by Hannah Jayne
Bex bit her bottom lip. “So he was framing you all along?”
Her father held out his hands, palms up. “I don’t know about that. I just know that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was the type of guy they were looking for. They thought the person who did that must have been nomadic, you know, on the road a lot? Well, I was. The guy would have been big and pretty athletic, and they supposed that he didn’t have a lot of connections keeping him in one place—like he was probably not married. That’s me too. I think I just fit and this Schuster guy jumped at the chance to get himself off the hook and look like a big hero at the same time.”
Her father shook his head, eyes downcast. Even in just the sliver of moonlight streaking in through the window Bex could see how tired he looked, how downtrodden—like a man who knew he never had a chance.
“I couldn’t fight him, Bethy. I just couldn’t.”
Bex scooched closer, for the first time in ten years feeling her father’s warmth beside her, feeling the smooth pull of his arms around her. She breathed him in, his soap and seawater smell, something she didn’t remember but was already starting to love.
“We could end this, Dad. I could help you and then”—she sniffed, tearing up again—“and then we could really be a family.”
He rested his chin on Bex’s head, squeezing her tightly. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Bethy. You and me to be together as a family.” He pulled away, a small, wistful smile on his face.
“Detective Schuster came here, you know. He came to my house. How did you find me, Dad? How did you find me here?”
“So you’ve seen him.”
“Yeah.”
“You got a cell phone on ya?”
Bex nodded, showing it. Her father took it, popped the little compartment open, and took out the SIM card. “He’s probably tracking you with this.”
“No.” Bex shook her head, guilt crashing over her again. She wouldn’t lead Schuster to her father a second time. “I don’t think so.” She pushed the SIM card back in and showed her father as she turned off all location markers.
Her father looked pained, his shoulders slumping. “I can’t stay around here, Bethy. They’re going to find me.”
“No they won’t. I’ll hide you.”
He shook his head. “I gotta move on.”
“Tonight? Right now?”
There was a pause, the air in the cab of the truck heavy and electric.
“Come with me, Bethy.”
She blinked.
“Come with me. Tonight. Right now. We’ll find some town where no one’ll ever know us and become new people and live out our lives. Whaddya think about that, Bethy? I could be, I don’t know, called Howard or Matthew or something.”
“And we could work on your case.”
“Sure.”
It sounded like a good idea. But then Bex thought about Trevor and Laney and Chelsea, and everything else she was leaving behind. “I can’t go with you tonight. I have to say good-bye to someone.”
“Bethy—”
“Friday. It’s Back to School Night. I’ll leave with you on Friday.” She paused, then put her hand on his arm. “Then we can be a family.”
“If only your mother were here to see it.”
Bex felt like she had been punched in the gut. “Mom? Do you think…?”
His eyes were steady on hers, and her voice dropped to a low, terrified whisper.
“Do you think Detective Schuster was the reason Mom left? Do you think he…” Bex couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, to say the words, but a new flare of anger raged up inside her. It was Detective Schuster who had taken everything from her, who had started to dismantle Bex’s family before she was even old enough to read.
She thought of the way he’d removed the lightbulb on her porch and pummeled her, hand over mouth, his calves pinching her rib cage, tightening like a corset, just waiting for her bones to snap. An honest detective wouldn’t have had to trick her. A respectable police officer wouldn’t have wrestled her to the ground in her own home.
She thought about how she’d lain, chin pressed against the carpet, as he dropped the newspaper clipping in front of her. He said he kept it in honor of her. Was it truly a remembrance—or a trophy?
Thirty-Three
Pink fingers of sunlight were starting to scrape against the sky as Bex crept back into her house.
“Were you outside?” Michael was standing on the landing, hair ruffled, eyes bleary with sleep.
“Uh…” Bex stammered. “I woke up early. Couldn’t sleep.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “I thought maybe a walk would be good.”
Michael nodded, yawned, and brushed past her. “You want coffee?”
“I’m actually going to try to see if I can get back to sleep now. Get in another hour before I have to wake up for school.”
She padded up the stairs, the thunk of her heart mirroring the thunk of her footsteps. She peeled off her clothes and slid into bed, for the first time that she could remember, feeling light.
Bex’s phone went off before her alarm clock did.
“’Lo?”
“Bex?”
She sat up ramrod straight, all thoughts of drifting back into sleep-filled oblivion gone. “Detective Schuster.”
“You didn’t call me back last night. Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” She coughed into her hand. “I’m fine.”
“I want you to know that we’re protecting you, Bex. You’re not on your own in this. We’re going to find your father. So there still has been no contact?”
Bex gnawed on her lower lip, her heart speeding up and doing a breathless double thump. She thought about her father’s downcast eyes, the earnest way he pursed his lips when he was telling her—admitting to her—that he wasn’t guilty, that Detective Schuster was framing him. She shifted in her bed. “Uh, no. He hasn’t reached out.”
The detective blew out a breath. “Okay, well. Let’s keep each other posted.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, Bex?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re doing a great thing here. You’re helping to take a dangerous man off the streets.”
