Victim Rights

by Norah McClintock

  Dooley hung his head a little. “You didn’t know the whole story, but I did,” he said. “She told me what Parker did to her.” Nevin was the last person he wanted to admit this to. “She told me that he forced her, and you know what I said? I said, What were you doing with him in the first place? You get what I’m saying, Nevin? You thought she went with him in the first place because she wanted him, but I knew—I knew—what he’d done, and the way I acted, it was like I was blaming her.”

  “You made her cry,” Nevin said, an accusation.

  “Yeah.” It had eaten at Dooley ever since. “Yeah, I made her cry. She went with Parker, and he did that to her. She told me about it, and I got mad at her. She tried to kill herself, and who was there for her? You were, Nevin. You were there for her.”

  Nevin didn’t say anything.

  “You want to know why she confessed?” Dooley said.

  Still nothing from Nevin, but he was leaning even closer, his whole body tense. He wanted to know. He ached to know.

  “It’s just like you said,” Dooley said. “She did it because she loves me.” He leaned on the present tense of the word, sure of it. “She knows I’m not perfect, but she also knows I would do anything for her. Anything. That’s why she confessed. Because she saw me kill Parker, and that was her way of thanking me.”

  Nevin stared at him.

  “Did she tell you that? Did she tell you she saw me?”

  Nevin shook his head.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Dooley said. “I don’t know what kind of time they’re going to give me. It could be ten, with three served in the community. That’s not so long. And it won’t be so hard, not with her waiting for me.”

  Nevin looked like he was going to say something, but in the end, all he did was turn to go. Dooley grabbed him by the arm again, harder this time, holding him back. Nevin shook him off easily. Dooley was almost impressed with the force behind it. He had Nevin down as an inflated ego, period. The guy was a debater. He was flashy. But he was also a lot stronger than Dooley had imagined.

  “How did you know what Parker did to her, Nevin?”

  “What?”

  “What you said—the way he held her down, what he said to her. How did you know?”

  “Beth told me.”

  “No, she didn’t. She told the cops because she had to, but that’s it. She didn’t even tell me that stuff.”

  “Well, she told me.”

  But she hadn’t. She’d specifically told Dooley that she hadn’t discussed what happened with Nevin. But Nevin knew. Dooley bet what he’d just told him would match perfectly with what Beth had told the cops.

  “What did you do with the shirt, Nevin?”

  “What shirt?”

  “The blue shirt. The one you were wearing at Parker’s party.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nevin said.

  “You probably dumped it in your hamper for the maid to wash, right? Well, I got news for you, Nevin. They can find blood traces on anything these days, and they don’t need much for a DNA match. I should know, believe me.”

  Nevin met Dooley’s eyes.

  “I believe that shirt was donated to charity,” he said. “My mother does that a couple of times a year—rounds up stuff we don’t wear anymore and donates it somewhere. God knows where it is now.”

  “Too bad there were so many people at that party, huh?” Dooley said.

  Nevin looked blankly at him, but Dooley saw the brain working behind his dull eyes.

  “All those people—you think there aren’t at least a few of them who are going to remember what you were wearing? Hey, I’d be surprised if someone didn’t take pictures. Bet you anything pictures of the whole party are up there on the Web where everyone can see them. Where the cops can see them, Nevin. You think they aren’t going to wonder about that shirt after Beth tells them what she saw—the shirt that got conveniently donated to charity right after Parker was killed?”

  “Are you suggesting—”

  Dooley had to hand it to him. He did indignation well.

  “Parker told you, didn’t he?” Dooley said.

  Nothing.

  “What happened?” Dooley said. “Did you see him slip back there with a girl? Did you think it was Beth? Is that it? Did you go to find out?” No answer. “He was pissed off, wasn’t he? He asked you what the fuck you were doing there?”

  The startled look in Nevin’s eyes gave him away.

