Testimony by Anita Shreve

Author:Anita Shreve [Shreve, Anita]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Contemporary, Fiction, Adult, Mystery
ISBN: 9780316040174
Google: B1w_VXw3aOIC
Amazon: 0316067342
Barnesnoble: 0316067342
Goodreads: 7250870
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 2008-10-20T16:00:00+00:00

Colm

I had stayed late at work, as I usually do. It was my beat then to monitor the small-town New England papers. We get 30 percent of our stories that way. I’m doing this online, of course, because you get the bulletins faster. So I’m scrolling through these phenomenally boring stories in the Rutland Herald — “Paintball Vandals Target Cemetery”; “Arson Blaze Closes School” — and I come to the police blotter for Avery. The police blotter is the most-read part of any local paper. Even more than obits. And I see these entries: Eighteen-year-old male student charged with sexual assault. Nineteen-year-old male student charged with sexual assault. Search instigated for eighteen-year-old male student wanted in regard to sexual-assault charges. It was the word student that interested me. First of all, it’s slightly unusual to list a person’s occupation in these blotters, and second, the word student in combination with the word Avery immediately brings to mind Avery student, i.e., Avery Academy. And I’m thinking, If this is really Avery Academy, and there’s been a sexual assault — and already I’m guessing the victim is a student — then this might be a good story. I don’t want to call this guy I know up in Rutland, because I don’t want to tip my hand in case he hasn’t noted the word student yet. So I call the police station in Avery. Even in these small towns, they always have someone on duty, though sometimes you have to wake him or her up at home in bed.

Officer Quinney — technically chief of police — answers the phone. I identify myself, and I ask him whether he has in custody two suspects in a sexual-assault case. He’s reluctant to speak to me, and he sounds upset. He says he did, earlier in the night, and I ask who, and he says, No comment. I ask him if they have found the third student yet, and he says he can’t tell me, which is bullshit, because if there’s a search going on, the name is out there, but that’s OK because I can get that another way. So I ask him the victim’s name, and he says, No comment, again, but he’s pretty ticked off now, because I should know that he can’t give me the victim’s name, which, of course, I do know. But you see, not all questions are asked to elicit answers. Most of them are to get the person on the other line to talk, to say words, one or two of which are going to be revealing or cause a spark that sends you in a certain direction.

I ask him if these students are from Avery Academy, and he says yes, which is a huge piece of news. I’m pretty stunned, actually, that he’s given me this, but I proceed as if he’s said nothing of interest. I ask him how he came to know about the case, and he says the parents of the victim of

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