The captain opened the door, and I couldn’t help but think he was making a huge mistake. I felt it deep inside. This was wrong.
“What do I do?” I asked Angel. The captain was getting away. So to speak.
“Ask him about the dog!” Kory called out to me.
Without another thought, I called out, “What about the dog?”
He stopped, hesitated, executed a slow, military-style about-face, and waited.
I tossed a sideways glance toward Kory. “What about the dog?”
Kory shrugged. “It’s just, I don’t get why he’s so hell-bent on turning himself in for a crime he didn’t commit.”
My eyes widened. Before this got too out of hand, I stepped to the captain, grabbed his jacket sleeve, took a quick peek toward Uncle Bob, who was still talking to the psychic wannabe, and dragged the captain back inside his office.
“Just hold on,” I said, closing the door. “Kory, what are you talking about.”
He shrugged. “This is wrong. He didn’t do anything wrong. I was the stupid one.”
“In what way?”
Exhaling superfluously, he sat against the windowsill and said, “It wasn’t even his gun. It was mine. Or, well, my dad’s. I took it from his drawer. Trying to be all cool and shit once again. When Van found me—”
“Van?” I asked the captain. Even though he seemed to believe everything that was happening, my knowing that surprised him.
“When he found me, he was madder than a diamondback during roundup. He hit me and I pulled the gun on him. He just wanted me to confess. This kid who meant nothing to me. He wanted me to confess to what I’d done. When I refused, he got so mad, he was crying and shaking. He was a tiny shit.” He looked the captain up and down. “I can’t believe he turned out that big. We started fighting and my dog jumped on us. The gun just went off. Hit me square in the chest. He wanted to help me get to a hospital, but I screamed at him to leave. If my dad found out I’d taken the gun, he would’ve killed me.”
“If you were shot in the chest, how did you get that wound?” I asked, pointing to his knee.
“When I was trying to find a place in our barn to hide the gun, I was in so much pain that I got really light-headed, and I shot myself in the leg on accident. Van didn’t have anything to do with that.”
I turned to Van. Who named their kid Van? “I know exactly what happened,” I told him, my expression stern.
“Yeah, but his family doesn’t. I killed him. I pointed the gun—”
“That’s not the way Kory remembers it. He said you two wrestled for the gun and it went off. It was an accident.”
He looked down in thought.
“You were only seven, Captain. And it all happened very fast, I’m sure. You didn’t do this.”
“Look,” he said, clearly having made up his mind, “I’ve made up my mind.”
Nailed it.
“Nothing you say is going to change that,” he continued. “His family deserves to know what happened.”
“Screw that,” Kory said. “If he goes forward, everyone really will think I did it.”
“You did do it, Kory. You did sexually assault an innocent girl.”
He bowed his head and whispered, “Yeah, but they don’t know that. They always believed me.”
“So, it’s okay for her name to be run through the mud, but not yours?”
“What will it change? He could go to jail for something that was my stupid fault.”
I had to agree with him. Even if he didn’t go to jail, his career would be over. He was good at his job. “Give me some dirt,” I said to Kory. “I need something to blackmail him.”
The captain crossed his arms over his chest in bored contemplation.
“Dirt? I didn’t know him. He was just a scrawny kid.”
“Darn.” I looked at the captain in desperation. “I’ll help you,” I said, scanning my memory for any bit of information I could use on him. Something popped up immediately. “I’ll help you with the Loretta Rosenbaum case.”
He gave me a dubious look. “That case has been cold for a decade.”
“And I’ll warm it up. I have connections,” I said, wriggling my brows. “I can get to people you can’t.”
“Ms. Davidson—”
“Okay,” I said, raising my hands when he tried to get past me, “let’s tell all this to Uncle Bob, just like you said, and get his opinion. Just hear him out, yes?”
He nodded. “I’m going to tell him either way. I would prefer that he arrest me instead of Marsh. Marsh is a dick.”
I almost chuckled at his reference to a detective nobody in the office liked. Poor guy. “I agree.”
I stepped out and waved Ubie over to us. The fake psychic was gone, and though I was dying to ask him about her, I had bigger fish to can.
16
Danger: Attitude subject to change without notice.
—T-SHIRT
Uncle Bob had been distant when he walked in and was even more so now. It was very, very unlike him. We explained the entire situation, even the part where Captain Eckert manufactured evidence and the fact that he knew my deepest, darkest secret. Well, okay, not that deepest, darkest secret, but the one right next to my deepest, darkest secret. My ability to communicate with the departed. If only they knew why.
Uncle Bob listened with a quiet resolve, his poker face excellently placed and maintained throughout, and then he said the unthinkable: “Charley, can you leave us alone for a minute?”