Tunnel Vision

by Aric Davis

  “Pretty much,” said June. “But listen, Jake is one of the cutest and dumbest boys in school. Someone was going to break his heart this year, and it may as well be Betty.”

  “I’m not sure that makes me feel any better,” said Betty with a frown. “I’m not doing it to be mean, it’s just—”

  “Betty, the problem is that most of the girls at Northview would kill for Jake Norton just to look at them once the way that he stares at you. The boy is seriously in love, and you know it, and you knew exactly what was going to happen if you dated him. It’s part of the Betty Martinez experience, if the past couple years have been any indication.”

  “Fuck you,” said Betty with no malice in her voice.

  “Fuck you back,” said June. “I need to get to work on my homework, all right? We can talk more in school, maybe come up with a plan.”

  “All right. I hope your night gets better.”

  “It won’t,” said June, and then she was gone.

  Betty laid her phone down on the desk in front of her, then stared down the blinking cursor on her open Word document. The flashing line was mocking her inability to go to shows, treat boys decently, or write about the women’s suffrage movement. With a sigh, Betty popped her headphones back on, fired up the same playlist from earlier in the afternoon, and then clicked on the browser tab at the bottom of the window. After a moment of thought, Betty punched “duke barnes grand rapids” into the search box and then waited as the results loaded.

  The results came flying in, and Betty clicked on the first of them, a website with the URL www.freedukebarnes.com. The click led her to a page with a black background and a picture of a hard-looking young man. The guy in the picture—presumably Duke—had spiked hair and a dog collar with a bondage ring hanging off the center of it. Seeing no other links on the page, Betty hovered her mouse arrow over the picture and double-clicked the image.

  The screen flashed and then loaded a menu with four options: The Crime, The Trial, The Aftermath, and How You Can Help. Betty figured the start was as good a place as any, and clicked “The Crime.” The screen flashed again, then loaded a text-heavy page with a few pictures of Duke along the side. The background was black with a red spatter effect, the grim imagery removing any doubt that what she was about to read wasn’t going to end well. Betty shut the playlist off, removed her headphones, and began to read.

  On January 27, 2000, Duke Barnes was at the end of a tough period in his life. He had largely dropped out of the alternative music community that he had invested a great deal of energy in, and he was struggling with addiction issues. His friends were worried about both Duke and his girlfriend, Mandy Reasoner, and their worst fears came to fruition on that wintry day. Duke and Mandy had both spent a significant amount of time under the radar of modern society, at first by intent, and later through their crippling addictions to street narcotics.

  At 7:45 a.m. Duke was returning home to the squat he shared with Mandy and several other transients on the south side of Grand Rapids. He had spent the morning earning money through prostitution, and according to several witnesses, Mandy was also engaged in acts of solicitation. Upon arriving at the squat Duke saw a man running from the building, and fearing the worst, Duke entered to find Mandy lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

  Despite Duke’s best efforts to revive Mandy, her wounds were too grievous, and eventually Duke left her to call 911. Upon police arrival Duke was detained and then released, but was later brought back to the Grand Rapids Police Department in order to straighten out the exact window of his arrival to the home. At some point this line of questioning turned into an interrogation, and even though Duke did not have legal counsel present, he was questioned for over seventy-two hours. When the detectives in charge of the investigation were finished, they had a confession on the table and a suspect in custody.

  This confession came despite the fact that Duke was given next to no food during the interrogation, was suffering badly from opioid withdrawal, and was still grieving Mandy. Duke was recorded on both video and audio for the duration of the interrogation, and the detectives in charge of this case broke several Michigan statutes regarding the length of time that a suspect may be questioned without counsel present. Despite these issues, Duke was formally charged, arraigned, and brought to trial later that year.

  Seeing the tops of more pictures, Betty scrolled to the bottom of the page, and then gasped. There were three more pictures of Duke—one of him on stage holding a guitar, a shot of him smoking a cigarette and smiling under falling snow, and one of him holding his fists up in a mock fighting pose—but Betty ignored all of those because there was another picture, a moment captured in time of a skinny and scared-looking girl with bright orange hair.

  Mandy Reasoner.

  Mandy had a ring in her nose and was wearing a Queers T-shirt and black jeans. She had what looked like track marks on her arms and a bright bruise on her neck.

  All of those things were insignificant to Betty, however, because the girl in the picture was a dead ringer for June.

  Betty found it nearly impossible to take her eyes from the shot of Mandy, June’s impossible doppelgänger. The similarities were so striking—the shape of their noses, the corners of their mouths, their hairlines. Betty back-clicked and then began to pore over the rest of the website, ignoring the words now, entirely focused on the pictures.

  There were lots of shots of Duke and Mandy on the page about the trial. In some they were together, but most of the time they were separate and alone, and it was easy for Betty to imagine that whichever was missing from the frame was likely the one holding the camera. The last of these shots, an awful image taken by a police photographer of a half-naked Mandy covered in stab wounds, was bad enough to make Betty tear up, but the words at the end of the paragraph chilled her to the bone. “I hope he rots in hell” was the quote from the victim’s sister—and the name next to it snapped the final piece of the puzzle into place.

