Walk a Crooked Line

by Susan McBride

  No, because you’re a spoiled rich kid who thinks he can get away with anything, she wanted to say but didn’t.

  Jo kept calm. “You said she was blackmailing you. Be an easy way for you to turn the tables.”

  Even through the dark, she could feel his fury radiating through the night air, giving off a stink like raw sweat and humiliation. But it hardly unnerved her. It felt like vindication.

  Very calmly, she told him, “If you didn’t make a video, if you weren’t threatening her, then you can easily prove it.”

  His voice was pained. “How?”

  “Surrender your cell phone, then give us the key for the encryption, and let us read any and all communications between you and Kelly since she contacted you about your party. We’ll find out pretty quickly if you’ve been holding out on us.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No,” Jo said. Far from it.

  Even with Trey’s face shadowed, she could see he was torn. Come on, do it, she willed him. Give me your damned phone. It really is that simple.

  “Go to hell,” he said instead.

  Then he stepped over the bench and headed off, his agitation obvious in every shake of his head, every toss of his arms.

  Well, crap.

  That was it? Their midnight gabfest was over, just like that?

  Over, she told herself, but not done. She wasn’t giving up.

  She rose, stepping over the bench to the grass. She turned to pick up her phone, expecting to hear the slam of Trey’s car door, the noise of his engine revving. But instead, she heard the quick succession of muffled footsteps and his noisy breaths as he ran back.

  Before she could face him, he grabbed her from behind, knocking the phone from her hand. He pinned her arms to the small of her back, holding on so tightly, Jo gasped.

  “Are you ready to listen?”

  “Let me go, Trey,” Jo said through gritted teeth.

  But he didn’t.

  “You might want to consider one fact you’re missing,” he told her, his breath in her hair, the heat of his body penetrating her clothes. He pushed her forward, over the picnic bench, so Jo’s face glanced off the wood as she turned her head.

  “Hey!” she yelped.

  “Listening now?”

  “You want to go to jail for assaulting a police officer?” she hissed, the grain of the wood rough against her cheek. She tried to kick at him, but his thighs pinned her. Then he leaned into her harder, and full-blown panic began to set in.

  “I just want to make you hear me,” he said under his breath. “If I really wanted to assault you, I could. You know that, right? Just like I could have done whatever I wanted to Kelly that night. But I didn’t.”

  “Let me go now,” she intoned, wondering if Hank could hear her from wherever the phone had dropped, if he was even listening at all instead of tending to a sick kid. “Damn it, Trey, this is not the way . . .”

  But he just shushed her.

  His weight pushed into her, crushing her lungs against the bench, turning her breaths shallow. She swallowed hard, hating the helplessness, feeling like she’d felt every time her stepfather had come to her room all those years ago, had forced his way into her bed and held a hand over his mouth to silence her until she’d given up and given in.

  “I want you to get this, Detective,” Trey told her, his pelvis pressed against her backside. “Are you listening?”

  Jo gritted her teeth, nodding as best she could, hoping to hell that was his belt buckle poking her and not an erection. Son of a bitch. If she could have reached for her sidearm, she would have taken a shot at whatever it was.

  “The girl is dead,” he said into her ear. “Kelly’s dead. She offed herself, and that’s all there is to it. Nobody pushed her. Nobody made her jump. So get off my back, keep away from my bros, and leave my family the hell alone. You got that?”

  He waited until she said, “I got it.”

  With that, he let her go and took off in a sprint.

  Jo pushed up from the table and turned, trying to catch her breath and feeling sick. She put a hand on her weapon, and she started to move, thinking she could chase him down on her wobbly legs.

  But she couldn’t.

  Before she’d managed to go ten feet, the pickup’s engine ignited, the headlights flashing on, swamping her in their glare.

  Jo listened to the tires skitter on gravel, and then the overly bright beams swung away. She stood in the dark for a moment, waiting until the flashes of light disappeared from her eyes, hearing the thud of her own heartbeat before it was drowned out by the cicadas. She placed her hands on her knees and bent over, spitting the bad taste from her mouth.

