Slain

by Harper, Livia

  I get in my car and pick Tessa up on the corner. We drive. She’s asleep as soon as the car starts moving. I want to sleep too, but there’s too much to figure out. I have no idea where to go from here. I know Jackson would help if I asked, but what if the police are watching him? It’s too risky. There are no friends left, no family to call, nothing. All we have for money is $40 the guy gave us for bus tickets, not even enough for a hotel room tonight.

  It makes me think of June, alone out in the world, broke, nowhere to go. I always thought of her as fragile, weak, but you have to be some kind of strong to survive that kind of life. Am I? I don’t know.

  Eventually, I decide it’s wasting gas to drive around. I only have a half tank, and I don’t want to spend what little money we have on filling it up. I drive to City Park, the place Jackson and I used to meet. It’s one of the biggest parks in Denver and has a golf course and a zoo and three lakes. I park near the biggest of them, Ferril Lake. It’s warm, and the fountain in the center is going. There are runners out, moms with strollers, teenagers from East High School across the street, eating lunch on the long green lawns.

  Tessa stirs, stretches awake. “Hey. What’s up?”

  “I’m gonna take a walk. Want to come?”

  “Okay.”

  We lock up the car and head to the lake path. I need to think things through, figure out what to do next. She probably does too. We make it halfway around the lake before either of us says anything.

  “I love this place,” Tessa says.

  “You’re from Denver?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you don’t want to go back to your family?”

  “No. They hate me. There’s no place for me there anymore.”

  “Any ideas of where else we could go?”

  She shakes her head. Whatever happened to her has made her just as alone as I am. She pulls out a pack of cigarettes from her hoodie pocket, cigarettes she picked up at a truck stop in Wyoming. Taps one out. Searches her pockets for something.

  “You don’t have my lighter do you?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Must have left it in the car.”

  We turn around to go back for it, and see, racing through the five-mile-per-hour park streets, four police cars, lights flaring.

  They come to a screeching stop next to my car, and the shape of a person I recognize gets out: Detective Boyer.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  I YANK TESSA BACK around, and head the opposite direction. We have to get out of here. Fast.

  “What’s going on?” she says.

  “The police found my car.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.” Could they have put a tracer on it? Back when they were following me everywhere? I can’t rule it out.

  “Why are they after you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I really don’t. Why would Detective Boyer go to all that trouble? Four police cars, all those lights, for a runaway teen? I turn eighteen in two weeks. It doesn’t make any sense. “I need to get to a phone.”

  We book it out of the park, jaywalking across four busy lanes on 17th Street, toward East High School, hoping to blend in with the lunch crowd. As we walk toward the school, we hear three more police cars zoom by behind us, sirens blaring. No. This can’t be for a runaway teen.

  We walk past the school, out on to Colfax Avenue, and I spot a 7-Eleven on the corner. We go inside, looking for a pay phone, but there are none. I spend ten of our precious dollars on a prepaid cell phone, then realize I have no idea what the number is. I’m so used to having everything programmed in. I’m going to need a computer too.

  Tessa and I catch a bus, the 16L, down Colfax toward downtown. It drops us a couple blocks from the Denver Public Library, a building that looks like a bunch of multicolored blocks stacked haphazardly, but still manages to be one of the most interesting buildings in Denver. We go inside, and I use one of their computers to log in to my iCloud account. I transfer a few numbers to the prepaid phone, log out, and we go. I have no idea if the police can trace me from this account. Are they even looking? Can they tell what computer I’m on if they are? It’s safer to go.

  On the street, I make a call.

  “Emma, where are you? You’re parents are very worried,” Mr. Graham says.

  “Why are the police looking for me?”

  “Just tell me where you are, and I’ll send a car to pick you up.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “They have a warrant for your arrest. For June’s murder. You need to come to my office—“

  “I don’t understand. I haven’t done anything.”

  “They found the murder weapon, Emma. It was in a Sunday school room at church, one of the church guns. Stolen from the security office. The police have been keeping that detail out of the papers.”

  The church guns. Of course. There’s cabinet full of them in the security office that the Security Team carries during services just in case. Not that the guns did any good when there was an actual emergency.

  “So what does that have to do with me?”

  “They found your fingerprint. On a bullet inside the gun.”

  “They made a mistake,” I say. “That’s not possible.”

  “It is to them. You could have used your dad’s key to get access to the cabinet and—“

  “I’m telling you it’s not possible.”

  “Look, just come down to my office, okay? They already have that Jackson Thomas boy in custody.”

  “Jackson’s been arrested?”

  “Brought him in an hour ago. With your record, it’s pretty clear who masterminded this whole thing. If you come in right now, I think we still have a chance to—“

  I hang up the phone.

  Jackson is in jail, not juvie this time, actual jail. And it’s all because of me. I lean against a concrete block wall, the feel of it cool on my back as I sink to the ground.

  And the other thing too. My fingerprint on a bullet. How?

  “So?” Tessa says. “What did he say?”

  “Give me a second. I need to think.”

  My fingerprint on a bullet. There’s no way.

