"What was he doing out there?"
"Said he went for a walk and fell asleep under the stars." She made a face. I shared the sentiment.
"So they think he's lying about when he found the body, but they don't think he killed her?"
"That's the impression I get."
I folded my arms and frowned. "They question Eric and let him go. They're questioning Skeeter and probably will let him go. Interesting."
The police sometimes lied about what they knew, let a suspect go, and gave him enough rope to hang himself. Maybe that's what they were doing.
We both glanced at the door opened. Granddad walked in looking harried. He did a double-take when he saw me and gestured for me to follow him to his office.
"Close the door," he said, plopping down in his chair. His usually neat space was cluttered with file folders and empty food containers. From the faint light streaming through the window, I saw the strain on his face. "What have you got for me?"
"Me? I…well…"
"You look worried. Did you mother call again?"
"No need," I said, sitting down across from his desk. "She's determined."
"She's as stubborn as your grandmother," he said, carefully pulling the top off his coffee cup.
I wondered if he knew about the mental institution.
"Do you think my parents might have me committed?"
The look on his face confirmed my suspicions. He laughed. "Don't be silly. Things were different back then. You know, parapsychology is a legitimate field these days. We know so much more about psychic phenomenon—"
"But some people still believe it's evil," I said.
"Well, I'm not one of those people." He narrowed his eyes at me. "Shouldn't you be home packing?"
"I was thinking I could read suspects for you. Help with the case."
He choked on his coffee. "Oh, how the tide has turned! Now you want to read for me. No, I want you away from here, at least until this mess is over."
So there it was. I have no chance of changing my mother's mind if my grandfather agreed with her.
He watched me thoughtfully. "I wish Tessa hadn't told you about the hospital."
"Why did Grandma tell her and not me?"
"When Tessa came to stay with us, she was shy and maybe even a little depressed. They spent a lot of time together, talking. Then she met Tim, and things began looking up for her."
I waited for him to answer the question, but he patted the papers on his desk.
"Lots of work to do. See you at home."
"One more question," I said. "Does Eric have an alibi?"
"His mother said he was at home asleep."
"Do you believe her?"
He winked. "We check out everything."
Chapter Nine
I left the office but lingered around the station. I heard Rory tell Skeeter he was free to go, and I followed him as he scampered out of the building. I broke into a jog to catch him before he reached his truck.
"Skeeter?"
He looked around, shading his eyes with his hand. His dirty-blond hair hung in greasy strings around his pale face. He was twelve years older than me, and he resembled Kurt Cobain. Or so my mother said.
The police had cleared him after the shooting eight years ago, but his wife left him, anyway. He started selling crystal meth. Then he started using. Now he was a sad-looking man who got high in the woods at Jepson's Point.
He wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt. In this heat. When I reached him, I noticed he wasn't sweating at all.
"Look who it is," he said.
I gave him a weak smile. "They didn't arrest you."
"They don't know what the hell they're doing." He looked me up and down. "Damn, girl. You grew up nice."
His checking me out didn't make me cringe. "You were doing drugs out there that night?"
He sneered. "I've been clean since March. I was out taking a walk."
"On a Saturday night into Sunday morning?" The police had been over this with him, but I needed to do only what I could do. "What were you really doing out there?"
He stared at me with vacant eyes. "Why don't you do your witchy thing and find out."
Here we go again. "I can't read people's minds. If I could, I wouldn't be asking you questions."
He leaned toward me expectantly.
"I read people's emotions."
Skeeter smirked. "Weak. You don't need to be a psychic to do that."
"And I know what a dead person was thinking just before he or she died."
He stopped smirking. "Is that why your granddaddy brings you to see dead bodies? What was Kate thinking, then?"
I bit my lip. He's a suspect. If I told him what I'd seen, he might use it to avoid a murder charge.
"I think she knew the killer."
"Yeah? And I take it you don't know who that is?"
I shook my head.
He glanced at the police station. "Maybe I can do something about that," he said. He started walking to his dingy white truck.
"Do you have the murder weapon in your truck or something?"
Skeeter got in, leaned across the seat, and opened the passenger-side door.
I looked back at the police station. "What do you want to show me? Can't you just tell me?"
He rolled his eyes. "Just get in. What, you think I'm the killer?"
I didn't know what to think. But if Skeeter had information...I gave the station a fleeting look, patted my back pocket to make sure I had my cell phone, and got in. The stun gun my Granddad insisted I carry was in the glove compartment of my car.
He started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot. He lit a cigarette and took a long drag. "I may be an accidental killer, but I'm not a murderer."
Our eyes briefly connected. Intense regret. Deep and oppressive self-pity. Longing and loneliness. Anybody with any sensitivity at all could sense these things about Skeeter Watson. But I couldn't be sure his regret had to do with killing Kate recently, killing his father-in-law years ago, or both.
He jerked a thumb behind him. "And I'd have to be pretty stupid to kidnap the chief's granddaughter in broad daylight and take her somewhere and kill her."
I heard a car engine start and watched a car drive by. "Are we going to Jepson's Point?"
"Yep," he said, flicking ashes out the window.
