“A ruse?” I repeated. How dare Colter put me through such torture just to divert attention from his real target! Anger bubbled. I should send him the attorney’s bill.
As if Leonard hadn’t a clue about the injustice I’d suffered, he continued. “For weeks I’ve heard rumors that something big is about to go down. Looks like these three boys planned to do something at the school, like Columbine, but settled for offing that poor unfortunate girl. Old Colter’s made the arrests.”
He lowered his voice to a confidential tone. Jesse bent to hear him. “She was one of them… a street person originally. Lived out at Pioneer Park with that pack of runaways. Didn’t move to Rough and Ready until a little while ago. Guess they recovered plenty of evidence in one of the boy’s houses.” He nodded, looking thrilled by the direction this investigation had taken. “She’s been ratting on them to the authorities. It’s all in the stuff they took from the houses. They’ve got weapons and tons of ammunition. However, these kids out here—” He gestured around us. “These kids say, ‘No way.’ So far, everyone’s standing behind the boys. Everyone I’ve talked to anyway.”
Jesse and I stared at each other in amazement. Would the craziness never end?
The commotion suddenly swelled to a roar. Leonard and his cameraman raced into the tumult like piranhas to a morsel of meat. The dense crowd stampeded as one unit. We lagged behind, craning our necks to see above the hubbub, jostled by hurrying bystanders. By the time we got to the edge of the onlookers, bodies were crushed so tightly together that nothing could be seen.
Jesse’s head towered over everyone, one of the advantages of being tall. “Looks like a fight,” he said, without taking his eyes off the action. He dodged and flinched while he watched. “I think there’s a deputy in the middle of it.”
“Oh, no! Is it anyone we know?”
Jesse didn’t answer.
The backs of the kids in front of me blocked my view, so I tried to decipher words on the back of a black sweatshirt. Chunky block letters like those drawn by graffiti artists had been bleached into the fabric. Skinny Puppy? What did that mean? Other t-shirts had Japanese characters. For all I knew, they didn’t say anything in English.
All of a sudden, a loud thud and the crash of breaking glass caused the crowd to shift left.
“What was that?”
“Ooh,” Jesse exclaimed. “That must’ve hurt!”
I tugged on Jesse’s shirtsleeve. “What?”
“Someone fell through the window in front of the Hat Shoppe. Looks like there’s blood.”
The dissonance swelled in reaction. I sighed, feeling quite left out.
“Here,” Jesse said, looking down at me as if he’d just remembered my size handicap. “Climb on my shoulders.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Do what? Are you kidding?”
“Come on, Chris.” He made a little foothold by clasping both hands and bending toward me. “Remember how we did it when we saw the Queen Mum?”
We’d been in Windsor during the Queen Mother’s ninetieth birthday celebration and lucked out with a royal sighting when she did a walkabout on the street outside the castle gates. That day the crowd pressed so tightly together I had to climb on Jesse’s shoulders to take pictures. “You’re talking twenty years ago!” I didn’t want to remember how many pounds ago.
“Give it a shot.” He grinned. “You can do it.”
Jesse grunted and swayed when I put my weight into his hands, but managed to keep them together. I swung one leg over his shoulder, kicking the boy in front of me soundly when Jesse struggled to straighten.
“Hey!” The boy turned so quickly his chains rattled. “Watch it, lady.”
Now in a rather precarious predicament, I decided since I’d made the commitment, I’d best just get on with it. “So sorry,” I said from my sideways position, smiling as pleasantly as I could under the circumstances. We bumped several others near us while I tugged and pulled with all my might to heft my middle-aged body onto Jesse’s shoulders. Additional glares and stares were hurled our way like daggers. One young man used unnecessarily rude language, but eventually I worked my way to a relatively comfortable position.
Once settled, I patted Jesse on the head. “Are you okay?”
He laughed. “We’re not as young as—”
“You can say that again.”
