“Oh my Gah.” She wipes her cheeks and tries to edge by me. “Just leave me alone for Gah’s sake.”
“Libby, I need to talk to you.”
She rips her arm away with surprising force. “I’ve got work to do, Katie.”
“Well me too!” I yell after her. “And by the way it’s Kippy—my name is Kippy Bushman!” When she doesn’t turn around, I get out my phone. It’s easier to be confrontational via text.
To: Libby Q. (Mobile):
I said my name is Kippy Bushman and also I know about u+colt . . . what’s the RFFB rly 4, neway? Covering ur tail? From, KIPPY BUSHMAN
I barge through the station door and at first it seems like Sheriff Staake isn’t even going to let me see Colt. Good thing I’ve got a plan.
“Please,” I beg. “I totally believe you guys now and I found this really mean note Ruth meant to give Colt, and I want him to know all the bad things she said about him, so that he knows that she’s hating him from heaven.”
“You’re a weird one, Bushman.” Staake licks his lips. “Ten minutes.”
It’s not a pretty picture. The last time, Colt was like some kind of Ken doll with Tourette’s, all inappropriate and mean. But it must have been some kind of denial stage in his grief process because this time, he literally looks like a zombie. He hasn’t shaved and there’s food caught in his creepy beard. His eyes look red and wrinkled, like maybe all he does is cry. I shake my braids off my shoulders in an effort to refocus. “I know about you and Libby,” I snap. “I read it in Ruth’s diary.”
He doesn’t answer and right away I revert to feeling bad for him—blabbering away, asking about his mental health and whether there’s any evidence he might’ve thought of. “I mean, okay so you made a mistake—you came in here and acted all superior and now nobody believes you—but do you think that Libby might have had a motive to kill Ruth—I mean aside from the fact that setting up some charity in her honor might help get her into college? Because we could use that stuff, Colt, we really could, I think. Sex makes people crazy, right? I mean I wouldn’t know, but, whatever.”
He just looks at his feet and for a second I think he might actually be asleep. But then he glances up at me with bloodshot eyes and says, “They’re letting Jim Steele prosecute me. You gotta get me out of here, okay? He and Ruth were fucking. He’s going to tear me to shreds.”
“I can’t—Wait, how did you know about them?” I ask. “What exactly do you know—that might help, too. Did you try telling your lawyer?”
“Ruth told me. She rubbed it in my face to get back at me for Libby.” He looks at his sneakers. “And I fucking hate my lawyer. My parents got him because he represented that cannibal guy from the eighties.”
“Oh, him. Yeah, that didn’t end very well.” The cannibal guy ended up in a maximum-security prison, getting his skull crushed with a pipe.
“This lawyer’s superexpensive, and I’m telling you, he’s horrible. He won’t listen to me about the Jim Steele thing. He’s too busy trying to spin my case into something like—I don’t even know, a crime of passion or self-defense or something. The only thing he’s good at is pushing back my trial. He barely talks to me. He thinks I did it.”
“Geeze Louise.”
“Kippy, please.” Colt’s literally sweating. His skin is pale, gray almost. “I thought this was cut and dry, but even my parents are losing it. The other day, my mom brought over some kind of federal-prison life coach. He was prepping me on worst-case scenario stuff—like what to do if someone tries to stab you in the shower. Apparently you’re supposed to get in a fight your first day so that no one will mess with you.”
“Geeze Louise.” I’m repeating myself. I don’t know what else to say. Colt reaches through the bars and even though I can hear Sheriff Staake coming up the stairs, I give him both my hands. He’s not all bad.
“Bushman.” He tugs me toward him. “Please,” he says, reaching around my waist, pulling me closer to him against the cold steel bars. And then, who knows why—curiosity I guess? Proximity and opportunity? But I kiss him. Nothing explodes inside of me and I don’t feel anything, really. Nothing. But I stand there and we kiss.
“Kippy Bushman, you climb down off that boy this instant!” Sheriff Staake shouts from the stairwell. I see him charging toward us. He has his hand on his gun.
“Uh—” I shove off the bars and pretend to be reading from the hate letter I pretended to have brought. I can smell Colt’s rank breath wafting up from his spit, which is all over my mouth. “‘And that is the last reason that I think you’re an asshole, Colt! Sincerely, Ruth’—”
Staake grabs me by the shoulder and leads me forcibly down the stairs toward the front door. I’m babbling false starts, unable to finish my sentences because I’m panting to keep up with him—and he’s just about to throw me off the premises when I get the words out. “What about the possible double homicide?” If Colt couldn’t give me any more hard facts, maybe Mrs. Klitch’s autopsy can shed some light on all of this. “Wait, seriously, Sheriff Staake—one sec—how’d it turn out with Mrs. Klitch?”
“What?” He yanks me to a halt. “You’ve got a morbid curiosity, you know that? She’s over at the funeral home, for God’s sake, resting peaceably.”
“Her body, I mean.” I smile and shrug, trying to look delicate, nonthreatening. “Didn’t you do an autopsy?”
“The whole thing was open and shut, cut and dry—”
“But it could so clearly not be a suicide—”
“For your information, we didn’t even need the autopsy, that’s how good we are at what we do.”
“But what about marks of struggle or violence, did you look for those? Or perhaps a time of death? That stuff is superimportant, you know. You shouldn’t cut corners just because you think—”
“Oh, just can it!” He grabs me by the shoulder but I dig my heels in.
“Think of how many people hated her, it could even be the same person who—”
“This isn’t some crime show, missy!” He tugs me toward the door. “The only thing we’ve ever had to worry about is that juvenile delinquent, Widdacombe, and now he’s upstairs.” He shakes his head. “You keep your mind off that boy—you hear me? All you girls coming in wanting the same thing. Pure sex on your brains. You’re just hungry for drama, that’s what this is. You and that crazy veteran, both. He bothered us at the beginning, too, just like you.”
“Davey’s not crazy.” And I’m going to prove it, I almost add. But then I remember that this isn’t supposed to be about Davey. I’m working alone now. I’m going solo and being professional and not getting distracted.
And apparently kissing other people, like Colt, who happened to be Ruth’s boyfriend. My stomach drops.
Staake squeezes my shoulder and I lean into his grip, craving physical contact. Comfort. “And you better watch out, too, don’tcha know, because like I say: you go looking for trouble, it’s gonna find you!” He stops and points at the cars outside. The front row is all cop cars, each with a smiley face on the side. “See how safe that is?” His tone of voice has changed to something fatherly. “That’s because of me, Bob Staake. See my jeep in the back row? Nice and red and new and shiny? It’s not even locked. That’s what kind of town this is again. Because of me. Because of my smarts.”
He opens the door for me and leaves blow in, whipping around our ankles. I’m just sort of standing there, blinking at the cop cars, all those smiley faces. When you’re little, you think nothing bad can happen to you because if you fall out of that tree, a fireman will catch you, or a doctor will fix it—and if someone brings a gun to school, maybe it’s okay to engage in dangerous heroics because an ambulance will get there soon enough. Now here I am with a sheriff whose first thought after a murder is maybe I can pin it on that guy I don’t like.