“The kids that aren't competing for the big colleges let the RP's take all the prizes. Don't need it. Don't want it. Don't care. You end up with a yearbook that shows the ‘same cadre of kids in all the pictures. Well, they are on the yearbook staff too. And the real go-getters, like Cass, go beyond school; they sign up to work for the ASPCA dog wash and make sure they're there for the photo shoot. Clean Up the Highway Day—she'll be there and she'll be in that picture when the paper comes out.
“Cass isn't as cold as all that sounds. She puts up a good front, but she's just a little girl with her britches hanging out. Oh, I see your face, Officer. Not like that. That's an old Southern expression, meaning she's showing things she doesn't know she shows.
“In our poetry unit Cass turned in interesting work. Here, let me read one for you:
I climb the sheer wall of my father's expectation
While his determination of the greatness that I'll achieve
Tells of the nothing he knows me now to be
The steepness attracts
Draws me
Though there is no soft place to fall,
Not to climb
Will leave me in the cold.
“I was never much good with poetry, but all that stuff about her father's ‘expectation,’ does that sound any alarms for you?
”
“Officer, your mind went to the gutter again. No, I don't think there is sexual abuse in that house. But Ted's love for Cass is conditional. Somewhere deep down, she knows that. It makes me sad for her. I know, sad for the poor little rich girl. How trite.
“Who do I think took her? That's unfathomable. Her father is wealthy, but not that wealthy. Let's hope the kidnappers think he is and she's alive.
”
“Good work, Roger. All that kind of knits together with the poetry book we found in the girl's nightstand.” He stared at the board. “The kid has issues with her father but I don't see it leading anywhere in this kidnap, do you?”
He surveyed the officers and then struck a line through Ted McBride's name.
“I saved you for the good stuff,” Ben said to the female officer.
“The friends,” she said. “All but the boyfriend and the best friend. Those two are waiting for you in the interview rooms.”
Her notebook was open but she didn't glance at it. “There's a crowd of girls that hang with her on a regular basis. All affluent parents. High-end homes and cars. Great clothes, uptown haircuts, rich-kid lifestyle. A couple have been busted for small-time possession. No bigs, and Daddy's lawyers smoothed it over. Not bad kids, really. No huge trust funds to keep them rich forever so they'll have to go to school to maintain their privileged lifestyle. Keeps ‘em honest.
“Guys are the same way. Pretty decent. When you get past the posturing, I got the same story. Cass doesn't see high school boys as anything but a staging area. Practice. If I'm reading her right, she dates the football captain during football season, the basketball star during that season.”
Tyrell whistled. “An athletic supporter.”
She sighed. “I have a gun and I
will
use it.”
He put up his hands in surrender.
“You know what I think it means?” the officer said.
Ben nodded. “She's a teenager.”
“That's how I see it.”
“Tyrell, go see the teachers and the principal about the Kirby kid. I don't like coincidence. And that's a big one. Then put the squeeze on forensics about the drug tests,” Ben said. He stared at the board. “We're running out of time.”
I pressed my palms against my ears. Trying to keep the sound out. But the sounds were
in
my head. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to think but the voice wouldn't go away. The voice over the phone. The voice in my ear the night I made the plan.
“She's tearing me apart, Kyle. Come home; it's not so bad when you're here.
”
“Just keep out of her way, David, you can…
”
“I can't. You know how she is.
”
“I know. I hear you and I know.” I paced the room, listening to David's ragged breathing in my ear. Pulled the cell phone away so I could think. It was barely October and this year was already worse than last. Mom was worse to David when I was away at school than when I was home
.
What could David do that…
I put the phone back to my ear. David was crying again. “David, stop crying and listen. I've got an idea. Maybe we can shut her up for good.
”
“It starts with her.”
“Her? What starts with her?” I asked.
“Pay fucking attention! You want to know about David? It starts with her. My mother. I guess a shrink would say it starts with her mother and then her mother and back until a woman in a cave clonked her daughter on the head with a club. Like I give a shit. That's ancient history.”
