“Doing what?”
“Pardon?”
“You don’t look like a salesperson. Are you campaigning for some sort of office?”
“I’d like to talk to you about your daughter, Kelli.”
“What about her?”
“May I come in?”
“You expect me to just let you into my house? Are you kidding me? Who are you?”
“Dani Ripper.”
She frowns while studying me.
“Your name sounds familiar,” she says. “You look familiar. Where do I know you from? Carson Collegiate?”
“No. I’m a private investigator.”
“Why would a private investigator be asking about my daughter?”
“It’s about the sleepover Kelli had Saturday night.”
“What about it?”
“After you went to bed, the girls swiped a fifth of vodka and drank it.”
“Obviously, this is a joke.” She looks around, then peers over my shoulder, as if expecting to find a camera crew.
“Just after midnight, two cars full of boys came over. Kelli let them in.”
“Is this your idea of a joke? Because this is ridiculous! Kelli’s an honor student. She simply wouldn’t do that.”
I hand her my card and say, “Talk to her about it. Then give me a call.”
“Why should I?”
“Because something happened here that night, whether you want to believe it or not.”
Her eyes narrow with anger. “I was here the entire evening, and remained here until each girl was safely picked up by her parent on Sunday. I don’t appreciate your insinuations about my daughter, or my parenting skills. What I would appreciate is for you to get off my property, immediately!”
“Talk to Kelli,” I say. “Then call me.”
Wednesday.
I follow Ethan’s Mercedes as he drives his girlfriend, from place to place.
It’s tough having a girlfriend sometimes, isn’t it, Ethan? Cramps your style, I bet. Well, don’t worry. I doubt she’ll be around much longer.
Eventually, he makes his way to her house, walks her to the door, kisses her. It might have been a tender moment had he not grabbed her ass when she turned to enter the house.
Now I’m following him as he turns on Radcliff, now Wyatt, and onto the interstate. I pull up beside his car and honk my horn. He looks at me, does a double take, smiles, waves. I lower the passenger window and yell, “Follow me!”
“I’m on it!” he shouts.
Again, he’s a boy, he’s seventeen…you get it, right?
I pull in front of his car, take the Westport exit to Spring Valley Mall. He follows me into the parking lot. When he parks, I climb out of my car and get into his.
“You’re Dani Ripper,” he says. “The Little Girl Who Got Away.”
“And you’re Ethan Clark.”
“You know me? How, through my father?”
“Nope.”
He smiles. “You want to meet him?”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
We sit quietly a minute. Then he says, “If you know how many hours I’ve spent trying to find naked pictures of you on the internet.”
“Why?”
“Are you kidding me?”
He looks at my chest.
“I’m up here,” I say.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just, I thought you’d have bigger boobs.”
“Behave, or I’ll tell Melanie.”
“You know Melanie?”
“I know a lot about you, Ethan.”
He shows me his best cheesy smile and says, “Like what?”
“Well, for one thing, I know you drive your car past midnight with a provisional license.”
He grins, holds his wrists toward me and says, “Guilty as charged. Arrest me.”
“You’re safe. For today.”
I look at his hands. “You can put them down now.
He does.
I say, “Have you been cuffed before?”
“No, of course not.”
“You sure about that?”
He gives me an odd look. “I’m a nice guy. Ask anyone.”
He fakes a sympathetic expression, as if to imply I hurt his feelings. Then says, “Why would you ask me that?”
“It’s no big deal. Probably just a coincidence.”
I can see he’s curious, so I add, “You extended your hands with your palms open, inches apart, thumbs up.”
“So?”
“It’s the correct way. But ask a hundred civilians to make the ‘handcuff me’ gesture, and they do it the way they see it on TV.”
“Which way is that?”
“They make their hands into fists, thumbs to the side, and way too far apart.”
He smiles. “What else do TV cops do wrong?”
“Don’t get me started!”
“Seriously.”
I shrug. “On TV they always lean the suspects over a car or against a building, or fence.”
“So?”
“The suspect’s best chance to make his move is while the officer’s preparing to put the cuffs in place.”
“Why’s that?”
“There’s an art to cuffing a suspect. On TV, they slap the cuffs on in a fraction of a second. In real life, it’s a process. It’s hard to secure a suspect with one hand, while retrieving and putting cuffs on with the other. If you lean the suspect against a solid surface, he can use it to push off, and throw you off-balance.”
“What’s the proper way?” he asks, obviously amused.
“In real life you want to keep the suspect off-balance. I want him on the ground, on his stomach, hands behind his back so I can press my knee into his back to maintain control. But if I have to cuff him upright, I make him spread his legs far apart—”
“Wait! I’ll handcuff you!”
“—Let’s ask Melanie what she thinks.”
“I was just kidding. Tell me the rest.”
“When the suspect’s legs are spread wide apart, I have him raise one hand and put the other one behind his back. That makes it harder for him to get leverage.”
