Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

an explanation. The problem is there will only ever be theories. Her son is gone, and so he cannot tell us the real reason.

I say, “Greg looked into those possibilities. There were no prints here except the three of yours. No signs of entry or really any indication at all that someone else was here, invited or otherwise. His friends, that we’re aware of, were all accounted for. All we have is the video from your security camera and the neighbor’s account.”

The footage, from one of those fancy doorbell cameras, shows Johnny Rogers walking out their front door and straight across the street, into the woods. His path took him past a neighbor’s yard, and he saw him trudging into the trees at a calm, leisurely pace. He thought nothing of it. And why would he? It was just a kid exploring, perfectly normal behavior on a mountain like this. Maybe the hour was weird, but not weird enough to worry over.

“The thing is, Officer, he spoke with his friends mostly via the computer,” she says. “Or texting.” This word she almost spits out.

“I know,” I say patiently. “We sent Johnny’s phone and laptop to a digital forensics specialist at the county sheriff’s office, just in case, but as of yet there’s been no indication that anything was amiss.”

“As of yet,” she repeats numbly.

“It’s Greg’s professional opinion,” I go on, “which I share, that his friends had nothing to do with this. They’re all—we’re all—shocked beyond words, Mrs. Rogers. Barb.” I let that sink in. It sounds rehearsed to my own ears, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Unless,” I add as a tingle runs up my arms, “there’s something else? Something you remembered, or found?”

She shakes her head, not at my question, I think, but at some internal debate. “I’m just having a hard time understanding. This was so out of character for him. So… random. I wondered… when I called I’d planned to ask Greg to take another look through Jonathan’s room. A closer look. If there’s anything that might suggest drugs, or alcohol. Anything that could have clouded my son’s judgment…”

Her words echo what I’d said to Doc about the hiker, almost exactly. Another shiver flashes up my spine. “Greg was rather thorough,” I say, and instantly see the disappointment in her features. “But, maybe a fresh set of eyes would help? Unless you’d rather wait for Greg—”

“Thank you, Mary.” Barely a whisper. “I’d appreciate it if you had a look.”

“Of course.” I eye the sleeping bag on the couch. “How about you wait down here?”

She nods once, takes a careful sip of her tea. Her eyes are focused on the steam curling up from her mug.

Upstairs I enter Johnny’s bedroom.

A typical teenager space. Posters on the wall for various staples of pop culture: Mass Effect, Stranger Things, and half a dozen others. I only vaguely recognize them.

The floor is hardwood, original from the look of it but gleaming like the rest of the house. In fact, everything’s been thoroughly cleaned and tidied. I wonder for a moment if Barb did that herself, or if she’d had a service come in and do it.

In Greg’s report there were a number of photographs of this space. I’d been so focused on the death itself, and the reactions of both parents and town, that I didn’t really look at it from the perspective of the kid. In hindsight, there are signs everywhere that he treated this place as his own little cave.

The bed itself looks stiff and almost unused, shoved into one corner. The main attraction here is the sofa, which is well worn and piled with cushions and blankets. It sits only a few feet from a large flatscreen television. Beneath the screen on a double-deck stand are several game consoles and at least six controllers in various colors.

A thought occurs to me, and I cross to a shelf on the adjacent wall where dozens of games are shelved in seemingly random order. Most are unknown to me. Greg has a list of all these in his report, I recall, but I don’t know if anyone has really looked into what they are. Seems a bit of a stretch to blame video games for this, but I file that away for further examination anyway.

There’s a small desk by the window with a simple lamp and a pad of lined white paper. Ballpoint pens in a plastic cup. Probably where he did his homework. The window looks out on the mountainside, or would if the blinds weren’t drawn and covered in dust. So he wasn’t sitting here pining for the great outdoors then.

Johnny’s school backpack hangs from a hook on the back of his door. I unzip and open it, looking for a laptop or iPad despite knowing we already bagged and removed such devices. I do find a graphing calculator, but that seems harmless enough. It’s sandwiched between textbooks and spiral notepads. I thumb through the latter. Pages and pages of neatly handwritten class notes. No convenient letter from a friend daring him to survive a night on the mountain. No suicide note. No anything, really.

He was a nice kid. Every fiber of my being says so. A homebody, sure, but that’s not so strange these days.

I walk down the hall toward the bathroom. Hardwood creaks underfoot, giving way to marble tiles that gleam in the midday sun.

On the sink there’s a blue plastic cup, faint imprint of Johnny’s lower lip still visible. A toothbrush rests beside it. I check the medicine cabinet but there’s nothing remarkable. Floss, aftershave, deodorant. All the usual suspects.

For Barbara’s sake I look extra closely at everything, then sigh. She wants to hear something that might explain, but the truth is there’s no explanation coming. The kid screwed up. Was probably just tired of being cooped up, finally, and wanted some fresh air. We’ll never know why he went out that night. Maybe, maybe, he drank a shot of Dad’s whiskey just to