About that night, p.15
About That Night, page 15
Now he finds out that she lied to the police—for him. She didn’t tell them the real reason he went to her house. But the way she’s looking at him now, he simply can’t fathom why she lied.
“Ronan, I know Derek went home that night to get the bracelet. But the police didn’t find it on him.”
“The police know about the bracelet?” He can’t stop himself from asking. Nor can he stop the hammering of his heart in his chest.
She shakes her head. “No one knows about it—except you and I. I know Derek went home. I also know what the police found on him—there wasn’t any bracelet. And it’s not in his room. I know because I looked.”
She’s staring hard at him. It reminds him of how the cops look at him, that unwavering, unflinching latching of their eyes on his, trying to fake him out, trying to make him believe they already know everything there is to know about him because what’s in his head is leaking out through his eyes.
“Ronan, your mother was wearing it when I went to talk to her.”
He doesn’t know what to say.
“You have to tell me what happened, Ronan. You have to tell me because it’s scaring me to think about it.”
How can he speak? He can barely breathe. If she’s put together the pieces she has, and if she’s come to believe he really did it, that he really killed Maugham, then there’s no way she’s going to keep everything to herself forever. She’s not that kind of person. She would never protect someone she knows to be a murderer.
“Ronan, you have to talk to me. You have to tell me. Derek went home to get that bracelet, but he never came back. They found one of your buttons right beside his body. Your mother is wearing the bracelet. She told me when you gave it to her.”
He feels like a drowning man, swirling around and around, unable to draw a single breath, unable to do anything but thrash about helplessly.
“Did you follow Derek from my house?”
“Follow him? No. No.”
Jordie nods, but the gesture is so slight, he almost misses it. “Because you couldn’t have known he was going to go home that night,” she says. “I didn’t even know.” Her eyes never waver from his. “But you saw him. You talked to him, didn’t you?”
The word comes out before he can stop it. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“I ran into him on the trail behind his house.”
He watches as her shoulders slump. She’s like a balloon with a leak. She deflates in slow motion.
“What were you doing there?”
“I didn’t kill him, Jordie.” He can’t let her believe for even a second that he did.
“Then how did your button end up where it did?”
She’s a hound after a fox; she’s not going to let up. He can log off his computer. He can refuse to talk to her. But that will just make it worse—and nothing, he knows, will make it better.
“We had an argument,” he says finally.
“Argument? And?” When he can’t think what to say next, she adds, “Did your button jump off your jacket? Is that what happened?”
Jesus, such a beautiful girl, and such cutting sarcasm, like a butcher knife slicing into his heart.
“It got physical,” he admits. If she tells the police that, he’s screwed for sure.
“How physical?”
“I didn’t want to talk to him at all, Jordie. I didn’t even see him until it was too late. It was snowing, you remember? And it was blowing. I was walking with my head down, and all of a sudden, there he was in front of me. He was pissed off right away.”
“Why? Why was he pissed off?”
Ronan feels heat in his cheeks. He’s sure he looks like a kid caught red-handed stealing cake from the kitchen—or like a killer standing over the body with a smoking gun.
“I guess he didn’t expect to see me there, and when he did, he was naturally suspicious.”
“Naturally?”
“Because there’s not much up there except his house,” Ronan says, which, he knows, raises the question, So what were you doing there? Sure enough:
“So what were you doing there, Ronan?”
If he tells her, how does he know she won’t go and tell the cops? But if he doesn’t tell her, well, how does he know she won’t tell the cops the parts that so far she hasn’t told them?
“Ronan?”
He looks into the screen, into her eyes, and he starts to talk. He talks slowly, watching her the whole time. He sees worry in her eyes. He sees surprise. He sees shock. And then more worry. Deep worry. So deep that it scares him.
“Did anyone see you, Ronan?” she asks when he’s finally said all there is to say.
“There was no one down there, Jordie. I told you that. Just him.”
“What about before that?”
“Before?”
“Before you ran into Derek. Did anyone see you?”
