“Or reliving it?” She raised her hand before Nick could answer. “We found page after page of drawings of people bleeding and dying.” She riffled through them. “Dismemberments, torture, stabbings, and shootings. Sometimes captioned with the person begging or screaming.”
Nick drew scenes from movies or from graphic novels (although he was nowhere near as good as the real illustrators). Sure, sometimes his drawings grossed people out, but he didn’t mind. Not if it meant they were paying attention.
But this was definitely not the kind of attention he’d wanted.
He looked from one face to another. Harriman looked sad. Meeker looked angry. The lady cop regarded him with twisted lips and narrowed eyes. When his mom looked at him like that, it meant she thought he was lying.
“None of you are here to find out the truth. You guys all think that I did it.”
“It’s past that time,” Meeker snapped. “We know that you did it, Nick.” He stalked over to Nick and started to raise one hand.
Nick shrank in his seat, but Harriman yanked Meeker back by the arm. Then he turned to him as if nothing had happened. “So why don’t you tell us about it. Tell us what really happened. We’re just trying to understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand, because nothing happened. I rescued a little girl with Search and Rescue, I drove home, and I went to bed.”
Ignoring the other two, Nick stared right into Harriman’s shadowed eyes. “How can you even think this about me? You know me! You know what I do. Why would I volunteer with SAR to save people if I secretly wanted to be a killer?”
“I don’t know, Nick.” The detective sounded weary. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Nick gritted his teeth. “What? That doesn’t even make sense. How am I supposed to explain something that doesn’t make sense? If I killed her, then why did I help find evidence?” He sat back with a sense of satisfaction. Finally! Something they couldn’t refute.
Harriman didn’t seem rattled at all. “That’s the thing, Nick. When you showed up on Monday, you weren’t there to help, were you? That footprint you planted your hand on, that was no accident. Did you do even more than that? Did you spot something you had left behind and pocket it?”
CHAPTER 32
NICK
FRIDAY
NOT DEAD
“No! Of course I didn’t take anything at the search,” Nick told Harriman and the other two cops. “We’re shoulder-to-shoulder. How am I supposed to do that?” Something inside him dwindled. He could see how it looked. Who knew better than someone on the team how evidence searches worked?
“Nick!” The lady cop raised her eyebrows. “Don’t be lying to us, now.”
“I’m not! I’m not lying.”
She scooted her chair even closer and put her hand on his knee. “We know that you did it, Nick. We just want to know why.”
He stared at her hand. If he pushed it away, would she let him? What if she resisted? Would she take that as just one more piece of proof that he had done it? He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to ignore the light pressure of her fingers the way he was ignoring the continued buzzing of his cell phone.
“We know it’s hard to admit it, Nick, and we appreciate that.” Her voice was softer now. Every patient syllable made him want to punch her in the face. “We know what happened, but we don’t know why. And we’re trying to give you a chance to explain. If you’re sorry it happened, Nick, you can help fix this. If you explain, then we can understand.”
She leaned ever closer, even though there was no room for her. Nick shrank back, tried to make himself smaller.
“Did you come up behind her?” She was practically whispering in his ear. “Did she fall? Did she trip onto the knife? What happened, Nick? I don’t know.”
“I don’t, either. Because—” Because I didn’t do it, he started to say.
Meeker stepped forward and held his hand in front of Nick’s face like a traffic cop. “No! Stop! Don’t give us any bull. Tell us what really happened.”
“I’m telling you guys the truth. I don’t know what happened.”
“Nick.” The lady cop’s soft voice was full of disappointment. “Why can’t you accept responsibility for what you did?”
“Because I didn’t do it!” He lowered his voice. “And it’s horrible being accused of something I didn’t do.”
“We’re not accusing you of anything.” Her mouth twisted in disappointment. “We already know you did it.”
He took a deep breath, tried to calm himself. There was no way they could arrest him. There was nothing linking him to the girl who had died. Nothing. “I never touched that girl. I never even saw her. You should be out there looking for the real killer. Not someone who’s going into the army.”
