Drowning With Others

by Linda Keir

  “I was working a different angle, but she had news I wasn’t expecting. This is an important lesson in working your sources: Get to know everybody, because sometimes the least important person will have the most important information. Often, the most important person won’t want to talk to you.”

  Now he was losing them.

  “Get to the point already,” said Noah under his breath.

  Mr. Kelly cleared his throat and stood up, looking deadly serious. “Curtis Royal, our Roy, an employee of Glenlake Academy, has been charged with the murder of Dallas Walker. They’ll be making a formal announcement this afternoon.”

  Cassidy felt her scalp prickle. It was only a confirmation of what they’d been expecting, but somehow it felt weird now that it was real.

  There were a few whoops and cheers as Noah said he would have bet money on it, before Mr. Kelly calmed them down again.

  “Apparently, my source is quite friendly with one of the junior detectives, who shared a lot of information without thinking where it would end up. Roy was initially detained on what you might call a fishing expedition. Stopped for a traffic violation—the arresting officer claimed to smell marijuana and searched the vehicle, finding a misdemeanor amount. An interrogation uncovered nothing significant, but the detectives had an ace up their sleeve: a jailhouse snitch. Apparently, someone who’d been arrested for armed robbery downstate tried to plea-bargain by claiming knowledge of a long-ago murder. He’d heard that the car had been found and claimed to be present at a party where Roy had threatened to kill Dallas Walker. The police likely have other evidence we don’t know about.”

  Cassidy raised her hand. “Does this mean we’re done?”

  “We have two choices,” he said, pacing at the front of the room. “One, we can simply report the trial. That’s what most news organizations do. It’s the job of law enforcement, after all, to put forth the suspect, and the job of the judicial system to try him. In most cases, the Fourth Estate simply reports on the proceedings and the outcome. Investigative journalists get involved when there’s a miscarriage of justice. But the trial likely won’t get underway until you’ve already graduated Glenlake.”

  “So what’s the second option?” asked Tate.

  “We finish our work,” said Mr. Kelly. “We’ve already cleared several suspects to our satisfaction. We continue to examine the available evidence until we can end the year convinced in our minds that the Lake County Sheriff’s Office got the right guy for the crime.”

  “If option one is off the table,” said Noah, “and we don’t like number two, is there a third option?”

  Mr. Kelly grinned. “We can always go back to my planned curriculum, which included a spring unit on the law as it relates to journalism.”

  “Option two, please!” said Hannah.

  Just about everyone chimed in, except for Felicia, who wanted to be a lawyer anyway.

  “The ayes have it,” said Mr. Kelly. “Let’s continue our work. Break into groups and review your to-do lists. I’ll check in with you one at a time.”

  Cassidy was still turning her desk around when he came over and handed her a flash drive.

  “This was my original objective. To support the next generation of journalistic excellence, the photographer agreed to let us look at her outtakes. She was shooting from a distance, so there’s probably nothing new here, but let me know if you spot anything.”

  As he moved on, Cassidy plugged the flash drive into her laptop and opened the folder while Noah stood behind her, his eyes fixed on the screen. Tate wandered over, having overheard.

  “I want to see,” said Tate, leaning in just close enough that she could feel the warmth of his skin. “After all, I was the one who found the damn thing.”

  “A hundred and seventy-two pictures,” said Noah. “Damn.”

  “Open them!” urged Tate.

  Cassidy opened the first file and expanded it to full screen. A series of photos showed the operation required to lift the car out of the lake and the surprising number of vehicles that had bushwhacked their way up the old overgrown road and parked in a line leading to the cliff. She spotted a pickup truck from the town of Glenlake, a van from Glenlake Academy, two sheriff’s department SUVs, a couple of vehicles she couldn’t identify, and, strangely, even an ambulance.

  Down below on the shoreline, yellow caution tape fluttered, and a small crowd stood watching a crew operate the crane on the barge. She recognized the headmaster, the assistant headmaster, and the operations manager of Glenlake. The photographer had gotten there before the car came up and seemed to be killing time, snapping picture after repetitive picture.

