“Well, if Ray screwed the pooch, we should know about it before Tish or someone else gets there ahead of us.”
“Of course.”
“One last thing,” Pat said.
“Yes?”
“At some point, I may pull the plug. If all we’re doing is chasing our tail, and it’s obvious we’re never going to have enough evidence to put someone on trial, then I’m going to shut this down. I’m sorry, I know this girl meant something to you and your late wife. But if we don’t find anything new, then you and Tish are both going to have to live with the idea that the case will always be unsolved.”
WHO KILLED LAURA STARR?
THIRTEEN
July 5, 1977
The three of us were in our living room on Tuesday afternoon. It was me, my dad, and Jonny. The house had never felt so small. I hadn’t slept at all, and the walls felt like they were closing in, and the ceiling was coming down on top of me. I couldn’t breathe. The room was baking hot and so sticky that you broke into a sweat without doing anything at all. We all sat there, not saying a word, watching the dusty stream of sunlight through the front window. Jonny held my hand, and I buried my head in his shoulder. Tears of anger and regret streamed down my dad’s face. His face was beet red. He blamed Laura for living when my mom died, and now he blamed her for dying like she did. He had lost another one.
My dad. He was never a big man, and year by year, he seems to shrink. His dark hair, which was so full and thick when I was a little girl, is mostly gone now. His clothes don’t fit, but he won’t let me buy new ones, so his white dress shirts balloon at his shoulders. He sits in his recliner in the evenings and reads his leather Bible by the dim light. No ambition anymore. Just crushed dreams and a tug-of-war with God. I remember how he used to come home from Wahl’s in his sharp pinstriped suits, like a man on top of the world, a man going places. He was going to run that department store someday. That’s what he told Mom. Now other men have climbed over his shoulders, and Dad writes newspaper ads for white sales. At fifty, he looks sixty. You just don’t realize how one person depends on another, and when they’re not there, it’s like going off a bridge, and you’re falling and falling.
I went to Jonny’s place. After. In the middle of the night. He answered the door, and I looked a sight, crying, dotted with blood. He called the police, because I couldn’t do it. They came and took us back there, and I led them through the woods to the body, but I couldn’t go out to the beach. I couldn’t see it again. Even the big, tough cops couldn’t believe what had been done to her. Things like that don’t happen. Not here in Duluth.
They asked me a lot of questions in a police car parked back in the weeds and had me repeat over and over what I did and what I saw. I think they could have done that for hours, but Jonny stood up to them and insisted that they take me home. I needed to tell my dad. I needed to stand under the shower and wash away the blood. They took pictures of me first, though, flashbulbs popping in my face out there in the woods. They scraped blood from my skin. I realized that they thought maybe I had done this myself. I had killed her. I didn’t understand how anyone could think that. I told them I was innocent. I’m not sure they believed me.
“I’m so sorry, Dad,” I murmured.
I felt a need to take this on myself, for his sake. I never should have let her go.
Dad didn’t look at me. “God’s punishment is a terrible thing.”
“You know I don’t want to hear that.”
“I told Laura she was sinning,” he said.
I wanted to scream at him, but I didn’t. I bit my tongue. This was how he dealt with grief, how he explained awful, random things. He had become so hard and unbending over the years. As if standing straight made any difference at all when you were in the path of a tornado. As if lightning somehow distinguished between good and evil.
Dad bowed his head and started crying again. I sighed and looked up into Jonny’s dark eyes. He kissed my head. We had both grown older overnight, in a lot of ways.
I heard a knock on the front door. “I’ll get it,” I said.
The man on the doorstep had bushy red hair and a matching mustache. He wore oversized wire-rimmed glasses over pale blue eyes. I figured he was in his midthirties. He was medium height, but heavy and strong, with fingers like thick pork sausages. He wore a plaid sport coat and a white dress shirt that bulged out over his belt. No tie. Open collar and a fuzz of red chest hair. He wore flared denims and muddy dress shoes. I saw splotchy stains on his shoes. I wondered if it was blood.
“I’m Detective Inspector Ray Wallace,” he told me. “Duluth police.”
“Come in,” I said.
Wallace walked with a limp. He followed me into the living room, and I sat down next to Jonny again. Wallace introduced himself to my dad, who didn’t get out of his recliner. Wallace’s eyes shot around the room as he pulled out a dining room chair and sat down. You just know when somebody is smart, and Wallace was smart.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Starr,” Wallace said.
My dad used a handkerchief to blow his nose and then folded it and replaced it in his pocket. He laid his hands on his knees and didn’t say anything.
“I’m trying to find out exactly what happened to her, sir,” Wallace continued.
Dad still didn’t say a word. He stared blankly into the dust.
“I didn’t do it,” I blurted out, filling the silence.
To a cop, that must be like lighting up a big sign that says, I did it! I did it!
Wallace smiled with his lips, not his teeth. His mustache wriggled like a red worm. “No one is saying you did, young lady.” He looked at Jonny. “And who’s this?”
“I’m Jon Stride. I’m Cindy’s boyfriend.”
“Nice to meet you, Jon. Why don’t you head on home now, okay?”
Jonny pushed himself off the sofa and shook Wallace’s hand. There was something different about him right then, something I’d never seen before, something mature and attractive. I could see them sizing each other up like men do. “If Cindy says she didn’t do it, you can take that to the bank. And I’m staying. I was there last night.”
Wallace got a little glint in his eyes. “Suit yourself.”