What I saw from my roost looked like a fight scene from a movie. Was that why we watched like spectators without acting on behalf of justice, because it didn’t look real? I expressed my righteous disapproval with a loud TSK. Had our society become so jaded by what we viewed every day on our televisions or on the movie screens that we didn’t react with outrage when faced with genuine evil?
At the center of the throng, several of the aggressors appeared to be beating the stuffing out of each other. A uniformed officer had apparently been caught in the middle. He didn’t look familiar, although I only got an occasional glimpse of his face. His uniform was torn and bloodied just the same as the clothing of the three kids doing the majority of the punching. The officer defended himself remarkably well considering the odds against him. The horror of what I watched sunk in. This was the real thing.
“We should call 9-1-1—”
A blaring siren drowned out my words as a dozen vehicles surrounded the pandemonium. Officers jumped out with weapons drawn.
Jesse started to move away from the crowd. “It’s time to get out of here.”
“Let me down then.” I patted Jesse’s head again.
He stooped so I could climb off his shoulders. Gravity being what it is, unloading proved significantly easier than climbing up. I jumped to the ground with a grunt. When I straightened, I collided with a girl who was running away from approaching deputies. I recognized the pale-faced teen we had talked to earlier. “Careful now.” I grabbed her arm to steady her.
“Thanks.” She skidded to a stop. “You better hurry and get out of here.”
“Why?”
Jesse bent to hear her answer.
“We ain’t gonna take this.” She glanced over her shoulder at the rapidly dispersing crowd. “We’re gonna fight back. You could get hurt.”
Jesse and I turned toward the advancing line of officers. Dear, Lord. Please diffuse this situation quickly. Protect these people from injury.
The girl started to run again, glancing back over her shoulder. When we didn’t move, she returned to where we stood. “Come on, move! You don’t want to be here when bullets start to fly, do you?”
Jesse frowned and grabbed my arm.
She hurried alongside us. Sandwiched between her and Jesse, I moved along with the mob. Her dark restless eyes darted through the throng. When we got to the car, she stopped and faced me. “Now get going.”
I felt strangely drawn to this sad little person. Her mournful eyes broke my heart. Why did she stop to help us? “Can we drop you somewhere?”
She hesitated a moment, looking back at the mayhem. The injured officer had been rescued and a stretcher carried him away to a waiting ambulance. Deputies held back the throng of kids. Strident voices floated over the general clamor of the crowd.
“Um.” She took a few seconds to think it over. “Sure, I could use a ride.”
She scrambled into the backseat as if she’d ridden with us before and slammed the door. Jesse swung into the crowded street. During the several minutes it took to navigate through the multitude, she peered out the window, straining to see, but when we got onto Highway 49, she settled back in the seat. I watched her for another minute until she noticed my interest.
“Drop me at Kmart.” She tugged her black hooded sweatshirt tighter around her. “If you don’t mind.”
I smiled and nodded.
“I live close to there.”
Jesse’s gaze darted to the rear view mirror and back to the road.
I gave her a smile. “What’s your name?”
She didn’t return the smile. “Amanda.” Her sigh was long and deep as if she knew w
hat our reaction would be. “Amanda Colter.”
Chapter Twenty
Jesse looked puzzled. “Colter?”
“Yeah,” she said with a slight groan as if she knew what we’d say next.
Jesse studied her in the rear view mirror. “Any relation to Deputy Colter from the sheriff’s office?”
Amanda’s countenance wilted. Black hair fell forward, veiling her face. “He’s not my real dad. I don’t know my real dad. My mom married him when I was little. They got divorced last year.” A monotone of information.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Silver chains dangling from her ears jingled when she shook her head. “That was a good thing.”
“You don’t like him then?”
She rearranged a clump of dyed black hair behind one ear. “He’s a first-class jerk.”
Jesse shot me an amused look. “You may be right.”
I agreed with a nod. “We’ve certainly been disappointed in the way he’s dealt with us.”
