Victim Rights

by Norah McClintock

  Against whatever common sense he possessed—he was pretty sure his uncle would have said that it wasn’t much—he found himself headed to Parker Albright’s house.

  A small brown woman answered the door. When Dooley asked if Deecee was in, the woman asked for his name.

  “I’m a friend of Parker’s,” he said.

  The woman asked him to wait. She did not invite him to step inside. She closed the door in his face and left him standing on the wide stone steps for so long that he began to think that the answer was no, Deecee wasn’t in, and that he was supposed to figure that out for himself.

  Then the door opened again and there stood the girl who had greeted him at the party. The look in her eyes went from friendly to hostile the moment she took in his face.

  “You’re not a friend of Parker’s,” she said. She began to swing the door shut.

  “Wait! I just want to talk to you for a minute, about what happened.”

  The door was already half closed.

  “I know who you are,” Deecee said. “You’re her boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” He wasn’t going to deny it, especially not to Parker’s sister. “Was she here the night of the party, Deecee? Did you see her?”

  “What difference does it make? She confessed. She told the police she did it. She even told them how she did it.” Her voice broke when she said the last part, and tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

  “All I want to know is, did you see her that night?” he said, talking low and gentle, as if he were talking to Beth. “That’s all.”

  She wiped a tear from her cheek. “No. No, I didn’t. I told the cops that, too. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t sneak in. I was keeping an eye on who was coming into the yard, but it was a party, you know? I didn’t see everything.”

  “I talked to your friend Monique.”

  Deecee’s expression sharpened. Monique was probably in for an earful.

  “She said she saw Parker leave the party with a girl around ten o’clock. She said the girl had long dark hair. Do you know who that might have been?”

  “Beth has long dark hair,” Deecee said.

  Dooley forced himself to stay calm.

  “Was there anyone else there with long dark hair?”

  Deecee stared at him.

  “There were nearly sixty people at the party. A lot of them had long dark hair.”

  “Can you tell me who?”

  It was as if she hadn’t heard the question. Maybe she really hadn’t. Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if it was Beth who Monique saw. She’d been saying all those horrible things about Parker and what he supposedly did at our country place. Because of her, the police arrested him and charged him with sexual assault.” Her eyes drilled into him. “Girls line up around the block to get with Parker. He’s a good person. He’s considerate and sweet and good-looking. He didn’t have to force anyone. But he got arrested because of her, and she refused to drop the charges.”

  “What do you mean, refused?”

  “She’s crazy,” Deecee said. “I’ve heard people talk about her. I know all about her brother and his friends. I’m not surprised what she did, showing up like that and luring Parker away from the party and killing him. I’m not even remotely surprised.”

  The look in her eyes was one of pure hatred. Jesus, he wondered what Beth would have done if she’d seen all the looks he had seen in the past couple of days. These people had all judged her. Who she was and who she had been was colored now by the lies they were all convinced she had told and the revenge she had supposedly exacted. Beth had crossed the line, whether she realized it or not. She had a big neon sign flashing above her head that set her apart from civilized society. Beth was just like him now—except that he refused to believe that she had done what they thought she had done. What she herself had confessed to doing.

  He met Deecee’s eyes. “Thanks for talking to me.”

  He was turning away from the door when he heard a man’s voice.

  “Lena said a friend of Parker’s was here,” the voice said.

  “Lena was wrong, Dad. He isn’t a friend of Parker’s. He’s a friend of Beth Everley’s.”

  One part of Dooley’s brain told him to get the hell out of there, now. Another part, the part that reminded him of his uncle, told him who this man was and what he had been through, told him to do the decent thing. He turned to see Parker’s father, who was tall, like Parker, and looked surprisingly fit for a guy who probably never had to lift a finger if he didn’t feel like it.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” Dooley said.

