by Chaz McGee
‘What do you know about her personal life?’ Maggie said. ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
The kid looked momentarily startled. The thought of Darcy having a boyfriend had never occurred to him. He had been too busy casting himself in that role. ‘I don’t think so,’ he stammered. ‘If she did, I never saw her with him. Maybe the other waitresses would know.’
The more they talked about Darcy, the more the kid started to realize that she was gone and that his dream of being with her one day was dead. His voice cracked as he fought back tears and he looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Maggie took pity on him and brought the questioning to a close.
‘Is there anything else you can tell me about her?’ she asked him. ‘Even if it’s just personal details, like what she wanted to do with her life. I’m really having trouble getting a sense of who she was.’
The boy wanted to help Maggie and he had started to believe that she truly cared about Darcy as he did. ‘I know she was thinking about getting a new job,’ he offered. ‘About a week ago, some jerk came in and left her a fifty cent tip on a twenty dollar tab. Darcy gave it to me and said that I should keep it, that she was sick of crappy tips and dirty old men. She said that if men were going to stare at her and grab her ass and be pigs about it, that she ought to be getting paid a whole lot more for it.’
Maggie looked a little startled at this news. What had Darcy Swan been thinking? There were way too many options for young girls in our town that led to nothing but misery and, inevitably, danger. Surely Darcy had known better than to consider any of those?
The kid knew nothing more of use and Maggie sent him on his way. She spent the rest of the morning questioning the other waitresses: about whether Darcy did, indeed, have a boyfriend; if she had had any favorites among the regulars at the diner; if anyone had seen her leave the night she disappeared; had she mentioned any trouble at all with anyone in the weeks leading up to her murder; had she talked to them about getting a new job?
In the end, Maggie got nothing to help her other than that Darcy had once had a boyfriend who would pick her up in his red truck after work and give her a ride home. No one quite knew why they had broken up, but they thought it probably had something to do with Darcy’s mother. All the troubles in Darcy’s life usually had to do with her mother, most felt. Some of the waitresses thought Darcy’s mother had probably put the moves on the boyfriend and scared him away. Others thought Darcy’s mother had been so jealous of her daughter that she had forbidden Darcy to date at all.
It was hard to tell if their speculation about Darcy’s mother was real or a by-product of their feelings about her. They had all seen Belinda Swan on the airwaves milking her daughter’s death for all it was worth – and they all seem to despise her for it.
Finally, one waitress offered that recently Darcy had been upset about something that had to do with her old boyfriend, but would not talk about it. Under patient questioning from Maggie, the waitress offered that she thought maybe Darcy’s old boyfriend was stalking her.
It wasn’t much for Maggie to go on. The staff had pretty much confirmed what she already knew: for a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, Darcy Swan had been trying to do her best. She worked hard in school, she worked hard at the diner, she had believed that if she worked hard enough she could make something of her life. She had died before she got that chance.
Maggie finally threw in the towel and left her card with the cashier, extracting a promise from the staff to call her if they remembered anything at all that might be of value to her.
I longed to order a coffee and jelly doughnuts to go. Alas, I was denied the second-hand pleasure of either when Maggie ordered hot tea – lemon, no sugar – and turned down the offer of anything with calories in it.
Damn, girl.
I was forced to admit that, had I lived, we would have been most unsuitable partners.
TWENTY
It took Maggie less than half an hour to learn what I already learned by eavesdropping on my son and his friend: the identity of Darcy Swan’s old boyfriend. A phone call to the high school principal triggered a phone call to the student body president, who in turn remembered that his first name had been ‘Adam.’ She put Maggie on hold while she checked her list of Facebook friends – over three thousand of them, she said proudly – and came back a moment later with the news that his full name was Adam Mullins.
Personally, I thought Maggie was lucky his name had not been Zeke. That would’ve taken all day.