Bex hung up the phone without answering. She let a beat pass before pulling her laptop into her lap.
“Bexy?” Denise knocked, pushing open the door a half inch. “You awake?”
“Yeah.”
Denise opened the door, sitting on the edge of Bex’s desk chair. “Everything okay?” Her eyes were searching.
“Totally. Yeah.”
“Michael said you were out really early this morning.”
A stripe of heat burned the tops of Bex’s ears. “Uh, I was just having trouble sleeping so I went for a walk.” She shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “No big deal.”
“Not really, no.” Denise looked away, seemed to think better of it, then fixed her gaze on Bex. “It’s just that—I mean, I want to be cool and all, but I’m still your mom. Your foster mom. I’d like it if you wouldn’t just go out like that. At dawn. Or at night. They still haven’t caught Darla’s killer and…”
Bex nodded, wondering when Darla’s name would stop triggering that awful memory—her broken body on the beach, those milky, unseeing eyes. Then she thought of Detective Schuster suddenly showing up in town. Had he really been looking for her, or was he hunting for Darla?
Bex’s stomach started to churn, pinpricks of heat burning through her nightshirt.
“I’m really sorry, Denise. I won’t slip out without telling you. And about everything else lately…” But even as Bex finished her statement, she knew it was a lie. “I’m sorry.”
Denise stood up. “Hey, no problem. We never really set any ground rules. We’re new at this, you know.”
Bex forced a smile she didn’t really f
eel. “Me too.”
She really did like Michael and Denise. There probably weren’t cooler or nicer foster parents in the entire system but Bex’s father—her dad!—was back! Maybe, that same tiny voice cautioned her. Maybe… She thought of the psychologist, the eyewitness testimony. Serial killers are master manipulators…
“You should probably hop in the shower or you’re going to be late for school.”
As soon as Denise closed the door behind her, Bex flipped open her screen and went directly to the fan forum. GAMECREATOR was already online.
Bex clicked the private chat icon and GAMECREATOR accepted. She started typing, her fingers stopping after just two letters: H-I. Did she say “dad”? Did she call him by his screen name? His first name? Finally, she hit Enter and watched her piddly “Hi” fill the screen.
GAMECREATOR: Thanks for talking with me last night.
BETHANNER: I still can’t quite believe that was actually you.
GAMECREATOR: You don’t think it was your father? The one who ordered two waitresses to bring more powdered sugar that one time at the Black Bear Diner? Oh, man, was your granny mad at me when I brought you home. Said you kept her up nearly all night!
Bex grinned. She remembered that dinner. She had wanted pancakes for dinner and her father had indulged her, stopping first their waitress and then another to bring Beth Anne another white bowl mounded with powdered sugar. That second waitress had lingered after setting the bowl in front of her, had leaned one bony hip against the torn Naugahyde booth and talked to Beth Anne’s daddy in a slow drawl that didn’t sound like it came from North Carolina.
Because she was from Texas. She was Amanda Perkins. Three days later, her body was found mostly undressed in a ditch, what was left of her pink Black Bear Diner uniform streaked with reddish-brown blood and dirt. Bex remembered how the sodden uniform had looked, rolled up in a Ziploc bag and held aloft by a man in rubber gloves.
BETHANNER: I remember that night. I remember the waitress. Her name was Amanda Perkins. She was murdered 3 days later.
There was no response from GAMECREATOR.
BETHANNER: She talked to you. Did Schuster know her?
GAMECREATOR: Probably. Lots of cops ate at that place. It was kind of a hangout.
Bex couldn’t remember that, but her simmering anxiety was almost snuffed out.
BETHANNER: One of the other women—Amy Eickler, I think—we gave her a ride.
GAMECREATOR: I don’t remember that, but OK.
BETHANNER: She was murdered after.
GAMECREATOR: She was hitchhiking.
BETHANNER: Schuster could have picked her up.
GAMECREATOR: Yes.
Bex’s phone blared out Trevor’s favorite Death to Sea Monkeys song and she glanced down at it, seeing his grinning face on the home screen. She smiled to herself but sent the call to voice mail and grabbed her towel.
• • •
Chemistry was bad enough when she could concentrate, but on this day, it was excruciating. Bex had spent her day e-chatting with her father and her night tossing and turning, hearing him whisper to her, seeing him in the dark recesses of her mind. Was he right? Had Detective Schuster framed him? And if so, why? When she had asked her dad, he gave her this simple explanation:
Schuster is a psychopath. If he pinned the murders on me, then he’s also the hero who caught the big bad wolf. I go down and he moves up in his career, and really, he can keep doing what he’s doing. Killing them girls. He didn’t think anyone would ever figure him out. He’s like that. Narcissistic.
Narcissistic.
That’s what Schuster had called her father. That’s what “all psychopaths” were. But did her father know because he was one?
When morning came, Bex was cranky and jumpy at the breakfast table and in class, her mind constantly wandering, trying to figure out a way to help her father, trying to decide what to do about Detective Schuster. Turn him in? Set him up? Her father was stern—as stern as someone could be in writing—telling her to let him worry about Schuster. But Bex knew she had to help. She had helped incriminate her father away; now she could help to free him.
