Page 61 of Everything You Want Me to Be
“I was going to say your name, but I don’t even know what to call you.”
I pulled his head down to the crook of my neck, hugging my entire being around him. “Call me yours.”
DEL/ Wednesday, April 16, 2008
THE PROBLEMwith DNA was it took too damn long. It wasn’t like in the movies where they poured something in a test tube, swirled it around, and got the name of the killer. You had to send the samples up to the crime lab in Minneapolis and they put your stuff in line behind everyone else’s stuff and they got to it when they got to it, which could take up to a year depending on the type of evidence. Lab people, working nine-to-five and looking at dead-girl cells all day long. They didn’t care about your dead girl. It didn’t make any difference to them. At least that’s what it seemed like from here in Pine Valley, where we only had one dead girl and she’d torn a wide, ugly hole through this town.
Hattie was all anyone was talking about, the only thing filling their eyes when they passed me on the street. Word got around about Tommy Kinakis’s DNA test, probably from Tommy himself, the big goon, and about Lund being pulled out of school for questioning. Phone calls poured in to dispatch and Nancy told most of them to stuff it, but she felt it was her duty to keep me up-to-date on the gossip as she tucked sandwiches and fresh coffee into the few bare spaces on my desk. Brian Haeffner kept playing politician, trying to set up daily press conferences. Every parent in town wanted to know about security for the high school. Thanks to Portia, the curse story had spread like wildfire and two vans from the cities’ news stations had camped out on Main Street last night. I’d stopped answering my phone unless it was Jake... or Bud. He had called around six this morning.
“Del.”
“Bud.” I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at today’s front-page picture, which was a “still” from the play on Friday night of Hattie wearing her bloodstained dress and her crown, looking haunted and holding one arm out against the darkness. It gave me goosebumps. I imagined Bud was looking at the same thing. Neither of us spoke again for a minute.
“Do you have the DNA results?” His voice sounded rough.
“No. No, it takes a little while. I’m checking other things in the meantime, getting the timeline down.”
“You brought Peter Lund down to the station yesterday.”
It wasn’t a question, but I heard the demand behind the words well enough. Twenty-five years of friendship will do that.
“We’re talking to a lot of people.”
“You think Lund had something to do with it?”
“He was the director of the play, knew all the kids. You’ve heard all this curse bullshit. If any of them had a mind to act it out, I thought Lund might have a bead on which one.” It grated to be lying outright, to be using that stupid curse as a reason for anything.
“So you don’t think it was Tommy?”
“I don’t think anything, Bud. When I start to think things are one way, then it closes off a lot of other ways that might be just as probable. I’m just getting as much information as I can while we wait on this DNA, trying to piece the whole night together and everyone who was in it.”
There was another long silence, a sigh on the other end of the line, and a hitch in Bud’s voice when he spoke again. It sounded like this call was costing him almost more effort than he could bear.
“Del, Jesus. All I can think about is her poor body lying there on that slab yesterday. Me and Mona went to claim her and she looked like a piece of meat, all bloated and—and wrong. My little girl, my little girl was a piece of meat on a slab.”
His next words were racked by sobs. I could hardly make them out.
“And I’m going to gut the son of a bitch that did it. I’m going to make him wish he’d never so much as looked at her.”
“Bud, you listen to me. Bud?”
There was only scraping and heavy breathing in response.
“I’m going to find this guy, Bud. Hattie’s got me for that. She doesn’t need her dad going to prison. Mona needs you, too, you know, and Greg needs you here for him when he gets home. You gotta remember them.”
I didn’t know if he heard me until the breathing evened out. The sun was starting to rise, turning the kitchen a deep, burning orange.
“Are you saying you’re going to arrest me?”
“Bud—”
“My girl is dead. I held her in my hands yesterday, held her sweet, bald head and watched her cry for the first time. I taught her how to drive a tractor on my lap with her little pigtails bouncing in my face. I watched her play a queen—a queen with all the power and wickedness you could imagine. She owned that stage. She lit it up. And I hugged her and told her what a good job she did and let her go. I just let her walk out of that school and die. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around and pick out her funeral dress while her killer walks around free.”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
“Damn it, Del. What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m telling you we’re in the middle of an ongoing investigation and you’ll know who killed Hattie the minute the cuffs are on him.”