  Mr. Albright stepped out in front of his daughter. Dooley saw then that he was much taller than Parker had been, taller than Dooley, too, and bulky. Dooley didn’t know whether that bulk was muscle or fat. It didn’t matter. A man that tall, carrying that many pounds, with that half-crazed, half-grieving look on his face, was a threat. Dooley stepped back a full pace. His heart was pounding in his chest when he finally turned and started down the wide stone steps. Every muscle in his body clenched as he waited for Mr. Albright to make a move. But nothing happened—until he turned the corner onto his uncle’s street nearly an hour later.

  Dooley’s antennae started to tingle when a dark-colored sedan slid to the curb beside him—on the wrong side of the street. He made it for a cop car before he saw who was behind the wheel.

  Randall.

  Dooley glanced up the street. His uncle’s house was out of sight. He waited. Randall stepped up onto the sidewalk and moved in close, inside Dooley’s comfort zone, trying to make Dooley squirm. Dooley wanted to step back, but he knew it was pointless. Randall would only step in close again.

  “What have you been up to, Ryan?” Randall said.

  Right. Like Dooley was going to answer any cop questions without having a clear idea of where the questioning was going.

  “I got a call from Patrick Albright.” Parker’s dad. Boy, the guy hadn’t wasted any time. “He tells me you were at his house, harassing his daughter.”

  Oh. So it was that game.

  “I wasn’t harassing her. I asked her a couple of questions, that’s all.”

  Randall chewed this over silently, or pretended to. Dooley knew that trick, too.

  “Why?” he said at last.

  “Why?”

  Geez, what was it with detectives? You knew they were smart guys because they’d made the grade. They knew they were smart, too. They got off on it. But they never quit playing dumb, like they thought that would trip you up.

  “Why do you think?”

  “Well now, that’s a good question,” Randall said, talking slowly, like he was some kind of moron. “Maybe you were talking to her because you’re trying to find out what we know—and what we don’t know.”

  Gee, you think?

  “We’ve already got your girlfriend, Ryan. Maybe you’re checking around to see what we’ve got on you.”

  Randall gave him that look, the one his uncle gave him sometimes, the one that told you that he knew whatever it was you were trying to hide, he had it all figured out and he was just waiting for the right time to spring it on you. The thing was, though: Dooley had dealt with enough cops and had lived with his uncle long enough to know that most of the time that look was bullshit. He figured they’d had to practice it in front of a mirror at the police academy—the fake-out-the-suspect look. Make him think you know everything, make him feel the doom that’s waiting for him, fill him with such despair that the only thing he can think of to do is to give it all up and hope he’ll be shown some mercy. Dooley would have ignored that look, except that this time he wasn’t sure what Randall was up to. He must have turned up something if he was here talking to Dooley. But what?

  “I’m going to ask you again, Ryan, and this time I’d like an answer. Why were you asking Deecee Albright about what she saw the night her brother died?”

  Part of him wanted to like Randall.
After all, he’d ended up being okay when Lorraine had died. But that first time he brought Dooley in to talk to him about Parker, it was like they were back to square one, like everything that Dooley had done that wasn’t completely fucked up, all of a sudden didn’t matter. Still, giving him attitude wasn’t going to help. In fact, giving a cop attitude pretty much guaranteed that he’d go out of his way to mess you up.

  “You talked to Beth,” Dooley said, talking to Randall the way he would talk to his uncle, trying to make him think—despite everything he had heard from the girls he had talked to. “You think she would actually kill someone?”

  Randall’s eyes remained guarded, which told Dooley something. Randall wasn’t in shoot-the-shit mode. He wasn’t going to let it be just two guys having a conversation. He was in full investigative mode. Mr. Detective.

  “I’ve been doing this job a long time, Ryan,” he said. “Most people who kill someone, it’s not a huge surprise. They’re leading the life. Or they’re time bombs, you know, like those guys who all of a sudden lose it and do the murder-suicide thing. But every now and then it happens. Every now and then, some ordinary citizen, some seemingly perfectly nice individual, takes a life. Sometimes it comes out of the blue. Sometimes there’s a reason that’s been festering for a while.”

