Текст книги "The 9th Girl"

Автор книги: Tami Hoag

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

27

“You are not to leave this house. Do you understand me?” Nikki said. “I don’t care if it’s on fire. You are not to leave this house.”

Kyle didn’t look at her. He hung his head and said yes in a barely audible voice.

They had ridden home in absolute, oppressive silence. She couldn’t trust herself to speak. She couldn’t stand to have music on the radio or DJs trying to fill everyone with phony hilarity. The sound of the blinker was intolerable. Kyle slouched down in the passenger’s seat, trying to make himself invisible.

The house was equally silent save for the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. The quiet seemed to press in on her eardrums. Every small sound—her purse touching the dining table as she set it down, Kyle unzipping his hoodie—seemed magnified ten times.

He sat down at the table looking despondent. She refused to feel badly for him.

“I can’t talk to you about this now,” she said. “I am so angry and so disappointed in you, I can’t talk about it.”

He hung his head. “Are you going to tell Dad?”

“Why would I bother to involve your father?” she snapped. “He’s as juvenile as you seem to be. He’ll probably think it’s funny. It’s not funny. It is so not funny.

“You could lose your scholarship over this. You could be expelled. You can sit here all day and think about that, and what that means. No television. No Internet. And if I find out you’ve been on Facebook or tweeting on your secret account, I will take your phone and smash it with a hammer right before your eyes.

“I have to go now,” she said, “because I have to have a job so I can provide for you and your brother, and feed you, and clothe you, and buy you things—all of which you seem to have no appreciation for whatsoever.”

He was trying to hide the fact that he was crying. She had to fight like a tigress against the urge to go to him and put her arms around him. She loved him so much it hurt like being stabbed in the heart with an ice pick.

She felt like she was going to explode into a million glass shards as she went back out into the cold and got in the piece-of-crap car from the department pool. It smelled of cold Mexican takeout food. She left the windows cracked as she drove.

Alone, she couldn’t help but let some of her own tears fall. She was exhausted, both from the case and from all the drama with Kyle. At times like this she found that terrible, insidious worn-out wish sneaking in the back door. The one where she imagined someone stronger than she felt offering to take some of the burden away and let her rest in a safe place. It was a cruel dream, one she never expected to be fulfilled. But it crept in the back door just the same.

She drove to the medical plaza where Penny Gray had been treated for her broken wrist and picked up the X-rays that were waiting at the front desk, then headed downtown to the ME’s offices.

She was informed at the front desk that Möller was in the middle of an autopsy.

“Which suite is he in?” she asked.

The receptionist blinked at her. “You can wait in his office. He’s in the middle of an autopsy.”

“Yeah, I got that the first time you said it.” She held up the large manila envelope with Penelope Gray’s name on it. “I need him to look at these X-rays now. I don’t care if he’s knee-deep in decomposing corpses. Which room is he in?”

The young woman looked alarmed, torn between fear and duty.

“Look, sweetheart,” Nikki said brusquely. “You can call Dr. Möller and interrupt him or you can tell me which room he’s in and I’ll interrupt him myself. I need to know if his Jane Doe is my missing child case. I have a mother hanging in limbo.”

Still uncertain, the young woman swallowed and said, “He’s in two.”

She was already picking up the phone to call the suite and cover her ass as Nikki turned and headed down the hall.

The smell hit her in the face like a baseball bat as she went into the autopsy suite.

“Holy Mother of God!” she exclaimed, reeling. Her stomach flipped over like a beached fish, and her head swam.

Möller looked up at her, his eyes sparkling above his mask. “Ah, welcome, Sergeant Liska! You don’t like our ambience today? So sorry. The piquant bouquet of our latest customer isn’t for the more delicate nose, I’m afraid.”

Liska clamped her nose shut with thumb and forefinger and tried to breathe through her mouth. Her eyes watered as if she had just sliced open an onion. “What the hell is that?”

“A dissatisfied client from a funeral home in north Minneapolis. One of several. Apparently, they ran out of storage while waiting for the weather to cooperate for burials,” he explained. “And ran out of embalming fluid, it would seem, as well. Seven corpses stacked in a closet like cordwood.”

“I’m gonna puke,” she said, then promptly turned toward the nearest receptacle and unloaded her breakfast into a laundry bin.

Unfazed, Möller went on about his business, waiting for her to recover.

“Okay,” she said, still breathing hard through her mouth. “That guy isn’t going to get any deader. I’ve got the X-rays to match to our Jane Doe. Can we go somewhere with a lower gag factor and have a look?”

