by Liz Jasper
When I was done, Gavin flipped through his notes, apparently checking to see if there were any discrepancies between my and Kendra’s statements. At least I assume that was what he was doing; he didn’t see fit to explain his MO to me. His jaw was set and if he gripped his pen any harder it would break.
“So as I understand it,” Gavin said finally, glancing over the pages in front of him as he spoke, “Kendra and Bob were dating—or had been dating. Reading between the lines, I’d say it looks as though he was trying to let her down easy after a spring and summer fling, whereas she was still very much in love with him and wanted the relationship to continue.”
I nodded. “She was the blonde who wrote that love letter, you know. You probably didn’t notice at the time, and her hair’s grown back out to light brown since then, but she had been streaking it blonde.”
He silently made a note of it and continued, “She mistook his invitation for a beer after the parent-teacher conferences as a date, a sign of his renewed interest. When she found him leaving directions for you in your classroom, she lost her temper in a fit of jealousy, picked up one of your display rocks and hit him with it. She blamed you of course…”
“What do you mean ‘of course’?” I demanded, mindful of Kendra’s accusation that I had been using my vampire wiles on Bob, like some tawdry romance novel vixen.
“She had to blame someone,” he said reasonably, looking up from his notes. “You were the logical choice.”
“You too? Just because I’m…” I remembered in time where I was. For all I knew ten people had their ears pressed up against the door, “I didn’t try to lure him away.”
Gavin raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Never said you did. Anyway, we’re not dealing with reality here, we’re dealing Kendra’s reconfigured version of reality. She needed a scapegoat as much as an alibi, and you were good for both.”
Oh. I’d had so many ugly missiles hurled at me that night that his bald statement of belief in my character was surprisingly warming. I smiled at him.
Gavin suddenly busied himself with his notes again. “So she arranged for the glassware to go crashing to the ground around the time you should have been coming back for your next parent conference, and then faked the teeth marks on his neck to implicate you further.” He drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the arm of his chair. “I’m still not sure how she learned about…” he hesitated slightly, and then summed up Will, vampires, and my own vampness with a sweeping gesture, “all that.”
“Pure darn luck. The coffee shop across from the police station was Bob’s secret grading place. One night when I was there…” I casually glossed over the fact that I had been there to spy on Gavin, “Kendra stopped in. I think she was hoping to meet Bob, but found me instead, and jumped to conclusions. She began trailing me, thinking I was heading for a tryst with Bob. She followed me the day I learned… She saw everything.” I stared at my shoe, willing myself not to think about that night.
If Gavin noticed my sudden reticence, he was kind enough not to make it worse by commenting on it. “You’re probably right. It certainly explains what happened next. When you weren’t arrested for killing Bob, she naturally assumed the police just didn’t know to connect the teeth marks on Bob’s neck with you—I wasn’t among the officers who responded to the 9-1-1 call the night of Bob’s death so she didn’t know that any officer involved in the case could make the connection. So she tried to “out” you at the restaurant by ordering that garlic shrimp scampi for you.”
“Yeah, and that worked smashingly.”
“You might have found the pregnancy rumor embarrassing and ridiculous, but it really backfired on her. You got the attention and recognition she so desperately wanted. And when you denied it, she only became angrier. In fact, I think that’s what turned her against you. She felt you didn’t treat his memory with the reverence it deserved, and became frankly unhinged.
“The burden of guilt she felt over killing Bob must have been tremendous. I do believe it was an accident, but by not owning up to it, she turned it into murder, at least insofar as the community was concerned. I’ve seen what guilt can do. The stronger it got, the deeper she buried it, until it became too much for her. That’s where you came in. In you, she saw the duality she despised in herself. Like her, you were trying to hide a part of you that you feared.” His eyes met mine unwaveringly. In them was not censure but clean, clear logic. He reached forward and placed a hand over mine, gripping it fiercely as if to take the sting out of his words, to remind me it was Kendra’s view he was explaining, not his. “You weren’t lethal, but to her mind, you should have been. You were the one who housed a monster, not her. She rationalized her part in Bob’s death more and more as the guilt became stronger, and you provided a way for the denial to become complete. She transferred responsibility to you. You were the one who was evil, not her. Therefore, you were the one who had killed Bob, who had set in motion the chain of events leading inevitably to his death, you were the chess master, she was the pawn.”
I made a small noise in protest and tried to pull away, but Gavin gripped me harder. He leaned forward, pinning me with his eyes, forcing me to listen, not to look away.
“She needed to show the world what you were, what you had done. She brought a gun to school, a family heirloom, old and unlicensed. It had one bullet—for obvious reasons she couldn’t buy more. She used her master key to sneak into the chemistry supply room, silver-plated the bullet and waited to catch you alone. She took the shot, and without waiting to see if she had succeeded or not, ran the back way to the gym, stashing the gun in the bushes somewhere along the way for later retrieval. Then she ran from the gym to the parking lot, as if she’d come after hearing the shot. She’s a good runner, it probably didn’t look as if she’d exerted herself more than the short sprint from the gym she’d owned up to.”
