She laughed, weighing the risk to her life versus the risk of hurting his feelings. She’d never ridden a motorcycle before and was mildly terrified. She reached for the helmet. Cooper opened a saddlebag and pulled out a black leather jacket, similar to the one he was wearing, and held it out to her. But it was mid-June, warm and balmy.
“No thanks,” she said.
“It’s to protect your skin if we have a crash.”
“Oh, that’s reassuring.”
She put on the leather jacket. It smelled of cedar, cherries, and the faint hint of another woman’s perfume. Cooper straddled the front seat. She climbed onto the seat behind him and grabbed the metal handles on the sides, leaving a wide berth between their bodies.
Cooper glanced back. “Don’t be shy. Scooch up nice and close and hold on to my waist.”
She hesitated, suddenly wary. Who picks someone up from the airport on a motorcycle? What if she’d had more luggage? She met his clear blue eyes and found only earnestness there. She slid forward and put her arms around him.
He started the engine and pulled forward. As the motorcycle drove past the parked cars, her heartbeat quickened. She was very aware that she had a large man between her legs, her breasts pressed against his back, and a giant engine humming beneath her. She could feel Cooper’s lean muscles beneath his leather jacket. She wasn’t cheating on Jack, she reasoned. First: she was just getting a ride. Second: she and Jack were done. Third: she hoped she didn’t die.
Anna tried to pay for parking, but Cooper beat her to it. He pulled out of the parking structure and onto the service road. Anna could reach out and touch the car in the next lane—which would take her arm off. As he pulled onto the highway’s on-ramp, Cooper yelled, “Ready?”
“Yeah,” she lied.
The bike roared up to Michigan’s 70 mph speed limit. She held tight to Cooper’s waist. The motor filled her ears and the pavement flew under her feet. She wondered how it would feel if her body hit it. The bike angled low into a curve, and Cooper swung between her thighs. Her adrenaline surged. She was scared and thrilled and very aware of being alive.
Halfway between Detroit and Flint, Cooper slowed the bike and took the exit ramp marked “Holly Grove.” Anna’s grip relaxed, but her chest tightened. She’d been relieved when she left this town, and she never liked coming back. The only thing she really loved here was her sister.
Cooper passed through the historic downtown. It must have been charming once, but it wasn’t used for much these days. The courthouse and city hall still looked respectable enough, but the storefronts in between were mostly vacant and dilapidated. With each auto factory that closed, the town took a hit. And the commerce that still remained in Holly Grove was in the suburbs. Cooper continued out there, passing subdivisions anchored with strip malls, big-box stores, and massive parking lots. He turned onto a smaller cross street, leaving the commercial strip behind.
As they came up to the curve before Holly Grove High School, Anna noticed an acrid smell, growing stronger. The football stadium came into sight, and she stared at it in shock.
A burned-out car was smashed into the center of a blackened circle at the bottom of the stadium’s cement wall. The ground beneath it was an oily scab of scorched earth. The top of the stadium appeared unscathed, with the word BULLDOGS still gleaming in blue and silver. Yellow crime-scene tape surrounded the area. A few police officers lingered around the perimeter.
Cooper pulled the bike to the shoulder, put down the kickstand, and took off his helmet. The roar of the engine was replaced with the chirping of insects. She took off her helmet too, smelling fresh-cut grass, ashes, and gasoline.
“What happened?” she asked.
“This is where Coach Fowler died,” Cooper said.
“How?”
“He came around this turn. Guess his car was going pretty fast. Crashed right into the stadium. His car went up in flames. He didn’t make it out.”
She climbed off the bike and walked to the edge of the yellow tape. A cop on the other side glanced over but didn’t shoo her away. She guessed the crime-scene work was done and they were just waiting for a tow. Cooper stood next to her.
The car was a classic Corvette. A few spots of blue paint were still visible, but most of the outside was burned black. The hood was smashed in so far, the car looked like a pug. A circular web cracked the windshield in front of the driver’s seat.
