by Mindy Mejia
“Yeah, that’s what all us rebellious teenagers want. Bucking the system with our pencil skirts and twinsets.”
“Eat your peas.”
I did and we fell quiet for a bit, while I tried to think of something worth telling her. It was a normal day for the most part.
“There’s a new English teacher.”
“I heard.”
“He seems nice. Different, you know, from the other teachers.”
“Elsa Reever’s son-in-law. He and Mary came to live with Elsa this summer.”
A few more bites. Dad’s clock on the wall that was radio-synced with the international standard clock in Denver said it was 9:52. Mom’s clock on the microwave read 10:03. She said it felt like it gave her a cushion.
But Dad’s clock is right there, I always pointed out.
I don’t look at it, she always replied.
“Tommy Kinakis came in for some pictures.” I said, just to make some conversation. Dad walked in to refill his water in his undershirt and boxers. He used to drink root beer while he watched the news every night, until the doctor told him he was pre-diabetic. He wasn’t fat, not like some people with all their jiggles and bulges. He was just—solid. But I guess he was getting more solid than the doctor wanted, so now he drank water at night.
“Tommy Kinakis? He’s looking to be one hell of a linebacker this season. They’re expecting he’ll get a pretty good ride at the U.”
“I think he was trying to ask me out.”
Dad grunted like Tommy had to be reevaluated now. Mom scraped off the last bits of hot dish from the pan and tossed them out the side door for the barn cats. She looked like she was talking to the cats when she replied.
“Tommy’s a good kid. You could do a lot worse than a Kinakis.”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“You don’t have to date anyone, Kinakis or no Kinakis.” Dad gave my shoulder a squeeze on his way back to the bedroom.
“Did you get those convent brochures you’ve been waiting for?” I yelled at his back and heard him chuckle.
I helped Mom clean up the table and load the dishwasher. She never said thank you or anything, but she appreciated it when I helped out. That was at least one thing I knew about her.
“Thanks for having supper with me.” I picked up my book bag and was on my way to my room when she stopped me.
“Hattie.” She wrung the dishrag out in the sink and draped it over the faucet to dry.
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you should go out with Tommy. It would be good for you to socialize, make friends in the real world, instead of surfing away on your phone like you do all the time lately.”
I should have just agreed, but ever since I bought my Motorola this summer she acted like I was carrying Satan in my purse. Like I wasn’t going to school, and work, and rehearsals. Why couldn’t I text my friends and check my forums? “The internet’s not full of made-up people, Mom. They’re real, too.”
“Yes, but it’s important to talk to people face-to-face. You don’t know who some of these people are.”
“Of course I do. They’re people just like me.”
“Oh, honey . . .” She shook her head and looked at me, looked right through me until I really did feel like I was nothing more than a ten-year-old girl playing New York dress-up by way of Rochester, Minnesota.
“There’s still a lot for you to learn about the world.”
“Like what?” I bristled, ready to argue with her, but she just smiled like I’d proven her point.
“Don’t stay up too late.” She came and kissed me on the cheek, her library book in one hand, cholesterol pills in the other. I watched her walk down the hallway into their bedroom and turn on her nightstand lamp. Her hair was almost half gray now. And for about the millionth time in my life, I wondered who my mother wanted me to be.
DEL / Sunday, April 13, 2008
JAKE AND I headed over to the Kinakis place right after the play.
“You think Tommy had something to do with it?” he asked.
Jake was still acting a little sore because I’d made him leave his cruiser at the station and ride with me. He didn’t think two seconds ahead sometimes. I wasn’t going to spook Tommy with two cop cars pulling up in front of his house. Out here, intimidation is never the right way to go, no matter what the city boys say. Country people know themselves. They don’t do anything they think they shouldn’t just because you wave a badge at them. And the more badges you wave, the more stubborn some of them get. It was all the Norwegian and Irish blood.
“I don’t think anything about Tommy, except from what we know so far, Hattie might have left the school with him.”
“And she was definitely dating him,” he added.
“Yep.”
“Big kid.”
“Hmm.”
I could tell Jake was thinking along the same lines as me. Last year, sixty-five percent of all the women killed in Minnesota were done in by domestic violence. The number rang true around the station when the stats came out. We were a quiet county and we didn’t have the murders, but we still saw a fair amount of domestics. Too many.
“So he takes Hattie out to get a little action at the Erickson barn after the play. Friday night, springtime, kids are going to be kids. They get into a fight about something and things get out of hand.”
I snorted. “You’re no more than a damn kid yourself. Sound like some TV cop.”
“I’m just putting together the story.”
“That’s Tommy’s job.”
We pulled into the Kinakis place and right away the wife came to the screen door. Martha, I think her name was. Jake and I took our time getting out of the car. If you weren’t there to arrest somebody, it was always a good idea to give them a minute or so to puzzle out why you were there. They drew their own conclusions, and sometimes when you got to talking, they’d fill in blanks you didn’t even know were there.
“Mrs. Kinakis.” I pulled my hat off as we approached. “Is Tommy home?”