Gavin stopped talking and waited for my response. His summary made a clear distinction between Kendra’s actions and mine and should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. I may not have given in to it yet, but as his tale made clear, the potential for evil was in me now, whether I liked it or not. For how much longer could I control it? He had used the word monster almost ironically, to highlight what Kendra had become, in contrast to my own probity. But wasn’t she right at some level? I may not have done anything worse than unintentionally provoking her anger through my ignorance, by my careless treatment of her deep feelings for Bob, but what about next time? The monster was in me, wasn’t its manifestation inevitable? By framing me for a murder I hadn’t committed, wasn’t she preventing me from doing evil in the future? No! Something in me rebelled. It didn’t have to be that way. I wouldn’t let it.
I became aware of Gavin’s hands still gripping mine. His grey eyes regarded me quizzically, but as much as I wanted the relief that came with sharing the burden of my fears, I didn’t tell him how much his words had scared me. My fears were my own to sort out. His belief that I would stay poised on that knife’s edge, that I wouldn’t give in, was too precious for me to risk. I needed him to fight for me. I was relying on it. Will was pulling me one way and I needed Gavin to pull back.
I swallowed on a dry throat and forced my voice to assume a lightness I didn’t feel. “She must’ve been sorry to hear she missed. I’m surprised you didn’t notice that—it was probably as good as a confession. You must’ve been off your game, Detective.” I quietly slid my hand out from under his.
For a brief moment I thought he looked disappointed, but it was just a trick of the light. His light tone matched my own as he relaxed back in his chair, crossing his arms lightly across his broad chest. “Evidently she managed to control her dismay by the time we finally got around to questioning her, after prying you out from under that SUV.”
That was totally uncalled for. I went back to glaring at him.
He resumed his narrative. “Since the shooting didn’t pan out, she decided to try to kill you using a more direct method.”
; The stake, I translated silently.
“Apparently we were still doing a good enough job watching your apartment that she decided the next attempt would have to be at school again. She talked up that Olympiad thing to the headmaster during the soccer finals, knowing it would get back to your department head, and that he would demand you organize some sort of trumped-up demonstration for the headmaster.”
Hah! I knew Roger was to blame somewhere in all of this. If he hadn’t been such a glory-seeking jackass…well, she probably would have found some other way, but still…
“Kendra scheduled the mock Olympiad on a Monday and dumped all the extra work on you, knowing you would have to come to work Sunday night to get things ready. When your department head showed up, she simply told him to go home, she would take care of you.”
“Nice word choice.”
He ignored my comment. “Anyway, you know the rest.”
I certainly did.
His eyes drilled into mine with razor sharpness. “You’re lucky you landed on that hedge,” he said softly.
I developed a sudden fascination for the school’s carpeting.
“It’s amazing you weren’t more hurt.”
“Yeah, lucky me.”
I put down the paper cup I had been mangling for the past half hour and stood, swaying slightly on unsteady feet. “Can I go home now?” I asked rather plaintively. I wasn’t just trying to avoid Gavin’s probing questions. I was suddenly so tired I could barely see straight.
Gavin stood quickly and put out a strong arm in time to steady me as my knees began to buckle. “Maybe I should drive you.”
Chapter Thirty-One
* * *
We drove home in silence. Gavin maneuvered expertly into a tight parking space near my apartment and killed the engine. Neither of us made a move to get out of the car. I was too tired to so much as undo the seat belt and Gavin seemed to have been zombified.
After a few minutes, Gavin shifted suddenly in his seat as if to say something to me, but before he could get a single word out, we were blinded by the headlights of an oncoming car careening the wrong way down the one-way street. Its driver, a woman, screeched to a halt in front of my apartment building and got out in such a hurry she left her headlights blazing but forgot to switch on the hazard lights. She clicked briskly on high heels under the halogen streetlight, her hair glowing brownish-pink.
I watched her click halfway up the stairs to my apartment before realization dawned. I’m used to my mother’s hair being an unnatural color, but never a shade close to brown.
“Halogen lights distort color!”
“What?”
“Oh, crap!” I jabbed a finger against the seatbelt button. When it didn’t release, I started pounding it with my fist.
“Jo!”
“How do you get out of this thing? I have to get up there!”
Gavin grabbed my fist in mid-pound. He gently undid my seat belt with the other hand and I launched myself out of his car. He troubled to lock his car, and reach into my mother’s to flick on the hazards, but was only a few steps behind.
When we caught up to her, she was banging on my door. “Jo? Josephine? Honey, it’s your mother. Open the door!”
“Mom?”
She gasped in alarm, stared wide-eyed at me for a long moment, and then threw both arms around me in an unexpectedly prickly hug. “Jo, honey, I came as soon as I heard.” Her voice caught and she squeezed me even tighter.
Something sharp was digging into my scalp, but I didn’t complain. For little while, anyway. When she finally let me go, I saw she was holding a dozen roses. Odd. I hadn’t noticed her carrying flowers when I’d spied her from the car.
