“You need to be honest with me, Kory. Did you sexually assault Cindy Eckert?”
He bowed his head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“We saw her at the park after school. She was alone on a swing and everyone told me to go talk to her, to pretend to be into her.”
“You’re not winning any brownie points here, Kory.”
“Just wait. I didn’t— I was just kidding with her.” He shoved his hands farther into his front pockets. “She told me she’d always had a crush on me, and I told her the same thing back.”
As Kory spoke, I relayed what he was saying to the captain.
“She told me she had a special room in the woods just beyond the park. She wanted to show it to me. Everyone was teasing me, telling me to go with her.”
The captain’s anger rose. “That was not in the report,” he said. “No one ever said that. According to the police, no one ever saw him with her.”
“Then they lied,” I said to him. “For Kory.”
Kory kept going. “When we got there, she wanted … she wanted to show me…”
“I don’t really want the details,” I told him. “I just want to know what you did to her.”
“She started it,” he said, shame making him flinch every time he started to talk. “She rubbed me and told me to—” He stopped, unable to explain. “Then, right in the middle, she changed her mind. She told me to stop. I— I finished anyway. She didn’t really fight or anything. She just bit me. But, yes, I did it with her. She said no and I did it anyway.”
“That’s very wrong. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t mean for it to go that far. By the time she changed her mind, I was already in her. I just needed a minute. Then she killed herself. I wanted to die. I’d lied to everyone. They all thought I was so cool. Too cool to sink low enough to have sex with Cindy Eckert.”
“Because she was mentally challenged?”
After he nodded, he repeated, “She killed herself because of me.”
“And because of how she was treated afterwards.”
“Exactly, because I didn’t have the balls to confess to what I’d done.” He looked up at me then. “No one would have messed with her if I’d just told them not to. They did it thinking they were doing me a favor. Am I going to hell?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“That’s enough,” the captain said. “That’s all I needed to hear. I had to know if I got the right guy.”
“And if you hadn’t?”
“I would have gone after the right guy. But since I got him, I can get on with this. Thank you, though,” he said, tossing the entire envelope of pictures to me. “I won’t be needing those anymore.”
“Wait, how do you know I’ll hold up my end of the bargain?”
“It won’t matter. There are some things you can’t outrun. Your past is one of them. Can you ask your uncle to come in here, please?” He sat behind his desk and started straightening papers.
“Why?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.
He tapped a pile of folders until they stood in perfect alignment, just like everything else on his desk. Pristine. Orderly. Everything in its place. “I’m going to turn myself in.”
“What? Why would you do that? That was, what? Thirty years ago?”
“Thirty-five. My mother died last week. She was the only one I was protecting by keeping this secret. Now I can own up to what I’ve done and put it behind me.”
“He doesn’t need to do that,” Kory said. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, the JV letter jacket he wore crinkling. “It won’t make any difference.” Then he brightened. “Maybe if I fix this, I can go to heaven.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I’m supposed to make amends, but there’s just no way to do that. But maybe if I stop Cindy’s brother from making a big mistake, I can get in.”
I wanted to tell him he could probably get in anyway, but I decided not to.
“He’s a good guy, right?” Kory asked.
“Yeah, he’s a pretty good guy. Or he was until he set me up like a bowling pin on league night at the alley.” I scowled at him, but only a little, since he was taking the charges off the table. And he’d killed someone. Did I now have a moral obligation to see him brought to justice?
I was torn. On what to feel. On what to do.
Then another thought hit me. “Maybe you are paying for what you’ve done,” I said to him as he straightened yet another stack. “I mean, you help people every day, right? Maybe that is your way of paying society back.”
“But what about Kory’s family?” He stood, put his jacket on, then walked to the door to face the firing squad. “My mind’s made up, Ms. Davidson. If you won’t get your uncle, I will. It’s time this ends.”
“Do your thing,” Angel said.
“What thing?” I asked him for the bazillionth time.
“Your reaper thing. Only you know the hearts of men on earth.”
“Trust me, hon, if there is one thing I do not know, it is the hearts of men. I know they like sex. That’s about it.”
“No, I mean, humans in general. You can see their intentions, and you mark them.”