“You’re that new girl . . . Harley,” said Dara.
“Uh-huh.”
“Greer likes you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing.
“He liked Michaela last year.” She moved farther into the room and slipped a small black purse off her shoulder. She wore jeans and a black turtleneck and her blond hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. Somewhat terrified, Harley made note of the older girl’s appearance for future consideration.
“Do you like him?” she asked as she rummaged through the purse for a tube of cover-up. She dabbed at a zit on her chin that Harley hadn’t even noticed.
“I don’t know him very well. Apart from being pushed off the stage, that is.”
Dara turned and gave her a long look. Harley wished she hadn’t said anything.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. We’re all graduating. We’ll hardly ever see one another again. Tyler can go fuck whoever he wants.”
With that, she turned back out of the room, stopping long enough to add, “And he wasn’t at that house where your friend was babysitting. He was with me.”
She pushed through the door and Harley stood there for a moment in silence. Tyler had been with his parents, according to them. Well, he couldn’t have been with both of them, so who was lying?
She felt cold all over. Could Tyler have been the one in the ski gear who’d come after Marissa with a knife?
Chapter Twenty-One
Cooper had started out the week in serious frustration about being kept out of the Ryerson home invasion, but by Wednesday, Howie finally laid out everything he’d discovered about the teens who had pranked Marissa at the Ryerson house in a meeting that also included Chief Bennihof and Detective Verbena. “I don’t think it was Troy Stillwell or Greer Douglas,” Howie concluded. “I thought it was. Tried to be fair, but I really thought it was. They were there, but they left. They gave me a blow-by-blow account of what they did and when, but they left together in Stillwell’s car, which needs a muffler. Neighbors heard ’em leave and saw the car with the two boys in it, about an hour before the Ryerson home invasion.”
“Couldn’t they have gone back?” Verbena asked. She posed the question that had been on the tip of Cooper’s tongue.
“They could’ve,” Howie had agreed. “But they went to Deno’s and ordered pizza. Hung out there for quite a while, then headed to the Stillwells’. Deon Stillwell swears they were there the rest of the night, and his ex, Alicia, who was also at the house, concurs. She and Deon got into a huge fight about Troy. I got the feeling there was drinking, maybe dope smoking going on with the teenagers and she was ready to blow the thing wide open. Now that the law’s involved over the attack on Marissa, she’s changed her mind. She did tell me to check and see where the boys’ phones were after ten o’clock.”
“Did you?” Bennihof asked.
“Not yet. But I will.”
“Was there anybody else with them?” Cooper asked.
“Only the two guys in the car. Marissa, once she realized that we knew that Troy and Greer had been there, admitted she wasn’t sure if they were the only ones. They were in dark pants and hooded sweatshirts. She only caught glimpses of them. Admitted she wasn’t really scared. She knew who they probably were, and it turns out she was right.”
“So, our attacker is someone else,” said Verbena.
“I think so,” Howie agreed.
They’d discussed the case some more. Cooper had wanted to jump into it, but Bennihof had thought it would be better if he let the other detectives handle it, and Howie had agreed, reminding him, “It keeps you one step out from your ex-wife.”
Cooper had been left with a vandalism case at the Staffordshire development. Someone had written swear words into new concrete with a stick in front of an almost finished home at the far end of the development. The lots around it were for sale. The builder of the vandalized property was fit to be tied. He was going to have to replace the ruined concrete at great expense. An empty bottle of Tito’s vodka had been left on the site. The glass of the bottle would be great for fingerprints. Cooper had looked around a bit and found a place at the back of the lot, where it was mostly brush and briars, and a copse of trees where the ground was disturbed, the vegetation flattened. He concluded something had been laid atop it, possibly a blanket, and the used condom tossed into the briars looked like it answered that question.
He’d gone over the Emma file again and had lingered over his information on the Ryerson parents, William and Nadine. They’d arrived separately at the house that night. Initially, they’d said that William had wanted to stay and Nadine had caught a ride with Dr. Alain Metcalf. The timing had been a little off, however, and eventually, it came out that the Ryersons had had a huge fight, with Nadine accusing William of cheating before leaving with Metcalf. William had proceeded to keep on drinking and, yes, had been flirting, rather unsuccessfully except for Kayla, his current wife, throughout the night, both before and after Nadine left.
There had always been a question about William’s practices. He was a little too liberal with his prescriptions, according to a few sources who’d requested anonymity. Now in his sixties, he’d moved to Bend a few years earlier and was still practicing.
Nadine was married to another physician, Dr. Jay Campbell, and had moved to Bellevue from Tahoe fairly recently. Campbell’s kids, only a few years younger than Ted and Serena, lived in the Seattle area, and Cooper guessed
