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“Then they lied,” I said to him. “For Kory.”
Kory kept going. “When we got there, she wanted … she wanted to show me…”
“I don’t really want the details,” I told him. “I just want to know what you did to her.”
“She started it,” he said, shame making him flinch every time he started to talk. “She rubbed me and told me to—” He stopped, unable to explain. “Then, right in the middle, she changed her mind. She told me to stop. I— I finished anyway. She didn’t really fight or anything. She just bit me. But, yes, I did it with her. She said no and I did it anyway.”
“That’s very wrong. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t mean for it to go that far. By the time she changed her mind, I was already in her. I just needed a minute. Then she killed herself. I wanted to die. I’d lied to everyone. They all thought I was so cool. Too cool to sink low enough to have sex with Cindy Eckert.”
“Because she was mentally challenged?”
After he nodded, he repeated, “She killed herself because of me.”
“And because of how she was treated afterwards.”
“Exactly, because I didn’t have the balls to confess to what I’d done.” He looked up at me then. “No one would have messed with her if I’d just told them not to. They did it thinking they were doing me a favor. Am I going to hell?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“That’s enough,” the captain said. “That’s all I needed to hear. I had to know if I got the right guy.”
“And if you hadn’t?”
“I would have gone after the right guy. But since I got him, I can get on with this. Thank you, though,” he said, tossing the entire envelope of pictures to me. “I won’t be needing those anymore.”
“Wait, how do you know I’ll hold up my end of the bargain?”
“It won’t matter. There are some things you can’t outrun. Your past is one of them. Can you ask your uncle to come in here, please?” He sat behind his desk and started straightening papers.
“Why?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.
He tapped a pile of folders until they stood in perfect alignment, just like everything else on his desk. Pristine. Orderly. Everything in its place. “I’m going to turn myself in.”
“What? Why would you do that? That was, what? Thirty years ago?”
“Thirty-five. My mother died last week. She was the only one I was protecting by keeping this secret. Now I can own up to what I’ve done and put it behind me.”
“He doesn’t need to do that,” Kory said. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, the JV letter jacket he wore crinkling. “It won’t make any difference.” Then he brightened. “Maybe if I fix this, I can go to heaven.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I’m supposed to make amends, but there’s just no way to do that. But maybe if I stop Cindy’s brother from making a big mistake, I can get in.”
I wanted to tell him he could probably get in anyway, but I decided not to.
“He’s a good guy, right?” Kory asked.
“Yeah, he’s a pretty good guy. Or he was until he set me up like a bowling pin on league night at the alley.” I scowled at him, but only a little, since he was taking the charges off the table. And he’d killed someone. Did I now have a moral obligation to see him brought to justice?
I was torn. On what to feel. On what to do.
Then another thought hit me. “Maybe you are paying for what you’ve done,” I said to him as he straightened yet another stack. “I mean, you help people every day, right? Maybe that is your way of paying society back.”
“But what about Kory’s family?” He stood, put his jacket on, then walked to the door to face the firing squad. “My mind’s made up, Ms. Davidson. If you won’t get your uncle, I will. It’s time this ends.”
“Do your thing,” Angel said.
“What thing?” I asked him for the bazillionth time.
“Your reaper thing. Only you know the hearts of men on earth.”
“Trust me, hon, if there is one thing I do not know, it is the hearts of men. I know they like sex. That’s about it.”
“No, I mean, humans in general. You can see their intentions, and you mark them.”
The captain opened the door, and I couldn’t help but think he was making a huge mistake. I felt it deep inside. This was wrong.
“What do I do?” I asked Angel. The captain was getting away. So to speak.
“Ask him about the dog!” Kory called out to me.
Without another thought, I called out, “What about the dog?”
He stopped, hesitated, executed a slow, military-style about-face, and waited.
I tossed a sideways glance toward Kory. “What about the dog?”
Kory shrugged. “It’s just, I don’t get why he’s so hell-bent on turning himself in for a crime he didn’t commit.”
My eyes widened. Before this got too out of hand, I stepped to the captain, grabbed his jacket sleeve, took a quick peek toward Uncle Bob, who was still talking to the psychic wa
“Just hold on,” I said, closing the door. “Kory, what are you talking about.”
He shrugged. “This is wrong. He didn’t do anything wrong. I was the stupid one.”
“In what way?”
Exhaling superfluously, he sat against the windowsill and said, “It wasn’t even his gun. It was mine. Or, well, my dad’s. I took it from his drawer. Trying to be all cool and shit once again. When Van found me—”
“Van?” I asked the captain. Even though he seemed to believe everything that was happening, my knowing that surprised him.
“When he found me, he was madder than a diamondback during roundup. He hit me and I pulled the gun on him. He just wanted me to confess. This kid who meant nothing to me. He wanted me to confess to what I’d done. When I refused, he got so mad, he was crying and shaking. He was a tiny shit.” He looked the captain up and down. “I can’t believe he turned out that big. We started fighting and my dog jumped on us. The gun just went off. Hit me square in the chest. He wanted to help me get to a hospital, but I screamed at him to leave. If my dad found out I’d taken the gun, he would’ve killed me.”
“If you were shot in the chest, how did you get that wound?” I asked, pointing to his knee.
“When I was trying to find a place in our barn to hide the gun, I was in so much pain that I got really light-headed, and I shot myself in the leg on accident. Van didn’t have anything to do with that.”
I turned to
Van
. Who named their kid Van? “I know exactly what happened,” I told him, my expression stern.
“Yeah, but his family doesn’t. I killed him. I pointed the gun—”
“That’s not the way Kory remembers it. He said you two wrestled for the gun and it went off. It was an accident.”
He looked down in thought.
“You were only seven, Captain. And it all happened very fast, I’m sure. You didn’t do this.”
“Look,” he said, clearly having made up his mind, “I’ve made up my mind.”
Nailed it.
“Nothing you say is going to change that,” he continued. “His family deserves to know what happened.”
“Screw that,” Kory said. “If he goes forward, everyone really will think I did it.”
“You did do it, Kory. You did sexually assault an i
He bowed his head and whispered, “Yeah, but they don’t know that. They always believed me.”
“So, it’s okay for her name to be run through the mud, but not yours?”
“What will it change? He could go to jail for something that was my stupid fault.”
I had to agree with him. Even if he didn’t go to jail, his career would be over. He was good at his job. “Give me some dirt,” I said to Kory. “I need something to blackmail him.”
The captain crossed his arms over his chest in bored contemplation.
“Dirt? I didn’t know him. He was just a scrawny kid.”
“Darn.” I looked at the captain in desperation. “I’ll help you,” I said, sca