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She was right. I didn’t have anything. What I did have, she was the source of. All she had to do was deny she’d told me anything. So it was nothing. I couldn’t connect her to Pete’s murder at all.
“I think it’s time for you to leave,” she said. I decided she was right. If I stayed there much longer, I might push her off the balcony.
I drove back to The Freedom Agenda, let myself in, turned on the light, and sat down at my makeshift desk. I tried to read one of the many letters waiting to be considered, but I couldn’t focus. There had to be some way to tie Sammy to the murder. I mean, when she planned it, when she killed Pete Michaels, she was sixteen at most. I didn’t believe a sixteen-year-old could plan the perfect murder. In fact, I didn’t believe anyone could.
Except it was the perfect murder. No one involved knew anything about her. Even Pete—especially Pete—didn’t know anything about her relationship with the coach. His brother didn’t know. Anne Whittemore didn’t know. No one—
Wait. Andy Showalter knew she was involved. He’d gotten her the gun. I picked up the receiver on the desk phone I’d been given and dialed Mrs. Showalter’s number.
“This is Dom Reilly. I’m sorry to call you so late.” It was nearly eleven.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t sleep much.”
“Do you remember a girl named Sammy Blanchard? She was about two years younger than your son, Andy.”
“Sammy Blanchard? Are you telling me she’s real? She’s an actual person?”
“Yes, I met with her tonight.”
“I think you should come over.”
28
April 21, 1996
Sunday in the wee hours
Twenty minutes later, I was in Downey. It was just after midnight but all the lights in the Showalter house were on. When she opened the door, Mrs. Showalter wore a pink shell and a tight pair of black pants. Somehow, she wore more makeup then she had the first time I met her. She’d just lit a cigarette, a very long one, and waved it around like a wand.
“Come on in. Would you like a drink? I decided to have one.”
I had the feeling that decision had happened much earlier in the evening.
“No, thank you. I think I’ll just hear what you have to say and go.” Not that I had any place to be.
“Well, have a seat then,” she said, leading me over to the living room with its plastic-covered yellow sectional. I sat down, with a big squeak. In front of me was a Mediterranean-style coffee table, very dark wood. Except when you looked closely, it was wood printed paper over pressboard.
Mrs. Showalter brought over a large drawing pad that had been leaning against the wall. Twenty-four by thirty-six. Awkwardly, she spread it onto the coffee table and sat down next to me.
“I haven’t looked at this in years. It’s a little bit heartbreaking,” she said, flipping the pad open to the first page. The image covered every inch of the page. It was dense and chaotic, there were words and images mixed together. The first thing that struck me—and this was probably the part she found heartbreaking—was that it was good. There was a lot of talent on the page. A lot.
“It’s hard to know what you’re looking at, at first,” she said. “This pad starts in seventy-five. See, a lot of this page is devoted to Germany’s invasion of Poland in thirty-nine.”
I could pick out tanks, the date September 1939, Hitler speaking to a crowd, Nazi soldiers lining up Poles to shoot them. The drawing was in pencil and smudged around the edges where it had been touched.
Mrs. Showalter carefully flipped forward a few pages.
“I would put this page around January of seventy-six.”
In the center of this sheet, there was a portrait of Sammy over her name. It was a good likeness. I could see that it was her right away. Surrounding the portrait were little sketches of Sammy. Candids almost. She was carrying her schoolbooks close to her chest, raising her hand in class, eating her lunch. He was stalking her in an odd way.
“Honestly, I thought he made her up until you said her name. You can see that none of this seems very real,” she said as she flipped a few pages. Now we were looking at images that did tell a story. A young man, presumably Andy, lurking next to a tree in a park. Then he’s following a boy in a hoodie, reaching out to touch the boy’s shoulder, turning him around. The boy seems to have no face, it’s hidden, deep in the hoodie. Then there’s a close-up drawing of the gun in someone’s hand. Money in another hand. Then the boy is holding the gun. The images float around the page nearly in order. It’s almost like a cartoon strip, except there are no speech bubbles. Just the occasional word drawn into the background. On this page, it was the word FAVOR. Next to which, he’d put a heart.
“He didn’t use any dates, so I’m not sure when he drew this page. I assumed it was well after his father left. He’d stopped drawing him, you see. That would have placed this after the murder. But now I think I might be wrong. He might have drawn this before the murder.”
She flipped the page, and I was looking at Sammy again. A lot of Sammys. There were pictures of Sammy in front of the Michaels’ house—drawn very accurately. Sammy walking up the driveway and entering the house. A young man cowering, face turned away. Sammy holding the gun out. The gun as it fires with a flare of flame. The young man lying in a pool of blood. Sammy, smiling.
“You thought this was fictional.”