  “I think we found the smoking gun,” joked Noah, already bored.

  “Hold on,” said Tate.

  Divers’ heads poked above the water like seals, one of them giving a thumbs-up. Chains had been rigged to the sunken car.

  A burst of a dozen photos captured the car rising, from the first glimpse of its hood to the moment it dangled above the rippling lake’s surface, murky water streaming out of it. It all looked very much like the few photos they’d already seen published in the newspaper.

  Then, finally, the car was down on the deck of the big barge. Sheriff’s investigators in orange vests peered into the windows. The photographer zoomed in with an amazingly powerful telephoto lens, and Cassidy recognized Detective Gavras from his visit to her class. He was the first to open the door.

  The next shots were from a different angle, as if the photographer had run along the cliff top to get a better view. Suddenly, there were startlingly clear images of the front seat, framed by the open door and the arms and bodies of the investigators.

  “There he is,” said Cassidy softly.

  A heap of bones on the seat mingled with mud and algae and some kind of green underwater plant. Walker’s clothes had long since rotted away.

  A sheriff’s department photographer on the barge obscured the next several photos, but when the stringer got another clear shot, it was of Gavras lifting a watch out of the car on a long metal probe. The watch went into a plastic evidence bag.

  But something else sparkled on the seat.

  “What’s that?” asked Noah, touching the screen of Cassidy’s laptop.

  Cassidy zoomed in, but the image blurred. She zoomed out and moved to the next image. And the next.

  Gavras lifted something else out of the car. In the first photo, the shape was enough to make Cassidy’s stomach feel hollow.

  The next photo, perfectly focused in a gleaming ray of sun, confirmed it.

  “It’s a bracelet,” said Noah.

  It was a bracelet. Exactly like her mother’s.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ANDI BLOOM’S GLENLAKE JOURNAL

  Monday, February 10, 1997

  Today is Dallas’s fortieth birthday. We all sang happy birthday to him in class, but after the (weird, surreal, I’m just not sure how to describe it) Saturday night celebration we had together, I can’t say I felt as enthusiastic as I could have. For the first time, I wished he’d stop wearing the bracelet I gave him every day. Or at least to class.

  For his birthday, he told me the only gift he would accept was the pleasure of my company, so I lied to Georgina and Mrs. Henry and said my dad was in town for just one night and wanted me to stay in his hotel downtown. I had even forged a note, but Mrs. Henry didn’t ask to see it, so I just wandered off with my backpack, waited until I was sure no one was watching, and then cut through the woods to the back door of Dallas’s cottage, just like we’d planned.

  All the curtains were drawn and only a couple of lights were on, so my hopes immediately went to a romantic dinner, followed by a long, lingering evening of being together.

  Funny how fast your imagination always seems to take you places you never get to go.

  “I hope you’re ready for something different,” he said as he kissed me in the kitchen, just long and deep enough that I felt my body starting to melt.

  “Y
es,” I whispered, and the next thing I knew we were going into the tiny attached garage where he’d parked his car, and he told me to crouch down on the passenger floor until we were totally out of Glenlake.

  When I could finally sit up, I saw that we were on Highway 41 headed north.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Dallas just smiled and turned up the radio. The song was “You Shook Me All Night Long.” He loves classic rock and just laughs when I try to get him to listen to Ani DiFranco or Fiona Apple.

  A little while later we got to a bar called Kyle’s Kabin. Instantly I thought of Ian, because he’d been there with the Cue Sports Society and told me about it. There were pickups, motorcycles, and some really shitty cars parked out front. It looked crowded, and I was worried about being carded.

  “Don’t worry, they know me here,” he said, reading my mind.

  He leaned across the seat and kissed me. I won’t say the kiss changed everything, but it definitely made me feel better about going in.

  There was a bouncer at the door, but he just nodded at Dallas and gave me kind of a gross look without asking to see any ID.

