Criminal (18 page)

“It's been a while.”

“Yes, it has.”

“There's a lot to wait on in a case like this.”

“That's what they tell me.”

We looked at each other. Both of us, maybe, a little more accepting.

“Well, while it may not seem so from your perspective, we've been progressing.”

She stopped as though I should say something, but I didn't know what. I just nodded.

“And we're at a crucial point now where more of your help would be vital.”

I looked at Doug. I'd told Hampton forever ago everything I knew. What more could she need from me now?

“There are still some things that aren't quite lining up. From the witness testimonies, mainly. Walking through the crime scene with one of our detectives could be very . . . instrumental.”

I felt Doug looking at me. But I didn't want this decision—to go back there, to live through any minute of it—to be about my case. I had thought about Dee. Of course I had. I had thought about him and Nicole and what happened. Bird. The entire thing. But picturing any of it now didn't give me the dragged-around-and-back feeling it used to. Instead I was mad. At him, and her, and mostly myself. When Dee had wanted to get together again last May, I'd thought it meant I'd been right all along, that my love for him—our love for each other—had some
purpose.
But now I just saw what an idiot I'd been, what an idiot he obviously thought I was. Which he should have. Because
I was an idiot. I was stupid enough to let him ruin my friendship with Bird and my entire life—to help him kill someone—when he didn't even care.

But I wasn't stupid anymore. My addiction to Dee was over. And I was going to do whatever I could to keep him away from her—anyone—forever. When I first told Hampton my story, I thought I was doing it to get back at Nicole for being the one he loved. But after these long months, all of that seemed silly. Helping lock Dee up wouldn't do anything worse to her. If she'd really asked Dee to do it (I was never going to be sure; it was nothing I could prove), she had to know, being a cop's daughter, that he was going to get caught. So if she asked him to, she can't have believed they would stay together. Dee rotting in prison the rest of his life may have been part of her whole plan.

But even if it had been her idea, thinking you want somebody dead is a whole lot different from dealing with them actually being so. I'd heard enough girls talk in here to know that was true. Living without her daddy, no matter what she thought of him, was going to be punishment enough. Awful as Cherry was, bad as I wanted not to see her anymore, I didn't want her in the ground. Nicole would have to deal with her father's death, his absence, for the rest of her life. No matter whatever else she felt. And, in my opinion, that was enough.

Dee, on the other hand. He still wanted her. I knew it. He
did what he did thinking it would end with him and Nicole running off together, getting married, whatever. My helping the prosecutors get every detail down, it wasn't about her anymore. It was about teaching him a lesson. And it felt good, telling this woman who couldn't promise me any kind of deal, “I'll do whatever you need.”

A COUPLE DAYS LATER I WAS GIVEN SPECIAL RELEASE TO
go out to the site with Detective DuPree, the same guy who'd questioned me back in August. The one who showed up on Bird's front stoop with that search warrant. I'd forgotten he was big. Like a kid's drawing of a fat person: round from shoulders to waist, with skinny stick legs. But also—and I hadn't noticed this before—he was handsome. Smooth skin. Nice smile.

“I just need you to walk me through it,” he said as we drove. I hadn't been in a car in a long time. Not one where I was allowed in the front seat. It was strange and fast—everything rushing toward us. “There are some things that don't quite line up. I'm sure, though, once you show me, it'll all become clear.”

Doug had tried to insist on coming with me, but at that
point I knew he couldn't protect me anymore. I wanted to do this on my own, for my own reasons. At first, in the car with DuPree, I wondered if that had been a bad idea, not bringing Doug along. But it didn't take long for that feeling to come over me again—that feeling like DuPree and I were just talking. Over a cup of coffee. Even if there was a laptop magically rigged into the dashboard between me and him, and a staticky radio squawking from time to time.

We were driving from a different direction Dee and I had taken out there, so at first it was just a regular drive. A regular drive with a detective who needed help with investigating a murder I helped commit. It started feeling a lot less regular once we got off the interstate, though. Things started coming back to me. We turned onto roads I'd forgotten I knew. Blocks away, I guessed exactly when the brick sign for the subdivision was going to come up. I expected that cursive sign long before I saw it.

