Free Deep Pockets by Linda Barnes

didn’t.”
    “Finished?”
    “What I mean is, are you satisfied with it being called a suicide?”
    “Satisfied? What the hell’s that mean, lady? A kid’s dead, I’m not fucking satisfied. Look, I gotta go. My partner’s gonna think I dumped him.”
    I gave him the rest of the doughnuts to give to his partner as a peace offering. Then I studied the names I’d scrawled in my notebook. Benjy Dowling, shaken-up boyfriend. Jeannie St. Cyr, former roommate.
    Who did you trust with your love letters, Denali?
    I flipped a mental coin.
     

Chapter 8
     
    I wiped glazed-doughnut sugar off my fingers and glanced at my watch. Leaving my car in the lot behind Pearl Art, I walked up Mass Ave, skirting the Yard, passing the Fogg Museum and slipping between the ziggurat-topped Graduate School of Design and magnificent Memorial Hall. I might have found a parking space closer to McKay Hall, behind the Science Center, but it was doubtful at best, and I enjoyed the walk. One thing about a university town, people walk. Some folks in Cambridge and Boston consider cars an abomination; they don’t even know how to drive.
    The ones who do drive, most of them don’t have a clue, either.
    I found a convenient tree to lean against and waited for Jean St. Cyr, Jeannie, the roommate, the dark girl with the notebook on her belly and the questions in her eyes, who’d told nasty Gregor she couldn’t meet him at eleven because she had a class at McKay. Across Oxford Street, a scrawny student tried to launch a kite despite an almost-total lack of breeze and an abundance of trees and telephone wires. I watched him fail over and over, wondered if it was a class experiment in futility.
    I was starting to think I’d missed her, when I caught a glimpse of a girl speeding across the grass, her backpack flung across one shoulder, wearing a raggedy tight red T and bleached jeans. She saw me at the same time and stopped in her tracks, glancing quickly from side to side like a cornered animal.
    I moved, and she ran like a deer.
    She darted around the Science Center and made for the Yard. She was fast and agile, but hampered by the crowd near the gate. I was gaining, shoving kids out of the way, pushing past a clot of robed priests. She raced through the gate, sprinted to the right, away from the crowd, toward Memorial Church and Robinson. She was weighed down by her backpack, hampered by short legs and clunky shoes. She tripped and almost went down, regained her footing, and charged ahead.
    I was on her heels, close enough to hear her pant. I didn’t waste breath ordering her to stop. What the hell was I gonna do if she didn’t, shoot her? I put my head down and ran hard, ran till I could grab her shoulder.
    At my touch, she sank to the ground, like a stone plunging to the bottom of a pond. She was gasping for breath and crying. In a minute, I’d have a full-blown incident on my hands:
Hey, lady, what the hell you trying to do to that girl
?
    “It’s okay,” I assured the closest hoverers. “My friend’s okay. Just give her some space.” There were murmurs of concern, but no one intervened; I don’t look like a bruiser. I knelt beside her, inhaling the scent of fresh-mown grass, and put what must have looked like a comforting hand on her shoulder.
    She wasn’t going anywhere, and I wanted her to know it. Running makes a suspect look guilty as hell. Maybe I’d guessed right on whom to question first, the boyfriend or the roommate.
    “Oh God,” she said. “Oh God.” Defenseless, out of breath, out of guts, tears rolled down her cheeks. My sympathetic side felt like patting her on the back. I kept it in check and waited till the crowd dispersed. Then I grabbed her chin and tilted her face so I could see into her dark eyes.
    “You needed the money? Is that why?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Or did you want to teach the bastard a lesson?”
    “What the—”
    “You’ve got Denali’s letters, don’t you?”
    “I don’t have