“Of course,” Möller said pleasantly, stepping back from the table. “If you had allowed the girl at the desk to call ahead, I would have met you in the hallway.”

He stripped off his gloves, mask, and gown and threw them in the laundry bin, then washed his hands in one of the big stainless steel sinks.

Liska didn’t wait for him, bursting out of the room and sucking in fresh air by the lungful. Möller stepped into the hall and offered her a wrapped peppermint, which she took in exchange for the X-rays.

They went into his office and he clipped the pictures of Penny Gray’s broken wrist to a light box. He had already mounted the matching X-rays from the Jane Doe autopsy. He stood looking at the images, frowning and silent.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Are our pictures the healed version of that?”

“Yes,” Möller said. “How did this allegedly happen?” he asked, pointing to Gray’s known X-rays.

“The mother said the girl fell off a bike. Why?”

“No,” he said. “You fall from a bicycle, you reach out to break your fall like so,” he said, stretching out one arm, his hand flexed back. “Your hand strikes the ground, the break happens here.” He cut his other hand across the wrist. This is not what happened to this girl.”

Liska looked at the fracture, the steep angle of it.

“This,” Möller said, “is a spiral fracture. A spiral fracture is caused by a twisting motion.”

He turned toward her, grabbed hold of her wrist, and slowly twisted.

“That, my friend—,” he began.

Liska finished the sentence for him. “Is abuse.”

28

Have u heard about Gray?

Brittany looked at her phone. Kyle. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? That was her first thought. Her second thought was that in her heart of hearts she actually kind of wished she could see him and talk to him. He was always so sure of what to do, of what was right. She didn’t always agree with him, but she wished she had some of his strength right now.

She glanced around to see if anyone was watching her, then texted him back. She’s missing. Cops here now. Where r u?

They sat at a big, glossy wood table in a room in the principal’s offices. Christina and Aaron and the other kids who had been at the Rock & Bowl that night—Jessie and Emily, Eric and Michael; the core of the clique. The police wanted to talk to them.

“How did they even know we were there?” Aaron asked.

Brittany was silent, dreading having everyone’s attention on her. Would they be angry? Would they hate her? She hadn’t asked for the police to come to her house.

She felt Christina’s dark eyes on her with extra intensity. She had to tell them. They would find out anyway.

“They came to my house last night,” she said. “Gray’s mom told them she was staying with me.”

Emily’s eyes got big. “The police came to your house? Oh my God.”

“This is what happens,” Christina said with firm disapproval. “This is what you get for letting her come to your house, Britt. She’s always in trouble. She is trouble. I’ve told you that a hundred times!”

“I know, I know,” Brittany said. “But her mom kicked her out. She needed a place to stay—”

“Let her go stay with one of her weird poet friends. She’s not your responsibility, Britt. You don’t owe her anything.”

Brittany said nothing. Everything with Christina was cut-and-dried and bent to fit, but Brittany never seemed to see things so clearly. She had been friends with Gray before she was friends with Christina. Even though she didn’t really get Gray, she felt like she did owe her a certain amount of, if not loyalty, then kindness, at least.

She felt badly for Gray. Her father had cut her out of his life. Her mother was a selfish bitch who would have been just as happy if Gray disappeared forever. That was so sad. Brittany had great parents. They didn’t always see eye to eye on things, but she knew her mom and dad loved her. They would never in a million years throw her out of the house, throw her away like she was a broken doll or a piece of trash.

“Maybe she had her own reasons for wanting Gray to sleep over,” Jessie said sarcastically. “A little girlie action, Britt?”

Brittany looked at her, seeing the nasty little gleam in her eyes. Jessie considered Christina her BFF and was easily made jealous. If anyone had lesbian tendencies, it was Jessie, but Brittany didn’t have the nerve to say so.

“Maybe I’m just a nice person,” she said. “Maybe if your mom kicked you out, you would like somebody to be nice to you too.”

“Leave her alone, Jess,” Christina snapped, conveniently forgetting that she had made the same kind of nasty comments before that night at the Rock & Bowl. All was forgiven now.

“What did you tell the cops?” Aaron asked.

“That we went to the Rock and Bowl and that Gray got pissed off and left.”

“And you told them that we were all there,” he said. “Thanks, Britt.”

“What difference would it make if I did?” she asked defensively. “What difference does it make who was there? Gray left. That’s all that matters.”

“Did you tell them that douchebag Hatcher was there?”

