Over Her Head (21 page)

Oh, the egocentrism of youth. “Anna, he’s probably seen kids in your situation before.”

“I doubt it.”

“Come on. Just talk to him. You’ve got nothing to lose, and maybe it will help.”

“Mom, how many times do I have to say this? Nothing’s going to help. If I want to talk to someone, I’ll talk to the grief
team. Not you, not Gregg. He’ll probably blab everything I say to everyone in the family anyway.”

Do not lose it. This is too important. Stand firm.
“He can’t. Your conversations will be completely confidential. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at 10:15.”

“I won’t be there. That’s English, and I like it.”

“Remember the lumber room.”

But Anna didn’t answer. Instead, she picked up the drawing pad, tore off the sketch of Kyle, and ripped it straight down the
middle.

She wasn’t going to get anywhere tonight. Laurie got off the bed and paused by the door in time to see Anna toss the pieces
of paper on the floor to join the dirty laundry, homework, miscellaneous books, CDs, and other flotsam of the teenage life.

“We’ll talk about this again in the morning.”

She had to settle for having the last word. She certainly hadn’t gotten any other satisfaction out of this little talk.

To: KelciP

From: JohnnysGrrl

Getting pretty friendly with Poser2 huh?

Careful what u talk about.

Can u swim?

N
ick had had
enough of teenagers to last him for the rest of his life. If he believed in reincarnation, he’d have said he’d done some
horrible crime in a previous life to deserve this.

It was Monday night, and in interview room A he had Kate Parsons, with one of the female dispatchers silently serving as matron.
In room B sat Rose Silverstein, with Gil and one of the second-shift clerks. And in the waiting room he had two sets of parents,
both screaming lawsuits and demanding that their daughters be released immediately. He was thankful he had the seniority to
avoid working the front desk. The poor rookie out there looked as though he was seriously considering a career change.

He closed the door of room A and sat opposite Kate, who looked as cool and chic as a model on a magazine cover.

“Can I have a soda?” she asked as soon as his rear was planted in the chair.

Without a word, the matron got up and fetched a paper cup of water from the cooler. When she put it down in front of her,
Kate wrinkled her nose and said, “That’s not soda.”

“And this isn’t the Marriott.” From next door Nick heard a muffled sound that could be someone crying, and Kate shifted in
her chair.

“Who’s that? Is that Rose? I saw her, you know, when you brought me in here. What are you doing to her? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine, Kate. She’s sitting there until we’re done.”

“But she sounds like she’s crying!”

“She’s probably a little nervous. Look, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner you all can go. So let’s focus.”

“But—”

“Now, we’ve talked a couple of times at your house about what happened that night on the bridge. What I need you to do right
now is try to remember exactly what happened from the time Randi came over to your group to the time she went over the rail.
Can you do that?”

“I already told you. Don’t you have it recorded?”

“No. But we are being videotaped now.”

“Yeah? Where’s the camera?”

He pointed up at the corner of the room, and Kate smiled and waved at it. With a sigh, he said, “So, for posterity, how about
you tell me again what happened?”

The girl moved her chair six inches to the right and turned sideways. What was she doing? Making sure the camera caught her
best angle?

“Well, like I told you, we were all hanging out at the Stop-N-Go.”

“Who do you mean by ‘all’?”

“Me, Rose, Kelci, and Michelle Gibson. Then the boys joined us—Kyle, Brendan, and some friend of Brendan’s whose name I forget.
We all walked up on the bridge and then Poser came and we started goofing off.”

“For the record, Poser is . . . ?”

“You know. Randi. Sorry, that’s not very respectful of the dead, is it?”

He wondered why she bothered, when she clearly hadn’t respected the girl when she was living. “And then?”

“Then Kyle saw Anna Hale down on the grass, so he went down to talk to her, which totally made Rose mad because she has such
a major crush on him.” She glanced at the camera. “Oops. I wasn’t supposed to say that. It’s a secret.”

“The tape is confidential, Kate.”

