Slain

by Harper, Livia

  I search for him again in the Colorado Department of Corrections database, just to be sure, but he’s not there. A Google search yields different results. I turn up a whole list of men named Jay Peterson. After a little digging, I narrow down the pool to people who were at least eighteen when the crime was committed in 2004, which would make them at least twenty-eight now. I also eliminate anyone who was older than sixty-five at the time.

  Then I start digging deeper, looking through Facebook profiles and LinkedIn profiles and webpages for dentists and lawyers and real estate agents. Anyone even remotely connected to anything legal is out, because they’d have to pass a background check to do the job, just like we require at church. Anyone who looks like they got married or had a baby or started a business in 2004-2006 seems unlikely. He would have had to serve at least two years for a crime like that, probably a lot more, which is why it’s so strange that I can’t find him.

  I go through page after page, and no one seems right. I have nothing.

  I decide to plug him into a background check service online. I type in Jay Peterson, and find one person who lives in Denver and lists having a criminal record. His age seems about right, thirty-three, so I pay the $24.95 for a background check with the credit card my parents opened in my name for emergencies.

  Bingo. This Jay Peterson was arrested in 2004 for armed robbery in Lafayette, Colorado. Last known address, in 2005, was in Limon, Colorado. So shouldn’t that mean he went to prison and is already out? Then I scroll down.

  Jay Peterson is listed as deceased.

  The death record lists him as dying at the Limon Correctional Facility, the same place where Lee Stuckey is incarcerated. It doesn’t say how. There’s not much more information.

  There goes that theory.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I’M DRIVING BACK HOME, going slow through some post-Rockies traffic, when my phone rings. It’s my mom. Shit. I pick up.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Where are you?” she asks. “Because I know you’re not at church.”

  “On my way home.”

  “How far?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I expect you through these doors in the next ten minutes, young lady.” This drive will take more than twice that.

  “Okay,” I say, knowing for sure there’s no way it’s gonna happen.

  By the time I get through traffic, it’s been nearly forty minutes, and my mom has called three more times. I didn’t pick up. She starts in on me as soon as I’m through the front door.

  “Where were you?”

  “Just driving around.”

  She looks at me like she knows better. “Uh huh. Not going to visit anyone in prison this time?”

  So she talked to Mr. Graham. Dammit.

  “When, exactly, did you do it?”

  “Sunday,” I say, avoiding her eyes.

  “So you lied to us?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s not very trustworthy behavior from someone who very much needs to be focused on showing the police she’s trustworthy right now.”

  I stay silent.

  “And how, may I ask, did you even get in?”

  I tell her about borrowing May’s ID, and her face goes white.

  “You can’t be doing things like that, Emma. You just can’t.”

  “Somebody has to.”

  “That’s right. The police.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah. ‘Cause they’re doing such a great job right now.”

  “I do not appreciate the attitude, young lady. Frankly, I’m surprised by it.” She paces in front of me, agitated. “I had a very interesting talk with Miss Hope. You want to tell me about what happened at Worship Dance Team?”

  “I quit the team.”

  “And?”

  I decide to play dumb. “And what?”

  “If you can’t be honest with me, we’re done talking. You’re grounded.”

  I go to my room and hear my parents’ door close down the hall. I’m grounded. Fabulous. As if they could make my life any worse than it is right now.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. A text from Jackson.

  Check flower pot in back yard, by trees.

  Is he here? I’d love to see him right now, but this is the worst possible night for him to just show up. I race to my window, but it’s too dark to see. I text him.

  Why?

  He texts back right away.

  Just check.

  I tiptoe out of my room and down the stairs, sliding open the door to the back yard as quietly as I can. Of course, the motion-sensor light fires on, lighting up the whole patio and I’m sure notifying my parents I’m back here. But maybe not? Their window faces the front of the house, not the back.

  I scan the backyard, half hoping to see his face and half hoping not to. There’s no one back here. The yard is a stretch of empty green.

  I race over to a small patch of aspens. At the foot of them is a huge ceramic pot. There’s nothing growing in it yet, the weather is still too cold for planting. But there are some branches and twigs, knocked down from the weight of winter snow. Underneath them, I see a patch of red peeking out.

  I reach in and retrieve a small box, squirreling it into the pocket of my hoodie. I turn back to the house, just in time to see the shadow of my mother walking through the kitchen and reaching the light of the back door. She’s in her bathrobe now, and isn’t exactly smiling.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asks.

  “So I’m not allowed to have fresh air either?” I ask. I’m panicky, and the words are too bratty, even for me. I can feel their wrongness as they tumble past my lips.

  “Get to your room. Right now.”

  I walk past her, fisting my hands in my pocket to mask the bulk, and run up the stairs. As soon as the door is closed behind me, I pull it out. The box is oblong, papered in red foil, the kind of box jewelry sometimes comes in at Christmas. There are scuffs on the edges that make it look like it might have been used before. I imagine Jackson in his dark basement, digging through a bin of old holiday gift wrap and picking this.

