Free The Dreams of Ada by Robert Mayer

said.
    The voices of the detectives were soft as they asked the questions. Ward sounded almost bored as he answered them.
    “You haven’t told us the truth,” Dennis Smith said. “We have a statement from Jannette about where you were at that night. We know more than you’re telling us.”
    “About what?”
    “About where you were at that night. About what you did that night. We have a witness. You’re getting yourself in more trouble…We have a person that will testify that that wasn’t what happened.”
    Tommy insisted he was telling the truth.
    “You’re getting yourself in more serious trouble…That particular night you and Karl and Jannette went to the Blue River.”
    “I didn’t go to the Blue River that night.”
    “You didn’t?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    The detectives kept telling Tommy that he and Karl and Jannette and others were at the Blue River that night. That had been Sunday night, Tommy insisted.
    They told him he had borrowed a pickup and left the party.
    “I still don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Ward said. “Sunday night is the night she’s talking about.”
    “Tommy,” Mike Baskin said, “are all these people mistaken about the day?”
    “I guess so,” Tommy said.
    The questioning continued. Dennis Smith tried a new approach. A bluff.
    “Karl this morning gave us a statement that you were at the river,” he said. “You ran out of beer. You took her pickup and went into town to get beer.”
    “I’m sure we wouldn’t come all the way back into town to get beer,” Tommy said.
    “Isn’t it true you were going to rob McAnally’s?” Smith said.
    “No.”
    “We’ve got people who are going to testify that you and Karl said that,” Smith told him. “You and Karl left the party and were gone a long time, and then came back.”
    Tommy Ward said no such thing had happened. He said that on Friday he had gone fishing; on Saturday he had installed plumbing with his brother-in-law; on Sunday they had gone to Blue River.
    Dennis Smith reached for an envelope. He pulled out a large photograph. He held it perhaps three feet from Ward’s face.
    “Do you know that girl?” he asked.
    “I don’t know her. I’ve seen her.”
    “Would that be Donna Denice Haraway?”
    “I guess.”
    “Did you kill that girl?”
    The detective’s voice was still soft, gentle.
    “No, I didn’t. I wouldn’t take nobody’s life away from them.”
    “Who did kill her?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Smith continued to hold the photograph close to Ward’s face.
    “Was she a pretty girl?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Is she still pretty?”
    “Yeah.”
    “This girl’s family would like to bury her,” Smith said. “They’d like to know where she’s at so they can bury her.”
    “I don’t know where she’s at.”
    Smith continued to hold the picture of Denice Haraway in front of him.
    “Would you tell me where she’s at, so her family could bury her?”
    “Yeah, if I did it. But I didn’t do it.”
    “What do you think happened to this girl?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Use your imagination,” Smith told him. “Two guys took her, got her in a pickup, took her away. What do you think they did with the body?”
    “No telling.”
    “Use your imagination. What do you think?”
    “She could still be alive for all I know, for all you know. For all anyone knows.”
    “You think they hid her under some rocks or something?”
    “Could be. No telling.”
    “Are you telling the truth?”
    “Yes, I’m telling the truth. I wouldn’t do nothing like that. I’m not that kind of guy…I feel sorry for whoever did it.”
    “Her family would like to have a Christian burial for this girl,” Smith said. The picture was still smiling at Ward. “A funeral service. And put her in the ground the way she’s supposed to be.”
    “If it were my daughter, I would too,” Tommy Ward said.
    “So what do you think happened? What happened to this girl? You think they did it because she recognized