“The basketball game?” I can’t help laughing. “No. We got creamed in the second half.”
“It was my fault,” Manuel says, looking pained.
“It wasn’t your fault.” I’m still laughing. “The Pansies suck, is all.”
“My fault,” Manuel says again. His voice cracks.
That’s when I stop laughing. Because I realize he’s crying. Fat tears are beading up under his eyelids, threatening to come spilling out any minute. He seems to want to lift his hands up to wipe them away, but he can’t.
“It’s not your fault, Manuel,” I say. “How can you even think such a thing? The guys on the team didn’t even know what happened to you until later. Coach Andrews didn’t tell them—”
“No,” Manuel says. The tears are sliding out from beneath his eyelids and streaming down his face. “I meant it’s my fault about Lindsay. My fault that she died.”
Whoa. “Manuel,” I say. “It isn’t your fault that someone killed Lindsay. It isn’t your fault at all.”
“I gave her the key,” Manuel insists. And he does manage to move one of his hands then. He curls his fingers into a fist and thumps the mattress, pathetically softly.
“That doesn’t mean you killed her,” I assure him.
“She wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t given it to her. I should have said no when she asked. I should have said no. Only…she was crying.”
“Right,” I say. I glance at the two detectives outside the room. They’ve disappeared. Where did they go? I want to run out after them, tell them to get in here…but I don’t want Manuel to stop talking. “You said that last night. When did she come to you crying, Manuel? When did she ask you for the key?”
“It was right before I went home,” he says. “Monday night. After the cafeteria was closed at seven. I was pulling a double, because Fernando had to go to his grandmother’s birthday party. The holiday. You know. And she came up to me, as I was putting on my coat to go home, and said she needed to borrow the key to the cafeteria, because she’d left something in there.”
“Did she say what?” I ask, glancing at the door. Where were those guys? “What it was she left, I mean?”
Manuel shakes his head. He’s still crying.
“I should have gone with her. I should have gone and opened the door for her and waited until she got whatever it was. But I was supposed to meet someone”—from the way he says the word someone, it’s clear he means a girlfriend—“and I was running late, and she’s…well, she was Lindsay.”
“Right,” I say encouragingly. “We all knew Lindsay. We all trusted her.” Though I’m starting to think maybe we shouldn’t have.
“Yeah. I know I shouldn’t have given it to her,” Manuel goes on. “But she was so pretty and nice. Everybody liked her. I couldn’t imagine she wanted the key for anything bad. She said it was really important—something she had to give back to…the people she borrowed it from. Or they’d be angry, she said.”
My blood has run cold. That’s the only way I can think of to explain why I suddenly feel so chilly. “She didn’t say who they were?”
Manuel shakes his head.
“And she definitely said they, plural, like it was more than one person?”
He nods.
Well, that was weird. Unless Lindsay had said they instead of him or her to hide the sex of whoever it was she was talking about.
“So you gave her the key,” I say.
He nods miserably. “She told me she’d give it back. She said she’d meet me by the front desk the next morning at ten o’clock and give the key back. And I waited. I was out there waiting when the police came in. Nobody told me what was going on. They just walked right past me. I was waiting for her, and the whole time, she was inside, dead!”
Manuel breaks off. He’s choking a little, he’s crying so hard. One of the machines that’s hooked up to him by a tube starts beeping. The woman I assume is his mother stirs sleepily.
“If…” Manuel says. “If—”
“Manuel, don’t talk,” I say. To the woman who has just woken up, I say, “Get a nurse.” Her eyes widen, and she runs from the room.
“If…” Manuel keeps saying.
“Manuel, don’t talk,” I say. By now Julio is up, as well, murmuring something in Spanish to his nephew.
But Manuel won’t calm down.
“If it wasn’t my fault,” he finally manages to get out, “then why did they try to kill me?”
“Because they think you know who they are,” I say. “The people who killed Lindsay think you can identify them. Which means Lindsay must have said something to you to make them think that. Did she, Manuel? Try to remember.”
“She said…she said something about someone named—”
“Doug?” I cry. “Did she say something about someone named Doug? Or maybe Mark?”
But the beeping is getting louder, and now a doctor and two nurses come rushing in, followed by Manuel’s mother…and the two detectives.
“No,” Manuel says. His voice is getting fainter. “I think it was…Steve. She said Steve was going to be so mad….”
Steve? Who’s Steve?
Manuel’s eyelids drift closed. The doctor barks, “Get out of the way,” and I jump aside, while she messes around with Manuel’s tubes. The beeping, mercifully, goes back to its normal, much quieter rate. The doctor looks relieved. Manuel, it’s clear, has drifted off to sleep.
“Everyone out,” says one of the nurses, waving us toward the door. “He needs to rest now.”
“But I’m his mother,” the older woman insists.
“You can stay,” the nurse relents. “The rest of you, out.”
I feel horrible. I shuffle out, along with the two detectives, while Julio and Mrs. Juarez stay with Manuel.
“What happened to him?” the younger detective asks me, when we hit the hallway.
And so I tell him. I tell him everything Manuel said. Especially the part about Steve.
They look bored.
“We knew all that,” the older one says—sort of accusingly, like I’d been wasting their time on purpose.