Anna looked at the ground between the road and the stadium. There was a dirt shoulder, a section of grass, and then a cement apron abutting the concrete wall. There were no skid marks.
“You know what’s weird?” Cooper said.
“Other than Coach Fowler crashing right into his stadium, without making any apparent attempt to stop?”
“Cars don’t generally explode on impact. I mean, it happens sometimes, but it’s not like the movies. It’s rare. And when cars do catch fire from a crash, there’s usually a more heavily burned area where the fire started, like around the battery or gas tank, and then some less burned parts. But the coach’s car is blackened all around. To me, cars look like this when someone has taken serious steps to make it happen.”
“How do you know so much about burning cars?”
“I saw a lot of them in Afghanistan.” Cooper ran a hand through his short black hair. “I was in one.”
Anna glanced up at his face. He was looking at the stadium, but seeing something else. Before she could respond, a police officer came up to them. “Help you?”
“Actually, yes, sir.” Cooper straightened and put a hand on Anna’s shoulder. “We’re looking for my friend’s sister, Jody Curtis. I understand you are, too. Do you know if she’s been located?”
“She’s at the station now.”
“Is she okay?” Anna said.
“Seems so.”
“Thank God.” She was flooded with relief. “What’s she doing at the station?”
“Being interrogated,” the officer said. “In connection with Coach Fowler’s death.”
That made Anna pause. Questioned was one thing. Interrogated sounded a lot more adversarial.
“Thanks, Officer.” She turned to Cooper. “Can we head to the station?”
“Let’s go.”
4
Mom always told us not to use the word hate. “Hate is a very strong word,” she said. “Save it for the very worst things.” We could say we “disliked” something, or we “didn’t care for” it. But let me tell you: I hated Wendy Weiscowicz. Not like cleaning the toilet or global warming, which I merely disliked. I hated her.
We’d never been friendly—she was a princess and I was a jock—but Wendy and I really started beefing at the Homecoming game of 2004. That game was always a big deal at Holly Grove High, and it was seriously big that year. The team was undefeated, and everyone hoped we’d take back the state title. In a town where everything was turning to rust, football was our last shining thing. That night, I was also excited to be out hanging with friends. After you left for college, the house felt empty. Mom was working two jobs, and the dinner table was a lonely place. Football games meant a place to go, excitement and crowds, tailgating and after-parties.
It was ten years ago, but I remember that night as perfectly as if it were recorded on video. Funny, things from last week are stored in my brain with less clarity. There’s something about being fifteen that makes everything that happens stay clear and bright.
I stood with my friends, our cheers making cloudy puffs in the cold night air. The wave came around and we shouted and raised our hands toward the bright lights. Down below, Coach Fowler stalked the sidelines, shouting commands at his players. The cheerleaders were in frenzied dance mode, flashing their silver-and-blue pom-poms.
Wendy Weiscowicz stood on the sidelines near the cheer squad. She’d been the head cheerleader the year before but graduated last spring and
enrolled in Holly Grove Community College. In her spare time, she helped train the current crop of cheerleaders. She called that “community service,” but actually it was her way to keep hanging out at the high school. In the real world, she was just another college freshman. Back at the Holly Grove stadium, she was still queen bee.
One of the cheerleaders grabbed Wendy from the sidelines and pulled her out with the cheering squad. Wendy made a momentary show of resisting. Then she smiled and threw off her jacket. Beneath it, she wore a blue top and black leggings—the closest thing to the cheerleading uniform a civilian could get away with. She grabbed a pair of shimmery pom-poms and seamlessly joined the routine. She knew the moves better than some of the actual cheerleaders did. It was pathetic how much she missed high school. But the crowd cheered for her. At least, the adults loved her. Me and my friends rolled our eyes.
