by Blake Pierce
“We don’t think anything just yet,” Riley said. “For all we know, Holly still might turn up just fine.”
The coach shrugged slightly and added, “From what I’ve heard, some folks think she just ran off with a boy or something. Good Lord, I hope it’s not something worse.”
Riley wished she could reassure him. And as she always felt when interviewing distraught people, she wished she didn’t have to cause him further anguish.
She hesitated, then said, “Mr. Griggs—”
“Please, call me Judd.”
“Judd, did you notice any changes in Katy’s mood or behavior recently?”
Judd Griggs thought for a moment.
“Now that you mention it—maybe so. I’m not sure I should talk about it, since I don’t really know what happened. Or if anything happened.”
“Anything you can tell us will be helpful,” Riley said.
Judd looked out over the soccer field.
“Awhile back the girls had a party after a big victory. I didn’t go—I always let them celebrate among themselves. But at practice the next day, Katy seemed different—subdued and quiet, not really herself. I kept waiting for her to snap out of it, but she never did.”
Riley asked, “Did it affect how she played the game? Did she lose her enthusiasm?”
Judd knitted his brow.
“No, if anything, she worked harder—too hard, I thought. She pushed herself like she never had. But she wasn’t enjoying it anymore.”
Judd looked down at the ground and shook his head.
“I should have talked to her,” he said. “I should have asked what it was all about. Maybe if I’d gotten her to tell me …”
He seemed on the verge of tears now.
Riley hated that he felt this way. She wanted to assure him that it wasn’t his fault. But she’d learned long ago that too much empathy could distract her from her work. It wasn’t her job to become the local therapist. The people who had known and loved Katy were going to have to look to someone else for help.
Besides, he might well be right. If he had talked to Katy, maybe she’d be alive today.
Riley glanced toward the door to the locker room.
She asked, “Is your team still in there?”
Judd nodded.
“Yeah. I guess you need to talk with them too. Go easy on them, OK? They just had a good game, in spite of what’s happened. It’s a shame they have to be reminded, but you’ve got to do your job.”
As Riley and Jenn started to walk toward the locker room, Judd called after them.
“Agent Paige, Agent Roston … you don’t think anything like this is going to happen again, do you?”
He had an imploring expression now. Riley felt a deep pang of sympathy for him. All he wanted was a word of reassurance.
But she had no reassurance to offer him, so she just turned away.
As she and Jenn walked toward the locker room door, Jenn said, “Let me ask the questions in there.”
A bit surprised, Riley turned toward Jenn.
She could see by her expression that the younger agent was annoyed about how Riley had kept her from asking Judd Griggs questions.
As much as she disliked Jenn’s interviewing style, she couldn’t very well stop her from doing it altogether.
She’s got to learn sometime, Riley thought.
Riley said, “Just remember—the girls aren’t suspects.” It didn’t seem likely that any teenage girl in this town had killed a friend and buried her.
Jenn looked a little insulted at having been told what was obvious. But Riley didn’t much care.
They continued on into the steamy locker room. The girls were mostly dressed and getting ready to leave. There was some chatter and some giggles, but the mood was pretty subdued for a team that had just played a good game.
Jenn and Riley produced their badges and introduced themselves.
The girls’ eyes widened and most sat down on the locker room benches.
“Is this about what happened to Katy?” one girl asked.
“That’s right,” Jenn said. “We’re really sorry about your loss. We just hope you can answer a few questions.”
Riley was glad that Jenn started with a note of sympathy. But there wasn’t a lot of warmth in her voice. She was sorry that Jenn had never had a chance to learn from Lucy.
But Riley managed to keep quiet. The upside of letting Jenn doing the talking was that she could watch the girls’ faces and gauge their reactions. Right now, they seemed understandably anxious.
Jenn asked, “Does anybody have any idea who might have wanted to hurt Katy?”
The girls looked nervously at each other and shook their heads. Some of them said no.
“When was the last time any of you saw her?” Jenn asked.
The girls murmured to each other for a moment, trying to remember.
Then one girl said, “It was after practice on Wednesday. We all went over to the Burger Shanty to get something to eat.”
Another said, “Katy left before the rest of us did.”
“Did she say where she was going?” Jenn asked.
“No,” the second girl said. “But I saw her through the window heading toward the bus stop. So I guess she was planning to take the bus home. That’s what she usually did.”
Jenn seemed to think for a moment.
Then she said, “Coach Griggs said something about a party you all had recently.”
Riley noticed a sudden change in the girls’ expressions. They looked more alarmed than before.
What’s it all about? she wondered.
Jenn continued, “He said that Katy’s mood changed after the party. Do any of you know why?”
The girls said “no” in a hushed, nervous chorus.
Riley scanned their faces carefully as she let Jenn keep on asking a few more routine questions. Their anxiety at the mention of the party lingered even when they went on to other topics. Riley was sure that at least some of them knew something.
She was also sure that they weren’t going to open up in a group.
She remembered the names of the girls Dustin had mentioned—the girls who were especially close to Katy.
