Page 66 of A Future To Remember

“Nah. Let’s go,” he said.

We headed out the back door and down the alley, which smelled like rotting garbage to the north side of the diner and out to the front. Crossing the road, I pointed to the striped white lines that separated the parking spaces on the far side of the street from Wanda’s and said, “This is where the sheriff was found dead.”

Levi nodded. “Got it.”

“Can you time our trek on your phone, Levi?”

He lifted out his smartphone and tapped at the screen, then he pocketed it again and said, “Let’s go.”

We walked in an unhurried fashion, as I imagined Doug Maydole may have been strolling with his dog along the sidewalk that led to one of only three stop signs in town, then we turned right onto Dogwood Lane.

Neither one of us spoke; we just walked in silence, with me leading the way a half step in front of Levi.

Dogwood Lane was sparsely populated, just four or five homes on the whole street, but it was longer than I’d expected it to be. When we reached the cul-de-sac, I stopped and turned to Levi. “How long has it been?”

He lifted his phone to look at the screen. “Six minutes.”

I nodded. “We’re at least a quarter mile away. Which makes me wonder if Maydole even heard the shots. We’re surrounded by woods, which would’ve muffled the sound, for sure, so at best, they would’ve been faint. Six minutes to get back from here, even if he hustled, seems quite long.”

Almost in answer, Levi pointed behind us. “There’s a path through that patch of trees over there, Maddy.” He then turned and pointed to the right of the only house on the cul-de-sac. “And it picks up again there. Evansville High is another quarter mile that way. I used to walk this route to school every day.”

“A path through the woods?” I repeated. “You mean, there’s a shortcut?”

“Yeah. It’s right there.”

I pointed to his cell phone. “Hit the timer again and lead the way to the path.”

I couldn’t see the start of the path in the dark, but I watched Levi stroll straight to it, and when I stepped onto the path, I noticed that it was well worn, more like a trail than a path. Even though Levi had graduated a few years earlier, the kids were obviously still using it.

But had it been here twenty-five years ago?

And more importantly, if it had existed back then, had Doug Maydole both known about it and perhaps used it to double back with his dog after hearing the shots?

A short time later, we emerged from the trees, and I was quite surprised to be looking straight across at Wanda’s Diner, just a little way south from where Sheriff Penton had been murdered.

“How long did that take?” I asked.

Levi looked again at his screen, tapping it to end the timer. “Three minutes, thirty-four seconds.”

“Wow. That cut the time nearly in half. And we weren’t even hurrying.”

Levi nodded. “That’s why we use the shortcut.”

“How long has this path been here?”

Levi shrugged. “Ever since I can remember. I used it back when I was in middle school and we had football practice at the high school.”

“Who showed it to you?”

I was hoping some much older steward had showed Levi the path, anchoring my thought that it’d been in use at the time of Sheriff Penton’s murder. Levi’s expression, however, wasn’t what I’d expected. Immediately he cast his gaze to the sidewalk, hunched his shoulders, and simply said, “A friend.”

In that moment, the image of a broken heart floated through my mind. “Luca,” I said. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I knew it.

“Yeah,” he whispered, surprising me with an honest answer. Levi hadn’t spoken about Luca before. He surprised me even further when he continued to talk about the young man who’d died so tragically. “Seventh grade was the year I fell hard for him. It was the first time I admitted to myself that I was attracted to other boys. Luca told me he knew it when he was even younger, in like, third grade, when Stacy Johnson, the most popular girl in our grade, told everybody that she and Luca liked each other. He said that he’d been scared shitless at the idea of being forced to like a girl.”

“He hid it well, it seems,” I said, recalling Cash’s insistence that Luca had only been into girls.

“He did. We were best friends, and good athletes, so nobody thought much about our hanging out together all the time, but by the time we were in our freshmen year, we were making out and exploring our feelings, you know?”