Page 54 of In the Air Tonight

My first call the next morning is to the longest standing assistant attorney general, the one most likely to remember the case from fourteen years ago. Neil DeGrasso retired five years ago.

“Vaguely,” Joshua Spurling says after I ask if he recalls the case brought against Ryder Elliott and dismissed at preliminary due to a lack of evidence.

“A witness has come forward.”

“A witness.”

“That’s right, someone who saw Ryder Elliott rape Denise Sutton.”

“And where has this witness been for the last fourteen years?”

“She was a teenager at the time, with deep ties to Elliott and his family after having grown up with him. She was scared to come forward then but is willing to do so now.”

“Why now?”

“After she heard he’s running for Congress, she couldn’t keep the secret any longer.”

“I don’t know about this, Houston. A defense attorney would shred her on the stand.”

“She understands that and had good reason for keeping quiet before. Or at least it made sense to her at the time, but to hear her tell it, she’s been sick over this incident since the day it happened.”

“Are you angling to reopen the case?”

“That depends on whether I’d have the support of your office.”

“I’ll talk to Roberts about it, but no promises.” The AG, Victor Roberts, has been in office just under three years, so he had nothing to do with the original case. “It might be too little too late at this point. Do we even know where the victim is?”

“No, but I could find out pretty easily.”

“Work on that while I pitch this to Roberts.”

“Will do.”

“I’ll be back to you with an answer as soon as I can.”

“Thanks, Josh.”

My next move is to find Neisy. After she left the area, we lost touch with each other. I start with social media, combing through Facebook and Instagram but find no sign of her. I move on to Google, which is just as frustrating. There’s no mention ofa Denise Sutton after her graduation from a Virginia high school one year after the alleged incident.

People are easy to find in this day and age, unless they choose not to be, which she probably has. I wouldn’t blame her after the way people savaged her when she accused Ryder.

I wanted so badly to believe her back then, because she wasn’t the kind of girl who’d make up something like that to get attention. Her life at HHS had been rough, and I remember thinking at the time that there was no way she’d do anything to make it worse than it already was, but I couldn’t get past the feeling that Ryder wouldn’t do something like that. I told my father that, too.

One thing was for certain, she’d definitely lost her sparkle since we’d worked together the summer before she started school in Hope and had her whole life go to shit.

The restaurant is owned by her mother’s cousin, so I’ll stop in to see what he can tell me.

I grab my portable radio, tell the sergeant working the desk that I’m heading out for a bit and get into my SUV to drive to the seafood restaurant where Neisy and I worked together the summer before she started at HHS.

As I drive to the waterfront restaurant in Monroe, I remember the first time I ever saw her and how dazzled I’d been by her. She was far too young for me at sixteen, but you’d have to have been blind not to notice how beautiful and sweet she was. It was the first time in my life I’d yearned to be younger. A twenty-year-old college junior didn’t ask out a high school junior, no matter how mature they were, especially when she was the boss’s cousin.

Instead, I’d befriended her and later learned about her long-distance boyfriend, Kane, and how much she loved him and couldn’t wait for him to visit that summer.

A year later, when her dad came forward to report that she’d been raped by Ryder Elliott at my party, I’d been devastated. That something like that might’ve happened at my party and to someone I truly cared about… And Ryder Elliott… My brother, Dallas, had played football and run track with Ryder. They were close friends. So while Dallas had defended Ryder and called the charges preposterous, I’d made a lame attempt at defending Neisy as I’d come to the realization she’d have nothing at all to gain by making up such a thing. That was the first time I was ever seriously at odds with Dallas.

After the case was thrown out for a lack of evidence, it took Dallas and me a long time to get our relationship back on track. He never forgot that I doubted his friend, and I never forgot that he doubted mine. Eventually, we got to the point that we stopped talking about it and agreed to disagree, but that took years, and things were never quite the same afterward.

Dallas and Arlo recently left high-paying jobs, as did Ryder’s brother, Cam, to help get Ryder elected to Congress.

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