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“We’d had confrontations before,” he continued after a few seconds. “But what really started the whole thing was I caught him sexually assaulting a friend of Bree’s. The girl didn’t want to press charges, even though Bree and I begged her to—she didn’t want the stigma that would have accompanied it. Minnetonka—Minnetonka, Minnesota, where we lived—isn’t a small town, but something like that gets around. And high school kids can be particularly cruel when a not-very-popular girl accuses the star of the football team of sexual assault.” He grimaced. “The general consensus would have been that she only cried rape because I discovered them together.”
“That’s not unusual,” Mei-li said. “One of the many reasons women the world over don’t report sexual assault.”
“Yeah, well, she didn’t report it, but Lyon didn’t get off scot-free. I beat the crap out of him the next day. He was a couple of inches taller and a few pounds heavier, but I...I wasn’t about to let him get away with what he’d done and brag about it, as he was already starting to do with some of the guys on the football team. It wasn’t anywhere near what he deserved, but...” He clenched his jaw. “That’s when Lyon decided to get his revenge on me...by assaulting Bree.”
He stopped abruptly, because recounting this ancient history was a lot tougher than he’d imagined it would be. Mei-li waited silently, and Dirk realized she was using the same tactic on him she’d used on Vanessa that afternoon...waiting for him to become uncomfortable with the silence. And he mentally gave her bonus points as an interrogator.
“That night...the night it happened,” he finally said, “it was a beautiful evening in May, unusually warm for Minnesota, and the AC in my old beater of a car didn’t work. I’ve often wondered...” Back then he and Bree had thanked God for the warm night, because otherwise he wouldn’t have been driving with the windows rolled down. Wouldn’t have heard...
“Lyon must have stalked Bree for weeks, must have known she always went to the library on Wednesday and Friday nights, the nights I worked. I was supposed to be working that Friday, too, but my manager asked me at the last minute to switch shifts with another pizza-delivery guy who needed the following night off—I don’t remember why. I said sure and headed to the library to meet up with Bree—I thought I’d surprise her, take her to the movie we’d planned to see on Saturday.”
Dirk vividly remembered the rest of that night as if it had happened yesterday. “When I got to the library, the girl at the checkout counter told me I’d just missed Bree. So I hopped in my car and started for her house.” His pulse kicked up a notch and his breathing quickened. “There was an elementary school along the way. That time of night, the school yard was deserted, but as I drove past I heard what sounded like a scream. I stopped the car to listen and heard it again. Definitely a scream. And I knew it was Bree. I don’t know how I knew... I just...did.”
Fear had gripped him, but instead of paralyzing him, it had given his feet wings as he dashed from the car toward the sound of Bree’s last, desperate, choked-off scream, which had emanated from the parking lot behind the building. When the sound stopped, fear had turned to terror.
“When I found them, Lyon had Bree down on the ground, a knife to her throat as he tried to rape her.” He shuddered at the rage sweeping through him now, just as it had then, and his hands formed fists. “She wasn’t screaming anymore, but she was trying to fight him, despite the knife. When I pulled him off her, he turned his knife on me. We fought. He had hatred going for him, and the memory of the beating I’d given him the last time. And he had a weapon. But I’d seen what he’d tried to do to Bree. I had fury going for me, and a determination that—”
He broke off, and after a moment Mei-li touched his arm. “Then what happened?”
“We struggled for possession of the knife,” Dirk rasped, “and I killed him in self-defense.” He paused and took a deep breath. “At least...that’s what Bree testified to at my murder trial, and the jury believed her—they acquitted me.”
“If it was self-defense, why was there even a trial?”
“The police took me into custody that night—they pretty much had to, because Lyon was dead at my hands. And I’d had a few run-ins with the law the year before. Nothing major, just the usual teenage stupidity—staying out past curfew, getting into fights, stuff like that. It might have all come to nothing, but Lyon’s multimillionaire father, Terrell Blackwood, had political connections. He maintained I had it in for Lyon—he pointed to the fight we’d had before as proof.”
