I stood there for a moment with my mouth gaping open until the knife clattered from my hand. Thankfully the guys didn’t advance towards me because I surely would have wet my pants. We were criminals. The guys were criminals because they kept this a secret and probably helped Brian stuff her under the bus – the bus for Christ’s sake! Honestly, I was a better criminal than they were because I never would put the body under the bus of the first suspect. But now I was reeled into this and it was not fair because I was a criminal and I would have the same punishment as the guys on top of everything else. Besides all that, this would certainly be the end of the Backstreet Boys unless we decided to sing some cover songs from behind jail walls.
I sank to my knees in front of the knife. What was I going to do? I played with the strings of my shoelaces as I thought. Well, the right thing to do would be to go to the police and tell them what Brian did. I didn’t have any direct involvement in this, so maybe I’d get let off easy.
“I know what you’re thinking Nick,” Brian told me in that flat tone of his. “And no one is leaking anything. The only reason why we didn’t tell you right away is because you were not involved and you have no reason to get in trouble for it. But you’re so noisy and you would have found out eventually.”
“See, that’s not what I thought, I thought you didn’t trust me.”
“No that’s not it at all.”
“Ok, but how are we going to keep this a secret if the body is under the bus and the murder weapon is right in front of me?”
“We’ll stay here.”
“But if we stay here, the police will find the body.”
“Good point. Well now I’m glad I told you, you can help us.”
“I think we need to blow up the bus, that’s the only way we can get rid of the evidence. We just need to get our stuff out.”
“But won’t that look suspicious?” Kevin piped up. “ I mean, if we’re with all of our stuff and our bus blows up won’t that be suspicious?”
“Not if we take it in our suitcases up to the hotel,” AJ answered.
“Ok, then how will we blow up the bus?” Howie demanded. Always trying to ruin my leadership plans…
“I’ll buy dynamite,” I told him. When I saw the look on his face I corrected myself. “Just, like, one stick from Chinatown. Yeah, that should do the trick.”
“Oh yeah, Nick Carter goes to Chinatown to buy some dynamite and hours later his bus blows up. How suspicious can you get?” Howie folded his arms triumphically and I gave him my best glare; mindful of course of our previous struggle but acting tough because I knew he wouldn’t try that again.
Brian was starting to look more bummed out by the minute. All of the guys could see that and we all exchanged turns giving Howie dirty looks. It would take only a mere twenty-four hours and the police would start searching for Leighanne. Since she and Brian had their fight in a club, as soon as the police found the right club and started asking questions, they would suspect Brian. I was starting to look longingly at the telephone booth across the street, but I couldn’t put my best friend to jail, could I?
No one came up with another good idea for at least a half an hour. We couldn’t even move our bus because of that stupid body. What were they thinking? Now I couldn’t fix it all for them. This must be the stupidest crime ever committed. I mean, it was so stupid that there was a possibility that the courts would decide that we were framed.
I was getting side tracked again. Somehow we had to find out how to ditch the body within a couple of hours without anyone spotting us. I guess if the body was totally mangled, we could call animal control and ask them to clean up the dead animal out form under our bus. It was a disgusting idea, but I suggested it anyway.
“No,” Kevin told me, “I don’t know animal that wears a black dress.”
I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. “You know why none of my plans are working? Because you guys fucked up royally.” I saw Brian duck his head and immediately regretted saying that.
“You couldn’t imagine the pressure we were under. I mean, he did it in the bathroom at the club and he left the body there when he went to tell us what happened. Somehow we managed to clean up all of the blood, lug the body here, and ditch it where no one could find it. Plus we didn’t panic.” Howie held his nose in the air as the guys nodded grimly.
“Brian, why’d you do it man?” I had to ask.
“She broke my heart, I told you that.”
“There has to be more than that. I remember the time she said that she couldn’t make the tour because of her movie and so you flew over there for your anniversary. You remember what you saw…you know that she was having an affair. Still you gave her another chance.”
“Yeah, I know I’m an idiot. This time it was worse. She managed somehow to cheat on me right under my nose, and then she humiliated me in front of everyone. You don’t know how terrible that feels.” At that point in his speech I glared Howie down and for the first time in weeks he looked away.
“Jesus Brian, I don’t know what to say.”
“Just help me out man.”
After that conversation, my mind wandered again. I think I gained a new respect for Brian just then, because he had been through similar things as I have but I never heard any complaints from him. His girlfriend cheated on him, as did mine. I was humiliated by Mandy in public countless times until I decided that I would take her to more secluded spots when we went out. Especially when there was alcohol around. Leighanne just proved that she was like that. She certainly can’t be like that now, since she’s dead.
Still Brian could have used a less, uh, final method to end his problem. Like breaking up with her, getting revenge on her with another plan of public humiliation. Surely he’d be devastated and he would need me to help him with a plan of revenge. Brian never wanted to take any rash actions usually, that’s why he criticized me when I took the vengeful way out. I think he beat me out on that part this time.
