The bell rang.
“Thanks for trying, Warren,” Dooley said.
Dooley dragged through math, which he was turning out to be reasonably good at, even though he didn’t see what good it was, and English, which he liked for some of the stuff they had to read but didn’t like because his teacher, a maternity-leave replacement who, Dooley had observed, was tight with Rektor, made a point of not looking at him. After English, Dooley was heading to his regular lunch place when his cell phone trilled in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the display. Private number. He was about to stuff the cell back into his pocket when he thought, what the hell. He flipped it open.
“Yeah?”
“Dooley?”
His knees buckled. His stomach clenched.
“Beth.” Thank God. “Beth, I’m sorry. What I said—it was stupid. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean it. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know,” she said, her voice so soft that he had to stick a finger in his other ear to drown out the buzz of tires on pavement, the rumble of the streetcars, the buzz of conversation as people breezed by him in both directions. Even then, he couldn’t hear her. Had she hung up? Had they been disconnected?
“Beth?”
Still nothing.
Then: “I saw you, Dooley.”
What? What was she talking about?
“That night,” she said. “I saw you.”
That night? What night?
“I was there,” she said. “I was in the ravine.”
Sweet Jesus.
“I saw what you did.”
He felt like a comic book superhero whose Achilles heel had just been discovered. He’s battling the villain when, all of a sudden, he starts to turn to stone or ash or ice, it doesn’t matter which, they all turn to something, and it always starts with the feet. His feet don’t move, and the superhero looks down and realizes why: they’re petrified or burned to the bone or frozen solid. And as he watches, the immobilization creeps up his ankles, his calves, to his knees, his thighs, his hips, and there’s nothing he can do about it except dread the moment when it reaches his heart.
“Beth—”
“Dooley, I—” She broke off. For a few seconds Dooley heard nothing. Then a noise—male, muffled, vaguely familiar. “They’re here,” she said. “I have to go. I love you.”
Then nothing again. Dooley punched in her cell number—and couldn’t get through. She must have been calling from a hospital phone, but what the hell was the number? He spun around, sweeping the street for a pay phone. There weren’t any. He thought of the restaurant. There was a pay phone in the back, between the men’s room and the ladies’ room. He loped down the street, pushed open the door, and nodded at the woman who was there every day at lunch to take orders. He thought maybe she owned the place or was married to the owner. He’d been coming so regularly that she smiled at him now, although he hadn’t broken through her limited English to make real conversation. He kept going, to the back, to the phone. A thick city phonebook, dog-eared and ragged, nestled in a nook under it. He pulled it out, looked up the hospital phone number, and fed a couple of quarters into the slot. He had to listen to a long message before the option presented itself—press zero for the operator.
“I’d like to speak to a patient,” he said. “Beth Everley.”
“Everley,” a brisk female voice said. There was a pause. “I’m sorry, I can’t put you through.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t put you through.”
“I just—”
But by then the phone was dead.
He bet Beth’s mother had something to do with it. He could see her issuing the order: nobody gets through to Beth. Nobody. He could go down there, but he wouldn’t be allowed to see her, either. Her mother had that nailed down, too.
He dropped the phone back into its cradle and stood there a moment, his forehead against the cool, hard pay-phone box. When he finally straightened up, he saw the woman looking at him, her forehead furrowed. He went back to the main room and slumped into his regular booth. The woman was at his side almost immediately.
“Same?” she said, her black eyes peering at him, a tiny but motherly smile on her face. “All same?”
He wasn’t hungry any more. But she was smiling and nodding at him. Maybe all she wanted was to sell a lunch. But maybe—Dooley had the feeling this was so—she was like one of those TV moms. Maybe she thought a good meal would make him feel better.
He nodded at her. “Same as always,” he said. “Thank you.”
She was back faster than usual with a bowl of soup that he hadn’t ordered.
“Special,” she said. “All good for you.”
He accepted it and thanked her again. The soup was thick and hot and spicy and—he never would have believed it if he hadn’t tried it—it spread a warmth through every part of him that let him move again, let him think. And when he started to think, his heart began to race. Easy, he told himself. Easy. Think it through.
But, Jesus, all the thinking in the world brought it back to the same place every time.
