Everything You Want Me to Be(44)

I nodded.

“She’s been like that the whole play, feeding this curse crap to anyone who’ll listen.”

“Did Hattie listen? She and Portia were mighty close.”

“No.” His voice quieted down. “No, Hattie was one of the only ones who didn’t buy it. She . . . she was different from most teenagers. She understood the space between reality and illusion.”

He started to say something else and then seemed to think better of it.

When we pulled up to the station I had Jake take him into the back while I got a cup of coffee and waited for it to cool. Two news vans drove by the front window and I could hear Brian bugging Nancy out on the sidewalk to set up another press conference. I took a drink and headed to the interrogation room.

Jake, who was playing bodyguard by the door, handed me a folder when I walked in. Lund looked a lot more uncomfortable than he had a few minutes ago. I sat down and flipped the folder open, reading the emails and sipping my coffee. After a moment, Lund leaned in and saw enough to drop his head into his hands.

“So, LitGeek, huh?” I tapped the name on one of the pages.

“God. I . . . I didn’t know who she was. It was all anonymous.”

“Anonymous, like strangers?”

“Yes.” He lifted his head while I kept drinking and flipping pages. “Yes, exactly.”

I picked up a paper and leaned back until I could read it clearly. “?‘I’m running my hand up the inside of your thigh and into the crease of your leg. My fingers are a whisper on your skin, a suggestion you can’t ignore.’?”

Jake snickered. I read the crap same as I’d read my breakfast order at Sally’s. I glanced up at Lund. He’d gone beet-red.

“You make . . . suggestions like that . . . to complete strangers?”

“No, I knew her. I mean, I didn’t know her identity but I knew who she was, I thought. We’d been chatting for weeks. We’d become close.”

“Mmm-hmm. Appears that way.”

“What did she print? God, did she just print the sex stuff? As soon as I found out who she was, I ended it. I mean immediately. Doesn’t she have that in there, too?”

He’d worked himself into a pretty good sweat and tried to see what I was reading. Jake was trying for all the world to look tough and disinterested again after the snicker.

“Matter of fact, she does.”

He heaved a sigh out, deflating like a balloon. “So you can see. It was over. It was nothing.”

“Don’t suspect your wife would think this was nothing. Don’t suspect Hattie did. She seemed pretty bent on you here.” I shook my head. “For some reason.”

“Hattie did try to talk to me after we realized . . . the situation. I even met with her once, to end it face-to-face, because she wanted to . . . to continue the relationship.”

“And you weren’t the least bit tempted? Pretty, young girl like that. Smart, just like you. Liked all those books and big cities.”

“No. No.” He shook his head, looking between me and Jake. “She was a student, a . . . a child. I could have gone to jail, for Christ’s sake. Not to mention losing my job and my marriage.”

“You still can, Lund. We can arrange all those things for you.”

“But nothing happened. I told her she had to drop it, that I would never return her feelings, and she moved on. She started dating Tommy Kinakis. That’s when I finally felt like the whole nightmare was behind me, when I began seeing them in the halls. It seemed like they were together for the rest of the year, but I have no idea why. He’s a big, hulking idiot. Have you even talked to Tommy yet? He acted like she was his property, always draping an arm over her and steering her through crowds in the halls like she couldn’t walk by herself.”

“You must have been watching her pretty close to know all that.”

“With the rest of the students, I couldn’t care less. But yes—I watched Hattie.” He slumped a bit as he said it, maybe ashamed, maybe relieved to get it off his chest. “How could I not? I was paranoid that she’d decide to turn me in.”

“Well, then, this all worked out pretty nice for you. Can’t hurt you now, can she?”

“No! How can you even say that?” He snapped back up, indignant as hell. “I fucked up, okay? I know it. I’m an asshole and a lousy husband.”

“No arguments here.”

“But that doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that Hattie was the brightest and most promising student in that entire school. She . . . understood people, she could peg you with a glance. It was unsettling sometimes, like she could see right through you. She was going to New York in the fall and I knew that she would fit right in with that fast-paced East Coast mentality. I knew she would do something amazing with her life. And I was relieved, too, okay? That she would be gone and I could move on with my life.”

“Maybe next fall wasn’t fast enough for you. Or maybe Hattie decided she needed some cash for her trip to New York or a little bump in her GPA.” It grated, having to talk about Hattie like that, heaping ugliness on her, but I couldn’t spare her from it. I had to bare all her secrets, and just hope I could keep some of it from Bud and Mona.

“The only time I spoke to Hattie in the last few months was in class or at the play. She wasn’t blackmailing me. She wouldn’t do that. You need to talk to Tommy. Hattie was going places and Tommy wasn’t. If she tried to break up with him . . . these last few days . . . it’s the only thing I can think of.”