Flashback Read Free

Max took out his cellphone and opened one of his games. He was so engrossed that he scarcely noticed when a bespectacled old man with a gray goatee wearing a blue baseball cap came around the corner. The man wrapped his small black dog’s leash around the railing where Max had leaned his bike.
    “Excuse me.”
    “Huh?”
    “Would you mind just watching my dog for a minute, while I grab a coffee?” asked the old man. “He’s very well behaved.”
    “Yeah, whatever,” said Max, seeing no harm in it.
    A few minutes later, the old man returned with a coffee and a small cookie, much to the dog’s delight.
    “Thanks a lot,” said the old man.
    He sat down and tossed a piece of the cookie to his dog.
    “I told you he’d be no trouble. Sure is a nice evening.”
    Max paid no attention and remained focused on his cellphone.
    “So why were you looking into the Dexter case?” said the old man.
    “What?” Max asked, turning to stare at the stranger beside him.
    “I was on the computer beside you at the library,” the man explained. “Why are you so interested in David Dexter?”
    “I’ve got to do a summer project for school about old newspaper stories,” Max lied. “I found those articles by accident.”
    “It was quite a story back then,” said the old man, taking a sip from his coffee, “before they just buried the case. Too many secrets, I guess.”
    “Is that right?” said Max, disinterestedly, returning his attention to his game.
    “John Carrington,” the old man said, handing Max a business card.
    “A private investigator?” said Max skeptically, as he took the card and quickly scanned the words.
    “Sort of,” replied Carrington. “I rarely take on any jobs now. Back then I was working with the city police, investigating David Dexter’s disappearance. That is, until I was taken off the case.”
    “Oh yeah,” Max said, as he finished his drink.
    He stood up from the table and put his cellphone in his pocket.
    “Well, I’d better get moving,” said Max, handing Carrington the business card.
    “Hey, keep the card, kid,” Carrington told him. “If you want to know any more about the Dexter case for that school project, I’m usually in Castlegate Park around noon. We sit on the benches over by the lake.”
    “Okay,” said Max, stuffing the card into his pocket and grabbing his bike. “Bye.”
    As Max pushed the bike around the corner of the coffee shop, a white car pulled
    in to one of the parking spaces. Two men wearing dark suits got out of the car’s front seats. One was tall and willowy with thinning, pale blonde hair. The other was shorter and more heavily built, dark haired with a gray peppered goatee. A third man, with longer, blonde hair, was just getting out of the back seat when he got a call on his cell phone.
    “What do you want anyway?” asked the man with the goatee.
    “Americano, large, room for cream,” replied the third man as he leaned on the car’s open back door. “I have to take this call from the station. I’ll see you guys in a minute.”
    The first two men brushed past Max and went into the coffee shop’s side entrance. Max was about to get on his bike and ride away when he noticed a boy outside the bank on the far side of the parking lot. It looked like the same boy Max had seen at the bus stop when he and Jeff had been walking home from the cemetery. Dressed in a black tee shirt and jeans, with thick dark hair, the boy just stood there, looking over at Max. The boy then started to walk across the parking lot toward him, but Max was startled when his bike clattered to the ground. The man who’d been in the back seat of the white car had dropped his cell phone as he and Max had collided.
    “Hey, watch where you’re going,” he snarled, as he picked up his phone from the sidewalk and dusted it off. “Damn, I’ve lost the call.”
    “Sorry,” said Max.
    “Yeah, you should be,” said the man, angrily, but then his expression changed and he looked