Funeral for a Friend

by Brian Freeman

  24

  Andrea made pancakes on the griddle on her kitchen stove, mindlessly flipping them as they browned. The morning news droned in the background at a low volume. Her sister, Denise, stood near the rear window, drinking a mug of coffee and admiring the collection of suncatchers in the early light.

  “These are pretty,” she said. “I don’t remember seeing these before.”

  “I’m not sure I had them up when you were last here.”

  “Well, I like them. They add color to the place. You need some color. Where do you get them?”

  “A secret admirer,” Andrea replied.

  Denise turned around with the mug of coffee at her lips. “Sorry, what?”

  “Someone sends them to me. I don’t know who it is. It’s been happening for years.”

  She didn’t mention that her secret admirer also broke into her house to deliver his gifts and that they came with the same strange message each time.

  Forgive every sin.

  “That’s sort of weird, isn’t it?” Denise said.

  “Well, it’s probably a former student who’s still bringing the teacher an apple. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “I guess not.”

  Denise sat down at the table, and Andrea put a plate of pancakes in front of her, along with a glass of orange juice. She did the same for herself. For a few minutes, they ate without talking or looking at each other. Denise checked her phone; Andrea read the News-Tribune.

  They had never been particularly close as sisters, and Denise moving back to Duluth hadn’t changed that. Andrea wasn’t looking for a confidant, and with their parents gone, it had been painfully obvious to both of them that they had little in common. Even so, they were taking baby steps toward a better relationship. The occasional breakfast together was part of that.

  As she stabbed her pancakes with a fork, Andrea realized that Denise was staring at the television over her shoulder. She turned around and saw that the morning news program was broadcasting from inside Duluth’s harborside convention center. The talk of the town was Devin Card’s upcoming town hall meeting that night.

  She turned up the volume and listened to what the news anchor was saying.

  “Late last night, the Card campaign issued another press release emphatically denying the rape allegations that have dogged the Congressman for the past seven years. Regardless, the issue is sure to come up from constituents at tonight’s town hall, along with questions about the unsolved murder of an online journalist named Ned Baer, who was attempting to identify the anonymous accuser. With the scandal back in the headlines, the question on many people’s minds is this: Will the woman behind the allegations take this opportunity to finally come forward?”

  Andrea picked up the remote control and muted the TV.

  “So what are you going to do?” Denise asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t you want to tell your story?”

  “I told my story. I talked to a lawyer. I wrote a letter. I never intended for any of it to become public.”

  “But it did. Without you to back up what you wrote, Devin can stand up there and call you a liar. Is that what you want?”

  Andrea shot a look across the table. “Well, you think I’m a liar, don’t you?”

  Denise put down her fork and looked stricken. “Andrea, no. When have I ever said that?”

  “I know your tone. You’ve never believed me.”

  “It isn’t that—” Denise began, and then her words trailed off.

  Andrea made a little snort of disgust, because she heard the same tone from Denise again. The tone that announced all of her doubts about Andrea’s story. Her sister must have heard it in her own voice, because she stopped talking and took a minute to regroup. When she spoke again, she was firm. “I believe you.”

  “But?” Andrea said. “Because there’s obviously a ‘but.’ Go on, fire away.”

  “It’s not a ‘but.’ I’m not doubting you. I just want to know why didn’t you tell me when it happened.”

  “You were gone, remember? You left for basic training two days later.”

  “We talked on the phone.”

  Andrea gave a sour laugh. “Yeah, how would that conversation have gone? ‘Hey, Denise, how’s Air Force life? By the way, Devin Card raped me at that party.’ Don’t you get it? You left, and by the time you came back, we were strangers. You have no idea what I went through. None.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, Denise. I don’t blame you.”

  “But I pushed you to go to the concert and the party,” her sister pointed out. “I didn’t look after you while you were there.”

  “I went because I wanted to go. I wasn’t looking for a chaperone.”

  Denise looked down at her plate and tilted it to make the syrup run. She didn’t look up at Andrea. “Tell me what happened.”

  “You already know.”

  “Not the details. I don’t.”

  Andrea shrugged. “It started after you had sex with Peter Stanhope. Remember that? You did it in front of everybody.”

  Denise closed her eyes. “I didn’t realize you saw that.”

  “Of course, I did. Everybody did. You know what? I was jealous of you. My sister was cool and out there and willing to do all this shit that Mom and Dad didn’t know about. And me, I was the good girl. The virgin. I was sick of it. So when Devin Card told me how pretty I was and started to make out with me, I thought it was the hottest thing ever. I’d never made out with anyone before, but Devin Card?”

  “You’re sure it was him?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “We were all drinking, Andrea. You’d hardly ever had a drink before, and you drank a lot.”

  “It was him. Do you think I wouldn’t remember that? I was with the guy that all the girls wanted. You had sex with Peter Stanhope, but I was with Devin Card. Guys were watching us together and drooling over me. Me. So when he asked me to go upstairs, I said yes. I consented. But later, when it started to happen, I said no. I said stop.”

