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The Bone House - Brian Freeman [24]

By Root 1382 0
the victim's mother was in the building, the two kids would be more guarded with their answers.

He took his coffee into the interview room, where Tresa and Troy waited in silence, ignoring each other. Tresa sat at the interview table and drank a can of Diet Sprite. Troy, who was a fleshy sixteen year old, drank root beer and leaned against the wall. To Cab, the silence between them felt hostile. They weren't friends.

'Your mom's on her way,' Cab informed Tresa. 'She'll be here in an hour or so.'

Tresa didn't look happy with the news. Cab guessed that the girl would bear the brunt of guilt and blame when Delia arrived. As the older sister, she'd failed. I trusted Glory with you, and now she's dead.

'Troy, I'm going to ask you to wait outside,' Cab told the boy. 'Hang around, though, because I need to talk to you, too. Ask one of the officers to fix you up with some chips or a sandwich if you're hungry.'

Troy grunted and pushed himself off the wall. He put down his empty bottle of root beer and left the room without a word. Tresa's eyes followed him, and Cab thought his first impression about the two of them was correct. Tresa didn't like her sister's boyfriend.

Cab sat down at the interview table opposite Tresa and gave the girl a reassuring smile. At nineteen, Tresa still had a naive way about her that made her look younger than she was. She was extremely skinny for her height, which made Cab wonder if she had an eating disorder. She played with her straight red hair between her fingers and stared vacantly at the wooden table. Her pretty blue eyes were rimmed in red, and her face was marked with streaks of tears. Talking with her earlier, Cab had found her to be painfully shy, a loner without a support network of friends. He'd offered to ask some of the other dancers from River Falls to stay behind with her, but Tresa hadn't given him a single name of someone who was close to her. It was also obvious in her answers about her family that her sister Glory got most of the attention from their mother. Tresa, who was clearly artistic and smart, had been left to live in her own world.

'I know it's been a long day,' he told her. 'I appreciate you being patient with us. It probably seems like we cover the same stuff over and over, and you know what? We do. But that's usually how we find the details that help us figure out what really happened.'

'Do you have any idea who did this to Glory?' Tresa asked. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.

'I wish I could say yes, but we don't, not yet,' Cab admitted. 'I'd like to make sure that we haven't missed anything important. OK?'

Tresa nodded without enthusiasm. 'OK.'

'You came down on a university bus from River Falls with the rest of your team last Monday and Tuesday, is that right? And Troy and Glory drove down from Door County on Tuesday and Wednesday?'

'Yes, they took turns and drove straight through,' Tresa answered. 'They got here around ten o'clock Wednesday morning.'

'Did anyone else from Door County come down at the same time?'

'No.'

'Did Glory and Troy bunk with you in your room?'

'Uh huh.' She added quickly, as if her mother were already listening, 'Glory and I shared the bed, and Troy took the couch.'

Cab noticed the girl fidgeting. She was hiding things, and she wasn't good at it. 'Tresa, I need to know who your sister was, even if there's stuff that wasn't so good. Understand?'

Her eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, teenagers do things that their parents don't always know about. I don't care about that. I just need to know if Glory was involved in anything that might have gotten her into trouble. See?' 'Yeah, I get it.'

'So it doesn't matter to me who slept in what bed, but I would like to know if Glory and Troy were having sex while they were here.'

Tresa hesitated. 'What difference does that make?'

'Maybe none at all,' Cab admitted, 'but I need to get the whole picture.'

'OK, yes.'

'You know that for a fact?'

'Yeah, I came back from practice once, and they were in bed together.' Her tone was pinched and unhappy.

'You sound like you

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