  “He was back there with a girl, Nevin. Not Beth, another girl. And you barged in and messed it up for him. You pissed him off, and when Parker gets pissed off, I bet he gets mean. That’s when he told you, isn’t it?” Dooley could picture it. “I bet he told you all the details, every last one of them. You just can’t catch a break, can you? She goes with him—that’s what Annicka said, right? And you’re such a good guy that you forgive her. Then Parker, the asshole, he wanted to get back at you for ruining it with the other girl. And he knew the reason she wanted on his team was to get away from you. He knew how you felt about her, didn’t he? So he told you what he did. He told you what really happened. Jesus, if I’d been there and he’d said that stuff to me, I would have done the same thing you did. I would have beaten his brains in, too. But you can’t be Beth’s hero, can you? You can’t tell her what you did. You can’t tell anyone. So you do the next best thing. You stick right there by her side—you’re in the hospital with her every day. You’re true blue. And how does she repay you? She says she did it. She confesses. You know she didn’t do it, Nevin. You must have been wondering, what the fuck? Why is she confessing? Did you figure it out? Or did she finally tell you? Did she tell you she was doing it for me? Jesus, what a kick to the head. Is that when you cut her off?”

  Nevin stared stone-faced at him.

  “You were at the hospital every day. But you haven’t gone to see her even once since they transferred her out,” Dooley said. “Did you decide she deserved whatever happened to her, is that it? If she was stupid enough to turn herself in to save me, that was her problem, right?”

  Nevin turned abruptly to cross the street. A truck horn blared. Jesus. Dooley reached out with both hands and pulled Nevin back just in time. The truck thundered by, burnishing Dooley’s face with the heat of its wake.

  Dooley stood there, hands dug into Nevin’s shoulder, heart pounding. He spun Nevin around and read the blank look on his face.

  Dooley told him, “Call your dad.” He said, “At least get a lawyer.” But Nevin shook his head both times. Dooley didn’t get it. Did he think his dad would cut him off? Or was he just tired of it all? Had it all become too much, weighing too heavily on him? Dooley knew the feeling. You did something. You didn’t think about it, you just acted or, sometimes, reacted, and by the time you got a grip on yourself, it was too late. The deed was done. All you could do was wait. You could run and wait or stay put and wait, it was all the same. You still had to contemplate what you had done, and you had to come to grips with the fact of the law. You knew the odds were against you. Sure, some people get away with murder. But even those people are looking over their shoulders. The cops don’t give up. They keep chipping at it. Yeah, they might have to let it go for a while. Maybe a long while. But eventually they get back at it. And a lot of times, they figure it out. They are tenacious little fuckers. And the whole time you were waiting and wondering. Wondering what they might find. Wondering what you might have overlooked. Wondering who might have seen something, who might finally come forward. Always wondering, no matter what you were doing.

  Nevin walked back across the street with him to the restaurant. He ordered a slice of pizza and a can of pop, while Dooley made a couple of calls.

  “You really should call a lawyer, Nevin,” Dooley said. “You don’t know what they’re like.”

  Nevin chewed on his pizza. It was as if he hadn’t heard a word Dooley had said.

  Randall showed up first, along with a squad car and two uniformed officers. He
looked skeptical until Nevin started talking. Randall glanced at Dooley, but didn’t say anything to him. He stood up and got Nevin to stand. He told Nevin he was under arrest, cuffed him, and read him his rights. Dooley’s uncle walked into the pizza place just as Nevin was being led out.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  EIGHTEEN

  Dooley sat on the bench-like swing on his uncle’s porch, a near-empty cup of coffee in his hands. Eight o’clock in the morning, and it was pleasantly warm. There were some flowers coming up in the strip alongside his uncle’s front walk. That was something he had never got used to, his uncle down on his hands and knees, fiddling around with flowers. He commented on them, too, sometimes, when he sat out there on the porch after work.

  “Zinnias are looking good this year,” he’d say. To which Dooley would think, what the hell is a zinnia? Or, “I think I’m going to pull out those Shastas, put in more Echinacea.” Okay, sure, whatever.

