Slain (29 page)

As soon as I spot the newsstand, I stop. The headline on the front of the
Denver Post
reads:

MR. CLEAN NOT MURDERER

I fish out quarters and pull the paper out, scanning until I read:

While still in custody for the content on his computer, Rick Rassmussen, known as Mr. Clean, is not being charged for the murder of June Vogel that took place on April 19 at Summit Christian Fellowship. Further examination of Rassmussen’s computer revealed that he was in an online chat room, posing as a teen boy and chatting with an unknowing teen girl at the time of the murder.

I throw the paper in the trash. I don’t care what else it says. My life is right back where it was two days ago.
 

Then I see the pay phone, like a unicorn, a rare relic. I find more quarters. Dial.

“Meet me,” I say into the phone, barely able to keep the tears from escaping. My voice sounds odd, my throat tight from holding them back. “The Starbucks on the corner of Westlake Road and Sixth Avenue.”
 

“I’ll be there. What time? I’m out of school at 3:35.”

“Now. It’s important.” A sob escapes. I’m too weak to keep it in any longer.

“On my way.”

I walk to the coffee shop and wait for him in a booth near the back. The place is as crowded as I expected. There are people at almost every table—moms with small children, men on laptops, some women in suits passing around papers with colored pie charts. The din of steaming espresso and clattering spoons and people’s voices as they chatter comforts me.

It takes him less than twenty minutes. He wades through the line at the door, finds me, and sits. I got my crying done before I arrived, but my eyes are puffy and telling all my secrets.

“What happened? Are you okay?”

“Someone found the video,” I say. “Someone e-mailed it to everyone I know.”

His face darkens. “Oh, Jesus.” He leans his head into his hands.

“You said you deleted it.”

“I was going to.”

I can feel the breath rising in my lungs, getting hot and fast. “You were going to? When, exactly? Before my parents saw it or after?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Okay. That makes me feel so much better.”
 

The din around us has grown quieter. People turn to stare. I take a moment to get my voice under control, make an effort to speak quietly. By the time I’m ready, people’s attention has shifted back to what they were doing before.
 

“Do you know what this has done to me? To my family? I’m going to get expelled. No question. My parents might even get fired.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, his throat bobbing as he chokes the words out. “I’m so sorry.”
 

“Did you show it to anybody else, Jackson? E-mail it to anyone?”

He leans in, his eyes fierce. “Jesus Christ. No, Emma. Do you think I’m the kind of person who would do something like that?”

“I didn’t think you were the kind of person to break a promise to me either.”

“How was I supposed to know something like this would happen?”

“I told you to delete it specifically because something like this could happen. I would have never done anything like that if I thought for a second you would hold on to it.”

“I didn’t twist your arm. You’re not exactly a pushover, Emma. You wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t want to.”

“Excuse me?”

He looks away, shakes his head. “Nothing. I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s not about what we did,” I say, even though it’s not
not
about what we did either. It was so stupid of me. “It’s about what you promised.”

He doesn’t say anything. He knows how bad he messed up. But I say it anyway. Not for him. For me. If I keep these words inside they’ll kill me.

“You lied to me. Twice. You broke a promise.”

“I’m sorry, Emma. Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

I stand up, not trusting myself around him right now. I want to forget this ever happened. I want to go back to the way things were a month ago, me in his arms. But can I after this? It’s a lot to forgive.

“I have to go.”

He grabs my hand. “I love you, Emma. I love you so much. Just tell me what to do. I’ll do anything.”

“I don’t know if you can fix this,” I say, and pull my hand from him as I walk away.

“Fuck,” I hear him say behind my back, the sound of his fist hitting the table sending a shockwave of silence through the restaurant. “Fuck, fuck. fuck.”

I won’t say that I cried all the way home, because what’s the point? Of course I did.

“W
HAT
IS
GOING
ON
with you?” my mother asks, in almost a shout. “I don’t understand anything you do anymore.”
 

After I left Jackson, I spent a couple hours walking around to calm myself down. I knew my parents would be upset, really upset. I knew they would have heard all about the video, if they hadn’t already seen it with their own eyes. I knew what I’d be coming home to.
 

