“What we need to talk about . . . it’s about the night Lark died. I guess you know why I went over to the Thomersons’。 I knew I probably wouldn’t see Lark, but she needed moral support.”
“I know,” she murmured, “my daughter had been thinking about skipping the party.” It was easy to imagine Quinn pacing outside Katherine’s elegant property, sending Lark comforting text messages.
“Yeah, but there’s something else.”
“Go on.”
“Rae, the police got it wrong. I don’t mean they messed up their conclusions exactly. Or maybe that is what I mean.” He blew out a frustrated breath. “I’m not sure.”
Shock held Rae transfixed. What did the police get wrong?
The dog rolled onto her side. She yipped in her sleep.
A diversion, and Quinn took it readily. He skirted past her, clearly needing distance before continuing. Lowering to his knees, he began stroking his dog. Long, even strokes. Calming Shelby as she slept. Calming himself.
“You know about the first part,” he said, “when I climbed over the wall surrounding Mrs. Thomerson’s pool. The police got that right. I climbed over in a hurry. I tore my jeans on those prickly bushes.”
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.”