The Lantern Man by Jon Bassoff

Author:Jon Bassoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

CHAPTER 17

Lindsey was right. Chloe never did come home. But at least there were some developments in the investigation. Some sense of the players involved. And it was all because Josh Lange liked to brag.

The truth is, he never stopped bragging. About how many tackles he’d made in a game. About how many colleges were recruiting him. About how many girls he’d banged. So it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise that the day after the fateful meeting at Hagerman Tunnel, he bragged to anybody who would listen about what he and Billy had done. Yes, he told six or seven of his best buddies. The type of non-puritanical guys (and a couple of gals) who would appreciate his exploits. And word spreads quickly. Especially in high school. “I took her up to the hills,” he said. “Fucked the shit out of her. She was like a dog in heat.”70

But once Chloe’s face appeared on the front page of the local paper, a few of those buddies got to thinking. Maybe she’d been so ashamed at what she’d done that she’d run away. Maybe she’d gone and killed herself. Or maybe it was something more sinister.

I heard that it was Gary Watkins, the boy with the cauliflower ears, who finally told the cops about Josh and Billy.71 Once that happened, I knew that it was the beginning of the end. I knew that pretty soon it would come out that Josh had told Stormy about the meeting, and that pretty soon they’d figure out that Stormy had been at the tunnel as well. And then what? I’d seen enough movies to know the process. They’d lock him in an interrogation room. They’d deprive him of legal advice. They’d threaten and manipulate. And eventually he’d confess to a crime he didn’t commit.

The way I looked at things, I didn’t have much more time with him. I wanted to hold on to each and every moment.72

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