Warren had heard her tell Nevin that she wanted to call the cops.
Beth had been in the ravine that night.
She had seen him.
She had seen what he did.
And the kicker—even after that, she had said, “I love you.”
Warren had also heard her say that she wanted to tell the cops that he deserved it. Who deserved it? Dooley? But if he deserved to have her call the cops on him, why had she said she loved him? She’d meant it, too, as far as he could tell. He’d heard it in her voice. She’d said it in that quiet way she always did, only with real hurt this time. Because she was separated from him? Or because she wanted to call the cops? Or—he remembered the muffled male voice—because she had already called them? He thought hard about the voice. It had sounded familiar.
Randall.
He was sure of it. Beth had been down in the ravine. She had seen him. She loved him. But she had done what she felt she had to do. She had called the cops.
The woman was back with his meal. She beamed when she saw the empty soup bowl.
“All good,” she said. “All good.”
He sat in history class, his ears tuning out the drone of his history teacher’s voice and, instead, hyper-attuned to every footstep that passed in the hall. If he was right, if it really was Randall’s voice that he’d heard, something would happen soon.
The bell rang.
He made his way to his next class through the din of the crowded corridor, and sat waiting again, his eyes darting to the glass in the classroom door every time he thought he heard something out in the hall.
They still didn’t come.
He went to his locker to ditch his textbooks and binders and to round up his homework. He walked down to the main floor slowly, thinking that as much as he hated this school, at least it was a real school, not just a rundown classroom in a juvenile detention facility.
There was no patrol car outside. No unmarked police car, either.
No Randall.
Maybe he was waiting for him at his uncle’s house. Maybe Dooley would round the corner onto his uncle’s street and see the dark-colored sedan that screamed, “Cop on Board.”
Randall wasn’t waiting for him on his uncle’s street, either. What was taking him so long?
He sat at the dining room table, where he could hear what was going on outside and could look through to the living room and out the picture window onto the sidewalk beyond. Even so, he was caught off guard when he heard a car door slam. He sprang to his feet, but before he even got to the living room, he heard footsteps on the porch. Here we go, he thought. Then a key turned in the lock.
It was his uncle, home from work, half a dozen bags of groceries hanging from his hands.
“You gonna stand there gawking at me or are you going to give me a hand?” he said, kicking the door shut behind him.
Dooley took half of the b
ags and carried them through to the kitchen. His uncle followed with the rest of them. He didn’t say a word as he moved around the room, putting some things away, leaving others out.
“You want some help with supper?” Dooley said when all the groceries were stowed.
“I’m good,” his uncle said, without looking at him. Was he still pissed off from last night? Jesus, when it rained, it definitely poured. “Go do your homework.”
After Dooley got through his math homework, his uncle called him to eat. He cleaned up the kitchen, just like always, and went back to tackle his history assignment.
His uncle sat on the couch with the newspaper.
“You can take that upstairs if you want,” he said.
“I’m good here,” Dooley said.
His uncle shrugged and disappeared behind the pages of the business section.
The doorbell rang at nine o’clock, jolting Dooley like an electric current.
His uncle started to lower his paper.
“It’s okay,” Dooley said, jumping to his feet. “I’ll get it.” He was out of the room before his uncle could speak, a vain attempt, he knew, to stave off the moment he had been dreading all day.
He swung the front door open. It wasn’t who he had expected.
NINE
Her hand landed on his cheek before he even registered what she was doing.
Smack!
The blow resounded in his ear and, Jesus, it smarted. He stared at Beth’s mother in disbelief. She had thrown her whole body into the slap and was unsteady on her feet, but her eyes were focused and were blazing into him. She hurled herself at him, raining slaps and punches on him. Dooley had never been hit by a woman before. He couldn’t believe how strong she was.
“Hey!” he said. He caught one of her wrists, then the other. He was taller than her, with more muscle. But she had rage on her side. She wouldn’t quit. She wrenched and struggled to break free. Then she spat at him, landing an enormous gob of saliva on his face.
“What the hell?” his uncle’s voice rumbled. He moved in between the two of them, thrusting Dooley back out of the way.
Beth’s mother lunged at him again, but this time was intercepted by Dooley’s uncle.
