That Night (31 page)

“We’ve seen worse,” he said.

“Yeah.” I didn’t want to think about that, what he may have gone through, didn’t want to talk about prison. “Where’s your truck?”

“Down on the back road, hidden in the bushes. I hiked in. I got some work on one of the tugboats with an old buddy of my dad’s. He also has a sailboat down in the marina and he heard you got evicted.”

“So what did you want to talk about?” I said.

“You smell like the ocean.”

That caught me off guard. A warm heat spread through my stomach. I flushed, angry at my reaction. “That’s what you came here to tell me?”

Our eyes met again. This time he looked away, saying, “I’m sorry about you losing your job and everything.”

“I didn’t lose everything. Not yet.” I glanced at Captain, who was staring out the window, his ears twitching at a sound here and there, bunnies and mice scurrying in the night. I turned back to Ryan.

“I’m pretty sure Shauna set it up. She’s pissed that her daughter is crushing on me.” I told him what had been going on, about the confrontation with Shauna, how she’d warned me to stay away from him.

“I’m positive it was those bitches who killed Nicole,” he said. I was caught by the deep anger in his voice, the hatred in his eyes. I felt the same way, but it concerned me, the rage barely contained. What would it take for him to explode? He took a deep breath, like he was trying to calm himself.

“They found Cathy today. She’s dead.”

“Shit.” I sat up straight, thoughts crashing into each other. I glanced at the door, half expecting the cops to break it down and start screaming orders at us.

“Yeah, that guy who works on the tugs with me, he was down at the pier when they brought up her body and he overheard the cops talking. They said it was a known drug user, Cathy Schaeffer.”

“Did she OD?”

“Don’t know yet, but it sounds like they had a lot of cops down there. My gut tells me it was murder and we’re going to be hearing about it.”

“There has to be a lot of people she’s pissed off.” I could hear the panic in my voice.

“Probably, but we’re the only ones with a murder conviction.”

He was right. We were screwed. I sat back in my chair, the hard edges digging into my calves and thighs.
I’m not going back. No way. I can’t go back.

“Even before this, Hicks has been following me everywhere,” Ryan said. “The fucker even walked in when I was taking a leak at the gas station. He asked if I liked hanging out in men’s rooms, said he sure hoped so because I was going back to prison soon. He’s been pushing me, trying to get me to snap.”

“Why does he care?”

“He’s never liked me. He hated my dad too. And I tell you, Toni, I wasn’t scared of him before, but I am now. I’ve got a bad feeling we’re going back in.”

I had a bad feeling too. “I made an enemy at the halfway house—she’s got friends on the inside, and they’ll be waiting for me.” I told him about Helen.

He was quiet, thinking, his face worried. He fingered a scar on his arm, the ridges still red like it was fresh.

“That’s fucked up. Will you be all right? Do you have friends inside too?”

“I’ve got some girls. But you know all it takes is someone to get you alone for a minute.”

“If Suzanne suspends us, she might keep us in for the full thirty. We could be in for even longer if she doesn’t cancel it. You’ll have to watch your back every second.” Ryan was right. Suzanne had the authority to suspend us for thirty days while the police investigated, and if she still thought we were a risk, she could refer us to the Parole Board for a post-suspension hearing. That could take another ninety days.

“What about you?” I said. “Will you be okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” But he fingered the scar again, and I wondered if he also had enemies inside. For a second it was like we were kids again and he was showing me another bruise or cut that his dad had given him. I almost reached out to touch the scar, then curled my hand under the table, digging my fingers into my leg.

Ryan said, “The cops are going to tell you stuff about me, trying to turn us against each other like they did the first time.” We’d never spoken about our interviews, the lies the cops had told, but obviously they’d tried to screw with his head as well. It made me feel good, knowing that neither of us had thrown the other to the wolves. We’d stayed loyal. “It looks bad that I was talking to Cathy, but I didn’t hurt her. I wanted her alive.”

“I know.” And I did—though I couldn’t stop thinking about the anger in his face, the rage, how prison changes a person. How it changed me.