“And what are soldiers, Nick, but killers. Killers with a reason.” She tilted her head. “Did you feel like you had a reason that night? Did she give you a reason?”
“Stop coddling him.” Meeker slammed his hand into his fist.
Nick shook his head. It was as if they all had scripts and they were going to stick to them no matter what he did.
“Did she turn on you?” she asked. “Did she not leave you any choice? Was she asking for it? Did you kill her because you were afraid?”
“It doesn’t matter what I say to you guys.” He ran his hands through his hair, his fingers snagging on a knotted curl. Everything had gone south so fast. He felt dizzy. “You don’t believe me. What’s the point?”
“Nick,” Harriman said. “I just want to help you. Just explain it to me. Did you do this with someone? Is that why there was a brick and a knife? Maybe they stabbed her and made you hit her, made you help hide her body. It’s okay, Nick. If you tell us who else was there, we can protect you. We can work something out with the judge if you help us out.”
“But I didn’t do it.” He was nearly whispering.
“Look, Nick. The evidence is too strong for anyone to deny.” The lady cop ticked it off on her fingers. “Lucy Hayes was killed in your neighborhood. You’ve already admitted that you were there, on that very street on that very night. You collect knives. And Lucy was killed with a knife.” Nick noticed it was “Lucy” now that she was no longer trying to pretend she was on his side. “We hear you like to play first-person shooter video games, extremely violent ones, ones where you can stab people for extra points! You draw women who are dying, people getting stabbed. Your teachers say you often draw during class when you should be doing work. They say”—she pulled a notebook from her jacket pocket and turned back a few pages—“that your drawings are frightening. And we had a therapist look at them. He said”—another pause—“that you were rehearsing the murder, as evidenced by your obsessive drawings.”
Harriman leaned forward. “And you were the first person from SAR at the search scene. You showed up to grill me about what we knew before the rest of them were even there.”
“Mitchell gave me permission to come separately. Ask him. He gave it.”
“I already did, Nick. And he says you asked for it.”
They had talked to SAR? Who had they talked to? What had they said? Did everyone at school and SAR know the cops thought he was guilty?
“There’s something else, Nick.” Harriman was speaking so slowly that Nick got the weird feeling he didn’t want to say what he was going to. Which meant Nick definitely didn’t want to hear it.
“We found male DNA on Lucy’s right hand. The hand without a mitten. She must have fought with the killer. We ran it through the national and state DNA databases, and there wasn’t a match. But Oregon does familial DNA database searches now. It looks to see whether a relative of a convicted offender might be a match.”
He paused, as if expecting a response. When Nick didn’t say anything, he continued, “Which is why we’re talking to you now, Nick. Because the DNA we found on her matched your dad’s. Obviously, he isn’t the person who killed Lucy Hayes. But someone who is a close male relative of his d
id.”
What the hell was Harriman talking about? He wasn’t making any sense.
“Of course my dad didn’t kill her. He’s dead.”
“Dead?” the lady cop echoed. “Your dad’s not dead, Nick!”
CHAPTER 33
NICK
FRIDAY
MIXED UP WITH SOMEONE ELSE
All the air was sucked from the room. He looked at the lady cop, at her smiling white teeth and flat eyes. Then at Harriman, at his crowded mouth and shadowed gaze.
Meeker grinned at him. “The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, did it, Nick?”
“What are you talking about?” He barely felt the renewed buzz of his phone in his pocket.
Meeker answered his question with a question. “You know what I’ve learned over the years? Bad blood runs in families, the same as anything else. I’m talking about a genetic predisposition to violence. Like father, like son.” He nodded to himself. “Athletic parents have athletic kids, artistic parents have artistic kids. And violent parents have violent kids.”
Why was he looking at Nick like that? “But my dad died in Iraq. He got a medal.”
