Fatality (2 page)

She could not eat the doughnuts after all. She pleated the bag between her fingers, spindling long wrinkly lines through the paper, until she had created a mountain range of crinkles on the doughnut bag.

She hoped it would be the police who picked her up and not her parents. She did not care about the police. She cared about her father and mother. The important thing was that they should never understand.

Indeed, they never were going to understand the theft of a car.

She knew kids whose parents didn’t let them take blame for anything, whose parents yelled and fought and hired lawyers when their kids did something wrong, insisting it wasn’t really wrong, or there were extenuating circumstances, or the witnesses had lied.

Rose’s parents were not of this variety.

They had not bailed her older brother, now in college, out of jail the night he and a carload of friends were stopped, driving drunk. Everybody else’s parents had. But the Lymonds, furious and ashamed, said a night in jail was just what Tabor deserved.

Rose did not want a night in jail.

She rather thought that stealing a police car meant several nights in jail. Possibly weeks or months.

I can handle it, she told herself. Stealing a police car means temporary punishment. Telling the truth is a life sentence.

A police car appeared down the road to her right, lights swirling but siren off. She held tightly to her bag of doughnut holes. She suddenly understood those real-life criminals in cop videos: losers who ran when they were surrounded, ran when they were wounded, ran when they were in a dead-end alley.

Rose Lymond wanted to run.

Instead she lifted her arm straight into the air and waved it once, like a flag on a pole, to catch their attention. I have the right to remain silent, Rose said to herself. I was silent four years ago. I’ve been silent this week. I can be silent now.

Bits of television played through her head, an electric storm of TV cop shows, men and women in blue, attack dogs and guns, officers’ adrenaline pumped so high that they gasped and heaved while the weapon in their hands somehow stayed steady. In voices too loud, charged with fear and fury, invariably they shouted,
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you.”

My only ally is a Supreme Court decision, thought Rose.

The police saw her, put on a turn signal, and came slowly into the Dunkin’ Donuts lot, the car pulling almost close enough to amputate her legs at the knees before it stopped. The cop had his phone up to his mouth.

No. It was a woman—young, tall, and tanned. Her name tag said Megan Moran. She looked at Rose in exasperation. “Your plan?” said Megan Moran acidly as she got out of her car and walked over. “Your hopes? Your expectations? Stealing a police car?”

A second police car appeared from the other direction, entering Burger King to pull up next to the idling vehicle Rose had abandoned.

“I just needed it for a minute,” Rose said. “I would have taken a different car if there’d been one with the keys in it.” This was not a good beginning for somebody who intended to remain silent.

The policewoman looked Rose over, opened the wrinkled white bag, found only holes, handed it back, and sat on the tabletop next to her. “You are one dumb kid,” she said.

They sat together while the afternoon sun warmed Rose’s face, and she tried to think silent, shrugging thoughts, but there was nothing to shrug about.

Two more police cars arrived. The policemen who had been in her living room were not among the ones who surrounded her now. They had lost their transportation. It was probably not a good thing to humiliate a policeman.

“Rose Lymond?” said one of them.

He was her parents’ age. Rose did not know why this surprised her. She nodded. His tag said Craig Gretzak. It was a sharp, edgy name, but the man seemed mild. “Must be quite an important diary,” he said next, not looking at her face but at her hand. Rose looked down, too, and saw with surprise that her hand was shaking so badly the bag was noisy, paper rustling and doughnut holes thudding softly against one another.

With difficulty she set the bag on the little white table and folded her arms across her chest.

“Where is the diary?” asked Megan Moran.

Rose said nothing. She reminded herself of her strategy, the one word a long thin repeating line
silencesilencesilencesilencesilence
until it became a hiss, a snake in her heart.

It occurred to her that the police had no idea what to do next.

They hadn’t known what to do back at her house, either. When Rose said, “I don’t remember, I wasn’t looking, I can’t think of anything,” the police were stymied. Rose had drifted away, heading for the kitchen, planning on a glass of lemonade. The month of May had started out surprisingly hot and they were drinking summer drinks already. Her mother was a pink lemonade person and her father a yellow. Rose liked to cut hers half and half with seltzer to make lemonade soda pop.