  Claire Derricks.

  “Mandy was June’s aunt,” said Betty to no one at all, and then her hands dropped off the keyboard and mouse as though they could burn her.

  June’s aunt was killed.

  The thought kept repeating until it began making some sort of impossible sense to her, and then she moved on to the next.

  How could we not have known about this?

  Andrea had worked a great deal with the police department over many years. Surely she had to have known all about this. Betty supposed there was no reason for Andrea to share these sordid details with her daughter, but the issue had to have come up between the moms once the dead girl’s niece became Betty’s best friend. Even so, Betty guessed it wasn’t surprising that they’d never broached the subject with her, particularly since June herself didn’t seem to know anything about it.

  That was the amazing part, now that she thought about it: How had June never heard of it? Even if her mom and dad chose to keep it from her, wasn’t it pretty incredible that no one in the community at large had brought it up with her? Maybe not, though. A random junkie girl’s death had probably never been front-page news. Still, especially with the grown-up June walking around town as the murdered Mandy’s all-but-identical twin, it was remarkable that it had never come up.

  June had never said much about her family, which as far as Betty knew was practically nonexistent. Betty knew that June’s parents were split up and that June didn’t have any living grandparents, but that was about it.

  How can we be such good friends if I know so little about her?

  Betty felt almost sick at this thought, and then remembered the murky waters of her own past—her missing father, her nonhyphenated last name, the moms themselves. Especially when it got complicated, maybe it was just easier to keep family stuff to yourself. It just was, after all, and not talking about it didn’t mean they loved each other any less.

  Done thinking for a while—it was wearing her out—Betty folded the laptop closed with a satisfying snap, grab
bed the bottle of water from her desk, and ventured out of her room and back to the kitchen.

  She found Ophelia and Andrea sitting at the table there. “Hi,” she said.

  “Why don’t you have a seat,” said Andrea.

  Betty nodded, realizing as she sat that they’d been waiting for her. That they’d probably heard her phone ring and knew who’d likely called, and at least some of what they’d talked about, and where her curiosity would probably take her after she’d hung up.

  “OK,” said Betty. “I want to know everything.”

  NINE

  “That’s not going to be possible,” said Andrea.

  The moms were holding hands, Ophelia’s over Andrea’s on the tabletop. Betty wondered how long they’d been waiting for this moment. She’d been friends with June since the second grade, they’d gotten their first periods a month apart, and Betty’s moms had known all along that June’s aunt was dead and that June’s parents wanted it all to just go away.

  Now Betty found herself pissed off again. Things like this don’t stay buried forever, she said to herself in her seat, fuming, her eyes flitting back and forth between her parents.

  “Why not?” she asked, and even though she knew her tone was shitty she kept her eyes locked with Andrea’s.

  “Because we still don’t know everything, Betty.”

  Exhaustion was evident in Andrea’s voice, and normally Betty would have recognized that and realized that the conversation could wait a day or two, but not this time. Betty wanted to tear the information from their minds, and then get back online and read everything she could on the subject. She wanted to know all there was to know about Duke and Mandy. She wanted to know why Mandy was dead and why people thought Duke was innocent if he’d confessed to the crime. She wanted to know how June could have grown up in the shadow of all of this but was left with no information.

  “I don’t understand,” said Betty. “Should I go look online some more, or can you tell me why in the hell no one knows about this?”

  “Relax,” said Ophelia. “You’re getting very aggressive about this, but you don’t need to. This wasn’t a case of keeping something from you because we felt that we had to. There was just no reason to tell you about some poor girl that was killed over a decade ago.”

  “Why doesn’t June know?” Betty demanded. “Why doesn’t she catch shit for this from the mean girls and write sad papers about her cool dead aunt? Why was all of this a secret?”

  “It’s not a secret just because you’re ignorant of it, Betty,” said Andrea. “The information has always been out there. The fact of the matter is this: the man who killed June’s aunt is a drug addict who has been locked up for half his life. His fingerprints were all over the crime scene—all over Mandy—he had a history of violent behavior, and he confessed to the crime. There was just no reason to talk about this. As for June’s mother, well, not telling June was a decision she made when June was very young, and it’s not up to us to decide if that was a good choice or not.”

  “What about me?” Betty whined, hating the sound of her voice. “Why couldn’t you tell me?”

  “You weren’t but a year old when the poor girl was killed,” said Ophelia, “and they’ve already convicted a man for what happened to her. Would you have even been interested in a story like that?”

  “June would have,” spat Betty, “but that’s not even all of it. You saw the flyer for the show that she brought here. Why do so many people think this Duke guy is innocent?” She turned to Andrea. “I know that he confessed, Mom, but the website I found said that the police broke a lot of laws talking to him, and that—”

  “How much bullshit have you read online?”

  Andrea asked the question so coldly that it stopped Betty’s stream of questions dead. It was all she could do to keep her eyes locked on her mom’s heated gaze. For the first time, Betty wondered if more time researching this subject might have been a good idea before throwing ideas around the dining room table. “A lot, I guess,” said Betty finally, and Andrea nodded.