I started to sweat. Not beads and beads—more like a thin curtain over me.

“So, you came in through this entrance, right?” Detective DuPree asked.

I nodded.

He drove slowly up the hill. Turned. The houses we passed—full of neighbors. Neighbors I knew now had picked up their phones, dialed 911 when they heard the shots that day. Had
looked out their windows. Seen Dee. And me. A panicky feeling rose up in me, wondering were they looking out those windows now, watching again. Would they recognize me? Come out of their houses, demanding that I pay for what had happened?

“You okay?” DuPree asked, kind.

I wiped my hands against my thighs and nodded. They'd given me sweatpants and a sweatshirt to wear out here, thinking my orange getup might raise alarm. I tried to concentrate on how much better the fuzzy fabric felt than my jail uniform.

I counted down the houses as we drew closer: four . . . three . . . two . . . one. It shouldn't have surprised me, I guess, that I would know the place before I saw it again. When I thought about August twenty-fourth, I saw Dee more than anything else. Now I was seeing the whole picture, in razor-sharp vision. The cracks in the driveway next door. The manhole cover in the middle of the road. The border of monkey grass in the yard across the street. And the house—that yellow house—with everything exactly the same, save that the plants were all gone and there was a
FOR SALE
sign next to the mailbox.

“She's not here?” I asked before thinking.

“Who? Miss Palmer?”

I kept staring at the house, picturing the rooms empty now. I wondered when she was here last. If she'd ever come back.

“Moved up north to be with her aunt.”

“Indiana.” I remembered the newscast with unreal clarity. The one we watched at Bird's, the day after it happened. I saw DuPree try to cover up being surprised I knew.

“Shame, really,” he said. “Leaving town your senior year. And your daddy not there for your graduation.”

I had to shut my eyes then. Hampton had shown me a picture of Deputy Palmer and his daughter, from when she was a little girl. The way they were both smiling, the way he had his arm around her, I knew he would've been so proud at her graduation. Even if she hated him. Even if she thought she wanted him dead. He would've worn a tie to the ceremony and shouted her name when she took her diploma even if there were too many people in the auditorium for her to hear. He would've put his arm around her like that again and taken her out dinner after. Somewhere fancy. He would've bought her dessert.

“You going to be able to do this?”

I opened my eyes again, forced myself to look at the house.

“What do you need me to tell you?” I said as I opened the door to get out.

I SHOWED HIM WHERE WE PARKED BIRD'S CAR, A LITTLE
beyond the edge of the driveway. I told him again about the wigs, the clothes, about Dee making me put on that flannel shirt.

“That makes sense, then,” DuPree said thoughtfully.

I asked him what.

“Two witnesses said they were sure a man was in the driver's seat. Which was why he asked you to bring that short wig you had. Wear that shirt.”

The disguises had always felt so wrong, but something extra curled up cold in me, knowing Dee had wanted to disguise me too. Trying to confuse witnesses just that much. I shuddered.

DuPree didn't seem to notice. He asked me if I saw any shooting, and I had to tell him no, that I'd been too freaked out.

“I could hear it, though,” I said, breath shuddery. DuPree and I were standing at the end of the Palmers' driveway. Six feet away from where Mr. Palmer had died. Maybe exactly in the spot where Dee had emptied out his guns.

“How many shots again?” DuPree had a little notepad out. He licked the end of his pencil like they do in old detective shows.

I imagined it, the bullets just coming and coming at Deputy Palmer. Glass bursting as they pierced through the windshield. Slamming into his body. Shot after shot. So many he couldn't move, couldn't duck down, couldn't get away. Could only raise one hand in a useless attempt to ward them off. Recognizing the hate-filled face of the boy he knew all along was bad for his daughter. And being able to only sit there, seat belt still on, and bleed.

“I'm not sure. Thirteen? Fifteen?” Tears had come to my eyes and I pushed them away with my fingertips. “It was a lot. And they came fast. I was driving away by then.”