  Tessa spots someone smoking on the corner and walks up to them. “Got a light?”

  “Yeah, sure,” the guy says.

  My fingerprint on a bullet.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spot the flame shoot out of the lighter, ignite the cigarette. Smoke curls from Tessa’s mouth.

  Then it hits me. Lighter to fire to steel wool to batteries.

  Batteries.

  The cool metallic feel of them on my fingertips. Me blindfolded and clueless. But in a moment so inconsequential that they crossed my fingertips for just a few seconds, then slipped my mind. Nearly forever. If it hadn’t been for that video, I wouldn’t even remember it.

  The moment it clicks into place other things do too. My missing earring, the few people who knew for certain I would be out of the room at the time of the murder, even that little detail must have been planned ahead.

  And something else, Lee Stuckey right about trusting people, just like I thought. Only now, everything feels flipped. But what other reason could there be?

  Connections form and join until I can see it all in front of me, like sheet music, each note perfectly in place, playing a melody I’ve never heard before.

  I know who did it. I know exactly who did it.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  “TESSA, IT MIGHT NOT be safe for us to stay together. They’re looking for me, and if they find me, they’ll find you too.” Tessa is a senior in high school like me, but she’s only seventeen, won’t be eighteen until August. They’d send her right back to her parents, who would send her right back to that place.

  “Are you sure? I don’t like the idea of you being alone.”

  I don’t like the idea of it either, but I can’t risk her life too.

  “I’m sure. It’s safer this way.” If what I think happened actually happened, I’l
l need proof. And it could be dangerous.

  We find a scrap of paper and borrow a pen. I give her my phone number at home, my address, my e-mail. I give her a note to give to my parents in case something happens to me. We split up the rest of the money and make a plan to meet at the boat house in City Park in a few days.

  She gives me a big hug, then heads toward the 16th Street Mall. I stand at the bus stop and watch her disappear into the crowd, wondering if I’ll ever see her again.

  Then I make a call.

  “Hey, Chuck. I need to ask you something.”

  A few bus rides and a short walk later, I’m standing in front of Pastor Pete’s house. He lives in a small split-level not far from the church. It’s made of red brick and looks like it was built in the ’80’s.

  I knock on the door, but there’s no answer. What time is it? Three something? He wouldn’t be home. He’d be in his office at church. Good.

  I try the handle, but it’s locked, so I go around to the back. That door is locked too, so is the side door to the garage. I test all the windows I can reach, but they don’t budge. On the upper floor, there’s a window open, but there’s no way to get to it. I’ll have to break a window or something.

  I spot a storage shed under a tree in the back yard, and go inside to look for something heavy. But I find something even better: a ladder.

  I pull it out and prop it against the house, underneath the open window, and climb up. The screen pops out of its frame so easily I realize how simple it would have been for the killer to get into my bedroom when they planted the gun.

  It’s a little bit of a reach to get myself through the opening. I have to launch myself off the ladder toward the window, and I accidentally kick the ladder away from the house in the process. There’s a loud clatter as it hits the ground. My stomach hits the sill hard, nearly knocking the breath out of me. But soon I’m tumbling through into Pastor Pete’s bedroom.

  It’s sparse, not many pieces of furniture: a king-sized bed, a small dresser, what looks like a chair from an old dining set I’ve never seen in the house. I paw through the dresser, and look under the bed and mattress, but what I’m looking for isn’t in here.

  I search the top floor and find nothing, not a file cabinet in sight. There are only two bedrooms, and all the other one has in it is a small glass desk, no drawers, and an empty closet. It looks like he never even comes in here.

  I go down the stairs onto the middle level. I scour the cabinets in the kitchen. Nothing. I go into the living room and pull up couch cushions, search the hall closet. Nothing.

  I go down into the garden level basement, and through a short hall with a door that leads into the garage.

  Much like Jesus, Pastor Pete fancies himself a carpenter. There’s a workbench and tools, and a half-finished project that looks like it will be a headboard. Probably a wedding present. I search the drawers of the workbench, search behind it, on shelves holding sports equipment, in a box labeled simply, Stuff. But that turns out to be random parts of electronic equipment, and after scouring the rest of the garage, I find nothing, so I head back inside.

  Even at just two bedrooms, the house seems big for a bachelor, but he told us he chose it for the basement. It’s big enough to hold thirty of us on a good night. I’ve spent so many nights in this room—summer barbecues with the youth council, organizing agendas with other school captains for Prayer at the Pole, or sometimes nights with just Mike and Paige for what we called PK night at PP’s. Pastor’s Kids. Pastor Pete’s. We’d watch movies, eat cereal—he’s not exactly a cook, but it didn’t matter. They were nights we all looked forward to, a chance to get away from the responsibilities of church. Pastor Pete seemed to understand that we needed them from time to time and opened his home to us. The memory of them makes everything so much more confusing.