“I want to clear our names,” he said. “It’s not enough that we’re out. I want to be free, no bullshit parole conditions.” He paused, looking at my face. He was gauging my reaction, testing me. “I want it how it used to be.”

The words hung in the air, an invisible cord that pulled me closer. I caught my breath. I knew what he really meant. I felt myself on the edge, wanted to give over to it, wanted to get up and walk around the table and sit in his lap like when we were kids. But something held me back. Fear held me back.

“A lot’s changed over the years, Ryan. We grew up.”

“Haven’t you heard?” A bitter smile. “No one grows up in prison.”

I had heard that. I’d heard it a lot, but it wasn’t true for me. I felt like I’d aged a thousand years. My skin weighed me down. I imagined it sliding onto the table, puddling on the floor, wanted to climb back into it like a sleeping bag.

Ryan’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. “What if we
could
go back in time?”

“If we could go back in time I never would’ve gone to the lake that night. If we hadn’t taken Nicole, she’d still be alive.” It was the hard, painful truth that I lived with every damn day and that beat in me like another heart.

Ryan nodded and sighed, his shoulders slumping as he sat back in his chair. After a moment, he said, “I’ve been talking to some people we went to school with and found someone else who was at the lake that night, at that party we saw down below. Her name’s Allison—she was a year younger than us. She said she told the cops back then that she saw a white car like Shauna’s tear out of there that night, just after eleven. I asked which cop and she said it was Hicks. He told her she wasn’t a reliable witness because she was drunk. Then he kept asking her stuff until she said she wasn’t sure what she saw.”

I remembered the girls’ testimony at the trial, how they said they’d been at the lake earlier, saw me fighting with Nicole around ten, not long after we got there, then they left before ten-thirty. The police figured Nicole had been murdered around eleven. So if Allison saw a white car later, that backed up the girls being involved.

Ryan was still talking. “I figure because Shauna’s dad’s a cop, they didn’t even consider that she and her friends could’ve been involved.”

If the girls had been hunting for me, or saw Ryan’s truck and decided to screw with us but mistook Nicole for me in the dark … We did look alike. Or maybe something had happened between all of them during those final weeks of summer. I had a flash of an image, the white car slowing down outside the house a few days before Nicole was killed. She’d said Shauna was away. Was that a lie?

“She’s willing to give another statement, but it’s not enough,” Ryan said. “Hicks was right—if she was drinking, she’s not a reliable witness. They’ll just say she got the time wrong.” He thumped his fist on the table. “I’ve got to find someone else willing to talk before Shauna kills any other witnesses.”

Or we got sent back to prison.

“Maybe we should talk to Suzanne about getting a transfer out of Campbell River,” I said. “We shouldn’t have come back here.”

“I’m not going anywhere. This is no kind of life, being on parole. We still don’t have any freedom. I want to clear my name, I want my mom to be able to hold her head up high in this town, and I want Shauna to feel the pressure. If she did it, she’s never going to feel safe as long as we’re on the outside.” He looked at me steadily. “It doesn’t matter where we move. We’re a threat as long as we’re alive—especially now that she knows we’re not just going to go away quietly.”

He was right. We might be out of prison but we’d never be truly free unless we were cleared. I’d never be able to look into my parents’ eyes and see they finally believed I didn’t do this terrible thing to my sister.

“So what’s your plan?” I said.

“I’m going to keep talking to people, see what I can stir up. Something’s going to break, but it might just take some time.” He looked up and around, like he was sensing danger in the air. “I should go, just in case anybody’s watching.”

“I’ll go out the front with Captain, like I’m taking him for a pee. The back bedroom window’s open.”

I thought about all the nights Ryan and I had climbed out of windows to see each other. I knew he was thinking about that too because he gave me a rueful smile and said, “We thought we had it so hard, hey?”

This time the memories overtook me, and I reached out and touched his hand, then rested my palm on top of his for a moment, feeling his warmth, the substance. I thought about how many nights I’d lie awake in my cell, holding my own hand, imagining it was his. He flinched, stared down at our hands, his face a mixture of wonder and fear and sorrow. The moment built in my throat, until it scared me. I took my hand away and stood up. “I better get Captain outside.”

