The Mia Quinn Collection Page 28

“And I’m hearing you even have some kids on the hook for Darin Dane’s death.”

  She nodded. And waited.

  “And you got permission from Jeremy Donaldson’s mom to question him? Alone?”

  Uh-oh, Mia thought. “Of course we did, Frank.”

  “Well, Jeremy’s father called me and said his wife didn’t know what she was agreeing to. That she felt threatened and intimidated because you two went to her home. According to Mr. Donaldson, she didn’t know she had a choice to say no. Supposedly she’s claiming it felt almost like an invasion.”

  “An invasion! That’s ridiculous. She gave us snacks! And then when we told her what would happen next, she just kept chopping vegetables. She didn’t seem fazed at all.”

  “Her husband’s threatening a suit based on prosecutorial misconduct, even a civil rights violation. He says his kid’s rights were violated under color of law. Do you understand how this looks, Mia? He’s saying he’s going to go to the media.”

  “Let him,” Mia said flatly, thinking of how Mr. Donaldson’s son had tormented the boy who had once been his friend. “Jeremy freely confessed to us. And nobody likes a bully.”

  “Exactly.” Frank leaned forward and put his hands flat on his desk. “And that’s what you and Charlie look like. Picking on some poor kid until he broke down in tears and didn’t know truth from falsehood, until he told you anything just to get you to leave him alone. Mia, you have to figure a way out of this before it goes viral. This guy is well connected, and he can make some noise. I do not need my campaign derailed just weeks before the election. I do not need to give my opponent a boost. He’ll be saying we railroad minors, that we interfered in the relationship between parent and child. You need to take care of this.”

  Without speaking, Mia stood up and walked to his door. She was trembling. Before she could think of whether it was the right thing to do, she turned and said, “This isn’t about your reelection, Frank. This is about a dead child.” She left while he was still opening his mouth to rebut.

  What was the right thing to do? she wondered as she walked back to her office. Did these boys deserve to spend years in a detention center? Would it teach them a lesson? Would it prevent future Darin Danes? She sat for a long moment and then called Nate Dane.

  She was just hanging up the phone when Katrina poked her head into Mia’s office. “Hey, are you still planning on having that garage sale?” Katrina the ever-practical.

  The garage sale. Mia flashed back to Colleen’s Fleetwood Mac albums, to the last conversation she had had with her friend.

  “Yeah, I am. In a week or two.” Even a few hundred could be put to one of those Visa bills.

  “I have some ski equipment I’d like to sell. Can I drop it off at your house after work?”

  “Oh, sure. If I’m not there, you can leave it on the porch.” Mia gave her head a little shake. She didn’t have time to think about garage sales, bills, or even Colleen. Not right now. Not when she needed to be thinking about what she might say to Nate Dane. Not when she needed to be worrying about the potential fallout from her retort to Frank.

  Katrina tilted her head. “Are you all right, Mia?”

  “Just tired.”

  “You should be proud that you found the guy who killed Colleen and Stan. You figured it out.”

  Yesterday Mia had found so many answers, but instead of filling her up, they had left her feeling hollow. Colleen was dead, but so was her killer—and Mia had been a witness to both deaths. The boy who had tormented Darin the worst had turned out to be the same boy who had once been his friend. Even the reason for Charlie’s behavior had proved to have a dark side.

  “Seth Mercer suffered a lot too,” Mia said. “His son was innocent, and not only did we convict him, we let him get killed. We made mistakes we could never undo.”

  “What’s done is done.” Katrina shrugged one shoulder. “Sometimes you just have to move on.” And with that she took her own advice and exited with a little wave of the fingers.

  Mia sat for the next twenty minutes without doing a single thing. Without even thinking. Then Judy called to say that Nate Dane had arrived. Mia met him in the lobby and walked him back to her office, trying not to wrinkle her nose. A fug of stale cigarettes hovered around Nate like the cloud of dirt that followed Pig-Pen in the Charlie Brown comics.

