Tunnel Vision Page 8

  “Oh, get the knot out of your thong.”

  June scowled and socked her on the arm. “I’m serious, though, Betty. This all sounds pretty flimsy.”

  “We don’t even know that yet,” said Betty. “Like I said, we’ll look over this page, read it all, top to bottom. And then, as far as I’m concerned, we have three things to figure out. We need to know who was with Mandy in the week or so before she died, we need to find out where they lived and if it’s somewhere we can visit, and, unfortunately, we’re going to need to learn a lot about Duke.”

  “God,” June said, her eyes settling against their will on the man’s sneering image on the screen.

  “He’s the only person who knew who was there that day,” Betty said. “We need to read his articles from Maximum Rocknroll, we need to find out why the cops were so sure it was him and not anyone else, and if worse comes to worst, we really might need to find a way to talk to him, face-to-face.”

  “Christ,” said June. But then she took a big breath and took over the mouse, scrolling down to the next screen of text. “I guess we better get to it.”

  I don’t like Mondays. It’s pretty much the worst cliché, but I really don’t. Mondays were always the end of the party when I was still in school—or at least had friends in school—and I never really got over it. I never got over that blunt feeling that life really will catch up with you.

  Example: take your average nine-to-fiver. Do they like their job? Nope. Are they satisfied with the money they make? Nope. Do they realize how lucky they are? Oh hell fucking no. I get it, though, at least now I do. Being some modern Kerouac-esque vagabond seems pretty romantic, at least it did to me, but when you realize that you never travel and that you’ll do anything for heroin, it sort of takes some of the shine off. God, I feel like such shit right now, so fucking weak and useless.

  I want to get high and listen to Jawbreaker, let Blake just soothe me into a coma. I want to shoot speed and listen to Motörhead, stop giving a fuck. More bands, too, all with drugs that match the music—cocaine and Avail, a buttload of beer and Hot Water Music, weed for any of them. Vodka for Crass, everything for the Dead Kennedys. That’s how my brain has been for so long, it’s hard to see it any other way. Heroin can be the best for relaxing, but it needs to be the right shot. The kind I can’t find, the kind Duke can’t find, that first blast of good clean pure shit. The kind I’ll never have again. But I’ll fucking chase it.

  Jason came on to me last night, and I know what you’re probably thinking, that Duke would kill him if he found out, but is that even the truth anymore? The stuff that Duke and I do to get a fix isn’t what most people would consider good for a relationship. I mean, even if you discount what I do, having a boyfriend that goes to the rough trade district selling bareback sex can be a strain. If that sort of thing is OK, then why is it that I know that Duke would be furious about Jason sitting next to me on the couch last night? Nothing really happened, not really, at least not from what I remember, but the stuff that he told me was so sweet. It made me feel like maybe I was worth something, like maybe I could even turn all of this shit around if I got my act together.

  I know I won’t, though. I’m too scared of getting an HIV test, too scared of life without getting high, and way too scared of having to face my family ever again. For all I know they think I’m dead, and I may as well be at this point. Dead, gone, and forgotten, like a real-life zombie just sticking around for a fix. Have to go.

  Better now. I saw Duke when he came to shoot up, and after he left again I finally talked to Jason. Nothing happened last night, so there’s nothing to worry about. He said he was sorry I thought he was hitting on me. He was just messed up and being friendly. I don’t remember what happened, but I think he’s probably telling the truth. There was a time where I would have known for sure, and probably even freaked out about something like that, but all I can think of now is how good it felt to sit on the couch with his arm around me. If something else did happen then I don’t remember it, so it doesn’t matter.

  I wish Duke and I were like that again, instead of just living like animals. I just want to have someone care about me. I want to feel as good as I used to on dope. I want to feel like more than just something for men to get off on. Jason made me feel like that and he says nothing happened, so I believe him.

  This is the first time I’ve ever felt like I should just destroy this journal. Maybe in the morning, but right now I’m going to lay down for a little bit, it might help with how sick I’ve been feeling.

  Kiss kiss,

  Mandy

  SIXTEEN

  When Betty and June tromped inside the house, they grinned—Ophelia was back on a rap kick—and then headed upstairs to Betty’s room. Once the door was shut behind them, they sat on the floor at the foot of Betty’s bed, laptops laid out before them, and June pointed at her screen. “I found an archive with the last ten or so MRR articles written by Duke. I haven’t read more than the first few sentences, but check this out.”

  Betty leaned in to see June’s screen, and June began to read aloud from it. “‘Another day, another lack of a dollar here in prison. Money can’t buy happiness, but I would love to know why it’s legal for the state to pay us only 74 cents a day. In all fairness, a skilled worker here can make almost five times that, and take home the lump sum of $3.87 a day, but that still isn’t exactly minimum wage. Rehabilitation is supposed to come from within, but how can you rehab a man’s spirit when all you do is remind him of how broken he is? I’d understand if prison was solely about punishment. Then they wouldn’t have to pay us at all. But when there are men here for months or years, working 12-hour days punching out license plates for less than three quarters a day, and then they’re expected somehow to reenter society? Something is broken.’”