“He is.” She looked between each of us, not willing to step aside and let us in quite yet. “He’s in pretty bad shape, though. We just got the news.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“Can’t it wait till tomorrow? I was going to let him stay home from school.”
“Afraid not. This is a murder investigation and we need to talk to everyone who saw Hattie on Friday night. Now, we can do it here or down at the station. You decide.”
She looked torn for a minute, kind of scared and mad wrapped up together, before opening the screen door and waving us in.
We waited in the living room while she got him. Jake paced around, tapping his hat on his leg, while I looked over the pictures sitting on top of an upright piano. Lots of football shots, lots of Tommy riding tractors and posing with dead deer and pheasants.
Tommy came into the room with a parent on either side. He looked about five years old—round face blotchy with emotion, flannel shirt untucked, arms hanging like he didn’t know he had them. At first he seemed like he wanted to say something, then just dropped his head and waited.
“Tommy, we’ve got some questions.”
Mrs. Kinakis jumped in again. “He’s really in no state to answer questions right now. I thought he was coming down with something even before we got the call. I’ll bring him to the station first thing in the morning if you want.”
“This is a murder investigation, ma’am.” Jake was eager to do some talking. “We don’t have time to waste if we want to find Hattie’s killer.”
Tommy flinched a little at the word. His mother steadied him with a hand.
“Best to talk while the memories are fresh,” I said.
“Well, sit down. Let’s get this over with.” Mr. Kinakis waved a beefy hand at the couch and shot his wife a look that told her to hold her peace.
None of the Kinakises were what you’d call delicate flowers, so after they sat down on the wraparound sofa, there wasn’t much room
for Jake or me. I went to the window instead and gave everyone a minute to situate themselves. The sun was still well above the horizon, melting the last bits of snow that hugged the north side of their outbuildings.
“Hattie left the play on Friday night with you, Tommy?” A flock of Canadian geese honked overhead and landed in a field across the road. There was no answer behind me.
“How long were you dating her?”
There was a pause and a murmur before he managed to speak up. “Since Sadie Hawkins, I guess.”
“Five, six months. You must have been pretty close.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you like the play on Friday? Did Hattie do all right?”
“I guess.”
Kid wasn’t much for talking. I finally turned around and put myself dead in front of him and waited until he looked up. He was big; he could probably bench my whole weight, but he didn’t look it right now. He looked small and scared, hunched between his mom and dad.
“Where’d you and Hattie go after the play, Tommy?”
“Out for a drive,” he admitted.
“For a drive where?”
“I dunno.”
Jake jumped in, hell-bent on playing bad cop. “We can take you down to the station, if you’d prefer, or to the murder scene. Maybe that would jog your memory a bit.”
“What are you accusing my son of, Jake Adkins?” Mrs. Kinakis asked, standing up.
“No one’s doing any accusing, Mrs. Kinakis. All we know is Hattie left the school with Tommy on Friday night and the next time anyone saw her she was dead. Now we need to know what Tommy knows. I understand it’s hard to talk about, but it’s going to be a lot harder if he chooses not to talk to us. For us and for him.”
Mr. Kinakis cleared his throat and motioned to his wife to sit down. She walked to the other side of the room instead, and we all waited for Tommy. After a minute, he took a breath and started in.
“I thought we were going to Dairy Queen, but she wanted to go out to Crosby instead.”
Mrs. Kinakis gasped and covered her mouth. “You didn’t tell us you took her to the lake.”
Tommy looked away.
“Where on Crosby?” I asked.
“The parking lot by the beach. We went there sometimes to . . .” He glanced at his dad. “Just to make out. Nothing else. She hadn’t wanted to go out there for a while.”
“What then?”
“Well, I thought she wanted to—you know, but she didn’t. She said she couldn’t see me anymore.”
“She broke up with you?” Jake asked.
Tommy nodded. “She acted so strange. I told her there was still another couple months before graduation, and prom, too. Didn’t she want to go to prom?”
He was looking at his hands now, almost seeming to forget we were all there.
“She got real quiet then. Looked sad for a minute. And she said some girls weren’t meant to go to prom. It was like she already knew. Like she knew she was gonna die.”
He broke off and put his head in his hands.
“What happened then, Tommy?”
“She left.” His voice was muffled and I wished I could see his eyes.
“She got out of the truck and told me to go find some other farm girl who’d let me fuck her. Sorry, Mom. She said, ‘’Bye, Tommy,’ and then she walked off into the night. She never swore. I didn’t know why she was acting like that. I didn’t know what I did wrong.”
“Did you follow her?”
“No.”
“Must have made you mad, what she said.”
He lifted his head again and his eyes were dripping. “It was cold out. I thought, let her walk home then. Fuck her, you know? Sorry, Mom.”
“Anybody else in the parking lot?”
“No.”
“You pass anybody on the way in?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And you just let her walk off and went home?”
“I—yeah, I left, but I drove around for a while before going home. I was pretty mad.”