  “I know what you want to talk to me about.” Nate stared down at his big hands, twisting in his lap.

  “You do?” That was a relief. Mia hadn’t been looking forward to explaining the decision she had reached.

  “Let me just say right up front, I’m sorry.”

  She had been bracing herself, but not for this. “What are you talking about?”

  “For scaring you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. But when it’s your child, you just get obsessed. I needed to know you were making my son’s death a priority.”

  Mia looked at him more closely. Nate Dane was wearing a dark hoodie. Mentally she added a baseball cap and pulled the hood up to hide his face.

  “You. You’re the one who followed me.”

  “It seems like you’ve been spending a lot of time not even thinking about Darin. Like teaching at that school.”

  “I’m teaching future lawyers who will go out and fight for people like your son.”

  “And then you showed up at the football game on Friday. Charlie was there too, but he was the only one really paying attention to what was going on. And then I realized you weren’t there to investigate. You were just there to cheer on your son. When my son is dead.”

  Mia ticked off the possible charges in her head. Stalking, menacing . . . But Nate was right. His son was dead. And Nate was lost to grief.

  “Despite what you think you’ve seen, Mr. Dane, I have been working hard for your son. We’ve had several hearings in front of the grand jury. I can’t tell you what’s been said, because everyone in that room is sworn to secrecy. About all I can say is there have been no surprises. However, yesterday, outside of the jury room, Charlie and I learned the identity of the person who hacked your son’s Facebook.”

  He straightened up. “Who was it? That Reece? Brandon Shiller?”

  “It was Jeremy Donaldson.”

  His face crumpled. “But they were friends.”

  She thought of Gabe, of Charlie. “Sometimes it’s friends who hurt us the worst.” Was that what she was planning to do now? What if Frank hadn’t talked to her? Would she still say what she planned to next?

  “Here’s the thing, Nate. I feel sure we can get an indictment against Jeremy and Reece and Brandon.”

  He started nodding before she even finished saying their names. “They deserve that. They deserve to suffer. They killed my son.”

  “But these are minors, teenagers who are fourteen or fifteen. Kids who don’t have criminal records. You may want them to rot in prison, but the reality is even if they are sentenced, it will be as minors, not adults. And there are no guarantees we will win. Juries and even judges can be unpredictable. To make sure they are punished, I’d like to offer them a plea bargain.”

  Nate was already shaking his head. “No.”

  She had known this wasn’t going to be easy. “The outcome of this trial is unpredictable. With a plea bargain we can guarantee that they receive some punishment.”

  “But it would be to a lesser charge, right? That’s not acceptable. I want them to get the maximum.”

  “The thing is, Nate, the juvenile justice system in Washington State is geared to rehabilitation.” Gabe’s face flashed into her mind. “Not punishment. Not even deterrence. No one, not even Jeremy, is likely to be sentenced to a juvenile facility for this. It’s even possible that they could be acquitted. However, if we offer a plea bargain, then we know for sure that they will be punished.” He hadn’t interrupted her yet, so Mia continued, “We could propose that if they plead guilty to criminal harassment, they will be on probation until they’re nineteen. And that during that time they must be in school or
employed. And that they’ll have to complete, say, forty hours of community service.”

  “A hundred. Forty hours isn’t enough.”

  Mia nodded. “Okay.”

  “And part of that time they have to speak to schools about bullying. Get up in front of everyone and admit the part they played.”

  Mia thought about it. Would Reece, in particular, go for it? She thought the answer might be yes, given that the alternative could be harsher. “Okay.”

  “And on every anniversary of his death they have to write me a letter saying how they are doing and telling me what they imagine Darin would be doing right now.”

  “Okay,” she said again.

  After Nate left, Mia picked up the phone and started calling lawyers.

  She had just finished talking to Brandon Shiller’s lawyer when her phone rang. It was her direct line, not a call that had come through Judy.

  “Hello?”

  A girl’s voice said, “You said I should call you if I wanted my stuff back.”

  It took her a minute to reorient herself. “Ronni?”