  “Wait,” June said, scrolling down. “It goes on like that for pages. This is one seriously pissed-off dude.”

  “He’s got a point,” said Betty, “but I’d be shocked if there was anyone really listening to him up until this campaign to free him started. Now, who knows? There could be thousands of prisoners and civilians reading this sort of thing, and you know what they’re all thinking: ‘How could someone this smart commit a crime that was so senseless?’ Hell, I’m thinking it and I hardly know anything about this stupid case.”

  “So he can talk and write OK,” said June. “That’s not that big a deal to me. He’s complaining about rehab, but it seems like it worked fine on him.” June rolled her eyes. “To me, he comes off like a total dick. Maybe he did it or maybe he didn’t, but if he acted like that in court it’s no wonder things didn’t go his way.”

  June had turned tomato red while she was speaking, and Betty was desperate to see the subject changed. “All right then,” she said. “So, nothing else interesting in here?”

  “Nah,” answered June. “I just read the same stuff you did. It makes me really angry. Yesterday I was pissed off that I was out of the loop, but now I’m just pissed off that she’s dead. She was like us, and she would have been our friend, I just know it. Instead, some asshole killed her, and even if it was the guy convicted, no one knows why. It’s not fair.”

  “No one said it was fair,” Betty said quietly. “It’s like the least fair thing ever. But what also isn’t fair is if Duke is innocent.”

  June just shook her head and looked away.

  Betty slid her laptop to the side and grabbed a notebook and pen from her bag. “Let’s start with what we know.” She tapped the tip of the pen on the lined, spiral-bound page. “Duke was convicted of doing it, so he’s suspect number one, no matter who his friends are. Who else do we have?”

  “The article on the Free Duke page said there were two roommates,” offered June, and Betty nodded and wrote down “roommates” under the line that said “Duke.”

  “But it also said there were a lot of homeless people coming through, too,” said June. “I know that isn’t much help, but it’s still something.”

&nbs
p; “No, that’s good,” said Betty. “I had another thought, too. Do you suppose there would be any way to find some of her customers from back then? I mean, they might not all have been awful, but the kind of person who would pay to have sex with someone who was that damaged . . . I don’t think these were good people.” Betty scratched “homeless roommates” into the third line on the page, and then added “customers” underneath it. “How old was she when she died?” Betty asked, and June took her computer and did a quick search.

  “She was twenty-three,” said June. “That’s really young. Even younger than I thought.”

  “I was guessing around that age,” said Betty quietly. “Any non-Duke theories?”

  “It feels like sort of a stretch, but it could have been a teacher,” answered June. “I don’t mean, like, a teacher that sought her out. But maybe one that knew her from school, saw what she was doing and just couldn’t get over it. So he pulled over and got her in the car, and then it just went bad. I suppose that could go for any of her customers. I was just trying to think of people we could connect her with.”

  “What other men would she have been in recent contact with?” Betty asked, and the question gave the girls pause.

  “Probably my dad,” said June solemnly. “I’m serious, Betty. I don’t know if my folks were around her at all then, but if they were, my dad probably would have been apt to take a pass at his wife’s little sister. That doesn’t mean I think he did it or anything, and for all we know Mandy never saw either of them, but for right now he should probably go on the list.”

  “I don’t know,” said Betty. “I think I’d feel awful putting your dad on the list.”

  “Think like a cop and remember what Mr. Evans said about college grading,” said June. “Put him on there, and hopefully we can cross his name out soon. It’s not like it’s uncommon for the victim to know who killed her. Why should this one be any different?”

  “You are cold,” said Betty, and the joke broke the tension, sending the girls into peals of laughter. “All right, all right,” said Betty. “I think, first things first, we need to find out who these roommates are. It’s safe to assume the cops haven’t followed their lives since then, not with Duke’s conviction, but I bet their names are listed somewhere.”

  “Yeah, like the police station,” said June dejectedly, and then as if she had been reminded of some impossible secret, began beaming. “Wait, your mom’s practically a cop, right? Maybe she can get us a couple names. If she did, all we’d have to do is look online into where those guys are, and then we could try and see what they’ve been up to for the past twenty years or so.”

  “I don’t know,” said Betty. “I think my mom would say no. And anyway, despite the fact that these guys were near the scene of the crime, they’re also the people the cops would have looked at the hardest. Even if we could find them, I don’t think we’d really be able to find out much information that isn’t already out there. I mean, if one of these guys looked good for the crime or had like a history of being a rapist, the cops would have looked a lot harder at him than at Duke.”

  “For sure,” said June, “but the cops wouldn’t have thought to find out anything he did after she was killed. If one of the roommates did it, maybe Mandy was just the first, and everything they’ve done afterward they either haven’t gotten caught for or it wasn’t as bad as killing someone.”

  Betty stared at her. “God, you’re right. That totally makes sense. Like, why would the cops go after them when they already had a conviction, a trial, and a guilty verdict? Why go through all that again if in their eyes they had the right guy all along?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “All right, I’ll ask,” said Betty, though the truth was she didn’t know what Andrea might say. She wasn’t totally sure she even wanted to ask the question. Telling Andrea she needed to talk to the cops would mean the project was a little more serious than she’d sold it to the moms, which would either impress her mothers or make them wonder why in the hell their daughter was so obsessed with a crime that most people considered solved.

