Nice Girls(62)

Both Kevin and I knew that his fame was purely luck. He hadn’t been particularly useful to Olivia’s case, and he had downplayed DeMaria’s death completely. He hadn’t been the one stuck in Dwayne’s apartment with him. He hadn’t put his life on the line to find the truth. Each time I heard him mentioned on the news, I felt a bitterness in my stomach, hard as ice. All the attention they poured on him—and he deserved jack shit.

But Kevin was only a blip in the national news story. Some people were drawn to Olivia, the beautiful social media star from the Midwest. Others were drawn to DeMaria, the jilted young Black mother who’d been forgotten. Their names and their pictures flooded the news.

But Dwayne seemed to tower over all of them: the brutal, enigmatic killer from Liberty Lake. The news talked about Dwayne’s troubled past in high school. He had performed poorly in a few of his classes; he drank underage and smoked marijuana in the school bathrooms; and he had briefly dated one murder victim in high school and impregnated the other. The news almost always included a clip of Dwayne violently shoving a lineman during a game.

Thanks to one article, I finally found out how Dwayne had ended up back in Liberty Lake—he’d been caught using steroids his freshman year of college. Dwayne was subsequently kicked off his school’s football team, his full-ride scholarship taken away. After one semester of college, Dwayne dropped out and returned home. That was why he had never wanted to talk about school. He had blown his one chance, like me.

Then there were the think pieces about Dwayne. The more thoughtful ones discussed the toxic nature of rape culture in sports or domestic violence in the suburbs. Other pieces argued that Dwayne had been a psychopath. In response, others argued that Dwayne had multiple personalities, including a murderous one. There were conspiracy theories that Dwayne had been framed for the murders by the local police.

Then there were the more virulent articles that came out. One article suggested that Dwayne was hardwired for violence—it was in his genetics—and needed to be put to death. One commenter hoped that Dwayne would get thoroughly “ass-raped in prison.” It seemed the case was growing uglier by the day.

The Liberty Lake Police Department discovered “explicit correspondence” on Dwayne’s phone between him and Olivia. Correspondence had ended back on October 18, the day of Olivia’s disappearance. People surmised online that Olivia’s last message to Dwayne had been her nude photo. They didn’t know how right they were.

Though there was no set trial date, the case against Dwayne was building.

People came forward to the police. An anonymous coworker claimed that Dwayne had once mentioned Olivia as the “girl he should’ve tied down back in high school.” An anonymous resident at Dwayne’s apartment reported a heavy black duffel bag that he often carried. Since the Jewel already had a gym inside, they thought it was strange that he left with a workout bag so often. Only now did they realize that it could have been used for more insidious purposes.

A gas station owner in the Sewers provided police with footage from the afternoon of Olivia’s disappearance. Dwayne was shown filling up his tank at five thirty-four that night, only a couple of hours after Olivia had left her house for good.

I didn’t know much about criminal law, but I knew enough to guess some of the charges against him: first-degree murder, kidnapping, the desecration of a body, the broken privacy laws around Olivia’s nude photo, and whatever else the police had yet to uncover. Since Minnesota had no death penalty, Dwayne was most likely going to get life in prison with a bonus of solitary confinement.

Life was slowly turning upright again, like the hand of a clock climbing back to twelve. There was justice now for the victims and perhaps a little peace for me.

On the upcoming Saturday, the Willands were holding a private funeral service for Olivia at St. Rita’s Catholic Church. Mrs. Willand had reached out directly to me and Dad.

“We consider you to be family friends. And, Mary, you were so close to Olivia way back when,” said Mrs. Willand over voice mail. She sounded feeble and shaky. “We’re not sure when we’ll get a full confession—we could wait forever to get all of her back . . . but Martin and I thought it was right to give Olivia a proper goodbye as soon as possible.”

The funeral sounded painful. I didn’t belong there—we hadn’t spoken since high school. I had resented her for years. I doubted that I ever really knew her.

But I wanted to go. It would be one moment in time, and it would be over. Even after everything, I needed to give Olivia a proper goodbye. Then I could finally let go.





31




The morning of the funeral, I woke up early—just a bit after five, when the sky was still dark. I sat up in bed. The room was chilly. Though my body was awake, the rest of me felt bleary, as if I hadn’t slept at all.

I spent the next hour dumping out the garbage bags of clothes on the floor. I plucked out whatever was black, including a pair of dress pants, some leggings, some different tops, and a strapless dress meant for the summer. Without much thought, I settled on the dress, pairing it with a gray button-up sweater.

Within an hour, I finished putting on my makeup and curling my hair. That was how the women had looked at Mom’s funeral—dolled up and proper in their fancy black dresses. It seemed the more effort you put in, the more you cared.

By the time I came downstairs for breakfast, I was already dressed for the funeral.