From the kitchen, she had heard her mother say, “You know what? Rose kept a diary that year. I’ll just run and get it. Perhaps there’s something in the diary that would jog Rose’s memory.” Her mother’s light feet raced up the stairs. Mom was never leisurely; she usually had a hundred things to do. She did them well and quickly.

Rose had pressed the lemonade glass against the automatic ice dispenser and watched as crushed ice fell into the pale yellow drink. She was astonished at the trespass. How could her mother even think of handing over somebody else’s diary, let alone without asking? She took a sip of sparkly lemonade before going out to stop her mother and then she choked, the lemonade suddenly thick, gagging slime.

She remembered what was in the diary.

Rose stumbled out of the kitchen, trying to call her mother, trying not to raise her voice, trying to save them quietly, there in the hall by the stairs, but Mom had already trotted back down and Rose in her panic spilled lemonade on the thick celery-green carpet. She looked down at it, already soaking in, and thought of paper towels, while her mother said, “Here it is,” and the policeman said, “Thanks.”

Rose went into the formal living room, lemonade sticky on her hand, and managed to provide two good arguments, although not the real one. “The diary is mine and it’s private. I’d like it back, please.”

She was shaking with horror. Her parents did not see this. They thought she was being rude and difficult. The cop’s eyes, however, grew bright and interested and he looked thoughtfully down at the diary Rose Lymond did not want him reading.

“Rose,” said her father, “you were a little girl when you scribbled in it, but this is not a little girl situation. They are reopening a murder case. You might have seen something you’ve forgotten. There might be a reference to it in your journal and they need that.”

The policeman went out to his car, tossing Rose’s diary in to make it irrevocably his.

“You can’t let them have it,” Rose said, frantic and trapped.

“Rose,” said her mother, “there’s probably some silly embarrassing seventh-grade gossip in those entries, but the point—”

“The point is it’s my diary!”

Her parents were not used to Rose arguing with them. They were affronted. “Rose, wait in the study,” said her mother stiffly, “while we settle this. I am not impressed with your childish behavior.”

Her mother. Accusing Rose of childish behavior.

As Rose left the living room, the policeman returned, and it was then Rose realized that the diary was not irrevocably in the possession of the police. She could repossess it.

And she had.

Now Rose became aware that her head was between her knees. She was sitting on a little white table looking down at the long, soiled laces of her oldest sneakers. The policewoman was saying, “Take a deep breath, Rose. Don’t faint on us. We’re going to give you a ride home. We’ll talk when we get there.”

She saw the shining shoes of police feet, bits of trash, sparkles of glass from a broken taillight. She took the deep breath. They were right. She must not faint. She had to be in control of what happened next.

Craig Gretzak escorted her, as if she were his date, or a convict, to his car.

Rose Lymond, age fifteen, honor student, field hockey star, soprano, camp counselor, and baby-sitter was placed in the back of a police car to look out windows that did not roll down, above doors that did not have handles.

T
HE OFFICER HAD JUST
put his car into gear when a woman lurched out of the laundromat “She stuck this in my car!” said the woman, waving Rose’s diary. The woman was scandalized, as if Rose had spray-painted obscenities on her old Lincoln. “She opened my door!” shouted the woman. “I knew she was up to no good.”

Megan Moran took the diary and thanked the angry woman for her vigilance and concern. It took a few minutes to coax her to go back in and do another load of laundry. Then Megan Moran leaned her elbows on the passenger side front window of Craig Gretzak’s car, open for the fresh flowery breeze of May. She leafed through the diary, every now and then glancing at Rose through the dividing grille. “So this isn’t the kind of diary with the little slots for each day, Rose. Or even one page for each day. This is a journal where you decide if the day is worth two sentences or two pages and you date the entries yourself.” The policewoman flipped through it slowly, reading phrases here and there. “Something written here is worth a criminal charge?” Go ahead, Megan Moran, thought Rose. Scour the pages that are left. None of what is left matters.

