I didn’t know if I was messing with her or wanted to hear what she’d say, but I asked her, “So who do you think did it, Ashley?”
She glanced down, fiddled with one of the carrots for a moment. “I don’t know, but the police, they only looked at you two. I watch those cold case shows. I know how it goes when the police focus on someone right away.”
“Some of those cops are still pretty well known in town.”
She hesitated, a flash of fear in her eyes. “When you’re searching for the truth, you have to be willing to look at everything.”
I wanted to slap her down for her na?veté, her youthful ideals, but mentally I said, Be nice, Toni. She’s just sixteen.
“Thanks for wanting to help, but I’m not going to make a documentary. It’s over and I’m trying to move on.”
“But it can’t ever really be over, can it? What happened to you?”
Okay, now she had it coming. “You know what makes it worse? Thinking about it makes it worse. Talking about it makes it worse. Having teenagers who don’t know shit about the real world asking questions about it, that makes it worse.”
“I totally get that.” She nodded, still trying to find a way around me, to speak my language and connect. This kid didn’t give up. “All I’m trying to say is, I don’t think you got a fair chance. And I can help you.”
“Life isn’t fair. You’ll figure that out in a hurry.”
“Maybe just read this when you get a chance.” She reached down into the side of her combat boots and pulled out some papers she had stuffed in there.
“What’s this?”
“It’s an essay. I wrote it last semester. Just read it, please.” She walked out, the door swinging shut behind her.
I glanced down at the essay. It was titled “That Night.”
*
When I got home after work, I took the papers out of my bag. I was tempted for a moment to burn them or chuck them out. What did I care what this girl wrote about me? But I was curious. Sure, I’d had letters from people over the years who said they believed in my innocence, but they were all fruit loops or fame junkies or kids in law school who wanted to prove themselves—until they found someone else who had a more interesting story, until they decided that maybe I was guilty.
I sat at my little table and stared at the essay, then thought, Fuck it, and started reading. It was well written, a thoughtful look at the whole case. She’d talked to some of my old teachers and friends, waitresses at the restaurant, even Nicole’s friends, including Darlene Haynes. And my friend Amy, who told her how Shauna and her friends had bullied me. It was unnerving, how adult Ashley came across, how in many ways she did seem to get it, that I was just an angry teenager who fought with my sister but it didn’t mean I killed her. She’d even talked to Ryan’s father. She’d tried to talk to mine but my mom closed the door in her face.
Ashley also wrote about the trial, how the most damaging testimony had come from Shauna and the other girls—my known enemies. They were popular, and I was the underdog. She referenced some psychobabble about teen girls turning on each other, the viciousness and pack mentality that can arise, how gossip can become truth in people’s minds. She cited some cases where it had been proven later that people gave false testimony against someone they didn’t like, and questioned if Shauna and her friends had lied. At the bottom, she also speculated about the real murderer, and whether Ryan and I could be innocent. She finished by saying, “Whoever the murderer is, wherever he is, he didn’t just end one life that night—he ended three.”
The next day at work I left the essay in Ashley’s bag with a note stuck to it: Good writing, but I can’t do the documentary. Sorry.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CAMPBELL RIVER
SEPTEMBER 1996
The police tried to talk to me a couple of times over that weekend. They’d bring me out of my cell, then sit me in that same room, the heat jacked up, offering me water or a cigarette, trying to be my friend. I’d take both, puffing on the smoke, which only made me more anxious. I never saw Frank McKinney again, but before I was arrested my mother had left him several messages that he didn’t return. Mom would pace in the kitchen, the phone tight in her hand, saying, “Frank, I just need to know that you’ll find whoever did this.”