Then my course of thinking changed. There was something I’d forgotten: something we’d all forgotten and I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Sure we were all standing in the middle of nowhere talking really loudly about the person Brian killed and how to ditch the body, but that wasn’t it. My eyes trailed to the bloody knife before me and I thought that was it. That’s what was bugging me. I picked it up and chucked it under the bus. The noise it made scared the shit out of Brian and he warned me never to do that again. But that still didn’t satisfy me, there was something wrong.
I decided to address my public about it. “Guys, I have weird feeling.”
AJ whipped around 180 degrees and the rest of the guys just stared. I look right back at them, waiting for them to say something. Brian was nodding his head and I nodded back at him.
“Yeah, I feel it too,” he said.
“And you’re sure no one saw you drag her out of the club?” I asked him.
AJ was the one to answer. “I was guarding and I’m positive.”
“There’s no one around here for miles but us. So what could it be?” I wondered.
Then Kevin had a bright idea. “What about bums? There has to be bums living in this place if no one else crashes here.”
“Well then Kevin, you take the left building, I’ll take the middle one, Howie; the one on the right and AJ you take the one across from the bus.”
I couldn’t believe he neglected to mention me twice in the same day. “What am I supposed to do?”
“ Stay here and guard the body,” Brian paused to look at my confused expression, then he continued to explain, “because if someone comes here and sees it while we’re gone, we’ll be doomed.”
“Oh.” I decided not to argue that someone else could do it just as well as I could (Howie). Arguing now would not get our old, happy family back, and I didn’t want to start any unnecessary fights. See, I do think of these things now before I pick a fight with the guys.
They were gone for a good twenty minutes, dashing from one house window to the next, apologizing to bums and prostitutes for invading their space. I could see AJ clearly from where I was, and I could tell that he was having a hard time with one of the prostitutes. From what I could tell, she thought that AJ was one of her customers that hadn’t paid her the last time they were together. AJ did his best to defend himself, but it was really one of the prostitute’s girlfriends that got him off the hook.
Brian was having other problems. The bums were furious with him, because they thought that he was searching for their marijuana. Besides all that, he was asking too many questions. I guess it’s a bad way to start interrogating a bum by asking him if he was high last night. If I were him I would’ve panicked as well, because I wouldn’t want to face incarceration. Brian could have looked a bit like an undercover drug-dealer then.
In that respect I was luckier than most bums; I always had one dealer to count on. Most other people travel around and go place-to-place looking for good drugs, and then they can get ripped off. When you’re on your way to addiction, money gets tight (even for me) and it hurts like hell when someone rips you off bad. My drug of choice (I suppose I would call it that) was relatively cheap in most places, because more and more people have started using it. Had I gotten into cocaine, my money would’ve been gone a lot faster. It hurts just as bad when you buy bad shit from an undercover cop, and that’s obviously what that bum was trying to avoid.
I guess you must be thinking that I shouldn’t use the term “bum” for someone who does drugs, because I did too. At the time, I thought I was a bum, but that isn’t really true. A bum doesn’t have money so they beg for it, but I never needed to. Also, I was tricked into taking heroin. It’s not like I woke up one day and decided to take it because my life was bad. I woke up addicted to the stuff, and that’s a really scary feeling. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to begin the healing process (which I’ll talk about later on) and as well to go through withdrawal. On top of that, I had to figure out that there are better drugs, non-addicting drugs, that doctors use for killing their patients’ pains. So I had to stop thinking that I was taking it for the pain when I was actually doing it because I was addicted. Waking up and coming to terms with that is terrifying. And that’s what sets me apart from bums. Bums don’t want to get better, or they try and keep on failing. I don’t know, maybe I’m not giving them enough credit, but that’s my opinion.
The guys came back unsuccessful and with our combined new feeling of worry. There was something so crucial we had missed, but what? We searched high and low and left and right and still nothing. If all five of us had to have the feeling, then it must be real.
I happened to look over my shoulder at the bus and saw a curtain rustle. Then it came at me all at one; I knew what we were missing. The guys saw the alarmed look I had on my face and rushed to my side in panic.
“You guys, I know what’s wrong.” I started breathing heavily, because we were in real deep shit now.
“Well spit it out junior!” AJ yelled at me. The stress of being stared at so crucially was starting to kill me.
“We left Conan in the bus and he heard everything! He was on the phone dammit, we’re screwed!” I tried to let this sink in for the guys and I ran my hands through my hair like I do sometimes when I’m stressed. Brian was the first to react by running inside the bus and dragging Conan out to the best of his ability.
“It’s too late!” he yelped as Brian tugged on his hair with strength I never thought possible coming from him. “I heard everything and called the police. They should be on their way any time now. But believe me Brian, I did this for your own…” he started screaming as Brian threw him to the ground and kicked him reptitiously. It took all five of us to restrain him.
When the police came they arrested all of us before we told our story. Basically because it was our right not to say anything that could be used against us in the court of law.
The police started by asking a very important question: “Who killed Leighanne?”
Brian looked at me and sighed. “Nick did it sir.” The guys all nodded their heads in unison and the policeman turned to me.
“Is this true young man?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
Chapter 49
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