Until Paige spoke. ‘Wait. Lucy and Linus? Lucy, your parents were the worst.’
Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘I know, right?’
That Lucy’s father had physically abused her as much as White had Thorne would be left unsaid, because chuckles filled the room and behind him, Gwyn relaxed. In the mirror he saw her throw a grateful glance Paige’s way. Paige’s slow smile was a silent ‘you’re welcome’.
‘Anyway, back to Sherri.’ All eyes returned to Thorne and he drew another deep breath. ‘We dated all the way through high school. Her father wasn’t crazy about me, but I called him sir and treated Sherri like she was precious. Because she was.’ His voice cracked a little and he cleared his throat again. ‘So he didn’t hate me.’
‘Who was Richard Linden?’ Clay asked. ‘The brother of today’s victim.’
‘The school bully,’ Phil said bitterly. ‘Goddamn, I hated that kid.’ He aimed a look of challenge up at Jamie. ‘I can say that now. I’m almost retired.’
Jamie smiled down at him. ‘I was fine with you saying it then. He was a piece of shit. So were his parents.’
It was true. ‘They were very wealthy and they donated a lot of money to the school. They donated the money for our scholarships, actually. And never let us forget it.’ Thorne raised a brow. ‘Because we had little originality, we called Richard “Richie Rich”. He really was a total piece of shit. Thought he was entitled to everything. And anyone.’
Sam frowned. ‘He went after Sherri?’
Thorne found he could honestly chuckle at that. ‘Hell, no. Sherri was only five feet tall, but she would have kicked his ass if he’d laid a finger on her. No, there was another girl. Another scholarship student. Her name was Angie. And Richard thought she was his private little toy. I disagreed. We’d had a shouting argument about it earlier in the week that everything went to shit. I told him he was a privileged little . . .’ He winced. ‘Well, it wasn’t very nice.’
Phil laughed. ‘He called him a “privileged little limp-dicked Napoleon”.’
‘You remember that?’ Thorne asked, surprised.
‘I thought it was fantastic. You managed to blend an honest insult with a historical one. I gave you an A.’ Phil sighed. ‘But Richard had a posse and Thorne didn’t.’
‘I was known as a bully, but I’d never laid a finger on him,’ Thorne said sadly. ‘I was huge by then – six-three and still growing. I was also browner than tan because my father, my birth father, had been part Maori. I did not fit in at Ridgewell Academy. That I had the highest GPA in the school after Sherri made Richard even angrier. He went after Angie when he knew I’d see. He was pawing her in the hallway right near my locker. I pulled him off her. It was the first time I’d ever touched him. Next thing I knew, his friends were on me.’
Phil’s smile had evaporated. ‘Coach and I had to drag them off him. The boys were vicious. They were all athletes, all big guys. Not as big as Thorne, but there were four of them. And they kicked his head first. Then his ribs. It was . . . shocking. I’d never witnessed a fight like that. I was a good bit more sheltered then. But even later, after I’d gone to the inner-city schools, I rarely saw fights like that. Coach and I got Thorne up and took him to the office to see the nurse. He could barely walk. They’d destroyed his knee.’
‘Well, not destroyed,’ Thorne grumbled. ‘It got better.’
‘It took a year, some surgery, and a lot of physical therapy,’ Jamie said mildly. ‘But because the boys who’d attacked him said Thorne had started it, he was expelled. The girl – Angie – had been threatened into silence by Richard, I’m sure. She denied he’d ever touched her. No cameras back then. It was Thorne’s word against Richard’s.’
Thorne shrugged. ‘When I got expelled, my mother was upset. My stepfather was publicly upset but privately smug. Said he always knew I’d be a thug like my father.’
Stevie’s brows lifted. ‘Your father was a thug?’
‘My father was a professional rugby player. He was a good man.’ His voice cracked again. ‘A damn good man.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Gwyn murmured as her hand ran down his arm comfortingly. Then it was gone. But it was enough.
‘Thank you,’ he managed. ‘My father also played the bass guitar, and I’d taken it into school that day because we were practicing for a music assembly. The principal refused to let me take it home and wouldn’t allow the teacher to give it to Sherri either.’
All eyes shifted to the bass standing in the corner, then back to Thorne.
‘Why not?’ Ruby asked, then sighed. ‘Because he was afraid of the Linden family. They were the deep pockets.’
‘Essentially,’ Thorne said. ‘That was on Thursday. But on Friday, the music teacher slipped Sherri the keys to her room. That Sunday night, Sherri and I broke into the school to find my guitar, but we found Richard instead. He’d been beaten and stabbed, and he was bleeding badly. I wanted to run.’
‘But you didn’t,’ Lucy said confidently.
‘You wouldn’t,’ Gwyn added, and he met her eyes in the mirror. She looked defiant and pissed off. Just like her old self. It almost made him smile. But he was thinking about Sherri and what came next, and the almost-smile faded.
‘No, I didn’t. I gave him first aid, tried to stop the bleeding. Told Sherri to call 911 and then run. I didn’t want her involved because I knew the cops would assume I’d done it. Richard and I hated each other. But I couldn’t leave him there to die.’ He dragged air into his lungs. ‘Sherri had just called 911 when the cops piled in. She’d barely started talking to the operator. Someone else had called first.’
‘We never found out who,’ Jamie said with a sigh. ‘But that Sherri had called at all was one of the things that saved Thorne. That and the fact that they found a bloody knife outside in the bushes. The prints didn’t match Thorne’s.’
Lucy straightened. ‘Someone left a bloody knife with your prints on it at the crime scene this morning.’
‘Yeah,’ Thorne said grimly. He’d noticed the knife immediately while looking at the photos that Gwyn had so cleverly taken. ‘Back then I was arrested because I’d fought with Richard a few days before. It didn’t matter that he’d started it. It didn’t matter that his friends beat me up. It only mattered that I was seen putting my hands on him.’
‘But Sherri was a witness that you hadn’t murdered Richard Linden,’ Clay said, studying Thorne carefully as he made the observation.
‘Yes. She was arrested too. For trespassing, as it turned out. Her father came to bail her out, but I hadn’t been arraigned yet so I was stuck in jail.’ He closed his eyes. ‘She and her father were struck broadside by a pickup truck on their way home from the jail. Neither survived.’
A heavy silence filled the room. Then Gwyn’s hand gripped his biceps and squeezed. He covered her hand with his and held it there. She laid her head against his back, cuddling him. Comforting him.
‘I was . . . devastated,’ Thorne confessed, his eyes still closed because they’d filled with unexpected tears.
‘The police ruled that the crash was deliberate,’ Jamie said into the silence. ‘The truck had been waiting for Sherri’s father’s vehicle. Witnesses said that it accelerated, knocked them off the road, then sped away. Its license plate was covered in mud. No one got the number. The truck was never found. That was the other thing that saved Thorne. His only witness was murdered.’
‘Jamie and my brother had their own firm back then,’ Phil said. ‘My brother’s specialty wasn’t criminal law, but Jamie’s was, so I asked him to review the case.’