Harriman’s face changed. His eyes widened and he started to open his mouth. But Meeker spoke before he could.
“Nick.” Meeker shook his head with exaggerated slowness, lifting one side of his mouth as if Nick had just told a not-very-funny joke. “I’m not talking about what happened over in Iraq. I’m talking about your dad beating someone to death with his bare fists in a bar. And Lucy—Lucy had just left a bar. Coincidence?”
Everything inside Nick went still. It was like the world had suddenly turned to black and white. Still recognizable, but not right. Not right at all.
“What are you talking about?”
“Twelve years ago your dad killed a guy in a bar in Northeast Portland. He said something just snapped. Is that what happened to you, Nick? Did you just snap?”
“You’re not making any sense. My dad was a soldier. In Iraq. You’ve got him mixed up with someone else.”
“Your father was a soldier. That’s true.” Harriman leaned closer, his sad eyes never leaving Nick’s face. “And a little over twelve years ago he was discharged. Two weeks after he came home, he killed a guy in a bar over what he admits was nothing. Didn’t even know the other guy’s name, but he still went ballistic. Left a woman a widow, two little kids without a father.”
Harriman could have been talking about Nick’s own family. But it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. “You’re wrong. You’re wrong! I’ve seen the medal my dad got. You must be talking about some other guy. Some other Don Walker. And he died over there. In the war. When I was four.”
“No. He went to prison when you were four. Is that what your mom told you? That he died in Iraq?” When Harriman spoke next, his voice was so soft he could have been talking to himself. “Maybe he did. To her. After all, what kind of mom wants her kids to grow up knowing they’re the sons of a murderer?”
Nick didn’t answer. He was incapable of answering. With one hand, he braced himself on the edge of the table.
“You’re saying my dad was a killer?”
“Not was, Nick. Is.” Harriman’s voice was oddly gentle. “He’s still alive. He’s in the penitentiary down in Salem.”
His dad was alive? The room spun. Nick felt boneless. He turned in his chair, leaned over, and rested his head against the cool, fake wood of the table.
His mom must know. Had to know. Known and chosen to lie to him. But what about Kyle? The thing was, he could totally see Kyle lying. But his mom? She had never lied to him.
As they watched him, the cops were silent, letting the poison seep deeper into Nick’s veins.
He had boasted about his dad. Daydreamed about him. Wanted to become him. Now they thought he had. Because the truth seemed to be that his real dad was the evil shadow of the man Nick had imagined.
“I don’t understand. You’re saying that my dad’s in jail.”
“Prison,” Harriman corrected, his voice still oddly gentle. “He’s in prison. Has been since you were four.”
“So how could you find his DNA on this girl?”
“We didn’t.”
The lady cop interrupted Harriman. “But we found the next best thing. A few months ago Oregon started doing familial DNA searching. If it can’t find a perfect match, it looks for people who share a big chunk of the perpetrator’s DNA profile. People who share DNA are usually related. One test the lab ran looked at a portion of just the Y chromosome, which only males have. In fact, it never changes as it goes down through the generations. A grandfather has the same Y-STR as a father as a son as a brother as an uncle. As long as they are all descended from the same male line.”
Harriman took a piece of paper from his jacket, unfolded it, and pushed it over. It was some kind of report. Nick’s eyes skimmed it. It was full of numbers and letters he didn’t understand.
RESULTS OF Y-STR DNA ANALYSIS:
In the DNA analysis detailed below, the following Y chromosome Short Tandem Repeat (Y-STR) loci were analyzed using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR): DYS456, DYS389I, DYS390, DYS389II, DYS458, DYS19, DYS385a/b, DYS393, DYS391, DYS439, DYS635, DYS392, Y GATA H4, DYS437, DYS438, and DYS448.
Y-STR examination is male-specific, as the Y chromosome is solely inherited by males. Regions of the Y chromosome are normally identical among paternal male relatives (e.g., parent-son, full brothers, grandchild-grandparent, etc.).
