That Night (41 page)

I held up my hand. “Give me a minute.” The tears were running hard, and I wiped them on my sleeve, fighting the brutal images twisting through my mind.

Suzanne said, “Maybe I shouldn’t—”

“No.” I shook my head. “I have to know. Keep going.”

Cathy and Kim refused to hit Nicole, but once she was dead they helped take off her clothes and drag her body to the water. Kim, hysterical by this point, wanted to go to the police, but Shauna said she’d be arrested as an accomplice. They all snuck back to Shauna’s, thinking that they could shower there, that her dad would be working late and no one would ever know. After the trial, Kim fled town and hoped to never come back, but then Shauna tracked her down and told her she had to return to help “clean things up.”

Rachel had confessed as well, saying Shauna had delivered the worst of the blows. Rachel had only hit Nicole in the body, never in the head, and she’d been terrified of Shauna. She was also charged with Nicole’s murder.

When the police searched Shauna’s home they found Nicole’s necklace in her jewelry box, with some trace evidence still on it. It made perfect, terrible sense that Shauna hadn’t been able to part with the gift, a symbol of her father’s betrayal and a trophy of her destruction of Nicole.

After Shauna was confronted with the evidence and the testimony of the other girls, she turned on her father. She hadn’t realized that he’d started fooling around with Nicole until later that July, when he begged off from an annual family camping trip, sending Shauna alone with her uncle and aunt. A week later she came home early and discovered her father in bed with Nicole. They’d fought and he swore he’d break it off, but that wasn’t enough for Shauna.

“What happened to Nicole’s clothes?” I said. “The tire iron?”

“They were in the trunk of the car—along with the girls’ bloody clothes. Shauna was supposed to get rid of them, but when McKinney came home in the morning, after the other girls had left, he noticed some sand on the car tires.”

“He realized they’d been at the lake?”

Suzanne nodded. “He confronted her, and she told him everything.” I could well imagine that fight, Shauna trying to hurt her father with all the vicious details of how she’d killed Nicole. “He dumped the tire iron into the ocean, burned the clothes, cleaned up the car, and they never spoke about it again until Shauna called him, saying that Cathy was starting to talk about that night.”

“Did Shauna kill her?”

“Looks like it was Frank McKinney. They found hair and DNA samples on some of his clothes. That might not have been enough, but a witness saw a man matching his description down at the pier the night she was killed.”

I remembered how Frank had defended sending us to jail.
You two would have ended up there eventually
.… Was that how he justified killing Cathy? She was just a drug addict? I wondered if Cathy had trusted him at the end or just needed the money for drugs so bad she threw caution to the wind. I sat back in my chair, thinking of Nicole, Cathy, Ryan, of all the ruined lives since that night, of all the ways Shauna’s hatred and jealousy had destroyed so many people over the years.

Suzanne said, “A lot to take in, I know.”

“You’re not kidding.” My mouth was parched, my head pounding. I grabbed one of the cans of Coke, opened it, and took a long swallow. When I was finished I put it down and looked at Suzanne across the table, remembering how tough she’d always been on me and wondering what was going on with her now. Was it guilt?

“Why are you really here, Suzanne?”

She looked around at the other inmates and their visitors, then back at me.

“Lots of my parolees over the years have claimed they’re innocent.…” I held my breath, waiting. “You’re the first one I believed.”

I was glad she’d said it but still angry that I’d been caught up in a system where it didn’t matter what Suzanne believed, the law had decided I was guilty and she had to make sure I followed the rules. But there was something else, something she wasn’t saying—I could see it in the way she was looking at me, like she was waiting for me to connect the dots. I thought of all the times she urged me to stay away from Ryan, reminded me over and over.

“Did you know Ryan and I were meeting each other?”

“Of course not. I would’ve suspended your parole immediately.” Her face was serious, but she held my gaze a minute too long.

She pointed to my half-eaten chocolate bar.

“Are you going to finish that? Men don’t like skinny chicks.”

I smiled at her.