Maggie called the principal back, obtained the kid’s address and soon we were heading back to Helltown, windows rolled down so that the cold spring air rushed over us. I felt as alive as I had ever felt when I was actually, well, alive. It was good to be back in the field.
By now, the street was familiar to me: a block of rundown mill houses, rental properties all, perched on small patches of dirt where the grass waged an ever-losing battle with rusty lawn chairs, discarded garden tools, dented tricycles and other junk. No one ever worried about having their stuff stolen. These houses were slim pickings. Thieves looked elsewhere for their bounty.
There was a minor traffic jam in front of Darcy’s house, caused by a couple of news vans and the morbidly curious who just wanted to drive by and see where the dead girl had lived. I caught a glimpse of Darcy’s mother on the doorstep of her home, dressed to the leopard print nines, being interviewed by the media. She was going to ride that gravy train for as far as it would take her.
In the daylight, it was clear that my son’s friend put more care into his yard than any of his neighbors. Adam was, in fact, pushing a mower back and forth across a front yard that had a respectable lawn of newly green grass. He mowed that lawn with the same contained seriousness he displayed in every other aspect of his life. This poor kid wasn’t much of a kid.
Maggie had a dilemma to consider. Adam Mullins was a minor and she could not legally question him as a suspect without a parent present. In fact, Gonzales was so cautious on this point that – in order to mollify voters who didn’t care what he did to other people’s kids, but who were damned and determined to cover the asses of their own – he had directed that no minors be questioned at all without a parent or guardian present. This had crippled the ability of the squad to pursue drug cases completely and led to elaborate fantasies of teenage gangs attacking the commander, or stealing his car and all manner of nonsense until his deputies had come down hard on the ranks and made it plain he was absolutely serious about the policy. Maggie knew the drill as well as anyone, but she was not good at delayed gratification. I could feel her mulling over the implications of questioning Adam Mullins alone and, predictably, could not stop herself.
As she pulled up in front of his house, eyes watched her from behind the curtains and blinds of the other houses on the block. I knew the drill well – this was like reality TV, only better, as neighbors pegged Maggie for a cop and wondered who had violated their parole or who finally bounced enough bad checks to warrant jail time. A back door slammed nearby as someone with a guilty conscience took flight. Probably some deadbeat late on his child support. I hoped he would trip and break an arm.
Adam Mullins saw Maggie coming and switched off the lawnmower. He was a smart kid and knew why she was there. His face betrayed nothing about what he might feel at finding a detective on his doorstep. Even when Maggie was inches from him, he simply waited for her to speak which, trust me, was not something that many teenagers could do.
‘I wanted to ask you some questions about Darcy Swan,’ Maggie said, showing him her badge. ‘I know you used to be her boyfriend. You’re not a suspect. I just need you to help me figure out who she had in her life.’
She had solved her dilemma by making it plain that he was not a suspect.
The boy still said nothing. He just opened the front door wide and followed Maggie through it. I brought up the rear. The living room wasn’t very big, but it was surprisingly clean. It had to be the kid who was keeping it that way.
From what I had seen the night I hitched a ride in his truck, Adam’s old man, with his unshaven chin and greasy shirts, was not exactly Mr Clean.
‘Who is it?’ a tremulous voice called out from a back room. ‘Is that you, Adam?’
‘Just me and a friend, Grandma,’ the boy called back. ‘I’ll be in to check on you in a moment.’
Adam moved a stack of school books off the couch to make room for Maggie. He sat across from her in a tattered recliner with sunken-in cushions – proof that his father pretty much lived in front of the widescreen television bolted to the far wall.
‘What do you want to know?’ he said. I had to give the kid credit, he tried to keep the traces of resentment from showing up in his tone. I’d noticed, but Maggie might not. Darcy Swan had broken up with him, I suspected, and the thought of it still bothered him. I knew first-hand that the thought of what-might-have-been can do that to you.
‘Well, first of all,’ Maggie said, ‘I’m sorry about your friend. It was a lousy way to die. She seemed like a really good person and she didn’t deserve to die that way.’
