Page 53 of Lethal Danger

“Right. Did you see anything unusual when you did it that night?”

“You mean like a dead body?” She smirked as she stepped down off the display. “No, I think I would’ve noticed that. But the police thought I must’ve missed it.”

She headed up the path again, and Hawthorne followed behind. “I was thinking more like something to suggest a visitor hadn’t left or a missing boat. Maybe more garbage than usual left somewhere?”

“You mean like extra beer cans?” Amusement was obvious in her tone as she detoured onto the display again. “Jaden gets all hung up on that. But he doesn’t work nights. I’ve seen plenty of visitors get on my boats with more than one can per person.” She held up the two cans she found on the shoreline to emphasize her point.

“Do you often see passengers who are intoxicated?”

She snorted. “Oh, yeah. The nighttime crowd tends to be older than the daytime. Fewer kids, unless you count the stupid teens with fake IDs who think they’re something as soon as they get a sip of this stuff.” She dropped another can into the bag, then returned to the path.

Christy didn’t look much older than a teen herself, but given she said she’d worked the fair for five years, she must look young for her age.

“Did you see a teen who fit that description during the evening?”

Christy paused, facing him this time as she crossed her arms and looked away. “The police asked me if I’d seen him. They showed me a photo of the body.” Her posture tensed.

“I’m sorry. That must’ve been difficult to see.”

“It’s weird in real life, you know?” Her gaze bounced to Hawthorne’s face, then away.

“Yes, I know.” Most people thought they knew about death and killings, thanks to the saturation of gore and violence on TV and in movies. But the reality was so different. And so much harder to forget.

She took in a visible breath and brought her attention back to Hawthorne. “Nobody asked me about drunk punks that night.” She looked up to the right. “Yeah. I actually saw a group of young guys like that. There were like four or five of them together. I remember because they kept trying to hit on me.” Her pale lips quirked. “Like they didn’t know they were a bunch of drunk slobs. They weren’t all super young. The guys trying to pick me up were older, closer to my age then.”

“How old was that?”

“Like twenty-one maybe? But I remember thinking they’d brought their kid brothers along ’cause a couple were scrawnier and stayed in the background.”

Scrawny teenagers? Could Sam have been one of them? From the autopsy details in the police report and the photos, tall and scrawny would be a fitting description of him.

“Honestly, I had my hands full with that one dude who thought he was God’s gift to women.” She laughed and put a hand on her hip as the gears of Hawthorne’s mind turned.

She probably wouldn’t have noticed Sam’s face at all. Not well enough to ID him from a photo of a dead body the next morning. While working at the fair, Christy must have seen thousands more people than Hawthorne had seen in his longer lifetime. No way could she notice or retain most of them in her memory.

“Did the guys go on the ride?”

“Yeah. Two times.” She rolled her eyes. “I was afraid they were going to stay all night.”

“But they didn’t?”

“No. Lucky for me.”

“Do you know what they did on the ride?”

“Probably drank and threw their cans on the display. I can’t really hear what anybody’s doing inside. The music is pretty loud.”

The music. Both of the times Hawthorne had visited the ride, it wasn’t running. He hadn’t thought about the loud music that must play all the time when the ride was operational. So the group could’ve done anything inside and only fellow passengers would have been within range to notice. “Did any of the other visitors complain about the guys?”

“No.” She shrugged. “That near to closing, I think everybody’s kind of in the same boat.” She laughed. “Get it?”

He smiled. “Yeah. I get it.”

“Well, I’d better get back to it.”

“You’ve been really helpful, Christy. Thank you.” He held out his hand.

She held up her gloved hands, one holding the garbage bag. “You really don’t want to do that.” She shook her head back and forth.

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