"Who do you think did it?"
His laugh turned into a cough. "What would you say if I told you I think Officer Timmy did it?"
I shook my head slightly but otherwise stared at the road.
"Come on," he said. "I knew Tim was sleeping with that girl long before everybody else found out. He's got the motive."
"Just because he slept with her..." I trailed off, not sure I believed what I was going to say.
He took another long drag and tossed the stump out the window. "Let's say he had motive because she was going to spill the beans. Did he have the means? Kate was hit with something blunt. A tree branch, maybe. That's easy. Next, did he have the opportunity?"
I realized I was gaping at him. "Tessa said he was at home with her, in bed."
He glanced at me, his eyebrows raised. "What else would a wife and mother of young kids with a husband suspected of murder say?"
"So you're saying Tim might have killed her, and Tessa is covering for him?"
"I'm just considering possibilities."
"You found the body at what time?"
He cut his eyes at me. "Like I told the cops, around eight Sunday morning."
"What were you doing out—"
He held up a hand. "Not the point. It's not against the law to go for a walk. Stay with me here."
I stared at his profile as he rattled off how Eric was too obvious a suspect and how Tim was a stronger one. He also brought up a drifter-murderer theory because the Interstate-77 access ramp was a few miles from the center of town.
"That's unlikely, though," he said. "Just tossing things out. You?"
I told him about Kate rejecting Eric and Adam, which he alrea
dy knew.
"That's all you got?" He shook his head. "Chief of police's grandkid and town psychic. You ever thought about going deeper than that?"
"Well, the pool of potential killers is limited," I said, feeling defensive.
He shifted in his seat. "That's right. Limited to people she knew. Now, think beyond the men she screwed and screwed over. Who else would have a reason to kill her. And," he said, holding up a finger, "did the person intend to kill her?"
A half-formed thought teetered at the edge of my mind. "So you think the person might have lured her there just to talk, and then things went wrong?"
Skeeter shrugged and gave me a sideways glance. "Did your granddaddy tell you what the murder weapon was?"
I shook my head. "They're not releasing that information, so when they question people—"
"Yeah, yeah, the murderer might give himself—or herself—away. But I thought your grandfather might have told you."
"And if he had, I wouldn't tell you."
He flicked his hand as if batting away a fly. "That don't matter. I'm guessing it was something handy."
I wouldn't have guessed Skeeter was so talkative. Or analytical. I never asked my grandfather about the weapon. Long and slender. It could have been a tree branch. Or a baseball bat. I found myself wanting to open up to Skeeter about the dream. I decided to ease into it with small talk.
"I think the moon was full that night. Did you notice?"
He frowned. "It was kind of dark. Not a full moon."
I nodded absently, brushing strands of hair out of my face. The hot wind from the open windows had blown it all over my head.
"I read somewhere that the moon is actually black," he said. "Did you know that? People think it's white."
I laughed. "A black moon? I don't think so."
He grinned. "It looks white because the sun's shining on it."
I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the moon as it appeared in my dream. Had it been full? I did a quick Google search on my phone. The night Kate was killed, the moon was in a waxing crescent phase.
Forget about the dream for now.
"Skeeter, when you said I should go deeper into this, what did you mean?"
"I meant you should consider people other than the husband, the dumped boyfriend, and the other rejects. Who else would want to see Kate dead?" I must have been silent a beat too long for his taste. "Come on, girl. Just say it out loud."
I took a deep breath. "A cheated-on wife might want to see her dead."
He nodded. "She might."
"But in this case, she has an alibi."
He smirked. "Right. So if one was asleep, how could he or she be sure the other was there the whole time?"
"You have a point," I said. "But I know Tim and Tessa. They're not murderers."
He cut his eyes at me again. "You probably didn't think Tim would turn out to be a cheater."
In the brief moment we held eye contact, I sensed an undercurrent of excitement. Was this all a game to him?
"You know more than you're saying, don't you?"
"Beware of the evil eyes," he said.
"Huh?"
He kept his eyes on the road, and I couldn't tell if he was serious or joking. Before I could respond, his truck lurched forward. My pulse quickened, and my hands flew up in front of me. The instinctive move kept my chest from slamming into the dashboard. The passenger-side seatbelt hadn't locked with the impact.
The tires screeched as Skeeter cut the steering wheel to the right to keep from running off the road.
"What the hell? Crazy bastard!"
"Who is that?" I said. My heart pounding, I twisted around and saw a black SUV I didn't recognize. The windshield was tinted too dark to see the driver. "And this seatbelt is broken!"
I expected Skeeter to pull over, but he sped up.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm gonna kill that snot-nosed little—"
The driver slammed into the back of the truck again. I didn't have time to brace myself. My body, still twisted in the seat, jerked forward. I hit the dashboard. My right arm took the brunt of the impact. I held my breath against the sharp pain and gripped my arm. "Skeeter, stop this truck!"
But he maintained his speed, sideswiping a mailbox.
Where were the police when you needed them?
"My arm...Skeeter, stop."
"Hold on!"
