Funeral for a Friend

by Brian Freeman

  “She’s the one.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Truly. I liked the kid. I still don’t see what this has to do with me. She says Devin raped her, right? That’s what this has been about for the past seven years. So why are you talking to me about it?”

  “Andrea thinks it was Devin, but she’d been drinking a lot,” Maggie told him. “She may have passed out. See, we’re wondering if Devin Card came back downstairs and left her alone up in the bedroom. And there you were at the party, Adam. Drunk, pissed off, out of control. Suddenly, you realized that your ex-fiancée’s sister was all by herself. Did you go upstairs, Adam? Did you figure if Denise was going to have sex with someone, you could do the same thing? Did you figure that’s how you could get back at her for what she did to you? By raping her little sister?”

  Halka’s eyes widened in what could only be genuine shock. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “You were there, and you had a hell of a motive.”

  “I didn’t do it. You hear me? I didn’t do it!”

  “Maybe you were so drunk you blacked out and don’t even remember.”

  “No fucking way.”

  “Can you be sure? Isn’t that possible?”

  “No. It wasn’t me. Do you hear me? No!”

  Halka lurched up from his chair, practically in a daze. He threw money on the table, left behind his beer and burger, and stumbled for the door of the bar. Several people shouted his name, but he ignored them. He punched through the door to the street and slammed it behind him.

  Maggie rushed after him into the rain. Outside, she found Halka on the street corner, his back against the stone wall of the bar. He was bent over, his hands on his knees. The downpour flooded over him, soaking him to his skin. His face was red, and when he saw her, his features contorted. He straightened up and jabbed a finger at her, his voice like a primal scream. “Are you doing this because of Stanhope? Is this him getting back at me? He wants to get his buddy Devin off the hook, so he spoon-feeds this bullshit to you?”

  “That’s not what’s going on here, Adam.”

  “He’s rich, and I’m trash. He gets whatever he wants. He always has.”

  “Peter Stanhope doesn’t know about any of this. Look, Adam, I just want the truth. After all this time, Andrea deserves the truth. And whatever you may think of Devin Card, he doesn’t deserve to be destroyed over an accusation like this if he’s innocent.”

  “It wasn’t me!” Halka insisted again. “I don’t know anything about a rape back then. I told you that. I told Ned that. If it happened at that party, okay, fine, whatever you say. But I didn’t know, and I sure as hell had nothing to do with it.”

  Maggie blinked as rain ran down her face. She stared at Halka and realized that she believed him. He was innocent.

  “Okay, Adam,” she said. “Okay, you didn’t do it.”

  “I loved Denise. Yeah, I was hurt by what she did to me, but I would never have taken it out on her sister. No way.”

  “So who assaulted her?”

  Halka ran his hands through his wet hair. “If Andrea says it was Devin, it must have been him.”

  “Can you think of anyone else who might have seen them together? Someone else who was at the party?”

  “Nobody.”

  Maggie knew she was back at a dead end. “Thank you for talking to me, Adam.”

  Halka was still bent over, hyperventilating, trying to breathe.

  “You okay?” she asked. “You need a doctor?”

  He shook his head and waved her away. Maggie headed into the street, water pouring across her boots, the wind whipping around her hair. Her Avalanche was parked on the opposite curb. She hadn’t even reached the middle of the street when Halka called after her in a raspy voice.

  “Wait.”

  Maggie stopped. She marched back to the motel owner. “What is it?”

  “There was another guy.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There was another guy at the party. A stranger.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I brought him. He came with me. We left together, too. Actually, that’s why I remember. I was too drunk to drive, so he drove instead. But he was jumpy and weird, and he crashed my dad’s car. Drove it into a utility pole near the DECC. I knew I was going to catch hell. I wanted him to explain it to my dad, but the guy gave me two hundred bucks to say I did it. Then he ran. Just got out of the car and ran. I never saw him again.”

  “Who was he?”

  “No idea. I don’t think I ever knew his name. He was from out of town.”

  “Why was he with you?”

  “I met him at the concert,” Halka told her. “I wasn’t going to sit with Denise after our fight, and I had a buddy who could always get me backstage. I hung out with the roadies. This guy and I hit it off, and when I mentioned the party crawl, he asked if he could come along. I said what the hell.”

  Maggie heard Halka’s voice echoing in her head, and it triggered a memory.

  I hung out with the roadies.

  She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold rain.

  “Adam, do you remember the concert that night? Do you remember the band you saw?”

  Halka nodded. “Sure. It was ZZ Top.”

  33

  A sea of people filled the DECC ballroom and squeezed into the overflow rooms and the corridors outside. Stride found it hard to make out any faces. Serena stood next to him, and both of them got up on tiptoes to survey the room, but if Andrea was here, she was lost among dozens of blond-haired women. The deafening chatter in the room made it almost impossible to hear. Most of the people inside were wet from the storm, and the room had a pungent smell.

  He dialed Andrea’s number again, but the call went straight to voice mail.

  “We should split up,” he told Serena, cupping his hands over her ear so that she could hear him.

