"You killed your father?" Darlene asked.
Jill nodded.
"When did this happen?"
"Seven years ago."
"How did you kill him?"
Jill didn’t hesitate. “Telekinesis.”
“I beg your pardon?” The reaction came out a bit sharper than she’d intended.
“Telekinesis,” Jill repeated. “It’s the ability to move objects with your mind.”
“I know what telekinesis is. I just… Okay.” She paused, took a deep breath. “You have telekinesis?”
“I did. Not anymore.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I just… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? It just went away?” She snapped her fingers. “Poof? Just like that?” She instantly recognized the condescension in her tone and made a mental note to dial it back.
“I only used it that one time,” Jill said. “Now that I think about it, it may have been directly related to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“My father and I have always had this...connection.”
“What kind of connection?”
“A psychic connection,” Jill said. “It’s my gift. That’s what my mother calls it. I can sometimes sense what he’s thinking and feeling. And he can sometimes sense what I’m thinking and feeling.” She furrowed her brow. “I think that psychic connection might extend to telekinesis. Maybe our connection was especially strong that day, with all that was happening.”
“What was happening?” Darlene asked.
“I heard my mom and dad yelling in the basement,” Jill said. “I went downstairs and saw my dad hitting my mom. First I was scared. Then I was mad. I wasn’t big enough or strong enough to hit him, but I wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine. I wanted him to know what it was like to get hit...the way he was hitting my mom. So...I imagined it; I imagined what it was like to hit him...with big fists...over and over and over again. Then I heard the smacking sounds. My imagination was working; I was hitting him with my mind. Then he was bleeding. Then his face started caving in. Then he was dead.”
Darlene realized her mouth was hanging open. She closed it, took a deep breath, and said, “Then what?”
"We buried the body." She paused. “But now he’s back.”
Darlene hesitated. “If he’s dead, how can he be back?”
“I used my gift to bring him back. I raised him from the dead.”
Silence.
Darlene considered pushing the issue but thought better of it. Telekinesis? No, the girl was clearly delusional, and the interview was going in the wrong direction. If she was going to sift through the girl’s delusions to get closer to the truth, she was going to have to bring the conversation back to the night of the murders. Whatever may or may not have happened to Jill’s father would have to wait.
"Let's talk about your friends," Darlene said.
"My friends?"
"Yes, the friends you went camping with."
Jill looked away. "Oh, you mean the kids who died." A pause. "A few weeks before we went camping, Richard came up to me in the hallways. We started talking. It turned out we were both into horror movies."
"Did you and Richard spend a lot of time together in the few weeks before you went camping?"
"Yeah...a lot. He invited me over to his house. Nothing happened. We didn't kiss or anything."
"What did you do at Richard's house?"
"Same thing we did at school," Jill said. "Talked."
"About…?"
"Horror."
"Horror movies?"
"Movies, books, whatever. He had a lot of stuff in his room. Movies, books, posters, memorabilia."
Darlene was well aware of the items in Richard Caulfield's room, of course. But she couldn't help noticing that Jill didn't mention the role-playing props.
"Anything else?" Darlene asked.
"Did we talk about anything else?"
"Was there anything else in his room...that you found interesting?"
Jill frowned, shook her head. "No."
Darlene took a moment before deciding that beating around the bush wasn't going to get her anywhere. "Did Richard ask you to play a game?"
Jill hesitated just long enough to lead Darlene to believe that she may have struck a nerve. "No." But she said it with enough conviction for Darlene to question if she had struck that nerve, after all.
"No? You hesitated, Jill."
"I hesitated because I didn't know how to answer the question."
Darlene shrugged. "The truth would be nice."
"The truth is that I wasn't asked to play a game, but a game was played that night. The Final Girl game. Is that what you're talking about?"
"Yes."
"Yes, the other kids, the ones who pretended to be my friends, they played the game that night. But they didn't tell me about it. They were playing a trick on me, trying to scare me. And it worked. But then The Man with the Pushed-in Face showed up and killed them all. But he spared me."
"How do you know that? Yesterday, you told me that you blacked out, that you didn't witness any of the murders."
"Like I told you before, my father and I have a psychic connection. I know what he's thinking."
"Do you know what he's thinking now?"
"No, he's not close enough. I only know what he's thinking when he's nearby."
The discussion was heading in the wrong direction again. "The kids were playing a trick on you, you said."
"Yes."
"These kids, were they bullying you?"
"Yes."
"Even Richard?"
"Yes." A pause. "But they won't be bullying me anymore, will they?"
Darlene was stunned by the girl's words, and for the briefest of moments, she considered the possibility that the girl wasn't delusional and was simply lying through her teeth.
"No, I suppose they won't," Darlene said.
The girl eyed her with something that Darlene couldn't quite read. Was it hostility? "Do you think I'm lying, Detective Moore?"
"Now, why would I think that?"
The girl looked away.
There was a sudden, palpable silence in the room that Darlene was desperate to break. "I'm a detective, Ms. Turner. I'm pretty good at reading people."
"That makes two of us," Jill mumbled.
Darlene leaned forward, straining to hear. "I'm sorry?"
