Cruel Doubt by Joe McGinniss Read Free Book Online Page A

kick their ass, but Jonathan managed to calm him down, driving him away from the house and to the mall a mile away.
    He was manic, hyper, on the verge of losing all control. An old friend from high school named Steven Outlaw saw him pacing back and forth outside Frank’s Pizza.
    â€œLieth is dead?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œHow’s your mom?”
    â€œNot too good. She’s a mess. They stabbed her and they clubbed her in the head.”
    â€œWho do you think it was?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Chris said, lighting one cigarette from another with shaking hands, “but if I ever find out, I’m going to kill them.”
    Then Chris turned and walked into Scott’s clothing store. He browsed through counters stacked with shirts, and racks of pants. He told Jonathan he’d been working part-time at a clothing store in Raleigh. Then he started chatting with a clerk about prices and styles.
    Jonathan Wagoner didn’t know much about shock, but he figured whatever it was, Chris was suffering from it.
    They went back to the house, where a big crowd was still gathered. Chris spoke to a neighbor who’d just come back from seeing Bonnie at the hospital.
    â€œWhat did she say?” he asked.
    That was strange, the neighbor thought. Not “How is she?” but “What did she say?” And why wasn’t he there himself?
    â€œDid she see who it was?” Chris asked.
    â€œNo, she just said he had to be young. He seemed strong. She had the sense of a lot of muscles in the chest.”
    â€œYoung, what do you mean, young?”
    â€œChris, relax. Calm down. She doesn’t know. She couldn’t see.”
    But Chris didn’t seem able to calm down. “I’m gonna kill whoever did it,” he said. “I can’t believe anybody would hurt my mother.”
    â€œHe was still kind of fucked up,” Andrew Arnold said. “Still tore up. He couldn’t stand still. Said he’d been partyin’ all night, taken a few drugs.”
    Andrew drove Chris and Angela and Donna Brady to Burger King. Nobody ate. They just ordered sodas and coffee. Chris seemed not just nervous now, but angry. He overheard some people in a nearby booth talking about the killing.
    â€œThey better stop talking about us!” he said. His voice was loud and shrill, his hands drumming on the table nonstop.
    He said he needed to get away, out of town. He hooked up with Jonathan Wagoner again and asked Jonathan to drive him to Greenville, twenty-five miles away. Jonathan went to East Carolina University in Greenville and had an apartment there. Chris said he needed to sleep. He didn’t want to talk about what had happened, or hear anyone else talk about it.
    They drove to Greenville. When they reached the apartment, Chris turned on the television, found MTV, and then, without another word, lay down on the couch and went to sleep. Shock. This must be shock, Jonathan thought.
    Chris slept for two hours, but not peacefully. Jerking and twitching a lot. When he awoke, his face was slick with sweat.
    * * *
    Angela seemed as calm as her brother was hysterical. She seemed beyond calm: casual, even indifferent.
    â€œShe’s just like her mom,” her best friend, Donna Brady, said. “Neither one of them are emotional. They keep everything inside.”
    To Donna, there was nothing suspicious or even out of character about Angela’s apparent lack of reaction. Others, less well acquainted with Angela, formed a different opinion.
    She and her friends sat in a neighbor’s yard for hours, directly across from her house. Trees provided shade from the hazy July sun. Seated on the grass, legs crossed, they were joking, laughing, smoking cigarettes. Somebody said they should get some beer. Someone else asked about a party that night.
    â€œIt looked like a sit-in,” one neighbor said. “Or like they were watching a big circus, or a parade.