  And then we were in. I’ve been to bars with Simon, but this was definitely the first roadhouse I’ve ever been in. If that’s the right word. There wasn’t live music or anything, but everybody seemed to be smoking and drinking beer, and there were a couple of pool tables under green-shaded lights.

  Most of the patrons looked like townies except for one guy in chinos and a sweater who came in right after us and made me afraid that he worked at Glenlake or something until I realized I’d never seen him before.

  Dallas went right up to a massive man who had tattoos—even one on his neck—and bumped fists.

  “Roy,” he said, “this is Andi.”

  Roy looked at me in a way that made me shiver, and not in a good way. I felt slimy, but for a moment I felt proud because this was the first time Dallas had ever introduced me to anyone.

  Even if we were in a gross bar in the middle of nowhere.

  “How’s your supply?” Roy asked Dallas.

  “Good, good,” said Dallas, like he didn’t want to talk about it.

  Then Roy said, “Let me get you some beers,” and Dallas said, “Hell yeah. Thanks, bro.”

  Since when did Dallas call anyone “bro”?

  I’m finishing this up later because Georgina came home and wanted to ask me all about my night in Chicago with Simon, forcing me to invent a small off-Loop play that somehow involved some of the details of what actually happened with Dallas. And then I had to listen to her tell me about how she and Tommy are having issues again but it’s no big deal really and blah blah blah. Everything was going great for them, which is why Georgina feels obligated to invent a little drama. She asked me if I was really done with James Whitmer, because Sylvie had been seen with him (again), and I CAN’T STAND ALL THIS CHILDISH BULLSHIT.

  So, anyway, we drank beer, and I watched Dallas and Roy play pool for what seemed like hours. Dallas is good and Roy is obviously a lot better, but I liked the way Dallas kept trying again, and in the end he finally did win a game.

  Roy threw his cue stick on the table and laughed and bought us all shots of whiskey. I took the tiniest sip of mine because I hate the taste. Dallas threw his back in one gulp.

  Then Dallas and Roy were having a conversation with several other men and women there, and all of a sudden we were piling out the door and into our cars.

  “Are we going home now?” I asked, thinking it was an abrupt end to the evening but grateful to be calling it a night.

  “Party at Roy’s,” Dallas told me, getting ready to follow Roy’s beat-up old Jeep. When Roy gunned his engine, it was so loud that I knew he was the one who’d come to Dallas’s cottage that day in January when Dallas never came back.

  “I’m tired, Dallas,” I said.

  “We don’t have to stay long,” he said, kissing me again. This kiss didn’t work quite as well as the first one, but I didn’t say anything.

  I wish I had.

  Roy’s was an old farmhouse with a rotting porch and dirty floors, half-hidden by trees and reached by a long, rutted driveway. In the yard there were junked cars and motorcycles under mounds of snow. The house was lit by bare lightbulbs, with unmatched couches and chairs and coffee tables plunked down wherever.

  There were already people there, and heavy metal was pumping out of some big speakers. It smelled like pot, dirty ashtrays, and cat pee. I wasn’t the only woman there, but I was definitely the only girl, and as Dallas guided me through to the kitchen, people were looking at me, and at him, and grinning.

  Dallas didn’t seem to notice, but I was starting to feel panicky, like a dream where you’re in school and realize you’re not wearing pants.

  “Too many people are seeing us!” I practically yelled in his ear, so he could hear me over the music.

  “And they have zero connection to Glenlake,” he said into my ear.

  He got us some beers from the fridge, and I took one, just so I’d have something to hold on to. I’m not sure if I even opened it. Dallas bummed a couple of cigarettes, lit both of them, and passed me one. I thought of all the cigarettes I’d smoked with Ian at the peristyle and wondered if he still went there to smoke. With Sarah Ann? Sylvie?

  A skinny guy with pasty skin and a fake-looking leather jacket came over to talk to us. He was talking really fast and not making any sense, so we went back into the living room, and he followed us. He was talking about computers and chess players and how someday we’d all have chips in our necks so the government could track us. Then he looked at us suspiciously and asked if we already had our chips and could he trust us.

