We pulled into the Kinakis place and right away the wife came to the screen door. Martha, I think her name was. Jake and I took our time getting out of the car. If you weren’t there to arrest somebody, it was always a good idea to give them a minute or so to puzzle out why you were there. They drew their own conclusions, and sometimes when you got to talking, they’d fill in blanks you didn’t even know were there.
“Mrs. Kinakis.” I pulled my hat off as we approached. “Is Tommy home?”
“He is.” She looked between each of us, not willing to step aside and let us in quite yet. “He’s in pretty bad shape, though. We just got the news.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“Can’t it wait till tomorrow? I was going to let him stay home from school.”
“Afraid not. This is a murder investigation and we need to talk to everyone who saw Hattie on Friday night. Now, we can do it here or down at the station. You decide.”
She looked torn for a minute, kind of scared and mad wrapped up together, before opening the screen door and waving us in.
We waited in the living room while she got him. Jake paced around, tapping his hat on his leg, while I looked over the pictures sitting on top of an upright piano. Lots of football shots, lots of Tommy riding tractors and posing with dead deer and pheasants.
Tommy came into the room with a parent on either side. He looked about five years old—round face blotchy with emotion, flannel shirt untucked, arms hanging like he didn’t know he had them. At first he seemed like he wanted to say something, then just dropped his head and waited.
“Tommy, we’ve got some questions.”
Mrs. Kinakis jumped in again. “He’s really in no state to answer questions right now. I thought he was coming down with something even before we got the call. I’ll bring him to the station first thing in the morning if you want.”
“This is a murder investigation, ma’am.” Jake was eager to do some talking. “We don’t have time to waste if we want to find Hattie’s killer.”
Tommy flinched a little at the word. His mother steadied him with a hand.
“Best to talk while the memories are fresh,” I said.
“Well, sit down. Let’s get this over with.” Mr. Kinakis waved a beefy hand at the couch and shot his wife a look that told her to hold her peace.
None of the Kinakises were what you’d call delicate flowers, so after they sat down on the wraparound sofa, there wasn’t much room for Jake or me. I went to the window instead and gave everyone a minute to situate themselves. The sun was still well above the horizon, melting the last bits of snow that hugged the north side of their outbuildings.
“Hattie left the play on Friday night with you, Tommy?” A flock of Canadian geese honked overhead and landed in a field across the road. There was no answer behind me.
“How long were you dating her?”
There was a pause and a murmur before he managed to speak up. “Since Sadie Hawkins, I guess.”
“Five, six months. You must have been pretty close.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you like the play on Friday? Did Hattie do all right?”
“I guess.”
Kid wasn’t much for talking. I finally turned around and put myself dead in front of him and waited until he looked up. He was big; he could probably bench my whole weight, but he didn’t look it right now. He looked small and scared, hunched between his mom and dad.
“Where’d you and Hattie go after the play, Tommy?”
“Out for a drive,” he admitted.
“For a drive where?”
“I dunno.”
Jake jumped in, hell-bent on playing bad cop. “We can take you down to the station, if you’d prefer, or to the murder scene. Maybe that would jog your memory a bit.”
“What are you accusing my son of, Jake Adkins?” Mrs. Kinakis asked, standing up.
“No one’s doing any accusing, Mrs. Kinakis. All we know is Hattie left the school with Tommy on Friday night and the next time anyone saw her she was dead. Now we need to know what Tommy knows. I understand it’s hard to talk about, but it’s going to be a lot harder if he chooses not to talk to us. For us and for him.”
Mr. Kinakis cleared his throat and motioned to his wife to sit down. She walked to the other side of the room instead, and we all waited for Tommy. After a minute, he took a breath and started in.
“I thought we were going to Dairy Queen, but she wanted to go out to Crosby instead.”
Mrs. Kinakis gasped and covered her mouth. “You didn’t tell us you took her to the lake.”
Tommy looked away.
“Where on Crosby?” I asked.
“The parking lot by the beach. We went there sometimes to . . .” He glanced at his dad. “Just to make out. Nothing else. She hadn’t wanted to go out there for a while.”
“What then?”
“Well, I thought she wanted to—you know, but she didn’t. She said she couldn’t see me anymore.”
“She broke up with you?” Jake asked.
Tommy nodded. “She acted so strange. I told her there was still another couple months before graduation, and prom, too. Didn’t she want to go to prom?”
He was looking at his hands now, almost seeming to forget we were all there.
“She got real quiet then. Looked sad for a minute. And she said some girls weren’t meant to go to prom. It was like she already knew. Like she knew she was gonna die.”