She told her dad that Schuster was in town, that he had been texting and calling her. Her father had called him a dangerous man and urged her to stay away. And in the last twenty-four hours, her phone had been mercifully silent, not a text or a call from the detective. It should have made Bex feel better, but instead she found herself studying everyone now, squinting at the barista who poured her coffee, sweeping her gaze at the team of gardeners huddled in front of the school. Now Bex wondered if Schuster was in every crowd, watching her, holding back, waiting.
Something hit her square in the lap and she glanced down, staring dumbly at the folded piece of notebook paper. Bex looked up and Trevor cocked an eyebrow, a hint of a smile on his lips. He jutted his chin toward the note and Bex looked up surreptitiously, watching Mr. Ponterra’s fat bottom jiggle while he wrote equations on the whiteboard, completely oblivious to the yawning class behind him. She snatched the note and smoothed it open on her lap.
Does this class make you want to die? Check yes/no.
There were boxes to check next to “yes” and “no.” Bex pulled out her pen, marking the “yes” box with a thick blue check and underlining it three times. She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at Trevor before folding the note and handing it back to him.
There was another beat, then another note in her lap.
What should we do about it?
Bex replied.
I don’t know. Stage a walkout??
He tossed the note back.
Or maybe…
She looked up when Trevor stood, waving an arm. “Mr. Ponterra?”
Bex could feel her heart flutter. Was Trevor actually going to stage a walkout?
Mr. Ponterra turned, eyebrows raised as if surprised to see an entire class behind him.
“Yes, Trevor?”
He paused, then opened his mouth at the exact moment the fire alarm started to wail from the loudspeaker.
Mr. Ponterra clapped his hands for the class’ attention. “Fire drill, fire drill, everyone! Now line up and—okay, orderly lines. Okay, okay…”
The class stood and interpreted “orderly lines” as “meandering cluster heading toward the door.” Bex grabbed Trevor’s arm.
“Did you do that?”
“Would you believe it was a lucky break?”
She hiked her backpack over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes. “No.”
“Okay, then let’s just say I have friends in low places.” He winked, his fingers sliding down her arm, then linking with hers. Bex squeezed his hand, enjoying the pinprick-like shivers. They followed their class into the hallway, carried along with the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Bex tried to keep her focus on Trevor, on the way his thumb stroked the back of her hand, on the way their hips bumped as they walked but she still searched the crowd, examining every face for her father as the crowd wound out to the designated meeting spot on the back forty.
“Is there really a fire?” someone asked. “Oh my God, did something really happen?”
Nobody answered immediately, and Bex felt a niggle of fear at the back of her neck. Someone jostled between her and Trevor, and he broke hands with her while a line of students trudged through. She whirled when someone called her name, but Trevor still wasn’t there.
“Trevor?” Her voice was swallowed in the din of students talking and the far-off wail of the fire alarms. “Trev?”
She began to walk, then blinked when two teachers rushed by her. She didn’t recognize them. She didn’t recognize the boy who bumped into her or the two girls behind her. Bex turned, anxiety starting to swell.
“Bex?”
She turned, trying to find the person who said her name. It wasn’t Trevor. It wasn’t Mr. Pont
erra. The voice was rich and deep, but it was familiar.
“Bex!”
Had he said Bex or Beth?
A man was coming toward her, fast, but he turned before she got a good look at him. But the profile, his hair, his broad shoulders…
Dad?
Another alarm blared. Someone stood up with a bullhorn. Someone was cheering—or was it screaming?
She stumbled over her feet, thought she heard someone mumble, “sorry” or “’scuse me.”
Bex pressed her palm over her chest, felt her heart slamming against her ribs. She was breathing hard, her cheeks and eyes burning. She started to walk blindly toward the school, weaving through the crowd that seemed to swell and push against her.
“Hey, hey, you can’t go in yet. That way.” Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and steered her toward the left. Someone turned, elbowing her in the chin. She stumbled backward and tripped. Bex hit the ground, her tailbone smacking against the packed dirt. She saw a snatch of bright-blue sky before the crowd closed in around her, legs and backpacks and arms closing in on her. She was crying, trying to push herself up, but each time she did someone pushed past her and she felt back down again.
“Trevor!” She stared to sob. “Stop, please, I’m down here! Don’t!”
“Bex?”
Trevor pushed between the crowd, his face appearing at her eye level. He reached out and slid his arms around Bex’s waist. “Move, assholes! Someone is down here!”
A few kids stepped away, looking stunned. Most looked annoyed but still moved.
“Are you okay?”
Bex looked around, blinking in the too-bright sunlight. “I-I fell.” She tried to shake Trevor off, feeling instantly embarrassed. “I just tripped and fell, that’s all.”
Trevor kept a tight hold on her, leveling her chin with a finger. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not big on crowds either.”
Someone came on the bullhorn again, and this time, Bex could hear the order. The fire alarm had been cleared; students were told to return to the building and go to their next class. It was now her lunch period. She raked a hand through her short hair.
“God, you must think I’m the biggest idiot.”
