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“Let me see that,” he said, sitting down next to Fiona and scooting the laptop closer to him.
“At first the names being redacted didn’t bother me as I figured we were all underage…”
“That’s not something you redact names for. As the case never went forward, it’s not necessarily part of the public record. And the only thing that the medical examiner mentions other than the fall being the cause of death was that the kid who fell had alcohol in his bloodstream.”
“All of us had been drinking beer or those wine coolers and some had been smoking weed. It was fairly tame. I don’t remember thinking anyone was falling-down drunk.”
“According to a ‘female bystander,’ the teen slipped and fell. Another witness—no gender noted—said the kid was horsing around and showing off and just went over. Apparently, several people heard the victim scream as he fell. Others, reportedly, ran to the edge to see him lying at the base of the falls. The family requested that the names of any of those listed as witnesses or bystanders be withheld from the media, which is fairly standard for minors.” He turned to Fiona. “Does that jibe with your recollection?”
“From what I can remember,” she said slowly. “It’s been a long time and honestly the single vague memory I have is of kind of standing away from the rest of the kids and just being horrified.”
“Do you have any recollection of Daniel?”
Fiona closed her eyes for a moment. “I seem to recall he was standing on one of the higher rocks above the kid who fell.”
“Any way anyone could think he’d pushed him?”
“Not any more so than any of the others. You know how high school kids are. The group that was horsing around were the jocks and the cheerleaders. Daniel was a goth; I was a nerd. We didn’t run with that crowd and tended to keep our distance.”
“Who invited you?” asked Slade.
“No one. The party was one of those things that just spreads through the school. I remember being a little surprised Daniel was there.”
“Why were you there? It doesn’t seem like your kind of party.”
Smiling sheepishly, she said, “It wasn’t, but one of the cheerleaders had backhandedly dared me to go. I decided I was going just to prove I wasn’t the little goodie-goodie they thought I was.”
They continued to go through the electronic and paper files as well as the physical evidence, making notes on the whiteboard in the conference room.
Slade looked at his watch to see that it was almost noon. “I think we’ve done a lot on the cold case, and my gut says we need to figure this out first.”
“Agreed, but I don’t see anything else we can glean from these old files.”
“I don’t, either. What do you say I take you to lunch, and then we hit the town newspaper? A lot of times you can find the most interesting things buried in a newspaper’s archives.”
“Sounds good.”
Slade pulled out her chair as Fiona took out her camera, focused it on the whiteboard and took a picture. “Grist for the mill?”
“Kind of,” she said a bit evasively.
After they left the sheriff’s office, Slade took Fiona’s hand in his and walked so that he was on the outside of the sidewalk. He smiled and shook his head.
“What?” she asked.
“I have given Thorn so much crap about the way he always takes care of Jessica—opening her door, holding her chair, et cetera…and now I find myself doing it without even thinking about it.”
“For the record, I like it.”
He grinned. “Good to know. So why take a picture with your phone of the whiteboard?”
“I always worry about ideas or things being lost from something I can’t safeguard. If someone sneaks in there and tries to erase or destroy something…”
“You think someone at the station was involved.”
“Don’t you?” she asked.
“I’m trying hard not to, as I think maybe the chief is the only one old enough to have been a cop back then…”