He thinks about that night. He walked from his house to Jordie’s house through streets that were completely deserted. It was cold and snowing. It was after Christmas, when everyone was partied out and stuffed full of turkey and cranberry sauce, shortbread and chocolate, eggnog, spiked and plain—all the treats that make an appearance once a year. Everyone was inside, warm and dozing if they were adults, playing with toys if they were little kids, hanging out with friends or relatives if they were older. He remembers perfectly how it felt—like walking through a ghost town or, even, like being a ghost walking unseen through a town filled with pleased and satisfied citizens. He had felt so alone as he made that walk. His hand had actually trembled as he reached out to ring her doorbell. And then later, when he walked away, it was more of the same, more being alone in a town full of people, none of whom meant anything to him…well, except for the person he was leaving. The person who was tucked up in her house with that jerk Maugham, and it was his own fault because he’d been idiot enough to let her go—hell, to push her away. You are the author of your own misfortune, Ronan, no doubt about that. He doesn’t plan to tell her, but the truth is that he felt sorry for himself as he disappeared again into the gathering snow.
“Jesus, Ronan.”
She’s annoyed now, the way she was at the end, before he told her maybe it was better for them not to be together anymore.
“Why do you always have to do this? Why do you make me do all the work?” she says.
“Sorry.” It’s the first time he’s said that to her, and she knows it. Her eyes widen. She looks slightly stunned, as if he were speaking to her now in Latin or ancient Greek. “I just—” he begins. Just what? Just answer the question. Did anyone see you, Ronan? “No, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Did you think maybe you saw someone but you’re not sure—is that it? If you saw someone, then maybe that person saw you.”
“What difference does it make?” He’s up to his neck in it, and everything he’s just told Jordie makes it worse for him. “If someone saw me before or after I ran into Derek, but they didn’t see Derek after I left, when, I swear, he was still alive, what difference does it make?”
“You’re in big trouble, Ronan. The cops think you killed him.”
The cops think.
He catches his breath. To ask or not to ask, that is the question.
“What about you? What do you think?” It’s what he’s wanted to know all along. It’s the only thing he’s wanted to know.
“If you want to convince the cops, Ronan, you have to think. You have to have a solid story.”
What is she saying—that she believes him? That she wants to believe him but it’s up to him to convince her? That she doesn’t care whether he did it or not but that if he wants to stay free, he’d better find a way to convince the cops?
“I didn’t see anyone,” he says. But is that right?
“What?” she says. She’s leaning into the computer, searching his face. “There’s something. I can see it in your eyes. What is it?”
He’s shaking his head even as he starts to tell her. “It was a domestic.”
“A domestic? You mean a housekeeper or a nanny, like that?”
“A domestic dispute. But they were too wrapped up in themselves to notice me. I’d stake my life on it.”
“You are staking your life on it, Ronan.” She’s got those two lines over the bridge of her nose again. “Tell me about it anyway. Where were you? What did you see?”
“Trust me, Jordie, when people are in the middle of something like that—”
“Humor me, Ronan.”
He begins to talk again.
» » »
An hour later, Jordie is staring at a blank computer screen and wondering. Ronan is telling the truth about some things—she’s sure of it. Either that or he’s a complete idiot because, really, how hard will it be to check on what he’s told her? Also, he has absolutely no guarantee that some of what he’s said will even help him. But he’s put it out there, and that part is checkable too. The question is, so what? What does it all mean? Do the things that are checkable prove anything? Do they even come close to proving that the cops are wrong about Ronan?
She thinks about this all night. When you come right down to it, what has she found out? What use is it? What can she do with it? What should she do with it?
Twenty-One
Jordie is antsy the whole of the next day. She can’t remember the last time she’s had so much trouble concentrating. All she can think about is what Ronan has told her and what kept her awake all night.
