Todd paused and looked up at me for the first time since he’d dropped onto the ottoman. “It all backfired,” he added, “and the other kids still make fun of me.”
The doorbell rang, and Todd got up to answer it, walking with his shoulders slouched. God help me, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, too. Maybe quitting drinking was turning me into some kind of sentimental slob.
Jason Ragsdale was another scrawny kid, an overgrown pup whose body had yet to grow into his feet. He too was wearing the same teenage uniform of ragged clothes and untied, ratty high-tops. These kids didn’t live on the pricey side of Queen Anne because they were poor, but you sure couldn’t tell that by looking.
“This is them,” Todd said unenthusiastically. “I told ‘em you’d tell them what you saw.”
Jason Ragsdale shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I didn’t see all that much, really. I mean, I could have been mistaken.”
“What did you see, Jason?” I asked, handing him my card. “This could be very important.”
He nodded and bit his lower lip. “If I hadn’t almost run into her, I wouldn’t have seen it. That’s why my mother said no skiing in the city. She was afraid I’d hit somebody, and I almost did. It scared me to death.”
“Tell us exactly what you saw,” Peters urged. “Try not to leave anything out.”
Jason shrugged and shook his shoulder-length locks. “I had been going up and down Fourth because there wasn’t much traffic there, and I almost ran into her. She came out of the parking lot and was walking up the hill. I didn’t know anyone was there. I flew past when she was right by the school district office, and I think, no, I’m sure, she had a gun in her hand.”
“A woman?” I asked.
“No. Not a woman really. She wasn’t very old, I mean not much older than me. She was wearing one of those knit caps, so I couldn’t see her hair, but she was young, I know that much. I saw the gun, just in a flash, you know, as I went by. I told myself I was mistaken, but then, a few minutes later…”
He stopped dead in the middle of his story, swallowing hard, unable to continue.
“A few minutes later what?”
“I heard it go off, the gun, I mean. I pretended at first that it was just a backfire and that it didn’t mean anything, but I was scared and I went right back home. Then in the morning, when I saw all the cop cars…”
“Why didn’t you come forward before this?” I asked.
“Dunno. I was scared, I guess. More of my mother than anything else.”
“Would you be able to recognize her if you saw her again?” Ron Peters asked.
Jason Ragsdale ducked his head and drew a line across the rug with the toe of his leather high-tops. “That’s just it,” he whispered. “I think I have.”
“What do you mean?”
He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a wadded piece of newspaper, which he straightened across the knee of his jeans before he handed it to me. “This was in the paper today,” he said, pointing. “That’s her. At least I think it is.”
I looked down at the clipping from the P.-I. Staring back at me was a poor reproduction of Erin Kelsey’s senior high school picture.
“You’re going to have to tell your parents, Jason,” I said at once. “If it turns out that you’re an actual eyewitness, there’ll be depositions to take, court appearances. Your parents will have to know.”
He nodded. “It’s all right,” he said gruffly, his changing voice cracking under the strain. “I mean, I get mad at my parents all the time too, but I could never shoot ‘em.”
“Fortunately for society, most people can’t,” I said. “Most people come up with other, more civilized, ways of dealing with their problems.”
For the next half hour, I went over in detail everything Jason Ragsdale could remember about the night of the murders. He was good on everything but the times, because he wasn’t sure what time he had left the house. It was close to eleven by the time I finished the interview and he headed for the door.
“I’d better get going,” he said. “I got school tomorrow.”
“Will you tell your parents?” I asked. “It would probably be better if they heard it from you first.”
He nodded. “I will.”
“As soon as you do, I’ll want to talk to them as well.”
“How come? They didn’t see anything.”
“No, but you did, and the woman you saw may come back to this neighborhood looking for you. After all, you can link her to the scene of the crime at the time the murders took place. Your parents may want to take some precautions for your own protection.”
“You mean she might come back looking for me?” Jason’s eyes grew wide.
“That’s right.”
“Shit, man. I never thought of that. I’ll tell ‘em. First thing in the morning.”
Jason Ragsdale got up and started toward the door but stood there before it indecisively for a moment, shifting back and forth. He seemed suddenly very young and unsure of himself, a kid thrust out into a world where bogeymen, or women, as the case may be, were free to roam the earth.
“Would you like a ride home?” I offered.
He was too damn macho to admit to wanting a ride. “No. I’ll be all right.” With that, Jason Ragsdale hustled out into the night, pausing long enough to peer around cautiously before stepping off the porch.
As I watched him go, I was grateful that, for this one time at least, Jason Ragsdale had been where he wasn’t supposed to be when he wasn’t supposed to be there. And I was also thankful that despite all that, and even despite the bomb threats, Jason and Todd probably weren’t such bad kids after all. Maybe in the long run there was some cause for hope.
And then I remembered Erin Kelsey, and I wasn’t so sure.
“Are you psychic, or just plain lucky, or what?” Peters asked with a dubious shake of his head when he was once more seated in the 928 and I had finished loading his chair into the back. “I don’t understand how you did that.”
“How I did what?”
“Managed to figure out there was a connection between the bomb threats and the murders when no reasonable connection existed. How did you tie them together?”
“Pure dumb luck,” I laughed, “because it wasn’t exactly scientific, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of connection I expected. Just you wait. In a couple of years, Tracie and Heather will be sneaking out in the middle of the night too.”
“Like hell they will,” Peters muttered determinedly. “Not my kids.”
“I believe those come under the heading of famous last words,” I told him. I’m equally sure those weren’t words he wanted to hear.
A thoughtful silence followed. “You never suspected the daughter, did you?” Peters commented finally.
It was true. The idea that Erin Kelsey might be our killer still rocked me.
“No,” I replied. “Never. That one came as a bolt out of the blue, although…” Suddenly a portion of Andrea Stovall’s message came back to me.
“Although what?” Peters asked impatiently. “Don’t leave me hanging in midsentence like that.”
“Andrea Stovall. When she called down this morning and talked to Kramer to tell him she was leaving town.”
“What about it?”
“She told him Erin Kelsey had called to warn her that her father was on the loose and might come looking for her.”
“Nice kid,” Peters said. “Sounds like she’s trying to pin the rap on her daddy and buy him a one-way ticket to Walla Walla.”
“That’s the thing. She sure doesn’t look the part.”
“Looks can be deceiving, Beau. Where was she late Sunday night?”
“According to what her father told us, Erin had left for school in Eugene much earlier in the day. Sometime during the early afternoon, I think.”
“That may be what she told him,” Peters reasoned, “but since we have an eyewitness who puts her at the scene of the crime much later in the evening, she must have lied to her dear old dad. It’s that simple. Did anyone say whether or not she and her mother quarreled while she was home for vacation?”