About That Night (16 page)

He pretends to think hard. He says, “We were fooling around one day after school, but it wasn't what you'd call a scrap.”

“What was it about?” the other cop, Tritt, asks.

“What was what about?”

“You said you were fooling around. How did that go? What did you say? What did he say?”

Ronan stares at the cop, incredulous. “I don't remember. It was, like, two weeks ago.”

“Well, you just told us he wasn't your friend. So I'm wondering what two guys who aren't friends fool around about at school. Fooling around is usually something you do with your buddies, isn't it? Not with the guy who's going out with your ex-girlfriend. Am I right?” Tritt is talking to Ronan nice and slow, like he's got all the time in the world and this is just a friendly conversation, but he's got his eyes fixed hard on him, trying to read him.

“He's not my friend as in I don't hang out with him. But I know him. He's in a couple of my classes. I see him around.”

“In the hall?” Tritt says.

“Yeah.”

“So, what happened? You were walking down the hall and you ran into him and you said, ‘Hey, how's it going?' Or was he the one who talked first?”

“I don't remember.”

“Maybe he said something about your girlfriend,” the other cop, Diehl, says. Tritt fishes in his pocket for something. A small flashlight. He flicks it off and on while Diehl says, “I've met her. She's pretty. I bet Derek was having a great time with her. Did he tell you that? Did he tell you how much he was enjoying your girlfriend?”

Ronan has to remind himself that they're on some kind of fishing expedition. If they had something on him, something at least semi-solid, they'd have had him down at the police station by now.

“She's not my girlfriend,” he says calmly. “We broke up. And for the record, I'm the one who ended it, not her. You can ask her.”

The two cops stare at him. Tritt has the flashlight on again, and he's got it aimed at Ronan. He's running it up and down the front of Ronan's jacket, and Ronan is trying not to show the immense relief he feels at having sewn on a new button to replace the one that was missing.

“Where were you the night Derek Maugham got killed?” Tritt asks, shutting off the flashlight and dropping it back into his pocket.

“What night was that exactly?”

“You don't know?”

“I didn't even know he was dead until someone told me.”

“And who was that?”

No way, Ronan thinks. “I don't remember.”

Tritt looks long and hard at him before telling him when Maugham was reported missing.

“Where were you that night, Ronan?”

Ronan takes a few seconds. He's never bought those cop shows where people remember instantly where they were and what they were doing at a specific time a week or two weeks or even a month ago. Sure, if you happened to be at some special event, or doing something like, say, writing a test or celebrating someone's birthday, you might remember. But mostly, life is just more of the same day after day and night after night, and sameness is the beige of life—you can't tell where one piece of it ends and the next piece begins.

“I was at home, I guess,” he says at last.

“You guess?”

“I was home most of the holidays. I worked during the day and chilled at night.”

“Can anyone verify that, Ronan?”

“Maybe my mom. She's always home. But she's sick, so she sleeps a lot.” It's lame, and he knows it. But it also has the ring of being reasonable if not true. He holds his breath. The two cops look him over, trying to give him the impression they're soul readers. But in the end all they do is thank him for his time—it doesn't sound remotely sincere—and go back to their car. Ronan keeps shoveling while they drive away. He's pretty sure they don't notice how badly his hands are shaking.

Eighteen

T
he church is packed, which comes as no surprise to Jordie. Practically the whole school is there. So is everyone who knows Derek's parents—and that's a lot of people. The Maughams have lived in town forever. Mrs. Maugham grew up here. Mr. Maugham came up here as the result of a bank transfer. He has risen steadily through the ranks and is now in charge of all of his bank's branches in the district. Everyone in business knows him. So do a lot of people who've had mortgages and loans approved by him over the years. And it goes without saying that a man in his business is active in the local service club and at a local church, that he sits on the boards of a number of non-profits and that he turns out for every pancake breakfast, every fundraiser, every children's sports tournament and every fall fair held in the town and/or environs. So, of course, everyone who has ever met him or done business with him or benefited from the donations handed out by his bank shows up at his son's funeral. Not that it's just a matter of being practical. People genuinely feel for him. What parent wouldn't? After all, isn't every parent's nightmare that they will outlive their children?