The morning passes. She meets up with some girlfriends for lunch but finds herself uninterested in what they’re saying—one is planning a trip to the city to spend the Christmas money she got from her grandparents, one met a guy while visiting relatives three hundred miles away and is now fretting about the difficulties of long-distance relationships, and a third bemoans the fact that she has neither money nor a boyfriend and then starts apologizing to Jordie as soon as she voices the thought: “I’m not being insensitive, honest.”
Jordie rewraps her tuna sandwich and stands up. “It’s okay,” she tells the girl. She walks away without another word. Behind her, one of her friends says to the girl, “See what you’ve done? Jesus, Derek died!”
In the schoolyard, Jordie takes out her phone and makes a call. She gets the same answer she got earlier in the morning, which is to say no answer at all. When the bell rings, she heads to English class. Ms. Phillips has just started Act 1, Scene 1 of Hamlet when an announcement comes over the PA system. Jordie is called to the office.
She sees Sergeant Tritt through the glass wall. He is standing facing her and comes to open the door for her.
“Your principal has put an office at our disposal,” Tritt says. “Third on the right.”
It’s Ms. Syros’s office. They go inside and Tritt closes the door. He waves her into a chair and then grabs the chair from behind the desk and places it so that he can sit facing her.
“What did you want to talk to me about, Jordie?” he asks.
“It’s about what happened to Derek.”
Tritt sits at attention, leaning forward so that he is on the very edge of invading her space. He waits.
“I talked to Ronan,” she says.
“Okay.”
“He says he ran into Derek that night.”
“Ran into him?”
“Behind Derek’s house. Right near where they found Derek.”
If Tritt were an insect, his antennae would be all aquiver, Jordie thinks.
“He says he had an argument with Derek.”
“An argument?”
“And that it got kind of physical.”
“I see.”
“He says Derek grabbed him and that’s how that button ended up where it did.”
“The button from Ronan’s jacket, you mean.”
Jordie nods. She hopes she is doing the right thing, but she can’t think of anything else to do.
“They kind of got physical and Derek grabbed Ronan and pulled the button off.”
“Did Ronan say what he was doing over there behind Derek’s house?” Tritt asks.
“Yes.” Ronan was so honest with her that it alarmed her. She tells Tritt about the bracelet.
“This whole thing is about a bracelet?” Tritt is shaking his head, as if she’s told him that Derek got killed over something as trivial as a pack of cigarettes or a twenty-dollar bill.
“That’s how it started,” Jordie says.
Tritt leans back in his chair now. “That boy must have it bad for you, young lady.”
“What do you mean?”
“Confessing to murder? Giving you all the details? It’s clear he wants you to forgive him.” He pauses. “You tell them, ‘You’ll feel better when you get it off your chest.’ Half the time—more than half the time—they don’t listen. But with this kid?” He shakes his head again.
“He didn’t confess to murder,” Jordie says quietly.
“Well, okay, so technically he didn’t. But you’re a smart girl. You do realize that everything you’ve told me just seals the deal, don’t you? He’s just put himself at the scene of the crime. We have physical evidence of that, but now we have him telling someone he was there. We have him getting into an altercation with the victim.” He glances at her. “Sorry. With Derek. And we have the motive—the bracelet. You knew where you were going with this when you asked to see me, didn’t you, Jordie?”
Jordie sits tall and straight. “He says he didn’t kill Derek, and I believe him. He says he ran into Derek and that they had an argument. But he swears Derek was fine when he left him.”
Tritt leans forward again. “He left him in the exact location where he was found, with a button from his jacket beside the bod—beside Derek. But you’re telling me that you believe him when he says Derek was still standing?”
“Yes.” She says it firmly and without even a second’s hesitation.
Tritt lets out a long sigh. “But you do realize that what you’ve told me makes things even worse for Ronan, right?”
“That isn’t why I called you,” Jordie says. “There’s more.”
“Now you’re going to tell me that not only did Ronan not kill Derek, but that he knows who did. Maybe he passed a stranger on his way back to wherever he was going. Or maybe—”
“I don’t think he knows who did it,” Jordie says.
Tritt studies her. “But?”
