“I don’t know what Ryan Walker’s doing, and I don’t care,” I said. “I’m staying out of trouble and trying to find a job, sir.”
Hicks said, “I know you don’t like me, Toni. But right now I’m the only person who can help you stay out of prison.”
“It seems more like you want to get me sent back.”
“I want you to stay away from Ryan. He’s trouble and always was. Everything I told you before was true. I think you were a good kid who just got hooked up with the wrong guy. I’d hate to see you go down that path again.”
His arrogance was pissing me off—his certainty that he knew all about Ryan.
“Is that all? Are you going to write me a ticket?”
“I’m not messing around, Toni. If you want us to reopen the case, stay away from Ryan.” He rapped on the top of the roof, making me flinch. “You’re a young woman, got a lot of life left. Let’s keep you on the outside.”
I watched him walk back to his car, my blood still pulsing hard and my chest tight. After he pulled back into the traffic I eased out myself, my body vibrating with nerves. What the hell was I going to do? Was he just bullshitting me about opening up the case again? Trying to get me to stop Ryan from talking to people because the cops didn’t want the real shit to come out? But what if he’d been telling the truth? I didn’t know who to trust anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CAMPBELL RIVER
JULY 2013
An hour later, back at the campground, I was still trying to recover from my run-in with Doug Hicks when my cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I answered with a cautious, “Hello?”
“Toni, hey.” It was Ryan.
“I’ll call you back.” I knew the cops probably couldn’t tap my phone without some sort of warrant, but I was still freaked. I grabbed my disposable phone and dialed the number that had shown up on my call display.
When he answered, I said, “Doug Hicks stopped me today when I was coming back from talking with Rachel. He’s watching me.”
“Shit. Did Rachel or Kim call the cops on you?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think they did, so it’s weird.”
“Then what did Hicks want?”
I told him what Hicks had said, finished with, “If he’s right, we could screw things up.”
“Come on, you don’t really believe him?” Ryan was pissed off. “There’s no way he’s looking into the case again. Why would he want everyone to know he screwed up and sent the wrong people away? He’s trying to stop us from finding out the truth, not help us. What are you thinking? You just want to believe him.”
I’d had similar thoughts, but Ryan’s angry tone was pissing me off. I wasn’t sure who I was more annoyed at, myself because I had wanted to believe Hicks or Ryan because he saw through it faster than I did.
“I’m thinking that something’s up,” I said. I told him what had happened with Kim and Rachel. “The way Shauna was talking to Kim in the car? Kim was nervous, really nervous. I’m worried there’s something else going on.”
“Like what?”
“Like they have a plan—something to get rid of us for good.”
“They’re not going to kill us, Toni. Nicole was young, they caught her off guard, and Cathy trusted Shauna. That was her mistake.”
“And you’re too damn confident—that’s your mistake. They’re going to get us one way or another. Back to jail or on a slab at the morgue.”
“So what do you want to do?” He sounded as frustrated as I felt. “How are we going to end this thing?”
“We need to lie low, stay away from each other, and see how the next few days go. One of them will make a move, I’m sure of it.”
“You can do whatever you want, Toni. But I’m not going away on this. I’m still talking to everyone who was at that party that night, anyone who snorted coke with Cathy over the years, anyone who knows something about anything.”
“That’s a mistake, Ryan. We need to be careful right now. Let’s wait and see if my talks with Kim and Rachel have any effect.”
“I’m done with careful. It’s time we blow this shit wide open.”
“Ryan, that’s not—”
He’d hung up.
* * *
Still angry and worried as hell about what was going to happen now, I decided to go for a walk on the beach. I’d just left my cabin and was heading down the path leading to the beach when I noticed Ashley’s car outside one of the trailers, where loud music was playing. What was she doing here? I paused, and she stumbled down the front steps, the door banging shut behind her. She was giggling as she opened her car door and grabbed some cigarettes from inside. She turned around and tried to light one of them, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glassy. From where I was standing, I could smell the pot smoke leaking out of the trailer.
She cursed at her lighter, gave it a shake, and tried again. She took a drag and glanced up, finally noticing me.
“Toni, hey.” She came toward me. “What are you doing here?”
“I live at the campsite.” I thought about her standing outside her mom’s place, watching. And I wondered if she’d followed me before and already knew I lived here. Had she ever videotaped me? The thought was alarming—especially if she’d seen Ryan there.
“What about you? I thought you couldn’t drive without an adult in your car.”
“I can’t. I snuck out.” She nodded back at the trailer. “That’s where Aiden lives.”
I glanced at the trailer, which was old and filthy, the siding grayed and the awning torn. Plastic lawn chairs circled a fire pit full of beer cans.
“So you’re still seeing him.”
“Yeah.” She took another drag while looking at me from the side, self-consciously. “Sorry you got sent back.” Cautious now. “How was it?”
“Not great.”
“Things have been sucking for me too.”
She was comparing her life to my life? I gritted my teeth, tried to remember she was just a kid.
