“I... I can’t do this. I’m so scared all the time. I can’t sleep.”
“This?”
“The pills and the heroin. I can’t. Please don’t make me do this anymore. Don’t hate me.”
She stepped in close to the girl and kissed her forehead. “I could never hate you, lover. Never.”
She put her mouth on the girl’s and kissed her with an urgency and intensity that surprised even her. It wasn’t out of love. It wasn’t out of desire, but out of fear for herself. She needed to lose herself for a little while. She dragged the girl over to the bed and let herself go.
“Listen to me, lover,” she said when they were done and reality was setting back in. “You have to give me the stash.”
Petra was crying again. Through her tears she managed to say the stash was in the trunk of her car. Then, using all of her will to hold back the tears, asked, “Does this mean you won’t be with me?”
She knew what she should have said. Knew she should have kissed the girl and said that they could see each other only if Petra promised to never talk to the police about her. But she was getting edgy, the last pill wearing off, and with that came anger and frustration. She reached for her phone and retrieved the photo Arakel had sent to her of Chris Grimm’s brutalized body as a warning.
“If I was you,” she said, her voice cold and nasty, “I would worry less about being with me than what will happen to me if you ever tell the cops about us.” She showed Petra the photo.
At first the girl was startled and couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing, but when she understood, she ran into the bathroom and vomited.
Fifty
Cole was already out of it on the couch. Jesse couldn’t sleep. This happened to him occasionally since he had parted ways with alcohol. He paced around, read a little, and caught the end of The Outlaw Josey Wales on cable. It was one of those movies he could watch from any point in the movie to the end. He turned on his computer. When it booted up, he typed Swingline Sue’s into Google, but never hit enter as his cell phone buzzed on the table. He saw it was from the Paradise Police Department and picked up.
“What’s up, Suit?”
“There’s a kid here to see you... Rich Amitrano. Says he was a friend of Heather Mackey’s and that he really needs to speak with you.”
“Ten minutes.”
Jesse walked into the stationhouse, waved hello to Suit, who nodded at the bench by the fingerprinting table. Rich was staring at his phone, which made him like every other teenager Jesse had encountered over the last several years. The kid looked as tired as Jesse felt. He guessed they could share at least a few minutes of insomnia together.
“Hey, Rich,” Jesse said, offering his hand.
The kid shook it, placing his phone in his front pocket.
“Come on into my office. You want anything? Water, coffee, tea?”
“No, that’s okay, Chief Stone.”
“Jesse. C’mon.”
When they went into the office, Jesse pointed at the two wooden chairs facing his desk. Jesse sat opposite the kid.
“I should apologize,” Jesse said. “When I spoke to you, Megan, and Darby at the cemetery, I could tell you wanted to talk.”
“That’s okay. I understand. You must be really busy.”
“Not too busy to talk.”
Then Jesse waited the kid out. He had wanted to talk, so Jesse was going to let him do it without prompting.
“Is it true that Chris is missing? Do you think something bad’s happened to him?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Is he missing?”
Jesse said, “Uh-huh, but I don’t know what’s happened to him. Do you?”
Suddenly, Rich, who’d come to speak to Jesse, had nothing to say.
“Look, Rich, you’re the one who wanted me—”
“I’m sorry, Chief — Jesse. I really miss Heather. I love Darby and Megan, too, but it was different with Heather and me. We never judged each other. We could be totally honest with each other about stuff.”
The kid had changed directions, but Jesse figured he would circle back around to what he’d come in to say. “Stuff like what?”
The kid squirmed in his seat a little, took a few deep breaths, and stared Jesse right in the eye. “I’m gay. I know that it’s supposed to be easier these days to come out, but I can only know my experiences. I knew I could tell Heather and she would be totally cool about it. Telling her gave me the courage to tell other people.”
“Does your family know?”
“My dad’s accepted it. He doesn’t like it, but he’s okay. My mom... She prays a lot and ignores it. My brothers and sisters couldn’t care less.”
“I couldn’t care less, either, Rich, but is this what you came to me to talk about?”
“Heather and I shared a kind of secret crush on Chris. That was okay. We could tell each other stuff like that. The thing is...” He stopped himself, stood up. “I shouldn’t be here telling you this stuff. I’m sorry.”
“Rich,” Jesse said, “you came in here to tell me something. If you don’t tell me now, I can’t help.”
“Heather slept with Chris to get drugs. She was ashamed of herself for doing it and she was ashamed about caring about what other kids thought. That’s why she never told Chris how she felt about him.”
“Did you tell Chris how you felt?”
Rich smiled, shrugged. “I knew he was straight, but a boy can dream.”
“He sure can.” Jesse smiled, too. “There’s something else, isn’t there, Rich?”
“Heather told me that Chris was her dealer. Everybody kind of knew that, but Heather said that Chris got his stuff from one of the teachers in school.”
“How would she know that?” Jesse asked, his voice more serious. “Did he tell Heather?”
The kid shook his head. “No, but she said she caught Chris and her meeting a few times. Like by the lockers after practice and once in a classroom.”
“Her?”
Rich nodded, his face reddening. “She saw them through the classroom window and... they... weren’t talking.”
“Who was it? Which teacher?”
He shrugged again. “She wouldn’t tell me. I think she was afraid if I knew, I would try to save her by ratting out the teacher.” He bowed his head. “It was the only secret she ever kept from me. I swear, Jesse, that’s all I know. Maybe if I had said something...”
“If and maybe aren’t places you want to go to, Rich,” Jesse said, thinking of the circumstances surrounding Diana’s murder. “You can’t change the past, but you might have just helped stop anyone else from dying.”
“How? I don’t know which teacher.”
“Believe me, it helps.”
Jesse got up from behind his desk and came to stand in front of the kid. Rich stood as well.
“Thank you for coming to speak to me.” He shook the kid’s hand. “It was a brave thing to do. Sometimes the lines get blurry between right and wrong. Not this time. You did the right thing.”
“I hope so.”
When Rich got to the door, Jesse called after him. “My door’s always open to you.”
Fifty-one
She’d driven back home from the motel in a rage. Now she sat in her car, pounding her palms on the steering wheel and screaming. She understood the girl’s panic, and on some intellectual level even empathized with it, but on a visceral level she just didn’t really give a shit. Did Petra care about what would happen to her? Did that stupid little girl consider that the woman she said she ached for had degraded herself? She had risked everything — her career, her dignity, her life — to make sure she would always have that next dose. And now where was she? Nowhere. Worse than nowhere.