  The room is wide open, but unlike the bedrooms, this space is packed with things. There’s a collection of mismatched couches lining the room, each of them Goodwill bargains hauled back here in his pickup truck and carried in by willing youth-group boys. There’s a collection of artistically crafted crosses on one wall and posters of Christian bands on the others. Built-in bookshelves line the fireplace at the far end of the room.

  I go through it all and find nothing. Could I be wrong about this?

  I put my hands on my hips and give the room one last scan. My eyes land on the bookshelves. I have an idea. There are no yearbooks, like what my parents have taking up space on our shelves. But sure enough, there’s a small, tattered-looking photo album on the bottom shelf. I leaf through.

  When I find it, it’s in an odd place, stuffed behind a photo of Pastor Pete on the pulpit at Bethany Bible College. It’s a picture of a woman with shiny black hair and olive skin, smiling broadly in a green wool dress from the ’70’s. She’s holding a baby boy. They’re standing against a clearly fake backdrop of fall foliage, the picture tinted yellow with age. I flip it over. In scrawled, looped handwriting, the back reads:

  Mommy and T.J., 6 months old, 1976.

  T.J. Not Peter, not Pete, not even Petey.

  And stuffed in right behind the photo? Tattered and stained, its edges mangled by years of being hidden away, is a birth certificate.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  PASTOR PETE IS JAY Peterson. Lee Stuckey was right. He did trust the wrong person. And I’m pretty sure that person turned against him, turned him in with everyone else. I realized it when I compared the dates. Jay Peterson died in 2005. Pastor Pete, with no real history to show for himself even though he was already twenty-four years old, started college the same year.

  I pocket the birth certificate and photo and head toward the front door. It’s the evidence I need, but only half. There’s still more to do before I go to the police.

  Then there’s a metallic click that makes my heart stop. I look for a place to hide, but there’s nowhere, no time.

  The door swings open just as I’m turning to go upstairs.

  Pastor Pete stands in the doorway, his arms laden with a suit bag from the dry cleaners and shopping bags from the mall. His face is startled at first, then confused.

  “Emma? What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

  I had hoped I wouldn’t have to do this. Not yet at least. “We need to talk,” I say, and his face falls. He walks past me into the kitchen, as though me breaking into his house, a person charged with murder, is no big deal at all.

  “All right. Whatever you need. Let me just put this stuff down.”

  I follow him inside, watch him hang the suit bag on the stair railing. It’s only then I realize what’s inside: his tuxedo. What day is it? Friday? Saturday? No, it must be Friday. His wedding is tomorrow.

  “What’s your real name?” I ask. “Because I know it’s not Peter Jakeman.”

  His body stiffens, but he says nothing.

  “Did the police cut you a deal? In exchange for identifying the others?” I wasn’t sure about this. But after I knew, when I was trying to figure out why, it made perfect sense.

  He turns to face me, and his face is ashen.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” he says. “Please, Emma. It means my life.”

  “Because you still have the money?”

  “The money? No. No. The police have it.”

  He sinks into a chair at the kitchen table and buries his hands in his hair. “That was the deal. The money and the rest of them, and I’d go free. They agreed not to make it public so the others wouldn’t know it was me. I don’t have a single dollar of it, I swear.”

  His eyes beg me to believe him.

  “Doesn’t matter as far as Stuckey and his crew are concerned, though. They’ll kill me themselves if they don’t send someone else to do it before they get out.”

  “From the way he made it sound, it seemed like it was you who was in charge.”

  He looks away from me, out the window. “I never told them to bring guns. That wasn’t supposed to happen. None of that was supposed to happen.”
>
  “June knew it was you, didn’t she? She recognized you. She remembered your face.”

  He nods.

  “When did you figure it out?”

  “Her testimony.”

  Then it clicks. Her story. He wouldn’t have known about it unless he was there. “It was you. You’re the one who saved her as a kid.”

  He nods. “We were all supposed to be at that birthday party. We were supposed to meet there to divide the cash, but I had already talked to the police by then. The other guys were getting arrested, or already had been. I’m the one who sat down next to her on that ride. I didn’t know she was too little for it. That experience…it changed everything for me.”

  He looks up at me then, his eyes bloodshot and his face flushed. It’s odd to see him this way, so weak and powerless. Our roles have switched. He’s the child now.

  “Afterward, she gave me the pig to say thank you. Her little heart, even at that age, was so generous. I saved it to remind me.” He takes a deep breath, “To remind me to do something good with my life. To make up for that little baby and his mom.”

  He reaches out for my hand and grips it with both of his, the way I’d imagine him gripping the hem of Christ’s robe. “I know how it looks, but I had nothing to do with her death. Absolutely nothing. I promise to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

  I look him straight in the eye, “I know you didn’t.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  “YOU DO?” PASTOR PETE asks.

  “But you told somebody else about it, didn’t you?”

  The look on his face breaks my heart. I can see the connections forming in his mind, the impossibility of it becoming possible, the weight of it crashing down on him. How his very presence caused her death, even if it wasn’t his fault.

  “No,” he says. “I can’t believe that.”

  “You have to tell the police,” I say. “There’s an innocent man in jail right now, and I’m not far behind. You have to tell them everything.”