“But I think I do.”
» » »
It’s Saturday, and Renee, the home-care nurse, isn’t there all day the way she is during the week. She’ll drop by around noon and help Ronan’s mother with her personal care. She’ll check her vitals too. So Ronan makes a soft-boiled egg for his mother and manages to get her to eat most of it. He gets some tea into her, too, but she drinks it clear, so there are no calories there, no nutrition.
“You should have some milk,” Ronan says. “Or some juice.”
His mother shakes her head. “I can’t.”
Ronan debates with himself: make her drink some milk, or let her be? She’s wasting away day by day. She was never what you might call hefty, but now she is like a tissue-wrapped skeleton. Her skin is almost translucent, and her bones stand out in relief. Her eyes are sunken and no longer sparkle like they used to when she laughs. But then, she no longer laughs. Even smiling seems to take more effort than she can manage. It won’t be long. He knows it, and she knows it. He tries not to think about it, at least not while he is in her presence. If he thinks about it, he chokes up. Sometimes he cries. Jeez, if the kids at school saw that, they’d never steer clear of him again. Or maybe they would. Nothing makes people more uncomfortable than a guy who cries in public. Better to put your fist through a wall. Or through some other kid. And better by far to do almost anything at all than to let his mother see him burst into tears. She’s doing her best to be strong, and she’s told him that she’s counting on him to do the same. “We have to be strong together” is how she puts it. She also reassures him—which he hates—that there is money set aside for his education. She wants him to go to university. She wants him to make something of himself. She wishes she could do more for him, but she can’t, and she’s sorry about that.
He decides to let her be. A glass of milk isn’t worth an argument. It isn’t worth draining her strength.
“You should take a nap, Mom,” he says. “I’m going to go clean up the kitchen.”
She reaches out and squeezes his hand. “You’re a good boy. I love you, Ronan.”
“I love you too, Mom.” He bends down and kisses her on the forehead. Her skin is cool and dry, like paper. He takes the tray with the egg cup on it and the mug still half filled with tea.
He cleans up, just as he said he would. He sets her dishes into the dishwasher along with his cereal bowl and the plate he used for his toast. He wipes the toast crumbs off the counter and puts the jam back in the fridge. Then he sits down to wait.
Half an hour later, he tiptoes upstairs and checks on his mother. She is sound asleep, and if the past few weeks are anything to go on, she will sleep for hours. He leaves a note on her bedside table, where she is sure to see it. He goes back downstairs, puts on sneakers—his boots won’t fit over the device that’s attached to his ankle—and pulls on his coat. He grabs his hat, gloves and keys. He locks the front door behind him and starts down the front walk.
The ankle device starts beeping before he hits the sidewalk, but that doesn’t stop him. He keeps walking. He’s still walking when a patrol car pulls up in front of him and two cops get out, one near the front of the car, the second back a ways, both ready to unholster their weapons. Ronan puts his hands up. He tells them, yes, he knows he’s violated his bail conditions, and yes, he knows what that means. He offers no resistance when they handcuff him and pat him down. When one of them puts his hand on Ronan’s head to guide him into the squad car’s backseat, Ronan informs them that he wants to talk to Lieutenant Diehl. One of the cops laughs.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “He’s waiting for you back at the station house.”
At the police station, Ronan is rebooked and led into another room. He’s only there for a few minutes before he is taken into an interview room. This time, because he is under arrest and in violation of his bail conditions, he is handcuffed to an iron loop set into the heavy table. He is left there, and it seems as if an eternity passes. He starts to worry about his mother waking up in an empty house to a note that is sure to raise more questions—and worry—than it answers. He begins to imagine her becoming frantic and wonders how that will affect her. What if she tries to get up on her own before Renee arrives? What if she falls down the stairs? What if, in doing all of that, she takes the oxygen tube off, or it comes off? He stands up abruptly and is jerked back by the handcuff. This is all a mistake. He shouldn’t have walked out of the house like that. He should never have come here.