Although of course it all mattered.

How shocking seventh grade had been, after the sweet friendships of sixth. Seventh graders traveled in packs: cruel, exclusionary, and circling, like jackals. They closed for the kill on losers caught alone. She remembered writing about the very fat kid nobody would sit near, the rest of the class preferring to laugh out loud and point. In sixth grade Rose would have made the effort to be his friend. In seventh, she could not bring herself to overrule the majority. She had written about the cafeteria and the risk of sitting alone; how essential to line up lunch company before approaching the meal. She had written more about the parties to which she had not been invited than the parties she had attended.

She had written about a boy on whom she had a crush so deep it embarrassed her. Even then, she used a single initial instead of his name. About spending the night at Chrissie’s house, and being upset by Jill, who was also there, and jealous of Halsey, who at all times was more trendy, more knowledgeable, and more interesting than the rest of them.

It’s okay, she said to herself. All they have now is a little girl’s diary and all they can read are a little girl’s thoughts.

“‘Dear Diary,’” read Megan Moran in a pleasant voice, “‘today, June 28, is my twelfth birthday, and you are my present from Grandfather and Nannie Lymond.’ Are those your father’s parents, Rose?”

Actually they were her father’s grandparents. Grandfather had since died, at the age of eighty-four, but Nannie, now eighty-six, was still bounding around. She had just given up tennis last year.

Rose wondered what Nannie was going to have to say about the car theft. Perhaps nobody would tell her. And what about her grandparents, whom she still called Popsy and Mopsy? Dad would have to tell them because on Sunday, Popsy and Mopsy would bring Nannie along for dinner after church. Nannie had been a member of the same Bible class for sixty-one years. What would Nannie think of Rose? What would everybody say, gathered around the table with their suddenly juvenile delinquent granddaughter? Or would they say nothing?

Rose felt she could say nothing just fine.

“You made entries all the way up to November, Rose. And here I am, closing in on November 8, the murder date, and you’ve ripped out ten or twelve pages.” Megan Moran squinted, counting the shreds that were left in the binding. “You flush them down the toilet?”

Rose said nothing.

“And then no more entries. After the ripped-out pages, the rest of the diary is blank. So you didn’t write in the diary again after you witnessed the murder, huh, Rose?”

Rose closed her eyes for a while, the way she did at the movies during rough parts. Nannie adored action movies and when Rose spent the night, Nannie always chose a movie with high bloodshed levels so she and Rose could scream together.

I handled this so stupidly, she thought. I should have acted like the twelve-year-old who wrote “Dear Diary.” Bitten my lip and giggled and blushed. I should have said, “I wasn’t nice to other seventh graders and I don’t want you to see my mean little thoughts.” I should have said, “Really and truly, I’m just embarrassed about this silly old diary.” They would have believed me. I would have gotten away with it. But no, I had to make a scene.

“So, Rose,” said Craig Gretzak, “you never wrote in the diary again after the murder? You know what, Rose? I think we’ll go down to the station after all.”

He drove at a leisurely pace that required every other driver on Frontage Road to brake. Rose slumped in the back. It was the posture of defeat. No, she thought. I’m going to win. I have to win. I have secrets to keep.

She sat bolt upright, took in the scenery, and planned her silence.

At the police department, they did not take Rose into any jail-style rooms. The room they picked was quite pleasant, sun streaming through windows and bars to make a nice diamond pattern on the floor.

They waited for her parents and a lawyer to arrive. The lawyer would probably be Kate Bering, who lived down the road, and who had been setting out pink-and-white begonias in her garden when Rose had come home from school. While her kids were little, Kate had all but abandoned her practice and did only quick, basic stuff a few hours a week. She’d be delighted to be brought into something unusual, and what’s more, she’d hardly even yell at Rose. Kate liked gumption in a woman.

The officers chatted. “Rose, honey, if the diary is so bad,” said one man, “why did you still have it?”

This was an excellent question, and one to which she had no answer, so Rose said, “Please don’t call me ‘honey.’”