We’re in the family room. My dad is in his wingback chair. He hasn’t said a word to me in an hour. I have a feeling he’d like to go back to when I was five, and my disobediences could be solved by a good, hard spanking.

My mom starts up again. “I don’t get it, Emma. I really don’t. You go from a straight-A student to acting out at church. Lying to us about everything. Ditching school. Promiscuity with juvenile delinquents. And now this video too?” Her voice crumbles. “I don’t even know who my own daughter is anymore.”

“It was a mistake. A big one. But I’m exactly the same person I was a week ago,” I say.

“No. You’re not,” she says. She sits down on the couch, looking exhausted and empty. “I’m at my wit’s end. There’s nothing else I can do to punish you that we haven’t done already. Do I have to go to every class with you? Stand by your side every moment? Is that what I have to do?”

“No,” I say.

My dad stands up, his face red and angry. “I think you’ve got a very big shock ahead of you if you think your mother and I are just going to tolerate this kind of behavior.”

“What do you have to say for yourself?” my mom asks, but I stay quite. What can I say? “Say something, Emma.”

“I don’t know.”

“Emma, please,” my mother says. “Just tell me why. Was it something we did? Something you read? Something you saw? What was it?”

The truth? None of that. What kind of reason can I give them that they’ll understand? Jackson was right. I wanted to do it. I didn’t think anything bad would happen, and I wanted to do it. I liked the idea of him having this little piece of me, something private to look at when I was gone.
 

“Oh, please, Gloria,” my dad says. “She’s had every possible opportunity. Every possible privilege. At some point she has to take responsibility for her own choices.”

My mom turns away from me, stares out the window into the dark backyard.

“Your mother and I have some serious thinking to do.”

They go upstairs. I go to my room.

I’ve already cried so much today that I have no tears left. I try to sleep instead, but my mind is spinning. The thing I haven’t even had the time to really think about today is…who? Who e-mailed that video?
 

It came from Jackson’s phone. But whoever sent it was clearly from the church. They knew exactly who to send it to. Which means the killer either hacked into my e-mail account, or knew the same people I did.

That’s if it was the killer at all. People at church have been up in arms about all the stuff that’s been going on lately with Mr. Rassmussen. Could someone else have gotten that video? Could Jackson have shown someone and lied to me?

Which brings me to Jackson. My heart screams that it wasn’t him, but I can’t logically ignore the possibility that he was involved anymore. He had the opportunity to do it when he went to the bathroom. It would have been hard to pull off, but not impossible. It was getting a text from his phone that lured me out that night the car tried to run me down, and his phone that had the video on it. Could Detective Boyer have been right? Could Jackson have been lying about someone breaking into his car?

There’s also his record. He pulled a gun on someone before, actually pulled a gun on someone. And lied to me about it. But why kill June? And why frame me? Do I really believe that what we shared together was all an act? No. I don’t. But I can’t tell anymore if I can trust my own judgment where Jackson is concerned.

Maybe I should start from the beginning, review what I know.
 

I pull up the article on June’s dad again. Lee, with his conspiracies that his gang betrayed him in exchange for a deal from the police, only all of the possible conspirators locked up just like him. Locked up or dead. It’s probably not even worth it to think about him anymore. But there’s nothing else I can do from my bedroom tonight, so it’s worth a try. There has to be something somewhere, something I’m missing.

Lee Stuckey, the last of the notorious Milk Gang, has been sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of Cassidy Surleaf and her baby boy, Cody Surleaf. The Surleafs were caught in the crossfire between a bank employee and the gang during the robbery of the Lafayette Credit Union last May 28. Forensic evidence later showed that the fatal bullets were shot from Stuckey's gun.
 

While the $200,000 they stole has yet to be recovered, all the members of the Milk Gang—Sara Jo Ford, Buddy Trent, Jay Peterson, Christina Bromegat, and Stuckey—were apprehended just four days later, on the morning of June 1. All have been formally charged and have begun serving out their sentences.
 

