by Eden Maguire
‘Wait until you see her,’ he warned. ‘But be ready for it. And don’t say I didn’t prepare you.’
Phoenix stayed in the car with me until I arrived at the Madisons’ place, then we exchanged our last, hurried kisses and he vanished.
‘Will you be here when I come out?’ I wanted to ask, but his light had fizzled and faded, and I knew I wouldn’t get an answer. I walked up to the front door, trying to clear my head.
‘Come in, Darina.’ Jon opened the door before I knocked. ‘I heard your car. For a second back there I thought you had someone with you.’
‘No, I’m alone.’ A breath of air blew from behind – a cold, creepy reminder for Phoenix and me to take more care in future.
Summer’s dad opened the door wide. ‘I told Heather you were coming. She’s in her studio, looking at the pictures I shot this morning.’
Shaking off Hunter’s warning signal, I glanced nervously across the hall. ‘You want me to go ahead?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll make coffee,’ he said as he disappeared into the kitchen.
So I crossed the hall and tapped on the studio door, feeling the silence in the space where there used to be music and laughter. There was no answer from inside the room but I pushed open the door anyway and was greeted by the same jumble of stacked canvases and unused paints and brushes that I’d noticed last time I was here.
Heather didn’t turn or look up. She seemed engrossed in the prints laid out on a table in front of her, running her fingers lightly over their glossy surface. I noticed again how like her daughter she was, especially from behind, with the lines on her face and other marks of grief hidden. Her fair hair hung loose past her shoulders and she wore the kind of flowered top and floaty skirt that Summer liked. When she spoke, it was with the same gentle voice. ‘Come look at these pictures of Hartmann,’ she invited. ‘See the spring flowers.’
I went and stood beside her, struggling to find something to say to fill the long silence.
‘Summer loved the spring,’ Heather told me. ‘It was her favourite time of year. Look at the lake, how beautiful it is.’
‘I was there this morning. It’s pretty.’
‘It’s over a year now,’ she sighed, still stroking the pictures with her fingertips. ‘Since Arizona drowned, I mean.’
I shook my head in confusion and for the first time Heather glanced up.
‘You thought I meant my daughter?’
‘No. I mean, I knew you couldn’t be talking about Summer …’ I trailed off.
‘I think about Arizona a lot,’ Heather confessed. ‘And Jonas and Phoenix – all of them. We families, we’re all so different, but we have the one terrible thing in common. And their friends too – you share what we feel.’ She paused then and gazed out of the large window overlooking the mountains. Then, without saying anything, she led me from the studio to Summer’s room.
I steeled myself not to give way to sadness, to try and be some kind of support to this woman who had lost her child.
‘You know how it feels?’ she asked suddenly, standing by her daughter’s bed looking at more photographs – this time of Summer playing her guitar. There were close-ups of a cloud of golden hair, a glimpse of pale skin, a curve of lips. And there were distant shots of Summer playing a concert, surrounded by bright lights, then behind the scenes: of her joking with me on two of the shots; one of her talking sound levels with Ezra and Parker, who were dressed in their trademark black T-shirts; another of her laughing with Jordan and Logan. It was how we used to be – happy.
‘It feels like we’re all being smothered,’ Heather told me. ‘All of us, under a blanket of sorrow and there’s no way out.’
‘Do you talk to anyone?’ I asked quietly, thinking of Kim in her sun-filled office, amazed that I was standing here recommending a shrink to Heather Madison. ‘It might help.’
‘Nothing helps,’ came the heavy, dull answer. ‘Except being with people who know what I’m going through, but without having to speak about it. Then it eases for a while.’
I heard Jon’s footsteps in the hall, heading for the studio. He heard our voices and changed direction, bringing cups of coffee on a tray.
‘Jon thinks I should start to paint,’ Heather told me as he put the tray on Summer’s bedside table. ‘But I don’t have the motivation.’
‘He’s right.’ Painting beautiful landscapes was better than being smothered, better than going down under the weight of the past. ‘Don’t you ever think it’s what Summer would want?’