“I didn’t tell them anything about anyone!” Brittany insisted. “Stop trying to make me feel like I did something wrong! They’re the police, Aaron. You think they wouldn’t find out whatever they wanted to find out?”

He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Was one of them Hatcher’s mom?”

“No.”

“Then how come he’s not sitting here?”

“How would I know?”

“He’s your boyfriend.”

“He is not! How can he be my boyfriend? You’re the one who keeps saying he’s gay.”

“Aaron, stop it,” Christina snapped. “This isn’t Britt’s fault. Kyle probably told them we were all there. Who knows what he might have said.”

“Fucking loser runt,” Aaron muttered, staring down at his fists on the tabletop. He had a tendency to pout, his full lower lip jutting slightly forward, his eyes narrowing to slits.

When Brittany had first seen Aaron Fogelman, like every other girl in school, she had thought he was hot. He was tall and athletic and good-looking in a young Channing Tatum kind of a way. She had fantasized about him being interested in her, but that hadn’t lasted long. First of all, he was Christina’s boyfriend. But as she’d gotten to know him, the hot looks had faded behind the fact that he was spoiled and sulky and not very nice to a lot of people.

She hated the way he treated Kyle—the bullying, the nasty gay references—even if Kyle did sometimes ask for it. As she looked at him now she could hear Kyle’s voice: Nice friends you’ve got there, Britt. . . .

Her phone vibrated in her hand. She held it down in her lap and tried to read the text surreptitiously.

@home. Suspended.

“Did you see what he put on Twitter?” Eric Owen asked the room in general. He was snickering when he brought the picture up on his phone and held it so everyone could look. He laughed even though one of the cartoon figures was clearly himself.

Aaron swore half under his breath, reached over, and snatched the phone out of his buddy’s hand.

“Hey!”

“It’s not funny, dickhead!” Aaron declared.

It wasn’t funny when Kyle did it to Aaron, but it had been hilarious when Aaron had done it to Kyle. Brittany wished she had the courage to say it, but she didn’t.

“Where do you think Gray is?” Christina asked her.

“I don’t know.”

“You haven’t heard from her?”

“No, but why would I?” Brittany asked. “She thinks I set her up.”

“You did,” Jessie Cook said smugly.

Brittany looked down again at Kyle’s text—@home. Suspended.—and thought, Wish I was there.

She wanted to deny Jessie’s charge, but what good would it do her? She wanted to believe she hadn’t known Christina was going to retaliate that night. Nobody had told her in so many words. Christina had texted her, knowing full well Gray was with her, and told her to come to the Rock & Bowl. Brittany had convinced Gray to go.

Now she felt ashamed of herself for being a part of it, for not being brave enough to say something that night.

“She had it coming,” Emily Peters said.

That was true. Gray had invited the trouble—as she always did. She had written a nasty poem about Christina called “Queen of the Class” and read it out loud at PSI’s monthly Artist’s Open Mike Night right before Christmas break had started. Brittany could see it in her head like a scene from a movie: Gray standing at the microphone wearing a look that always meant trouble—half-mean, half-excited—as she began to read.

Queen of the Class

Princess of sass

Boss of the cool elite.

Mermaid hair

Down to there

Never has tasted defeat.

Believes she’s adored

Everyone is so bored

Pretending to worship her shit.

Each one and all

Can’t wait for her fall

Just wishing she’d take a big hit.

But life as a rule

Is exceedingly cruel

To the queens of phony glory.

They all fall down

And break the crown

And that be the end of their story.

The ones they look down on

The ones that they frown on

Are only too happy to say, Fool

We knew all the time

That this was your prime

Bitch, you peaked in high school.

Gray had been so pleased with herself. She loved making people uncomfortable when she believed they deserved it. No one had been able to make eye contact with Christina. They all knew the poem was about her. Christina’s face had turned to stone.

“You know they think she’s that dead girl that fell out of that car New Year’s Eve,” Aaron said. “The zombie.”

Brittany frowned at him. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. Emily, you said you read about it on TeenCities.”

Emily nodded. “In Sonya Porter’s blog. It was all about how there’s this serial killer out there killing young women and doing terrible things to them.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s Gray,” Christina said.

“You know,” Jessie said, “the way they described that dead girl on the news, it kind of sounded like Gray. God, how weird would that be—to know someone who was murdered by some sick psycho?”

She seemed almost excited at the prospect.

“If it is Gray, the killer got her after she left the Rock and Bowl,” Brittany said. “And she left the Rock and Bowl because of us.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s our fault,” Christina argued. “It’s not our fault there’s some maniac running around killing people. All I wanted was to pay her back for what she did to me. I didn’t wish for her to be kidnapped and tortured by some sicko! God, Britt, is that what you think?”

