“Raspberry,” said Glassman. “Dillon’s famous for its raspberries.”
“Awesome,” said Marci, and she jumped up from her seat on the scratched red table. “Thanks! Come on guys.” She motioned to us with her head, sticking her fingers in the back pockets of her jeans, and turned her back on Glassman to walk to the ice cream counter.
The rest of us took our cue and followed Marci, while Glassman just stood dumbly and watched, completely outmatched in Marci’s verbal chess game. He didn’t try to stop us—the conversation had arrived at his own dismissal so naturally he couldn’t protest it. I waited the longest, letting the rest bunch up in the line while I watched Glassman’s face. The last one to go was Jessica. As she turned, she dropped her phone. She stopped to pick it up, grimacing in fear that she’d somehow broken the spell, but all Glassman could see was her butt, bent over and pointed right at him, perfectly displayed in her tight shorts. He stared at it, and I saw him swallow and clench his fists. I looked away, not wanting him to see that I had seen him. When Jessica walked past me I moved directly behind her, cutting off Glassman’s view.
At the bar, we all made pointless small talk, not daring to look back. After a minute or two, I glanced back as discreetly as I could, hoping not to see him still standing in the same place. The truth was almost as bad—he was across the street, sitting in his squad car and staring.
I couldn’t say for sure at that distance, but I’d have bet anything he was staring right at Jessica.
“Thanks for getting rid of him,” said Brielle. “And please teach me how to do that.”
“He’s not gone yet,” said Corey. I hadn’t even seen him look. Jessica turned and looked at the squad car.
“Frickin’ Cuddles,” said Paul. “That guy gives me the creeps.”
“You’re not the one he was undressing with his eyes,” said Brielle.
“I take it he does that a lot?” I asked.
“That’s the rumor,” said the kid behind the counter.
“He was always pretty touchy-feely,” said Brielle. “But after he left Dillon to join the state police we heard about a girl in another town—”
“Crosby,” said Paul.
“No,” said the kid behind the counter, “it was Taylorsville.”
“It was somewhere,” said Brielle. “Nobody knows exactly what happened, but he’s totally a skeeze.”
“Sounds like an urban legend,” I said.
“It definitely happened,” said Paul. “I met a guy who knew the girl he attacked.”
“If it definitely happened he wouldn’t still be a cop,” said Marci. Her father was a cop. “They hate pedophiles more than anything.”
“Maybe,” said Jessica. She didn’t seem convinced.
“You saw the way he was looking at us,” said Brielle. “Even if there wasn’t a girl in Crosby or wherever, there’s going to be one someday. Somewhere.” Glassman started up his police cruiser and pulled out into the street, driving away. Brielle watched him go, her eyes cold. “If he comes after you, Jess, I’ll kill him.”
17
It started with a scream. Distant, it sounded like, but nothing in Dillon is all that distant. I learned later that it was only a few blocks away from our guest room in Ingrid’s house, which isn’t that far for a scream to carry. Pretty far to wake someone up, though. I was lying on the floor and opened my eyes, not even sure what had woken me. Brooke was asleep on the bed; I didn’t let myself look, but I listened, and her breathing was soft and steady. Boy Dog was snoring on the floor. I was in front of the door, blocking Brooke from leaving, and anyone else from entering. The house was quiet, as was the town. The light of a pale quarter moon drifted through the slats in the window blinds.
And then someone screamed again.
You would think, after the kind of life I’ve lived, that I’d be some kind of expert on screaming—that I could tell from a single cry at least the gender of a screamer, if not the age and some other details. Maybe that happens eventually, but if all the screams I’ve heard aren’t enough, I certainly don’t want to know how many it would take. Extreme pain and extreme terror have a way of blending all voices into one primal sound, as if there were only one scream, and we just tapped into it now and then.