He stopped talking, but the static hissed and crackled. Kyle was in a rage.
“My mother was the blond cheerleader, Homecoming Queen, parasitic
bitch
that didn't intend to work for a living.”
Even knowing Kyle was a nutcase, that sudden lash of spite startled me. How could I outmaneuver a full-fledged, mother-hating psychopath?
“She was determined to nab the football star that was headed to medical school. He was scholarship material all the way, so there would be no putting a husband through med school. Not for her. Nope—spend a few years living the young college life and then coast in the rich lane with
DR. WIFE
vanity plates on a Jag.”
His radio popped off. I couldn't feel him walking. I guess he was standing still. Thinking? Deciding what to say next?
He needed a prompt.
“I'm guessing the football player/med student was your dad?”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“You're telling me that your mom married your dad just so she could be a doctor's wife? Not because she loved him?”
“That's what I'm telling you.”
I stayed quiet. I tried to move my legs. My knees were stiff and aching and I groaned as I eased them out a bit. “When I read about David in the newspaper, it didn't say your dad was a doctor.”
Kyle made a sound I think was supposed to pass for a laugh. It didn't come close. “He's not.
“I was Mom's snare to get Dad,” Kyle said. “She wasn't worried when he didn't want to get married right out of high school, but when he finished undergrad work and got into medical school, she saw the writing on the wall. She didn't like the story.”
Static. Something. Maybe a sigh.
“Mom took action. The wedding was rushed, but Mom was happy. She was happy with me. I was the key to the lock that kept Dad as her treasure chest.”
Kyle seemed to be waiting for a reaction.
“That sucks,” I said.
Slam! Slam! Slam!
The shovel again.
“Shut up!” Kyle shouted.
“You don't seem worried,” Ben said.
“Nothing to hide. Why would I worry?”
A young man lounged in the chair, seemingly unconcerned about being interviewed by the police. Arrogant and handsome, he bored Ben and crawled right up Scott's neck.
“You're dating a girl that's missing. You're not worried about her safety?” Ben said.
The kid sighed. “Nobody really dates Cass. She sort of allows you to take her places.”
Ben sat back, a signal for Scott to take over.
“I gotta tell you, that would spin me up a little. What do you mean, ‘allows you to take her places’?”
Derek Richards smiled. “It's not like that. She's pretty and she never dates anybody for a long time, so you know not to get, like, invested. But, she's fun and can be funny and it feels good to be seen with her. It's a win-win deal.”
Scott walked behind Derek. “We heard she can be kind of a backbiter.”
“Maybe. She might make fun of the nobodies and the dorks. But I've never heard her say anything mean about, you know,
us
.”
Scott made a gun out of his finger and thumb and mimed shooting Derek in the back of the head. “Never talked shit about the people that count, right?” He circled around to face the young man.
Derek smiled. “Right.”
Ben and Scott exchanged glances. The kid was a bonehead.
“So, you're telling me, you, nor anybody else that dated Cass, would want to put the grab on her?”
Derek smirked. “Put the grab? You're trying too hard. Give it up and just talk like an old guy. I can translate. No, I have no reason to kidnap Cass and I don't think anybody else that went out with her would either. It's not Cass's way to make enemies with boyfriends. She doesn't let you get that close, you know what I mean? She keeps it loose.”
Ben interrupted. “I think we get the picture. Did you know David Kirby?”
Derek put his palms up and out. “Whoa, the train jumped the tracks there. David Kirby? The kid that offed himself?”
Ben stared the kid down, long enough to send a message.
“Don't get all righteous on me. I didn't know him. I know his brother. By rep anyway. He's a year older and we didn't hang together. Until what's-his-name died, I didn't know Kyle Kirby
had
a brother.”
“So David Kirby was one of those people that didn't count,” Scott said.