“No!” Brittany said. “But if that’s what happened to her, I’m going to feel guilty, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to feel terrible,” Christina said, “but I’m not going to feel responsible. I didn’t kill her.”

Emily chewed at a fingernail, looking worried. “What do you think the cops will ask us?”

“What did they ask you, Britt?” Christina asked.

She squirmed on her chair. “They just wanted to know where Gray went. Had I heard from her. Did she leave with anyone. That’s all.”

“You told them she got mad and left,” Christina said, leaning closer, lowering her voice. “Did you tell them why she flipped out?”

“No.”

“They didn’t ask?”

“No.”

She leaned a little closer and swept a big curtain of gorgeous blond waves back over her shoulder. “You didn’t tell them what she said to me, did you?”

“No!” Brittany whispered. “Why would I do that? I wouldn’t do that.”

“You were the only one who heard her say it,” Christina whispered back. “And it’s a lie, anyway, but you know how mean people can be.”

She said it with a straight face, as if she had never been mean to anybody, her big brown eyes blinking with innocence.

“You won’t say anything, will you?”

Brittany shook her head. “No.”

Like the police would give a rip about the petty sniping of teenage girls.

Christina reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze. “You’re such a good friend, Britt.”

Gray probably didn’t think so, Brittany thought.

“You know,” Aaron said, “Hatcher left right after Gray did that night. He’s the one the cops should be talking to.”

•   •   •

“I WANT TO smack this little prick upside the head.”

“That would be wrong,” Tippen said with a bored sigh. “Satisfying, but wrong.”

They stood in the room adjacent to the one the kids sat in, watching them, listening to their discussion via closed-circuit TV. Kids had no expectation of privacy in school. They were literally spied on all day long, in classrooms, in the halls, in the cafeteria, in this conference room waiting to be interviewed by the police.

Kovac studied one kid and then the next, taking in their body language, their facial expressions. Brittany Lawler looked the least happy of the group. She wanted to get up and leave. She squirmed in her seat, leaning away from the girl next to her—Christina Warner.

Christina leaned toward her with a look of concern, put a hand on her shoulder, and murmured something the microphone didn’t pick up. Reassurance. Comfort. Something like that.

Christina was clearly the leader of the pack. Pretty, stylish, aware of her sexuality, bossy. The others looked to her. She was well aware of her position and her power.

It wasn’t hard to imagine there would be tensions between her and a girl like Penny Gray, the perennial outsider. They were opposites, light and dark, manipulative and reactive. Because of the relationship between their parents, they were essentially being pitted against each other for the favor of Julia Gray. Julia Gray, who seemed to have nothing but disapproval and disappointment for her only child. Kovac could easily imagine her saying, Why can’t you be more like Christina?

He turned to Tippen. “Let’s do this. The two stooges first,” he said, pointing to Aaron Fogelman’s wingmen. “Then those two girls. We’ll make the Fogelman kid wait a while after his pals, see if we can’t drum up a little more paranoia in that one. Then we’ll take the Warner girl, then Brittany Lawler again. We’ll leave her ’til last. Let the others wonder why.”

“Dr. Warner is already getting impatient,” Tippen said.

“Good. Let him stew.”

The parents had been assembled by Principal Rodgers in his office, Michael Warner among them. They would be allowed to sit in on the interviews with their individual children. At least none of them had brought an attorney along.

Thankful for small blessings, Kovac took one of the Fogelman kid’s buddies and Tippen took the other. Neither had much of anything to say. They claimed not to really know Penelope Gray. They claimed to be playing skee ball in the arcade when the argument between Gray and Christina Warner went down. The parents were predictably defensive, doing what parents do: getting between trouble and their kids.

The interviews with the two girls, Emily Peters and Jessica Cook, went much the same.

Kovac took the Cook girl, whose mother was big and square and looked like she might fight for the WWE when she wasn’t masquerading as a bank vice president in a sweater and pearls. Momma Bear sat with her meaty arms crossed over her chest and a sour look on her face. The girl had that slightly pinched quality to her expression that spelled a potential for belligerence.

Kovac sat down at the table across from them and began the verbal dance.

“So, Jessica, did you see Gray that night at the Rock and Bowl?”

She rolled her eyes. “You know I did. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“Let’s cut to the chase, then. What went down between Gray and Christina?”

“Gray got pissed off and called Christina a”—she glanced at her mother—“bad name, and she left.”