  Serena nodded and leaned close to him. “If we find her, what do we tell her? We have suspicions, but we can’t prove what really happened.”

  “I guess we tell her that,” Stride said. “This is the wrong time and place for her to go public.”

  Serena headed toward the west end of the ballroom. Stride walked the other way, toward the tall windows overlooking the rain-swept bay. He checked his watch and knew he didn’t have much time. The town hall had been scheduled to start fifteen minutes earlier, and the crowd was getting impatient. People had begun chanting Devin’s name, and even his supporters were wondering where he was. Stride didn’t like the tone of the crowd around him. It was ugly, unsettled, with partisans on both sides veering close to physical confrontations. There were plenty of cops everywhere, but it still wouldn’t take much for things to get out of control.

  His phone rang in his pocket. When he answered it, he could make out Maggie’s voice on the other end, but he could barely hear what she was saying. In a room with hundreds of phones, the choppy signal went in and out, and Maggie was obviously in her truck, with music blaring in the background. He kept asking her to repeat herself, but her voice was garbled, and then the call dropped.

  All he was able to make out was “Ned was there.”

  Stride didn’t understand the message. He tried calling back, but the call failed to go through.

  He reached the dark windows on the far side of the ballroom, but he still hadn’t found Andrea. Staying next to the windows, he headed to the stage, which would give him a slightly elevated view. A gaggle of campaign workers clustered near the metal stairs, and a police officer noticed him and let him through. He climbed the steps and looked out over the seething crowd.

  Finding one single person out there was impossible.

  Stride felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned around, he found Peter Stanhope, dressed as he always was: in a tailored suit. The room was warm, and the man’s sk
in glowed under his swept-back mane of silver hair.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Hello, Peter,” Stride said. They didn’t smile at each other. They weren’t enemies, but they definitely weren’t friends. Stride had disliked Peter Stanhope going back to his teenage years, and little had happened in between to change his impression of the man.

  “The crowd’s getting restless,” Stride went on. “You better get Devin out here.”

  “He’s huddled with his campaign staff. They’re still talking about the best strategy to deal with the woman if she shows up.” Peter studied Stride’s face. “Is she here?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her yet.”

  “Can you tell me her name, Jonathan? It’s not like we can do anything now, but Devin should know who he’s dealing with.”

  “That’s not up to me,” Stride said. “It’s up to her.”

  Peter shook his head. “Devin didn’t do this, but he doesn’t want to stand in front of a woman who claims she was victimized and call her a liar.”

  “Good call.”

  “Do you have any advice?” Peter asked. “You talk to witnesses with fragile memories all the time.”

  Stride stared across the hundreds of faces, barely visible in the low light of the ballroom. Thunder clapped like the thud of a bass drum outside. “My advice is, remember what the hell this is all about. Thirty years ago, someone did something terrible to her, Peter. I don’t know whether it was Devin, but I know this woman’s life was never the same. I want to protect her. I don’t care about the politics.”

  “If you want to protect her, convince her to talk to us privately. No good will come of it in here. Not for any of us, including her.”

  Stride looked at Peter and knew he was a master of multiple agendas, and the man’s loyalty was to whichever one served his interests at the moment. But he was also right. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

  “Thank you, Jonathan.”

  Peter headed down the steps from the stage, back toward the private room where the candidate was waiting. Stride focused on the crowd again. Standing there alone, he had an odd sense of foreboding, like a shadow falling across him. Nothing felt right. Everything felt dangerous. The storm. The people.

  No good will come of it.

  He kept trying to find Andrea, but instead, he found someone else.

  Cat.

  He saw her face and then lost her in the crowd, but it was definitely Cat. She was being pulled toward the far doors by another girl around the same age, with straight blond hair parted in the middle. At the same moment that Stride saw her, Cat looked up at the stage and saw him, and she couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Stride looked for Brayden. The young cop was close by, but he could tell from the look on Brayden’s face that he’d lost Cat.

  “Brayden!”

  The cop twisted around and spotted Stride. His face fell. He pushed toward the stage, and Stride bent down to talk to him.

  “What the hell is Cat doing here? She’s supposed to be at home while we look for Wyatt.”

  “Yes, sir. I know. I told her not to leave, but the fact is, she was going to come here no matter what I said. At least here I knew there would be a lot of cops and security.”

  “They have their own jobs to do. They’re not watching out for her. You are. Or at least, you’re supposed to be.”

  “I realize that. I made a judgment call. By letting her go, I figured I could stay with her. Otherwise, I was afraid she’d slip out on her own, and I’d have no idea where she was.”

  “Meanwhile, you’ve lost her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Find her, Brayden.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Once you do, keep her in sight. Keep her with you. I don’t care if you have to cuff yourself to her. Got it?”

  “Got it, sir.”

  Brayden began to turn back into the crowd, but Stride took hold of his shoulder.

  “Who’s the other girl?” he asked. “Who’s Cat with? I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Her name’s Colleen Hunt,” Brayden told him. “She’s Curt’s girlfriend. Don’t worry, she’s harmless.”