Heather flinched at my words. ‘That’s what people say,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. ‘They say you should let go, move on – all those shallow phrases, but they don’t know.’
Standing by the window, Jon shook his head. ‘Honey, Darina’s trying to help.’
‘Move on – what does that mean?’ she asked me.
‘I didn’t say that exactly. I know it’s not easy.’
‘Does it mean I should let go? They expect me to turn my back on all those beautiful memories, to forget the most wonderful part of my life, my reason for living?’
‘It’s OK,’ Jon soothed, going to her and putting his arms around her.
She buried her face in his shoulder and her words came out muffled and faint. ‘I’m not moving anywhere. I can’t take a single step out of this hell until they find my daughter’s killer,’ she sobbed.
I took on board Heather’s message loud and clear and translated it into: Darina, girl, get it together, solve this thing!
If I’d listened earlier to Phoenix’s doubts about continuing, I came away from the Madisons’ house knowing that I would push as hard as I could to knit together the strands of evidence to form the right pattern – no holes, loose ends or dropped stitches. As I drove home, I reminded myself that I only had twelve days left.
Do it! I told myself again.
The hard fact was, I reminded myself, that Summer’s case was different to Jonas and Arizona. Back then I’d been pretty certain from the start that the answers were local. Example: I learned early on that Jonas had a love rival in Matt Fortune, a kid who lived in Ellerton and went to the same school. The question was how to link him with Jonas’s accident. And again, Arizona worked hard to hide it, but once I learned some vital facts about her relationship with Kyle Keppler – that he dated Arizona but had a fiancée over in Forest Lake – a clear theory about why she drowned in Hartmann came through.
Not this time. However many times I ran through events leading up to Summer’s death, which I did as I lay in bed that night, the story spread out across the map, as far away and as random as Venice, Florida and Pennington, New Jersey.
I got up next morning feeling wrecked, stood under the shower, got dressed and went downstairs in a daze.
‘You just missed Hannah,’ Laura informed me, ‘I told her you were in the shower.’
‘Jeez!’ Glancing through the window, I saw Hannah getting back into her car. I ran outside and caught her before she pulled away from the kerb.
‘Hey, Darina.’ Hannah was another person who looked like she hadn’t slept. Her fair hair was mussed and flyaway; there were dark circles under her eyes. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d be in school today,’ she said.
‘I’ll be there around midday for the rehearsal. I have to see someone first.’
‘Cool. I guess it can wait.’ She pushed the lever into Drive.
‘Really? Five minutes back you thought whatever it is was important enough to detour down my street and knock on my door.’
‘Yeah, but maybe I’m being crazy.’
For once, Hannah didn’t seem sure of herself, so I slid into the car beside her. ‘Go ahead – share,’ I insisted.
‘So tell me if I’m being weird, OK.’
‘Speak, Hannah!’
‘You remember that guy on Summer’s site, the one who got mad because he couldn’t buy a ticket?’
‘JakB.’ Who could forget his neon skull icon and his sick messages?
‘He showed up on my doorstep.’
My jaw fell open. ‘When? How?’
‘Last night. Don’t ask me how he figured out where I lived, but there he was, hammering on my door telling me he wouldn’t leave until I gave him entry to the concert.’
‘What part of “no” does this guy not understand?’ I wanted to know. ‘So what was he like, this JakB?’
‘Creepy. Pale, like he never goes out in the daylight. He has long, greasy hair.’
‘Don’t tell me – he’s skinny and he wears a black T-shirt with a goth motif.’
‘An exploding skull with a bullet hole,’ Hannah shuddered. ‘And if he reached out and touched you, his hands would be clammy. You know the type.’
‘You told him no?’ I checked. ‘The tickets are sold out, period.’
‘I told him. But he said he already knew it and he was here for a backstage pass, a job on security – anything that would get him into the concert.’
‘You told him no,’ I said again through gritted teeth. The guy was harder to get rid of than a rash.
‘That’s when the abuse began. I was home alone and he started practically trying to break down the door.’
‘Jeez, Hannah! Did you call the cops?’