“Hey, I'm, like, volunteering to talk to you, and you're going for attitude. I didn't know David Kirby. Kyle Kirby, I knew a little. He played baseball. He dated hot girls. But, you know, he was kind of like Cass. He was ‘seen’ with them. I don't remember him having a girlfriend. And he was weird about something else.”
“What was that?” Ben asked.
“Summers. The dude worked. Landscaping. Yard work. I mean, it kept him ripped, but…well, that meant he couldn't hang with all the guys. Kirby was a loner.”
“What do the ‘other’ guys do in the summer?” Scott asked.
“Sports camp. Work out at the gym. Hang. You know.”
Ben stood. “You can go.” He walked Derek past Scott, who glared the kid out the door.
“I'm trying too hard?” Scott said when Ben returned. “Talk like an old guy?”
Ben rubbed his chin, trying to hide his grin. “It happens to all of us.”
“What? What happens?” Scott demanded.
“We find out we're not cool.”
“I
am
cool. That kid was the product of poor toilet training. I am cool.”
“I stand corrected. Let's talk to the best friend.”
“I didn't come home much the first year I was in college. I managed to avoid Thanksgiving by going camping with an Eco Friends group, so it was Christmas before I saw David. Since that September he must have lost fifteen pounds, and he didn't have it to lose. He looked tired and listless and kept his head down and answered in monotones around Mom.”
I got him alone in our room. “What the hell is going on?
”
He started crying. “It's worse than ever. I could take it when you were here. Dad stays gone all the time and now she doesn't stop. She just keeps going off on me. For anything. For nothing. I can't think. I can't study. My grades are shit and that makes her mad. I have to come straight home from school and go to my room. No TV. She moved the computer downstairs and I can't use it unless she sits right behind me to make sure I'm doing school stuff. She comes in and out of my room to ‘check’ on me, but she stays there and tells me that I'm lazy, that I'm just like Dad, that I give up rather than stick with something, that I'm stupid. You've heard it all, just multiply by about a hundred.
”
David curled into fetal position.
“I'll do something,” I said. “I don't know what. But I'll take care of this.
”
“You can't,” he said. “Nobody can.
”
But I tried. Dad took off the day after Christmas; we didn't even ask what trip or where and even why he needed to sell drugs during the holidays. I cornered Mom with her morning coffee.
“Mom, you need to let up on David.
”
“David isn't your concern.
”
“He's my brother.
”
She raked her fingers through her hair, massaging her temples. “If I hadn't birthed him myself, I'd find it impossible to believe.
”
“That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about, Mom. You have to stop saying shit like that.
”
She glared at me, but I locked on to the glare with my own. Something flickered and her bottom lip softened slightly and she looked away, like she was bored.
“A semester of college and you think you know it all. You don't know crap.
”
“Then tell me. Tell me why you do this to him. And don't give me that BS about David ruining your life. He didn't do anything to you. The kid got born. That wasn't his fault. That was your fault. Yours and Dad's.
”
Mom pulled back as if I'd slapped her.
“You don't understand. You're still young and have it all in front of you. You read, you think, you make good grades, and you know what you want. David could do that too. But he's wasting it. He's just throwing it away. Like his father did. Just like I did. I can't stand seeing it.
”
“Mom—
”
“What happened to this family when life got tough? Your father caved. He just quit. And he's been quitting ever since. He's a loser and I can't leave him because I don't know how to make it on my own. I got to graduation with the best boyfriend but with C's and D's and no skills at all. It was more important to condition my hair and do my nails than homework. I worried more about how to cross my legs so my butt looked good than about what the teacher might be saying. My mother married well and all she taught me was how to do the same thing. Well, it turns out I didn't even
marry
well!
“David's just like your father. He won't stand up and fight. He has to toughen up. This world is going to walk all over him if he doesn't learn to get tough. He's a crybaby and he has to get over it. You're not helping him, Kyle. You think you're protecting him from me, and from the bullies at school, but you're just making him weak.
”
“Do you love David? Tell me the truth, Mom. Do you love David at all?
”