“Oh, Jo, sweetie, how are you?” She hadn’t completely relinquished me. Her hands remained lightly my shoulders and her eyes scanned me from head to toe, taking in every bandage, every bruise, every scrape. “You seem okay,” she said. “I heard you got pushed out of a window?” She made it a question.
“I’m fine. Really. I didn’t fall very far—and I, er, managed to break my fall by landing on a hedge.” The last part was true. Well, mostly true.
Her teeth clenched in fury and her blue eyes seemed to emit sparks of rage. The only thing worse than pissing off a redhead, apparently, was pissing off a redheaded mother. Kendra was lucky she was behind bars.
Very gently, I detached her hands from my shoulders before they could add to the bruises on my frame. “Mother. Mother!” I met her eyes and said, “I’m fine.”
She blinked. “Of course you are, dear.”
Gavin eyed me speculatively, as if trying to fit what I’d said to my mother against what I’d told him in the hopes of filling the gaps in my story. I schooled my features into my best look of innocence and stared back at him. After a brief while, a slightly hazy look of acceptance replaced the suspicion in his eyes.
I kept myself from spiraling down into another I-am-Demon freakout by telling myself that my success was rooted in a lifetime’s worth of dissembling and no way vampire related.
“Jo, honey, why don’t we go inside?”
“Oh. Right.” I automatically reached for my bag before I realized it wasn’t there. “My keys…in my classroom…”
Gavin pulled out his phone. “I’ll have someone bring them over.”
“That’s all right,” my mother said. She opened her capacious designer purse and withdrew a ring of keys that was the duplicate of my own, down to the tiny funny-shaped one that opened my bike lock.
“How did you get the one to my bike—never mind,” I said.
Gavin follow me in, bending down first to pick up a small, rectangular package. He turned it over in his hands and then handed it to me. “I believe this is for you.”
There was no note attached to the brown paper wrapping, just my name written in bold, unfamiliar script. “Odd,” I said. “I wonder what this is?”
“Looks like a book,” said my mother. She was right, of course. My mother could tell what was inside a package as effectively as an x-ray machine. I ripped off the wrapping and stared at the contents. It was a copy of Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native.
“Oh,” said my mother, immediately losing interest. She went to the kitchen to look for something to put the flowers in.
I looked slowly up from the book and met Gavin’s hard stare.
My mother came back in the room, still holding the flowers. “Jo,” she said. Her voice had regained a little of its usual crispness. “Don’t you have any vases suitable for long stemmed roses?”
Sure. On the shelf above the plastic containers, where I keep the crystal water goblets and brandy snifters. “No, Mom, I don’t.”
Gavin kept his eyes trained on me. “Mrs. Gartner,” he said, “was there a card with those flowers?”
“Oh! I’m so sorry, Joey. I didn’t think to check.”
I looked at her in surprise. She must have been more worried than I thought. The warm familial glow that rose in my chest was abruptly cut short when she handed me a tiny card. It contained little more then a signature in the same bold and forceful script as had been on the package.
I dropped the book as if it burned. “I don’t want the flowers,” I said.
“What?” said my mother.
“Who’s it from?” asked Gavin.
“Will.”
My mother reached for the note but I ripped it into tiny pieces and threw it away.
“Oh!” she said. “Well!” She dumped the roses in the trashcan near my desk and the book followed with a satisfying thump. She brushed the dirt briskly from her hands as if to say good riddance! “Well honey, it’s a terrible shame, of course, that you broke up with him, but frankly, dear, I didn’t think he was good enough for you. I know you’re young and have very noble feelings, but I can’t believe you’d have been happy with Will in the long run, not with what he did for a living.”
Gavin was, for once, absolutely speechless. I had forgotten I had told my mother that yarn about Will�
�s occupation.
“Really, Mother,” I said, “you shouldn’t be so judgmental.”
Gavin’s jaw dropped.
“Well I’d hardly call it a career, darling, and he isn’t even very good at it, now is he?” she sniffed.
I was so appalled at her snobbery that I automatically defended Will’s occupation even though I had made it up. “Not everyone is cut out to be a banker like Dad, Mom. Being an assistant manager at the coffee shop is a good job for someone like Will.”
Gavin let out a strangled snort. My mother looked curiously at him and he tried to turn it into a cough. Unfortunately he managed rather too well and I had to pound his back before he could breathe normally again.
When he could speak again, he said, “Whatever you do, don’t let this, er—coffee shop manager—in.”
“You don’t think he’s dangerous, do you?” my mother asked.
“I do.” Gavin looked at my mother but his words were meant for me. “I’ve dealt a lot with men of his type, Mrs. Gartner. When a—er—jilted boyfriend sends something that has personal meaning, as I expect that book had, it usually means he’s not ready to let go. They’re the ones most likely to turn violent. The important thing is to make it very clear that the relationship is over. If you see him, go quickly in the other direction. And whatever you do, never ever let him inside. Even for a moment, no matter how nice he seems.”
“Well! I can assure you that man will no longer be welcome here,” said my mother, lifting her chin as if ready for battle. “In fact, I’m going to take those ‘gifts’ out to the dumpster right now.”