  The lid comes off easily. Inside, on a bed of cotton, lays a mini-figurine of the Statue of Liberty. It too looks weathered, cold and metal with a chipping mint paint that gives it an antique character. Where did he find this? A thrift store? An antique shop? A smile stretches across my face as I hold it in my palm. It’s perfect. I love it.

  Nestled under the figurine is a hand-written note. In Jackson’s handwriting, it simply says:

  I’ll kiss you here too.

  I grab my phone and text him.

  I can’t wait.

  The terms of my grounding are this: surrender the keys to my car, drive back and forth from school with my parents every day for two weeks, and I’m only allowed to go to church or school activities, nothing else. At least it gives me an excuse not to go out with Mike for a while.

  Paige seems to be hovering by my locker when I arrive at school the next day.

  “You gonna start returning my calls someday?” she asks. She seems a little pissed. I should have remembered to call her, but my mind was on other things.

  “Sorry. It was kind of a crazy night. I’m totally grounded. I basically lost my car for two weeks, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. They’re not letting me go anywhere.”

  “The dance thing?”

  “The dance thing.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised. What was that, Emma? I’ve never seen you act that way before.”

  “I know. All this stuff with June has really been getting to me.”

  She looks at me like she knows it’s an excuse as much as I do.

  “Still,” she says. “That was, like, weird. Especially for you. Are you sure there’s not anything else going on?”

  I wish I could tell her everything. I really do. It would be so nice, so nice, to be able to talk to her about all this. Mike, Jackson, Lee Stuckey the gun. Especially the gun. But telling her
a little means telling her everything. And telling her everything means losing her forever. I can’t.

  “No.” I change the subject. “How was practice last night?”

  “Oh fine, you know. Miss Hope gave Ruth the lead part and called Katie to see if she could fill in since she danced with us last year. Let’s just say Ruth had a little bit of a hard time learning it. As usual. I mean, I know I suck at doing all the moves, but at least I remember when to do them.”

  “You don’t suck.”

  She raises her eyebrows at me, “Know thyself, woman. And know when thou sucketh. I sucketh. A lot-eth.”

  “Whatever,” I laugh. Then I think of something I’ve been meaning to ask her. “Hey, do you know if June was being mentored by anyone?”

  “I never saw her with anybody. I mean, she came to you a lot, but other than that, no. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Nicolas told me that she really wanted to get baptized and the police said she was wearing a swimsuit when she died. I thought maybe, I don’t know…it’s probably nothing, but I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  “Well, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but your dad kind of has a thing about baptizing people. No one on staff would have agreed to do it but him.”

  “He likes it, yeah, but—“

  “No, Emma, it’s like a thing. My dad has never baptized anyone at this church, even though lots of other assistant pastors do it in other churches, and he did it in Bible College all the time. There was this one time when this guy he was mentoring, Gregory Foster, specifically requested my dad to do his baptism, and your dad said no and chewed out my dad about it.”

  “Really?”

  “I mean, and you have to swear you’re never gonna tell your dad this, but the rest of the staff sort of makes fun of him about it. They think,” she smiles cautiously, “they think he’s keeping score.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Of souls. The joke is that he’s gonna show up in heaven with a spreadsheet.”

  “Wow,” I laugh. “I had no idea.”

  “Yup,” she says. “Like I said. It’s a thing.”

  “So you don’t think anyone else would agree to baptize June?”

  “Not anyone on staff. Your dad would be all over them about it. You promise you’re not gonna tell, though, right? ‘Cause my dad would kill me if he found out I told you that.”

  “Of course not,” I say. “Did June say anything to you about getting baptized, or, you know, anything else?”

  “No,” she says. “To be honest, she didn’t really talk to me much unless you were around. I don’t even think she really wanted to be my friend, not really. I think…I think she only wanted to be friends with me because of you.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “Didn’t you notice how she was always tagging along, paying so much attention to you? That’s why she wanted to be friends with me. I think it’s even why she started dating Nicolas. I’m sort of surprised she never went after Mike.”

  “She might have. I don’t know. You didn’t see them talking ever, did you?”

  “A few times, but never for long. Why?”

  I tell her the story Mike told me.

  “See? That’s what I mean. She didn’t just want to be like you, she wanted to be you. It kind of, I don’t know…” she turns away from me, bites her lip. “It bothered me sometimes.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  EVERY DAY THAT WEEK, I have to go straight to my mom’s office after school and sit there with her, doing homework until she’s either ready to leave or another church activity starts up, which is pretty much every night. With them watching me so close, there’s absolutely zero chance to look into any more leads about June’s murder. It’s infuriating.

  The next Monday, I go to her office again after school to begin my second week of punishment. She’s the Women’s Ministry director, and has an office on the second floor of the North Wing. It’s smaller than my dad’s, and positioned almost directly below his. Both of their windows face west toward the mountains, but only my dad can actually see them from his higher vantage point. My mother’s view is almost totally blocked by the school across the street. Only the very tips of the mountains peak out from above the roof.

