SC: And then I went home.
Another page:
SC: She was a freak. I guess I am too. We had fun. But we kept it a secret.
ML: Why?
SC: I don’t know. It wasn’t anything exclusive. I see other girls. She’s got this boyfriend, Dan. He was sort of her boyfriend but she wasn’t really into him. She had a dangerous side he didn’t understand. Anyway, we didn’t want people talking. I was seeing other girls and I think she was embarrassed.
ML: Embarrassed?
SC: I think she wished she could be the kind of person who didn’t want to be with a guy like me. But she did want to be with me. We did it all the time: in school, at her house, at my house, at work. The more dangerous, the better. She just didn’t want anyone else to know.
And another:
ML: Did you see anyone else in the Gap that day?
SC: There were lots of people.
ML: No one suspicious?
SC: Nah.
ML: No one who looked like they didn’t belong there?
SC: I guess I’m not sure what that means, but no.
Joan closed the report. She had a vision of Davis’s eyes when he read it. Of the tears. The blindness. The anger. The phone call to the police. You knew all along there hadn’t been a rape! You never told me! The original detectives all retired now. The cheap boxes unpacked. The file cabinets filled and reorganized. A new computer at the desk, one with more power and speed. Late nights reassessing all the evidence with fresh and wizened eyes. Wondering how he could have missed this. What else he could have missed. The guilt. The sleepless nights. The new passion. The fury. The madness. Rededicating his life to the capture of a new nameless, faceless killer. A killer still out there. A killer still laughing, still pleasuring himself twenty years later with thoughts of the day he killed Davis Moore’s little girl. Vengeance. Coldness. And Justin. Poor Justin. His sad life for nothing. A boy who never should have been born again into this world. Who was miserable because of it, right up until the day he died of an overdose. How to cope with that? The responsibility. The culpability. And not just Justin, but Jackie. His first wife. Troubled Jackie. Hadn’t her husband’s obsession pushed Jackie beyond her limits? His obsession and this goddamn conspiracy, which Joan had once been a part of? Hadn’t it driven Jackie to her death? And wasn’t Joan at fault, too? Hadn’t she covered for Davis? Abetted him? Loved him? Flown to Brixton with him? And Phil Canella? Dead for nothing. For a mistake. An assumption. A misunderstanding. A file, a single file among thousands, unread. Davis’s feet on the stairs.
Davis’s feet on the stairs.
Joan shuffled Sam Coyne’s statement into the middle of the stack and tossed the whole lot into the open box. Coyne was still a killer, wasn’t he, even if he hadn’t killed AK? He killed Deirdre Thorson and those other girls. She piled another layer of paper on top without investigating its provenance, covering the lost witness statements like thin frosting over a cake.
Davis appeared in the doorway with a glass of pale pulpy liquid for each of them, garnished with wedges of fresh lemon. “Have I seen what?”
“Nothing,” Joan said. She took the lemonade. He smiled at her. He sighed.
“What a mess,” Davis said.
And his wife, who loved him dearly, entombed the contents of each box with long strips of brown tape.
