The Passing Storm(73)

The brick wall enclosing Katherine’s pool area was seven feet tall. “The holly bushes,” Rae supplied. The PD’s report had given the details. Quinn scrambled onto the holly bushes to grab hold of the wall’s top edge. Then he’d gone over.

“Holly bushes—right. That’s what they’re called. Anyway, the first officer showed up. Young guy, not much older than me.”

“Officer Collins.” A new recruit, only three months on the job.

“That’s his name. I was still in the pool with Lark. I didn’t want to leave her there. Not even when Officer Collins ordered me out. I told him to go away, just leave me alone. There was lots of commotion—the girls screaming from inside the house, and Mrs. Thomerson kept pacing around the pool, slipping. It was all keeping Officer Collins awfully busy.” Quinn hesitated before adding, “I was crying pretty hard.”

At her sides Rae clenched her fists, her nails digging into her flesh. “I can imagine,” she whispered, trying hard not to.

“I was scared. I didn’t believe Lark was dead.” Quinn brushed a shaky hand across his eyes. “Sometimes I still don’t.”

An ache tore through Rae. “Me either,” she agreed.

“I don’t know how much time passed before the other guys showed up. I remember yelling at them, making them angry. They climbed down the steel ladder into the pool. They had to drag me out. I didn’t want to leave Lark down there alone.”

Rae pushed away the image. “The other guys . . . you mean the other police officers?”

Nodding, Quinn pulled his knees to his chest. The telling was hard on him.

“The first guy—Officer Collins—he put me in his cruiser. I was talking real fast by then. Telling him I only trespassed because I’d heard Lark on the other side. I heard her shouting and knew something was wrong. I guess I was in shock. Plus, I didn’t know about my Mirabelle. No. Mara—”

“Your Miranda rights?”

Again, Quinn nodded. “Collins drove me to the station. He was being smug. Like he’d solved the case right there. He gestured to a lady detective, and they took me into a room. Accused me of killing Lark. Pushing her into the pool after a lover’s quarrel. They kept asking the same questions, over and over. Hoping to trip me up and get a different answer. I was really scared by then.”

This part Rae knew well. An interrogation mishandled. A minor grilled without a shred of evidence of wrongdoing. By sheer luck, the night-shift receptionist—arriving about ninety minutes into Quinn’s interrogation—was the daughter of Theresa Russo, Chardon High’s principal. After receiving a call from her daughter and hurrying to the precinct, Theresa demanded a halt to the interrogation.

Quinn’s parents never arrived to stand by their son. Predictably, they were out making the rounds of the bars. From what Rae had gleaned from Theresa since Quinn had moved in with her, the Galeckis didn’t get around to returning the PD’s calls until the following morning. By then, Quinn was holed up in his bedroom on a chilly Sunday morning, the damage done.

“You were scared,” Rae prodded, “and you wanted to go home. You didn’t want to tell Officer Collins and the lady detective anything else. You were afraid they wouldn’t believe you.”

“And they’d never let me go home. Maybe put me in jail, even.”

“Quinn, it’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. You tried to save my daughter.” In agony, Rae pulled in a quick breath. “What did you forget to tell the officers?”

On the floor, Quinn began rocking. Like a small child, overwhelmed.

“Rae, I didn’t climb over the wall only because I heard Lark shout. That’s what the police wrote up in the report. I climbed over because I heard Lark arguing.”

“She was . . . are you sure?”

“I’m positive. She was fighting with another girl. Their voices carried—it was easy to hear them. I just couldn’t hear what they were yelling about. They were talking fast, shouting at each other. Whatever they were mad about, it was bad.”

Quinn stopped rocking so quickly, Rae flinched. The moisture evaporated from her mouth.

Don’t tell me the rest. A trapdoor opened beneath her world, revealing a truth too dark to contemplate. Too dark to endure.

Quinn’s eyes misted as they found hers. “There was another girl there,” he insisted, “someone else who’d gone to the slumber party. I’m not implying someone pushed Lark in, but she wasn’t alone when she fell. I just thought you should know.”

Rae paled.

That was exactly what he meant.





Chapter 27


Rae stared unseeing at the TV.

Quinn was in his bedroom.

After finishing the story, he’d appeared physically ill. Traumatized by the memory. Rocking on the floor, his arms tight around his knees. Secrets were corrosive, especially when they were bottled up for too long. Rae knew this from bitter experience—her own secrets had weakened her relationship with her late daughter and tested her father’s love and his patience as he reluctantly learned to live with them. Quinn, however, felt somehow complicit in her daughter’s death. As if he could’ve stopped an argument between two girls from leading to tragedy.

Masking her shock at everything he’d described, she’d thanked him for sharing the true events surrounding Lark’s death. Then she helped him to his feet.