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encouraged.
    “You know that stuff that happened with my stepbrother? When he died?”
    “Of course.”
    “And you know they never got the guy who did it? A guy right down the street, but they could never prove it, and oh, god, I don’t know, it just never got solved. We . . . we didn’t keep up with it. We just wanted it to go away.” Mary Byrd could hear Mann fiddle with his stereo, turning down his music. Sade. It bugged her when he did certain trademark gay things—profiling himself. “But now some reporter in Richmond has apparently been going back through files, cold cases, and digging around for stuff to write about. She’s going to do an article or book or something.”
    Mann exhaled loudly. “How do you know all this?” he asked.
    “Because she—the reporter—called me. I guess she turned something up, and the police don’t want to look stupid, or have her fucking up the case. A detective called me, too, and now they want to talk to my whole family. On Monday .” Her voice broke a little on family.
    “Aren’t you glad that they might finally solve things? And it will all be over?”
    “No!” she said, and quickly added, “I mean of course I am. I, we, are sort of over it, as much as we can be, you know? I mean, it was thirty years ago. I don’t want to have to do all that again.”
    Mann asked, “So maybe they’ve got new evidence. DNA. Or a new suspect.”
    “I don’t know. The detective wouldn’t say, and I don’t know what the reporter knows. I wouldn’t talk to her.”
    “Just think: whoever it was could still be walking around committing more . . . crimes, and messing up more lives. It’s got to be a good thing that they’re bringing the case back up.”
    She sniffed hard to steady her voice. “Of course I get that. I just can’t tell you how much it will suck to go there again. And if it’s true—did I ever tell you this?—one of the theories ,” she said the word with sarcasm, “one of the stupid ideas the police had was that this guy who they thought killed Stevie did it because of some twisted fixation he had on me . That I led him on. What if that’s true?”
    Mann said firmly, “Look, I don’t think that can be what happened. We talked about this before. Child molesters who go after boys are not interested in teenage girls. They don’t make substitutions. That is a fact. They want what they want, like animals. Or like everybody else! You know that, M’ Byrd. I can’t believe a detective or whatever would tell a teenage girl something like that.”
    “A lot of things were going on with me and my family, and what fifteen-year-old wouldn’t believe a cop?” Her exhaled breath whistled in the receiver.
    “What was the name of the guy—the guy down the street?”
    “Ned Tuttle.”
    “Look, this is not about you! Maybe it’s true that Ned Tuttle had a crush on you, but that doesn’t mean he killed your stepbrother, right? And maybe he did kill your stepbrother, but that doesn’t mean it had anything to do with you. Did you not ever watch Car 54 or Andy Griffith ? Those cops in Virginia were probably just hicks. Do you think they knew anything about criminal psychology? They’re just guys who can make mistakes. Probably they’d never even had a crime in Richmond like that. Not back then.”
    “They took my diary,” Mary Byrd said. It was hard to keep the tremble out of her voice. Why did people mostly only cry if they had an audience. “I don’t know what’s in that thing. I didn’t even remember then. They still have it. Mann, I’m scared of Ned Tuttle.”
    There was silence on the line. Then Mann said softly, “Jeez, M’Byrd. I don’t know what to tell you, except that I can’t believe anybody would pay much attention to anything in a teenager’s diary, and I don’t think it makes sense for you to be scared of the guy. You just feel upset and paranoid. I’m really sorry. Please don’t blubber.”
    “I’m not,” she said, snorting back