'Are you okay? You want me to drive?'
Melissa didn't answer. She turned into the park and headed for the heavily forested section known since the advent of the car as Lovers' Lane. Melissa smiled at Tim. There was no doubt what had prompted her look. If he'd been sober he would have been scared, but the booze had mashed down his inhibitions.
Sometime between parking and their first kiss, Melissa slipped her hand into Tim's lap and began stroking his penis through his jeans. When she broke the kiss, Tim noticed that her eyes were glassy, but he didn't notice much else.
'Want one?'
Melissa was holding out a handful of pills. Even as wasted as he was, Tim knew better than to mess with pharmaceuticals. He shook his head. Melissa shrugged. She shoved the pills into her mouth and washed them down with something from a bottle Tim hadn't seen before. The hand returned to Tim's lap. Melissa pulled down his zipper and unbuckled his pants. He was conscious of the rain pelting against the roof of the car. For a second, Tim thought about Cindy. Then Melissa's mouth was on him and he wasn't thinking about anything. His eyes closed and his buttocks tightened. He was about to come when Melissa pulled away roughly.
Tim's eyes snapped open. Melissa's eyes rolled back in her head. A moment later, she was thrashing against the driver's-side door. Tim pressed backward, stunned and too terrified to think. Melissa was flailing. He knew that he had to do something, but he had no idea what. Suddenly, she collapsed, convulsed again, and stopped moving.
'Oh, my God. Melissa! Melissa!'
Tim forced himself to lean toward Melissa and touch her neck, checking for a pulse. Her flesh felt clammy and he pulled back. Had there been a pulse? He wasn't certain. He just wanted to get out of the car.
The rain was still falling. He zipped up his pants. What should he do? Call someone, he guessed, an ambulance, the cops. But what would happen to him if he did? He was drunk, breaking curfew, an engaged man getting a blow job from a girl high on God knew what. Would the cops think he'd given her the drugs?
Better get out of here, he told himself. Tim ran. Then he stopped. He had to make a call. If he left her and she died . . . He didn't want to think about that.
Another thought occurred to Tim-- fingerprints. He'd seen cop shows. They'd dust the car, wouldn't they? Where had he touched it? After that night, every time he was tempted to rationalize what he'd done, Tim would remember wiping the door handles and the dashboard.
The rain was starting to let up when he sprinted out of the park. He was two miles from home. There were houses across the street but they were all dark. He should pound on a door and tell them about Melissa. He could make up a story, say he was . . . what? Walking through the woods in the rain at three in the morning, drunk. And they'd know him. He was famous. If the cops told Coach what he'd been doing-- that he was intoxicated-- Coach would kick him off the team. He'd have no choice.
Tim kept running. There was a twenty-four-hour convenience store a few blocks from his house. He detoured past it and checked the lot for cars. A guy was inside, getting cigarettes. Tim waited until he left, then jogged to the pay phone and called the police anonymously, hanging up as soon as he was certain that the cops knew where to look for Melissa.
Tim's house was dark and quiet. He let himself in and stripped off his clothes in his room. Melissa was probably okay, he told himself. Yeah, she'd probably just passed out. She'd been wasted. That was it. She was okay.
Tim went to bed, but he didn't sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Melissa pressed against the car door, her eyes rolled back, drool clinging to her lower lip. When he sobered up, he cried, but he wasn't sure if he was crying for Melissa or himself.
The next day at practice Tim learned that Melissa was dead. The paper said something about a preexisting heart condition and drugs and booze. There was no mention of a passenger. Tim wondered if Melissa would have survived if he had called for help as soon as he left the park. Was she dying while he was running for his life? Would a doctor have saved her?
Worst of all, he had spent time wiping away his prints to protect himself. Had those few moments meant the difference between Melissa living or dying? If he'd stayed with her until the ambulance arrived, would Melissa Stebbins have survived?
Tim waited for the police to come for him all week long. Some of the time, he longed for the knock on the door and the chance to confess and unburden himself of his guilt, but it never came. So much for justice. Instead of going to jail, Tim won the big game and was awarded a trophy declaring him to be the greatest college player in the United States of America. He was hailed as a hero. Tim knew better.
Chapter Thirty.
Billie Brewster waved to Kate Ross across the dining room of Junior's Cafe, where you could get coffee, strong and black, but no lattes; and apple pie a la mode, but never ever a tiramisu. Brewster was a slender black woman with close-cropped hair who worked Homicide. She and Kate had been friends when Kate was with the Portland Police Bureau and they had reestablished their friendship during the Daniel Ames case. Kate paused at the counter to give Junior her order before joining Billie.
'How have you been?' Kate asked as she slid into the booth.
'I've been better. The Parole Board passed on my brother this morning.'
'Did you go down there for the hearing?'
'No. I get too bummed out.'
'I'm so sorry.'
Billie had been forced to raise her younger brother from the time she was sixteen, the year her father deserted the family and her mother started to work two jobs just to get by. Billie blamed herself for her brother's failings. He was locked up at the Oregon State penitentiary for committing an armed robbery.
'When does he come up again?' Kate asked.