*   *   *

A week later, Angus told me Ryan had recovered enough to be sent back to Rockland. This time I sent a letter and we began to write. We were hesitant at first, reserved in our writings, but slowly we began to open up, getting to know each other again as we shared our daily lives on the inside. He talked a little about things he wanted in the future, like a better job and his own place, but he didn’t really say much about a future with
me
, like he wasn’t sure how I felt about that yet and was waiting until we were released.

I thought about my own life a lot, whether I wanted to stay in Campbell River—with Ryan, I hoped—or go somewhere else and start fresh, especially now that there was so much media attention to our case. But I still had unfinished business in Campbell River. The story wasn’t over yet. Not for me, anyway.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

C
AMPBELL
R
IVER

O
CTOBER
2013

Three months later, our cases were overturned and our records expunged. There were a lot of media waiting outside the prison for me, but I refused to answer any of their questions and pushed my way through. Stephanie came to pick me up, with Captain. Turns out she’d decided to foster him after my parole was suspended the first time.

“I had a feeling you would come back and I didn’t want anyone else to have him,” she said.

Captain was ecstatic, jumping over the seat to greet me, his tail whacking both of us, his tongue trying to wash every part of my face. I laughed, then cried into his fur.

We drove to the campsite. The media hadn’t found out yet where I was going to be staying. When I’d been arrested the second time and sent back to Rockland, I’d called Stephanie. She’d gone to the campsite and collected my stuff from the manager. Then, when I found out I was going to be released, she paid him to keep his mouth shut. When I tried to thank her, she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll make you work it off.”

A few days later, I took a walk on the beach with Captain, noticing all the fall leaves that now covered the ground, breathing in the crisp air. When I got back, Ashley was waiting on the front porch.

She looked good, with her hair dyed a more natural dark brown. She was still wearing all black but she’d removed the Goth jewelry and only had a silver chain around her neck.

“Hey, how are you doing?” I said as I stepped onto the porch.

“I’ve been better.”

“I bet.” I sat on the chair across from her and unclipped Captain. He made his way over to her, nudging her legs. She scratched his ears for a minute.

“It’s hard, kind of feels like I lost my mom and my grandpa, like they’re dead or something.”

I nodded, understanding, thinking about my own parents.

“It’s like I don’t even know who they are. My grandpa, it’s weird hearing everything that happened, what he did. I really loved him, you know?”

“Lots of people have two sides. Maybe everything just got out of hand for him and he didn’t know how to stop things once they went that direction. He lost control.” I’d thought about that a lot in prison, trying to correlate the Frank McKinney from my youth with the man who’d slept with my sister and helped cover up her murder, then killed Cathy to keep her from talking. I knew how important his career had been and how much he loved his daughter, but I was still shocked at how far he’d gone to protect everything.

“I guess.” She was quiet for a minute, then said, “In some ways, I understand my mom more now. Like why she married my dad so young, why my grandpa seemed kind of distant with her, why she was always so jealous if he spent time with me.”

“They had a complicated relationship, lots of resentment.”

Ashley nodded. “My dad and I are trying to work things out, or at least we’re talking about stuff more. I missed the first semester of school.… He doesn’t want me to stick around here, listening to all the gossip, so he’s sending me to a private school in January. It has a really strong arts program.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.” She glanced in the direction of Aiden’s trailer. “And I broke up with Aiden. I think my mom was right about him.”

I thought of Margaret. “Sometimes moms are.”

She looked back at me, fiddled with Captain’s collar, straightening it for him. “What about you and Ryan? Do you think you’ll get back together?”

I looked down at the leash in my hand. “A lot happened when we were inside. Prison changes people. It’s hard to get back to who you were before.”

The night after we were released, Ryan’s mother had thrown a party in our honor. It was the first time Ryan and I had seen each other for months and we tried to talk outside in private, but we kept getting interrupted. The moments we were alone felt strange, awkward somehow, like now that we were free to be around each other we didn’t know how to act or what to say. His mother pulled him away to talk to some people, and I left the party early. I hadn’t heard from him since and I wondered if it was too late for us now. We had changed too much.