  “Maybe he didn’t realize you were serious. I mean, sometimes guys—”

  “Really, Denise? You’re defending what he did to me?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Yes, I was drunk. Yes, I agreed to go upstairs with him, and you know what? I probably thought I wanted sex. But when he started taking off my clothes, I did not consent. I told him to get out. He raped me! That’s what happened!”

  Her voice had gotten loud. Somewhere along the way, she’d stood up from the chair, and she was shouting and jabbing a finger at her sister. Tears came down her face. The memories roared back the way they always did. She stopped and shut her eyes tightly. Her body twitched, as if he were on top of her again in the dark bedroom. She could still feel him. She could still hear herself begging him to stop, to go away, to get off her. She could still smell the scent of him afterward as she lay there alone, with the awful ache between her legs and the stickiness of her own blood on her thighs.

  Andrea opened her eyes.

  Denise shook her head. “Jesus, sis. I’m so sorry.”

  “I know.”

  “I wish you’d told me. I would have tried to help.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything. Nobody could. My life was already over.”

  Denise got up, too. She went over to Andrea and hugged her, and they stood there in that tight embrace for a long time. It felt good; it felt safe. Andrea couldn’t remember the last time they’d done that.

  Then, when they separated, Denise’s face screwed up in disgust as she noticed the television. Andrea turned around, and there he was. Congressman Devin Card, perfectly dressed, serious and earnest, such a decent, moral man. She turned up the volume again.

  “I’m not going to specula
te on this person’s motives. We’re talking about an anonymous allegation. I don’t even know how to respond to that, other than to say I’ve never done anything like what she says in my life. It did not happen. Is this whole thing political? Is this a smear? Who knows? Believe me, I would like nothing more than for this woman to come forward and tell all of us her name. To share her story in public. Because then maybe we can figure out the truth behind this mistake. And if she won’t do that, then frankly, the voters can draw their own conclusions about her credibility. That’s all I have to say.”

  This time Andrea switched off the set entirely.

  She stood in the kitchen, breathing hard, still lost in the past.

  “You can’t let him say that about you,” Denise told her. “You can’t let him get away with it. Andrea, please. You can’t stay quiet anymore.”

  Andrea inhaled, then exhaled.

  It was like that moment right before you jumped out of the airplane. And once you did, there was no going back.

  “You’re right,” she said to her sister. “I can’t.”

  25

  Cat huddled in a window seat in the far corner of the great room in Stride’s cottage. She was invisible to everyone else. The police talked about her, but no one talked to her, and she hated that. She didn’t like listening to other people making decisions about her future as if she was just a bystander.

  Stride and Serena were both there. So were Guppo, Brayden, and four other uniformed officers. Brayden had a wrapped bandage extending below the cuff of his T-shirt. He was in pain where the bullet had grazed him, and she could see his mouth grimace when he moved. She kept trying to catch his eye. He knew she was there, but he refused to look her way. Now that it was over, he was pretending as if the kiss had never happened.

  There was an urgency among the people in the room. She could feel it. Shots had been fired, a police officer had been wounded, and suddenly, this was about more than a stalker sending anonymous notes. She heard Serena talking about attempted murder. She heard her saying that if it was Wyatt Miller, he was not going to stop with one attempt. Cat believed her. She already had a sixth sense about the future that she wouldn’t have admitted to anyone else.

  People were going to get shot.

  People were going to die.

  Because of her.

  “What did you find up on Hawk Ridge?” Stride asked.

  Guppo shifted his girth in his chair. “We found where the shooter hid out on the hillside. There were lots of 9 mm shell casings. It looks like he unloaded the entire magazine at them. Brayden and Cat are lucky to be alive.”

  Lucky, Cat thought bitterly. Oh, yeah. She felt lucky.

  “What else?” Stride asked.

  “He tore his shirt on some sharp branches and left behind a patch of fabric. Tie-dye.”

  “Any DNA?”

  “No, but I went over to Hoops, and two of the bartenders gave me affidavits that they remembered Wyatt Miller wearing tie-dye shirts. Brayden confirmed that Wyatt was wearing the same style the other night at the brewery. That was enough for Judge Edblad. He signed off on a warrant, and we went into Wyatt’s apartment an hour ago.”

  Cat called from the corner. “Did you find the box under the bed? Did you find the photos he took?”

  All the heads in the room snapped around to stare at her. It was as if they’d forgotten she was there.

  “I’m sorry, Cat,” Guppo replied. “No, the box wasn’t there. Either he has it with him, or he moved it because he figured we might get in and do a search. But we did find something else. At the back of a kitchen drawer, we found an open package of green Sharpies that match what was used to write the notes to Cat. He was definitely lying when he told Brayden that he had no idea where the marker came from.”

  Stride shook his head. “Where the hell is this son of a bitch?”