“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded. “Lady, you want me to call the cops?”
“She’s Beth’s mom,” Dooley said. Jeannie had met Mrs. Manson, but Dooley’s uncle never had.
“It’s all your fault,” she screamed at Dooley, craning to look around his uncle at him. “It’s because of you. I told her over and over, I told her, he’s a criminal, he’s no good.”
“Why don’t we all calm down here,” Dooley’s uncle said.
“Is Beth okay?” Dooley said. Something must have happened. Something he hadn’t expected. If Beth had called the cops on him, Beth’s mother would have been dancing in the street. Dooley would be put away. It would be her dream come true.
“She says it wasn’t because of you, but I know better. This whole thing is about you. Everything is about you. You’ve ruined her. You’ve ruined her life. I wish she’d never met you. I wish you’d never been born.”
“Look, lady,” his uncle began. He glanced at Dooley, searching for a better way to address her.
“Mrs. Manson,” Dooley said.
“Look, Mrs. Manson, I don’t know what’s happened, but—”
Beth’s mother zeroed in on Dooley’s uncle for the first time. Her eyes, her mouth, the set of her of her jaw, they all painted one cohesive picture of hatred.
“You’re as bad as he is,” she said. “You brought him here.”
She turned, crossed back over the porch, and marched down the walk. Dooley saw her get into a waiting cab. He watched it drive away.
“What the hell was that all about?” his uncle said.
All Dooley could do was shake his head. Maybe Beth had told her mother what she had told Dooley on the phone. But if she had, why was her mother so angry with him? Why had she come all the way over here to slap him? Why hadn’t she gone out to celebrate instead?
“Well, something flew up her nose,” his uncle muttered.
“I’m going to bed,” Dooley said.
He went upstairs but didn’t get undressed. Instead, he lay on his bed fully clothed, waiting for the police to show up.
Dooley’s uncle was on the phone when Dooley went down to the kitchen the next morning. He turned and looked at Dooley, his face somber. Dooley’s ankles felt icy. The cold radiated upwards to his calves, his knees.
“You’re saying it all fit?” Dooley’s uncle said into the receiver. He turned away from Dooley to scrawl something down on a pad of paper on the kitchen counter. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
It was quiet as Dooley’s uncle continued to listen and to scribble on the pad of paper. Dooley poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. His stomach was queasy. He’d barely slept. He kept thinking about Beth. He was sorry he’d said what he had in the coffee shop. He wished he could be with Beth. He wished he could hold her and make her feel better—except that probably the last thing in the world she wanted right now was some guy holding her. He wished she’d never gone on that stupid trip. He wished she hadn’t been down there in that ravine. He wished she hadn’t seen him. She had accepted a lot of things about him, but this? There was no way. He wished he could talk to her. He wished he could see her face so that at least he’d have a shot at figuring out what she was thinking.
And he wondered what exactly she had told the cops.
“Yeah, thanks,” Dooley’s uncle said. “I owe you one.” He dropped the receiver into its cradle and turned to look at Dooley.
“That was Joe DeLucci,” he said.
Joe DeLucci was a cop friend of his uncle’s.
“What did he want?”
“He didn’t call me. I called him.” His uncle freshened his coffee and dropped down in the chair across from Dooley. “They made an arrest in the Albright murder.”
Dooley knew he should have been relieved, but the tautness in his uncle’s eyes and profound regret in his voice put Dooley on full alert.
“It’s Beth.”
Sometimes, back when Dooley used to get wasted, he’d get on the bus and head for a friend’s house or wherever he happened to be sleeping. Sometimes there was no place else to go, so he aimed for home. And, if he was wasted enough, he’d fall asleep and not wake up again until he was so far past his stop that he had no idea where he was. It always jolted him. He’d look out the window at scenery he didn’t recognize, and he would panic. He felt like that now, like he’d nodded off for a moment and had missed something important. One minute his uncle had been talking about Parker Albright and the next minute he was saying it was Beth. What was Beth? What had Dooley missed?
“What do you mean?”
“Beth is the person they arrested. It’s in the paper, but they don’t refer to her by name.” Well, they wouldn’t. She was seventeen. She’d be covered under YCJA, assuming—and Dooley didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t bring himself to even contemplate it—his uncle had just said what Dooley thought he had heard.
