Nice Girls(61)

But this whole time, Dwayne had been a father. He had to have known that Demetrius was his. Though there was no proof, I knew deep down that DeMaria was right about her son’s paternity. I understood why she had taken antidepressants—she was stuck raising a baby on her own. The man she loved had left her. And it hurt her to know that the man was right there, in town, making enough money to live comfortably without them.

If there was any part of me that had doubted Dwayne’s guilt, it was gone now.

“I thought Dwayne Turner was just a coward. A stupid, selfish kid,” said Leticia. “He didn’t want to claim his own son because then he’d have to pay child support. But I gave him too much credit. It wasn’t bad enough that he knocked up my daughter and abandoned her and the child. But the fact that he had to kidnap and murder my child . . . and then someone else’s child, too? Well, that’s something else. That takes a monster.”

Leticia paused for one last time. She had all of us now, our strings looped around her fingers. And she wasn’t quite ready to let go, now that she had gotten her time to speak.

“A murderer is a murderer is a murderer,” said Leticia, her voice steady. “I want Dwayne Turner to pay, both in his assets and his life. And I am prepared for a paternity test, a court case, and whatever else comes. I will do what I said I would do—whatever it takes to get justice for my daughter, DeMaria Jackson.”

The crowd started clapping, the sound thunderous over the laptop speakers. Leticia took in the faces around her, one arm wrapped around Demetrius, the other hand raised in thanks. She was stone-faced. I turned off the laptop, my stomach queasy.

I hurried to the bathroom and locked the door. I lifted up the toilet seat and dry-heaved, my face inches from the toilet water. I kept retching, harder than I had in my entire life. I didn’t stop until my eyes were watering and there was spittle hanging from my mouth. I’d gotten nothing out.

But I couldn’t stop.

I needed to cleanse myself of everything inside me—my expulsion from school, Carly, the food that I had binged in the past few weeks, the deaths of Olivia and DeMaria, the fact that Dwayne Turner could have killed me next.

And I had let him fuck me. The thought was clear in my mind like glass—I had let a murderer fuck me.

I couldn’t stomach it. I gagged again, hoping the bile would start to come. I wanted the impurities gone, all of them. I needed to feel clean again. I was tired of being tainted.

When I finally heard Dad knocking on the bathroom door, I had gotten nothing out.





30




Before I knew it, a week had passed. We had our first snowfall on the ninth. The snow was so light that I wasn’t sure if I’d even seen it. But then I blinked, and the snow was suddenly flying down in hard white flakes, like flecks of cereal. I was in my room when the snow fell, putting my old desk together.

A couple of people from college had texted me again. After weeks of silence, they asked me if I knew the victims or the killer from my hometown. The Liberty Lake murders were national news. No one asked me how I was doing—they just wanted details on the case.

I didn’t respond. Those people only reminded me of Carly and campus, things that I’d pushed aside in the past few weeks. Everyone at school was stuck in the throes of midterms before Thanksgiving. A few weeks after that, it would be the end of the semester. For Carly, freshman year was almost half-over.

I missed the parties, the campus, and some of the people, but what I missed most was the opportunity—I’d only had a year left of school. The finish line was close, the diploma within reach. I had a future ahead of me, places to go and people to meet and things to do.

But that was gone.

The anger still burned inside of me—it would take a long, long time to die out. But by the time I’d finished assembling my desk, I was tired. I set the desk on its legs and pushed it next to the window. As the snow blew outside, I went online, looking at the nearby community colleges and state schools. I could still get a diploma. Ivy League Mary was not finished yet.

Time also slowed at the grocery store. It didn’t matter how many smiles I gave or how many customers I helped—I hated the work. I was restless and bored all at once. And I was watching the clock more often now, counting down the hours and the minutes and the bathroom breaks until I could leave.

And when I wasn’t thinking about school or work, I could only think of the murders: Olivia and DeMaria. Dwayne. I was ruminating over the past few weeks, retracing the conversations I’d had and the conversations I’d missed. The danger I’d narrowly dodged.

There was one hero to thank for solving the Liberty Lake murders. On Wednesday night, Kevin Obermueller appeared live on News Four. He was in his police uniform, his hands clasped firmly in front of him, his forehead gleaming with sweat. The news anchors asked him about his life in Liberty Lake, his job, what drew him to it. But when they finally asked how he’d gone after Dwayne Turner, Kevin stared at the camera, his mouth half-open.

“It was an anonymous tip,” he said.

“But there must have been a reason why they reached out to you specifically,” cooed a news anchor. “As a rookie, there must’ve been something about you that made someone trust you.”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess,” he said, looking away.

It helped that Kevin was related to a local celebrity: city council president’s son solves liberty lake murders. An op-ed in the newspaper even drew comparisons between the Obermuellers and the Kennedys, of both families’ stellar legacies in public service. For once, Mr. Obermueller said nothing to the press—he didn’t have to. They were doing the work for him, sprucing him up for a future campaign.