As if she’d done a good deed.

“Who would ask you to break into someone’s house to get something back? Why not do it themselves?”

She laughed again, like a punctuation mark, loud and brief. “Whoever would ask you to do something like that isn’t your friend,” she said, sing-song and teasing. “Your mother ever say stuff like that, Heather?” Her taunting tone caught me off guard.

“Not that I remember.”

“So why did your family leave Hunther?”

“My sister died. We moved away soon after.”

That’s what I’d assumed. But maybe we left Hunther because of Dawn Young’s murder. Maybe the accusations and rumors were too much for Mom to bear. Another thought bubbled up. Maybe Dawn Young’s murder was related to Becky’s death in some way. Becky died about a month after Dawn.

“She buried here? Your sister?”

“Cremated.”

“My place is up ahead. First right after the Stop-N-Go.”

We drove in silence for a minute. She pointed to an apartment building, and I pulled into the lot. Now that my pulse was calm, my mind shifted to logic.

“OK. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll go in and call the police. It’s got to be now because—”

“Hell, no, we’re not.” She laughed. She opened the door and stepped out.

She’d spent her entire day at the police station and didn’t want to go back for another chat. I understood her hesitancy.

“Listen, Desiree. We did nothing wrong. This was not your fault. He pushed you against his car, assaulted you, and I hit him with the Maglite. They’ll find his car. If he’s OK, they need to know there’s this asshole out there. And if he’s not, well, we don’t want to get in trouble.”

He’s not OK. You heard the splash. You heard how fast that river picked up. Under the bridge, it was rushing.

“Is that what you think happened?”

She slammed the passenger door shut and peered in through the window. “No way are we calling the police.” She held the window. Her fingernails, black paint chipped, still looked pretty.

“What do you mean, no way?”

She sighed like I was slowing her down, like it was obvious. “That guy you whacked? That was my boyfriend’s brother.”

“Wait, what? You know him?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me? I thought some lunatic cut us off and assaulted you.”

Had I misinterpreted the scene?

“Well, I mean, when he’s high,” she said, the one side of her mouth sliding up, her high canine exposed in a way reminiscent of a woman sliding up her dress to bare her thigh. “He likes to get rough.”

“You shouted ‘Quit it.’”

“I wasn’t into it. Hello? I’ve got blood dripping down my face. I’ve been in a nasty cell for hours.” As if I were the crazy one.