He nodded and got up. I put on Captain’s leash while Ryan moved toward the back of the cabin. At the last second he turned around.

“If we get questioned and our parole is suspended, stay alive, okay? Because when we get out again—and we will—we’re going to kick some ass.”

I tried to smile, but I couldn’t help thinking that this could be the last time I’d ever see him. I remembered a similar moment, all those years ago when I was being led away from him after the trial, how it felt like something was being ripped out of my body. He saw it in my eyes, my doubt and fear, and closed his own eyes for a moment, blocking it out, like he couldn’t bear to face that pain either. He turned quickly and climbed out the window, not looking back this time.

I took Captain out the front, thinking of Ryan making his way through the dark woods, then I thought about Cathy and breathed in the night air, wondering how much longer I’d be out. How much longer I’d be alive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

C
AMPBELL
R
IVER

J
UNE
2013

The next morning the police called. They had some questions and wanted me to come into the station that afternoon. I had a suspicion that shit was going down and made a difficult call to my dad. I tried his cell first, but he didn’t answer, so I had to phone the house. My mother answered.

“Hi, it’s Toni. Can I talk to Dad, please?” She was quiet so long I worried that she might hang up on me. I held my breath, waiting for the click.

“Just a minute.” Sounds of a phone being passed. Urgent, angry whispers.

My dad finally got on the phone. “Toni? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, for now. I lost my job. There was a theft—but I didn’t do it.” There was no sense covering it up. If they hadn’t already heard the rumors, they would eventually. Dad was silent and I wondered if he was remembering when I was a teen, how we’d broken into the neighbors’, the stolen bottle of Percocet.

I said, “Someone is setting me up, and they might try to cause me more trouble. I just … I just want you to know that whatever you hear, it’s not true. When I was a kid, I didn’t give you any reason to trust me, but I’m not a bad person, Dad. I’m trying to do everything right.…” I was surprised to feel tears running down my face. I brushed them away. Captain watched me from the bed, his head on his paws, his brown eyes sad and worried.

“I know you’re trying to turn your life around,” Dad said. But his voice was quiet, muffled, like he was trying not to be overheard.

I pushed past the hurt. I had to focus on the goal. “If my parole gets suspended, can you take my dog? It would just be until I got out again.”

“I’m sure we can—” I heard Mom say something in the background. Dad answered, but it was muted, like he was covering part of the phone. More arguing.

Mom got back on the line. “I’m sorry, but we have a cat now. Your dog is going to have to go somewhere else. We can’t take him.”

“You mean you won’t.” I hated the bitter tone in my voice, the disappointment.

She didn’t answer.

“Thanks.” I hung up the phone.

*   *   *

Later, I called Stephanie at the shelter and told her there was a chance I might lose my parole even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had to stop a couple of times to fight back tears, feeling ashamed, wondering if she’d also heard about the theft at the restaurant, and struggling with an overwhelming sadness that I might have to let Captain go. Thankfully, Stephanie didn’t ask any questions.

“He can live at the shelter until we find a home,” she said, “but he’d have to go up for adoption.”

I didn’t want him living at the shelter, or with anyone else, but it was the best I could hope for. “Thanks, Stephanie.”

I climbed into bed, pulled Captain’s head against my chest, trying not to think of him back in that cage, how I’d promised to take care of him forever.

*   *   *

At the station, they took me into the same interview room that they questioned me in after Nicole died. I flashed back to waiting huddled under a blanket, terrified, and wondered now if their choosing this room was deliberate. Sure enough, here came Doug Hicks walking into the room. He’d aged, had to be in his early forties by now, but was in good shape. His white-blond hair and pale eyelashes still creeped me out, and he still looked like a man who thought knocking some heads together was fun times and scaring the hell out of teenagers was just part of the job. When his ice-blue eyes met mine, I felt instant fear and dread. I could already see he’d made up his mind. He hadn’t believed me then and he wasn’t going to believe me now.

He pulled the chair close, leaned on the table. “It seems we have a problem, Toni. I’m hoping you can answer a few questions so we can eliminate you as a suspect, but you’re free to go at any time, okay?”