Five minutes. Long time.
Sixty-eight
More people turned out for the funeral than I might have expected. At least a hundred. Donna was more loved by her colleagues, and the entire Griffon Police Service, than she ever would have imagined.
I knew Augie would show up — it was his sister, after all — but I was still surprised when I saw him walk into the church with Beryl. I wasn’t surprised by his attendance, but by how quickly the events of the past few days had worn on him. His wife was a sapling next to Augie’s oaklike stature, but she seemed to be propping him up as they made their way to a pew.
It was blame and guilt eating us all up, like a cancer. Mayor Bert Sanders was feeling it, too. He had to be asking himself why he hadn’t kept a closer eye on Claire, why he’d been so easily duped when she’d said she was going to see her mother in Canada.
Annette Ravelson showed up, too, along with her husband, Kent. She made a point of not sitting anywhere near Mayor Bert Sanders.
I was relieved when Sanders offered to say a few words about Donna. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it together, and when I’d asked Augie if he wanted to say anything, he could only shake his head.
“Darkness has visited our town,” he said. “It has touched us all, but it has touched some more than others, and we mourn for them.” He was speaking, of course, about Hanna as well.
But not Ricky.
Instead of offering up one of those “insert name here” kind of eulogies, Sanders had asked around about Donna, particularly among her coworkers, and pulled together a brief, touching portrait of a woman who had already lost so much.
Besides the minister, there was one other speaker: a woman Donna’d kept in touch with over the years, and who’d gone all through public and high school with her. She uttered some nice platitudes. At least, I’m told they were nice. I’d stopped listening by that point. I was imagining being someplace else. Someplace with Donna and Scott. How I ached, sitting in that church, to believe in the tenets that had led to its construction. I had little expectation that I would find myself reunited with them one day.
The Skillings came. Sean, of course, had been released from jail, within twenty-four hours of Donna’s death. His parents were threatening a massive lawsuit that included the town of Griffon and Augie personally. I was betting the Rodomskis would get in on that.
They’d do what they had to do.
Then the service was over, and people were filing out of church, offering their condolences.
I was surprised to see Fritz Brott, owner of the butcher shop. He took my hand in his and squeezed.
“Read about this in the paper,” he said. “So sorry about your loss.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to call you. I made a promise to someone a few days ago.”
“Tony,” Fritz said.
“That’s right. Tony Fisk. I found myself in a situation... and he helped me out. I promised him I’d speak to you, ask you to maybe reconsider, give him another chance. I didn’t promise him I’d be successful, but that I’d at least make the pitch.”
Fritz nodded knowingly. “He came to see me.”
“He did?”
“Came in, maybe the day after you saw him. Said you were going to come talk to me, that you were going to make me give him his job back.”
“No,” I said. “That wasn’t the deal.”
“I figured, and told him so. And then he took out a gun and started waving it around and called me a bunch of names and for a second there I thought he was going to shoot me.”
I felt my heart sinking. “No.”
“After he left, I called the police. He’s been arrested. Tony’s in jail right now.”
You don’t think you can feel any sadder. But you can.
Fritz moved on, and a few more people stopped and shook hands, but I couldn’t tell you who they were or what they said. I believed Tony Fisk had some good in him, but not enough to keep him from being a hothead.
Then Sean stopped, along with his parents. They all shook hands with me, said the things people are supposed to say at a time like that, and moved on. But then Sean held back.
“Could I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“I mean, private like?”
I put my hand on his shoulder and steered him back into the church, which was now empty.
“What’s up?” I asked him.
“Well, first, I just want say thanks again,” he said. “For getting me out of jail.”
“It wasn’t really me,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I guess, but it was you, finding Claire and everything, that made it happen.”
I waited to hear what it was he really wanted to tell me. He was looking at his shoes, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his suit pants. The jacket was tight around his shoulders. The suit probably fit him six months ago, but he was at that age where he was having his final growth spurts.
“There’s something I gotta say,” he said.
“Something you don’t want to tell me in front of your parents.”
“Yeah, I guess. But maybe you’re going to tell them anyway, and if you do, I guess I have to live with that. But you’ve been good to me, and I think I owe you the truth.”
“What is it, Sean?”
He licked his lips, then lifted up his head to look me in the eye. “It was me. I did it.”
I leaned my head in closer to him and put a hand on each shoulder, as much to steady myself as anything. What the hell was he talking about? There was no doubt Haines had killed Hanna, that he’d planted Hanna’s clothes in Sean’s truck. Phyllis Pearce had confirmed those details since her arrest.
So what was Sean talking about?
“Sean, what are you saying? You killed Hanna?”
He shook his head violently and his eyes went wide. “God, no, I didn’t do that. No way. I loved Hanna. I just wish I’d gotten there in time, picked her up before...” He shook his head sadly and looked down again.
“Then what are you—”
And then it hit me.
“Scott,” I said, dropping my hands from his shoulders.
He lifted his head slowly and nodded. Tears were welling up in his eyes. “A couple of days before he, you know, I had some X. Sometimes, when Hanna and I would go around delivering beer and collecting money for it, you’d get the odd asshole who didn’t have the cash. This one guy, he wanted to pay Hanna with a couple of tabs, and she let him, and got back in the car with the X, and I told her she was an idiot, that Roman wasn’t going to take anything except cash and we were going to have to make up the difference, and I thought of Scott, because I knew it was his thing, and I got hold of him and he said, yeah, he’d take them off my hands.”
Sean looked at me, waiting for a reaction, but I was too numbed by the day to offer one.
So he continued, “I don’t even know if he was on the stuff I sold him when he jumped. I wasn’t the only guy he got it from. But I know it’s possible it was me.” A tear ran down each of his cheeks. “I’m so sorry. If you want to hit me or something, like, I’m okay with that. I’ll tell my parents why you had to do it. I’ve got it coming. But I’m sorry, Mr. Weaver. God, I’m so sorry.”