“So anyways, we started goofing off and shoving around and the next thing I knew, Randi was hanging all over Brendan like
she wanted to be his girlfriend, so Rose got in her face—she’s my best friend, you know, so she was totally defending me—and
Randi leaned back to get away from her, and the next thing I know, there was a big splash. I always thought the rail was higher
there. You know, to stop people from doing that.”

“Can you back up a little? Are you saying that Rose Silverstein pushed her?” Now they were getting somewhere. Maybe—screaming
parents aside—this had been the right tactic.

“I don’t know if I’d say that, exactly,” Kate hedged. “All I know is she got into Randi’s face and they shoved back and forth.
I must have looked away for a second because then Randi was just . . . gone.”

“What did you see after that?”

“I don’t remember. We all started screaming and running around.”

“Did you call for help?”

“Somebody must have, because Kelci Platt’s big sister showed up just then and she got in the car and they took off.”

“Did anyone go down to try to get Randi out of the water?”

“I don’t know. It was dark. And I was pretty upset.”

He wondered about that. “And it never occurred to you to go get help? Or call 911?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Well, sure. That’s what we were doing—running around trying to think what to do.”

Were they? Because the only person who had actually done anything concrete was Anna Hale, if Vanessa’s story about her running
under the bridge was to be believed, and even still he hadn’t been able to find out exactly what had happened after that.
It bugged him that none of these kids had done the logical thing and called for help. Was it out of guilt? Or ignorance? Deliberate
malice? Or worse—apathy?

“Anything else you’d like to add?”

“No, but if this tape goes on
America’s Most Wanted
, they need to remember that my real name is Kathryn. That’s R-Y-N. Kate is just what my friends call me.”

Nick resisted the urge to remind her that this was the homicide of a classmate, not a reality show. “We’ll try to remember
that, Kate. Thank you for coming in.”

He deposited the girl in the loving arms of her parents, who were still shouting recriminations and threats. After instructing
the sergeant to hold them until Rose’s interview was complete, he went to check on Gil’s progress. Instead of joining them
in interview room B and possibly interrupting a vital train of thought, though, he walked down the hall to the video closet.
The tech indicated a chair and he sank into it, watching Gil’s technique with the petite brunette in the expensive leather
jacket.

“So you’re saying Randi had a crush on Brendan, who was Kate’s boyfriend?”

“Yes, which was totally not mutual. He couldn’t stand her. So when she showed up and started talking to him, Kate got upset
and got in her face.”

“What was everyone else doing at this point?”

“I was talking to Kyle because we have this thing going, and I don’t know what Kelci and Michelle were doing. I was busy,
if you know what I mean.”

“So Brendan and Kate were with Randi?”

“We were all kind of in this big group. So anyway, Kate gets in her face, and I go to help her, ’cause she’s my best friend
and all, and Kate gives her a shove, and then Brendan does, and then I do. Just little shoves, you know, like this.” She flicked
her hands as though she were on a volleyball team setting up the ball.

“Then what?” Gil prompted her.

“So Poser is over by the rail and Kate is in her face and I turned to look for Kyle but he was gone.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Anna Hale showed up. He feels sorry for her that she’s not in our group, see, so he goes to talk to her.”

“So he wasn’t there.”

“No. But meanwhile Kate’s getting really mad, and she pops her fingers against Poser”—again the volleyball flick—“and she’s
up against the rail and so I turn around and suddenly she’s not there.”

“Who?”

Rose glanced up at Gil through her bangs as though he were a complete idiot. “Poser, of course. Then there was a big splash
and all you-know-what broke loose.”

“What did you do?”

“I just started crying. And nobody carries tissues so I had to go over to the Stop-N-Go and buy some. I missed a lot of what
happened then.”

“So, to recap, you saw Kate push Randi over the rail?”

“It was her popping her in the chest, so yeah, she could have done it.”

Great. So much for being best friends. And so much for my bright idea about getting the real story.

“What happened while you were at the Stop-N-Go?” Gil went on.

“Nothing. I got my tissues and went back up on the bridge, but by then mostly everyone was gone. Some sophomore guys walked
me and another girl home. They were on the soccer team, I think, if you want to talk to them.”