  “There are a lot of groups like this, Betty, and not all of them are trying to help an innocent man. Just because some guy looks cool and there’s circumstantial evidence suggesting that he might be innocent doesn’t really mean a whole lot. Cases of convicted people being exonerated get a lot of press, but believe me, they’re few and far between. The fact of the matter is that it takes a number of gross mistakes for that sort of thing to happen, and—”

  “This doesn’t sound like that, Mom.” Betty couldn’t stop herself from interrupting. “Everything about this sounds really, well, interesting, at the very least. And not just because the girl who got killed was June’s aunt. I only read a little bit about Duke, but it does seem possible that he’s innocent.”

  “Betty.” Andrea took a breath and sighed it out. “This guy was convicted by twelve of his peers and he’s been in prison ever since. There’s a reason for that, trust me on this. I see children every day that are at real risk of turning out just like that poor girl. Though hopefully they’ll have a better end, there always seems to be someone around them like Duke. Men like that always find someone weak to be with them, someone they can lord over. And far too often, this is the result: a dead girl and a man sitting in prison and trying to figure out why he did what he did.”

  “You’re really turning on that feminine charm, Mom,” said Betty with a grin, and to her relief, Andrea smiled wryly back at her.

  “That’s one of my better traits,” Andrea said, “and I thank you for calling attention to it. That said, how’s that paper coming along?”

  “All right, all right.” Betty stood and then paused by the table. “Can I tell June about this?”

  She watched her mothers exchange glances, and then Ophelia turned to her and said, “That’s up to you, Betty. Just remember, this isn’t going to be just ‘interesting’ or exciting for June. This is probably the biggest skeleton in her family’s closet, and if you act like it’s something to be played with, you’re liable to get burned.”

  TEN

  I was already pretty familiar with the Mandy Reasoner case before Claire mentioned it in the park, but I knew I needed a refresher to get up to speed, so that’s exactly what I got to work on when I came home.

  My office used to always be a mess, but these days I keep it pretty clean, at least by my standards. I’m sure it could still use a good deep cleaning, but I barely even know what that means, so I doubt I’m the right person for the job. That’s OK, though—no one’s been in the house besides me in years, and I like it that way. The house feels like my soul a lot of the time. It’s one of the only things that’s mine, and sharing it could just end up with me getting hurt, or worse. I’ve got experience to back that up: the last time a girl came inside, she broke my heart.

  I got right on the hunt as soon as I sat down, even though I was pretty sure I knew what I was going to find. One of the best things about a trial that’s received a lot of publicity is that there is a ton of information out there on it. One of the worst things is that most of that is bullshit. Take any crime tried in the public eye, and you’re going to see a lot of wishful thinking touted as fact. I completely understand not wanting to think the worst of someone, and I fully believe there are a lot of innocent men sitting behind bars. I just don’t think most of the innocent ones are lucky enough to snag a PR campaign.

  It becomes apparent immediately that Duke Barnes has picked up even more support since the last time I looked into this mess. Not that I really care much either way. Duke is either guilty or one unlucky son of a bitch, but he’s got public opinion on his side, so it’s really just a matter of time before something happens for him. Granted, that something might not be what he’s hoping for, but a second shot at a trial is still pretty good, especially when the body’s as cold as this one is.

  Speaking of the body, the pictures of Mandy blow my mind. When Claire handed me the photo of her daughter, I was struck by her resemblance to t
he dead girl. But now that I hold the picture up against the screen, I’m dumbfounded. Saying she’s a dead ringer for this poor girl? Probably an understatement. They not only share the same alt look, it’s like some cosmic trickster’s at work. The girl is Mandy.

  Which is all great, fascinating, even. Except what does it tell me? When Claire first handed over the photo, I was sure that resemblance had a lot to do with why she’d hired me to protect her daughter. But since then I haven’t come a step closer to figuring any of it out.

  Start with the facts: June is Mandy’s clone, and at the very least, a blood relative. Could Mandy be her mother, and somehow June fell into Claire’s care? Maybe, but highly unlikely. Surely that would’ve come out in the reporting of the case and in the trial.

  No, June is Claire’s girl. I feel that in my gut.

  So . . . Claire is worried that maybe all of these rock stars and B-list celebrities that hopped onto the Free Duke bandwagon might actually spring the man who killed Mandy. And if Duke killed her once, he wouldn’t be able to pass up the chance to kill her again, a decade and a half later? That’s pretty damned far-fetched, even for a deep cable thriller. And even if that is Claire’s thinking, why would she be so worried now, with Duke still safely fenced in?

  I have no answer for that, so I move on.

  Like she told me, now Claire’s thinking maybe the Free Duke crowd is on to something. Maybe the man who killed Mandy is still free. All right, but if that’s the case, that man’s been free all of these years, probably walking the same streets as his victim’s doppelgänger. So the same question comes up: Why is Claire so suddenly freaked out about the danger?

  I’m getting this tiny headache in my temple, like someone’s pressing a sharpened pencil into it. It’s maddening how often my client’s motivations turn out to be the deepest mystery in whatever job they’ve given me.