“Ex-sheriff, yes. She gave me your name.”
“Gloria Walsh.”
Audrey opened her mouth, and closed it.
“I went to school with her daughter,” Katie said, answering the question Audrey had not asked. “Does she still work for the sheriff?”
“Yes. I went to talk to him, the sheriff, but it was her—Gloria—who gave me your name.”
“And why did you go talk to the sheriff, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Because of Danny Young.”
“Danny Young—?” Her eyes grew large, and Audrey thought she was about to stand up, but she only shifted in place and tossed her free arm over the back of the loveseat.
“You and he…” Audrey said.
“Yes,” said Katie. “About a million years ago. He was my brother’s best friend. A year older than me. How do you know him?”
“I don’t. I only know him through my dad. Through the Holly Burke case.”
“Holly Burke. God, there’s another name I haven’t heard in forever.”
“Did you know her?”
“I knew her. We weren’t exactly friends.”
“You weren’t?”
“No. Most of her friends were boys. Or men. She was known as bad news, generally.”
Audrey thought of Gordon Burke, his good old face and his big hands and his kindness to her, his gentleness when she was sick.
She said, “I’ve gotten to know her father a little bit since I’ve been home. Mr. Burke.”
“Oh God, that poor man. I thought he’d moved away.”
“No, he’s still there. And so a few days ago Danny Young came out to Mr. Burke’s house, and—”
“Wait.” Katie raised her hand. “Danny Young went to Gordon Burke’s house?”
“Yes.”
She sipped her wine. “All right. I’m just going to shut up now and listen. Go on.”
And Audrey went on, telling her all that she herself had learned in the last two days, and when she was finished Katie sat looking at her.
“You sound like that TV show, Audrey.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” She took another sip of her wine, and Audrey drank her water.
“So, what are you telling me here? That Deputy Moran had that torn pocket?”
“Yes. I mean, according to Danny Young.”
“And he pulled Danny over so he could plant it on his truck, and then he just—let him go… but then they never found it?”
“Right. Danny found it first.”
“And held on to it for ten years.”
“Yes.”
“And then all of sudden decided to show it to Gordon Burke.”
“Yes.”
“Because…?”
“Because he wants Mr. Burke to know the truth.”
“Why didn’t he do it ten years ago?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he understood it back then. I think he was just a scared kid.”
Katie set her glass down on the table and turned it around slowly by the stem, watching it. “And that’s why you’re here. Because you want to believe Danny Young.”
“Because I want to…” she said, and faltered. The beat in her head thumping on. “Because I want to know the truth.”
“And you think I can tell you that?”
“I don’t know. I only know that Gloria gave me your name.”
Katie stared at her—then put her face in her hands, as her little girl had done in the bathtub to keep the water out of her eyes. “Jesus,” she said. “What a convoluted cluster-fuck of goings-on.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to tell it.”
“How else could you tell it? It’s impossible.”
Katie dropped her hands and sat looking across the room, at the wall, or maybe at something beyond the wall.
“Well, Audrey,” Katie said, “well…” and was silent again.
“Holly Burke… Jesus,” Katie said. “That girl. We heard all kinds of things about her. Said all kinds of things about her too, little bitches that we were. She was sleeping with this boy and that boy. One DUI after another. Giving married men blowjobs for money.” She shook her head. “But did she have dealings with that deputy? Could he have had reason to kill her? Is that what you want to know?”
It was the first time Audrey had heard the idea expressed out loud. It sounded ridiculous.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I want to know.”
“Well, I just can’t answer that, Audrey. I’m sorry.”
Audrey looked at her own hands where they lay in her lap, the twined fingers. White from squeezing. She untwined them and wiped her palms on her jeans.
“Then why would Gloria give me your name?” she said quietly.
Katie was still looking off.
“Katie—?”
Katie turned and looked at her. “Your dad let him go. He had him and he let him go.”
“I know. It bothered him the rest of his life.”
“And now it bothers you.”
“It bothers Mr. Burke. And it bothers Danny Young and his family,” she said, thinking of Danny Young’s twin brother. Of that poor woman trying to bury her dog. “It bothers the whole town.”
“Why doesn’t Mr. Burke,” Katie began, and stopped. “Why doesn’t Danny… I mean, why doesn’t he go to the sheriff—the new sheriff—with this?”
“I don’t know. I guess because he doesn’t think anyone would believe him, ten years later.”
“You guess? He didn’t tell you that?”
“No. I’ve never spoken to him.”
“You’ve never spoken to him?”
“No. Like I said, I’ve never actually met him.”
Katie stared at her. Then she lifted her glass and drank and put the glass down again. She shook her head. “Danny Young. God. I thought I was in love. I thought we’d get married, someday.”
Audrey didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.
“But it wasn’t Holly Burke that ended it,” Katie said.
“It wasn’t?”
“No.”
Audrey was quiet. She tried to breathe evenly and quietly.
“What ended it, really, was one stupid decision on one stupid night,” Katie said. And then she told Audrey about the night—August 15, which she remembered because it was Ginny Walsh’s eighteenth birthday and Ginny always threw a party at her house, and it was always the last party before the new school year. Ginny’s mother, Gloria, was there and so was Mr. Walsh, and everyone was allowed to drink one glass of champagne each, and the girls were going to sleep over. But then at three in the morning Katie had slipped away; she’d wanted to go see Danny and she thought she could go see him and sneak back in before dawn and no one would know the difference. She’d drunk three glasses of champagne and Ginny Walsh always left the key to her Honda under the seat and all the girls knew this and they would borrow it at lunch hour to drive to McDonald’s and Ginny didn’t care and Katie didn’t think she’d care this night, and she let the Honda roll down the driveway before she turned on the engine and the lights, and she was doing all right, she was doing just fine, until she rolled through a stop sign on Old Indian Road and the colored lights lit up in her rearview and Shit, oh shit, she was so screwed. Arrest. DUI. Her parents. College—it all just flashed before her eyes.
Audrey knew before Katie said it: it was Moran. Although Katie didn’t know him then. Had never seen him before, or if she had, had never noticed him.
He came up and put his flashlight on her and said, Can you turn that engine off for me, miss? and she did, and then she saw that his headlights were off too; just the colored cop-lights flying around in the night, in silence, lighting up the side of his face blue and red where he stood. Moran looking down at her, flicking his light around the inside of the car, over her knees, the short skirt she’d worn for the party. He said he knew this car and it wasn’t hers. She said her friend said it was OK to borrow it.