  * * * * *

  Curt sat in his old Thunderbird across from Colleen’s building. He had the engine on, which coughed and rumbled. The driving rain pounded on the roof. He had the radio on loud, but he barely heard the songs. He’d been here for half an hour, trying to decide what to do, and every time he made up his mind to drive away and forget Colleen, he put the T-Bird back in park.

  Light glowed in her apartment window, but no one moved behind the shade. He’d called her, and she didn’t answer. He’d texted her, and he knew she’d read what he sent, but she didn’t reply. She was ghosting him. The unspoken message couldn’t be any clearer.

  Go away, Curt.

  He tried to figure out what had gone wrong between them. What he’d done this time. Sooner or later, he always screwed things up, but this time the break-up had come out of the blue. Just yesterday, they’d had loud, wild sex in the back seat of the T-bird, and now she was over him. No explanation.

  He loved her. He really did, and that was a first. Colly was different from the girls he’d dated before. Sweeter. Classier. Smarter. They’d always had a good time together, but now he wondered if there had been something going on with her from the very beginning. She also had a cold side. There would be times when he’d look into her dark eyes and feel like she didn’t even see him. Even when he was between her legs, he’d watch her face and get the feeling that she wasn’t really there. Like she wanted someone else on top of her and he was just a stand-in.

  Curt was no fool.

  She’d been cheating on him all along. If that was the case, she could damn well tell him the truth.

  He shut down the T-bird engine and got out of the car. Instantly, the rain drenched him. A car passed on Third Street, kicking up an ocean wave of spray. Curt jogged across the street and yanked on the building door, but it was locked. He buzzed Colleen’s apartment but got no response.

  “Come on, Colly!” he shouted into the intercom. “Come on, open up!”

  He stormed down the steps onto the sidewalk. The third window past the door was her apartment, and he went and banged his fist on the glass. He called her name again. While he was doing that, he saw the building door open, and he shouted for the person to hold the door. He ran back, made an excuse to the man at the door, and slipped inside. In the hallway, he stood there, dripping on the floor. The apartment doors were all closed. He heard the blare of televisions and someone practicing an electric guitar.

  Curt’s feet squished on the carpet as he headed for Colleen’s apartment. He thumped his knuckles on the door and listened, but he was wasting his time. He realized he didn’t have a key, which should have been a red flag to him. He’d given her a key to his apartment, and she’d told him how nice that was and how much she appreciated it. But she’d never offered to give him her own key.

  He was about to leave when he glanced down at his feet. The carpet in the hallway was gray and worn, and the flimsy apartment door didn’t extend all the way to the floor. Where the crack was, he saw a wet, fresh stain. Something dark. It had trickled along the linoleum inside. He squatted and rubbed the seam at the bottom of the door, and when he looked at his hand, he found a red, sticky liquid streaking his fingertips.

  Blood.

  “Colly?” Curt called loudly. His heartbeat took off. “Colly? Are you in there? Are you okay?”

  Curt danced uncertainly in the hallway, trying to make up his mind, and then he backed up and threw his shoulder against the door. He nearly broke a bone, but the door held. The next time, he bent his leg and kicked, and the lock shuddered. He kicked again, and the wood splintered away from the lock and the door flew open.

  He rushed inside t
he apartment and swore. “Holy shit!”

  A body lay on the floor, a pillow covering its head. The pillow had a burnt hole in it; feathers covered half the surfaces in the living room where they’d been blown into the air, and a river of blood seeped from under the pillow. He went over and used two fingers to peel the pillow back and saw what was left of Wyatt Miller’s face.

  “What the fuck! Oh shit!”

  Curt felt his stomach doing somersaults as he backed away from the corpse. “Colly!” he screamed, trying not to throw up. “Colly! Jesus!”

  He ran into her bedroom, expecting to find another body. Expecting to find his girlfriend murdered on the floor. Another gunshot. More blood. What he found was even worse.

  Nearly every inch of Colleen’s bedroom was covered with photographs thumb-tacked to the walls. The photographs were all of Cat. Cat inside, outside, Cat with her son, Cat in her bedroom. And across the pictures was the same message scrawled over and over in green marker, spilling from the pictures onto the walls.

  I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you.

  Curt covered his mouth with both hands and smelled his hot breath speeding in and out of his lungs.

  “Oh, shit,” he mumbled. “Oh, fuck. Colly, you crazy bitch.”

  34

  ZZ Top.

  Maggie didn’t bother taking off her raincoat or turning on the light in her office at police headquarters. She crossed the room and dropped down in the chair, and then she dug through the file on her desk for the information on Ned Baer’s Colorado editor. When she located Debbi King’s phone number, she grabbed her cell phone and dialed.

  “Ms. King?” she said, when the woman answered. “This is Sergeant Maggie Bei with the Duluth Police. We talked about Ned Baer a couple of days ago.”

  “Yes, of course, Sergeant. Do you have news for me?”

  “About his death? Not yet. But I do have a few more questions.”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “This will sound like a strange question, but I remember you telling us that you met Ned backstage at a ZZ Top concert in San Jose one summer when you were in college. He was a roadie for the band that year. Is that correct?”