  Damn it, she cursed herself. He’d done what he’d come to do, hadn’t he? He’d made her feel like a victim. Made her feel powerless. Was that his intent all along? Did he think she was Kelly Amster? Did he imagine she’d react like a fifteen-year-old girl and stay quiet out of fear?

  If he did, he’d thought wrong.

  Pretty dumb move for a quarterback.

  Jo rubbed a sleeve over her mouth, wiping away any traces of bile. Slowly, she walked back to the picnic bench, stooping over to hunt for her phone. “Hank,” she said aloud, thinking if he could hear her, maybe she could hear him. “Hank, are you there?”

  A muffled voice said her name.

  “Jo?” Tiny, tinnish, like someone very far away. “Jesus, Jo, what the hell’s going on?”

  “I can’t find you,” she told him. “So keep talking.”

  “Um, okay, did you know that flu viruses kill up to half a million people on the planet every year, which is nothing compared to the Spanish Flu pandemic that toasted around five hundred million people in 1918? And, er, the Spanish Flu was called the Purple Death because it starved the lungs of oxygen, and it turned people blue or purple . . .”

  Jo rummaged until her hand touched glass and plastic, nestled in the grass below the bench. She snatched up the phone and put it to her ear. “Got it,” she said. “You can stop now.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” That was only partly true. “That asshole threatened me,” she said, her voice as unsteady as the rest of her, hating that she’d let Trey get the upper hand.

  “You hurt?”

  “No, just shaken up,” she said, rubbing her cheek, wondering if she had a splinter in her face from the picnic table.

  “You want him picked up?”

  “Not yet,” she said, despite everything. Calm settled in her chest, erasing the ebbing panic. “We’ll get him soon enough. He knows what happened to Kelly. I’m sure of it. We just have to find a way to the truth. If it’s not through him, we’ll go around him.”

  Whatever it takes, she thought. Whatever it takes.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tuesday

  In the morning, Jo awoke slowly to the noise of running water.

  Is it raining? she wondered, until the rush of water stopped with a soft groan of pipes, and she realized Adam was in the shower.

  Too bad, ’cause they could have used the rainfall.

  Yawning, she plumped her pillow and turned on her side. She squinted as light squeezed through the crack of the not-quite-closed door. Then it burst wide open, spilling into the bedroom. Adam’s footsteps on the carpet quickly followed, and she watched him enter the room, towel wrapped around his hips.

  “Morning, sunshine,” she said, sleep still in her voice. “You gonna wear that to work? It would make quite a statement.”

  “Ha.” He smiled. “You sleeping in today?”

  “I wish.”

  He leaned over to kiss her, droplets from his wet hair landing on her face. He wiped them away with a soft brush of his thumb, apologizing. He paused for a moment, glancing at her cheek. Jo wondered if she had a bruise.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “You have a scratch.”

  “Oh.” Jo touched her face but didn’t explain.

  He sat down beside her, and
she reached for him, setting her palm on his bare chest.

  “Come back to bed,” she said.

  “If only I could.” He sighed. “But I’ve got a full caseload . . .”

  “Kelly Amster?” she asked, her heart skipping a beat.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve got a case review meeting in an hour, so it’ll probably be assigned, since she was brought in yesterday afternoon. You have doubts about how she died?”

  “No, not about how.” Jo withdrew her hand from his chest, sitting up higher. “Just why. Is it possible to find evidence of rape in a postmortem, if the assault occurred weeks ago? She was supposedly a virgin before it happened.”

  Adam let out a puff of breath. “It would be pretty difficult, yes. If she’d had any tearing, she would have had some time to heal before her death.”

  “You would know if she’d had sex, though, right?”

  “Only if she has an STD,” he said. “Can’t tell a virgin just by an intact hymen when some females are born without and some stretch more than others—”

  “Thanks, Dr. Ruth,” she cut him off, having heard enough.

  “Hey, you asked.”

