Everything You Want Me to Be(93)

“The door,” Bud spat, and then I saw it.

The inside panel of the driver’s-side door was cracked open, and there, stained dark with dried and crusted blood, was Mary Beth Lund’s chicken-butchering knife. The knife I’d dreamed about, the knife we couldn’t pull out of that lake. I leaned in farther and saw a rectangular box with buttons underneath the knife. I’d bet a thousand dollars it was Hattie’s missing camcorder.

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered.

Bud stepped up next to me and we stood there, staring at Tommy’s mutilated body, watching his blood congeal.

“Lund,” Bud said, quiet and low, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was thinking. Peter Lund had confessed to a crime he didn’t commit. Maybe he thought he was protecting someone else or maybe he wanted to pay for his other sins, but in all likelihood he was going to rot in prison for the next twenty to thirty years, and the only thing in the world that would prevent that was right in front of us.

I glanced at Bud. In the distance came the wail of the ambulance and another police siren. There was no time to think it through. No time to wonder about the morality of a man’s actions, whether he owed more to a friend or to the law and the country that depended on that law, no time to sift through the dozens of questions that would haunt me in the middle of the night for years to come, sitting up in a pitch-black living room staring at the neighbors’ cat and feeling like I had no right to wear a badge, that I had failed the institution I’d given my life to and not even knowing what that meant. The sirens came closer and closer and I turned to Bud, my oldest, broken friend, and I gave him back a crumb of what he’d lost of himself.

“It’s your call.”

Tears coursed down his unshaved cheeks. “I don’t know, Del.”

“Decide for Hattie, then. Choose for her.”

I watched as Bud’s hand slowly reached out, to either pry open that hidden compartment or to seal it from the world’s eyes forever. To reveal who had murdered his daughter or to sentence her lover to a lifetime of penance.

His hand shook while he decided.





DEL / Sunday, May 11, 2008


JAKE AND I watched the tape from the beginning. Hattie’s image filled the interrogation room, bright and bubbling one minute, big-eyed and somber the next, telling us everything she had done in the last year of her short life. This was the diary I’d expected to find when I’d searched her room all those weeks ago.

When the scene switched from her bedroom to the dark, splintered boards of the barn, we both sat up straighter. Everything in me tensed and went cold. Hattie was oblivious to any danger, bursting with details about her rendezvous with Lund and their plans to run away together. She was glowing, pulsing with life and hope. Then a squeaking noise pulled her gaze away from the camera and her face brightened.

“Did you forget—”

Her smile died. She tripped backward, away from the camera and from the person who’d just walked into the barn.

“Tommy.”

“You lying whore.”

Hattie backed up until only her top half was visible. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for you.” Tommy stepped into the frame, holding Mary Beth’s knife in one hand. “I went home and then came back. I drove along the back roads looking for you, to give you a ride because I felt bad about what I said.”

“That’s sweet.” Her voice shook as she said it.

“Then I checked the barn.”

He kept walking forward, slowly, until he was in the far corner of the frame with Hattie, facing away from the camera.

“And I see you sitting in Mr. Lund’s lap, making out with him like he just fucked you four ways from Sunday.”

“Tommy, I can explain.”

“I don’t need any explanation, Hattie! I got the picture! You won’t have sex with me, but you’re giving it away to one of our teachers. Does he give you good grades? Do you give him a blow job for every A?”

“I’m in love with him, Tommy.” Hattie’s eyes kept bouncing to the knife.

“So you’re cheating on me with a teacher. Letting him do all the things you tell me you won’t do. Were you laughing at me behind my back? Laughing at me while screwing him?”

“No. No, I never laughed at you. I never . . . thought about you.” She took another step back and the floorboards creaked. She had to be close to the water’s edge now. “You were a really good boyfriend, Tommy. Really. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t think.”

Suddenly she pointed to the blade in Tommy’s fist. “What are you doing with that?”

“I’m going to get some answers out of you. I watched him leave and waited for you to come out. Then I found this.” He lifted it for the first time, pointing it at Hattie’s chest.

“Can’t you just put it down? We’ll go somewhere, anywhere you want, and we’ll talk. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, the whole truth. I promise.”

“Did you fuck him here?” he demanded, his voice rising.

She hesitated before answering. “Yes.”

“Then I want to talk right here.”

They were only a few feet apart now.

“How long have you been screwing our English teacher?”