  “Yeah. And I can’t sleep without my bear.” Her ragged voice bore testimony to the truth of her words. “I don’t know why. I just can’t. Do you have him?”

  CHAPTER 46

  A woman clutching a Seattle’s Best coffee cup walked by and gave Mia an odd look, as if trying to figure out what category she belonged to. Occidental Park, in the heart of Seattle’s Pioneer Square district, attracted all kinds of people, from tourists to the homeless to office workers taking a quick break. But Mia bet this might be the first time that a professionally dressed woman had sat on one of the park benches with a worn brown teddy bear perched on her lap.

  Mia’s heart ached for Ronni, so alone that a worn stuffed animal was her only comfort. “I have everything of yours that was in the house,” she’d told her. “Your bear, your textbook, your clothes, your sleeping bag. Just tell me where you are and I’ll meet you.”

  “How do I know you won’t turn me in to the authorities?”

  “Your birthday was three days ago, Ronni.” Charlie had gotten the girl’s birth date from her school. What had it been like, marking her birthday all alone and in hiding? “You’re eighteen now. In the eyes of law, you can stay on your own. Even if that means you’re living on the street. And since you didn’t do any damage to your old house when you were staying there, the bank isn’t interested in pressing charges.”

  “I can’t go back there, can I?” Ronni asked. “I tried my key, but it didn’t work.”

  “No, I’m sorry, you can’t. They changed the locks, and the real estate agent will be going inside more often.”

  They had agreed to meet at three. Now Mia and the bear sat looking out over the park, facing one of the four carved totem poles that reminded visitors that long before Seattle was a city, this area had been home to native tribes. Pigeons bobbed and cooed at her feet. Even a few gulls patrolled the brick pavement, looking for crumbs from workers’ lunches or from treats purchased from one of the coffee shops that ringed the park.

  Mia checked her watch again. Ten after. Charlie was at the other end of the park, pretending to read a copy of The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly. She had noted his presence and then not looked at him again, except out of the corner of her eye.

  Charlie a bully. The idea still shocked her. Mia imagined him with bloody fists, standing over some crying, cowering boy. She tried to put an expression on his teenage face, but couldn’t.

  What kind of bully had he been? Smirking like Reece? Pitiful like Jeremy? Given Charlie’s age, he had to have been a hands-on bully like Brandon and Reece. There’d been no Internet to hide behind.

  And why had he been a bully? Although, did it matter where it came from? Weren’t all bullies insecure, maybe even in pain? He had claimed he had acted out of fear, but maybe he had enjoyed the power.

  Knowing that Charlie had been a bully changed everything. Didn’t it?

  Mia remembered his compassion with Shiloh and Rainy when they talked about Darin. Even with Jeremy he had been gentle.

  Especially with Jeremy.

  If you had done something wrong, were you unforgivable?

  Could you change your past? No.

  Could who you were now offset who you were in your past?

  Mia considered her dad. Which was the real man? The father who had kept his distance, barked orders, didn’t pay his child support? Or the kind dad who only wanted to help her?

  A little boy laughed behind her, and she turned. A father held the hand of a three- or four-year-old boy as he walked up a tilted slab of granite that was part of a memorial to four fallen firefighters. The granite slabs were meant to evoke a collapsed building. Bronze statues of the firefighters—two kneeling and two standing—memorialized the men who had been killed in the collapse of a deliberately torched warehouse twenty years earlier.

  For a moment Mia envied the dad and his young son. Life had been easier when Gabe was three, when he willingly held her hand. She had had to let go, let him make his own mistakes. She only hoped he was learning from them.

  And what about Charlie? Yes, he sometimes flouted the rules. But Mia had also spent the last week in his company. He hadn’t hesitated to leave a crime scene to help her family. He had let out a relieved sigh at the news that Brooke would outgrow her night terrors. Even when Seth held a rifle on him, he had treated him with something approaching kindness. And then he had held Mia while she cried.