“And if he tries to make a move just before you cuff him?”
“I can kick him in the nuts.”
“Ouch!” he says.
“Exactly.”
I’ll keep all this in mind,” he says, “if I ever break the law.”
“If you ever get caught, you mean.”
“Anything else you want to tell me about handcuffs?” he asks, slyly.
“They can cause tissue and nerve damage if they’re not applied properly. Older ones are easier to escape from than new ones. And you typically only cuff three types of people from the front. One? Pregnant women. Two? Suspects with medical conditions…”
“And the third?”
I look him in the eyes. “Juveniles.”
“Ah,” he says.
“Ah, indeed.”
He pauses a moment, then says, “I probably knew about the handcuffing because my dad’s an attorney. A very high-powered one.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He smirks. “What else have you heard?”
“I heard you were in Kelli Underhill’s home Saturday night.”
He’s caught off guard, but recovers nicely. “Who told you that?”
“It’s all over school.”
“What do you mean?”
“The party.”
“What party?”
“You, Ronnie, eight other boys. Kelli let you in just before midnight. You went down to the basement to hang out. Sometime after midnight you, and possibly Ronnie, snuck away from the others and went upstairs, to Kelli’s bedroom.”
He stares at me. Wants to hear me out, but wants to deny it, too. “Whoever told you that is full of shit.”
“You weren’t at Kelli’s Saturday night?”
He says nothing for twenty seconds, during which I can practically see the wheels turning in his head while he t
hinks it over. According to Riley, there were ten boys there, and five girls. Too many people. He knows he can’t deny it.
“Yeah, I went to Kelli’s. Like you said, a bunch of us did. But I don’t know anything about Kelli’s bedroom. Why would I go upstairs? The party was in the basement.”
“Maybe you wanted to molest the underage girl who passed out on the bed.”
The look on his face speaks volumes. So does his sudden flash of temper.
“Get out!” he yells. “I’m calling my dad.”
As he grabs his cell phone, I hand him my card, open the passenger door, and say, “Give your dad a message for me, okay?”
He glares at me. “Gladly, bitch.”
“Tell him I said strawberry.”
I slam the door shut.
He jumps out the driver’s side. “Wait!”
I turn around, note the genuine fear in his face.
“What do you want, Dani?”
“Justice.”
“How much do you know?”
“Enough to talk to the cops.”
We stare at each other a moment. Then, to my complete surprise, his face breaks out in a wide grin.
“Why so happy, Ethan? Looking forward to jail time?”
“I’m a juvenile, Dani. And good luck proving anyone was molested, or that I was anywhere near Kelli’s bedroom that night. If you had anything substantial, I’d be talking to the police right now, instead of you. Which tells me you’ve got nothing. What do I have? A house full of witnesses who will testify I was in the basement the entire time.”
I want to give him a smart-ass reply, but my phone rings. I click off the recorder app, check the caller ID.
It’s Rick Hooper.
“See you in court, Ethan.”
“Until then, Sugar Tits,” he says, grinning.
I get in my car, accept the call. “What’s up, Rick?”
“Are you at your computer?”
“No. Why?”
“A friend just forwarded me a photo of Riley Freeman.”
“Can you describe it?”
“She’s lying on a bed, sleeping.”
“Could she be passed out?”
“You know she is.”
“Is she dressed?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Just a guy. He’s not involved.”
“Can you send it to me? My email’s on my business card.”
“My friend says there are a dozen more pictures floating around.”
“Can you get him to send them to me?”
“He doesn’t have them. Like I said, he’s not involved. He just got the one, and sent it to me. But he heard there are more, and I believe him.”
“Did he hear what type of pictures they were?”
“The bad kind.”
I sigh. “It’s time to tell me about the conversation you heard at school on Monday.”
“Why?”
“Because the cops will be all over this by tomorrow.”
He pauses a minute. Then says, “Okay. When?”
“Right now.”
“I only heard a small part of the conversation,” Rick says.
“Just tell me what you know for certain.”
“I heard a guy talking on his cell phone behind me at lunch.”
“What guy?”
“Nathan Cain. I’m not sure who he was talking to.”
“But you heard Nathan’s part of the conversation clearly?”
“I’ve got this move where I put ear buds in my ears so people think I’m listening to music? But in reality there are holes in the ear buds, and I can hear everything people are saying around me!”
That is so pathetic I don’t know how to respond. Then it dawns on me he wants me to agree it’s a cool move. Before I can form the words, he says, “Nathan was telling the guy about how he and a bunch of guys went to Kelli Underhill’s house Saturday night.”
“Go on.”
“He said while everyone else was drinking in the basement, Ethan and Ronnie scouted the house and found Riley Freeman passed out in the upstairs bedroom.”
“What else did he say?”
“He said they climbed in the bed with her, to take a picture, as a joke, and before they knew it, she was all over them.”
He pauses.
I frown. “Did he say anything else?”