While the rest of the Milk Gang each accepted plea bargains for shorter sentences, Stuckey demanded a jury trial. It proved to be a mistake for Stuckey, who was convicted on two counts of murder, as well as armed robbery and possession of an unregistered weapon. Stuckey now has no option for parole.
 

The husband of Mrs. Surleaf and father of young Cody, Jason Surleaf, said nothing can ever replace the loss of a wife and child, but added, “I’m glad today that justice was finally served. I pray that Mr. Stuckey comes to find the error of his ways.”

 
I wonder what it was like for June to grow up with her dad in prison. I do the math. The article was written ten years ago. June would have been only six years old, which makes me even sicker on her behalf to know what her father did to her before he went away. Something jogs my memory, and I pull it up just to be sure. June’s testimony is still up on our youth group website. I press play, and there she is again, so alive, blinking against the bright stage lights.

“My sixth birthday party was at Six Flags. My birthday is on June first in case you want to buy me a present. It’s easy to remember because it’s my name too.”

I scroll forward to something else.

Her voice rings out over the crowd, “Once I sat down the best thing happened! My dad sat down right next to me!”

If her dad was arrested on the morning of her sixth birthday, then how could he have been with her at Six Flags? Did they celebrate her birthday on a different day? Or did June just make that whole story up? I wouldn’t doubt it. She had her head in the clouds about everything, like she was stuck being a little kid in her mind.

But why? The answer comes to me fast and simple. Because everyone else does. She wouldn’t have been the first to feel pressure to have a good testimony, true or not. But wasn’t June broken enough without it?

I sigh and push away from the computer. This is getting me nowhere.

Thinking of June’s testimony brings my thoughts around to Pastor Pete. Chuck said he was there the whole time, but the whole thing about that pink piggy still isn’t sitting right with me.

Then I remember the files on my dad’s desk, the ones he’s been reviewing ever since they discovered the background check problem. I wonder if they’re still there. Maybe Pastor Pete’s file is with the others.

I sneak downstairs, past the door to my parents’ bedroom, which is already dark and silent, and into my dad’s study. Sure enough, the files are still there. I shuffle through the boxes until I find Pastor Pete’s.

The first thing I see is his resume. It shows he graduated from Bethany in 2009, just five years ago like I thought. There are mission trips and volunteer organizations listed, but they all appear to be while he was in school.

There’s some tax filing paperwork and a copy of a letter, signed by my dad, offering him the position as youth pastor. There’s a copy of his driver’s license and Social Security card. He was born in January of 1981, which makes him thirty-three, the same age Jesus was supposed to be when he died.

I do the math. It’s never occurred to me before, but he didn’t go to college until 2005? When he was twenty-four? I guess it’s not unheard of to begin school so late, but most people start when they’re eighteen, right after high school. Pastor Pete has never talked about it. Once again, not a big cause for suspicion, but why
not
talk about it?

I flip over to the last page in the file—the background check. He has a few credit cards, all of which he got while in college, and all of which are paid on time. No student loans, though, which means he either had a scholarship or parents who could pay. Bethany is expensive. Twenty-five thousand a year just for tuition, not to mention dorms and books. But there’s no mention of his family or relatives. And there’s no criminal activity listed, not even a single parking ticket.

I’m chasing wild geese here.

I go back up to bed. It’s late, and I’m tired.

A
GAIN
THIS
WEEKEND
, I’
M
on lockdown. No driving, no leaving the house, no calling anyone. The last part is the easiest to live with. Who do I have to call?

On Sunday morning, my parents drag me to church like always. The moment I walk through the door I know it’s going to be a tough day.

Word about the video has spread through Summit like chicken pox in kindergarten. Mothers tug their children away from me. Men chastise me with their glares—
You should be ashamed of yourself, showing your face!
Others look away, whisper to their neighbors: “
I heard the girl stole her boyfriend. That nice Nicolas boy. That’s why she did it.”
A handful stare at me with compassion, shake my dad’s hand, put an arm around my mom—
God will help you through this
. No one says a single word to me. Yesterday I was their princess; today I’m their worst nightmare.