“How’s that?”
“Mom’s been freaking out since Cathy was murdered.” She sighed, her mouth twisting in a sad smile. “I remember her from when I was a kid. She was funny and she used to come over all the time, then she got messed up and I wasn’t allowed to see her anymore. Weird to think she’s dead, you know?”
I did know, remembering how I’d sat in Nicole’s room after she died, staring at her things and trying to understand that she was never coming back. I kept quiet, knowing the less I said, the more Ashley babbled. And she did.
“My mom and dad are fighting all the time now. Mom’s watching me constantly. I can’t do anything. We’ve fought a lot too, about Aiden and you.”
“Me?”
“I told her I didn’t think you and Ryan killed Cathy, that it didn’t make sense. She told me to stay out of it and let the police handle it.”
“Good idea.”
“There’s something up, though. She’s spending all this time with Kim and Rachel, but she never even talked to them for years. Now she gets lots of calls. I saw her clearing her cell phone history, but she left her cell on the counter today and she had a text from Rachel saying they had to meet ASAP.”
After my little visit.
A guy came out onto the front steps, banging the door behind him. He wasn’t much taller than Ashley and had a scruffy goatee. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just baggy jeans that showed the top part of his underwear.
“You coming back in, Ash?” He gave me an odd look, like he was trying to figure out where he’d seen me before.
“Yeah, in a minute, just talking to a friend.”
He stared at me again for a second, then went back inside.
“I’m not supposed to be talking to you,” I said. “If he says anything…”
“He won’t. I just thought you should know what’s going on with my mom, so you can be careful.”
“She’s your mother. Why are you telling me this stuff?”
&
nbsp; She stared down at the cigarette in her hand and said, “I never thought I’d be a smoker, didn’t think I had it in me. But then one day I just started and now I like it. It makes me wonder what else is in me, like maybe I have all kinds of sides I don’t know about.”
I was still trying to process what she’d said, and what it meant, when she looked up and quickly said, “I think my mom did something bad, like really bad.”
We stared at each other. I thought about what I should do, if I should just be honest with Ashley. Finally I said, “She lied at my trial. I never fought with my sister that night—lots of other times but not that night. Shauna hated me.”
“So it was like how I wrote in my essay? She was a bully?”
“Your mom and her friends were brutal to me, even after they started hanging out with my sister. But something changed that summer in the weeks before she died. I’m not sure what happened between them, but something did.”
A pulse was beating hard in the pale skin of Ashley’s throat.
“Do you think … do you think my mom did it?”
“I don’t know what went down that night, but those girls know the truth. Cathy was starting to talk to people about what happened. Now she’s dead.”
“So you think my mom did something to Cathy?” Her voice was scared, lifting up on Cathy’s name. “Just because she’s a bully doesn’t mean she’d murder her, right? Like how you were angry at Nicole, that doesn’t mean you’d kill her.”
Her expression was almost desperate, and I wondered if the real reason she’d wanted to do the documentary was to disprove her fears that her mother might be a murderer. Would she confront her? I didn’t have any reason to protect Shauna, but I still wasn’t sure of Ashley’s motives—what if she found out somehow we’d talked to the dealer, and threw it in her mother’s face? Next thing you know, he’d go missing too. It was better if I didn’t reveal too much else.
I said, “You should talk to your mom about that.” I’d have loved to see the look on Shauna’s face if Ashley did drop that bomb. I caught a motion out of the corner of my eye, a curtain flickering in the window. Aiden was watching. I wondered if he’d figured out who I was yet, if he’d call the police.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
As I started to walk away, Ashley called out, “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know what she was sorry about but I didn’t turn around. Later, when I was walking on the beach, I thought about what was going to happen to Ashley when the truth came out that her mother was a murderer. I was sorry too.
* * *
When I got back, Ashley’s car was gone and her boyfriend’s trailer was dark. I hoped I didn’t run into her again and considered whether I should move somewhere else. But I hadn’t been working, so my money was almost gone.
Back in my cabin, I remembered how Ashley had mentioned her essay. That made me think about Darlene Haynes, who’d had a falling-out with my sister. What had that been about? Could she know something more? Stephanie still had my laptop, so I walked over to the campsite office and did a quick search on the guest computer, happy to see a listing for Darlene in town. Either she hadn’t married or was divorced, but I didn’t care—it was working in my favor.
The sun had drifted behind some clouds, so I grabbed my jeans jacket and hopped in my truck, with Darlene’s address on a piece of paper on the seat beside me. I drove slow, taking alternate routes and checking to make sure I wasn’t being followed. Finally I pulled up in front of Darlene’s house, which was on the other side of the river. The house wasn’t much to look at, just a white single-story box, but it was tidy and there were flowers blooming all over the yard.
I rapped on the door. A cat came running out of a nearby hedge, startling me, then weaved in and out of my legs, purring.