  He gently touched her cheek. Then he got up. He tossed the towel over the back of a chair and went to the dresser, opening the bottom drawer—the one she’d ended up sacrificing for him—and he pulled out clean boxers, socks, and a white tee. He’d left his scrubs hanging over the arm of a chair, and she figured he’d wear them again, changing at work if need be.

  Jo sighed as he slipped on the boxers, wishing they could both stay in bed all day. She was tired and hadn’t gotten much sleep after her disturbing encounter with Trey.

  “Did you go out last night?” he asked, turning around as he tugged on his shirt.

  “What?” The question jolted through Jo like a shot of caffeine.

  He’d been asleep when she’d left and when she’d returned. She had taken great pains not to jostle him. But, somehow, he knew regardless. Maybe Ernie had squealed on her?

  “Did you go out?” he tried again. “Your car’s in a different spot this morning.”

  It was. He was right about that.

  “I was going to tell you,” she said, and it was true. She just hadn’t planned to tell him at that very moment. “That call that came late . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was a high school kid who might know something about Kelly Amster,” she said.

  “You didn’t go out alone?” He got that look on his face, like he was about to give her hell for taking a stupid risk.

  She blurted out, “No, no. I called Hank. He was supposed to meet me there, but both his kids got sick.”

  Adam’s jaw tightened. “So you did go alone.”

  “I had Hank on my cell the whole time, just in case.”

  “I could have gone with you.” Adam looked miffed.

  “You needed your sleep,” she said, which was the God’s honest truth. “Hank knew where I was, so if anything had happened . . .”

  She stopped, catching herself. She’d been ready to lie to him, or at least lie by omission. But they’d sworn off secrets, hadn’t they? They’d promised their relationship would be built on trust, not fear—fear of pissing off the other person, fear of being rebuked, fear of the past.

  Jo let out a slow breath, patting her palms on the sheet. “It was a high school kid, a football jock,” she told him. “I thought he’d gone, but he came back. He pinned me to the picnic table, which is how I got this.” She touched her cheek where Adam had seen the scratch. “He didn’t hurt me, not physically. He just reminded me that I’m the weaker sex,” she said dryly, having a hard time meeting Adam’s eyes. “I wanted to shoot his balls off.”

  “Jo,” he said, clearly having trouble finding the words. He came back to the bed to sit beside her. “You’re hardly weak, but . . .”

  “But I’m no match for a hundred-eighty-pound muscle head.”

  “You should have known better,” he started, but stopped himself. “Look, it’s just that there are some things a woman shouldn’t do alone.”

  “Like meet a witness in a public park?”

  “It was after dark—”

  “So I can only go out alone in broad daylight?”

  Adam sucked in his cheeks. “It’s the world we live in. There are just men who don’t respect boundaries—”

  “Boundaries?” she interrupted him again. “I’m a police officer. I have a shield. I carry a sidearm. Why should I be afraid of a high school boy?”

  “You said it yourself. Because he’s bigger than you.”

  “So I should be afraid of anyone who’s bigger than I am?” she said sharply. “I can’t trust that there are men out there who haven’t been trained to think rape is okay? Who don’t think all girls are whores and we ask for it?”

  “C’mon, Jo.” Adam put a hand on her thigh, a lump beneath the covers. “You know I’m not saying that.”

  But she wasn’t done with him yet.

  “I get it. I was like Kelly Amster going to a party alone, at the mansion of a rich white kid—the same kid who asked me to meet him.” Her anger bubbled to the surface, and she snapped at him, despite knowing it wasn’t his fault. “Why shouldn’t we have felt safe? Why should she—why should I—have felt afraid?”

  “Hey, I’m not your enemy.” Adam took her hand, holding on when she tried to pull away. “I agree with you. No woman should have to live in fear. You should all be able to walk down a dark alley in a miniskirt at midnight and not expect to be attacked. But I’m only one man, okay? I don’t control the pack. I can control only what I do.” He frowned at her. “And I know for damned sure that I don’t control you.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Hell, no.”

