by Dan Wells
“That’s pretty far away,” said Corey. “What brings you here?”
“Just passing through,” I said.
“That’s what you told us Saturday,” hissed Paul, his brow furrowed in anger. “Now our best friend is dead—”
“Easy,” said Corey. “They weren’t even here, they were in…?” He left the sentence open for me to fill it in; I couldn’t ignore it without making myself look even more suspicious.
“Oklahoma City,” I said. I couldn’t think of any smaller towns in the area fast enough, but I guessed a big city would be easier to lie about anyway. Nobody could disprove our story.
“They were making out in the drive-in Saturday night,” said Paul, obviously still furious. “We showed up just goofing around and this bastard pulls a—”
“We got off on the wrong foot,” said Corey. “And since you and Derek were more than a little drunk, that’s perfectly understandable.”
“Gross,” said Brielle. “Again? No wonder you didn’t answer my texts.”
“We were just out walking around,” said Paul. “It was nothing.”
“Shh,” said Jessica. “They’re starting.”
We looked toward the front, and saw Pastor Nash step up to the lectern and adjust the microphone. “Friends and neighbors,” he said, “thank you for coming here today on this solemn and tragic occasion. We all mourn the passing of Derek Stamper, and we send our love to his parents, who are still at the police station working closely with the investigators. But we have work of our own to do, and for that I turn the time over to Officer Davis of the state police.” The pastor stepped back and sat, and one of the officers stood up—older than the others, with close-cropped hair much more silver than black, and a beard about the same length and color wrapped around his face and chin.
“Is that Ms. Glassman’s brother?” I whispered.
“No,” said Corey. “Her brother’s name is Officer Glassman.”
I glanced at him, seeing just the hint of a smug smile. I supposed it was obvious enough, but only if you knew Ms. Glassman used her maiden name. Now we did. Did that tell us anything?
Most of the shadows are empty, I reminded myself.
Officer Davis stepped toward the lectern, looked at it uneasily, then took a few steps to the side.
“Sorry,” he said. “Feels too weird to make like I’m a preacher. I’ll just talk loud and you let me know if you can’t hear me in the back. My name is Officer Davis and I’m heading up this investigation. I recognize that this crime is a horrible thing, a lot more horrible for you folks than it is for us; any death is heartbreaking, but you knew this boy, and you worked with him and played with him and taught him in school and so on. So I know this is hard, and we’re doing our best to get it over with soon and to give you all some closure and some sense of safety again. But there are two things we need from you that are going to be a huge help, and we appreciate your cooperation. The first is that you stay calm. Don’t freak out, don’t cause any trouble that might hinder our efforts, and whatever you do, don’t accuse each other. A small town like this can go completely insane if you start looking sideways at your neighbors, and you’d be surprised how quick a simple suspicion can turn into a mob or a witch hunt. So be careful.”
I’d seen some of that mob mentality in Clayton, when the killing started all those years ago and we’d thought it was serial killer. The town had been ready to lynch some of the people they thought were behind it. I’d been worried at the time that everyone would accuse me, because I was the weird kid obsessed with death, but that’s the kind of thing kids think when they don’t understand the world very well. They think it all revolves around them. Most of the people in Clayton didn’t even know who I was, and if they did, they didn’t think twice about me. But now I was a visible outsider.
I needed to trim my hair, and try to look as clean-cut as I could.
And I needed to figure out Corey’s game before he hurt us with it.
“The second thing I need you to do is a little at odds with the first,” said Officer Davis, “but it’s a vital part of the investigation. I need you to talk to us—not here, not in a public forum, but privately, in our office at the police station or on the anonymous tip line that we’ve set up. Fliers with that information are by the door and posted around town, plus I’ll be here in Pastor Nash’s office for a bit after this meeting. If you know anything—anything at all—please tell us. We’re starting pretty much from scratch on this one: there are no witnesses and no security cameras, so we have no description to start building a profile or even a sketch. We’ve collected a huge pile of forensic evidence from the crime scene itself, but that takes a lot longer to process than the TV makes it look, and it might not turn up anything useful. What’s going to help us crack this open are your observations. If you see anything suspicious, or especially if you find any knives or blades discarded around the town, come to us immediately. I’m not asking you to accuse your neighbor because you think he’s acting shifty, but I am asking you, if you know something concrete, to have the courage to come to us. More often than not these kinds of criminals are caught when someone close to them gets involved. We can protect you, we can keep you anonymous, we can do whatever you need us to do, but you have to come to us or we can’t do anything.”
He was walking a dangerous line in his speech, and I looked around the room to see how people were reacting to it. He was right about criminals being caught by the people close to them. Somewhere in this town, someone had ended their Monday night covered with blood, and that meant that somewhere there were bloody clothes, or even just a gap in somebody’s closet. If it was Corey, catching him might be as simple as his mother wondering where that one pair of jeans ended up, or finding a crust of blood around the drain in the shower. Could I get into Corey’s house? Would I even know what to look for? Not as well as his family would, but if he’d hidden his tracks well, they might not even look.
