RATH WAITED OUTSIDE, pacing on the street, smoking a cigarette. When he saw Sonja’s Peugeot pull up, he flicked the cigarette into the road and joined her as she stepped out of the car.
“I still don’t—” Sonja began, but Rath was already climbing the fire-escape stairs. Dad’s F150 wasn’t in the drive, but the Neon was. To be sure she was inside and alone, Rath had phoned moments before from outside. She’d picked up—and he’d asked for Dad. He wasn’t in. He was at Jay Peak, helping gear up for the ski season.
Rath knocked on the door.
“Langevine,” Sonja muttered absently. “Dressed as an old woman. I was running a while back and saw a man I thought was woman. Because of his long hair and, it bothered me, and—”
“I’ll ask the questions,” Rath interrupted. “She’s sixteen, a minor. If you ask questions as a cop without an adult present, they may not hold up. But I’m not a cop.”
“I—” Sonja began.
The door opened, and Porkchop, Abby Land, answered in a pair of sweats with CANAAN HIGH on the front. She looked like she hadn’t eaten or slept in days. Her eyes were bloodshot and pale cheeks hollowed.
“Jesus,” she said, “you—” She saw Sonja standing behind him then.
Sonja stepped forward and showed her badge. “Can we come in please?” she said.
Abby stared at them. “Sure. Why not?” She shrugged and went to the couch and sat on the edge of it, lit a cigarette she took from a pack lying on the old army trunk that served as a coffee table. She lit it clumsily. She didn’t look familiar with lighting it, or with smoking a cigarette, coughing slightly and blowing out the smoke in a puff. “I already told you he was here with me that night,” she said. She smacked her lips and doused the cigarette in a cereal bowl of milk.
“Right,” Rath said. “We believe you.”
“Good, finally. I’m telling the truth.”
“The thing is,” Rath said. He sat on the couch a foot from Abby and placed a hand on Abby’s knee. Abby flinched and stared at the hand but said and did nothing. She seemed very far away now. Rath knew the look. Reality hitting home. Taking hold of the mind.
“The thing is,” Rath said again, “you weren’t here with him.”
“What,” Abby said. “What.” Dazed. Disoriented. As if awakening in an unfamiliar bed with no memory of how she’d gotten there.
“You know you weren’t here with him,” Rath said.
“I was. He didn’t do it. That’s the truth.”
“I know he didn’t do it, dear,” Rath said. “I know that much is the truth.”
“Don’t you dear me.” She pulled her knees away from Rath’s hand, squeezed them together. She began to tremble. “Who are you to—”
“I thought maybe when you gave him an alibi you were protecting him, or scared of him, because he was dealing coke or somewhere else he shouldn’t be that night. But you weren’t protecting him by lying about being here with him that night,” Rath said. “You protecting yourself.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is,” Rath said. Abby was sixteen, but looked no older than fourteen. What was he doing when he was sixteen? Still riding his Huffy 10-speed as fast as he could onto a ramp to see how many cardboard boxes he could jump.
He took out the photo of Mandy and handed it to Sonja.
Abby was staring at her hands in her lap now. She wasn’t going to be able to keep the truth in her. In all probability, she wanted to vomit it up and out of her.
Sonja showed Abby the photo. Abby crumpled a bit when she looked at it. Then stiffened. “So,” she said, a jolt of defiance steeling her. “So what.”
“That’s you in the background,” Rath said.
“So.” She glared at him. “Big deal.”
“And who’s that with you?” Rath said.
She looked off toward the kitchen. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Some guy. So?”
“No one important?”
“No.”
“A good-looking guy like that. His arm around you.”
“We were friends.”
“Were?”
“Are. Were. Whatever.”
“No. Not whatever. You cared about him.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“I know this. He’s a volunteer fireman. And he’s stationed in the firehouse just up and across the street a door or two from the Dress Shoppe.”
“Wow. Good for you.”
“And I know that Mandy had bought raffle tickets from him.”
“Big deal.”
“And that Mandy saw him the last afternoon anyone ever saw her. Saw him walk past. And she wanted to tell him something, but by the time she got out there, he was gone, or she had lost her nerve. Maybe she even spoke with him. I’ll know when I talk to him.”
“Go ahead, talk to the asshole. What’s it got to do with me?
“You had a crush on him. But you were like his little cousin or something.”
“Shut up.”
“But Mandy. She was nothing like a cousin to him,” Rath said.
“Shut up.” She gritted her teeth at him and looked at him with eyes lost and barren. “You don’t know shit.”
“I know that when we check the battery on your Neon, we’re going to see that the posts have marks on them from a recent jump start. Your car’s got a bad battery. I tripped over the jumper cables coming out of here before. And those marks will match marks on Mandy’s battery. And they’ll both line up with the battery cables in your trunk.”
Abby was tapping her bare feet on the floor now. Tap tap tap. Drumming her palms on her knees.
“I know it wasn’t planned,” Rath said. “I know it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. An anger rising in you, a jealousy. Your car is dead on the roadside after a party or something and along comes Mandy, and she knows you. Probably feels bad for you. She knows the shit you have to deal with being in the same house with her asshole father. So, of course, she stops and helps you out, and you can’t stand it. You can’t stand the sight of her. Little Miss Perfect. Everyone always drooling over her. Luke especially. Your Luke.”
Tap tap tap. Abby’s whole body shook now. Sonja put a hand on her shoulder.
“When we check the trunk of your car,” Rath said, “we’re going to find hair. Or blood. All kinds of it. What’d you do, after she jump-started you, did you have her help you get your tire and cables back in the trunk, and when she bent over, you hit her with something. The tire iron? And shoved her in and—”
“God,” Abby moaned. “Please.”
“We know you didn’t mean it,” Rath said.
Abby snapped her head up at him, locked her eyes on his, black with death, her face wrenched and wicked.
“The fuck I didn’t,” she spat.
“Where is she?” Rath said.
“Still in my trunk. The bitch.”