He made a sharp right, his truck fishtailing. What had I gotten myself into? Skeeter had seemed so rational a minute ago. Now he was acting like the crazy man everybody said he was. I reached for my cell phone, temporarily forgetting that my right arm felt as if it were on fire. The truck swerved left, and so did I.
Before I could tell him again to stop, the words caught in my throat. An oak tree seemed to be moving toward us. He cut the wheel until the driver's side faced the tree. In those seconds, my grandmother's face floated before my eyes. Tires screeched, and the last thing I saw were the squashed innards of a dead bug on the windshield.
Chapter Ten
I read somewhere that the moon is actually black.
A black moon? No, but it has black eyes. Like those in a painted portrait, they follow me across the field and peek at me through the trees, even when I run. I dive and bury myself under weeds and broken sticks. Like a child, I think that if I cover my eyes, it won't see me. When I remove my hands, I'm still blind. Then the moon, a big white ball, sinks lower into the sky. I peer into its eyes. Yes, I will read the moon. Seems like the most logical thing in the world. I focus so intensely, my head begins to ache. The brick wall blocks me from reading. It's not my red-brick wall. This one is gray, slimy, and warped. It bulges outward on one side and caves in on the other.
A voice appeared in my head, echoing as if it came from the end of a long tunnel.
"He won't get away with this."
My eyes were closed, and I squeezed them tighter to blot out the gray slime.
"Son, the last thing I need is for you to take the law into your own hands. He's been arrested. Just calm down, okay?"
Easy. Watch her head. Guinan? Guinan?
"Calm down? Mr. Jepson, he tried to kill her."
"We don't know that yet."
My head felt like it weighed fifty pounds, and something was wrapped around my neck. I reached to touch it, and a sharp pain vibrated through my right arm. I gasped and felt a warm hand on my forehead.
We're going to have to cut him out of there.
"Skeeter?" A voice croaked. Was it mine?
"It's Zeke. You're in the hospital, Guinan."
As soon as he said it, the awareness hit me. The antiseptic smell of the hospital I hadn't noticed before now surrounded me like a vapor cloud. Even before I opened them, I knew the lights would be bright. Too bright.
"Granddad?"
"I'm here, hon. Can you open your eyes?"
My lids fluttered. I didn't want to open them. My mind was trying to pull me back into unconsciousness. But they opened, and the blurry forms of Zeke and my grandfather hovered over me.
"That's my girl," he said. "Do you remember what happened?"
Screeching tires. Breaking glass. A moving tree. "Someone ran us off the road?"
Granddad nodded. "It was Eric Rodman."
My eyes slid to Zeke. As I watched him, his features sharpened until I could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes. I missed those eyes. I must have spoken out loud, because his cheeks blazed pink.
My grandfather cleared his throat.
"Why did Eric do it?"
"That's what we're tying to find out. He's locked up right now. He's not talking."
"His daddy's lawyer," Zeke said. Contempt dripped from his voice. "What were you doing with Skeeter Watson?"
"Is he okay?"
He exhaled an impatient sigh. "He'll live. Did he force you into his truck or something?"
I shook my head and immediately regretted it. It felt like my brain rattled in my skull. "He was supposed to show me something at Jepson's P
oint."
My grandfather's eyes widened. He and Zeke had the same exasperated expression. "You need to stay away from those woods. Why in the world would you go there alone with him, anyway?"
"It's no longer a crime scene, and Skeeter's not dangerous." As soon as I said it, I felt foolish. I'm in the hospital.
Granddad took a deep breath. "He is a drug dealer and a user. I don't want you anywhere near him."
"He had something to show me."
"We've been over every inch of that crime scene," he said. "We've gathered what we need to gather, and—"
"But Skeeter's out there all the time," I said. "Maybe he wanted to show me something that wasn't part of the crime scene."
"That would crack the case open?" he said. "Your mother was right, and I don't say that lightly. You need to leave Ridge Grove. If I had my way, you'd be on a plane tonight. But the doctor wants to keep you here at least overnight."
My reached up and touched a large, square bandage on the right side of my forehead. "How bad is it?"
"Luckily, just a mild concussion and whiplash. A nasty cut on your head. A few scratches on your face." His voice was pinched. He dealt with injuries all the time on the job, but seeing his granddaughter's was another matter.
I glanced at my arm. "Is it broken?"
"No, but it's bruised pretty bad."
Zeke silently listened to the exchange. His mouth was a straight line, but he softened his expression when I smiled at him. "Your grandfather's right."
"About what?"
"Everything. All of it. I wish you could leave tonight."
My chest felt heavier than my head.
"Until the killer is behind bars," he said as if to clarify. Too late.
I looked at Granddad. "You know, when Skeeter saw that tree and realized he couldn't stop in time, I think he made sure it hit his side instead of head on."
"I give him points for injuring you instead of killing you," Zeke said.
Granddad cleared his throat again. "Well, it's over, and she's okay." He leaned over and kissed my forehead. "I need to make some phone calls. Be back soon."
"Where's Skeeter?"
"Across the hall, a few doors down. He's still unconscious."
When he left the room, I looked into Zeke's frowning face. His eyelashes are so long. I must have been on heavy pain meds.
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