Mr. Maugham sits up front, tall and straight. If he cries, there are no signs of it later, when he follows the casket down the aisle. Mrs. Maugham is another matter. She weeps throughout the service. Mr. Maugham makes no attempt to quiet her. He puts his arm around her shoulder and leaves it there the whole time. His arm is still there when they walk down the aisle together behind the casket.

People file out of the church slowly, pausing in the vestibule to say a few words to the Maughams. A reception is being held in the church hall, but not everyone will stay for that, so those who must hurry back to their offices or classrooms take the opportunity to express their sympathy. Jordie joins the line. After all, she was Derek's girlfriend. But her courage wavers when, third from the front of the line, she catches Mrs. Maugham looking at her. Glaring at her, really, her tears dried now, her mouth set in a firm line. The person who was speaking to her moves on, and now Jordie is second in line. The person in front of her, a woman from the church, grasps Mrs. Maugham's hand and says how sorry she is and what a wonderful boy Derek was. Mrs. Maugham doesn't look at the woman. Her eyes are on Jordie.

Jordie tries to bear up. She tells herself that no matter what, she owes it to Derek to say a few kind words to his mother. So when the church woman moves on, Jordie steps forward. She tells Mrs. Maugham it was a nice service and that it's wonderful so many people showed up and that it must be a comfort to know so many people cared about Derek and miss him. Mrs. Maugham doesn't say anything, and where before she stared at Jordie, now she refuses to look at her, and for some reason this hurts Jordie worse than anything Mrs. Maugham could say. At least, that's what she thinks as she steps sideways to tell Mr. Maugham how sorry she is. Mr. Maugham grasps her hand. He thanks her for coming, and Jordie is grateful to him. Then, as she moves on, she hears Mrs. Maugham's voice. She is talking to another mourner: “None of this would have happened if the girl he was seeing, that Jordana Cross, hadn't taken it into her head to have a fight with him. That's what drove him out of her house that night. She admitted it to me herself.”

Jordie turns and looks at Mrs. Maugham and is shocked to see the woman looking triumphantly at her, as if daring her to protest. Mostly, Jordie wants to cry. But she doesn't. She doesn't say a word either—what use would it be? And what would people think if she got into an argument with Mrs. Maugham, the poor grieving mother of a poor murdered boy, right here at the church doors on the very day of the funeral while the coffin sits just there, waiting to be taken away and stored somewhere—Jordie doesn't want to think where—until the ground thaws and he can be buried in the cemetery where all of Mrs. Maugham's family has been buried for three generations, or is it four?

Jordie scurries outside and watches people leave, waiting for some of the kids from her class or for Carly, for anybody, really, to walk back to school with. Kids stream out. Not many have stopped and talked to the Maughams. Not many want to put themselves through that. Jordie knows what they're thinking because she's heard them say it out loud: What are you supposed to say? What if you say something that makes them more upset? What if you make them cry?

They come out in twos and threes, in clumps and bunches, and even though Jordie knows most of them, she doesn't join any of the groups. She's waiting, she realizes, for one specific person. That person never walks down the church steps. Only when Mr. and Mrs. Maugham come out, followed closely by the minister, and take the neatly shoveled path to the church hall does Jordie know for sure what she has been thinking all along: Ronan did not come to the funeral. She tells herself it's understandable—he didn't know Derek well, or, really, at all. He had no reason to like him. Why would he come? Still, it seems wrong.

Maybe that's why Jordie finds herself at the hardware store after school. Mr. Sorenson, the owner, greets her like a long-lost daughter. She used to stop by here all the time when she and Ronan were together. She went by almost every day in the summer, on her lunch break, and she and Ronan would eat their sandwiches together at the picnic table beside the parking lot.