‘He grabbed my phone before I could do it. He wouldn’t stop yelling how he was Summer’s biggest fan and anyway she wants him at her concert.’
‘Oh no,’ I groaned. I wanted to block my ears and not hear the rest.
‘She, Summer wants him there!’ Hannah repeated. ‘JakB talks to her, Darina. He believes he has communication with her from beyond the grave.’
I calmed Hannah down and told her no way was she overreacting. JakB was one scary, crazy kid and she should drive straight to school and inform Miss Jones about what had happened. ‘Show her the comments on the website, say that he tried to force entry into your house – tell her to hand the whole thing over to the principal and then you stay out of it, you hear?’
‘Or we could ignore it,’ she suggested, still doubtful.
‘Hand it over,’ I insisted. ‘By the way, you didn’t give Crazy Guy his backstage pass, did you?’
She stared at me with some of her old fiery energy. ‘You think I’m nuts?’ she said as she drove away.
I called after her that I would see her at rehearsal and check that she’d done what I’d said.
But right now I had an appointment with the deputy sheriff.
‘Hello, Darina. You look like you didn’t get much sleep,’ he told me when I walked into his office.
‘People always tell me that,’ I grunted. ‘It’s great for my self-esteem.’
‘Sit. Do you drink coffee? Or Coca-Cola?’
‘Neither, thanks.’ It was my first time in a sheriff’s office and I sat awkwardly across the desk from Henry Jardine, taking in the framed diplomas on the wall and the family photograph – of him, wife and two kids – propped against his computer.
‘So how did you know Dean Dawson?’ he asked, sifting through some paperwork on his desk.
‘Not me exactly. It was more my stepdad actually.’
‘Yeah – your stepdad, Jim Wright. I know him.’
Small town! And it seemed Jardine’s total recall had kicked back in. Or maybe he’d checked me out before I arrived, read the file on me as one of the chief witnesses to the Summer shooting and put all the pieces into place.
‘Dean was the kind you can’t afford to lose – good cop, all-round good guy. He’d still be working on the Madison case if he was around.’
Thanks for the smooth lead in, I thought. ‘I visited with Summer’s mom and dad yesterday,’ I told him. ‘It’s so sad.’
‘I plan to pay them a visit myself,’ Jardine said, slipping the papers into a transparent plastic file. The deputy sheriff obviously liked a tidy desk.
‘To talk about the possible Fichtner link?’ I asked eagerly.
‘You don’t let that one go, do you?’ he smiled.
I sat frowning on the edge of my seat, thinking Don’t patronize me!
Jardine recognized the resentment in my expression and reined in the smile. ‘Something else came up, something you might like to think about, linked in a roundabout way to your buddy Zak Rohr.’
Zak? How did we get there?
‘Zak has an older brother, right?’
‘Brandon.’
‘Brandon keeps bad company, just like Zak. And while I agree with you that Zak was more or less there for the ride when Miller and Stafford burned down the janitor’s store, I can’t say the same for his big brother.’
‘So you won’t charge Zak?’ I asked. Any scrap of good news was worth clinging on to.
‘Not this time,’ Jardine agreed. ‘But focus on his big brother for a second. Brandon is in with a bad crowd – we both know that for sure. He has a particular buddy named Oscar Thorne, currently in detention at a Denver correctional facility for a drugs deal gone wrong. Thorne wasn’t the main mover in the operation, but he was in deep enough to get a two-year sentence.’ Jardine noticed I was having trouble following his thread. ‘Listen. These drugs people crawl over this town like any other. They deal on street corners, in the leisure centres, down the shopping mall, sometimes in broad daylight. And there are times when things turn nasty then the guns and knives come out.’
I was starting to nod, beginning to make connections.
‘Now we get to April thirtieth last year,’ Jardine went on. ‘We put a cordon around the mall within ten minutes of the shooting, and guess who was in Starbucks drinking coffee at the same time as you?’
‘Oscar Thorne?’ I guessed.