Adam looked startled. ‘Thanks,’ he mumbled. He did not know what to make of Maggie.
‘How long did you know her?’ Maggie asked casually, trying to put the boy at ease.
‘I knew her my whole life,’ Adam said. ‘We’ve been in the same classes since we were in first grade together.’
‘She lived just a few doors down, right?’ Maggie asked, though she knew the answer. She’d noticed how tightly wound the boy was and was trying to find a way in.
Adam nodded. ‘She’s lived in a couple of houses in the neighborhood. They had to move around a little after her dad walked out on them. But she’s been in the same one for a couple of years now. It’s pretty easy to tell which one. Reporters have been camped out there since it happened.’ He hesitated. ‘Her mother keeps giving interviews and stuff.’ A flash of anger had showed in his face. Maggie noticed.
‘What is it?’ Maggie asked. ‘I can tell something bothers you.’
‘It’s just that Darcy’s mother never really gave a shit about her, and now she’s crying for the cameras and making it sound like they did everything together and she’s lost her best friend and stuff like that. But when Darcy was alive, all her mother really did was make her do all the work around the house and then pay rent on top of that, and give her a hard time about bringing friends over to the house, not that anyone wanted to go over there.’
‘Why not?’ Maggie asked.
The boy turned red. My guess was that Belinda Swan liked to put the moves on any or all of Darcy’s friends who were male. God, what if the grandmother had joined in, too? No wonder Darcy had not replaced Adam with a new boyfriend.
‘She was just really friendly,’ the boy mumbled. ‘She liked to hug you a lot and . . .’ His voice trailed off. He looked so miserable that Maggie helped him along.
‘Can you tell me more about Darcy and her mother. How did Darcy feel about her?’
‘She hated her mother. Darcy said that most of the time she didn’t give a crap about Darcy, unless she was asking for rent money. But every now and then, she’d get really strict with Darcy, usually in front of one of her scummy boyfriends. She tried to tell Darcy what to do just to prove she was a good mother or something.’
‘Did they fight a lot?’ Maggie asked.
‘She didn’t have anything to do with Darcy’s death, if that’s what you mean. Her mother was kind of . . .’ He searched for the right words. ‘She kept trying to be Darcy’s friend instead of her mother, and she always tried too hard to act like she was as young as us, but she was OK. So long as you avoided her when she’d had too much to drink, she could actually be kind of nice. She was really proud of Darcy. She’d never have done anything to hurt her.’ He stared directly at Maggie for the first time, as if she might challenge this belief. He had a confidence and intelligence in his gaze that most kids his age lacked.
‘Did you see her after Darcy died?’ Maggie asked. ‘Did she have a boyfriend with her?’ Maggie was just fishing, but it wasn’t a bad guess – in Helltown, when you put together an ageing woman, her booze-hound boyfriend and a young daughter, you almost always had the makings of trouble.
‘She came down here after Darcy was killed,’ he said. ‘She was really upset. She just wanted someone to talk to about it. She was crying and asking why things like this always happen to her.’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘I couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of her, actually. She brought a whole bottle of vodka with her, so when my dad came home, she and him stayed up drinking together. In the morning, she was gone.’
‘She came here the night after Darcy’s body was found?’ Maggie asked.
He nodded. ‘I saw her the next day, outside of her house, talking to some reporters. I think my dad clued her into the fact that she could make money off of Darcy’s death.’ His voice was bitter; he blamed his father for most of the things wrong in his world, I realized. And, perhaps, rightly so.
‘Adam?’ his grandmother called out from the back of the house. ‘Are you there?’
‘I’m here,’ he called back. I had the feeling this went on every few minutes whenever he was home.
‘Do you need to check on her?’ Maggie asked.
‘She’ll be OK for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Is there anything else you want to ask?’
‘Was Darcy’s mother the reason the two of you broke up?’ Maggie asked.
