MAGGIE:
Like I said, I hadn’t thought that our testimony would’ve made a difference. I didn’t know when Mr. Buhrman was killed exactly, and I figured that Warren could’ve been in both places. That girl saw him pull the trigger, right? And his fingerprints? If he was found guilty in a court of law, there had to have been a reason. But then I started listening to your podcast, and I realized that it was important to have all the facts.
Maggie played coy when I asked her for the names of the other people she had been with. She said that she wanted to let them decide whether to come forward on their own, but she did slip at one point and mention someone named Keith. I looked at yearbooks from that time period and figured she was referring to Keith Baron, a student council member and varsity athlete. Keith now works in tech and lives in Silicon Valley, but he speaks fondly about his time in Illinois, and he agreed to speak with me on the phone. Our conversation began amiably enough, chatting about Elm Park and how it’s changed over the years. But when I mentioned my recent conversation with Maggie, things took a turn.
POPPY:
Maggie Kallas told me she was with you and some others in Lincoln Park on the night of October 19, 2002, and that you saw Warren Cave there.
KEITH:
No, that’s not right.
POPPY:
Are you sure? Why don’t you just think about it a little bit more?
KEITH:
I don’t need to think about it. I’m positive. I wasn’t at the park that night, and I never saw Warren Cave outside of school.
POPPY:
Why do you think Maggie would tell me you threw Warren Cave in the lake, then?
KEITH:
She said that?
POPPY:
She said that you and some others got in a fight with him in the park, and that it ended with Warren in the lake.
KEITH:
I . . . I’m done with this.
POPPY:
This is your chance to come clean, Keith. Tell me what happened in the park that night.
KEITH:
Go to hell.
At that point, Keith hung up and refused to return any of my attempts at communication. Maggie declined to name any other friends who had been in the park, and cold-calling likely suspects from the yearbook didn’t lead to anything. I’m therefore issuing a request: if you have any information about what happened in Lincoln Park that night, please, please let me know. You can remain anonymous if you want, but please. The truth wants to be set free.
chapter 18
I lay back on the bed and stared blankly at the ceiling, unable to stop hearing Maggie Kallas’s throaty voice, saying to Poppy Parnell and anyone else who would listen, Warren Cave was telling the truth about getting thrown in the lake that night. The conclusion was impossible to escape: if Warren was telling the truth, Lanie was not.
I shuddered as a sudden memory flashed through my mind, the two of us pressed together in the pitch-dark of the bedroom closet, squeezing hands so tightly I thought our bones would break, Lanie hotly whispering, It’s my fault.
“I’m thinking manicures,” Ellen announced, pushing open the door. “We need to cram in as much cousin-bonding as we can before we both go home tomorrow.”
I sat up slowly, Lanie’s damning words screaming through my mind.
“Oh.” Ellen startled when she saw my face. “Josie, what’s wrong?”
I shook my head to clear it, forced myself to tell Ellen about the podcast. “Poppy Parnell was right. She had a bombshell.”
“What was it?”
“She interviewed this woman named Maggie Kallas—”
“Maggie Kallas?” Ellen interrupted. “I know her. She was a senior when we were sophomores. What does she have to do with anything?”
“She’s substantiating Warren’s claim that he was in Lincoln Park that night. She says she saw him. She says her friends were the ones to push him in the lake.”
“So what?” Ellen shrugged. “Unless she’s claiming that she saw him at the exact moment that your dad was killed, I don’t see the bombshell. I mean, we knew he was in the park. He couldn’t have ended up in the lake otherwise.”
“Right,” I said, my voice shaking. “But the theory that he went into the lake on purpose to destroy evidence doesn’t hold if someone threw him in.”
“Maybe—”
“Ellen, no. That would have to be an incredible coincidence.” I took a deep rattling breath. “Besides, listening to Maggie talk about that night reminded me more about it. I fell asleep early that night. I have no idea whether Lanie was in bed or not. And she was so shaky when she came back upstairs. And sweaty.”
“Breathe, Josie,” Ellen commanded. “Listen to yourself. Your sister had just seen your father murdered. Of course she was distraught. I would be more worried if she hadn’t been shaky and sweaty.”
“But yesterday you said . . .” I trailed off, unable to vocalize the worst part, the thing that Lanie had said in the dark.
“Oh, please,” Ellen said, waving her hand as though she could erase the suspicions she had voiced. “I was buzzed and talking out of my ass.”
“So you think Lanie saw Warren shoot our father, and then he went to the park where Maggie saw him.”
“I don’t know,” Ellen said, her voice softer. “Look, you know there’s no love lost between me and your sister. She’s a real asshole, and the ingratitude she’s shown my mother is disgusting. I’ll never forgive her for what she did to you. But I don’t think she’s actively evil, and she certainly wasn’t back then. If Lanie said she saw Warren, I believe her.”
I nodded, but my chest was still tight with doubt. Before our father died, Lanie had not been the delinquent she would later become, but neither had she been infallibly truthful: she snuck readings of our mother’s diary, hid books, and stole candy. None of those minor offenses rose to the level of perjury, and certainly none of them came close to patricide, but they nevertheless contributed to my profound distrust of my sister.
A scene from that last afternoon flashed through my mind with sudden clarity: we had just finished the first set of tennis, and Lanie and I sat panting on the side of the court while our father ran around the fence to collect a stray ball. His cell phone rang in his gym bag, and Lanie reached for it, suggesting it might be our mother. When she looked at the caller ID, her face changed.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“No one,” she said, powering down the phone and burying it at the bottom of the bag.
When our father had come jogging up to us with the errant tennis balls, the smile that Lanie had given him had been cold and mean. She hadn’t mentioned his ringing phone, and I understood from her demeanor that I was not to bring it up, either.
Could the caller have been Melanie? Could Lanie have known about our father’s affair? Could she have decided to take matters into her own hands?