He realized his uncle had said something.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said, you’re going to be late for school.”
Dooley put the paper down.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” his uncle said.
“Yeah.” He was as sure as anyone could be after a week from hell.
“The offer still stands. If you want me to call Beth’s mother—”
“It’s okay.” If Beth had wanted to see him, nothing, not even her mother, could have stopped her. But she hadn’t even looked at him when he was at the hospital. She’d just sat there in bed, her head buried in her hands. “I gotta go.”
He found Warren at his locker, but Warren didn’t have any news.
“All I know is they put her up on seven,” he said. When he saw that Dooley didn’t get it, he added, “The pysch ward is on seven. I’ll see if I can get up there, but I can’t promise anything.”
“If you find out anything or see her—”
“I know,” Warren said. “I’ll do my best.”
Dooley spent the afternoon wondering where Beth’s mother would be. He knew she worked, but Beth was in the hospital and the way Dooley saw it, attempted suicide was as bad as it could get, short of having some terminal disease. Beth’s mother seemed to him like the kind of person who would stick pretty close. After all, Beth was her only child now, all she had left. She would probably take time off work. Minimally, she would be at the hospital every chance she got, so he went directly there after school and was startled to see Beth’s mother in the lobby, queued up at the Tim Horton’s kiosk, which was doing brisk business.
“Mrs. Manson?”
She turned, startled to see him.
“How’s Beth?”
“Next!” the counterperson said.
“Coffee, black,” Beth’s mother said.
“Medium? Large?”
“Medium.”
Dooley waited while she got her coffee and paid for it. She didn’t look at him but instead searched the lobby for a place to sit. There were a couple of uncomfortable plastic chairs against one wall. She headed for them and sank down. Dooley hesitated before claiming the one next to her.
“Is she okay? Do they have any idea how long they’re going to keep her in here?” he said, keeping his voice quiet, doing his best to convince her of his concern, conveying, he hoped, I’m a nice guy and I care, I really care.
She looked him over as if he were a total stranger. He supposed, in a way, he was. She had barely ever spoken to him, and had judged him purely on circumstances (catching him in bed with Beth hadn’t helped, nor had all those times he’d been questioned by the police) and on his past (he couldn’t blame her for that; he supposed he would do the same if he had a daughter who was seeing a guy with his history). Still, Beth must have told her a few good things. She and her mother had locked horns over him more than once, which meant that Beth had to have said something in his defense.
“She thinks it’s her fault,” Beth’s mother said finally. “And she thinks, for some reason I don’t even pretend to understand, that she let you down in some way.” Her voice got louder. “That’s why she did it.” She was angry—at him. She blamed him. “The irony is, Parker Albright is much more her type, and if it wasn’t for you—” She broke off. Maybe she didn’t want to finish her sentence. Maybe she didn’t think she had to.
Dooley focused on his breathing, filling his lungs slowly and emptying them again, another coping technique. It slowed him down, pushed his anger back into its black hole.
“I’d really like to see her, Mrs. Manson.”
“No.” No hesitation there. The old Dooley would have strangled her. The new Dooley merely wished he could.
“Could you at least ask her if she wants to see me?” he said, working even harder now to keep his anger in the black place where it belonged.
She shook her head. The worry, the fear, the shadow of a prayer he had originally seen on her face were gone now, replaced by the ferocious protectiveness of a mother.
“Getting involved with you was the worst thing that ever happened to Beth,” she said. Dooley knew for a fact that it wasn’t. “Look where it’s led.”
Terrific. Beth blamed herself, her mother blamed Dooley, and old Parker was walking around without a care in the world.
Dooley stood up. His heart beat like a battle drum in his chest. He told himself over and over: breathe. Breathe. With a curt nod, he left Beth’s mother alone with her coffee.
His uncle was watching the news when Dooley got home. He muted the sound.
“So?” he said.
“I talked to her mother.”
“And?”
“She turned me down.”
“Now what?” His uncle was clearly apprehensive, worried, probably, that Dooley would do something stupid.
“I don’t know. I guess I wait and see if she calls me.” Or, he thought, I could try to get a message to her through Warren. He sat down in an armchair and glanced at the TV. “So, what’s new?”
“Some politician spouting more bs,” his uncle said. “Although that’s not really news. Price of gas is up again for no damned reason that I can see, other than pure greed on the part of the oil companies. And another kid bites the dust—doesn’t look like it’s gang-related, though. No knives or guns.”
Dooley stared at the TV screen, even though he didn’t care about the news. All he cared about was Beth.
“The kid must have pissed off someone really good,” Dooley’s uncle said. “His head was stove in by a rock. Someone pounded him and didn’t stop until he was good and dead. Are you even listening to me, Ryan?”
“Yeah,” Dooley said.