When Jenn seemed to be finished asking questions, Riley said, “Thanks, girls. You’ve been a great help. Are Daisy Kinney and Taylor McGrath here?”
Two girls sitting together on a bench suddenly looked especially anxious.
“I’m Daisy,” one said.
“I’m Taylor,” the other said.
Riley said, “We’d like to talk to the two of you alone. The rest of you may leave. Again, my partner and I are terribly sorry for your loss.”
All of the other girls left the locker room.
Daisy and Taylor sat on the bench looking terrified.
“Are we in some kind of trouble?” Daisy asked.
“My folks are expecting me outside,” Taylor said.
Riley said nothing. She looked each of the girls in the eyes. She saw a world of trepidation there.
“Something happened at that party,” Riley said.
The girls said nothing.
“We need for you to tell us what happened,” Riley said.
Taylor forced a shrug.
“I sure don’t know anything,” she said.
Daisy nudged her friend with her elbow.
“Taylor,” Daisy said.
“Daisy doesn’t know anything either,” Taylor said.
“Taylor,” Daisy said again.
Taylor looked at Daisy sharply.
“Daisy, no. Katy made us promise. We’re not supposed to tell anybody. Ever.”
A sob rose up in Daisy’s throat.
“She’s dead, Taylor. We’ve got to say something.”
Riley felt a tingle deep inside.
These girls knew something—and whatever it was, it was dark and ugly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The girls’ faces had reddened. Watching them closely, Riley suspected they were feeling bo
th fear and shame. She could see that Taylor was still reluctant to talk. But Daisy was crying a little and looked like she wanted to tell the truth.
Riley said, “I need the two of you to tell me everything about that party.”
The girls were silent for a long tense moment.
Then Daisy blurted, “The party was at Taylor’s house.”
Taylor let out a groan of dismay.
“Daisy, don’t do this.”
“We’ve got to tell them the truth, Taylor,” Daisy said.
Then turning toward Riley and Jenn, Daisy said, “We’d just played a great game against Blenker. Everybody wanted to celebrate. Taylor’s parents were away, so we had the party in her rec room.”
Jenn asked, “Was there drinking?”
“Well, yeah,” Taylor said defensively. “It’s not against the law.”
“Actually, it is against the law,” Jenn said.
Riley gritted her teeth a little.
The last thing she needed was for Jenn to raise irrelevant issues.
Riley said, “We’re not here about your drinking. You’re not in trouble for that. Not this time. This is all about Katy and whatever happened to her. Were there any boys at the party?”
“Some,” Daisy said. “Mostly from school. Katy was waiting for her boyfriend to show up—Dustin Russo. But he was really late. So she kind of started flirting with another guy. We didn’t know him real well, an older guy who lives over in Manton, calls himself ‘Trip.’ He comes around Angier and hangs around from time to time.”
Daisy paused for a moment.
“Well, Katy was drinking some, which wasn’t really her style, and she normally wouldn’t have anything to do with a creep like Trip. But I think she was just mad at Dustin, and she was maybe trying to make him jealous. Well, there was a lot going on, and I guess Katy and Trip slipped out without my noticing it.”
“I didn’t notice it either,” Taylor said.
Daisy continued, “A while later Katy came back to the party. She seemed really out of it, kind of messed up. She was really upset, and Taylor and I asked her why, but she wouldn’t tell us. When Dustin finally showed up, she tried to act like nothing had happened. But a few days later she broke up with him.”
Now Taylor seemed more willing to talk.
She said, “Katy started acting weird after that. Not doing homework, cutting classes. That wasn’t like her at all. And she started pushing herself real hard at soccer—way too hard, it really scared the rest of us. It was like she was trying to let off steam, or get rid of her anger, or trying to hurt herself.”
Taylor fell silent for a moment.
“You’d better tell them, Taylor,” Daisy said.
Taylor’s voice was thick with emotion now.
She shook her head.
“I should have figured it out right way. I guess I kind of knew it, but didn’t want to admit it. When the party was over, after I’d cleaned up the rec room and gone upstairs to bed, I noticed that my room was kind of messed up. A couple of things were knocked over, and the bedspread was rumpled. Somebody had been in there. But I just kept telling myself it wasn’t important.”
Taylor gulped hard.
“But Katy kept getting worse and worse, and I just couldn’t help wondering …”
Her words trailed off.
Daisy started talking now.
“One day after school, Taylor told me about the bedroom, and I said we really needed to talk to Katy and find out what happened. So we found her and took her aside and really made sure that she tell us.”
Now Taylor was starting to cry. She said, “Katy wasn’t sure what happened or how. She guessed that Trip had put something in her drink. She didn’t even remember going out of the rec room with him. The next thing she knew she was in the bedroom and Trip was having sex with her. When it was over he just put his pants back on and laughed and left her there.”
Taylor wiped away a tear.
She said, “We tried to tell her it wasn’t anything important. I mean, she was on the pill like the rest of us, so she wasn’t going to get pregnant. As long as the guy didn’t have any STDs she’d be all right.”
Taylor shrugged and added, “It was like I told her, it was just sex.”