“You pick anybody up? Call any of your buddies to talk about it?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t want to tell anybody. I even . . . doubled back and drove around the back roads for a while, thinking I might see her and maybe she’d apologize. She just wasn’t like that, you know? We were going to do things. We were getting a limo for prom and all of us were going up to Derek’s cabin in July. It’s been all planned for months. Everyone’s bringing their girlfriends.”
“Did you go back to the parking lot? Try to find her there?”
“I just drove by without stopping.” He swallowed and took a shaky breath. “It was cold.”
“Then what?”
He looked at the door. “I came home.”
“When did he get home that night?” Jake asked his parents.
“Didn’t hear him,” Mr. Kinakis said. “We were already in bed.”
“I’m sure I heard him come in.” Mrs. Kinakis jumped in. “It couldn’t have been later than ten thirty.”
“Tommy?” I turned back to him.
“Yeah, it was probably around then,” he mumbled.
We kept after him for more details and his story didn’t waver. He kept his head down and wiped tears from his eyes with meaty forearms. As we wrapped up the interview, Mrs. Kinakis wasted no time shooing us out the door. Before she got us all the way out, I shot Tommy one last question.
“Hattie ever talk about a curse?”
“Curse? Like a voodoo curse?” He looked up blankly and shook his head as Mrs. Kinakis hustled us out of her house.
After that Jake and I headed over to the east side of Crosby to check on Shel, the deputy who’d won the coin toss to search the lake. The rest of the boys had made a full search of the shoreline first thing this morning and turned up nothing. Most of them were combing Winifred’s fields with the dogs now while Shel had the boat out on the lake, scanning the bottom. It was a shallow lake. Twenty feet at the deepest point. If there was anything to be found, Shel would see it soon enough.
While Jake radioed him, I poked around the parking spot by the beach. The gravel was dry and snow-free, so no chance of pulling tire tracks to see who else might have driven in here. I walked over to where the trail started and squatted down. It was a dirt path that you could hardly see in the summer, winding through the surrounding weeds and grasses, but now, just after the thaw, it was exposed plain as day. The ground was smooth, tramped down by years’ worth of feet hiking around the lake. There were a couple half-prints here and there—not much to go on. A dozen people could have walked this path Friday night and you wouldn’t know.
I followed the trail around to the barn—it wasn’t far, maybe half a mile—and checked the shoreline to see if anything had washed up in the last few hours. Nothing.
When I got back, Jake was fiddling on his phone next to the beach. “So far Shel’s got a case of empty beer bottles with the labels all washed off. Looks like leftovers from last summer.”
“How much area has he got left?” I asked.
“He’s covered over half the lake. Or so he says.”
I glanced at Jake, who sneered. “He drives a boat like a twelve-year-old girl.”
“Better than whining about opening a case file like a twelve-year-old boy.”
Jake grunted.
“So Hattie gets out of the truck and Tommy thinks she’s walking home, but she walks to the barn.”
“The barn window’s on the other side of the building. You wouldn’t be able to see any lights inside from here.”
“Exactly.” I faced it again.
Physically, it was the same decrepit pile on the horizon I’d seen every fishing season, but its substance had changed. Now it held a horror inside, the memory of a dead girl who’d been so bursting with life and plans, who’d swatted me on the shoulder every time I called her Henrietta and told me once with a cheeky grin, “I’m going to arrest you for defamation of character.”
&nbs
p; I’d laughed and explained you couldn’t defame someone’s character by calling them their legal name. And then we’d had a long talk about free speech and what was and wasn’t legal, with Bud looking on, shaking his head like he was proud and kind of confused all at the same time about where this girl came from.
“So, if Hattie went there by herself, either the killer was waiting for her, or knew she was there and came later.”
I turned away from the barn and the memories I didn’t need right now. “Agreed. Odds are strong against a chance meeting out here. Someone knew she was going to the barn on Friday night.”
“You don’t like Tommy as a suspect.” Jake said, watching the water.
“He’s all we got at this point and he admitted a fight besides.”
“You don’t like him for the killer,” he said again.
“Mmm.”
A yell came off the lake and Shel waved wildly at the monitors. I waited motionless, hoping for the knife, while he hauled up his find and motored back to the launch. It was a purse instead, found about twenty yards from shore and one-third of the way down the trail from the barn. A quick check revealed Hattie’s license and school ID inside, which told us the killer probably tossed it as he left through one of the parking lots.
“You want to call off the field search?” Jake asked as we cataloged the contents on the cruiser’s hood.
“After today. Keep them tracking along the main field paths until sundown, just to see if anything else turns up.” There was no sense wasting the borrowed manpower I had from Olmsted County.
We bagged and tagged everything in Hattie’s purse, from her waterlogged phone down to the empty Lifesaver wrappers that littered every pocket, and after ten minutes of methodical examination there was only one thing that interested me.
“This guy.”
I held up the bag with a business card we’d found in Hattie’s wallet. It was black on one side, white on the other, and some fancy writing said Gerald Jones with a website underneath. On the white side someone had written a phone number.
“I want to know who this is and why Hattie had his card. Check the number. Find out where he is.”
Jake nodded while he fiddled with another evidence bag. “I think the phone’s completely toast. Too bad.”