  Jo glanced down at her fingers as she intertwined them with his.

  “I just don’t like you taking risks.”

  “I get it. I do.”

  “Next time, wake me up, okay? I’ll go with you. Shit, I’d hide in the bushes if that would keep you safe.”

  She understood. She did. It was a scary world out there. Scary for women, for kids, for folks who looked different from everyone else, for anyone wearing a badge. Abuse, rape, mass shootings, sex rings, terrorism in all its ugly forms. You walked out the door, and you were taking a risk.

  “I love you,” she said, because it was true, and it was better than an apology when she didn’t feel she owed him one, not for saying what she meant. She kicked off the covers, scooting to the edge of the bed and wrapping her arms around him. “But sometimes I need to do things my way, even if I make mistakes.”

  His arms covered her, holding them closer together as he whispered, “I love you, too, unconditionally.”

  She closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of him: the soft scent of soap and the musk of his skin. She realized why he’d tacked that word on. Because he knew she needed reminding. He understood she walked on tenterhooks half the time, sure that something she said or did would make him leave.

  He kissed the top of her head. “I’ve got to run. Work, remember?”

  “I remember,” she said, parroting his earlier words with a smile.

  He let her go, and then he finished dressing.

  Jo got out of bed and stripped off her T-shirt and underpants, heading for the shower.

  By the time she’d finished running hot water over her face and scrubbing yesterday off her skin, Adam had taken off, trying to beat the rush of traffic south into the city.

  She took care of Ernie, grabbed a banana, and was out the door herself not twenty minutes later. She had work to do, too.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Jo drove to the station early so she could talk to the captain about what had happened with Trey Eldon the night before. As it happened, Captain Morris was on his way out the door when she got there.

  “Hey, Cap, got a minute?” she said, attempting to get his attention as he practically brushed p
ast her with his head down, trying to knot his tie as he walked.

  He stopped, looking up as he pulled the tail end of his tie through and cinched the knot up to his throat. “Ah, Larsen, I’ve got a day full of meetings at City Hall,” he said, pushing up the cuff of his jacket to check his watch. “Can it wait?”

  “I’ll make it quick,” she said. “Trey Eldon called me last night. He hosted the party Kelly Amster attended alone. We’re pretty sure she was assaulted there, after she’d had too much to drink.”

  “By Trey Eldon?” Cap squinted. “He’s quarterback for the Mustangs.”

  “Yeah.” Jo wet her lips. “He wanted to meet at the park. He sounded like he had something to get off his chest about Kelly and what happened.”

  Cap frowned. “You go alone?”

  “Hank was supposed to meet me there, but both his girls got some kind of virus so he couldn’t get away. I had him on speaker, but Trey kind of caught me unaware, Cap, and I dropped the phone—”

  “Oh, crap. I’m already five minutes late.” Captain Morris checked his watch again. “Can we finish this later?”

  Jo nodded. “Sure.” Like she had a choice.

  He gave her a quick salute before he took off, boots tapping down the hallway.

  Jo stared at the back of him until he’d disappeared around the corner. Then she went to the vending machine, tossed a coin to decide whether to get water or her usual Coke, and ended up saying “to hell with it,” going for the caffeine.

  Soda in hand, she settled at her desk, intending to do a little research on social media before Hank arrived.

  Since she was most familiar with Facebook, she went there first, entering via the department’s community relations pages. She did a quick search for Kelly Amster and found half a dozen comments where her name had been mentioned or tagged. There was one public page using the name, and it was Kelly’s.

  She pulled it up, scrolling down through recent posts, finding only a few photographs from the past three weeks. The most recent post was dated the day after the start of school. It was a selfie, taken in front of the poster for cheerleading tryouts. Y not? she had captioned it. A user identified as Angel had commented: Because they don’t want u. Kelly had replied, Says who? Then they’d gone a few rounds back and forth, with Angel telling Kelly that she needed to stop trying to be someone she wasn’t. U r changing, Angel told her, and not 4 the good. Go back to who U were, ho, or lose urself.