Riley shuddered. The whole thing made her feel sick inside—not just what the guy had done to Katy, but how these girls had dealt with it.
“Just sex,” she thought.
Did they even fully understand that their friend had been raped?
Riley now knew that her ugly feelings about Angier had been right all along.
It was anything but the picture-perfect ’50s sitcom town.
There was plenty of darkness behind those doors.
Daisy looked anxiously back and forth at Riley and Jenn.
“Do you think this had anything to do with what happened to her? Please tell us no. Because if we could have done something to stop it but didn’t …”
Riley didn’t reply. It now seemed more than likely that Trip was their suspect. But the truth was, she didn’t know whether the girls could have prevented Katy’s death. All she knew was that she felt sickened by the whole thing.
In Riley’s silence, Jenn spoke up.
“Tell us more about Trip. Is that his real name?”
Taylor shrugged again and blew her nose on a tissue.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Do you, Daisy?”
“I doubt it,” Daisy said. “Like I said, he was an older guy, and he was a real bullshitter. He kept telling kids that he was scouting Angier to make an independent movie, and that he might want some of us to act in it. Some of our friends believed him. I sure didn’t.”
Riley was on the verge of asking why Taylor had let him in to her party. But she quickly realized—Trip had convinced enough of the local kids that he was cool that Taylor wouldn’t make him leave. She might also have been scared of him.
Riley asked, “Do you have any idea where Trip really lives?”
Daisy and Taylor looked at each other.
Taylor said, “Sometimes he said he was from Minneapolis, sometimes from Chicago.”
Daisy said, “I don’t think he lived in either of those places. He was just full of bullshit.”
Riley thanked the girls for their help, and she and Jenn left the locker room. There were few people around the stadium now. Riley and Jenn headed for the car, where Riley called Chief Sinard’s cell phone number.
She said, “Chief Sinard, I don’t want to get your hopes up, but my partner and I think we have a suspect. Have you heard of a young man who hangs around Angier who calls himself ‘Trip’?”
She heard Sinard let out a grunt of disapproval.
“I sure have. He’s a bad sort. He mixes with the local kids bragging and telling them crazy lies about himself. We think it’s a ruse to sell drugs, but we haven’t been able to prove it. We try to keep an eye on him, hoping he’ll slip up some day and we can nail him.”
Riley briefly wondered—had Trip been selling drugs at the girls’ party?
If so, Taylor and Daisy had said nothing about it.
But it was hardly something to worry about right now.
“Do you know his real name?” she asked Sinard.
“Yeah, it’s Ivan Crozier.”
“What about an address?”
“Let me look.”
Riley waited for a few moments.
Then Sinard said, “He lives over in Manton, about twenty miles west of Angier. The address I’ve got is 420 Bennett Drive.”
Riley ended the call and entered the address into GPS service on her cell phone. When the directions came up, Jenn started to drive.
*
Riley’s spirits sank when Jenn drove up to the address.
As it turned out, 420 Bennett Drive was a trailer park.
Jenn asked, “How are we supposed to know which trailer Ivan Crozier lives in?”
Riley wondered the same thing. Doubtless individual homes were marked with letters
or something, but the overall street address was the only information they had.
“I guess we’ve just got to ask around,” Riley said.
They parked and got out of the car. Riley saw that this trailer park was shabby and dilapidated. Some of the trailers looked like they’d been long abandoned—or if they weren’t, it seemed to her that they should have been.
A pair of unshaven middle-aged men wearing tattered work clothes came sauntering toward them.
They didn’t look at all friendly.
One of them smiled at Riley and Jenn, tipping his baseball cap and leering and grinning at them through an incomplete set of crooked yellow teeth.
“What can we do for you lovely ladies?” he asked.
Before Riley could say anything, she heard another man’s voice behind her.
“Hey, boys—it looks like these gals is cops!”
Riley turned around and saw another man stooping behind the car Chief Sinard had lent them. He was peering at the license plate. Riley remembered that the word OFFICIAL appeared on the plate.
“Cops!” the man who hadn’t spoken yet said. “I don’t believe it. You girls are much too pretty to be cops. And where are your uniforms?”
Curious neighbors were starting to emerge from the trailers—several more tough-looking men and three or four women, one of them holding a baby. As they stood gawking, they reminded Riley of dirt-poor rural hillbillies she had encountered in Appalachia. Her memories of people like that were far from pleasant.
She took out her badge.
“We’re Special Agents Paige and Roston, FBI.”
All of the faces around them darkened.
“FBI,” the man who’d spoken first growled.
“Goddamn feds,” the man standing next to him said.
“Ladies, I do think you’ve got the wrong address,” the man behind the car said.
There were more men than before, and they started to crowd in around Riley and Jenn.
Riley’s hand hovered near her weapon.
“Keep cool,” she whispered to Jenn. “But be ready for anything.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The circle of men closed in threateningly around Riley and Jenn. Although Riley wasn’t sure how she and her new partner would fare in an unarmed brawl with this rough group, she didn’t want to use her weapon, and she was determined not to show fear.