Y-STR STATISTICS:
The DNA haplotype obtained from the swabs (Items 1.6 and 34.1) is consistent with that of Eldon Walker (Item 8.1), and is found in 51 of 15,697 total individuals within the database. Applying a 95% confidence interval results in a frequency of 0.0041, which is equivalent to approximately 1 in every 244 individuals. This DNA haplotype would also be expected to be exhibited in all male paternal relatives of Eldon Walker.
“What does this have to do with anything?” Nick felt almost giddy as he focused on the last two words. “Who’s Eldon Walker?”
“Your father,” the lady cop answered impatiently.
“My dad’s name is Don. Not El—” Only as he said it did Nick realize Don must be a nickname. “Oh.” No wonder he had had trouble finding his dad when he googled him, eager for the stories his mother wouldn’t tell.
Harriman spoke into his sudden silence. “Your father doesn’t have any brothers, right?”
“What? No. Why?”
“And it’s just you and your brother. And your brother told us he was home in bed that night. That he goes to bed early so he can work the early shift at UPS. Your mother confirmed it.”
Nick thought of the empty bed, the kicked-back covers, and willed his face into a mask. He had to be careful. So careful.
Had Kyle done it? His stomach did a slow flip. How could he think that? This was his brother. Not a murderer.
Only that was what he would have said about his dad. That his dad wasn’t a murderer. That he was a hero.
And Kyle had always been such a good liar. Good enough you could start to doubt yourself.
He remembered how Kyle had suddenly bolted from the room when their mom started talking about the sirens. The sound of him retching. Maybe it hadn’t been the flu. Had he been remembering sinking the knife into that girl, still sickened by it?
Or had it been just the simple fear that he would be caught?
CHAPTER 34
RUBY
FRIDAY
A CALCULATED RISK
Ruby checked her phone. Again. But there were no new texts. It had been over two hours since Nick had texted her and Alexis that Detective Harriman was taking him downtown because he was a potential witness. Two hours since he last answered a text—and Nick lived on his phone.
Ruby already knew everything that Nick had seen Sunday night driving past the area where Lucy Hayes had been murdered: nothing.
So why would the police still be talking to Nick? Talking to him when he didn’t know anything?
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The only answer was that they must think he did know something.
Or, Ruby realized as time ticked past and Nick kept ignoring her, they must think he had done something.
Instead of going to class, she hid in the bathroom until the bell rang. Then she walked down the suddenly empty hall, past the office, and right out the front door. Ms. Peyton, the administrative vice principal, was just coming in as she was going out. Ruby took a deep breath and tried to think of a lie, but Ms. Peyton only nodded at her and walked on.
Ruby realized that everyone knew what kind of girl she was, so that was what they saw. The kind of girl who would never skip.
Did the police think they knew what kind of guy Nick was? Were there things about Nick that might make them think he was the one they were looking for?
Ruby ran down the list in her head. Nick had admitted to being in the right area at the right time. He routinely carried a knife. Judging by his doodles, he was fascinated by violence. And he was impulsive.
Ruby also knew that underneath the brazen, bragging Nick was another guy, one who was capable of unexpected kindness. Of acts of heroism even when it looked like all hope was lost. But the police wouldn’t know those things.
Then she remembered the evidence search and how he had accidentally put his hand down on the only footprint they had found. She was sure Nick’s dizziness had been no act. But the police wouldn’t know that. From their perspective, it might seem that he deliberately destroyed evidence.
Driving seven miles over the speed limit—a calculated risk—Ruby headed to the Fred Meyer on Barbur Boulevard, where Nick’s mom worked. She found her at register nine.
“Hey, Ruby, what are you doing here?” Mrs. Walker threw a smile over her shoulder. Her hands never stopped moving, sliding item after item past the scanner and then putting them in the customer’s heavy black nylon bag printed with a logo, not for Fred Meyer, but for Trader Joe’s. The dissonance threw Ruby for a second. Then she gathered her thoughts.