The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier Page B

became of the rock?”
    Jason shrugged, wriggled a bit on the chair, conscious again of the heat in the room. He was not really interested in all this stuff about the stone. What did all of this have to do with him? He became aware of a headache starting; a small pulsing pain.
    “I don’t know what became of the rock. Maybe it got thrown away.” He was getting tired of the questioning, despite what Mr. Trent had said about helping out. He wanted, really, to get out of there, to go home.
    “I think I’d like to go now,” he said. “I’d like to go home.”
    “Not quite yet, Jason.”
    “Why not?” Hadn’t he answered all the questions?
    “Because as I said, you are important. Not only were you close to Alicia, but you spent those last hours of her life with her.”
    “The killer did, not me,” Jason said.
    Trent did not reply, merely looked at the boy.
    “Then, let’s summarize, shall we?” he said.
    “Yes,” Jason agreed. Summarize. The summary would prove that he was not the last one to see Alicia alive.
    “You knew Alicia Bartlett. She was a little girl who seemed to like you. A smart little girl who often beat you at games, made you feel inferior.”
    Jason opened his mouth to speak. Somehow Mr. Trent had gotten it wrong. But the interrogator held up his hand, like a traffic cop. And Jason sank back in his chair.
    “You enjoy reading about violence. Those books you read and movies you mentioned,” Trent said, speaking a bit more rapidly, not wanting to give the boy a chance to interrupt. “You said you’re not sure sometimes about the difference between reality and fantasy. You daydream a lot. Sometimes about violent things—”
    “But—”
    Again, the traffic cop’s motion.
    “You’re familiar with the woods where Alicia Bartlett was murdered. You said that a rock was used to kill her. The police had not divulged that information to the general public and yet you said a rock was the murder weapon. Right?”
    “Right, but—”
    “Opportunity and motive are the most important aspects of a case, Jason. And you had both.”
    “Motive?”
    “Alicia made fun of you. Made you feel inferior.”
    “I liked Alicia, she never—”
    “There’s a thin line between liking someone, even loving them, and then hating them. A spark can ignite very quickly. Let’s face it, Jason. No one else had the opportunity. You were with her that afternoon. Alone with her . . .”
    “I was alone with her but—”
    “Look, it’s understandable. You didn’t want to hurt her, did you?”
    “No, I—”
    “Those things happen. You lose your temper, you get upset, things happen fast, you didn’t mean to do it but things got out of hand. There was a rock nearby—”
    “It didn’t happen like that,” Jason said, voice rising in volume, seeming to bounce off the walls.
    “How did it happen, then?” Triumph in Trent’s voice.
    Jason recoiled as if the questioner had slapped him in the face or struck him in the stomach, and his stomach suddenly felt hollow, his bowels loosening. He had a sudden urge to go to the bathroom.
    Trent saw the panic in the boy’s eyes, the raw pain that distorted his features, the trembling of his lips, his hands raised in protest, his body suddenly shriveling as if he needed to make himself smaller, to squirm himself out of the trap he had walked into unaware. And in a blazing moment, Trent knew irrevocably that the boy was innocent, knew in the deepest part of his being, past all doubt and deception, that Jason Dorrant had not murdered Alicia Bartlett. Trent had witnessed too many evasions and heard too many protestations in all his interrogations to have any doubt about it. Jason Dorrant was innocent. The accumulation of body movements, the spontaneous responses, the lack of cunning in his voice and manner, all added up to the inescapable truth. Trent frowned in dismay and disappointment. He thought of Braxton and the senator waiting for the confession, the town outside