A Matter of Trust

Chapter 19





Is your kid on Facebook?” Charlie asked as he parked in front of Darin Dane’s house. The neighborhood was a mix of houses—some a century old and stately, others reflecting the styles of more recent decades. Darin’s was a yellow ranch.

“Gabe has an account, but he knows I can look at it anytime.” Although when was the last time Mia had looked at it? “Some parents don’t let their kids go on Facebook, but there’s a downside to that too. After my parents got divorced when I was in seventh grade, my mom wouldn’t let me go to the mall, which is where all my friends hung out. After a while I didn’t get invited to anything.” Mia remembered what it had been like to come to school on Mondays and hear about birthday parties and trips to the ice skating rink that no one had invited her to. “I guess my mom was worried about me hanging out with no supervision. But since she was at work, it wasn’t like I was being supervised when I stayed home. And the times I’ve worried about Gabe and Facebook, I imagined some pervy guy trying to friend him. I wasn’t thinking about what the other kids on Facebook might do to him.”

Was Gabe being picked on? Was that why he was suddenly obsessed with bulking up?

“How old does a kid have to be before he can get an account?”

“Thirteen. But that’s a joke. Most kids can do enough math to figure out how many years to subtract from their real birth date to make themselves eligible. According to Gabe, half his friends were on Facebook before they were thirteen. And I read somewhere that there are five million Facebook users under the age of ten.”

On Darin Dane’s doorstep, both of them went to push the doorbell, but Charlie got to it first. Typical Charlie, Mia thought. He hadn’t wanted to be part of this investigation, but now he wanted to be in charge. He had even insisted on driving, but since the county paid for his gas and not hers, she had been glad to say yes.

She had thought she could simply give the Suburban back to the dealership, maybe pay a small fee after she showed them Scott’s death certificate. It turned out not to matter if he was dead. Even if she turned the car in, she would still owe everything he would have paid if he had driven it to the end of its lease, plus a penalty. His estate was on the hook for it—which meant she was. Just thinking about it made her stomach clench.

A man in his midforties and dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans opened the door, releasing a fug of stale cigarette smoke. His face was unshaven, his eyes sunken. He looked even worse than when Mia had spoken to him last week.

“Nate, this is Charlie Carlson. He’s a homicide detective. Charlie, this is Nate Dane, Darin’s father.”

The two men shook hands, and then Nate stepped back and waved them inside with the hand holding an unfiltered cigarette. “Laurie should be home soon.”

Nate had told Mia that his wife was a nurse, which seemed kind of strange given how much smoking he appeared to be doing. All Mia knew about Nate was that he didn’t currently have a job.

The reek of cigarettes was overpowering. Not one but two over-flowing ashtrays sat on the coffee table, next to a photo album and an inch-high pile of papers, facedown. The curtains were drawn, the blinds pulled down. It felt like dusk even though it was only four o’clock. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Nate took a seat on a plaid recliner, and Charlie and Mia sat on the navy blue couch. A gray tabby skittered around the edges of the room.

Nate handed the photo album to Charlie. “These are photos of my son.”

Setting it on his lap, Charlie started to flip through the pages while Mia leaned over to look. Darin as a big-eyed baby, wearing a yellow-and-blue-striped knit hat. A three- or four-year-old Darin, grinning while he piled sand on his dad lying stretched out on the beach. Darin, a slender blue-eyed boy with small gold hoops in his ears, showing off a plateful of decorated cupcakes.

Then Charlie turned to the last photo and recoiled. Mia gasped, feeling like she had just been punched in the stomach. Darin lay on his back on the floor, a rainbow-striped scarf next to him, a wide red mark around his neck, his blue eyes half-open.

“What in the—! Did you take that photo?” Charlie demanded.

“Yes.” Nate’s face was stony.

“Why on earth did you take it?”

“Why did I take it? Why did I take it?” His words grew more agitated. “Because I wanted them to see what they did to him. They killed a beautiful boy just because he was different. They couldn’t stand that. So they killed him.”

A voice behind Mia made her jump.

“Don’t tell me you are showing those people our son like that. No one should remember him that way.” Laurie Dane was a plump woman with brown hair scraped back into a ponytail. She wore blue scrubs printed with cartoon butterflies.

“They need to see it so they’ll be motivated to take down the bullies that did it to him.”

Laurie didn’t answer, just made a show of waving her hand as if she was trying to rid the room of some of the cigarette smoke. But the air was so saturated it had no place to go. Tonight Mia would hang all her clothes in the garage in hopes of airing them out rather than having to pay for dry cleaning.

“You said Darin was different,” Charlie said. “Was he gay?”

Nate’s hand clenched so hard that it bent his cigarette. “What difference does it make? Are you saying if he was, what they did was okay?”

“No.” Charlie didn’t seem flustered. “I’m saying if he was, there are hate-crime laws that might also apply.”

“Who knows what they are at that age?” Nate said. “If he thought of himself as gay, he didn’t tell us.”

Laurie picked up the cat and then sat down on a brown ottoman. “He’s always been a little different.”

“He’s still our son,” Nate said. “A long time ago I realized I could spend all my time wishing for the son I never had or I could love the son who was standing right in front of me. But those kids—they pushed him and pushed him and pushed him, and finally he fell over.”

“I understand he’s been in counseling since he was twelve,” Mia said softly, trying not to phrase it like an accusation.

“As he got older, the kids got meaner,” Laurie said, stroking the cat so hard that it bent under her touch. “In elementary school, everyone knows everyone. He went to a small school and there were always parents around volunteering or picking up their kids. But things changed in middle school. The kids are on their own more. They have more secrets, and they get sneakier. He seemed depressed, so I took him to a counselor. He put Darin on medication.”