"I'm pretty good at reading people, too."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. You called me 'Ms. Turner' just now. You've never called me that before. You've been calling me 'Jill.' But that was when you were being nice to me. Now, you're mad at me because you think I'm lying, and you called me 'Ms. Turner.' When my mother gets mad at me, she calls me by my full name, but that would be weird for you because you're not my mother, so you called me 'Ms. Turner.'"
The girl's words were getting under her skin. She looked away.
"You're a mother," Jill said. "Aren't you, Detective?"
Darlene reflexively stood, like she was getting ready to run from the room. Emotions were twirling in her―fear, rage, despair―but she couldn't identify the dominant feeling, the one that would take control. But it didn't matter. At some point in the next few moments, she was going to fall apart right in front of this girl.
"Or you were," Jill added. The words were so cold. Darlene could hardly believe they came from this seventeen-year-old's mouth. "You lost your daughter."
Darlene thought her heart might stop. She gasped, bit her lower lip, and found the dominant emotion: rage. But she would not give this girl her rage. She would not give Jill Turner the satisfaction.
She lifted her head, her eyes narrow and cold. "Thank you for your time...Ms. Turner." She glared at Jill a moment longer before turning on her heels and stalking from the room.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Darlene was so blinded by her rage that she nearly slammed into Amanda pacing just outside Jill's hospital room door. Amanda hel
d out her hands, lightly touching Darlene's arms, as if to keep her from falling.
"Are you okay?" Amanda asked.
“Yep.”
"What happened?"
Darlene took a deep breath. "Your daughter...she's something."
Amanda gestured to a row of chairs against the opposite wall. "Why don't we have a seat?"
Darlene realized she was shaking as she settled into a chair.
Amanda sat next to her. "What did she say?"
Darlene took another deep breath. "I don't even know where to begin. Your daughter said some things that were...pretty disturbing."
"Well, she's been through a lot."
Darlene turned in her chair to face her. "Where is your husband, Mrs. Turner?"
"Didn't we already have this discussion? My husband ran out on us seven years ago."
"Yes, we did that have that discussion," Darlene said. "But I'm not asking you whether or not your husband ran out on you. I'm asking you where he is. I want to know how we can contact him."
Amanda shrugged. "I haven't the faintest clue. I haven't seen or heard from the bastard in seven years."
Darlene wasn't convinced. “She claims she killed your husband.”
Amanda gasped. “Well...that’s ridiculous.”
“She says she’s telekinetic. That she used her gift to push his face in. She calls him ‘The Man with the Pushed-in Face.’”
"My daughter is not well, Detective. She may not be well for a very long time."
Darlene hesitated. She wasn't sure how far she wanted to push the woman. "Your husband is alive and well, Mrs. Turner?"
"As far as I know."
"The Man with the Pushed-in Face. Kind of an odd detail, don't you think?"
"As we've already established, Detective, my daughter is traumatized. And she's watched a lot of horror movies. I wasn't happy about it, and this is precisely one of the reasons I wasn't happy about it. Those movies put ideas into people's heads, especially kids."
"You and Jill, you're religious, aren't you?"
Amanda furrowed her brow. "I don't know if religious is the word. We're God-fearing people."
"Based on what I heard in there, that's the understatement of the century."
"Well, it would help if you told me what she said."
"She believes that the man who attacked her and killed those kids is her guardian angel."
Amanda pulled back. "What?!"
Darlene studied the woman for a moment, trying to assess if her reaction was genuine. "That's what she said. The man who killed her friends is her guardian angel. He killed those kids to protect her, to keep her pure...like you."
Amanda hesitated before answering. "I told you. My daughter's been through a lot, and that's putting it mildly."
Darlene had told Jill that she was pretty good at reading people, and she'd meant it. There was something off about this woman.
"What do you think she meant when she said that the man who attacked her was trying to keep her pure like you?" Darlene asked.
Amanda narrowed her eyes. "Detective Moore," she began softly but firmly, "I have absolutely no idea what she meant. I'm not even going to begin to try to understand what she meant. She was just attacked yesterday. Her friends were just killed yesterday. She's in a state of shock, and she has every right to be."
Darlene stood. She'd gotten all she was going to get from this woman. "I'll let you know if there are any developments," she said coolly. "Have a good day, Mrs. Turner."
Once behind the wheel of her car, she felt safe enough to cry, but she didn't want to. It would have been such a relief, but she wouldn't. She'd done more than her fair share of crying over the years, but she'd always cried for the right reasons. Crying over what had transpired in that hospital room would have felt wrong for some reason. She would be crying, not for Brittany, but for the psychological wound she'd allowed Jill Turner to dig into.
As she squeezed the steering wheel in a vain attempt to keep her hands from shaking, she was forced to acknowledge that this case was beginning to scare the hell out of her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
On the surface, the case seemed pretty cut and dry, as far as Harry was concerned. They had a prime suspect in Richard Caulfield, and they had a motive. It would probably be just a matter of time before they closed the case.
Yes, on the surface, the case seemed cut and dry. But cut and dry cases didn't have loose threads. Jill Turner's involvement was a loose thread, one Harry was hoping to tie up by talking to Katie Beckham and Diane Wright.