‘Right. We searched him for drugs but for once he was clean. However, we did learn something interesting. Under questioning, Thorne admitted he was a marked man. He’d screwed up a big deal the previous week and now the main guys, the importers, were gunning for him.’
‘But,’ I argued before Jardine could get to the end of his account, ‘the guy who shot Summer wasn’t a drug dealer, he was a psycho, shooting at random …’
‘Listen,’ he said again. ‘Try this – the drugs boss sends a hit man after Thorne. Hit man tracks Thorne down to the mall, spots his target drinking coffee, takes aim from twenty metres, gets ready to pull the trigger.’
‘And suddenly Summer walks into his line of fire,’ I gasped.
‘Civilian casualty,’ Jardine said. ‘Collateral damage in the international drugs war.’
I needed to see Brandon to ask him about Oscar Thorne.
Jardine had been clever, I realized. He’d let me in on the insider information because he wanted to make use of my link with Brandon. ‘I want you to ask him about Thorne,’ he’d told me. ‘And come back to me with any new facts – got it?’
What could I do? I had to agree.
But the first thing I did after leaving Jardine’s office was to drive to school. It was ten minutes before noon and I headed for the theatre round the back of the main block.
Something was happening in the entrance – a small group had gathered, a couple of guys were fighting. As I got nearer I saw it was Logan and someone else. The second kid wore a black T-shirt. He had his back to me and I couldn’t make him out.
‘What happened?’ I asked Christian Oldman, who was standing next to Parker Simons.
In the middle of the action, Logan socked his opponent on the jaw. The other kid landed face up, flat on the ground. I looked down at his short, straw-coloured hair and his shades lying beside him on the ground. It was Ezra Powell.
‘Logan went crazy,’ Parker cut in. ‘Ezra was supposed to be discussing sound levels for his solo with him. He must have said something bad. Logan hit out.’
‘That’s so not like Logan,’ I muttered. We were talking about Mr Sensible, remember.
Ezra was down and Logan was on top of him, raising his fist to hit again. Seeing that Logan was about to land himself in big trouble, Christian stepped in, grabbing Logan’s raised arm and wrenching hard so that Logan topp
led backwards. This gave Ezra time to get on to his knees and let Parker step in to help him to his feet. On the way up, Ezra grabbed his shades and put them back on to cover the strawberry birthmark under his left eye. I knew he was self-conscious about the mark and wasn’t surprised that he seemed more focused on concealing this than the fact that he’d been socked on the jaw by Logan.
‘Fight’s over!’ Christian told Logan, keeping hold of his right arm. Christian is a county-level junior boxing champion, by the way.
By this time Jordan came running. ‘Logan, what in God’s name did he say to you?’ she demanded, getting in between Christian and Logan. She saw me and drew me in. ‘Logan totally lost it back there.’
‘Let go of me,’ Logan told Christian, who eased his grip but kept a warning hold.
‘What did Ezra say?’ Jordan wanted to know. Like me, she’d never seen Logan lose his cool before.
‘Nothing. Something about Darina. He’s a loser. Nothing!’
‘Something about me?’ I demanded.
‘That’s all you’re going to get,’ Christian advised, finally deciding that it was safe to let Logan loose because by this time Parker had led Ezra away to a safe distance. ‘Ezra wound Logan up is all.’
‘Fight over,’ Lucas Hart confirmed. ‘Time to get back to rehearsal.’
As people drifted into the auditorium, Jordan and I grabbed a moment with Logan, who was still breathing hard. ‘So?’ Jordan demanded.
‘Come on, Logan, what did Ezra say about me?’ We sandwiched him and held him back in the doorway.
‘Ezra’s a dumb idiot,’ he muttered.
‘Er, excuse me!’ Jordan shook her head. ‘Ezra Powell may be a geek and a wimp, but no way is he dumb.’
‘He has brains coming out of his ears,’ I agreed.
‘So he came across with the know-it-all routine. “Do the solo this way, not your way. Your way sucks!”’
‘I thought it was me he insulted?’ I spread my hands, palms upwards.
‘So why hit him?’ Jordan still wanted to know.
