"You did?" Ricky said, surprised now. That certainly hadn't come up in her research.
"Yeah, but it wasn't worth shit in the end," he said, his voice belying an old but persistent frustration. "She was a real estate agent, had an office on that block. Working late. Providence isn't Vegas, you know, and where it happened was in a real quiet neighborhood. Most businesses down there closed up early.
But she was working late, this lady, hadn't closed up yet. She said she saw two kids that day. One was a boy, young enough to probably still sing soprano in the choir. Black hair. Running like hell down the street. We never found him. But we also didn't try that hard. He was too young to be the perp, and maybe he saw something, or maybe he was just a ten-year-old boy running home to avoid a whooping, you know?"
"Uh-huh," Ricky said, feeling her heart beat pick up slightly.
"The other one, though, we thought we knew who she was talking about. A junior at the school, someone we'd had to talk to before. A real fucking asshole. Always harassing girls on the street and in class, lurking around getting himself into shit. Meanest little punk I ever dealt with. Had a stupid name, too, Curly Gottlieb. Maybe that's why he was such a fucked-up little shit."
The detective's language was getting more colorful by the sentence, and Ricky noted the intensity of his dislike for the suspect.
"Did you arrest him?" she asked, brow furrowed as she continued making notes, her pen scratching against the paper.
"On what charges? Walking down the street? No. We went and talked to him. Tried to scare him. He didn't flinch. Said he didn't have to answer any questions. And he didn't. You can't go arresting minors because they're seen somewhere near a crime. Even if they do kind of match the very vague description given by a victim who's suffering a concussion.
No, we would have been up to our ears in legal shit if we tried to bring him in. He came from a good family, believe it or not. And he didn't have any priors, just a bad reputation. We kept an eye on him – I kept an eye on him – for years after that, hoping he'd get himself into some real trouble so we could get some DNA. But he kept his stupid pig-nose clean until his family moved out of town when he graduated."
"And nothing else ever came of the case? No new suspects or … "
"Nope," Detective Warren said. She could tell by the shortening clip of his tone that he wouldn't be up for much more talking. It seemed to be taking a lot out of him. He confirmed this suspicion with a sigh.
"Listen, I'm sorry I can't be more helpful. Truth is, I hated working that case. It was one of those that you wind up carrying around the rest of your life. Always wishing things had been different. Always wishing you could have done more. You should have seen the look in that poor girl's eyes … Jesus, that was a hard one. I'm retired now, though. I try to keep my past in my past. Got enough baggage to carry to the grave without adding anyone else's."
"I understand, Detective," Ricky said. ‘Thank you so much for your time, and for, you know, dredging all this up for me. It's been a great help."
"Sure, sure," he said. "Good luck on your article. Hey, give me a call when it comes out, huh? I always did like seeing my name in the ol' black and white."
"Will do, sir," Ricky said before hanging up, feeling only the slightest twang of guilt over her deception. What she felt guiltier about was forcing the old man to remember something painful, for no reason.
She wasn't sure what she truly expected to learn from the call, but she'd hoped something would come up. All she had now was the possibility – the barest possibility – that Damon had been near the scene of the crime when it happened. Which, at best, meant he might have seen it happen. That would be traumatic for anyone, let alone an eight-year-old boy. No wonder he saved the articles. If that was him running down the street. If he'd seen it.
That was a lot of if's.
26
Tricia and Damon stopped in Jacksonville for their last night before hitting Miami. The remainder of the ride had been full of half-hearted efforts to return to the easygoing, joke-filled, happiness of their earlier days.
"What's the difference between a hippo and a zippo?" Damon asked.
"I don't know, what?" Tricia answered.
"One's a little heavy, and the other's a little lighter," he said, adding in some air drums for effect.
Tricia's laugh was so forced that it made her cringe after it escaped her throat. Two days ago, she might actually have found that funny.
Later, she tried her own hand at lifting the mood.
"I read that Clearwater, Florida, has the highest rate of lightning strikes per capita in the U.S. And Key West has more bars per capita than any place in the U.S."
"That must have been why Hemingway liked it so much," Damon said thoughtfully.
"Which? Clearwater or Key West?" she tried on a playful smile to go along with her joke, but Damon's look withered her. "I was joking … "
"Oh," Damon said. "Sorry."
And so it went. All the efforts had failed. It was both of their faults, and neither of their faults. It was just the way things went.
Damon checked them in to a little, local-owned beachside hotel with a restaurant attached, where they had dinner, both picking at huge plates of corn and shrimp and potatoes. Tricia was mumbling her way through a story about a family vacation in Panama City that had gone sour when she managed to get a sunburn on her eyeball when Damon put his fork down and interrupted her, looking straight at her bowed head.
"Why is it that you think I'm doing the wrong thing?" Damon asked. She looked up quickly, wondering how long he'd meant to ask her that. "I just want to understand. Everything I've done, gone through … it's all led me to this. And it feels right – a kind of wrong-right, but right nonetheless. But I can tell you don't agree."
Tricia blushed, chewing her food slowly to give herself time to think of a response. His green eyes demanded an answer. Her heart wanted to lie. The kind of lie you tell someone so they feel better. A white lie. But this was no white lie. Nothing about any of this was white. It was all the darkest black.
"I thought I would feel better," she finally said, putting her fork down and giving him her attention. "I thought I would feel better, seeing my ex locked up. Seeing those assholes behind bars. The ones who hurt me, punished. I thought it would all be okay after that. But it wasn't. The person who was hurting – the woman I was when it all happened – she didn't go away. She was still inside me, and nothing that happened outside of me could change that."
"You haven't stopped hurting," Damon said, stating the fact blandly.
"No, I haven't," Tricia said. "Not entirely. It's happening slowly. And … "
Her voice trailed off as they stared at each other. Did he know what she was going to say, what she was trying to say? How could he not? Hadn't they been speaking without speaking since the moment they met?
"You're helping," she finally said, reaching across the table to grab his hand, the movement feeling bold even though they'd shared so much more already – their whole bodies, their whole hearts. "You're helping more than putting them in prison ever did. The scared girl inside me – she fades away, when I'm with you."
He seemed to stiffen, and Tricia recoiled, wondering if she'd been wrong this whole time. Maybe they didn't really operate on the same frequency after all. Maybe it had all been in her head. And that scared girl she'd been talking about suddenly seemed to be right beneath her skin, and fighting to break out. Take over. She willed her body not to shake. She dropped her eyes, unable to look at him and realize that everything she'd thought had been wrong.
"I know," Damon finally said. "Tricia, look at me."
She blinked down at her food before dragging her eyes back up to meet his. He reached across the table, grabbed her hand and turned it over, stroking her palm with his thumb. The slightest act, and yet it filled her with everything she had ever wanted to feel: comfort and warmth and an aching desire.
"I always want to be the one who makes you feel better," he said. "I will always want to be that man. But I can't be that man until I take care of this. Do you understand?"
She shuddered then, wilting under the intensity of his gaze. She wanted to say yes, to say what he wanted to hear. And she did understand. All too well.
But she couldn't lie to him. Not about this.
"I understand," she said, pulling her hand away, her heart wincing at the sudden loss of his touch. "But I don't agree with you. You want to be the one who makes me feel better. Why can't you try to let me do that for you? I can be enough, Damon. You can let me try to be enough."