Dug had been no more messed up than the rest of them. Cooper had always known in his gut that Dug had gone back to keep after Emma as a means to make Race happy. “The truth is you came back and picked him up.”
“You’re way off base,” he denied, but his tone was careful.
Cooper was pretending to know more than he did. He’d never believed Dug had anything to do with hurting Emma, but he’d thought there was more to the story than either Dug or Race was telling.
“You left the Ryersons’, dropped off Robbie, circled around, and came back for Dug.”
“That’s not what happened.” Race shook his head. His hair was still dark, but there were flecks of gray just beginning to show.
“Dug got in your car and then you took him home.”
“That’s just not true, Haynes,” he said with more heat, but he wouldn’t meet Cooper’s eyes.
“What part did I get wrong?” Cooper asked coldly.
“What do you mean?” Race paused in the act of taking another swallow.
“It always bothered me, Dug not leaving with the rest of us. What did he do?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, Race. What sort of pranking did he do?”
“I told you. Nothing!”
“Emma had shut you down and Dug knew you were mad. Maybe he went too far?”
“Nothing happened with Dug,” Race shot back. His face had suffused with a dark red color. “He liked Emma. All of us liked Emma. She shut you down, too,” he reminded him, glaring at Cooper as if it had just happened.
“Emma was just friends with all of us.”
“Because of that college guy!” Race expelled.
“There was no college guy.”
“Yes, there was,” he insisted.
“I talked to Jamie. She said there wasn’t anyone in her sister’s life.”
“And you believed her?” Race looked at Cooper with a smirking grin. “You got it bad for her, too? Wanna get in her pants? Deon said she looks just like Emma.”
Cooper put a check on his own anger and just waited.
“There was somebody Emma was seeing. Maybe her baby sister didn’t know about him, but her friends did. I told the police he was the one who tried to kill her.”
“Could have been an accident.”
Race made a growling noise that summed up his frustration with the subject. “If I ever find the fucker, I’ll kill him myself!”
That felt real. And Cooper could relate. He’d felt that way when Emma had been attacked and he felt that way now about the intruder who’d threatened Marissa.
“Find who she was seeing and you’ll find the guy who attacked her,” Race stated flatly.
Cooper took a mental step back. He wanted to press on the Dug issue, but it was clear Race believed Emma had been attacked by her supposed older lover. Irene Whelan had pushed that theory for a while as well, but it had never been proven and seemed to be a dead end. A few of Emma’s girlfriends had been interviewed and asked the question, but none had offered up anything about Emma and any particular lover and no one had ever said she had a “secret life.”
Race had grown quiet, and Cooper realized he was deep in thought. It was the look of someone who was carefully thinking something over.
“You should talk to Dug,” he finally said.
Cooper stayed very still. Something unexpected here. “What’ll he tell me?”
He seemed to wrestle with himself for a while, then he sighed. “I did go back for him, but I didn’t find him. He walked home, like he said.”
“You didn’t tell the police you went back for him.”
“No. Of course not. They woulda made more of it than it was.”
“Did you go back to see Emma?”
“No. I circled the block, looking for Dug. He was already gone. Then I drove back to the party and got everybody out of there. Told ’em the police were on the way. I was . . . pissed.”
“What’ll Dug tell me?” Cooper asked again.
“Nothing!”
“You just told me to talk to him.”
“Yeah, to confirm that it wasn’t him who hurt Emma. I know it wasn’t Dug. You know it wasn’t Dug. I didn’t see him. I saw . . . I don’t know, it was dark, but it wasn’t Dug.”
“Jesus, Race.” Cooper was on his feet. “You saw? What did you see?”
“It wasn’t Dug!” he yelled as Cooper strode down the hall.
“I’m going to find Dug.”
“Don’t go off half-cocked, man. It wasn’t Dug, because I saw somebody else!”
Cooper slowed his steps and stopped by the front door. He turned around and regarded Race, who’d followed after him. Race had bleated out the truth, but now looked like he was going to start covering up again. “Who?” Cooper demanded.
“I don’t know, man. That college guy, probably. In a ski mask. But it wasn’t Dug.”
“What?” Cooper bit out.
“Maybe I’m wrong. I didn’t see him that well. But it wasn’t Dug.”
“You saw a guy in a ski mask the night Emma was attacked?”
“I don’t know. It was hard to tell. I thought so. I was looking for Dug, and I saw him, Dug, I thought at the time. But this guy wasn’t on the street . . . he was kind of staying close to the side bushes . . . and he didn’t walk like Dug. I told Dug about him later, and he said it wasn’t him.”
Cooper stared at Race, his thoughts tumbling over one another.
“They were trying to hang us all, remember?” Race declared. “Wanted to blame the whole thing on us. They woulda strung Dug up without a trial. I know how these things go. The police are a friend until they’re not. So don’t go making this bigger than it is.”
“If this is true, you covered up for whoever attacked Emma.”
“I told the police it was that college guy!”
Cooper’s blood was pounding in his ears. He was as angry as he’d ever been. With an effort, he tried to cool his fury, but he wanted to slam Race up against the wall. Race could be lying, he reminded himself.