  Like being assaulted by a pig like Parker Albright.

  “The real question is,” Randall continued, “how did a petite girl like Beth bash a big guy like Parker over the head with a rock that must have been a struggle for her to lift once, never mind a couple of times.” Randall was having doubts, at least about part of it. “How did she get up and down a sheer drop as high as the one behind the Albright house without any help?” Which meant that no one had been able to say for sure that Beth had gone to the party the regular way—around the side of the house, the way Dooley had got there, or maybe through the house. “You think maybe she might have had an accomplice?”

  Now Dooley got it.

  “She seems like a nice girl,” Randall said. “Pretty, too. And from what I hear, she’s been seeing you against her mother’s wishes. Her mother says she’s obsessed with you.”

  If Beth so much as waved at Dooley, her mother read it as obsession. What else would explain what a nice girl like her was doing with a criminal like him?

  “I bet you didn’t meet many girls like her before you moved in with your uncle, huh, Ryan?”

  Dooley just looked at him. Anything he said would just give Randall another way to get at him. The smart thing to do, he realized, was to simply walk away. He wasn’t obliged to talk to Randall. But he wanted to know exactly what Randall was thinking. Randall knew it, too. He’d probably been counting on it.

  “I bet you never met such a sweet girl before. Polite, too, even when she was sitting there in that hospital room giving me chapter and verse on how she killed Parker Albright.”

  Dooley could picture it—Beth in her soft, husky voice, probably calling Randall sir.

  “So it must have ripped your guts out when she told you her story about what Parker did to her,” Randall said. “Did you talk about it, Ryan?”

  “Yeah, we talked.” But the thought of that conversation—of Beth, pale, fidgety, sitting across from him in that coffee shop—made him want to go back in time. He should have listened more carefully. He shouldn’t have said what he did. He should have ... Jesus, Dr. Calvin was right. You could drive yourself crazy with should-haves, but they didn’t get you anywhere. They didn’t erase what had happened. They couldn’t make it go away. All you could do was learn from them. Dooley knew how it went. How did it make you feel, Ryan? Like shit. Did you like that feeling? No. Do you want to feel that way again? No. How are you going to make sure you don’t feel that way again? Next time, I’ll do it differently. It was the right answer, but it never seemed like enough when he said it. Next time was next time. How the hell did you make good on this time?

  “Did you and Beth talk about what should happen to Parker?”

  Dooley felt himself go on full alert. He would have to be careful now.

  “She said she’d talked to the cops,” he said. “I heard Parker was arrested and then made bail. But he was charged and was going to court for it.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it, Ryan. Did you and Beth talk about what would happen if Parker beat the charge? There was a good chance he would. I know about the witnesses. I’ve read their statements. I also know about how long it took for Beth to report the incident and what the rape kit turned up on account of the time lag. It was going to be hard to get a conviction, Ryan. She told you that, didn’t she? She was sure Parker was going to beat it and she hated that. So did you, didn’t you?”

  If Randall knew what Dooley had really thought, if he knew what Dooley had said to Beth, he’d have an even lower opinion of him than he already did.

  “Did you plan it together?” Randall said. “Is that why you showed up at the party? Were you getting a look at the layout? Were you figuring out how to get Beth in there without being seen?”

  Dooley bet that Randall wished Monique had been able to positively identify the girl she’d seen with Parker. But she hadn’t. And it looked like either no one else had seen the girl, or, like, Monique, that no one was able to identify her.

  “Did you help her get up onto the promontory?” Randall said. “Did you help her kill Parker?”

  Jesus.

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “No, you don’t. Not now, anyway,” Randall said. “But how about doing everyone a big favor? How about telling me exactly where you were and what you were doing when Parker Albright was killed?”

