I did not call my wife. Instead, I called Detective Parsons. I have his private cell phone, and he always picks up when he sees my number. For the first time, I lied to him.
“I heard you’ve made an arrest. That’s wonderful news,” I said. He confirmed the reports. He was beside himself with relief.
“I was hoping you could fill me in on everything you know. I’m sure you can imagine how important this could be for Jenny.”
This was not untrue. The lie was in the motivation my words implied. I was not unconcerned with Jenny. But my wife’s fear was raging inside me.
Parsons told me about the arrest, about Cruz Demarco and how he’d “lawyered up.” They were waiting for him to get an assignment from the public defender’s office. I told him I did not want any of the Kramers to see his face, either in person or in a photograph. He said there’d been no release of Demarco’s name or picture. He promised to speak to the Kramers before releasing any information to the press. I agreed to call them as soon as we hung up to take added precautions. Jenny could not have her memory compromised by suggestive influences.
Then he told me about his reinterview of the neighbor’s kid, Teddy Duncan, who’d spotted the blue Civic the night of the rape.
Teddy. What a piece of work. But then you meet his mother and you get it, you know? He was a brat last time I met with him, but now that he’s a teenager, what a little asshole. Thinks he’s some kind of celebrity because he spotted a car while chasing his dog. Sat there like I was doing an interview for People magazine or something. Anyway, the kid tells me the same story as last time. His parents got him a puppy for Christmas. A little beagle. The mom says the thing’s been a nightmare, chewing up all the furniture, pissing and shitting all over the house. The deal was that Teddy was supposed to take care of it. That was the whole point. Kid’s been getting in trouble at school, bad grades, skipping classes. The whole nine. Counselor suggested getting him a pet that he is responsible for. Convinced them it would do the trick. But little Teddy couldn’t give a shit, you know? They got a fence around the property. Mom doesn’t believe in the electric ones. Says it’s creating force fields that will give them cancer. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the extra fifty pounds on her ass was more likely to kill her than a doggie fence. So the dog keeps digging holes under the fence and getting out to chase things, squirrels and shit. The day of the party, the landscaper comes and fills the holes, so they think they’re good to go. Mom lets the dog out, and an hour later, he’s gone again. Guess there was a hole that had some dead leaves and stuff covering it. So the mom yells at Teddy to find the dog. And that’s when he goes out looking.
Now, that was around eight forty-five. Kid is in the woods maybe a few minutes calling for the dog, but he doesn’t come. He listened for rustling. I guess that sometimes works, you know, he can hear the dog running around. But that night he can’t hear anything, because there’s all this noise from the party next door. Music, kids laughing and cheering. They were playing drinking games, so that all made sense. So he gives up and heads back to the road, to Juniper. He walks on the inside of the car line, so he’s in the middle of the road, walking toward the party house. That’s when he saw the Civic. Said it stuck out because it was “ghetto.” Can you believe that? What a little prick. I asked him if he looked inside. He swears there was no one in the car. Said he could see just fine because he saw two kids “mashing” in the back of a Suburban, which was also parked on Juniper. They have streetlamps on Juniper. They were all working that night. Then we showed him photos of blue Civics from the back, with different plates and slightly different colors. He picked Demarco’s. Said he remembered some of the plate numbers.
“Which he couldn’t do before, right?” I asked.
Yeah, but I guess seeing them jogged his memory. We showed him ten cars with ten plates.
“Were they all blue? The cars? If the others were the wrong color, surely that could have been why—”
Fuck that, Doc. Let the PD come up with the defense. We have a kid who saw his car and no one inside, right around the time of the rape. The car was there but empty.
“But even if it was this guy, Demarco, he could have been inside, selling drugs. I’m sure that’s what he’s going to claim.”
It’s starting to sound like you don’t think this is our guy. Did Jenny remember something?
Parsons was defensive. Too defensive, like he had some kind of personal stake in nailing Demarco. I had never seen him as an ambitious man. I suppose he wanted this to be over, the relentless badgering from Tom, the lingering suspicions that the rapist was walking around Fairview in plan sight. But his eagerness appeared to be affecting his attention to detail. I wanted the charges to stick. I wanted this all to go away. But even I knew how many holes this story had.
I had to stop myself from answering the question about Jenny. She had remembered some things, but that was not why I had asked the question.
“No—and I have no opinion on this man except to foresee the next steps in the investigation. You’ll have to verify where he was, inside or outside the house, I imagine.”
We’ve already started. Every kid is getting a fresh interview. Even if he never stepped foot in that house, someone had told him about the party and that he should come by to sell them shit. Only way this guy knows where to be and when. And I’d bet he made a few sales before he saw Jenny in the woods. That’s the other thing. Teddy showed us about where the Civic was parked. You can’t see into the woods from there. There’s a row of bushes. He would have had to have been walking to or from the house or, worse, looking out from inside the house, to see her going across the lawn. But I’m not giving up on him. No way! Last thing I want to do is have this lead go away.
“I see.” I was lost then, in my thoughts and my wife’s fears.
Alan? You still there?
“Yes. Sorry about that. I’m on the road. I thank you for your time. I should call the Kramers now.”
Parsons said good-bye and hung up. I cleared his number, then made a call. It was not to the Kramers.
The phone rang. A woman answered.
“Law office of Mark Brandino. Can I help you?”
I almost hung up. My heart was pounding. The thoughts were absurd. The fears irrational. None of that mattered. This was my child.