“You stopped coming by all of a sudden,” Mr. Sorenson says now. “I asked Ronan about you a couple of times, but all he did was shrug. I had to find out from my daughter”—who is the same age as Jordie—“that you two split up.”

“Is he here?”

Mr. Sorenson shakes his head. “He works Thursday and Friday nights and all day Saturday during school.”

She thanks him and decides to go home. What would she say to Ronan anyway? But her feet somehow carry her far past her street and all the way to his. The first thing she sees when she turns the corner is police cars. Two are parked on the street. Two more have pulled into Ronan's driveway. As she walks up the street, staring at the squad cars, she sees that there are police officers at four different houses, talking to people at their front doors. One of the cops leaves a house two doors up from Ronan's but on the other side of the street. He walks directly to Ronan's house and goes inside without ringing the bell. He's back out again a moment later with Lieutenant Diehl. He is telling Diehl something. Then he points at the house he has just left. Diehl starts across the street. He goes directly to the house the cop pointed to, rings the bell and talks to the man who answers. He waves to the uniformed cop, who hurries to join Diehl. All three men talk. Then Diehl strides across the street and goes back into Ronan's house. A few minutes later, two more uniformed officers, who must have already been inside the house, come out. Ronan is between them. He is in handcuffs. The cops put him in a squad car and drive away. Diehl and Tritt come out a few minutes later. They get into an unmarked car and drive away. Jordie doesn't know what to think. She stands out in the street, all but oblivious to all the faces at all the windows, until the cold permeates her to the core. Only then does she head home.

» » »

There's nothing on the news that night. But it's on the morning show her mother has on in the kitchen while she cooks breakfast the next morning, and it's in the newspaper her father reads before he goes to work.

“They made an arrest in Derek's murder case,” Mrs. Cross says. Her face is a map of concern. “They're not saying who it is because the person is under eighteen.” She looks significantly at Jordie. “Do you think it's someone from your school?”

“How would I know that, Mom?” Jordie doesn't want to discuss this with her mother. She doesn't want to hear her mother's opinion of Ronan.

“How would you know what?” Carly, always annoyingly chipper in the morning, has bounced into the kitchen and snatched a piece of her father's buttered toast.

“I was just telling your sister that the police arrested someone for Derek's murder—a young person,” Mrs. Cross says.

Jordie shoots her sister a poisonous look. But Carly doesn't notice. She doesn't say anything about Ronan either. Instead, all she says is, “I guess the gossip mill will be working overtime at school today. Are you making more toast, Mom?”

Jordie eats some cereal and drinks some coffee as if this were an ordinary day. But her mind is racing and it takes all of her willpower not to dash out of the house and…and what? She wants to know what's going on with Ronan. She wants to know what the police know—are they 100 percent sure that he did it? Do they even have to be 100 percent sure? Beyond a reasonable doubt—isn't that the way juries are supposed to look at it? She wishes she'd paid more attention in her law course last year. She knows that probable cause is the big thing the police have to take into consideration. But what exactly is the difference between probable cause and reasonable doubt? Is she even remembering it right?

Say the police are sure Ronan is the killer. What have they based that on? What did that man across the street tell them? Who else talked to them about Ronan? And what about physical evidence? That's supposed to be the most important thing. That she does remember. People can be mistaken, or they can lie. But physical evidence is supposed to be objective.
DNA
is what it is. A fingerprint or a bloodstain or a tire track—they are what they are. So what's the physical evidence in Ronan's case?

Jesus. He's been arrested for murder. She can't believe it, even if it's one of the things she's been worrying about ever since she saw that button. But who can tell her what it's all about? Who can tell her what they have? The only person she can think of is Ronan, and what are the chances that she will even be allowed to see him? If he's been arrested, and if the charge is murder, then he'll be held until his trial date. She's pretty sure she has that right. And he won't be held in town. There are no youth facilities here. He'll be held a hundred miles away. She can maybe try to visit him, but she isn't sure how that works. She can't believe it. She can't believe any of it.