She thought of this and a thousand other things: how for one entire year, he'd cut her lunch box sandwiches into letters so that they spelled out a different word each week: BRAVE, SMART, SWEET. How he'd always hide a caricature of her in one of the pages of his comic books. How she would rummage in her backpack and find, tucked in a pocket, peanut M&M's that she knew he'd left for her.
Her eyes filled with tears. “But you're lying,” she whispered. The policeman sighed. “Well,” he said, “somebody is.” He glanced toward the truck, where Trixie's mother already sat in the passenger seat, staring at them through the glass.
* * *
It had been almost comical, getting the call. The state troopers in Alaska had served the arrest warrant for Trixie Stone, they told Bartholemew. But in doing so, two other people had confessed to the crime. What did they want him to do?
Short of getting governor's warrants, the detective had to fly out there himself, interview the Stones, and decide who - if anyone - he wanted to arrest.
Daniel Stone had been brought into the conference room at the Bethel Police Station, where he and his wife had been taken following their individual confessions. Trixie, a minor, was in custody at the Bethel Youth Center, a juvenile detention facility. A radiator belched out erratic heat, stirring tinsel that had been draped above
its casing.
Tomorrow, he realized, was Christmas.
“You know this doesn't change anything,” Bartholemew said. “We still have to hold your daughter as a delinquent.” “What does that mean?”
“After we go back to Maine, she stays at a juvy lockup until she's certified to be tried as an adult for murder. Then if she doesn't get bail - which she won't, given the severity of the charge - she'll be sent back there after the arraignment.”
“You can't hold her if I'm the one who committed the crime,” Daniel pointed out.
“I know what you're doing, Mr. Stone,” Bartholemew said. “I don't even blame you, really. Did I ever tell you about the last conversation I had with my daughter? She came downstairs and told me she was going to watch a high school football game. I told her to have a good time. Thing is, it was May. Nobody was playing football. And I knew that,” Bartholemew said. "The people who were at the
scene said she never even braked as she went around the curve, that the car went straight over at full speed. They said it rolled three, maybe four times. When the medical examiner told me she'd OD'd before she went over the railing, I actually said thank God. I wanted to know she didn't have to feel any of that.“ Bartholemew crossed his arms. ”Do you know what else I did? I went home, and I tossed her room, until I found her stash, and the needles she used. I buried them in the bottom of the trash and drove
to the dump. She was already dead, and I still was trying to protect her."
Stone just stared at him. “You can't prosecute all of us. Eventually, you'll let her go.”
“I've got evidence that puts her at the bridge.”
“There were a thousand people there that night.”
“They didn't leave behind blood. They didn't get their hair caught in Jason Underhill's watchband.”
Stone shook his head. “Trixie and Jason were arguing, near the convenience store parking lot. That's when her hair must have gotten caught. But I showed up just as he grabbed Trixie, and I went after him. I was already a suspect once. I told you I got into a fight with the kid. I just didn't tell you what happened afterward.”
“I'm listening,” Bartholemew said.
“After he ran off, I tracked him to the bridge.”
“And then?”
“Then I killed him.”
“How? Did you sock him in the jaw? Hit him from behind? Give him a good shove?” When the other man remained silent, Bartholemew shook his head. “You can't tell me, Mr. Stone, because you weren't there. You're excluded by the physical evidence.. . and Trixie isn't.” He met Stone's gaze. “She's done things before that she couldn't tell you about. Maybe this is one more.” Daniel Stone glanced down at the table.
Bartholemew sighed. “Being a cop isn't all that different from being a father, you know. You do your damnedest, and it's still not good enough to keep the people you care about from hurting themselves.”
“You're making a mistake,” Stone said, but there was a thread of desperation in his voice.
“You're free to go,” Bartholemew replied.
* * *
In juvenile jail, the lights did not go out. In juvenile jail, you weren't in cells. You all slept single-sex in a dormitory that reminded Trixie of the orphans in Annie.
There were girls in here who'd stolen cash from the stores where they worked, and one who had thrown a knife at her principal. There were drug addicts and battered girlfriends and even an eight-year-old who was everyone's mascot - a kid who had hit her stepfather in the head with a baseball bat after he finished raping her.
Because it was Christmas Eve, they had a special dinner: turkey with cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes. Trixie sat next to a girl who had tattoos up and down her arms. “What's your story?” she asked.
“I don't have one,” Trixie said.
After dinner, a church group came to give the girls presents. The ones who'd been in the longest got the biggest packages. Trixie got a colored pencil set with Hello Kitty on the plastic cover. She took them out, one by one, and drew on her fingernails. If she were at home now, they'd have turned off all the lights in the house except for the ones on the Christmas tree. They'd open one present - that was the tradition - and then Trixie would go to bed and fake being asleep while her parents traipsed up and down the attic stairs with her gifts, the semblance of Santa for a girl who'd grown up years before they wanted her to. She wondered what the fake Santa at the amusement park in New Hampshire was doing tonight. Probably it was the only day of the year he got off.
After lights out, someone in the dorm started to sing “Silent Night.” It was thready at first, a reed on the wind, but then another girl joined in, and another. Trixie heard her own voice, disembodied, floating away from her like a balloon. All is calm. All is bright.
She thought she would cry her first night in juvenile jail, but it turned out she didn't have any tears left. Instead, when everyone forgot the extra verses, she listened to the eight-year-old who sobbed herself to sleep. She wondered how trees became petrified, if the same process worked with a human heart.
* * *
In the small holding cell where Laura had been for the past four hours, there was nothing soft, only cement and steel, and right angles. She'd found herself dozing off, dreaming of rain and cirrus clouds, of angel food cake and snowflakes - things that gave way the moment you touched them.
She wondered how Trixie was, where they'd sent her. She wondered if Daniel was on the other side of this thick wall, if they had come to question him as they had questioned her. When Daniel came into the room, on the heels of a policeman, Laura stood up. She pressed herself against the bars and reached out to him. He waited until the policeman left, then walked up to the bars and reached inside to Laura. “Are you okay?”
“They let you go,” she breathed.
He nodded and rested his forehead against hers.
“What about Trixie?”
“They've got her at a juvenile center down the road.” Laura let go of him. “You didn't need to cover for Trixie,” she said.
“I don't think either one of us was about to let her get sent to jail.”
“She won't be,” Laura said. “Because I'm the one who killed Jason.”
* * *
Daniel stared at her, all the breath leaving his body. “What?” She sank onto the metal bench in the cell and wiped her eyes.
“The night of the Winterfest, when Trixie disappeared, we said that I'd go home and wait there, in case she turned up. But when I headed back to my car, I saw someone on the bridge. I called out her name, and Jason turned around.”