  And it wasn’t as if Charlie had changed only because being a cop had forced him to. Just because you were a cop didn’t mean you couldn’t be a bully too. Mia had even prosecuted one, a cop who broke a woman’s arm and claimed she had been resisting arrest—until a neighbor’s cell phone video showed he was lying. But despite Charlie’s reputation for being gung ho, Mia had never heard anyone even whisper that he was too quick to use force. And yesterday it had been clear that he had wanted to bring Seth in unharmed.

  When a girl began walking slowly toward Mia, her mind was brought back to the matter at hand. The school had given them a photo of Ronni. Her hair had been worn down around her shoulders. Now it was tucked back behind her ears, exposing black plugs that stretched her lobes. Her hair was dyed black except for a three-inch stripe of brown at her crown. She was bone thin, and even her skinny jeans looked too loose.

  “Ronni? I’m Mia.”

  The girl didn’t say anything, just snatched up the bear. She stepped back and hugged it close, burying her face in it and sniffing it.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Mia patted the bench beside her.

  The girl did, keeping a good three feet between them. She sniffed again, then wiped her blotchy cheeks on the bear’s face. Mia had thought she had been inhaling the bear’s comforting scent. Now she realized Ronni was really using it to hide her tears.

  “Where’s the rest of my stuff?” the girl demanded.

  “In my car. We can get it in a few minutes.” Mia picked up the brown paper bag that sat between them. “I got you a bagel and a coffee in case you’re hungry.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before Ronni was biting into the toasted bagel with a little moan. Mia could smell the warm rich scent of melted butter.

  “How did you end up living in your old house?”

  Ronni spoke with a full mouth. “We got foreclosed on in July. My mom took me and my brother and we went out to Spokane to live with my uncle. But it was pretty clear he didn’t want us, and there wasn’t any room anyway. And I love my school. I’m a good student, you know? But if I had stayed with my mom, I would have had to go to a new school and try to study in a tiny house with two bedrooms for ten people. And I thought—our old house is empty, and I still have a key. Why can’t I just live there and keep going to school? So I came back about a week before school started. The water still works, so it’s not that bad.”

  “Does your mom know where you are?”

  A shrug. “Yeah. She’s not
happy, but she didn’t try to stop me either.”

  Mia tried to imagine being that hands-off, but couldn’t. “So you started back at your old school?

  “I just showed up on the first day like always, and no one asked any questions. When I filled out the forms, I just did it like I was my mom. We already qualified for free lunch, and the school serves breakfast too.” Her bagel had disappeared, and now she licked her shiny fingers.

  “What about weekends?” Mia asked, thinking of the peanut butter and crackers. “How have you been eating then?”

  “Sometimes I panhandle. But I don’t like it because then people stare or make rude comments. If I get really hungry, I go to that one fountain, the one in front of the bank, and fish out the coins. But you have to be pretty desperate to do that, since they’re mostly pennies.”

  It would take a lot of pennies to add up to something to eat. “Where have you been staying since Saturday?”

  “There’s this Laundromat? I’ve been sleeping under the folding tables. Or if people are still there, I put an out-of-order sign on the bathroom and lock the door. But like I said, I can’t sleep without my bear.” She hugged it again.

  “Why not go to a shelter?”

  “I’m not like those people,” Ronni said. “People with no teeth and track marks on their arms. I’m normal. There’s lots of homeless kids in Seattle, kids who won’t go to a shelter because they’re runaways or they don’t like the rules or they’re scared of the other people. But I don’t want to be like them either, sleeping behind hedges, hoping some old homeless guy or meth addict doesn’t find you.”

  At a nearby bench was a reminder of the world Ronni was trying to avoid. A scrawny man with a snake tattoo coiled around his neck sat with his eyes half closed. Next to him was an older woman with rotted teeth. She held a rope leash, and on the other end was a pit bull named Diablo that she petted and praised.

  Ronni’s gaze skittered over them. “I’ve heard of kids who hide in a library or a school after closing time, just to have someplace safe to sleep. But I was worried if I got caught they would turn me over to the police for trespassing.”