A few minutes before halftime, someone in the stands called to Wendy, and she made her way up there. She was chatting and animated, her cheeks flushed pink. She was kind of a celebrity in the stadium. And she was beautiful, with that amazing head of red-blond hair and those big green eyes. A crowd was soon gathered around her. But when the clock reached zero, she excused herself and went to the rail overlooking the tunnel where the players ran to the locker room. That happened to be right in front of where I was standing. She leaned over the rail and called to the coach as he passed.
“Owen! Yoo-hoo!”
He looked up at her and stopped. The players jogged past him.
“Good game!” she called. “You’re looking good out there!”
Which was true—the Bulldogs were up by seven—but I couldn’t believe she was taking precious seconds out of his halftime to personally give him platitudes the rest of the crowd was yelling.
“Idiot,” I muttered.
She glanced at me, and the coach took that opportunity to move on. Wendy was furious.
“What’s your problem?” she asked me.
“Can’t you see he’s got coaching to do? He doesn’t need an old cheerleader interrupting his halftime.” Ah, for the days when eighteen seemed old.
“He’s a big boy. He can make his own decisions. I certainly don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she said. “Frankenstein.”
I was used to kids making fun of the scar on my cheek. It was a cheap shot, and usually I could shrug it off, but I was pissed, and, yeah, I’d had a few beers in the parking lot before the game. We exchanged some words, none of which were kind. Some f-bombs were dropped, and insults concerning our relative chastity. There was snatching at clothes and grabbing of hair. I pushed Wendy, hard, and she stumbled down two risers, into the arms of some spectators. She bounced right back and clawed me in the face. We started trying to hurt each other in earnest. Kids chanted, “Catfight! Catfight!”
I know, it was stupid, right? What can I say? The teenage brain isn’t fully formed. And my method of resolving conflict has always been more likely to involve physical force than yours. It wasn’t my first fight. Or my last.
Some adults eventually pulled us apart. When I got home later that night, I saw that I had four red fingernail scratches going across my forehead. I got a month’s detention for that. Wendy got nothing, since she wasn’t actually a student anymore.
The whole town saw it. Seriously. Holly Grove had, like, fourteen thousand residents, and the stadium had ten thousand seats. Everyone showed up for games. Wendy and I were the unofficial halftime show that night.
The silver lining was, after that, people stopped calling me “Anna Curtis’s little sister” and started calling me “the chick who got in a catfight with Wendy Weiscowicz.”
After the coach died, everyone remembered that fight. From what I hear, hundreds of people claim to have held back me or Wendy. There’s an ongoing dispute about which one of us won. But everyone agrees on one thing: “Those two girls always did have it out for each other.”
5
The police station was a low-slung brick building across the street from the Meijer superstore. Anna hopped off the motorcycle and strode through the front doors before Cooper finished strapping the helmets to his bike. A young officer with a Bulldog amulet and a cleft chin sat at the front desk, tapping at a computer. His name tag read F. Ehrling.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m here to see my sister, Jody Curtis.”
His eyes flicked up. “Ms. Curtis is being questioned right now.”
“I’d like to be there with her for that.”
“Sorry, you can’t go back there.”
“I’m a prosecutor, from D.C.”
“Then I’m sure you know everyone is interviewed alone.”
His eyes went back to the screen. Anna felt the full sting of being an outsider. She was law enforcement; she was used to being one of the guys. Not here. She made a quick decision. Blood might be thick, but in a police station a J.D. carried more water.
“I’m also Ms. Curtis’s lawyer,” she said.
The kid glanced up but didn’t seem impressed. “You just said you’re a prosecutor.”
“A prosecutor can represent a family member in matters outside of her own jurisdiction.” Anna said, with more certainty than she felt. That was the written rule, but she probably needed a supervisor’s permission to do this. She hadn’t asked for, much less received, that permission. “If you don’t take me to my client right now, I’ll make sure that anything my sister says from this point forward—the point at which her lawyer was denied to her—will be suppressed. And you can spend the rest of your life explaining to your drinking buddies how you were the rookie who screwed up Coach Fowler’s investigation.”