By the same token, coming right out and saying “family members of the killer are the best ones to catch him” would put those family members in immediate danger. If Attina was masquerading as a simple teenager, and he thought someone in the house suspected something, he might kill them to try to cover his tracks, passing it off as just another random attack. Even if Attina decided to skip town, he might hurt his pretend family on the way out, to stop them from sharing any more helpful information.
I looked at Corey, and found him looking at me. How much did he really know?
A tall man with slightly graying hair raised his hand. He spoke with a kind of angry confidence. “Do you think this killer’s going to strike again?”
“It’s too early to say,” said Officer Davis. “And I urge you not to speculate on this—we can extrapolate a lot of probable details, but when we start extrapolating beyond our data points, all we get is baseless paranoia.”
“But we hear about these kind of murders all the time,” said the man. “You don’t need a degree in criminology to know that this wasn’t a crime of passion—whoever did it took their time, and that sounds a hell of a lot like a serial killer to me.” There were murmurs of assent, and Officer Davis raised his voice to speak over them.
“The time the killer spent is definitely a factor in our investigation,” he said. “But I remind you that without more information, that extra time might mean anything—it might be a serial killer, but it might just as easily be a moment of passion that got out of hand, followed by a desperate and failed attempt to hide the body. I apologize for speaking so bluntly, but this is important and I want to make sure you understand: there are multiple explanations for literally every aspect of this case, and we don’t have enough information at this point to even narrow it down, let alone pick the one right answer. We’re not here to guess what happened, we’re here to find the truth—and you want to find the truth, too, so don’t guess. Don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t start spinning out scenarios based on untested assumptions, because that will tear this town apart.”
“Phrasing,” murmured Corey.
“Thank you for coming,” said Officer Davis. “I’ll be in Pastor Nash’s office for the next hour if anyone wants to talk to me. If you’d rather do it in private our tip line is open twenty-four hours a day. Please enjoy the refreshments.” People shouted out questions, but he descended from the podium and walked with the pastor into the back room.
“This is just creepy,” said Jessica.
“Duh,” said Paul.
Brielle swatted his leg. “He was your best friend, idiot.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Paul. “We don’t have to say that my best friend’s murder is creepy, because duh. What else would it be?”
“You can at least be nice about it,” said Brielle. “Jessica didn’t kill him, don’t take it out on her.”
“All I said was duh!” said Paul.
“Oh good,” said Sara Glassman, walking up to us, “you’ve found some other kids already.” A man was with her, but she seemed more annoyed by him than anything. “And these are good kids—I vouch for them all as their librarian.”
“She’s a great librarian!” said the man with a smile.
Sara ignored him. “Speaking of libraries, Jessica, have you finished Sherlock? It’s overdue again.”
“Finished it how many times?” asked Brielle.
“Can I hang on to it just a little bit longer?” asked Jessica. “I’m trying to write a script for one of the stories.”
“Like, for a movie?” asked Brooke.
“I want to put it on YouTube,” said Jessica, looking down at the floor and lowering her voice almost to a whisper.
“Cool,” said the man. “Maybe we could show it in the library.”
Sara sighed. “Randy, we need to have a talk.” She led him away, and Brielle snickered.
“Randy’s in love with her,” said Brielle, “and she can’t convince him she’s not interested.”
“He’s like a puppy,” said Jessica.
Corey and I stayed silent, watching and listening.
“I want some cookies before they’re gone,” said Paul. “Bree, you want anything?”
“Let’s go.” Brielle stood up, took his hand, and they walked to the crowd at the refreshment table. Jessica looked at Brooke and I—and Corey—uncomfortably, then slipped after them. Ingrid walked toward us.
“You realize what we have to do now,” said Ingrid. “A neighborhood-watch program.” She took a tiny bite of banana bread and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “It’ll help us catch any suspicious activity, but it’ll also help us control any accusations before they get out of hand.” She looked at Corey. “Would your parents be interested in joining a neighborhood-watch program?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Corey. “I can go ask them.” He looked at me one last time, a kind of noncommittal acknowledgment that was neither a smile nor a frown, and walked away.
“I haven’t talked to Beth yet,” said Ingrid, “but she goes along with everything. And I’m sure I can get Sara involved as well.”
“We’re in too,” I said.
“You don’t need to trouble yourselves,” said Ingrid. “You’re not even really a part of the neighborhood.”
“It’s the least we can do,” said Brooke. “You’ve helped us, and we want to help you.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Ingrid. “Say what you will about the youth of America, we raise them right in Dillon. And wherever you’re from.”
A neighborhood-watch program would give us the perfect excuse to wander through the town learning about people. Our plan was working out perfectly.
But Attina had a plan of his own, and Corey’s behavior had convinced me that I had no idea what that plan was.
16
I took a bite of whatever I’d picked up from the refreshment table, not paying attention to what it was. “Talk to Corey,” I said to Brooke.
