And that was death for an impartial investigation.
“You’re saying you don’t believe it happened like Marissa said.” Cooper was terse.
“Isn’t that more reasonable than to think the same thing that happened at my house twenty years ago happened again?”
“Marissa was terrified last night. So were your kids. That doesn’t sound like a prank to me.”
“Well, as Detective Eversgard is the lead, I’ll talk to him,” Ryerson said.
Cooper finished his cup of coffee, watching Ryerson walk out the door. The man met someone on the sidewalk, an older woman in earrings and a scarf artfully swept over her shoulders, and leaned in to her, smiling and talking. She seemed to come alive at the attention.
Ted Ryerson was in investments. Watching this interchange, Cooper sure hoped he was on the up and up and wasn’t some kind of scam artist. There was something a little slick about him.
Or is that just you being annoyed because he pointed out an important piece you refused to investigate? Your friends.
“Not refused,” he said aloud. He just hadn’t gotten to it yet. Either for Marissa or Emma, who’d already waited twenty years.
Mike Corliss believed Emma’s attack had been perpetrated by one of her classmates. Ted Ryerson believed the same held true for Marissa.
He sighed, dropped some money on the table, and headed out. He had to let Howie interview Marissa. Maybe he would learn something Cooper wasn’t going to like. For now, he would believe his stepdaughter. If there was any truth to what Ted Ryerson believed, it didn’t seem like Marissa was aware that the attack had been staged by her schoolmates. She’d been truly frightened last night.
In the meantime, he was going to delve into the report on Emma’s attack, the interviews he and his friends had given twenty years earlier. If the department hadn’t gotten it on computer yet, it was still in paper form.
He planned to spend the rest of Sunday, and however much longer it took, to scour those old reports.
* * *
Jamie beat Gwen to the Waystation, but not by much. Her old friend blew in the door in a rush of cold air from a wind that had suddenly cropped up, shaking the leaves from the trees and blowing them into neighborhood yards and pressing them against buildings.
Vicky and Jill were already seated, and it turned out Alicia was in the bathroom when Jamie arrived. She’d just greeted the other women when Gwen appeared, having to pull the door shut behind her.
“How wonderfully lowbrow,” Gwen said with appreciation, looking around as she came to the table.
“Isn’t it, though? You have to order at the bar here,” said Vicky. She smiled at Gwen, albeit with forced warmth. Jamie wondered if, in spite of what Vicky had said about inviting a friend, she’d overstepped her bounds with these women.
Jamie went with Gwen to the bar. The three other women had ordered wine, so Jamie did the same, but Gwen asked for herbal tea. The look she got from the man with the beard made them both chuckle. “I’ve got coffee,” he said. “Maybe instant decaf.”
“How about a sparkling water?” Gwen asked.
He poured Jamie’s wine and handed Gwen a can of soda water and an empty glass.
Alicia had returned from the bathroom as they regrouped around the table. She looked a little taken aback by Gwen, whose hair was once again pulled back by a scarf and who wore a sacklike dress in blue cotton and flip-flops, even though the temperature was in the low fifties outside. She had, Jamie realized, taken up the same style as her mother, who’d worn colorful Hawaiian muumuus almost exclusively when Gwen had been growing up. Jamie made introductions, even though the women mostly knew one another.
Vicky immediately quizzed Gwen on her work with the police. Jamie gave Gwen a worried look. She hadn’t meant to subject her friend to a full-on third degree. Gwen, however, could handle herself.
After a few minutes of this, when it became clear Gwen wasn’t going to cough up anything, Jill turned her attention to Jamie. “So, tell us about last night’s attack.”
Gwen looked at Jamie with questions in her eyes, and Jamie realized she hadn’t heard about it yet. Jamie gave the women a perfunctory rundown of how Marissa had been accosted and frightened, to the gasps and cries of everyone. When she was finished, Gwen asked urgently, “How’s Marissa doing? Fear can really injure a person’s psyche.”
“Okay, I think. I mostly know what Harley’s told me. She’s been in contact with Marissa, but she doesn’t want to talk about it with me.”
“God no,” said Alicia. “Parents just can’t be trusted.”
“No kidding,” said Vicky.
Jamie said, “I imagine Cooper, being Marissa’s stepfather, is making sure she’s okay.”
A discussion about who had terrorized Marissa ensued. Jamie was uncomfortable throughout, as the women kept turning to her, as if she were holding back on them.
“You don’t think . . . she could have made it all up?” Vicky asked. “For attention, maybe? Kids do crazy stuff.”
“What makes you say that?” Gwen asked, unintentionally putting Vicky on the defensive.
“Well, Tyler said that she let it be known where they were babysitting together, Marissa and Jamie’s daughter. I know Harley wasn’t there,” Vicky said quickly to Jamie, “but that’s what they’d said to the boys. Tyler thought the girls were kind of hoping the guys would show up.”
“Well, did they?” asked Jill, looking from Vicky to Alicia.
“Not Tyler,” Vicky said quickly. “He was home. I don’t know about the others, but Tyler wasn’t there.”
Alicia shook her head. “Troy isn’t interested in the younger girls. He thinks they’re all drama queens. Maybe some of the other guys . . .”
“Not Tyler,” Vicky said again.
Their rapid-fire defenses didn’t ring true. Jamie was starting to realize that maybe the boys had been at the Ryersons’.
“Why wasn’t Harley with Marissa?” Jill asked.
“Laura, Marissa’s mother, didn’t think it was a
