“Troy.”
“Troy Drake?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you’ll sleep at home
tonight,” Jesse said.
33
Kevin had stopped crying. He was drinking a Coke.
Jesse said, “Who’s the girl,
Kevin?”
“Candy Pennington,” Kevin said.
“You’d have found out
anyway.”
“What happened?” Jesse said.
Kevin looked at his mother. No one said anything.
“It was Bo, really,” Kevin said.
“Me and Troy just went
along.”
Jesse nodded and waited. Kevin looked around. No one said anything.
“She was such a freakin‘
brownnose,” Kevin said.
“Kevin!” his mother said.
He didn’t look at her.
“Well, she was,” he said. “She
was always sucking up to the
teachers. Always acting like she was better than anyone else.”
Jesse waited. Kevin drank his Coke and didn’t say anything more.
The room was still.
“So you thought you’d take her down a peg,” Jesse
said.
“Yeah. Exactly. Bo said we should take her out in the woods and
pull her pants down.”
“Oh, Kevin,” his mother said.
“Embarrass her, you know. Maybe take a picture of her.”
Mr. Feeney had his head tilted back against his chair. His eyes
were closed.
“My God, Kevin,” Mrs. Feeney said.
“You’re not helping, Mrs.
Feeney,” Jesse said. “Let him tell his story.”
Mrs. Feeney clenched her hands together and pressed them against
her mouth. Kevin wouldn’t look at her.
“Bo told her a bunch of us were hanging out there, partying, you
know. So she goes out there with us and we, you know, did it.”
“What was ‘it’?” Jesse
said.
Mrs. Feeney made a little moaning sound into her clenched hands.
“You know, had sex. I mean we wasn’t going to, we was going to
just, like, look at her. But then Bo said we’d gone this far and
what the hell. And then he got on top of her.”
“And had sex with her?”
“Yeah.”
“And you?”
“Yeah, I went second.”
Mrs. Feeney moaned again. She was rocking slowly in her chair.
Mr. Feeney neither moved nor opened his eyes.
“And Troy Drake?” Jesse said.
“He went after me.”
“He had sex with her?” Yes.
“And how did she feel about this?” Jesse said.
Kevin shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“How did she act,” Jesse said.
“She was crying,” Kevin said.
“When Bo did it she tried to push
him off, but she couldn’t.”
“Did she say no?”
“I guess so, she was yelling help and stuff.”
“And with you?” Jesse said.
“She just laid there,” Kevin said.
“Was she still crying?”
“Yes, but that’s all. It was like she decided to go along with
it.”
“She have any other options?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know.”
“So then what happened?”
“Troy did her. Then we held her down while Bo took her picture.
Bo told her if she said anything we’d show everybody in school the
pictures.”
Mrs. Feeney continued to moan and rock. Mr. Feeney continued to
sit immobile with his head back and his eyes closed.
“I’m really sorry,” Kevin said.
“Mom, I am. I’m
sorry.”
“I tried,” Mrs. Feeney said into her clenched hands. “I tried
and tried to teach you to respect women. Didn’t I?
Didn’t I drum
that into you since you were little. To disrespect one woman is to disrespect us all. In shaming that poor girl, you shamed me.”
Mr. Feeney opened his eyes, and without lifting it, he turned his head toward his wife.
“You know, Mira,” he said. “This
really is much more about Kevin
and that poor girl than it is about you.”
“Oh, God,” Mrs. Feeney said and pressed her hands to her face
again and began to cry.
Jesse reached over and shut off the tape recorder.
“I’m going to have that
transcribed,” Jesse said. “Then I will ask you to sign it.”
“Okay.”
“Mr. Feeney, you’ll need to sign it too, I think, since Kevin is
not of age.”
Feeney nodded.
“If he testifies against the other boys,”
Mr. Feeney said, “can
he get a break?”
“When you have a lawyer,” Jesse said,
“your lawyer and the DA
can negotiate that.”
“Will you put in a word for him?”
“Yes.”
“He’s never been in trouble
before,” Mrs. Feeney
said.
“And now he is,” Jesse said.
“But he won’t have to go to
jail?”
“Mrs. Feeney,” Jesse said. “He
participated in the gang rape of
a sixteen-year-old girl. He’ll have to answer for that.”
“Oh, my God,” she said and cried harder.
34
Jesse’s condo was only a block away from the Gray Gull, and they
walked to it after dinner. There was a hard wind off the harbor and Abby put her arm through Jesse’s and pressed against him.
Inside
the condo Jesse poured them each a Poire Williams and they stood at the glass slider and looked out past his deck at the dark harbor.
There was a storm coming up from the southwest and the water was restless.
Abby turned so that she could look up into Jesse’s face. She had
drunk two Rob Roys before dinner, and they had shared a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
“You look tired, Jesse.”
“Busy time at the office,” Jesse said.
“I know,” Abby said. “How many
television interviews have you
done?”
“Many.”
“And you always say it’s an ongoing
investigation and you can’t
discuss it.”
“I know.”
“I suppose they have to keep asking.”
“It’s sort of news
manufacturing,” Jesse said. “They do a stand-up in front of the police station and interview me, and ask me things like, have you caught the killer. And I say no. And they say, this is Tony Baloney live in Paradise, now back to you, Harry.”
Abby smiled.
“It’s not quite that bad,” she
said.
“I suppose not,” Jesse said.
“Sometimes they just ask if there
are any developments.”
“Are there?”
“Sure. We know that there were two
twenty-two-caliber guns
involved.”
“Two?”
“Un-huh. And we think he, she, or they drives a Saab sedan. And
we speculate that he, she, or they lives in Paradise.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Any connection among the victims?”
“Not that we can find.”
“You think the killings are random?”
“Don’t know. For all we know, he, she, or they had a reason to
kill one of the victims, and killed the others just to make us think it was random.”
“If that were the case,” Abby said,
“maybe the killings have
stopped.”
Jesse shrugged.
“Do you have a guess?”
“I try not to,” Jesse said.
“Sure, but you’re not just a
cop,” Abby said. “You are, after
all, also a person.”
“I’m better at being a cop. And
it’s best if cops don’t
hope.”
Abby was quiet for a moment. There was a break in the cloud cover and the moonlight shone briefly on the harbor, where the whitecaps were breaking, and the boats tossed at mooring. She sipped a little of the pear brandy. It was so intense that it seemed to evaporate on her tongue.
“I’m not so sure,” Abby said
after a time, “that you’re a better
cop than a person.”
“Lousy cop too?” Jesse said.