The boy shook his head. ‘No, she really liked me. She knew I got good grades and had a job. Darcy and me breaking up was just one of those things.’
Maggie leaned toward him. ‘Look, I know it’s hard for you to talk about this. People say you were together for a long time, maybe even months.’ She looked at him for confirmation and he nodded. ‘Maybe you could just go into a little more detail about why the two of you broke up?’
The kid was no fool. ‘You think there was someone else, don’t you?’ he said. When Maggie did not answer, he continued. ‘I don’t think she had another boyfriend after me. If Darcy had wanted a boyfriend, she would’ve chosen me. We were together almost a year, but one day she just told me that we couldn’t be together any more. She said that having a boyfriend and getting married and telling yourself that life was all about having a man was what had gotten her mother and grandmother into trouble. She said she wanted more for her life. I tried to explain that keeping her back was the last thing I wanted to do, that I would be there for her no matter what she decided to do with her life, but she just said she wasn’t ready to get involved with anyone. She wanted to concentrate on school and her art and stuff like that. She said she just wasn’t ready . . .’ For the first time, he looked uncomfortable. He was trying to say something, but I couldn’t figure out what.
I hoped that Maggie had a better take on it. I knew it probably had something to do with sex. At his age, what were the chances it didn’t?
‘Did you have a close relationship before that?’ Maggie asked gently.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you spend a lot of time together? Did you hang out at her house a lot? Did she hang out here a lot? Spend the night?’
The boy looked embarrassed. ‘She liked to hang out here with me. We would do our homework together and watch TV. Even with Grandma asking for help all the time, it’s still quieter here at my house than over at her house. My dad owns his own business, so he’s gone a lot. At her house, her grandmother is always watching TV with the volume turned up really loud. So we liked to hang out here and sometimes she would make me and Grandma a sandwich or something, if we had anything to eat in the house. I used to stop by the grocery store and pick up stuff to make sure we had supplies.’ He sounded wistful at the loss of this simple pleasure. ‘But then my dad would usually come home and ruin things. He’s an asshole. He would start yelling for a beer or asking where his sandwich was and why didn’t Darcy like him enough to have a sandwich waiting for him. Darcy would always leave s
oon after he got home, not that I blame her. I’d have left, too, if I’d had anywhere to go.’
‘Look,’ Maggie said. ‘I really hate to ask you this, but where is your mother? It doesn’t seem like she lives here.’
The kid was still just a kid. Whatever had happened to Adam’s mother, it had been bad and it showed in his face. ‘She died six years ago.’
He did not explain and Maggie did not press him further. He was shutting down enough as it was. I could tell that she felt sorry for him. Like Darcy Swan he, too, had deserved a better life than the one he had been given.
‘Did you and Darcy stay friends after you broke up?’ She asked, steering the conversation back to safer ground.
He nodded. ‘Yes. I mean, as much as we could. She started working at the diner a lot more, she was saving up to get out of here as soon as she could, but she still had to come up with the rent money in the meantime. And . . .’ He looked miserable, but had the courage to continue. ‘It hurt a lot to be around her at first, so it’s only in the last couple of months that we’ve been able to really be friends again. But she talked to me, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Are you absolutely sure she did not have a new boyfriend?’ Maggie asked him. ‘I know it’s not something that you want to think about, but it could be really, really important. It could lead us to who might have killed her.’
The kid thought hard. A whole kaleidoscope of emotions crossed his face as he wrestled with each possibility. In the end, he stuck to his belief that Darcy could not have had another boyfriend. ‘I really think I would have known about it,’ he explained to Maggie. ‘I mean, I know all of her friends, and even when we weren’t talking much, I could keep up with what she was doing on Facebook. I could see when she came and went from her house, and it really didn’t seem like she did much more than go to school and work at the diner.’
‘Do you think you could do me a favor?’ Maggie asked him. ‘Do you think you could go through her list of Facebook friends and tell me if there are any names you don’t recognize?’