He smiled. “Move it right along? Yeah, I brought ’em, tried to get ’em high. Janie smoked some weed, dropped some pills, drank, the blonde one just drank. We hung around together a little, it was a lunatic scene, rich kids and crashers, everyone high and horny, doing their thing in that big, old, empty house. Then Aimee showed up. Attaching to me like she always did. She was there in the first place because I’d agreed to watch her. The parents were off in India, or some place. Had just bought a bigger house, and the boys decided to give themselves a little good-bye bash. Anyway, Janie and her friend—I think her name was Melissa, something like that—were getting into the scene.”

“Melinda Waters,” I said.

He cocked his head, like a guard dog on alert. “So you know plenty.”

“I don’t know how it happened.”

“How it happened is Janie got noticed. By one of the brothers’ buddies, a mean kid. You know his name, too?”

“Vance Coury.”

“That’s the one,” he said. “Sweet piece of work, he wasn’t any older than the others, but he had this seasoned bad guy’s way about him. He noticed Janie, and that’s the reason she died. Because he’d had her, before, wanted her again.”

“Had her how?” I said.

“He picked her up when she was thumbing. Took her to some hotel his old man owned downtown, tied her up, did her, whatever. He bragged about it.”

“To you?”

“To all of us. The brothers were with him, coupla other buddies, too. They’d come over to me to score, when Coury spotted Janie. She was off dancing, by herself, tank top half-off, pretty much in dreamland. Coury spots her and gives out this big grin, this big wolfy grin, and says, ‘Look at that, the slut.’ And the other boys check out Janie and nod, cause they know who she is, heard the story before, but Coury tells it again, anyway. How easy it was, like it was some safari and he’d bagged big game. Then he tells me not only did he do the slut but so did his old man. And the other guys crack up and tell me their daddies did her, too. Seems Janie’s own dad was a lowlife scum who’d been selling her since she was twelve.”

Fighting revulsion, I said, “The other guys’ daddies. Do you remember which ones?”

“The brothers, for sure—Garvey and Bobo’s old man, and this other creep, this nasty nerd named Brad something-or-other. He piped up and said his daddy’d had her, too. Laughing about it. Proud.”

“Brad Larner.”

“Never knew his last name. Skinny, pale nerd. Mean mouth.”

“Any other buddies in the group, that night?”

“One other, this big doofus, this surfer type . . . Luke. Luke the Nuke, was my name for him cause he always looked bombed, would eat anything I sold him.”