“Let’s talk about that day. You didn’t have your driver’s license, but you supposedly forced Jenny inside your brother’s truck. You took her somewhere and killed her, then you dumped her body in our field. If you didn’t want her boyfriend and she used to kind of be your friend, then why? Why would you admit to all that?” I asked, boldly.
Chrissy’s jaw flexed in her cheek, then she reached for her drink. I watched as she drained the whiskey.
“Can I have another one?” Chrissy slid her glass toward me, not waiting for an answer.
“Sure. But then will you tell me about that day … the true story?”
Chrissy grunted a word that might have been ‘yes’, eyeballing the pieces still left on the board.
It’s time to take out my queen. I moved her out, then went to the kitchen to fetch Chrissy’s drink.
This time I made the drink stronger. Chrissy needed it after her tussle with Dennis, and I needed her to trust me more. I filled another glass of Coke for me, then added a splash of whiskey.
“Here you go,” I said, returning to the room.
Chrissy took a long swallow of her fresh drink.
She focused on the same bishop again. As she sat her glass down, her hand was wobbly, her limbs lanky and loose from the booze, and a bit of it swished over the side of her glass. She wiped it with the sleeve of her gray hoodie, then moved her bishop a single space.
Clearing her throat, she said, “I picked her up from school that day, that much was true. But I didn’t force her. I didn’t like her boyfriend … but I must admit, I was flattered by his interest in me. And intrigued at first. But then I started to notice the way he was, and I felt like I should tell her. She deserved to know the truth about John.”
“Okay…” I nodded slowly, urging her on. I wasn’t taking notes this time. How could I forget her words? I couldn’t. And I certainly didn’t need paper or a tape recorder to absorb them.
“When I told her the truth, about him pursuing me, I thought she’d be angry with me, or maybe even deny it. You know how some girls are … they don’t want to accept the truth about the men they love…”
I nodded. “But John wasn’t a man, Chrissy. He was a teenage boy.”
Chrissy shrugged one shoulder. “He was. But you have to remember, we were young too. Full of hormones and full of rage…”
“Murdering someone takes a lot of rage,” I said, solemnly.
Chrissy sighed dramatically. “Anyway, I picked her up that day. We didn’t go anywhere. We just rode around and talked, and we smoked some pot I stole from Trent. She wasn’t used to smoking … and by the time I dropped her off, she was more than a little high. I felt terrible about it honestly. I shouldn’t have left her that way.”
I wanted to believe her, but something was still missing here.
“She didn’t make it home though, Chrissy. You say you dropped her off, but nobody saw her after that. The next time anyone saw her … she was lying dead in the field. And you confessed to the police that you were responsible. If it wasn’t you, who was it? And why confess?”
Chrissy used her bishop to take out my knight, then drained her second glass. She slammed it hard on the table.
“Jenny’s parents were strict as hell. Her daddy was a pastor, for Christ’s sake. How do you think they would have reacted if she came home high, dropped off by a Cornwall with no license, no less? I couldn’t drive her home that day.” Chrissy’s words were softly slurred.
I moved my knight, then she moved hers too. I had no choice but to back off from her, in the game and in this conversation. She was getting visibly upset, flexing her jaw again.
But instead of retreating, I moved my queen, taking down one of her pawns.
Chrissy stared at the board, eyebrows furrowing.
“If you didn’t drop Jenny off at home that night, then how did you both part ways?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
“I dropped her off at the park beside her neighborhood. You know, the one with the merry-go-round…?”
“I know the one.” Although the merry-go-round had been gone for more than a decade. Too dangerous, according to the all the helicopter parents in Austin.
“She insisted on it. But truthfully, I was tired and high, and I didn’t fight her on it. When I left her there, she was walking through the grass, headed toward the goldfish pond…”
But there was one huge problem with Chrissy’s new story. “You told the cops you killed her. If your story is true, then you would never have done that. No one in their right mind confesses to a murder they didn’t do…”
“Who said I was in my right mind?” Chrissy’s eyes hardened, two shiny black marbles in the dark. She made another move, but I couldn’t pull my eyes from her face.
“Why did you tell them you did it, Chrissy?”
“Because I was protecting someone. Checkmate.”
I froze, a trickle of fear flowing through me. Protecting who?
When I looked down, my king was surrounded on all sides; either way I moved, I was dead.
“I had no more moves, don’t you see? If I told the truth, my life was over. If I lied, it was over too,” Chrissy slurred.
“Who were you protecting, Chrissy?”
Chrissy stared at my king, eyes watery and strange. “I used to sneak out of the trailer every night. Wander the dark roads sometimes, but mostly, I went down to the woods. I liked to sit by the creek, smoking. Thinking. I didn’t see who put her in the field, but I saw her there before anyone else. I stood over her body. I cried beside her. Then I got scared and went back home. And