Mia made a note. Some antidepressants had actually been shown to put a small percentage of teens at greater risk for committing suicide. The defense would be sure to bring it up. “Would you give me permission to talk to his therapist?” Patient-client confidentiality would probably preclude a lot of discovery, but Mia still might be able to tease out something if she phrased her questions as hypothetical.

“Of course. It’s Dr. Thorensen,” Nate said. “Harold Thorensen.”

“Do you know if Darin had ever talked about killing himself?” Mia asked gently.

“No,” Laurie said. “At least not to us. He did keep saying he didn’t know how he could do four more years. He wanted us to homeschool him, but how could we do that? I work full-time and Nate never even graduated from high school.” A look passed between husband and wife.

“I know this is painful,” Mia said gently, “but can you go over some of the bullying that went on at school?”

Nate took a deep breath, coughed, and then began. “Last year, when Darin was in eighth grade, things started getting really bad. They pushed notes into his locker. They called him names. They tripped him in the hall. Once I went into his room when he was changing into his pajamas. I saw bruises on his chest. He said he fell. I knew that was a lie.”

Charlie, who normally seemed unflappable, looked ill.

“He used to beg me to call in and say he was sick.” Laurie was petting the cat faster and faster. “He said he could help Nate with the yard work.”

“But it was Facebook that was the last straw.” Nate lit another cigarette. “We thought letting him have a Facebook account would be a good way for him to stay in touch with his cousins or friends who had moved away. He was on it a lot at first, but then he stopped using it as much.”

“The novelty wore off,” Laurie said.

“‘The novelty wore off,’” Nate parroted. “Get your head out of the sand, Laurie. It wasn’t that Darin got bored. It’s what they started doing to him. He’d put something on his wall, and kids would chime in with sarcastic comments, and then other kids would ‘like’”—he made air quotes—“those comments but not his original post.” He took a long drag on his cigarette before continuing. “But the worst is that someone hacked into his account two days before he died.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie leaned forward.

“Someone pretending to be him posted disgusting messages on his wall.” Nate’s lip curled. “They invited kids—boys—from his new school to come over to our house and have sex with him. Only it looked like it was Darin doing it. Kids he didn’t even know. He had been hoping that things would be different because he was in high school.”

Laurie added, “They even put up his address and phone number. We’re just lucky some pedophile didn’t come over here and try to take advantage of him.”

“What do you mean lucky, Laurie?” Nate snapped. “Darin is dead. You can’t get any more unlucky than that.”

Laurie didn’t answer, but she stroked the cat so hard it let out a yowl and shot off her lap.

Mia tried to get them back on track. “And no one told Darin that his Facebook had been hacked?”

“No.” Nate spit out the word. “It took him two days to realize what was going on. Whoever it was, they were smart. They unfriended his real friends, unfriended anyone who was a relative. So no one who might clue him in knew. Meanwhile, it seems like everyone else in school not only knew about it but kept it going. These kids weren’t innocent bystanders. And you can’t tell me that just because they’re in high school they didn’t understand what they were doing. When he finally figured it out, he tried to tell everyone it wasn’t him, but no one believed him. So he came home and killed himself.”

“Was he home alone when it happened?” Mia asked. It felt too cruel to spell out what it was.

Nate flinched as if he had been slapped. “No. I was right here. I was twenty feet away. He came home, yelled hello, and went into his room. I was on the Internet, if you want to know the truth. I was just killing time, looking at stupid stuff, and meanwhile my son’s looping his scarf over the closet rod. It was probably almost an hour before I went in to talk to him and I found him. His skin was already cool to the touch. I can’t help thinking if I had been paying attention . . .” His voice trailed off. “And when I touched his laptop, the screen came to life and I saw his Facebook page. I saw what they had done. I printed it all off in case someone went back and tried to delete things once they heard what happened. Facebook deactivated his account the next day, but not before a few people posted on there saying they were glad he was dead. Glad.”

Nate picked up the stack of papers and started paging through them. “I mean, look at this.” His voice cracked. “‘You queer! I’m going to tie you to a pole with a rope, then tie another rope around your stomach and tie the end to my bumper and drive off. I’ll rip you in half.’”

What Darin’s father had been describing already met the state’s definition of cyberstalking. But Mia hadn’t seen the death threat before, which took it from a misdemeanor to a Class C felony.

“By making examples of these kids, we can help make it so that it’s no longer acceptable to do what they did,” Mia said.

“Make examples?” Nate echoed sarcastically. “That’s not much punishment, is it? Considering that my son is dead? You sound as wishy-washy as that first woman I talked to.”

Mia froze. “Do you mean Colleen Miller? Colleen is dead. She was murdered in her home on Sunday.”

Nate had the grace to look away. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

Mia didn’t want to lose her focus, so she turned the conversation back to Darin. “We’re going to do our best to hold these kids accountable. Do you have any idea who they were?”

“Darin would never tell us the names of the kids who picked on him. He said it would just make it worse.”

“Well, can you give us the names of some of his friends so we could ask them?” Charlie asked.

Laurie said, “There’s these two girls, Shiloh and Rainy. They’ve known Darin since grade school.” She turned to Nate. “And maybe they should talk to Jeremy.”

After a moment Nate nodded. “Jeremy and Darin were best friends in grade school. In middle school they started growing apart. Or at least Jeremy started pulling away from Darin. Darin was only over at Jeremy’s house once this summer and that’s it. They used to be really close. But Darin talked to Rainy and Shiloh nearly every day.”

Mia said, “I have a son who’s about the same age. A lot of the time they’ll tell their friends things they might not tell their parents.”

“You have a son.” Nate’s eyes skewered her.

“Yes.” She was suddenly sorry she had mentioned Gabe.

“You still have a son.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “These punks left me with nothing.”