Free Tunnel Vision by Aric Davis Page B

as I walk into Jack’s room: an ugly reek of ass and black mold, with a few dried-up condoms on the nightstand to add to the ambience. I shudder, put my game face on, and get to work.
    Despite the mess on the floor, bed, and nightstand, the dresser is full of neatly folded clothing. Mr. Tidy. I rifle through each drawer, being sure to check the underside of each of them as I do, all while keeping an eye on the Timex on my wrist. So far I’ve been in the house less than five minutes, discovering nothing, and I’m starting to hope there’s not a crawl space or attic.
    I give up on the dresser after hitting the bottom drawer, and come away with the revelation that Jack and I have a bit in common. As it turns out, we both essentially wear uniforms. For me, that means punk shirts and hoodies, Converse All Stars, and jeans. Jack’s is a little different: flannel shirts and Carhartt outerwear, some camo for hunting, and then a bunch of white shirts, briefs, and socks. It’s all boring, nothing tucked under any of the drawers—no bloody knife, smoking revolver, or baggied trophy of victim-hair anywhere—and I’m starting to think this is more snipe hunt than investigation.
    There’s no blood-stained coat to be found as I shuffle carefully through the closet, no punk records or heroin needles in the nightstand, and no diary packed with confessions. A little dejected at not solving the decade-plus-old murder, I walk out of the bedroom and give a look out the back door to the rear yard.
    Jackpot.

THIRTEEN
    The last two hours of class dragged on long enough that Betty was sure there was something wrong with the clocks. Finally it was 2:20 and the last bell of the day sounded, and Betty walked to her Beetle while she texted June.
    She’d already decided she had to convince the moms somehow to let her break the grounding so that she and June could work on the project together, and she knew her only chance of doing that was if they agreed to do the work at her house. Betty knew what they were going to lay down as a precondition, though the thought of having to look Jake in the face and break it off made her throw up in her mouth a little. It would probably be for the best just to get it over with.
    Betty made it to the car at the same time she was hitting “Send” on her phone. The message she sent to June told her about the plan and gave her a couple of different websites to check out for more information on Duke, Mandy, and the bizarre set of events surrounding the murder and the trial. “K” came through a few moments later, and Betty dropped the phone into a cup holder before throwing the car into reverse.
    Betty was home ten minutes later, and she parked the car behind Ophelia’s and then walked in the house. Ignoring the loud techno coming from the basement, Betty grabbed a water and headed upstairs and got to work on the part of the website labeled “The Trial.”
    The Duke Barnes trial started going sideways before it began. For starters, the court had a very hard time appointing an attorney for Duke. Not only was he furious and recanting his testimony to the police, but he’d beaten up two men in the county lockup he thought were jailhouse snitches. Worse still, he was suffering from extreme withdrawals from heroin. By the time he finally did have a lawyer, the man could do little but attempt to slow the trial, but to no avail. Six months after Mandy Reasoner was found dead, Duke’s trial began.
    Betty didn’t even feel like she needed to research the matter to know that three days is an impossibly short span of time for a murder trial to take place, but in The People v. Duke Barnes, that was all that was necessary. Duke not only sounded guilty, he looked guilty. He was covered in tattoos, with the pinched and worn face of a junkie to boot. He was unpleasant, had to be threatened with being gagged, and was generally disagreeable with everyone he came into contact with. Duke’s lawyer did the best he could under