Her look of surprise communicated how unusual it was to get agreement from grownups. “Really?”
“So you and your mother live by yourselves now?” I asked, making small talk.
“We moved in with my nana.” She turned toward the window. “After the split.”
“How’s that working out?”
Amanda shrugged. “It’s better than before. Not so much drama.”
“Deputy Colter must be as difficult to live with as he is to work with,” Jesse said.
“No argument there.”
Her soft snicker reminded me of Mary. “Did you know Mary Wilson?”
“Mary.” She looked out the window again. “She hung with us. Not exactly with me, but I knew her.”
A sad knot formed in my throat. “She ran away from home.”
Amanda shrugged. “I guess. All I know is she stayed at the park until she hooked up with that poser.”
Jesse peered into the rear view mirror again. “You don’t like Frankie?”
The force of her head shaking jingled the chains louder. “Too old.”
I smiled. Frankie could be as old as forty, more likely only thirty-five. “You didn’t like him because of his age?”
She met my eyes. “Not just that. He was way plastic, a pretender. I like living on the edge all right. A dude who’s open to new ways to find happiness, whatever his age, that’s cool with me, but that one…” Her voice trailed off in a jangle of chains when she shook her head. “He’s not one of us. He’s… messed up.”
“Messed up?” I repeated. “In what way?”
“Totally into violence. Talks about killing and hurting people all the time.” She shivered. “We’re not like that.”
That surprised me. From the negative music and ghoulish costumes, I had supposed these kids delved deeply into violence. “Really? It’s the war talk you object to?”
Amanda twisted her rosary beads and tilted her head to study me as if curious about my honest interest in her world. “Hey. We’re not violent. Terrorism, atomic bombs, military dominance... that stuff didn’t come from my generation. We don’t buy into the horrible squalor of life you people created. We hate war and we hate the materialism that drives people to war.”
She sounded like every generation of teenagers. I remembered the hippies in my day making the same assessment of society’s ills. “Make love, not war?”
“Exactly.”
I didn’t get a chance to point out that she had told us the teens were fighting back in Nevada City because just then Jesse pulled into the Kmart parking lot. “Here you go. Are you sure this is close enough to where you live? I don’t mind taking you farther.”
She’d already opened the door. “This is great.”
“Hey, Amanda, wait.” I leaned toward the window Jesse opened. She came back and stooped to listen. “Mary Wilson was my friend. I don’t think those three kids killed her and I want to find out who did. If you hear anything on the streets that could help convict her murderer, please call me.” I scribbled my name and phone number on a scrap of paper from my purse and handed the paper to her. “Thanks for helping us escape.”
She took the paper and studied it a second, then raised a fist. “Stay out of the daylight!” She turned on her army boot heel and marched across the parking lot.
I watched her go, feeling strangely drawn. “What does that mean?”
Jesse shook his head when he rolled the window back up. “Haven’t the foggiest.”
Monday morning Jesse allowed me to accompany Zora Jane into town. She wanted help, and moral support, I suspected, transporting boxes of Baxter’s clothing and personal items to the Salvation Army. The trunk of Zora Jane’s red Mustang convertible wouldn’t hold all the boxes, so we took the Jeep. We planned to drop her boxes off, continue into town for a little shopping, and then indulge in lunch at The Bunnery, my favorite restaurant. It felt good to be doing something normal for a change despite the sadness surrounding the disposal of Baxter’s belongings.
But we arrived in Grass Valley to find traffic clogging the streets, news vehicles lining them in droves. Reporters huddled on street corners. I pulled the Jeep into a long queue at the stoplight on Main Street. “Oh, oh. Looks like today’s not a good day to come to town.”
Zora Jane peered along the intersecting roadway. “Traffic has simply become unbearable here. Where are all these people coming from?”
Truly, an unusual amount of activity buzzed through town; however, anytime a line of cars waited for a stoplight in Grass Valley, longtime residents complained about the traffic. In reality, a few cars in one short line could hardly be considered traffic by Los Angeles standards. “You’re talking like an old-timer.”