He’d been thinking about Beth all day. More than that, he’d been thinking about something that Dr. Calvin had told him more than once. Life was all about control, about understanding what was in your control and what wasn’t. Basically, what it boiled down to was that shit happens. It happens all the time. Sometimes you can see it coming and sometimes it rains down on you with no warning. And pretty much the only thing you can do once you’re neck-deep in it is make a decision: wallow in it or grab a shovel and dig yourself out. The shit-happens principle applied to other people, too. Other people think what they think. They do what they do. Sure, you can argue with them, you can fight them, but, fundamentally, you have no control over their thoughts and actions. The only thing you can control, the only power you have, is how you react to them: again, you can wallow in whatever bullshit they put on you or you can suck it up and move on. “The way I look at it,” Dr. Calvin had said once, “there are more than enough assholes in the world. You can join that crowd or you can be a good guy, Dooley. You can decide to do the right thing just because it’s the right thing to do, no matter what anyone else thinks—no matter what that little voice in your head is telling you about revenge, or payback, or just desserts.” He’d had that on his mind all day and had decided that the right thing to do if he loved Beth was to take her at her word, to do anything it took to back her up, and to make sure Parker Albright got exactly what was coming to him.
“So?” his uncle said, irritated now. “What did I just say?”
“Some kid got his head bashed in.” His uncle harrumphed, disappointed, Dooley thought, that Dooley actually had been listening. “You know him or something?”
“They haven’t released his name,” his uncle said.
So what’s the big deal, Dooley wanted to ask.
His uncle clicked off the TV. “You hungry or did you already fill up on junk food?”
Dooley hadn’t thought about food since he’d had lunch at the Chinese restaurant he liked because the only other diners were old Chinese men. No one from school ever ventured into the place.
“I could eat,” he said.
“Good.” His uncle heaved himself up off the couch. “I made a barley casserole.”
“Barley?”
“Jeannie’s interested in eating more vegetarian.
I thought I’d try out a few things.” The look on his face dared Dooley to make something of it. Dooley knew better.
Dooley trudged across the flagstone to the main entrance of school the next morning. There were kids milling around outside, smoking, flirting, giggling, gossiping, texting—all the stuff they were going to have to stop doing when the bell rang. Warren was up near one of the doors. He perked up when he saw Dooley and started down the steps toward him. His eyes flicked to someplace behind Dooley, and Dooley saw a puzzled look on his face, which quickly turned to concern when he shifted his gaze back to Dooley and gestured with a tip of his head, wanting Dooley to look. But before he could, a hand fell on Dooley’s shoulder and a voice said, “Ryan Dooley?”
Dooley turned to face two uniformed cops.
“Yeah, I’m Dooley.”
“You’re wanted for questioning.”
Well, he couldn’t say that he hadn’t been expecting them.
“Questioning about what?”
“Do you know Parker Albright?” said the cop who had put his hand on Dooley’s shoulder. He was the older one of the two, nearly as old as Dooley’s uncle, which meant he was either a total fuck-up or one hell of a dedicated cop if he was still on patrol at his age.
“I know of him,” Dooley said cautiously. Jesus, now what?
“Well, a couple of detectives want to talk to you about him.” Detectives?
“Is this about Beth?” he said. “Is she okay?”
“All I know is, we were told to bring you in for questioning.”
Dooley glanced at Warren, who wore a worried-mother expression. Most of the kids milling around outside school were staring at Dooley. Dooley bet there wasn’t a single one of them who was surprised to see the cops on him again.
Dooley nodded and walked with them back to the police car at the curb, where the older cop recited his rights to him, covering his ass. Whatever.
They stuck him in an interview room and let him sit there for a while. He wondered if Beth was okay. He pulled out his cell phone and was about to call directory assistance to get the hospital’s phone number when the door to the interview room opened and a detective walked in. Detective Randall, the same cop who had investigated Lorraine’s death. But he was Homicide, not sex crimes. No way, Dooley thought. He must have heard that Dooley had been picked up and had dropped by to see what was going on. That had to be it.
Randall pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Hello, Ryan,” he said.
Dooley nodded.
Randall ran through Dooley’s rights. Dooley’s fingers tingled. Then his arms. His chest tightened. What was going on? Why was a Homicide cop reading him his rights?
“What’s this about?” he said.
“Are you sure?” Randall said, meaning, was Dooley sure he didn’t want his uncle there and didn’t want to call a lawyer?
“I’m sure. I’m also sure I’m going to get up and walk out of here unless you tell me what’s going on.”
“First things first,” Randall said. He made Dooley sign the paper before he leaned back in his chair and said, “Do you know Parker Albright?”
“Yeah. Sort of.” Had Parker laid a complaint? No, that couldn’t be it, unless Randall had transferred to another unit.
“Sort of?” Randall raised an eyebrow. “You want to elaborate?”
“I know who he is. I met him a couple of times. Why?”
“Did you kill him?”
“What?” Jesus, Parker was dead?
Randall stared at him. He let the silence between them grow, hoping, Dooley knew, to make him so uncomfortable that he would feel compelled to go on, maybe hang himself.
“Where were you Saturday night, Ryan?” Randall said at last.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“I talked to your manager at the video store. He said you were supposed to work on Saturday night, but that you didn’t turn up. He said you switched your shift with one of your coworkers, even though he told you that you couldn’t.” That was Kevin, all right, complaining about Dooley to the cops. “You know what that makes it, right, Ryan? It makes it premeditated. First degree murder.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Where were you Saturday night?”
