A Long Stretch of Bad Days by Mindy McGinnis

Author:Mindy McGinnis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-One

“So murder is totally a thing that happens,” Bristal says lightly, popping a piece of cheesecake in her mouth post-dinner.

“Nice, great segue,” I tell her.

“Why? What were we talking about?” she asks, genuinely confused.

“Whether eating veal is a moral choice,” Mom informs her, and if I’m not mistaken, adds a little eye roll to her statement, along with a nod toward Dad and me, who had—admittedly—done a deep dive into our arguments and counterarguments.

“Yeah, we can’t afford veal, so I don’t know about that,” Bristal says. “But any cow I eat has technically been murdered, so murder is totally a thing that happens. To cows, and to people named Randall Boggs.”

“Your use of the word technically implies that you think a cow is a living thing with rights, otherwise you would simply say it had been killed,” Dad says, leaning forward on his elbows, obviously eager for Bristal’s rebuttal and moving on to his next opponent.

“How about it’s dead, and I don’t really care how it got that way?”

“Fair enough,” he says. “But what were you going to say about Randall Boggs?”

“Uh . . .” Her eyes cut to me, but I’m gauging the mood. Mom is my barometer, and her hand is steady as she lifts her third glass of wine. Boggs is a safe subject; I give Bristal a nod.

“His murder is the only one we’ve got,” she says, making homicide sound like a precious metal. “But it’s an unsolved case, and a cold one.”

“It’s a sad thing to say, but I don’t think the old man was missed much,” Dad says, leaning back in his chair now.

“Now or then,” Mom adds.

“Live dirty, die dirty,” Bristal says, and both my parents nod.

“Why the interest in Boggs?” Dad asks.

“That’s one of my episodes,” she explains. “And I just think it’s odd that our only murder is also unsolved.”

“I can understand your thinking, but you’ve got to consider the statistics,” Dad says. “A lot of homicides go unsolved, but that’s not a headline you’ll see in the paper.”

“Not the Hometown Henley Headlines,” Mom murmurs into her wineglass.

“Any paper,” Dad doubles down. “The public likes to believe that justice will always be served. Informing them of how often that doesn’t pan out isn’t in their general interest.”

A cold ball is forming in my stomach, a reminder of Dad’s comment the other night about the gray areas of life, areas people wander into and never find their way back out of.

“How many?” I ask, and Dad pulls out his phone.

“You want a number, or a percentage?”

“A number,” I say.

“From 1980 to 2019, in Ohio, over ten thousand murders went unsolved.”

A high whistle escapes from Bristal, and Mom sits her glass down harder than necessary. “I don’t know if this is really good dinner conver—”

“Dinner’s over,” I say sharply. “What’s the percentage on that?”

“That’s a sixty-seven percent clearance rate,” Dad says, pinching his phone to zoom in on the chart. “That’s actually not too bad.”

“Not too bad?” I demand. “That’s thirty-three percent of murders going unsolved! Randall Boggs is one of those numbers.

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