  Randall’s eyes searched his. Well, let them. Dooley met them square on. He didn’t have to tell Randall anything. He certainly didn’t have to tell him anything that would get him locked up.

  “If you were in on it, I’m going to get you,” Randall said.

  That was it. Randall had nothing but suspicions. Dooley stepped past him and walked as calmly as he could down the street to his uncle’s house. His heart was racing when he opened the front door. Jeannie’s head popped through from the kitchen.

  “Smells good, huh?” she said, beaming at him.

  “Yeah,” Dooley said, forcing a smile. “Smells great.”

  THIRTEEN

  Jeannie had just called Dooley and his uncle to dinner—she’d set the dining room table with a white lace table cloth and his uncle’s mother’s silverware—when Dooley’s cell phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket.

  “Let them leave a message,” his uncle said as Jeannie appeared carrying a roast on a platter.

  Dooley checked the read-out. It was Warren.

  “I’ll just see what he wants,” he said.

  His uncle took the platter from Jeannie and set it on the table. Jeannie dashed back into the kitchen. Dooley stepped out into the front hall.

  “Warren, what’s up?”

  “It’s not Warren,” a soft, slightly husky voice said.

  Dooley felt like he’d been punched in the stomach.

  “Beth?”

  “They won’t let me call anyone except my mother and my lawyer. And they always insist on dialing for me. I think my mother told them to.”

  “Where’s Warren?”

  “He’s cleaning outside my room. He’s going to tell me if anyone comes.” There was a long pause. “He said you wanted to talk to me, Dooley.”

  “I love you, Beth.”

  “I love you, too. You don’t have to worry.”

  “Ryan,” his uncle called. “Time to eat.”

  “In a minute,” Dooley called back.

  “It was all my fault. My mom got me a lawyer. He doesn’t know any of her friends, so that’s good. He listens to me, Dooley. He doesn’t try to pressure me.”

  He didn’t understand what she was talking about. Why would a lawyer pressure her? Pressure her to do what?

  “He says that under the circumstances—you know, because of what
Parker did and then because of what I did—”

  An image of her with black lips and a black tongue flashed before his eyes.

  “—that he might be able to get me a suspended sentence. Maybe he can even get me off. I told him I don’t care. And I don’t, Dooley. It never would have happened if it wasn’t for me. I know that.” There was another pause and then she was speeding along as if she was in a race with time. “I saw you, Dooley. At first I thought—”

  “Ryan!” his uncle thundered. “Dinner. Now.”

  “Saw me?” Dooley said. It wasn’t the first time she had said that. “Saw me when?”

  “That night. With Parker.” Her voice broke. It was a moment before she spoke again. “I wanted to tell you ... I love you, Dooley. And I won’t say a word to anyone. I promise.”

  His uncle appeared in the front hall, hands on hips, fury on his face. Dooley turned away from him.

  “Beth—”

  His uncle perked up, frowning.

  “Dooley? It’s me.”

  “Warren? Put Beth back on.”

  “No can do,” he said. He had dropped his voice so low that Dooley could hardly hear him. “The cops just showed up. I gotta go.”

  The phone went silent. Dooley stared at it.

  “Was that Beth?” his uncle said, no longer angry. “Is everything okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His uncle laid a hand on his shoulder. “We can talk later, if that’s what you want. But right now, Jeannie is sitting in there waiting for us. She knocked herself out making a spectacular meal. You think you could come back in there with me and show her some appreciation?”

  He was asking, not telling. This was important to him, Dooley realized.

  They went into the dining room and tucked into Jeannie’s meal. If it had been any other day, any other day at all, Dooley would have thought he’d gone to heaven. Roast beef, gravy, little roasted potatoes, green beans with almond slivers, a green salad on the side, and, afterwards, homemade apple pie, warm from the oven with a scoop of ice cream on the side. Any other day, any other day at all, he would have eaten until his stomach exploded.