CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Dee Dee drove straight to the sheriff’s office after receiving a message he wanted to see her. She was still in scrubs having worked a double shift. She had covered for one of the nurses who had called in sick. The extra shift had felt like it would never end. Her feet hurt in spite of the comfortable sneakers. Her skin was sticky and smelled like a mixture of stale air and antiseptic. But she wasn’t about to stop home for a shower. She pressed the accelerator. She couldn’t get to the sheriff’s office fast enough. She broke every speed limit, skidded into the parking lot, and burst through the door, surprised to find Heil stuffed into one of the metal chairs in front of the sheriff’s desk.

Heil stood as soon as she entered. “I’ll leave you two alone,” he said, and moved toward the door, but not without making eye contact with the sheriff first. “Dee Dee.” His fat stomach brushed against her arm on his way out.

“Frank,” she said. Neither one hid their apparent dislike for one another.

“Please, sit,” the sheriff said when they were alone.

“What was he doing here?”

“He wanted to know if he should be calling his lawyer,” the sheriff said.

“What did you tell him?”

“I’ve got a couple of witness statements saying they saw Billy drinking under the steps of the Pavilion bar. I told Heil to do what he thinks is in his best interest.”

“Does this mean you’re reopening the case?”

“Yes,” he said. “I got the final report this morning. The DNA is a match. The bones are Billy’s.”

Relief overwhelmed her and rendered her speechless. She hadn’t realized just how badly she needed it to be official until now, how much she had relied on the DNA results for validation. The bones were Billy’s, and one of them was fractured.

The sheriff continued. “After reading the original file and the new report from the medical examiner, something about his injuries doesn’t add up. Your brother fractured his skull here.” He touched the left side of his head above his temple. “But he fractured his right arm. You would think if he fell on the pier like we assumed, a flat surface with no obstructions, his injuries would be on the same side of his body, say his left arm and left side of the head. But that’s not the case. So the question is, how did he fracture his skull on one side and fracture his arm on the other?”

It didn’t make sense. But she was still too stunned, exhilarated, to respond. After all this time the very thing she had been hoping for was finally happening. She gripped the car keys so tight, the jagged edge dug into her palm.

“Now, I suppose it’s possible he fell twice, first hurting his arm and then hitting his head before falling into the water. But even that troubles me. The toxicology report confirmed there were traces of alcohol in his bloodstream. It’s hard to know the exact amount, since five days passed between the time of death and when his body was recovered. Minus the lower half of his right arm, of course, until now. But there’s not one statement in the file claiming your brother was drunk. Drinking, yes, but not falling down drunk. So what else could’ve happened that made him fall twice?”

She was nodding. Yes, she agreed with all of it. He didn’t have to sell it to her. She had known all along it didn’t make sense. Nothing about Billy’s drowning had ever made sense.

“There’s one other thing.” He was scowling.

Oh, here it comes, she thought. Nothing good ever came without a price. “What is it?”

“You know it’s a sensitive issue, especially when we’re still trying to find that little girl. People around here are reluctant to talk about drownings, past or present.”

“What are you saying?”

“It was one thing to poke around and ask a few questions, but now I’m going to be asking in an official capacity. And I have no doubt Heil is going to tell everyone to keep their mouths shut. Remember, he’s worried about his own liability in this.”

“I don’t care about Heil or that the damn alcohol came from his bar.”

“That may be. But he cares. And people aren’t going to want to speak out against him.”

She shook her head. The sheriff was missing the point. He needed to focus on Billy’s friends. He needed to interrogate Jo. “You’re still going to try, right?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Even Jo? Because I know she knows something about that night that she’s not saying.” She wanted to be present when he questioned her, but knew he’d never allow it.

“I’ll talk with her.” He paused. “I need you to be patient a little while longer. Like I said, it’s a sensitive matter, and I don’t want people to clam up before I even get started. You need to be patient and let me do my job.”

She didn’t respond, and continued squeezing the keys in her fist.

“I’m serious,” the sheriff said. “Let me handle this.” He waited for her to say something. When she continued giving him the silent treatment, he said, “You know I never would’ve closed the case if we would’ve found his arm with the body. If we would’ve had all the evidence back then, things would’ve gone differently.”

When she still refused to acknowledge what he was saying to her, he asked, “Did you hear me?”

“Oh, I heard you,” she said, and turned her head away.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Caroline woke to a wet stickiness between her legs. She tossed the covers off. The sheets were stained with blood. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. What happened to her last night? Her underwear was soaked. She pulled at her nightgown and found the back of it spotted red. It took a few more panicked seconds for her to understand.

She jumped from the bed and felt a warm gush between her legs. She cupped her hand over her private parts as if she had to pee. She peeked into the hallway, looking, listening for any sounds. The bathroom door was wide open. She made a break for it, not knowing what else to do. She stripped off her pajamas and cleaned herself with a washcloth. She knew she needed supplies. She had read all about menstruation from the stupid pamphlets the nurse had handed out during the school year. But it wasn’t until she had read Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret did she fully understand what was coming. It wasn’t like her mother had ever sat her down and had “the talk” with her. She wondered if there were parents who actually did stuff like that with their kids.

She doubted it.

What she knew about sex she had also learned from reading books. The information the other girls her age had imparted was mostly misinformation, like how you couldn’t get pregnant the first time, how anal sex wasn’t really sex. Books set Caroline straight. They saved her from the embarrassment of having to ask her mother to explain.

Although she had to give her mother props for standing up to the school board when they had threatened to remove some of the more graphic health books from the school library. Caroline’s mother had stepped out of her dark place and into the world, rallying a group of women’s rights activists into the largest protest the school had ever seen. With the support of the librarians and most of the other mothers behind her, the books stayed on the shelves. She was proud of her mother and embarrassed, too. The subject of sex had made Caroline feel all weird inside. It was a subject her mother cared about deeply.

She sometimes heard strange sounds coming from her parents’ bedroom, the moans, the creaking bed, the thumps and crashes. Once, she banged on the door, shouting for them to stop, thinking they were killing each other. They never answered her cry, but the rest of the night had been eerily quiet. She shuddered. Don’t think about it. No child ever wanted to think about their parents having sex, let alone the loud boisterous kind her parents had.