“Well, I hate to say it, but he might be Jake Doe. You see, we know there was a boy in Kirsten’s life around that time, but we have never had a slight inkling as to who he might be. They did everything in heavy secrecy, because she was technically still with her high school boyfriend, Brady, even though he went to A and M. They were trying to do the long distance thing, but her friends at TCU said they think she was hanging around with another boy. He would block his number before he paged her. She would call him from the phones in common areas around the campus. Maybe it was your Luke?”
At this point, I didn’t know what else I could do for Susan. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t want to spend anymore of my life doing anything that had anything to do with Luke Hanratty. I was ready to move on.
“I can give you the yearbook,” I said.
“I looked up Luke online before you came too and it looks like his parents own Hanratty and Hanratty, the big law firm downtown. They’ve worked defending the police in big cases. They might be blocking evidence through their connections knowing their son might have something to do with it.”
That made sense based on the soulless, yuppie, workaholic, only care about what people think image I got from Luke’s parents every time I met them. Luke told me once they would murder a baby if they thought it might help them get a big new case.
“Can I see it?”
Susan finally asked for the whole entire reason I was even there. I blushed when she quickly flipped to Kirsten’s picture and read the horrible things scrawled in there. I played with the last of the food on my plate.
“Well this is certainly interesting,” Susan whispered across the table.
I looked across the table and started to see tears form in Susan’s eyes behind her thick glasses.
“It’s just…
Susan had to stop and let out a few sobs.
“It’s just…I know Kirsten wasn’t a bad girl. She didn’t do these kinds of things. She was a good girl. She didn’t deserve this.”
As bad as I felt for Susan, the situation was just too much and too awkward for me. I wanted to get out. I figured I had helped her as much as I possibly could and I had my own problems. I was beginning to think my boyfriend of more than five years may have killed someone. No matter how good that peach pie in the oven smelled (and it smelled really, really good), I wasn’t going to stick around for it.