“Did anybody follow her out?”

“Yeah. Kyle Hatcher.”

“Anybody else?”

She huffed a sigh. “I really wasn’t watching. I don’t like Gray. I don’t care what she does.”

“She’s missing,” Kovac said bluntly. “She might be dead.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said with just enough whine to set his teeth on edge. “I didn’t see anything!”

Momma Bear reared her ugly head. “What does any of this have to do with my daughter? Jessica isn’t responsible for what that Gray girl does. Apparently, no one is.”

“We’re just trying to put together a complete picture here, Mrs. Cook. Any detail, no matter how insignificant it may seem, could be helpful to the investigation.” He turned his attention back to the girl.

She tipped her head to one side, bored, scratching idly at the arm of her chair with a shiny red fingernail. “I didn’t see anything.”

“That’s great, Jessica,” Kovac said sarcastically. He put his elbows on the table and leaned toward her. “Tell me something. If it was you missing instead of Gray, how would you feel about your friends not trying to help out?”

She gave him a cold look. “She’s not my friend. This is stupid, anyway. Gray left. None of us killed her.”

Momma Bear sat forward. “Are you trying to intimidate my daughter?”

“No,” Kovac said. “I’m trying to make her have a conscience.”

Mrs. Cook got to her feet with all the menace of an animal about to charge. “If Jessica says she didn’t see anything, she didn’t see anything. We’re done here. If you have anything more, Detective, you can speak to our attorney.”

Kovac followed them into the hall and watched the mother herd the daughter toward the office doors. Tippen came out of the room where they had been watching the video monitor.

“That went well.”

Kovac rolled his eyes. “I’m just happy Momma didn’t knock me down and hurt me. How did yours go?”

“She wasn’t right there when the fight happened. She was in the bathroom or getting a drink or looking the other way. But it was probably Gray’s fault because she’s just like that.”

“Nice.”

“Contemporary teenagers. It’s Lord of the Flies in designer labels.”

“How are the other three holding up?” Kovac asked.

They went back into their viewing room. Brittany still looked unhappy, staring down at her phone in her lap. Aaron Fogelman had gotten up to pace, his hands jammed at his waist.

“Why is it taking so fucking long?” the boy asked. “What could they possibly be talking about that’s taking so long?”

Christina got up and went to him, stopping in front of him and slipping her arms around his waist. Young love.

“Will you relax?” she said.

“What if this goes in our records?” he whined. “Questioned by the police because of that bitch? My dad’s gonna have my ass over this! He wants me to get into Northwestern!”

“Oh my God,” Christina said, letting go of him so he could pace some more. “You’re such a drama king!”

“Oh, it’s fine for you,” he said. “Daddy’s girl. Your father thinks you shit gold.”

“I can see why all the girls go for him,” Kovac said. “Silver-tongued charmer.”

“Angry white boy,” Tippen said. “Raging against the oppression of the bourgeois life in the mean streets of suburbia.”

“He needs his ass kicked,” Kovac declared.

He went to the room the students were in, opened the door, and nodded to Aaron Fogelman, his face a stony mask. The kid tried to put on a tough front, but the bravado was short-sheeted over the insecurity and his fear of a blemish on his permanent record. The last thing he did before leaving the room was glance back at Christina Warner.

His father, Wynn Fogelman, joined them in the conference room. Kovac took in the immaculate expensive suit, the power tie, the slicked-back hair, the way he carried himself, and thought, Wealthy self-important asshole, an assessment proven true the instant Fogelman opened his mouth.

“I hope you realize, Detective, my son’s future is something I do not take lightly. I won’t have the Fogelman name—mine or Aaron’s—tied in any way to this missing girl.”

Kovac motioned the two of them to sit on one side of the table. “I’m not interested in your name, Mr. Fogelman. I don’t know who you are. I don’t care who you are. I’m here because one of your son’s classmates has gone missing, and I know that he was among the last people to see her before whatever happened to her happened to her. If he can shed some light on what happened that night, great. If he can’t, he can’t.”

“He doesn’t know anything about what happened to this girl,” his father said. “From what I understand, she’s a behavior problem, and it isn’t all that unusual for her to disappear.”

Kovac just looked at him for a moment, chewing a little with his back teeth. He wanted to tell Wynn Fogelman that Penelope Gray was a sixteen-year-old girl, not a nuisance to be defined by a label. But even her own mother didn’t seem to quite get that.

