Will didn’t understand the contradiction: how John could go aboard to see if anything was wrong, but then see a bloody woman and not check to see if she were still alive. He’d been in Boy Scouts awhile and knew some first aid. This was the kind of thing that a skilled interrogator could start to break down, take apart, and drive a truck through. Will realized that he was desensitized to seeing the dead and being up to his elbows in blood. But John’s story still didn’t fit, unless you believed he first really did want to impress Heather Bridges and then, after he was aboard, became frightened and fled. It was all what a jury would believe—Will was that far down the line in his reasoning.
“What else can you remember about the boat? Anything on deck or in the cabin that seemed odd to you?”
“It smelled
funny in the cabin,” John said. “I couldn’t place it at first, but now I think it smelled like bleach.”
Will stared at the steering wheel, losing his last grain of hope that John’s presence on that boat was all a big misunderstanding. He had been there. “Did you know who the woman was?”
“Yes.” His voice was quiet. “Kristen.”
Will rolled down a window and the sweet Cincinnati spring breeze unseemly intruded.
“Why were you even on the river that night?” Will demanded.
“I was on a boat with some friends from school.”
He ran John through the same line of questions as he used on his supposed friends from school: What time did they leave the Serpentine Wall, who was aboard, when did they see Kristen’s boat, how far up the Licking River they went, how long they were partying, and when they saw the boat on the return trip. It all jibed. In fact, John had a more precise time for the second encounter with the death boat: a few minutes before four a.m.
“What were you doing upriver for so long?” Will asked.
“We had some drinks. Then Zack handed out E. Ecstasy.”
“I know what E means. What else?”
John rolled down his window and stuck an elbow out. “People started hooking up. I was with Heather.”
“Really?” Will didn’t say it in a scandalized parent’s voice, the way Cindy would, but with a sharp snap of skepticism. John looked at him with hate.
“I guess Zack fucked all three girls,” John said darkly. “Maybe the girls played with each other, too. I don’t know. I passed out.”
Will made him answer it again. He sounded credible.
“I watched Zack and Heather bumping nasties, if you really want to know the truth,” John said. “I didn’t want to see any of it, but they woke me up.”
“Why would you get on the boat with these kids, John?”
“I didn’t want to! Heather and I were going to have a picnic at Sawyer Point. Only us. I asked her out. Thought she liked me. Then that douche nozzle pulls up in his fancy boat and she wanted to go. She invited me. Zack would have been happy to leave me at the wall.”
Will took it in and said nothing.
“Are you carrying your knife?”
The boy stiffened in his seat and nodded.
“Let me see it, please.”
John reluctantly reached in his pants pocket and handed it to Will, who switched on the dome light and unfolded the knife, which locked in place. It was heavy and all black, with a web-textured steel handle and spear point. “Blackhawk!” was emblazoned on the surface of the blade. It was very sharp. Although the blade looked a legal length, the whole unfolded knife appeared almost eight inches long. He examined it for dried blood; found none. John could have cleaned it. The Gruber autopsy showed such brutal knife wounds that it was difficult to determine the shape or edge characteristics of the blade, but it probably wasn’t serrated. This blade wasn’t serrated.
Will asked John if he had bought the knife. He said he had ordered it online for eighty dollars.
“And tell me again why you would carry a knife?”
“So I’d feel safe.”
“Ever been in a knife fight?”
“No,” John said softly.