We walked down the street around the curve and went through the intersection, turned left. I showed him where I'd stopped the car, in time to see Dee running toward me between the houses.

“That lines up,” DuPree said almost to himself. Then, to me, “Lady in that house over there was one of the ones who described the purple car.”

I looked. It was a tan-colored house, the bottom half of it made up of those expensive-looking rocks. I was surprised she'd seen the car at all, because it was four or five houses away from where I'd picked up Dee and there were a lot of trees. She must've been standing right in front of the window when I drove by.

“He ran through here.” I pointed.

DuPree nodded again, mentioned someone who saw a red-haired woman. But I wasn't focused on anything he was saying. Instead I stared down the corridor of grass between the two stately houses, looking straight into the driveway where Deputy Palmer had died. Had he still been alive when Dee took off? Had he watched Dee run, that wig flying behind him? Was there enough consciousness in him left, enough clarity, to see me there too? Struggling to take his last breaths, full of blood and pain, and me—right there—waiting to take Dee to safety?

It was too much. I dropped down to the curb and pressed my knees against my closed eyes. Tears soaked into the fabric of my sweatpants.

DuPree was nice about it. He just stood there while I cried. Waited. Didn't rush me. Probably he'd seen this kind of thing happen before. People finally getting hold of exactly what they'd done. Seeing what they'd seen in their own heads so many times, only this time, finally from the victim's side of it.

“There's nothing I can do to make it right,” I said, trying
to breathe normal again. “This man's dead. His daughter has nobody, and I—”

“You're doing what you can,” DuPree said over me, quiet. “You're finally doing, now, what you didn't have the strength to do then.”

AS SOON AS I GOT BACK FROM THE SITE WITH DUPREE, I
called Hampton. She'd said she wanted to know everything. Needed every scrap of anything that she could use against Dee. And whether it was out of remorse or guilt or anger, just plain tiredness, or revenge, I knew I had to tell her right away, before I lost my nerve.

“Hello, Nikki?”

“Hampton.” I was breathing shallow, and my cheeks felt warm.

“Yes?”

“Afterward, he was laughing like a little kid. He was so excited, like he'd just won the lottery. It was what made me calm down, actually, how happy he was. Like we'd just done
something good. I believed him. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“You'll want to say all this with Doug present if this is a new addition to your testimony.”

“And that's not all.” This next part was going to destroy me, I knew. It would be terrible for my case, and Doug would kill me. But I had to do it. I had to tell the whole truth. “On the way home we pulled over at a rest stop and we screwed each other's brains out.”

MORE WAITING. DAYS AND WEEKS OF THE ENDLESS SAME
thing. Wake up, cleanup, breakfast. Mopping. Common room and doing hair. Lunch. More mopping. Outside walk with Priscilla. Cards in the afternoon. Reading time. Dinner. Mopping again. Priscilla and Cam going to their meetings. TV with everyone. Common room cleanup, count, lights-out, bed.

I wasn't hiding anymore. I'd done what I'd done. Whatever punishment came from that, I knew I deserved. Deserved because of my weak-kneed blindness, my choosing Dee over everything else. So I'd told the prosecutors everything without thinking twice. And though I was ashamed, when everything was finished, I felt cleaner than I had all year.

Priscilla got to get clean too, finally. In her own way. For
days I watched her haul herself out of bed when the guards called for her earlier than regular wake-up time. She'd be gone all day at her trial. Me and Rae walked the fence outside together, talking, trying not to think of Priscilla. Cam shot hoops with the other girls. She'd gotten really good, and everyone wanted to play with her. Afterward we played cards, the three of us, sometimes with an extra girl coming into the game, filling the hole of Priscilla being gone. It wouldn't be until we were getting ready to head into dinner that she came back, not saying much.

Five days later, she was gone. The jury only discussed it for an hour. That prior DWI was apparently all they needed to convince themselves she was guilty and would likely do it again. Twelve years in prison. Fines. Community service, after.