“But he’s the only other person who sees it the same, right? Who went through almost the exact same thing? I think he still loves you.”

“There’s a lot that has to get sorted out.”

She scratched Captain’s ears, her face reflective. After a couple of beats she said, “I understand now why you didn’t want to do a documentary. It’s real, what you went through. Film can’t capture that.”

I thought about her video, how it might have saved my life. Then I thought about all my friends on the inside who had no voice, no one speaking for them. Some major news shows had offered big money for an interview, but I’d turned them all down. This felt different, though, talking to Ashley. She was different.

“No, but we can try if you want.”

“That would be great.” It was the first time I’d seen her smile since I’d found her sitting on my doorstep.

*   *   *

The next morning I woke up thinking about my visit with Ashley. Her mentioning her relationship with her mom and dad got me thinking about my own parents. My dad had written when I was back in Rockland, asking if he could visit and offering financial support for my lawyer. But there was no apology, from him or my mother, and I’d felt my old anger rearing up. Why hadn’t they believed me all those years? Why hadn’t he mentioned my mother? I told him I didn’t need help and that I’d get in touch after I was released, but I hadn’t done it. I’d seen his company sign at a house being built in a nearby subdivision, and that morning I finally decided to stop and see him. I wanted to look in his eyes and know that he believed I was innocent—that he’d been wrong about me.

When I pulled up at the site, I spotted him near his work truck, some building plans spread out on the hood. He was studying them intently and didn’t hear me walking up to him.

“Hey, Dad,” I said when I was close.

He spun around, his expression startled. He reached out a hand, holding it out in the air, his face filling with an odd sort of wonder. Like he couldn’t believe I was standing there. “Toni … I…” His voice caught and his eyes filled with tears. “It’s so good to see you.”

I’d wanted to be hard, wanted to tell him how shitty they had made me feel, how he had let me down, but now I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t speak a word, my heart pounding and my throat thick. Then he was standing in front of me. I tried to back up, to push him away, but his arms were around me, his body shaking as he kept repeating, “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

And then I was crying in my father’s arms.

*   *   *

When we finally pulled apart, we leaned on his truck and talked for a while, about where I was living now, my plans for the future. Then, tired of small talk, I cut to the chase.

“I told you I didn’t do it, Dad. Why couldn’t you believe me?”

“I wanted to, Toni, I really did.” He explained that he never thought I was guilty until the trial, then the evidence had been so compelling he didn’t know what to think. He told himself if I did it, it was the drugs and the booze, I couldn’t have known what I was doing. In a hesitant voice, he said he and Mom had struggled a lot about me and had almost divorced a few years after the murder.

We were still talking when another vehicle pulled up on the other side of Dad’s truck. Dad looked nervous, his gaze flicking from me to the car, like he didn’t know what to do. Then my mom got out. She was walking over to us, carrying a bag from Tim Hortons and balancing a tray of coffees. When she looked up and saw me standing beside Dad, she stopped still, her eyes wide.

“Hi, Mom.” I held my breath. Would she hug me like Dad? Or would she reject me again?

“What are you doing here?” she said. I couldn’t read her tone, wasn’t sure how she felt about seeing me like this, but she looked upset, almost apprehensive.

Dad said, “Toni came by to say hi.”

Mom set the bag and tray of coffees down on the hood of the truck, glancing around to see if any of the workers were watching.

Thinking that she might be expecting an angry confrontation, I said, “It’s good to see you. I’ve missed you.”

Now she was staring at her feet, shaking her head back and forth. Was she crying?

“I want you to know that I’m not angry—not anymore,” I said. “I can understand how things looked, how much trouble I caused you as a teen. It hurt, a lot, but I’d like us to start over if we can. Maybe spend some time together—”

My mom finally looked up. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t sad. She was furious.

“I don’t care what the courts said.
You
took her there,
you
left her alone.” Now there were tears, but they weren’t for me—they were for Nicole, always for Nicole. Her breath was ragged and she was sucking at the air, her grief and rage making her body shake.