After I hung up with Fran, I stared at the sky for a minute, took a deep breath, and then continued out to Bud’s.
There were trucks and cars littered all over the driveway, family pouring in to help out any little way they could. The minister was there and all the church ladies. I found Bud out in the barn with some of the men. They were talking about helping him get his corn in this year, and weren’t taking no for an answer. I nodded at each one as they filed out, leaving Bud sitting on the arm of a combine, staring at the floor. I didn’t ask him how he was doing. I didn’t push my sympathies on him like another load I expected him to carry. There wasn’t anything I could do except take him inside and sit him and Mona down in their bedroom away from all the hens and tell them matter-of-factly everything Fran had said. That Hattie didn’t feel a thing. It was as quick as falling down. That she wouldn’t have had two seconds to be scared.
Then I told them about the sex.
“What?” Bud shot up, looking like he wanted to take a swing at me. I hadn’t even mentioned the aggressive part.
“God damn that Kinakis kid. God damn him.” Bud wasn’t in any mood to think beyond that, so I turned to Mona.
“Was she seeing anybody besides Tommy Kinakis?”
She shook her head once, a tight denial. “She’d been seeing him since before the holidays.”
While Bud stormed around the room, probably planning Tommy’s death, I sat on the bed next to Mona. She was working her hands one over the other, staring hollowly at the remains of the table she’d fallen into that morning.
“Did you know she was having sex, Mona?”
Bud swung around, all ears now.
“No.” Steady tears leaked into the crows feet around her eyes. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. “No, I didn’t know that. I thought there was something she wasn’t telling me, but I didn’t think it was to do with sex. Hattie was never starry-eyed about a boy in her whole life. Honestly, I never thought she liked Tommy that much. I couldn’t pin down exactly why she was dating him.”
“That kid’s got some answering to do.”
“Hold on there, Bud. We’re going to talk to Tommy again in the morning, and have him submit a DNA sample to test against what we found on Hattie.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t rape?” Mona whispered.
“It wasn’t rape. The medical examiner was positive. Don’t be thinking that, either one of you.”
Neither of them seemed able to speak anymore.
“I’m going to need to look through Hattie’s room. If you remember anyone else she was close to or in contact with, call me right away. Doesn’t matter what time.”
Mona resumed crying in earnest now and Bud went over to her. I left them alone and went to Hattie’s bedroom upstairs, without a word to the hens hovering by the kitchen doorway.
I was surprised there wasn’t much to see. A twin bed, dresser, and desk. She didn’t have posters splashed all over like most teenagers, just one picture—framed—of the New York City skyline above her bed. Her closet was about as messy as you’d expect but it was all clothes and purses holding lip gloss, bobby pins, movie ticket stubs, and loose change. Nothing that helped. Her desk seemed about the most personal thing in the room. The drawers were full of magazine pictures of subway stations, neon signs, and women walking down city sidewalks with little rat dogs tucked in their purses. I couldn’t find a diary or a journal, which struck me as odd. Hattie’d seemed like the type to keep one. Her laptop had a lot of stuff on it though and maybe we’d find something there. Jake could dig into those files with his computer tricks.
In the bottom drawer I found a program for a Rochester play where Hattie had gotten the lead. I remembered Bud saying something about that last fall. Scratching his neck, shrugging his shoulders as we winterized his boat. Kid’s a natural. Damned if I know where she got it.
Flipping through the program, my eye caught on a particular name.
Gerald Jones, director.
Now, why would Hattie be carrying, on the night of her death, the card and phone number of a man she hadn’t seen in over six months? A man she was connected to through the theater?
I smiled grimly, ready to put Jake in his place when I got back to the station. Look what old-fashioned police work turned up.
PETER / Saturday, September 8, 2007
SHAKESPEARE WAS one cunning SOB. I didn’t care much for his comedies, the farces full of village idiots and misplaced identities. I’d always gravitated to the tragedies, where even witches and ghosts couldn’t distract the audience from this central psychological truth: by our own natures, we are all inherently doomed. Shakespeare didn’t write anything new. He didn’t invent jealousy, infidelity, or the greed of kings. He recognized evil as timeless and shone a spotlight directly, unflinchingly on it and said, This is what we are and always will be.