“Out. I was out.”
Randall shook his head as if he were disappointed. He seemed even more disappointed when Dooley let the silence stretch, forcing Randall to say in a weary voice, “Let me be a little more specific, Ryan. What did you do Saturday night after you left Parker Albright’s back yard?”
“I went home.”
“What time did you get there?”
If Randall knew Dooley had been at the party, then he probably had some kind of timeframe. Someone—he wouldn’t be surprised if it was Parker’s sister—would have had an idea when he’d showed up at the party and someone else—again, it wouldn’t surprise him if it was Parker’s sister—had probably noticed when he’d left. For sure, his uncle would remember when he got home—his uncle, to whom Dooley had spun a lie, telling him a panhandler had puked on him on the way home from work.
“It was late,” he said. “I don’t know. After midnight. Probably closer to one.”
“Can anyone verify when you got home?”
“My uncle.” But, boy, Dooley wasn’t looking forward to Randall having that conversation. Nor was he looking forward to what would follow that little chat.
Randall digested this piece of information.
“Where were you between the time you left Parker’s house and when you got home?”
“Walking around. I was just walking around.”
Randall sighed. “Walking around where, Ryan?”
“Just around.”
“Just around. Your favorite place, as I recall. What were you doing at Parker’s party in the first place? Did he invite you?”
“No.” But Randall already knew that.
“So why were you there?”
“I wanted to talk to him.”
“Talk to him? You mean, threaten him?”
“Threaten him?” There was no way anyone had heard what he’d said to Parker. That meant that Parker must have told someone. He might even have told everyone at the party.
“Come on, Ryan. I know you did.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a threat.”
“Not exactly?” Randall sat motionless, his hands clasped together on the table. When Dooley didn’t elaborate, he said, “Did you go to the Millbrook Tennis Club on Friday afternoon and assault Parker Albright?”
“I didn’t assault him,” Dooley said. How can you assault a guy through a chain-link fence? “I just talked to him, that’s all.”
“By slamming his face into a fence? Sounds like it was a nice, friendly conversation.”
Dooley said nothing.
“Four witnesses, including two security guards, saw you, Ryan. That wasn’t a conversation. That was an assault, attempted, at least.”
Dooley kept quiet. Randall stared at him for a moment.
“How’s Beth?” he said finally. “You still seeing her?”
Dooley had no intention of discussing Beth with a cop.
“You know she pressed charges against Parker, don’t you, Ryan? You know she’s saying it was date-rape?”
Blood was pulsing through Dooley. He had to work hard to sit still, to show nothing.
“Where were you between nine-thirty and the time you say you got home on Saturday night, Ryan?”
“I told you. I took a walk.”
“Where, exactly, did you take this walk?”
Dooley looked into the detective’s eyes. They didn’t give away a thing, but Dooley had this idea that Randall knew. He was that kind of cop. He didn’t ask questions that he didn’t have the answer to.
“Come on, Ryan. You expect me to believe a smart guy like you can’t remember where he was a few days ago?”
Silence.
Randall leaned across the table, his eyes harder than Dooley had ever see
n them before. “If you want to see outside again, Ryan, tell me where you were and make me believe it.”
“In the ravine. I took a walk in the ravine.”
“The ravine that runs behind Parker’s house?”
Fuck.
“It’s the same ravine,” Dooley said. “But I wasn’t in that part of it.” He knew Randall wasn’t kidding. If Dooley didn’t make him believe it, he wasn’t going to walk. No way.
Randall eyed him again.
“I paid a visit to Parker’s house,” Randall said. “It’s quite a place.
His dad’s one of those dot-com millionaires. Did you know that?”
Everyone was so impressed with Parker’s dad’s money, Dooley thought. They all mentioned it.
“Beth goes to a private school, right?”
Dooley just stared at him.
“I bet she meets a lot of rich boys,” Randall said. “Boys like Parker. Did you see that pool while you were up there at that party? It’s one of those indoor / outdoor deals. They use it all year round. There’s a hot tub, too. I bet Parker knows how to put that to use, what do you think?”
What Dooley thought was that Randall was trying to get a rise out of him. Well, nice try.
“I’ve met a fair number of kids like Parker over the years,” Randall said. “A lot of people think that because they live in the best neighborhoods and go to the best schools, they’re good boys. Real little angels. But you and I both know that’s not true, don’t we, Ryan? Parker and a lot of guys just like him are spoiled rotten. They don’t appreciate what they have. You think Parker got up every morning and thanked his lucky stars that he lived in a house like that? You think he realized how lucky he was? No. In my experience, guys like that know nothing about gratitude. They’re all about entitlement. A guy like Parker thinks he deserves all the good things in life. And you know what? There’s not much in his life that tells him otherwise. His parents give him everything his heart desires. His teachers aren’t hard on him—they wouldn’t dare, not with all that tuition money his parents pay to that fancy school. And girls? Well, come on, what kind of girl wouldn’t want to land a guy like Parker? She’d have it made. She wouldn’t have to work. She wouldn’t have—”
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