Max Collins - Girl Most Likely

Jessy, not surprisingly, spoke up. “There was a second murder last night, wasn’t there?”

“Yes,” Krista said. “A young woman named Jasmine Peterson.”

No surprised reaction followed. The word had clearly gotten around.

Jessy asked, “Is the same person responsible?”

“It would appear so, but we are in very early stages of that inquiry.” Her eyes roved from face to face. “We are a small department — a dozen of us including myself and a civilian employee and our consultant here. That’s why your help and cooperation are so vital.”

Pop said, “We’re going to talk to you individually.” He gestured to the corner tables behind him. “We should be able to move quickly. We encourage you to be frank. And I’ll be frank with you — we have reason to believe several of you have withheld useful information, or have been self-serving in what you’ve told us so far.”

A murmur rose from the small group.

“Keep in mind,” Krista said above it, “that only the person responsible for Astrid Lund’s murder... and presumably Jasmine Peterson’s... has any reason to fabricate.”

Jessy, not hiding her irritation, said, “Isn’t that a nice way to say ‘lie’?”

“If you have secrets,” Pop said, “that pertain to Astrid, revealing them would be helpful... and do know that unless giving those secrets a public airing bears upon putting a killer away, we will protect your privacy.”

Everyone looked quietly alarmed. Krista didn’t mind — she wanted them to understand what was at stake, though they might feel they’d come here under slightly false pretenses. Things were ramping up, and the phone call summoning them with words like “voluntary” and “informal” might seem now to smack of bait-and-switch. Too bad.

Pop said, “Frank, would you join me?” He gestured behind him to the table at the other end, by the tall windows.

Krista said, “Brittany?”

And gestured to the other table at that end.

“In the meantime,” Pop added, as Frank Wunder rose and lumbered forward, “we’d like you all to reflect on anything involving Astrid that you may have seen at the reunion — any conversations you witnessed her having that may have looked at all... confrontational. Thank you.”

Keith said, “Frank, I believe you said you didn’t speak to Astrid reunion night.”

The roughly handsome onetime jock sat back hanging his head some. Those close-set, hooded green eyes and the several-times-broken nose gave him a rugged handsomeness but also made him look slightly stupid.

“I think I told you,” Frank said, “there were some hard feelings between her and me. Astrid.”

“Even after all these years?”

He was looking at the tabletop. “Some things hurt a long time.”

“Like what, Frank?”

Now the eyes came up, still hooded. “I will tell you something if you turn that damn thing off.”

The car salesman was indicating Keith’s phone on the table, where the field interview app had been utilized.

“Okay,” Keith said, and paused the recording.

“I went with her awhile. You know that. We used to make out. We were... it was prom. We, uh, wound up in the back seat. I’d had some beers. She hadn’t. We were parked out in the boonies. I got out and peed, and then we got in the back, like I said, and it was getting hot and heavy.”

“Okay.”

The eyes lowered again. “I had trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

The eyes came up. Not hooded. “Trouble.”

Oh.

“Couldn’t get it up, Frank?” Keith asked, deliberately needling him.

Frank sighed, looked away again. “Too much beer. Astrid, she... at first she, it was odd, but she took offense. I mean, let’s face it, she was a real nice-looking girl and I guess the idea somebody couldn’t... perform, she found insulting... Anyway, then she laughed at me. Made fun of me.”

“That must have hurt.”

“It did. I... I had some beers, remember? I lashed out at her.”

“Lashed out how?”

“I... I slapped her.” He was reddening with shame. “Keith, I swear I never hit a girl before, and never have since. That night when I went home? I went in the can and I threw up.”

“Well,” Keith said. “That’s understandable.”

“Yeah, right?”

“You’d had a lot of beer.”

Brittany, her arms folded, her brown eyes hard, her long blonde hair surrounding her face like a hundred angry spiders had spun it, had just told Krista much the same story. With the interview app again in pause.

“Frank was in college,” she said, “I was still at GHS. We started going together — to me, it was a big deal. He was one of the most popular seniors when I was a sophomore. Now I was a junior and... look, if I was to tell you Frank and I did it when I was just sixteen, could he get in trouble for statutory whatever? After all this time?”

“No,” Krista said.

“Anyway, I really loved him. To me he was everything. Understand, I still love him.” She leaned forward, whispered. “Maybe now he’s not so big a deal, but I love him.”

Krista nodded.

“Frank has an emotional side I didn’t know about till I really started going with him. One night, after he had a lot of beer, he really opened up and told me about how, prom night, he couldn’t satisfy Astrid... couldn’t get going, you know? And how he slapped her. It was like, over a year later, but he cried about it.”

“Has he ever been rough with you like that?”

“Not hardly. Next day, when he wasn’t drunk? I told him if he ever struck me, I’d be gone so fast he wouldn’t know I’d ever been around.”

“What about the other thing?”

“If you mean... as far as... you know, sexual performance? That was always fine till a couple of years ago. But that’s what little blue pills are for.”

Krista nodded to the phone between them. “I’m going to turn this back on, okay? Something I’d like on the record.”

“You mean, unless I don’t want to answer and tell you talk to my lawyer.”

“Right.”

Brittany nodded. “Go for it.”

“You said you and Frank were in town, the second week of August.”

“Yes.”

“Do you keep a calendar or appointment book of any kind? So you can demonstrate that you were in town? What you were doing and so forth? Specifically on Thursday and Friday of that week?”

She shrugged. “Well, I know exactly what we were doing the second Thursday of August.”

“You do?” That seemed unlikely, unless after Krista’s previous inquiry, Brittany and Frank had looked (or cooked) it up.

“Sure,” she said. “We were at Fried Green Tomatoes.”

A popular restaurant on Main.

“You remember that off the top of your head?”

“Sure. It was our wedding anniversary.”

Bill Bragg sat across from Keith, looking like the beefy man’s man you might expect from one of the state’s most respected and successful high school football coaches. He was smiling in a good-natured but serious way.

“Before you start,” Bragg said to Keith, “I should tell you that I heard from my friend Ed Clauson in Prairie du Chien. I know he talked to that Officer Cortez, so I figure you and your daughter have a pretty good picture of things.”

Keith nodded. “I would like to hear it directly from you. I can stop recording for now. If it needs to be official, that can happen later.”

Bragg said, “Please.”

Keith paused the recording.

The coach said, “You and I are about the same age.”

“I’m a little older.”

“Not much. But you understand that when I started teaching, almost thirty years ago, things were very different. ‘Coming out’ just wasn’t on the table.”