“Where was Kate?”

She shrugged. “I guess she went home. Brendan probably went with her. They live on the same street.”

“What about Anna Hale?”

But on the tape, Rose just looked blank. Gil wound up the interview and when the room had emptied, Nick met him in the hall
as he escorted Rose back to her mother.

“Get that?”

“Yep. Same story, different bad guy. Same bunch of stonewalling they’ve been doing all along.”

“Why, who did Kate say was the bad guy?”

“Rose.”

Gil cursed and then put on his solemn cop face as they stepped into the waiting area.

“Thank you for coming down tonight, folks,” he said. “We appreciate your willingness to help us find the person responsible
for this.”

After more shouting and threatening with at least three different flavors of lawsuit, the parents got themselves mobilized
in the direction of the door. Just as her father put his arm around her to guide her outside, Kate turned.

Her perfect oval face was white. “Wait,” she said.

“Kate, come on. We’re going home,” her father said.

“No. No. This isn’t right. Deputy, I—I have something I need to say.”

“Not without Jack O’Day here to advise you, you don’t,” her father snapped.

“Daddy, no, this is important.”

“Go ahead, Kate,” Nick said. “That is, if your dad says it’s okay.”

She pulled away from him and he rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever.”

“I didn’t quite tell you everything back there.”

“No? How about you tell me now?”

The desk sergeant leaned on his elbows in his glassed-in window, and even Rose’s mother stopped in the doorway to listen.

“After—after Randi went in, we all kind of fell apart and went running around ’cause we didn’t know what to do.”

“Yes, you said that.”

“Well, what I didn’t say was that for a few seconds I was by myself, over on the other side of the road, where you can kind
of look down on the park.”

Where Kyle had told him he’d found Anna Hale. “Yes?”

“And I saw—I saw Anna there.”

“Where?”

“In the water. With—with Randi.”

“What?”

Pandemonium broke out. If this had been a movie, Nick would have fired his service weapon into the air to get everyone to
quiet down. It took at least half a minute before he could even hear Kate speak.

“Kate, this is serious. Slow down and try to remember exactly. Didn’t you say it was dark and you couldn’t see anything?”

Tears streaked her cheeks. “Yes, I did. I didn’t want her to get in trouble, honest. But I can’t keep this to myself anymore.
It’s eating me up.”

“She’s right,” her mother said. “She can’t sleep, doesn’t eat properly—she’s a mess over this.”

“Tell me what you saw,” Nick repeated. He was not in the mood for a sympathy ploy right now.

“She was in the water, and Randi was kind of floating, and Anna reached out and touched her, and she just kind of . . . sank.”

“Was she alive?” Gil put in. “Could you tell if she was conscious?”

“No,” the girl said. “I told you, it was dark.”

“When you say ‘touched her,’ what do you mean?” Nick tried to keep the urgency out of his tone, but it wasn’t easy.

“She—she put her hand out, kind of over Randi’s face, and went like this.” The heel of her hand dipped, as though she were
pushing an imaginary canoe away from shore. “And then Randi just went under.”

The sobs she’d been trying to hold back burst out of her, and her parents put protective arms around her and hustled her out
the door.

Nick looked from Gil to the desk sergeant to the overhead camera, which had recorded everything. He’d heard the same rumors
as everyone else, but he’d dismissed them as insubstantial since no one had actually been able to confirm them.

Anna.
His heart squeezed with anguish.

Had he ever once thought that she might be involved as deeply as this? Had he ever been willing to consider that rumors are
sometimes rooted in fact? Had he let love blind him to the truth?

Had love blinded them all? He thought of Laurie, as staunch as any soldier in her belief in her daughter. What would she do
when she heard?

Family aside, what was he going to do? The pressure to make an arrest had reached the boiling point. The switchboard fielded
twenty or thirty calls a day, from people who thought they had leads to people demanding a recall of the sheriff because he
hadn’t found the guilty party yet. Once the word got out—and he had no doubt at all that it would be all over town by breakfast—the
department was going to have to act decisively, one way or the other.