He stepped onto the doorstep of the Beckham residence and rang the doorbell. A stocky, middle-aged man with a receding hairline answered the door.
"Mr. Beckham?"
"Yes?"
"I'm Detective Mitchell with the Suffolk County Police Department."
Mr. Beckham nodded as if he understood the detective's presence, as if he expected it to happen sooner or later. "Would you like to come in?"
"Thank you." Harry stepped into the foyer. "Do you know why I'm here, Mr. Beckham?"
Mr. Beckham nodded, his expression grave. "You want to talk to Katie, I'm assuming."
"Is she home?"
Mr. Beckham walked to the adjacent hallway. "Katie, honey," he said softly. Apparently, Katie was standing just around the corner, like she was waiting for this moment. "There's someone here to see you."
Katie stepped tentatively into the foyer. She smiled slightly. "Hello."
"Hi, Ms. Beckham," Harry said.
"Katie," she corrected him.
"Katie, I'd like to ask you a few questions." He looked at Mr. Beckham. "Alone, if that's okay."
Mr. Beckham glanced at his daughter. "I know what this is about, but is she―"
"Your daughter's not in any trouble," Harry assured him. "I just want to ask her a few questions, that's all."
Mr. Beckham appeared hesitant. "She's been through a lot. First, she lost her mother. Now, some of her closest friends."
"It's okay, Dad." Katie gave her father a reassuring smile. "It'll be okay."
Mr. Beckham hesitated before telling his daughter, "I'll be in the den if you need me." He gave Harry a parting nod and walked away.
Katie gestured toward the living room. "We can talk in here if you want."
She walked to the living room couch and sat. Harry followed and took a seat next to her.
He said, "How are you holding up?"
Katie didn't look at him when she said, "I'm okay, I guess." Like her eyes, her voice was distant, like she wasn't quite there in the room with him, or like she didn't want to be there in the room with him. Like she wanted to run away. Harry wouldn't blame her for not wanting to talk to a detective a day after losing four of her closest friends, but his instincts told him it was something more than that; it was something in her eyes, the fact that she couldn't bring herself to look at him.
"I know this is an extremely tough time for you, and I know you're going through a lot." The words weren't adequate, he knew. "To be honest, I have no idea what you're going through. I can't even begin to imagine."
She simply nodded, her eyes downcast.
"So I have a few questions for you," he continued. "I want you to take as much time as you think you need to answer them. Okay?"
"Okay," she answered meekly.
"Okay, good." Harry opened his notepad and flipped a few pages in. "So you were supposed to go camping on Saturday night; is that right?"
She hesitated. "Yeah, we were supposed to go, but we backed out at the last second."
"May I ask why?"
She shrugged. "We didn't want to go with Jill Turner."
"'We,' meaning you and Diane Wright?"
"Yeah."
Harry scribbled the information in his pad. "Why didn't you want to go with Jill?"
Diane rolled her eyes. "She's weird."
"Weird in what way?"
"I don't know. Weird. Creepy. She wanted to hang around with us. At first, nobody wanted her hang
ing around, so she started like...stalking us."
Harry stopped mid-scribble. "Stalking you?"
"Yeah, she was following us around at school."
Harry thought about this for a moment and wrote the information in his pad. "You say at first, nobody wanted her hanging around. I'm assuming that changed."
Katie nodded. "She was just always there, like a hungry stray dog that keeps coming around. I think Jill was just hungry for attention. She didn't have any friends. I think the others kinda felt sorry for her, so they let her hang around."
"You say the others let her hang around. I'm assuming you didn't want her hanging around."
"No, like I said before, she was creepy. That's why we backed out of the camping trip."
"You and Diane backed out of the camping trip because...what? You were afraid of her?"
Katie sighed. "Maybe. Not really. I don't know." She was reaching for an answer, Harry knew. And when people reached for answers, they weren't reaching for the truth. "We just didn't want to be around her, that's all, not for an entire weekend." She creased her brow and looked at Harry. "Why are you asking me about Jill Turner?"
"I'm a detective," he said. "It's my job to ask questions."
"Do you think she killed them?"
Harry was taken aback by the question. "Why do you ask that?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. She's the only one who survived. Seems kinda convenient." She held his gaze for a moment before looking away.
Harry didn't know what to make of the implication. Sure, it was convenient. He'd said as much to Darlene. But as Darlene had said, a one hundred and ten-pound girl slaughtering four of her peers with a kitchen knife before turning the knife on herself? It stretched the bounds of credibility, to say the least.
"How well did you know Richard Caulfield?" he asked.
"Pretty well. He wasn't my best friend, but I liked him."
"Were you familiar with his interest in horror movies?"
"Kinda," she said. "Yeah, he was into horror movies."
"He was into horror movies?" He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and opened his photos app. "Based on what we found in his room, I'd say that's a bit of an understatement." He turned the phone's screen toward Katie. He gave her a second or two with each image before swiping to the next―the posters, the DVDs and Blu-rays, the artwork, the fake blood, and crimson-stained clothes.
The Final Girl Page 11
