“I don’t know. It was only a figure of expression.” John sniffled loudly. Neither of them had a Kleenex. Will usually kept a pack in the car for moments like this with the family or friends of a victim. “Nobody was on deck. I ran the flashlight into the cabin and I couldn’t see anything at first. Then I saw her, and got out. I was really scared.”
“How did you know she was dead?”
He hesitated, as if he hadn’t even considered it. “There was so much blood,” he said. “It was all over the walls, a big pool of it on the floor, and she was so white.”
“You didn’t check her pulse?”
“I was afraid to step into the blood.”
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?”