Free To Love and to Perish by Lisa Bork

good graces to blush. “Then stop asking me questions and I won’t have to lie anymore.”
    â€œCory!”
    He stripped his gloves off and tossed them in the nearby plastic garbage can. “Okay, okay, let’s go in your office and sit down.”
    We settled in the black leather office chairs, Cory in front of the laminated desk and me behind it. I handed him a donut. He ate it in two bites and washed it down with his coffee. I slid another one in front of him. It disappeared. I wondered when he’d eaten last.
    He waved off the third, mine. “What do you think Brennan had for breakfast this morning?”
    The bite of donut I had taken wedged in my throat. All I could do was shrug.
    Cory didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy looking toward the floor. “I did something I probably shouldn’t have. You’re not going to be proud of me.”
    I’d managed to dislodge the donut and swallow it. “What did you do, Cory?”
    His gaze met mine. “You can’t tell Ray.”
    This presented a problem. It wasn’t that I told Ray everything. Heavens, no. Although Ray was the first person I wanted to tell anything and truly my best friend, some things he didn’t want or need to know. Often in the past, the most significant of these things had related to Erica. But if Cory had done something illegal or found out something pertinent to the case, my obligation would be to tell Ray, even though another county altogether had charge of this investigation and he wasn’t really involved. I wasn’t going to pretend any different.
    â€œNo promises until I hear what you did.”
    Cory signed. “First I drove to Albany and went through the newspaper archives at the library.”
    No harm there. “What did you find out?”
    Cory’s eyes lit up. “Brennan was a track star in high school, a long distance runner. He won a lot of medals.”
    Not the answer I expected, nor the one Cory really wanted to tell me, I suspected. “That’s cool.” I waited for him to continue.
    â€œHe was in Torque Club, too, just like me.”
    I smiled. The club for gear heads. For some boys, it was all about the toys, and cars were one of the best toys of all, lucky for my business.
    Cory’s shoulders sagged. “And I found articles about the crash. The car left the road and hit a tree around eleven o’clock at night. A passing motorist found them an hour later. Monica Gleason died on impact. The other girl sustained serious injuries and spent months in the hospital. At her family’s request, she wasn’t named in any of the articles. Brennan sustained head injuries and was in a coma for a couple days after the accident. When he woke up, the last thing he remembered was leaving his home to go to the reunion picnic in the park around noon. He claimed he didn’t have any memory of anything after that.”
    Interesting. “Anything else?”
    â€œJames Gleason attacked him the day he was released from the hospital. He jumped him in front of his house. Brennan didn’t press any charges.”
    A vision of Gleason’s waving arms on Friday night flashed through my mind. I could picture him attacking Brennan, frustrated and enraged at the legal system’s failure to punish the man he believed responsible for his sister’s death.
    â€œDid you learn anything else from the papers?”
    Cory swigged his coffee. “Not really.”
    I still hadn’t heard anything I couldn’t tell Ray. “There must be more.”
    He sipped of his coffee and licked his lips. “Lots more.”
    Oh boy. “Go on.”
    â€œI went over to Brennan’s house. I just wanted to be … to feel …
close to him. I started thinking about the weird phone call from that guy and how Brennan doesn’t want me around now … about how sometimes I think I don’t know him as well as I should. I remembered