He was just as guilty of it, truth to tell. He had a moment to assess the people he met in the course of his work. He had to read them, rank them, and label them instantly. Everyone did it. He took umbrage only with regard to the victims he adopted in his role of defender/avenger. No different from these parents trying to protect their kids, he supposed.

He looked at the boy, sullen and slouched in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest. “Who busted that lip for you?”

The kid reached up and touched the swollen spot, as if he’d forgotten he had it. “No one. I tripped and fell.”

“Into a pile of knuckles,” Kovac said. “Nice.

“Aaron, how well do you know Penny Gray?” he asked.

The boy lifted a shoulder but looked down at the tabletop. “Not very.”

He mumbled when he talked. He didn’t make eye contact with Kovac, but beyond that, he didn’t look at his father. He knew he was in trouble. The old man didn’t appreciate being taken out of his Very Important Job to come to school and talk with the police. Junior was supposed to be a chip off the old block, successful at everything, yet here he was . . .

“You have classes with her,” Kovac said. He slipped his reading glasses on and opened a file folder on the table in front of him. “Drama, English, something called Visual Media. You’re spending a lot of your day with her, you have mutual acquaintances—you must know her a little.”

“She’s weird. She’s a weird, angry bitc—person,” he said, shooting his father a glance from the corner of his eye. “Nobody likes her.”

“Your friend Brittany likes her,” Kovac pointed out.

“That’s Brittany,” he grumbled. “She likes everybody.”

“What a poor quality that is,” Kovac said sarcastically. “And Gray and Christina are halfway to being sisters, right? With Christina’s dad and Gray’s mom getting together. And you’re tight with Christina. . . .”

“Is there a point to this?” Wynn Fogelman asked sharply.

Kovac ignored him. “What went down between those two at the Rock and Bowl? I’m hearing Christina started something, making fun of one of Gray’s poems.”

The one-shoulder shrug. “I don’t know.”

“You were right there, Aaron. I have a witness who puts you right in the middle of it,” Kovac lied.

The boy jumped up in his chair, all shock and righteous indignation. “Fucking Hatcher!”

“Aaron!” the father barked.

“And we have security tape,” Kovac went on.

Of course, he didn’t. The video was of terrible quality and showed only part of the room from an angle that made it virtually impossible to tell what the hell was going on, and completely impossible to pick out individuals who weren’t in the camera’s direct path. But Aaron Fogelman didn’t know that.

“I didn’t do anything!” the boy protested. “She went after Christina! I just got between them! I didn’t hit her! Did Hatcher say I hit her? I didn’t! It maybe just looked that way. I didn’t!”

Kovac sat back and digested that. He looked at Wynn Fogelman, who was glaring at his son.

“No,” Kovac said. “I’m sure your father taught you better than to hit a girl.”

The elder Fogelman turned on him. “You can’t use any of this against my son.”

“Not in a court of law,” Kovac qualified. “Your son isn’t under arrest. He isn’t even under suspicion of anything, Mr. Fogelman. Luckily for our overcrowded prison system, being a dick isn’t against the law.”

Fogelman bristled. “You can change your tone with me, Detective.”

“Why would I?” Kovac asked. “I don’t care what you think about me. You will probably find this hard to believe, but this situation isn’t about you.”

“What is it about, then?” Fogelman asked, his face stone-cold with suppressed fury.

“The truth,” Kovac said calmly. “That’s all. I want to know every possible reason a sixteen-year-old girl came to be in a position where a predator might have taken advantage of her.”

“You don’t even know that she’s missing,” Mr. Fogelman said.

“Oh, I know she’s missing,” Kovac said. “And by the end of the day I’m probably going to be sure that she’s dead and lying on a steel table in the morgue.”

“Aaron certainly had no part in any of that!”

“He was part of the little ambush that prompted Penny Gray to leave the Rock and Bowl on her own that night, Mr. Fogelman. And then she disappeared. So see? You can’t say Junior here didn’t have anything to do with that. You throw a rock in a pond, you don’t have control of where the ripples go.”

Wynn Fogelman stood up, trying not to look flustered. “I think we should go now, Aaron.”

“Kyle Hatcher followed her out,” Aaron said, happy to throw the blame on someone else.

“Kyle Hatcher doesn’t have a vehicle,” Kovac returned.

“He came with her,” the boy threw back. “Why wouldn’t he leave with her too?”

Kovac refused to react. “What time did you leave the Rock and Bowl that night, Aaron?”

Fogelman Sr. put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Aaron. We’re leaving. Now.”

The boy looked from his father to Kovac, not sure which authority figure to obey. “Later. After them.”