She glanced at him across the crowded floor of the church. “I don’t like him,” she said.
“He’s probably a Withered,” I said, “and almost certainly a killer. I’d be disturbed if you did like him. But you don’t have to like him, just … talk to him. We need to get to know him better, and he doesn’t like me. Or at least he knows that something’s up with me. You can go make friends.”
“You want me to flirt with him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you meant,” she said. “You want me to smile and blush and laugh at his jokes and make him like me.”
“I’m just saying you’re better at it than I am.”
“Because I’m a girl.”
“Because I’m a sociopath,” I said. “We’re not charming people.”
“Yes you are,” she said. “Ted Bundy was the most charming person his victims had ever met.”
“I’m not Ted Bundy.”
“But he might be,” said Brooke. “And you want me to go and talk to him.”
“Are you scared of him?” I asked. “How many Withered have we faced?”
“This is different,” said Brooke. “He’s a teenage boy—that calls for a very specific kind of interaction, and I can’t do that. Maybe before, but not … like this.”
“We have to get to know him,” I said. “We won’t be at this meeting together forever, which means we need to find out where he’ll be next. He already introduced us to his social circle, so all we have to do is step into it.”
“I don’t know,” she said, grimacing as she stared at their little group. “What do I say? I suck at this.”
“You’re great at talking to people,” I said. “You were the one who asked me out on our first date.”
“I’m not going to ask him on a date.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, “I just mean that you are a social person—you know everything about everybody, because you talk to them. You talked to that girl in the car yesterday for hours.”
“She wasn’t a boy.”
“What, are you … attracted to him?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. Her hands were clenched in fists and she was practically bouncing on her toes. “It’s a cultural thing—there are certain ways a girl talks to a boy and they’re different in every era of history, sometimes in every year. And 99.99-whatever percent of my experience in this area is centuries out of date. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” She was gritting her teeth, and I recognized the signs too late: she was having another episode. I grabbed her hand and changed tactics immediately.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We can do it together.”
“You asked me to do it for a reason,” she said. “If it was something we could do together we’d have done it together.”
“We can do it together.”
She shook her head, still staring at him. “I screwed up. If I was Brooke I could do it, but I’m just a big pile of dead girls. I can’t do anything.”
I stepped in front of her, still holding her hand and now looking straight into her eyes. Talking to Corey’s group could wait—saving Brooke was the most important thing in the world right now. “Look at me. Do you see me?”
Her breath was coming too quickly.
“Brooke,” I said, “can you see me? What’s my name?”
“I’m not Brooke.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You’re you, and that’s okay. Who am I?”
“You’re trying to save me,” she said, closing her eyes. Tears seeped from under her eyelids. “That means I’m having an attack, which I always do every time we have to do something important. We have to talk to them and I’m ruining this.”
“Forget them,” I said. “You’re awesome and you’re not ruining anything.”
“Stop saying that!” she hissed, and I could see now that people around us were starting to look. “You think you’re saying you want to help me, but all you’re really saying is that I need help. That I can’t do it on my own. I am broken—I’m a hundred thousand girls and every one of them is broken—�
�
“Marci,” said Ingrid, stepping out of the crowd, “is everything okay?”
Brooke tugged on her hands, trying to pull free of my grip on her wrists, but her movements were stiff—not halfhearted, but as if she were physically fighting not just me, but herself. “You’re okay,” I whispered.
“Marci?” asked Ingrid.
“Yes I am,” said Brooke. She straightened her back and looked me in the eye. I could tell just by the way she held herself that she was Marci now. “You want me to go charm somebody? That’s what I’m here for.”
She pulled on her wrists again, and I let her go. The depression had disappeared like a switch had been flicked, replaced by cool, brazen confidence. She walked to Corey and his friends and started chattering happily, smiling, laughing, even touching him lightly on the arm.
“None of my business,” said Ingrid, and she walked away.
Marci didn’t look desperate, or like she was trying to impress anyone, or even like she was trying to flirt. She just looked like she’d known the other teens for years and fit perfectly into their group.
I took another bite of whatever baked thing was in my hand. Zucchini bread, it turned out. I looked at it, then back up at Marci. All I’d asked Brooke to do was talk to him—we had to talk to him, so I’d asked her to do it. But it had hurt her so much that Brooke had run away, retreating into her own mind and calling out someone else who could do the job for her.
Was Marci helping Brooke deal with a situation she couldn’t face? Or was she stealing her life away, second by second?
And which one did I want: the smart, capable girl I loved, or the screwed-up girl who wanted to die?
I set down the bread and watched them talk.
About ten minutes later Corey and Paul walked out, Jessica and Brielle leaving with them. Marci walked back to me and wiggled her eyebrows dramatically—something Brooke had never done, but I’d seen Marci do it a hundred times. “Eating out of the palm of my hand,” she said. She picked my zucchini bread and popped it into her mouth. “Turns out this town has an ice cream place by the delightful name of Kitten Caboodle. We’re meeting those young ladies and gentlemen there tonight.”
