“Please stop.” I’d rather not think about my former best friend’s dead boobs.
Staake smiles. “Anyhow, all that there diary book says to me is that you’ve got a lot of crossing out to do—that’s your job, isn’t it? If I were a parent and could read that penmanship, well, I sure wouldn’t want to know my daughter’d had an affair with Uncle Jimmy, no ma’am. Not at all. Any more hullabaloo about Ruth Fried’s shenanigans is just going to hurt her family. My mission’s the exact opposite. I’m ready to put this thing to rest.” He raises his eyebrows and nods at me. “Go ahead, Bushman, use that marker.”
I look down at the Sharpie near my foot and can almost hear Mrs. Fried’s dry lips cracking in my ear as she begged me to redact the sex parts. “Okay,” I mumble, leaning off my chair to snatch it. I open the diary to one of the dog-eared pages. It’s the one I read last night—the one where Ruth describes how Uncle Jimmy said he wanted to mount and stuff her. I uncap the Sharpie, but hesitate. “Don’t you want to talk to him, though?” I bite my lip. “At the very least—”
“Listen, I understand you might be after the age difference with this one, but your friend was eighteen, she could make her own decisions, wanton or not.” Staake clasps his hands against his belly, reclining deeper into his swivel chair. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Wanton? Also, how hard is it to at least go talk to Uncle Jimmy? Maybe Davey was right. I mean, even if Staake isn’t exactly officially mentally handicapped, he’s simply not putting all the pieces together. “But you should check all the facts.” I recap the marker and place it on his desk. ”Diane Sawyer’s just a journalist, and she has to fact-check, and meanwhile you’re a sheriff running a murder investigation.”
“Now I don’t like your tone—and who the hell is Diane?” Staake scowls. “You come in here and I offer you root beer like a reasonable person, and you try to poop on my parade.”
“Sorry,” I blurt. It just slips out. You’re not supposed to fight with anyone in Friendship, least of all a police officer. “Also I think the phrase is ‘rain on your parade,’ not—”
“Listen here, Bushman—”
“No, you listen—wait, sorry—” There’s no sense in getting on his bad side. I found this thing online where Diane Sawyer said you should never alienate your sources. “It’s just . . . can I ask you one more question?” She also said that you can never really know the whole story, but facts will paint a pretty good picture, and your sources point you toward those facts.
“Well, unfortunately I have nothing better to do.” Staake looks at his watch. “Shoot.”
“Um.” I didn’t actually have a question ready. But now that I know Sheriff Staake is kind of stubborn and simple, I feel like I can’t go home until I ask enough stuff to find out if he’s maybe truly cutting corners like Davey said he was.
“Spit it out, Bushman.”
“Um.” I think of the view from my window, all that razed corn, the whole field empty except for the willow tree where Ruth was hanged like a buck from a basketball hoop. “Sheriff Staake, why did you cut down all the corn? I mean, I know it said in the paper that it was for evidence—but where is it? I mean, did you dust it or . . .” I’m hoping it’s all in a warehouse somewhere, with scientists going through it stalk by stalk, looking for bits of hair or clothing. I’d like to be able to go home and feel like our house is safe even though it hasn’t got a moat around it—or even an alarm system, come to think about it. “I was just wondering.”
“For chrissake, Bushman”—Staake gives me an exasperated look—“you can’t get a fingerprint off a cornstalk. We cut it down so we could see better.”
“You mean you just threw it all away?” My mouth feels dry.
“No.” He shakes his head and rolls his eyes like I’m stupid. “We sold it.”
They don’t want the diary and they sell the corn without even looking at it first? How much other evidence are they sneering at? “But that’s totally illogical.”
Staake laughs through his nose, sliding his feet off his desk. “You know, I’m sick and tired of people telling me that.” He walks over to me and turns my chair around so I’m facing the window. “Bushman, I want you to take a good look.” He gestures to the cars parked on Main Street. “This is my town. It might be a boring place, but it’s my game and my rules, and I plan to keep it nice and boring. Nice and safe.” He pats my back. “Now are we about done here?”
I can’t think of any more questions except maybe asking if he ever graduated from high school, which might get me thrown in a jail cell. “I guess so.”
“Okeydokey, then.” He leads me to the door and hands me a business card with a smiley face on it. “That there’s my private number. I don’t give it out to everybody, but sometimes the girls think of something after we’ve already chatted and don’t have time to come back for a sit-down, don’tcha know.”
“Thank you.” At least he’s taking me seriously enough to give me his direct line. I pull out my phone and enter him into my contacts.
Staake smacks his forehead like he’s forgotten something. “Totally slipped my mind—I bet you want to go and see the boy now, don’tcha?”
“Who?”
“Why Colt Widdacombe—the monster himself. Some of the girls have been eager to scream at him—blow off some steam and so forth.” He pats me on the head. “I figure it’s therapeutic—especially for you, given that he murdered your best buddy, don’tcha know.”
“Is that even ethical?” I hug my backpack to my chest. “I mean, what does Colt’s lawyer say?” I think of Davey, sitting on his stoop with all that Beast, saying how the sheriff has a personal vendetta. Why else would Staake be urging me and all the other girls coming in to go and torture Colt?
“I’m giving you the opportunity.” Staake frowns. “Now do you want to talk to him or not?”
The cell where they’ve got Colt isn’t private at all; it’s a barred-off portion of the courthouse employee snack room, which seems pretty merciless. Cops come in here on their breaks and probably taunt Colt over bags of Doritos. All day, he’s got to stare at vending machines he can’t reach.
Colt is doing push-ups when I walk in. “Hi,” I say, just loud enough so he can hear me over his own counting. I expected to see him with a five o’clock shadow grown salty with tears. But when he glances up at me, he’s the same old Colt. Hot as hell and looking somewhere between bored and pissed off.
“What is it?” He climbs to his feet and saunters over, bending his arms casually through the bars. Outside you can hear the protesters chanting his name. He shakes his hair out of his eyes. “You bring me a sandwich or something?”
“Ugh, you’re so cocky.”
“Quit being such a stuck-up virgin.” He blows me a kiss and I roll my eyes, because I know he’s making fun of me. I remember once I told Ruth that Colt wasn’t the most kind or intelligent specimen, and she told me that was fine because he thought I was an icy-vaginaed prude.
“Yo.” He reaches through the bars and tries to flick me in the arm. “Seriously though, could you get me something from the vending machine? Please? I’m starving and my parents aren’t bringing me dinner for another hour.”
I roll my eyes. I guess I sort of expected to stand here and know in my bones that he was a psychopath. But this is pretty typical banter for Colt and me and as far as I can tell he’s just the same old asslord. I scan the vending machine for prices—and despite wanting to hate him I find myself rooting around in my backpack, searching for change. “Sorry but I’ve only got enough for the breath mints.”