Ehrling’s hands hovered over the keyboard. “Bullshit?”
Anna took out her phone and flicked to video recording mode. She handed it to Cooper. “Film this?”
He took the phone and pointed it at her. She turned back to the rookie.
“It is 2:17 P.M. on June 4, 2014, and I’m here at the Holly Grove police station requesting to see my client, Jody Curtis, who is apparently being interrogated somewhere inside. She has invoked her right to counsel, through me. Officer Ehrling?”
The officer stood and looked nervously at the cell phone. There was nothing like videotape to spook a cop.
“Turn that off,” he said.
“I’ll turn it off when you take me to my sister. If you don’t, I’ll post it to YouTube.”
The officer stood, opened his mouth and closed it. “Fine,” he said. “But just you. Not the big guy. Follow me.”
“Nicely done,” Cooper said quietly. He handed back the phone. “Just holler if you need me.”
Ehrling led Anna through the bowels of the station, then gestured to a closed door. She grabbed the handle and pushed in.
It was a run-of-the-mill interrogation room, small and windowless, with scuffed white walls and a video camera mounted in one corner. At one end of a faux-wood table sat a police officer with a badge hanging around his neck. Facing him sat Jody, wearing jeans, a pink T-shirt, and a stoic expression. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her eyes were red and puffy.
Both of them looked up. In unison, they said, “Anna!”
Anna did a double take. The officer was Rob Gargaron, her high school boyfriend. Ten years ago, he’d been a lean, mean, borderline-gorgeous quarterback. Now he wore a mustache, a short-sleeve shirt and tie, and thirty extra pounds. The cocky kid who used to sneak beer into parties had been transformed into a staid authority figure. Their relationship in high school had been short and intense, and ended badly. He was not the person Anna wanted interrogating her sister.
Jody appeared surprised but not overjoyed to see Anna there. She didn’t stand up. Anna looked from her scowling sister to her smirking ex-boyfriend.
“I didn’t know you were in town,” Rob said. “I’d love to catch up, but your sister and I are in
the middle of something.”
“I see that. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing,” Jody said. “It’s under control. I’ll meet you outside.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No,” Jody said. “Rob asked to talk to me, so of course I came down here. Did you hear about Owen? It’s awful. I want to do everything I can to help.”
“I’m all in favor of cooperating with the police,” Anna said. “Can you tell me what we’re cooperating in?”
Rob said, “We’re trying to determine the circumstances of Coach Fowler’s death.”
“What does that have to do with Jody?”
“She was the last person to see him alive,” Rob said.
“So she’s a suspect,” Ehrling added, from behind Anna.
“Dammit, Fred!” Rob glared at his colleague.
“Do you hear that, Jody?” Anna said. “You’re a suspect.”
“I’m sure once I talk to Rob, he’ll realize he has nothing to suspect me of.”
“Doesn’t always work that way,” Anna said. “As your lawyer, I advise that you consult with me before you say anything else to Detective Gargaron.”
“My lawyer.” Jody looked at Anna for a long moment. “I like that. Do I get to boss you around?”
“The opposite. I get to boss you around. Seriously, Jo. Can we talk?”
Jody flashed the officer an apologetic smile and stood. “Sorry, Rob. My sister flew all the way in from Washington, D.C. I guess I should go catch up with her. We can talk more later.”
Rob stayed in his seat. “This is your chance, Jody. If you don’t talk to me now, I can’t help you.”
“Help her with what?” Anna asked. He shrugged. “Let me take your card. I’ll talk with Jody and then call you. Let’s go, sis.”
Anna put an arm around her sister’s shoulders and ushered her out of the room, through the hallway, and into the lobby.
“Jody!” Cooper stood and gave her a sideways hug. “Good to see ya. It takes a lot to get your sister out here for a visit, huh?”
A Good Killing Page 2