  While I do trig, she chatters to someone about table decorations for a banquet to raise money for some missionaries the Women’s Ministry is sponsoring in the Middle East somewhere.

  I’m working through the first problem when my phone buzzes in my pocket. I glance up to see if my mom is looking, but she’s still talking, nearly oblivious to my presence. I sneak the phone out and look at the screen. There’s a text from Jackson.

  I slide it back into my pocket. “I’m going to use the restroom,” I say.

  She looks over and nods absentmindedly. Whatever she’s working on, she’s absorbed in it as usual.

  I go to the restroom where I lock the door and press my phone to life. His words jump out at me from the screen.

  Going crazy. Need 2 see u.

  I think we should come clean.

  Can u meet me?

  What the hell does that mean? I text back fast.

  ?????????

  Lots to tell u, but grounded, can’t meet.

  Hang tight. Will call 2nite.

  Love you.

  I wish I could call him now, but it’s not worth the risk. He texts back immediately.

  Please. I need u.

  The park? After bed?

  Please.

  Something is wrong. I have no idea how, but I need to figure out a way to see him.

  Ok. midnight. See u there.

  Love u. B strong.

  It’s only a little after four. This is already killing me. I walk back to my mother’s office. How am I going to get through until midnight?

  The following hours pass like a hot summer day: slow and relentless, where all you want is escape but the sun won’t let you, refuses to go.

  First, it’s home for a too-silent dinner, then it’s back to church where my parents have their weekly Parents of Teens Bible Study. I should be at dance, but since I quit I’m hoping the night will be free and I’ll get a chance to call Jackson. Not so. When we get to church, my mom informs me that she’s volunteered me for childcare duty in the preschool area of the Kid’s Korner.

  Ugh. I hate working in the Kid’s Korner. I spend the next two hours avoiding snotty noses and sticky palms and generally hating life.

  When parents start showing up, I want to go, but I can’t yet. The kids and parents get matching bar code bracelets. We have to scan them all and make sure every parent gets the right kid. Like somebody’s gonna take one of these brats if they don’t have to. It takes forever.

  Eventually, when we’re down to a handful of kids, I make an excuse and take off. I race over to the main floor of the North Wing, where the adult Sunday school rooms are. I peek through the window of my parents’ classroom. Things were supposed to end at 9:00, and it’s 9:15, but they’re still in there.

  They stand in the center of a circle. The other adults pray around them, their hands extended. I can’t make out what’s being said, but I can guess it probably has to do with me. Around here, everyone always knows all your business. Prayer requests spread gossip fast, and without all the guilt.

  The prayer comes to a close, and people start to gather their things. Several husband-and-wife duos stop to say a kind word to my parents as they filter out. I’ve slept over at these people’s houses, gone to their sons’ and daughters’ birthday parties for years. But none of them say a word to me as they exit, even though I know they notice me standing by the door. It’s like they’re banded together, wounded veterans in a war against teenagers.

  My parents are the last to leave, and they’re surprised to see me when they finally come through the door. I tell them I’m tired. I tell them I want to go home. But my dad has something to get from his office, and we’re interrupted by someone who wants to talk to my mom. I say I will wait in the car
.

  It takes another thirty minutes for them to join me. There are always hands to shake, small talk to make, questions to answer of a congregant who wants one more piece of you before you go. It was stupid of me to hope to leave right after their class. But we finally do.

  I go straight to bed. I wait for the sounds of the house to die down, wait for FOX News to silence, wait for the lights to go dark and listen for my parent’s door to close all the way upstairs. Then I wait some more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  AT ELEVEN THIRTY, I creep through the house and enter the night. My car is in the garage, and it would wake my parents to take it, so I have to go on foot. It’s probably better this way anyway. I’m certain there’s an undercover police car parked at the mouth of my cul-de-sac. I’ve been trying to notice which cars seem to be around a lot, and there’s no question that I’ve seen the one on the end of the block at both school and church too. So I can’t drive my car anywhere I don’t want the police to know about, or go through the front door.

  I turn off the motion-sensor light out back and use the storage chest to scale the back edge of the fence. I hop into the neighbor’s yard, then go through their side gate to the block behind ours.

  It takes me several blocks to stop looking over my shoulder to see if I’m being followed. The air is crisp, but not cold enough to see your breath tonight. It’s nice being out in it, alone, free. It’s usually my favorite time of year, and would be even more if everything was the same as just a few weeks ago. But it’s not.

  I let my mind wander to the things I used to conjure up when I needed comfort: dorm rooms and Jackson’s guitar and new, interesting friends and salty sea air and a world without limits. But instead of comforting me, they make me sad. They feel farther away than ever now, almost impossible.

  The park isn’t far, just a couple of miles. I’m on a main road now, Colfax, and nearly there. Cars whizz past even this late on a weeknight. My heart jerks. Was that last car the one parked in my cul-de-sac? I watch to see if it turns around, but it’s hard to tell in the dark.