“He said she was totally out of it. Said she kept telling them she loved them, and wanted to have a threesome. He said she took off her clothes, then passed out again. Ethan and Ronnie didn’t say anything about it at the party, but later, in the car, they told everyone she had a sticker on her…um…”
“Private area?”
“Yeah. A strawberry. So that was going to be her new nickname.”
“That story’s bullshit, Rick.”
“Are you going to tell the police?”
“Not yet. I need more evidence of a crime.”
I think a minute, then say, “Rick?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you home right now?”
“Uh huh.”
“Can I come over?”
“Hell yeah!”
“Give me your address.”
He does.
I call Dillon. When he answers, I say, “I need you to meet me at Rick Hooper’s house.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
“Is this for the case you took that pays us nothing?”
“Yeah. But it’s going to be high-profile.”
I give him Rick’s address, and tell him to meet me there in fifteen minutes.
“What should I bring?”
“A bunch of equipment.”
“What kind?”
“How should I know? You’re the expert.”
I hear him munching something that requires an inordinate amount of chewing before he finally swallows. When at last he speaks, his voice drips with condescension.
“Dani,” he says, “I’m going to attempt to explain this in a way that makes sense to you.”
“Thank you, Dillon.”
“Would you use your hairbrush to clip your toenails?”
I take a deep breath. “No, Dillon, I would not.”
“If you and Sophie are going out tonight, and you need a little extra padding in your bra, would you expect her to hand you a curling iron?”
I sigh. “No, Dillon, I wouldn’t. And while we’re at it, I wouldn’t put my lipstick on with a rolling pin, though if I had a rolling pin I might be inclined to shove it up your skinny, pimpled ass right now. What’s your point?”
“The equipment I bring depends on the job you need me to do.”
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
“What do you need me to do?”
I tell him about the email Rick received from his friend.
“What about it?” he says.
“I want you to get on Rick’s computer and track where it came from.”
“Just have him forward it to me. I can backtrack the origin from my own computer.”
“Aha!”
“Aha? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m about to give you a revelation.”
“This should be interesting.”
“The problem with tracking it from your computer, you won’t be able to check Rick’s computer to see if he’s already stored some additional photos of Riley on it.”
“You think he has?”
“No, but it can’t hurt to check.”
“Fine. In that case I’ll bring nothing with me.”
“Why not?”
“All I need is Rick’s computer.”
“Fine. I’ll see you there.”
“Fine.”
For some reason I find myself wanting to say “Fine!” again. But I resist the urge. I’m a professional, after all.
As I end the call, another one comes in. I don’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
&nbs
p; “Ms. Ripper, this is Allen Roemer, Lydia Underhill’s attorney.”
“How can I help you?”
“By answering a simple question.”
“Shoot.”
“Is this whole thing some sort of joke?”
“What whole thing?”
“Your so-called investigation.”
“It’s not a formal investigation, but I’d love to speak to the Underhills. Can you arrange that?”
“No. But I can arrange a critical meeting with you at my office tomorrow morning.”
“Why?”
“My clients are considering pressing charges.”
“Against Ethan Clark?”
“No. You.”
“Will Lydia be there?”
“Assuredly.”
“Great! What time?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Can we meet at the Underhill’s?”
“No chance in hell.”
“Will Mr. Underhill be there?”
“I’ve invited all the Underhills.”
“Kelli too?”
“Yes. But I’m not sure she can make it. It’s a school day, after all.”
That’s him, reminding me she’s a minor. I didn’t get a chance to give Ethan a smart-ass reply earlier, so I’d like to make one now, to the Underhill’s attorney.
But why bother?
After all, by setting up a meeting at his office with his clients, Mr. Roemer’s playing right into my hands.
When Rick opens the door and sees Dillon standing beside me, his face drops.
It drops even further when he hears I want Dillon to access his computer.
“My parents aren’t here,” he says.
“In that case, there’s no one to interrupt us,” I say.
Dillon sits at Rick’s desk, makes a derogatory remark about the archaic keyboard, then starts clicking keys. Watching Dillon at work is like watching a master. Within seconds, his fingers are a blur. Ramsey Lewis couldn’t do better work with a keyboard.
It takes him two minutes to find out the “friend” who forwarded Riley’s photo is Nathan Cain, the guy Rick supposedly overheard in the lunch room.
“I can explain,” Rick says.
“Let’s talk in the hall,” I say, knowing Dillon can work more effectively if Rick isn’t looking over his shoulder.
He glances nervously at Dillon, who takes the cue and gets up from Rick’s computer, crosses the room, sits on the side of Rick’s bed, as if planning to wait there till we return.
I secretly press a button on the cell phone in my jeans pocket while escorting Rick out of the room. Then raise it an inch out of my pocket so the speaker can pick up our conversation. This way Dillon can hear everything Rick and I say, and Rick won’t hear Dillon typing on his keyboard.