  Dallas told him to get lost.

  Then Roy appeared from nowhere, said, “Is this asshole bothering you?” and hit the guy really hard in the side of the head. When the guy in the leather jacket stumbled, Roy grabbed him and literally threw him out into the yard.

  “Nobody bothers the professor!” bellowed Roy.

  Dallas smiled, but it looked like he was starting to feel as sick as I was.

  But he still wouldn’t leave.

  And when Roy asked him if he wanted to get geared up, he nodded. He didn’t ask me if I wanted to come, thank god, but they both disappeared for ten minutes, leaving me utterly alone.

  A tough-looking woman with acne scars came up and started asking me questions, obviously trying to figure out who I was. I told her my name was Angie and I went to Glenlake College. Lame lies, but they were the best I could think of.

  When Dallas and Roy came back, they were totally amped up and having a crazy conversation. Then they began playing darts.

  I thought the party would go on forever, but gradually the house started emptying out, even though the skinny guy from before had come back in and was shivering in the doorway to the kitchen. I wasn’t really watching Dallas and Roy, but all of a sudden I heard Roy yell. When I looked, he was moving toward Dallas and holding a dart in his hand.

  No—he wasn’t holding it. It was sticking out of the back of his hand.

  “Fucking prick!” he yelled at Dallas.

  “Sorry, Roy,” said Dallas, but his voice sounded weird, like he had just stopped laughing.

  “Sorry, Roy,” Roy mimicked. “You fucking pussy poet. You can’t handle your fucking drugs. Get out of here and take your jailbait student with you.”

  I had been frozen until then, but when he said that, I scrambled off the couch and toward the door.

  “Shit, man,” said Dallas, backing up.

  “You’re lucky she’s here or you’d be fucking dead!” said Roy.

  I turned and ran out of the house. Dallas was behind me.

  “Fucking dead!” we heard again.

  Dallas slipped on the ice by the car and fell down. He shook me off when I tried to help him.

  “Get off me,” he said.

  “Are you okay to drive?”

  Instead of answering, he got in the car
and started the engine. I got in fast, not sure he wouldn’t leave me.

  I almost couldn’t bear to watch the road on the way back to Glenlake. Dallas seemed jumpy and kept looking at the rearview mirror like he expected someone to be following us.

  “You went with Roy that day, didn’t you?” I finally asked him.

  He grunted. “He needed help with something.”

  Does he really think I don’t know he was buying drugs?

  “Duck down,” he said when we turned onto Campus Drive, even though it was the middle of the night and no one was around.

  “Take me home, please,” I told him. “I want to sleep in my bed tonight.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t. It would raise too many questions after what you told Georgina.”

  He drove us back to his cottage and parked in his garage. I started to get out of the car, but he reached across me and pulled the door closed.

  “I want you,” he said.

  His breath smelled weird, and his eyes were glassy. The Charger’s heater didn’t work very well, and it started to get cold as soon as he turned off the engine.

  “Right here. Now.”

  I didn’t want him, not then. But he didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he just didn’t care.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  While her roommate attended debate club practice, Cassidy compared the photo on her phone to the photo they’d found on the flash drive, now uploaded onto the Google Drive folder Primary Sources and Evidence.

  As far as she could tell, Mom’s bracelet at home was identical to the one in Dallas Walker’s car. The one encircling the bones of his arm.

  She shuddered.

  She had to know.

  Cassidy couldn’t remember the last time she’d called Georgina, but she did have her number—her “honorary aunt,” as Georgina called herself, was always sure to text on her birthday or other special occasions.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “Cassidy! Well, this is a surprise. Boy trouble?” she asked hopefully.

  Cassidy suddenly wished she’d thought of a reason why she couldn’t ask her mother about the bracelet. She certainly couldn’t tell her mom’s best friend, I don’t trust my mom.