I didn’t think I’d get lucky and actually catch Darlene at home, but the door opened and I recognized her right away, though her hair was short now and bleached out. She had a couple of earrings in one ear and was dressed in some sort of uniform, like she worked at a store or a pharmacy. When she saw my face there was a pause as she tried to place me, then shock when she did.
“Are you…”
“Toni.”
“God, you look like your sister.” She was staring at me, trying to take it all in. I saw her eyes drop down to my tattoos, saw the fear as she remembered that I’d been in prison. I wished I’d grabbed my jeans jacket out of the truck.
“Can I come in? I need to ask you some stuff about Nicole.”
She looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
She’d never been a witness at the trial, which I always thought was strange. If anyone would know about my relationship with my sister, it was Darlene. They’d been close for years. So why didn’t the police talk to her?
“It won’t take long,” I said. “I just need to clear some things up.” She was still staring at me. I softened my approach. “I remember you at our house all the time, how close you two were, but something happened. Nicole changed that year, before someone killed her. It wasn’t me or Ryan, but that person is still out there. You might know something, something that could change everything.”
Now she looked confused, thrown off guard, like maybe she’d never considered there was another killer.
“It was a long time ago, my memory…”
Finally, an opening. “It might not take much, just a small detail.”
She still looked torn, like she didn’t know what to believe.
“I’m not here to change your mind about me, Darlene. I just need to know what happened between you two, why she ditched you. It must’ve hurt.”
I’d hit the right nerve. Her face was angry as she said, “Nicole turned into a total bitch that year.”
Perfect. Anger was good, anger would make her want to tell me more, so she could feel justified. “So why don’t you tell me about it?”
She opened the door. “I only have a little while before work.”
“That’s fine.” The cat dodged around my legs, zipped into the house, and raced upstairs.
We sat at her kitchen table. She didn’t offer a coffee, but I didn’t need one. My nerves were on edge, keyed up from excitement. I was close. I could feel it.
“So what happened?” I said.
“She was seeing a guy, Dave. That’s when she first started changing.”
“Dave?” That had to be the guy I’d spoken to on the phone, the one she’d been sneaking out to see. “I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.”
“No one knew. He was four years older than us—already in college. We’d met him at the mall that Christmas and he’d come by school sometimes to talk to her. They hooked up at a party, then she started sneaking out to meet him.”
So I was right. “Why did you two fight?”
“She was getting secretive, like she wouldn’t tell me stuff about him anymore, and she wouldn’t wear certain outfits because he said they were trashy. He partied a lot too, always drinking with his friends. I thought he was a jerk.” She stopped and thought back. “I heard him yelling at her on the phone once.”
I remembered Nicole crying in the girls’ bathroom at school; her fear when I’d picked up the phone. Was he just a controlling asshole with a bad attitude or something more dangerous?
“Did you try to talk to her about it?”
“I told her she should dump him. We stopped hanging out after that for a couple of weeks, then she was with those girls all the time. She started wearing sexy clothes again and going to parties, so I thought she’d broken up with him.”
I thought back to that May, how she’d started sneaking out again later that month. Either she hadn’t broken up with this Dave guy, or she’d been meeting up with the girls to party, or she was seeing someone else. That summer she’d told me she was in love with a guy who worked with my father. The one who gave her the necklace. She’d said it was the boy from the party, but was that just a lie to cover up for the real person?
Then I wondered if she might’ve been seeing one of the girls’ boyfriends. That would’ve pissed them off, but I didn’t think my sister had it in her. Odds were it was this guy.
“Why didn’t you say anything to the police about him after she died?”
“I did, and they said they’d look into it. But then you got arrested…”
“So you figured we did it.”
“I knew you and Ryan got in trouble a lot—and you were always doing drugs, and fighting with Nicole, and there were witnesses.…”
“I didn’t kill her, Darlene. I don’t know if this guy had anything to do with it, but I’d be surprised if the police ever talked to him.” I told her about our interrogation, how the police never considered other suspects, how the girls lied.
Darlene looked upset, considering the possibilities but still not willing to believe me completely. “Maybe Dave had an alibi or something.”
“Could be, but I’d like to have a talk with him now. Do you know if he’s still around? Or his last name?”
She was quiet for a few beats, then said, “I think it was Johnson. No, Jorgensen, something like that, but he moved away.”
It was a common enough name and it was going to be hard to find him after all these years, but still, there was a slim chance.
She said, “They weren’t friends anymore, you know.”
“Who?”
She hesitated, like she was already regretting having said it, but then she went on, in a tentative voice. “Shauna and her group, and Nicole. Those girls were pissed at her before she died. When I heard they’d testified they saw her at the lake with you, I always figured they’d gone there looking for her themselves.”
My adrenaline kicked in, everything else slowing down. “You didn’t say anything to anyone? At the trial…” I was still taking it all in.
She nodded. “They made it sound like they were best friends. I figured they were just doing that for the attention.” She shrugged, a small casual motion that enraged me. This information could have changed my life. I took a couple of breaths, gripping my hands together under the table until I’d calmed down.