“Tommy, we’ve got some questions.”
Mrs. Kinakis jumped in again. “He’s really in no state to answer questions right now. I thought he was coming down with something even before we got the call. I’ll bring him to the station first thing in the morning if you want.”
“This is a murder investigation, ma’am.” Jake was eager to do some talking. “We don’t have time to waste if we want to find Hattie’s killer.”
Tommy flinched a little at the word. His mother steadied him with a hand.
“Best to talk while the memories are fresh,” I said.
“Well, sit down. Let’s get this over with.” Mr. Kinakis waved a beefy hand at the couch and shot his wife a look that told her to hold her peace.
None of the Kinakises were what you’d call delicate flowers, so after they sat down on the wraparound sofa, there wasn’t much room for Jake or me. I went to the window instead and gave everyone a minute to situate themselves. The sun was still well above the horizon, melting the last bits of snow that hugged the north side of their outbuildings.
“Hattie left the play on Friday night with you, Tommy?” A flock of Canadian geese honked overhead and landed in a field across the road. There was no answer behind me.
“How long were you dating her?”
There was a pause and a murmur before he managed to speak up. “Since Sadie Hawkins, I guess.”
“Five, six months. You must have been pretty close.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you like the play on Friday? Did Hattie do all right?”
“I guess.”
Kid wasn’t much for talking. I finally turned around and put myself dead in front of him and waited until he looked up. He was big; he could probably bench my whole weight, but he didn’t look it right now. He looked small and scared, hunched between his mom and dad.
“Where’d you and Hattie go after the play, Tommy?”
“Out for a drive,” he admitted.
“For a drive where?”
“I dunno.”
Jake jumped in, hell-bent on playing bad cop. “We can take you down to the station, if you’d prefer, or to the murder scene. Maybe that would jog your memory a bit.”
“What are you accusing my son of, Jake Adkins?” Mrs. Kinakis asked, standing up.
“No one’s doing any accusing, Mrs. Kinakis. All we know is Hattie left the school with Tommy on Friday night and the next time anyone saw her she was dead. Now we need to know what Tommy knows. I understand it’s hard to talk about, but it’s going to be a lot harder if he chooses not to talk to us. For us and for him.”
Mr. Kinakis cleared his throat and motioned to his wife to sit down. She walked to the other side of the room instead, and we all waited for Tommy. After a minute, he took a breath and started in.
“I thought we were going to Dairy Queen, but she wanted to go out to Crosby instead.”
Mrs. Kinakis gasped and covered her mouth. “You didn’t tell us you took her to the lake.”
Tommy looked away.
“Where on Crosby?” I asked.
“The parking lot by the beach. We went there sometimes to . . .” He glanced at his dad. “Just to make out. Nothing else. She hadn’t wanted to go out there for a while.”
“What then?”
“Well, I thought she wanted to—you know, but she didn’t. She said she couldn’t see me anymore.”
“She broke up with you?” Jake asked.
Tommy nodded. “She acted so strange. I told her there was still another couple months before graduation, and prom, too. Didn’t she want to go to prom?”
He was looking at his hands now, almost seeming to forget we were all there.
“She got real quiet then. Looked sad for a minute. And she said some girls weren’t meant to go to prom. It was like she already knew. Like she knew she was gonna die.”
He broke off and put his head in his hands.
“What happened then, Tommy?”
“She left.” His voice was muffled and I wished I could see his eyes.
“She got out of the truck and told me to go find some other farm girl who’d let me fuck her. Sorry, Mom. She said, ‘’Bye, Tommy,’ and then she walked off into the night. She never swore. I didn’t know why she was acting like that. I didn’t know what I did wrong.”
“Did you follow her?”
“No.”
“Must have made you mad, what she said.”
He lifted his head again and his eyes were dripping. “It was cold out. I thought, let her walk home then. Fuck her, you know? Sorry, Mom.”
“Anybody else in the parking lot?”
“No.”
“You pass anybody on the way in?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And you just let her walk off and went home?”
“I—yeah, I left, but I drove around for a while before going home. I was pretty mad.”
“You pick anybody up? Call any of your buddies to talk about it?”