No, it couldn’t be right. There was something going on here, something that was messing with his brain.
“She called the police herself,” his uncle said, shaking his head slightly, as if he were also having trouble believing what he was saying. “She confessed. She told them everything.”
“What do you mean? Are you telling me Beth killed Parker?”
“I’m telling you what Joe DeLucci told me.” DeLucci and Dooley’s uncle were tighter than brothers.
“It has to be a mistake,” Dooley said.
“She called the police. She told them she did it. She gave them the when, why, and how. And apparently they have a guy who saw someone matching Beth’s description running out of the ravine the night it happened. They’ve arrested her, Ryan.”
“Where is she? Did they—”
“She’s still in the hospital, but she’s
being arraigned this morning. I don’t know where she’ll end up. It’s murder, and they don’t usually grant bail for murder. But considering what’s happened and the fact that she was still in the hospital when she called them ... I’m sorry, Ryan. I don’t know what else to say.”
His uncle asked him if he wanted to talk about it, but he didn’t. What was there to say? Beth had called the police. She had confessed.
“I’m at the new store all day today, in case you need me,” his uncle said. He looked at Dooley as if considering how he would hold up—if he would hold up—before getting up and setting his coffee mug in the sink.
Dooley went to school and looked at the faces in the hallways—familiar faces now, even though he couldn’t say he was friends with anyone there except Warren—and wondered what kind of day was unfolding for some of them. Maybe a fair number of them sucked, just like his day. But he seriously doubted that anyone else was dragging through math and history and French while contemplating the fact that a loved one had just been arrested for murder.
He couldn’t wait for the day to be over, but, in his experience, the worst days never seemed to end.
After school, he reported for work and went through the motions, scanning returns, shelving them, processing customer purchases, all of it without putting anything of himself into it. He kept thinking about Beth. She had confessed. She had told the police that she’d killed Parker. He could imagine how Randall was looking at it. Girl is sexually assaulted (at least, that’s what she claims). The guy who allegedly assaulted her has a different story (like any guy ever says, yeah, that’s right, I raped her). The girl has no bruises, no scratches, no physical evidence to show that she was assaulted. She didn’t report the assault until a couple of days after it happened. Witnesses say the alleged assault victim was flirting with her alleged assailant all week. A witness says the alleged victim went willingly up to the alleged assailant’s room and that the two of them were holding hands. So already there’s serious doubt: was she assaulted or not?
The guy involved has high-powered parents, which means he can afford a high-powered lawyer. The girl can probably imagine what she’s in for if the case goes to court. Already it’s a he-said, she-said setup. The guy’s lawyer is going to present the guy as a good student, an upstanding citizen, etcetera ad puke-dom. Maybe a few of the guy’s teachers will be paraded in front of the court. Maybe the guy volunteers somewhere—for sure, he’s dug wells in Africa and has helped to build houses for the needy. That’s how the whole thing got started. The girl herself will tearfully tell her side of the story. Then she’ll be cross-examined. Isn’t it true that you flirted with the defendant all week? Isn’t it true that you asked to switch to his work team? Isn’t it true that you went up to his bedroom willingly? Isn’t it true that you were holding his hand? What did you think was going to happen up there? And isn’t it true that you became upset when the defendant indicated that he wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship? Isn’t that why you were sullen and withdrawn on the bus all the way home and why you were staring at the defendant? Isn’t it true that you were planning how to get back at the defendant? And did you finally come up with a plan—you were going to accuse him of sexual assault? Isn’t that why you didn’t mention anything about sexual assault to anyone until after you were home from your trip? And what about your boyfriend (assuming that was how she’d presented Dooley)? Isn’t it true that you didn’t tell him what happened until after someone else told him what you’d done, that you’d gone up to the defendant’s room willingly? Isn’t it true that you told him about this alleged sexual assault only when it was obvious he knew something had happened? Isn’t it true that you were afraid of what he might do to you if he found out you’d had sex with another boy? Isn’t it true that he has a history of violence? Isn’t it true that you rolled the dice and lost with the defendant and that you were afraid that if the truth came out, you’d lose your boyfriend, too?
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