  And now here was Dooley, drinking his coffee outside, looking at the shoots of flowers poking through the earth, and thinking. How does that happen, year after year? How do they know when it’s time?

  He’d sat out here last night with Beth. He’d gone over to her place and pressed the buzzer, and when her mother answered, he’d given his name politely, respectfully, for once not thinking what a controlling, narrow-minded, pain-in-the-ass bitch she was. And she’d answered if not respectfully, then at least not disdainfully. She’d buzzed him up. She’d stood back out of the way when Beth came to the door. She hadn’t argued when Beth reached for his hand and he took it. She hadn’t warned Beth that she’d better be back at a certain time, or else. It was Dooley who had spoken up on that. He’d said, “I’ll bring her back before midnight.” Beth’s mother had nodded. She’d held Dooley’s eyes for a moment. Then she’d closed the door behind them, softly, letting the door speak for her like she always did, only this time, making it say something different.

  They’d walked back to his uncle’s house hand in hand. His uncle had come out to say hello, but otherwise had let them be. They’d sat out on the porch, just the two of them, watching the sun go down and then sitting in the dark, Beth’s hand slipped through one of his arms, her body pressed up close against his, her head half of the time on his chest. They didn’t say much, but Dooley knew it was okay. He walked her home and took her upstairs. She kissed him lightly on the lips. He accepted it and didn’t press for any more. And then she clung to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him and made his shirt wet with her tears.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said when he finally got her to stop crying. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  She went inside. He stood out in the hall for a moment. Was she going to be okay? He knew it wasn’t all over yet. Was she going to get through it? She wasn’t going to do anything crazy, was she? It was going to be okay, wasn’t it?

  He’d barely slept for thinking about that, for wanting to call her and hear her voice and know for a certainty that she was okay.

  He’d finally got up and made some coffee and had come outside to watch the sun get up. He was still there when his uncle stuck his head out the door.

  “You okay?” he said.

  Dooley nodded.

  “And Beth?”

  “I think so,” Dooley said. “I hope so.” He swallowed down the rest of his coffee. It was cold in the cup. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  His uncle came all the way out onto the porch.

  “There’s this kid I used to know,” Dooley said. “His name was Tyler Brock.”

  His uncle sat down next to him.

  “Was?”

  “He died—killed himself.”

  His uncle waited.

  “There was this guy at this group home I was in. Jeffie was in there one time, too.”

  He felt his uncle tense on the bench next to him. Neither of them had mentioned Jeffie in a long time.

  “This guy, his name was Ralston.” He still couldn’t say the name without his gut clenching. “He’s the reason Tyler offed himself.” He was breathing hard now, even though he was willing himself to stay calm. “He was a predator, you know? He had all this power. All he had to do was report you for something and he could make your life a living hell. He had other ways to do it, too. He came at me.” It was the best way he knew to say it without actually saying it. He couldn’t, even now. He just couldn’t.

  His uncle looked at him.

  “Did he—”

  “No. He tried. But no. So then he went after Tyler.”

  “You didn’t report it?” his uncle said.

  Dooley looked at him. Didn’t he get it? Then his uncle nodded, a curt little gesture. Yeah. He got it.

  “I knew what was happening,” Dooley said. “But I didn’t do anything.” Not a thing except, once in a while, tell himself: Better him than me. “I guess I thought—” But he couldn’t say it, not that part, anyway. “I thought, I got him off me. Tyler could do the same thing if he wanted to.” Because he’d thought that, too. He didn’t think it anymore, had given up that notion a long time ago. But back then, seeing what a mouse Tyler was, yeah, he’d thought that. He’d thought, if the guy wasn’t such a mouse, he could get Ralston gone.

  His uncle didn’t say anything.

  “The thing is,” Dooley said after a little while, “it wasn’t all me. I didn’t make him back off all by myself. And Jeffie was the one that finally got rid of him.”