  June must’ve caught the uneasiness in her voice. “You don’t have to ask your mom,” she said. “But Betty, this is my aunt we’re talking about. Even though I didn’t know she was alive until yesterday, I still want to help her. It’s too late to save her life, but maybe we can make sure that whoever really did hurt her gets in trouble.” She paused and then said, “Or maybe just stays in trouble.”

  “Hey, I’m sold,” said Betty, raising her palms to June as if warding her off. “Now let’s get back to work. There’s still a ton of ground to cover before we even need to be worrying about talking to a cop. I can’t imagine much that would be more embarrassing than having my mom set up time for us to talk to a detective or something and us realizing that we don’t know even the most basic stuff about this case. That’s going to mean finding stuff written by people who want Duke to stay locked up too, not just the stuff written by people who want him free because a few cool bands say that he should be.”

  SEVENTEEN

  The rest of the study session was largely uneventful. June found a very informative site that covered the case with a less biased view, but even on that more news-oriented site it was clear that not everything had gone smoothly in the case of Duke Barnes. Maybe the deck wasn’t stacked as much as the other site suggested, but there was enough odd stuff going on that it was hard to imagine everything on www.freedukebarnes.com was a falsehood.

  The names of the roommates remained a mystery. Reading through other true crime stories to get a clearer picture of whether or not that was standard practice, Betty was left with the impression that none of the sites were telling the whole story and that talking to Andrea about her contacts at the police station wouldn’t be all that bad an idea.

  At dinnertime Betty said bye to June, then sat at the table where Andrea and Ophelia were waiting for her, their plates topped with a medley of grilled vegetables atop a white risotto. Betty stuck her fork in the rice and smelled it, smiling as the distinctive scent of parmesan cheese came wafting off of the arborio. “This smells ridiculous, and it looks even better,” said Betty, and Ophelia smiled with pride at the compliment.

  “I’m glad you agree,” said Andrea with a grin, “but since we’ve been suffering and waiting almost two minutes to eat while your friend left, shall we get to it?”

  “Absolutely.” She hadn’t thought about food for even a second while June was over, but now she felt like she could eat multiple plates of just about anything. She dug in with gusto, and after a few bites she said, “Research is going well. It’s sort of a messed-up case.”

  “I remember reading about it,” said Ophelia.

  Andrea nodded. “Me too. I remember friends on the force talking about it as well.”

  “How old was she when was killed?” Ophelia asked.

  “She was twenty-three,” said Betty around a mouthful of food. “She’d be thirty-seven now if she hadn’t been killed.”

  Ophelia shook her head. “So young.”

  Andrea nodded. “No one deserves a death like that, but her age makes it all the more tragic.”

  Both moms looked at her then, and Betty knew they were thinking about all the danger the world might hold for her. All she could do was smile back at them. They looked at each other then, one of their superconnected gazes, and then the three of them worked on their dinners.

  Seeing her mothers like this made her long for someone she could care about like that, but none of the boys she’d ever met had come close to making her feel the way her mothers did about each other. Which then brought her mind around to poor Jake and the hammer she needed to drop on him. He’ll be OK, and we’ll both be better for it, at least in the long run.

  Not for the first time, it was like her moms had a clear view into her brain. “Have you dumped that horny idiot yet?” Andrea asked, venom in her voice, a smile on her face. “Or are you playing us a little bit?”

  �
��No, I haven’t dumped him yet,” she said, “but I’m not playing you guys, either. I just want to find the right time to do it. I know you guys think Jake is just some jock that’s trying to take advantage of me, but I think it’s actually going to mess him up a little bit after I tell him.”

  “I think Jake will be fine,” said Ophelia, “but I wouldn’t blame him if he did spend some time pining after you.”

  “So, I had a question,” said Betty to Andrea, desperate to change the subject, even if this new topic could be fraught with its own perils. “I understand if what I’m asking simply isn’t possible, or if you’d rather not get involved, but I was wondering if maybe you could set it up so I could interview someone at the police station?”

  “You mean for your project?” Andrea asked.

  “Yeah, exactly. June and I were hoping maybe you could use your contacts down there to get me an interview with someone who was on the force at the time. A detective would be ideal, but really anyone who was working back then who’d be able to give me some insight.”

  Andrea eyed her for a moment, working over a mouthful of risotto. “Assuming I can get you an interview like that,” she said at last, “what do you mean to ask?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Most likely just some questions about Duke and Mandy’s roommates at the time of her death, and why they were ruled out in the crime. I’ll probably come up with some other stuff, too, but if you’re worried about me being insulting by asking about some of the bad stuff that people say the cops did, you don’t need to worry. I want a good interview, not one where the person I’m talking to is irritated.”

  Andrea nodded at that. “No promises,” she said, “but I’ll make a call after dinner. Depending on scheduling, we might not hear anything for a day or two. Can it wait?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” said Betty, who stood and then rushed around the table to throw her arms around Andrea.