Waking Hours by Lis Wiehl Page A

collect information so we can sort it out later.”
    Claire took her eyes from the monitor in Room 2 and turned toward Tommy. “Do you know this man Casey?” she asked.
    “Never saw him before now.”
    Liam told the detective that he’d been to a party the night before. He knew his mom wouldn’t wake up when he got home because she’d taken one of her sleeping pills and had two glasses of sherry, which you weren’t supposed to mix.
    “She always has trouble sleeping when my dad’s out of town,” he said.
    “I did not have two glasses of sherry,” Claire said.
    “You don’t have to convince me,” Tommy said.
    Liam told the detective it was just a party. Yes, there was alcohol at the party, and marijuana too, but he didn’t smoke any pot because he was an athlete, and he’d heard high schools were talking about implementing drug testing for sports and he didn’t want to be kicked off the team.
    “It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to be caught,” Liam said. “I don’t like pot. It makes me hyper.”
    “You’ve tried it?” Casey asked.
    “Sure,” Liam said. “Once. But I hated it. Really. You can ask anybody.”
    “Can I ask the other kids who were at the party?” Casey said. “Who else was there?”
    Liam hesitated.
    Tommy saw Claire lean forward in her chair, silently urging her son to tell the truth.
    “I understand that you want to protect your friends,” the detective said. “They probably want to protect you too, but if we don’t know who they are, we don’t know who to talk to. You know how this works, don’t you? If only one guy says he didn’t do it, we don’t take him at his word, but if six guys, independent of each other, tell me Liam Dorsett had nothing to do with it, then we pay attention. But if we don’t have those other names, all we have to go on is what you tell us.” He paused. “I’m sure they’d like to get all of this cleared away, just like you do. You want to go home again, don’t you?”
    “They can’t hold him overnight, can they?” Claire asked.
    “They can hold him for twenty-four hours as a material witness,” Tommy said. “After that, they have to either charge him or let him go. Or take him into protective custody.”
    Claire looked doubtful.
    “I took a criminal procedures class,” he explained, hoping to reassure her.
    “Dani told me you went to high school together,” she said.
    “Middle school too. And part of grade school. But we ran in different circles. Correction—I ran in circles and she ran in a straight line.”
    Liam looked like he was going to cry again. It appeared to be dawning on the boy, Tommy guessed, that he was in bigger trouble than he’d thought.
    “You know, Liam,” Dani interjected, “we’re going to learn the names eventually, so it would be a lot better if you told them to us now.”
    “She told me she used to babysit Liam,” Tommy said to Claire.
    “She was our favorite,” Claire said. “I think she was the only babysitter we ever had who did the dishes once Liam was asleep. Never had any boyfriends over either. Never had any boyfriends, period, as far as we could tell.”
    Tommy had always assumed Dani must be dating somebody older and smarter who didn’t go to East Salem High.
    Liam hesitated, then rattled off a list of names: “Logan Gansevoort, Terence Walker, Parker Bowen, Amos Kasden, Julie Leonard, Rayne Kepplinger, Khetzel Ross, Blair Weeks.”
    Tommy recognized three of the last names from reading the New York Times financial pages. And Khetzel was the daughter of Vivian Ross, actress of stage and screen. Tommy had met Vivian several times, though he doubted she’d remember.
    Liam told the detective the party had been at Logan Gansevoort’s house because his parents were out of town.
    “And you guys were just getting drunk or high?” Casey said. “Nothing more than that?”
    “That’s all,” Liam said.
    “What was it? Beer? Wine? Hard liquor?”
    “Liquor,” Liam answered, running