She smiled.
I rapped the steering wheel a few times. “I told you about the crowd in Nevada City yesterday. Everyone’s upset about the arrest of those kids. Honestly, Zora Jane, I don’t think those kids killed Mary Wilson.”
She searched my face. “Why not?”
Hard to distinguish the facts from the journalistic spin. Three full columns had reported the story in the morning newspaper. “Something’s wrong. Why would Mary rat on her friends? She had nothing to gain. I think she got killed because those guys at Satori recognized her on the surveillance tape. Our visit to the compound and her death happened too close together to be a coincidence.” I swiped at a tear. “It’s all tied up with Baxter’s murder. I’m sure of it.”
Zora Jane’s expression softened while she gazed at me. “Are you sure you’re not imagining that, dear, because you so desperately want it to be true?”
I frowned. Hadn’t I redeemed my reputation for wild imagining and jumping to preposterous conclusions? I started to comment when the light changed and my attention was drawn to a long, sleek black Cadillac. The limo pulled into the no parking zone in front of the Union Hotel and parked. When we drove by, Constance Boyd’s entourage climbed out.
Zora Jane pointed. “Well, lookie who’s back in town.”
“What do you suppose she’s up to now?”
“Why not pose that question to the lady herself?”
I parked the car four blocks down the street, the closest I could get. By the time we hoofed back, Constance Boyd and her groupies had disappeared. Her entrance had created quite a hubbub. We followed the crowds to a conference room at the back of the hotel. Assorted news people and common citizens swarmed the hallway, buzzing with excitement.
“What’s Constance Boyd doing in the conference room?” I asked a cameraman who leaned against the wall.
He shrugged. “Got a meeting with someone.”
Zora Jane leaned closer. “Do you know who?”
Looking bored, he shook his head. “Think it’s those three freaky boys, the ones that offed that homeless girl.”
His cavalier attitude and gross lack of compassion made my blood pressure rise instantly. I snapped at him. “You mean, allegedly killed that girl, don’t you? And she wasn’t homeless.
For your information, no one has been convicted yet.”
Zora Jane raised her eyebrows. The cameraman slunk away with a backward glance that communicated his belief that those three weren’t the only freaky ones in town.
Zora Jane watched him go. “Well, you certainly let him have it.”
In my impatience, I had already flown past that encounter and now I concentrated on how to get in to see Miss Boyd. “I don’t want to wait around until she comes out, do you?”
“Well—” Zora Jane’s wrinkled her nose and lifted her shoulders. I guess she’d rather wait than barge in.
I pulled her away from the crowd a few steps. “I think we should demand to see her. She hasn’t had time to start the interview. Let’s just open the door and go in.”
“Christine—”
We had no time for her to object and I certainly didn’t want her to stop and pray over whether we should go in or not. “Come on.” I grabbed her arm and pushed her through the crowd ahead of me. “Excuse us. Pardon us. Oh, sorry. We need to get through.”
When we got to the closed conference door, I opened it as if I possessed authority to do so. Pulling Zora Jane inside, I slammed the door quickly.
Constance posed on a chair at the end of a conference table. Three somber teenage boys slouched in their chairs across from her. Three women I took to be mothers of the boys huddled behind them with anxious expressions. The cameraman busily set up his equipment on the opposite end of the table and the spectacled assistant balanced on the edge of a chair near Constance’s left. The drone of soft conversation
ceased the moment we entered. All eyes turned toward us. The assistant rose halfway out of her chair.
“Miss Boyd.” I bustled into the room. “We need to speak with you.”
The assistant rushed toward us like a mother hen fending off a snake. “You cannot come in—”
Constance held up her hand. “Just a moment, Rebecca. I’ll deal with them.” She lowered her hand to the table and sat a moment, blinking her perfectly shaped eyes. “You have interrupted an important interview.”
The Dunn Deal Page 18