Roper’s response was an unconcerned shrug.
“How?”
“She fell off the front steps,” he answered. “It was an accident. I found her lying there and took her ring, then I called the cops.”
Joanna picked up the evidence bag, tossed it into the banker’s box, and then made as if to put the lid back on the box.
“Wait,” Roper objected. “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
“Because I came to hear a confession—a complete confession,” Joanna told him. “I didn’t show up at this ungodly hour of the morning to sit here and listen to a bunch of lies, so either tell me exactly how Lucille Hawkins fell off those steps, or I’m out of here.”
“I tripped her,” he said.
“How?”
“I strung some fishing line between the top posts of the banisters on the front steps, then I told her that a raccoon had gotten to her cat and she needed to come quick. She rushed out in such a hurry that she never saw the string. She tripped over it, and down she went, just like that.” He slammed the palm of his free hand on the tabletop for emphasis.
“Didn’t the string cut into her legs?” Joanna asked. “Why didn’t the autopsy mention that?”
“She always wore boots, and not ladies’ fashion boots, either, but clunky men’s work boots. She stomped around town in those looking like a clown straight out of a circus. The other kids made fun of her and teased me about it.”
“So you decided to murder her.”
“I guess,” he said.
Good enough, Joanna thought.Confession number one.
She paused long enough to consult her iPad and review the notes she’d made during her conversation with Dan Hogan. Then she dug through the evidence bags until she located the one containing Brian Olson’s Cub Scout Wolf pin. Looking at that put a lump in Joanna’s throat. Her own son, Dennis, had started out in Cubs and had earned a Wolf pin, too, although when he’d been old enough to join the Boy Scouts, he’d opted for 4-H instead.
“What about this?” Joanna asked, holding up the bag. “By my count, this should be number two.”
This time she was gratified when Roper actually shifted uncomfortably in his chair before answering.
“It belonged to a kid,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed, “a boy named Brian Olson who disappeared from the Polk County Fair in Fertile, Minnesota, your hometown, in 1961. You were sixteen years old at the time. His body was found a few days later in Arthur Lake. I don’t know the actual location of the farm where you used to live, but I’m willing to bet it wasn’t far from where Brian’s body was found.”
Joanna paused and waited. “So?” she prodded finally.
“So what?” Roper asked.
“Did you murder Brian Olson?”
“I guess,” he answered.
“Did you or didn’t you?”
“Did,” he said. “I did it. I found out his name later because it was all over the news in Fertile, but I always called him Cotton Candy Boy. He had to take a leak and got separated from the people he was with. So I bought him some cotton candy and offered to take him to the sheriff’s department so they could help him get home.”
“Instead you drowned him.”
Roper shrugged. “He didn’t know how to swim.”
Joanna was so filled with revulsion that she almost couldn’t proceedwith the interview, but quitting wasn’t an option. This time when her hand emerged from the box, she was holding the knife.