  “We’re talking about Jeffrey Eccles, right?” his uncle said.

  Dooley nodded.

  “He told Ralston he had pictures.”

  “And did he?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. You could never tell with Jeffie. But, yeah, I guess maybe he did, because Ralston resigned. But by then Tyler ... Tyler had done it.”

  He hadn’t shown up for breakfast one morning, and Dooley, for some reason, had been sent up to get him. He’d checked the john first. A lot of times when a guy was late for breakfast, it was because he was on the john. But Tyler wasn’t there. So Dooley went to his room and found him hanging from one of the exposed pipes that ran through the building. He was cold to the touch. Dooley had pulled his hand away and stepped back. He stood there for a few moments, not believing what he was seeing.

  “I haven’t thought about it in a while,” he said. “Then a couple of weeks ago, I was at work and I looked out and I saw him on the street.”

  “Ralston,” his uncle said.

  “Yeah. He was carrying a duffle bag. It said Little League on it.”

  His uncle was staring out at the street now.

  Dooley wished he hadn’t looked out the window that day. He wished he’d been in the back of the store, re-shelving product. That way, maybe right this second, he’d be blissfully unaware of Ralston’s presence in town.

  “I wasn’t going to do anything.”

  His uncle’s eyes came back to him.

  “Then I went to Parker’s place that night, the night he died. I talked to him.” Jesus, if you’re going to tell the story, tell it right. “I was pissed at him. I wanted to let him know. I wanted—” I wanted to kill him. “I talked to him and then I left. I went down into the ravine.”

  “The one behind his house?”

  “Yeah. I looked up there, too. And then I headed home. That’s when I ran into him.”

  “Parker?”

  “Ralston. He was walking up the ravine. He had a kid with him. He’d looked a year or two older than Tyler had been.”

  “Anyway, when he saw me, he told the kid to go on ahead. Then he asked me how I was.” His eyes raked over Dooley: Well, well, Ryan Dooley. How are you? How’s your friend Tyler? Like he didn’t know. “I hit him,” Dooley said. “With a piece of tree branch I picked up.” Swinging it like it was a Louisville Slugger.

  “Jesus, Ryan.”

  “I hit him pretty hard,” Dooley said. At the time, filled with rage and regret, he’d hit to hear the sound
of the connection—bark on bone. “He was bleeding.”

  “That’s why you came home and washed your clothes?” his uncle said. “It’s probably why Randall wanted to see you. They probably found blood. They didn’t have enough time for a DNA analysis—the request was probably in at the lab, though. This guy Ralston—you didn’t—”

  “He was on the ground when I left him,” Dooley said. “He was bleeding but he was okay.” Dooley knew that for a fact because Ralston had been laughing. Dooley hit him, as hard as he could, knocked him right off his feet, and the guy lay there laughing at him. Dooley knew why, too. Because he’d just been rash enough and dumb enough to hand his life over to Ralston. All the guy had to do was put in a call, and Dooley would be scooped up off the streets. “I thought he was going to turn me in.”

  “He still might,” Dooley’s uncle said.

  “I don’t think so,” Dooley said. “He skipped out on his landlord. And the Little League team he was coaching.”

  They sat in silence for another few moments. Then his uncle said, “What do you want to do about it?”

  What did he want to do? He wanted to forget it, that’s what. But that wasn’t really the question.

  “I was thinking maybe I should talk to Randall,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  He’d thought about it from the time he left Beth’s place last night.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “You want me to come with you?”

  “Yeah.” In fact, he’d been hoping his uncle would offer.

  Annette Girondin went with them because Dooley’s uncle thought it would be smart for them to have a lawyer handy. The three of them, Dooley, his uncle, and Annette, sat on one side of the table, and Randall sat on the other. Dooley told Randall what he had already told his uncle. Randall didn’t interrupt and remained silent for a few moments after Dooley had finished. Then he let out a long sigh, leaned back in his chair, and stared across the table at Dooley. Finally he pulled out a notebook and a pen.