The Cheerleaders(18)

Leaves crunch under my tires, and a breeze knocks loose some of the hair I pinned away from my face. I turn down the alley next to 2nd Street and leave my bike in the rack outside the post office; no one ever locks anything around here because no one ever steals.

Every year the businesses on Main Street try to outdo each other with a scarecrow dress-up contest. On the telephone pole in front of the day spa, a scarecrow wears a bathrobe and has fake cucumbers for eyes. Outside Starbucks, a hipster scarecrow in a flannel shirt sips a latte from a paper cup.

A blonde with her hair in a stubby braid is seated at a two-person table by the window, a laptop open in front of her. Daphne looks younger than she does in her picture on the Crunch’s website. A black Under Armour jacket is zipped up to her chin, and she’s wearing pearl earrings.

She looks up. Spots me and waves. “Monica?”

I nod. Consider the empty chair waiting for me. An untouched scone sits on a napkin next to Daphne’s laptop, which she shuts.

“Thank you for coming,” she says, as if she’s the one who reached out to me. “Do you want anything?”

“I’m okay.” I slide into the chair, eyeing Daphne’s cup of water. What kind of journalist goes to Starbucks and orders water?

Daphne gives me a disarming smile. “I’m guessing you want to talk about my story on the cheerleaders and not the one about the five best videos of cats knocking things off tables.”

I flush. Return her smile. “How on earth did you guess?”

Daphne seems to clam up. She taps a finger on the lid of her water. “I spent six months working on that article. I never expected the reaction that it got.”

“Well. I think people may have resented some of the things you suggested,” I say. “About how the police did their investigation.”

“I didn’t write the story in a vacuum, Monica. Everything in there—I got that information from talking to people.”

“But you didn’t talk to the police directly.”

Daphne’s fingers move to the surface of her laptop. “Not for a lack of trying. The thing is, I didn’t set out intending to cast doubt on anyone. It was supposed to be a profile of the girls and Sunnybrook. Then days after it was published, people were emailing my editor accusing me of attacking the police.”

Yet somehow she wound up implying that the police didn’t do a thorough investigation—that it was impossible for them to be objective when they knew and cared about the girls.

“Emotional blinders,” I say. “That’s what you accused the cops of having.”

“I didn’t accuse them of anything.” Daphne leans forward, resting her forearms on the table. Lowers her voice. “There are lots of details about that night that don’t line up.”

My stomach sours. “Like what?”

“There weren’t any signs of forced entry at the Berrys’ house that night. If the girls were so creeped out by Jack Canning, why would Juliana open the door for him? The door had a peephole. She would have seen it was him on the porch.”

“How do you know the door had a peephole?”

“I told you. Some people were willing to talk to me.”

I pinch the fleshy area between my thumb and my forefinger. A trick to get rid of nausea, my mom always says. “But Jack Canning was basically a sex offender. Or he should have been.”

Daphne’s mouth forms a condescending little smile. “Do you know what he did?”

“No.”

“He was caught in a car with his girlfriend by her father,” she says. “He was twenty, and she was seventeen. Her father almost beat him to death.”

Four years. The age difference between Brandon and me is twice that.

I pinch the space between my fingers harder. “He had pictures of Susan in his bedroom. She was fifteen, and he was in his thirties. That’s totally different.”

“You’re right.” Daphne sips her water. “But the police never found bloody clothes at Jack’s house. Juliana had cuts all over her body. The killer would have gotten her blood on him.”

“But he would have had plenty of time to get rid of them,” I say. “It doesn’t prove anything.”

“Also true. Like I said. I didn’t have an agenda to prove he didn’t do it. In all likelihood, he did do it. But facts are facts, and not all of them support the police’s conclusion.”

I think of the other details in “When Death Comes to Town.” Throwaway lines about the other girls, gleaned from comments from friends and family who were willing to talk to Daphne.

The students at Sunnybrook High remember Bethany Steiger as a party girl, but a responsible one; she would never drink and drive. Her family has vehemently denied rumors that Bethany was texting at the time of the crash.

Jennifer Rayburn was always smiling. At the beginning of that year, if you told anyone who knew her that Jen would take her own life, they would have thought you were insane.

My mouth has gone dry. “That part in your article about how no one could believe my sister would kill herself—who told you that?”

Daphne’s face softens. “Everyone who would talk to me. Jen was very loved.”

“I know,” I say, my throat tight. “I have to go.”

Daphne reaches into her laptop bag. Fishes out a card with her email and phone number and hands it to me. “If you need anything, give me a buzz. I’d be more than happy to talk again.”