  “We don’t know. We’ve got his photo out there and the license plate of his car. Everybody’s looking for him, boss. I left a uniform to watch his apartment building, and we’ve got somebody down at Hoops. Apparently, Wyatt also does fill-in shifts at Va Bene, so we’re watching there, too. As soon as we spot him, we’ll bring him in. I got Judge Edblad to do a specific order for a GSR test. If we can establish that he fired a weapon, that should be enough to hold him over while we look for more evidence.”

  “That’s good work, Max,” Stride said. Then he called to Cat and jabbed a finger at her. “Until we find this guy, I don’t want you leaving the house.”

  Cat shrugged. “Whatever.”

  He was treating her like a child again. For a few minutes the previous day, he’d talked to her like a real person. A woman, an adult, who was smart and sensitive and sexual. But not anymore.

  “I bought a security system,” Stride added. “We’ll have motion-sensitive cameras on the front and back doors.”

  “Is that for him or for me?” Cat asked sullenly.

  Her comment cast a pall of uncomfortable silence over the room. Stride didn’t answer, and his face showed no apology. Cat shot a look at Serena, asking her to stand up for her, but Serena was in mother mode now.

  “It’s only until we have Wyatt in custody,” she said to Cat. “We’re trying to lock him up. Not you.”

  “Right.”

  Stride bulldozed over her unhappiness. “Is that everything, Max? Are we done?”

  “Yes, sir. For now.”

  The meeting broke up, and everyone began to disperse. A few of them looked over at Cat and then looked quickly away. She expected something from Brayden, a smile, a glance, anything to acknowledge that things had changed between them, but he turned his back and headed for the front door without a word.

  Cat refused to let him walk away from her. Not like that.

  “Brayden.”

  The young cop stopped. He glanced at Stride, then headed across the room toward Cat. He made sure no one else was in earshot around them, but he also kept a safe distance, which matched the distance that she saw in his eyes.

  “I can’t talk, Cat,” he said in a clipped voice. “I have to help Stride with the security cameras.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, are you going to tell me if you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Brayden replied. “You don’t need to be concerned. They patched me up and gave me an aspirin. That’s all I needed.”

  Cat stood up from the window seat, and Brayden jumped backward as if she’d stepped out of the infectious disease ward. She kept her voice low. “I want to talk about what happened between us.”

  “Not now.”

  “Why, is this conversation going to take long, Brayden? I’m not an idiot. Obviously, you’re going to tell me it was a mistake, a moment of weakness, you never should have let it happen. Right? How hard is that to say?”

  “Cat, please.”

  “I know you liked it. I could feel it.”

  “Later. We’ll talk about this later.”

  “Does Stride know?” she asked. “Did you tell him?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m not going to tell him, either, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not going to get you fired.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” he replied.

  “Are you still my babysitter? Or did you make up an excuse to get out of it?”

  Brayden took a step closer. His strength gave out a kind of aura that wrapped itself around her. “Stride gave me a chance to bail on this assignment. I said no, I wanted to keep going.”

  “Because you want to be with me?”

  He ran his hands back through his hair and left it messy. He had the look of a man desperately searching for control. She’d seen that look on men’s faces before, and they never found what they wanted. “Because I want to keep you safe. But
there have to be ground rules, Cat. What happened between us can’t happen again. If you can’t accept that, then I’ll ask someone else to take over. You’re right, the kiss was a mistake. A huge mistake. That’s just reality. My job is to protect you, and I can’t do that if I lose my focus.”

  “Do I make you lose your focus, Brayden?”

  He didn’t answer, but she stared into his eyes and saw what she was looking for. He wanted her. Then he shook himself and broke the spell.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  * * * * *

  Colleen Hunt was so caught up in the sketch she was drawing that she didn’t hear the knocking on her apartment door. When it stopped, and then started again, she finally looked up. The knock wasn’t the big, confident pounding that Curt usually made when he came to pick her up. This was a nervous little scratching, like a stray dog begging to be let in out of the cold.

  She put her sketch pad on the coffee table and went to the door, swaying a little as she did. Her feet were bare on the linoleum. She wore a knee length yellow wrap dress with a lily of the valley design. She was smoking her second joint, which gave her dreamy, staring eyes and a wicked little smile. Curt said she was at her prettiest when she had a post-weed glow. Colleen liked the confident feeling it gave her, as if she could get whatever she wanted. Her artwork was best when she was high, too.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  A panicked, barely audible voice hissed back. “It’s Wyatt.”

  Colleen hesitated, then opened the door a few inches. “What are you doing here?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Please, Colleen.”

  “I think you should go. I know you’re a perv, Wyatt.”

  “Oh, man, not you, too. I’m not! I didn’t do anything! The police searched my apartment, and they’re trying to arrest me. A friend called from Va Bene. The cops are over there. Hoops, too. And there’s a squad car across the street from the building. I had to sneak in through the back. I don’t even want to go upstairs to my place, because someone might be inside. Just a few minutes? Please, Colleen, I need to think!”