by Madelyn Alt
Pointed enunciation, the kind that made me feel all of twelve years old. I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
“Well? Are you going to explain, or aren’t you?”
“It was Amanda’s,” I confessed in a rush, willing the right words to come forward. “There are files on it that are protected by passwords. I was talking to Annie about needing some help in breaking them open . . . but instead I decided that it should go to you ASAP.” Okay, that was a teensy white lie, but self-preservation was a pretty strong human impulse. I was fairly certain that if I told Tom the truth, that we weren’t originally planning to hand the CD over to him until we were able to break the passwords and access the files ourselves, I could probably kiss any potential future relationship with him permanently good-bye. “You know, because it could be important.”
Without saying a word, Tom tucked the CD into his jacket pocket while the lines of his face morphed from surprise to shock to cold, hard fury. “Where did you get this?”
The room had gone perfectly, utterly still. No more banter between Steff and Dr. Danny, no more one-liners from Marcus. Just the kind of cringe-worthy stillness that made me wish I was someone, anyone else.
My mouth was dry as I cleared my throat. “From Amanda’s mother. She—she asked me to . . . Oh, hell. She was out of her mind with a combination of grief and sedatives, and she asked for my help. I didn’t know what to tell her, so I took the CD.” I plunged on before I lost my nerve. “Apparently Mrs. Roberson found the CD hidden in her daughter’s room, wasn’t able to access the files herself, and got worried because of other things she had discovered about her daughter.”
“And the reason she didn’t come to me with this was . . . ?”
I shrugged helplessly. “It could have been nothing, you know, just a girl’s silly scribblings. Oh, I don’t know, maybe she should have turned it over immediately, maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly, but somehow she convinced herself you would only want to see it if it obviously pertained to Amanda’s death.”
“That’s a load of crap, Maggie, and you know it.”
“I know, I know,” I moaned, wishing I could rewind the last two days like a tape recorder. Where was life’s redo button when you needed it most? “You really need to talk with her more, Tom. She was worried about Amanda’s relationship with Jordan Everett, and—I’m not entirely sure about this—it seems she might have been worried about other boys as well? Maybe you know all of this already. You probably do. Oh, but just so that you know, I promised myself that, if the CD turned out to be more, I’d turn everything over to you, no matter what Mrs. Roberson wanted or didn’t want. I did. Really.”
“Well, that’s just great. That’s just perfect.” He closed his eyes, his jaw working as he strove for patience.
It had been a fool’s errand. I could see that now, though my heart had been in the right place. My head, well, I guess that was another story.
Tom slammed his hand down against the kitchen counter, hard, and my heart leapt into my throat. “What in the hell were you thinking, Maggie? Withholding evidence is a crime! Jesus H. Christ, I should book you for this, just to teach you a lesson.”
I winced and bowed my head. He was right, and I knew it.
“And don’t give me that puppy dog look, either,” he added, scowling. “Now. Is there anything else I should know about, while we’re practicing for your next reconciliation?”
Marcus took a step toward us, but I gave him a slight shake of my head as discouragement. Defending me would only make matters worse. I cleared my throat. “Well . . . if you’re wanting me to be entirely truthful . . .”
“Oh, I do, I do.”
“Well . . . there is the blog.”
He narrowed his eyes even further at me. “The blog? You mean one of those online diaries?”
I nodded as Marcus came to stand behind me anyway, a protective force hovering at my shoulder. “Authored by Amanda and uploaded secretly onto the SunnyStonyMill. com website. No one from the county knew it was there, and no one knew who wrote it. Marcus and I only just discovered the link to Amanda—”
“Quinn?” Tom’s eyes flicked left. “You mean, you discussed it with him before bringing it to the police? To me?” His mouth tightened. “Who else knows, Maggie? What’d you do, share it with the whole goddamned town?”
I could feel his sense of betrayal, his anger. It was pouring off him in rolling waves, each stronger than the one before it. “Tom, the high school kids . . . they had been visiting this web blog for months apparently before Amanda died.”
He looked at me, irony and hurt drowning his eyes. That was it for me. That was the extent of my honesty. I would have to leave the pics on the digital storage disk for another time. There was such a thing as too much too soon.
“So the whole town did know.” He shook his head and sighed in exasperation. “I want everything that you have, and I want it right now. Consider it confiscated.”
“All right.”
He took out his clipboard and scribbled something in big, bold letters. “One last thing, Maggie. What is the connection with Cutter?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t sure that he believed me.
It was probably terrible of me, but I handed over the original CD without a qualm because I knew that Marcus had made copies.
I probably definitely almost certainly should make time for confession to clear my conscience.
One of these days.
Tom left with the CD and the blog URL and passwords and headed off for a night of interrogation and investigation. I would have given anything to have been a fly on his shoulder, but all I could hope was that he and the rest of the Stony Mill PD managed to get the goods. Steff and Dr. Dan invited me to spend the night in Steff’s apartment, but I demurred—three is company only in TV land. Marcus went home only after I forced him out with the reminder that the police had the man who’d broken into my apartment and I was now completely safe. I’m not sure he believed me, but I insisted. There was nothing left to do but to try to get this mess of an apartment put back together.
It was as good a plan as any.
As I sifted through papers and books and the flotsam that had collected in out-of-the-way places, I couldn’t help thinking about all that had happened. Most of all I couldn’t get Randy Cutter’s face out of my head. I couldn’t get over the fact that he had invaded my private domain and risked his freedom all at once. It was almost too much to digest. A man I knew, someone I’d seen on a day-to-day basis for months. Why? What reason could be strong enough, dire enough, to bring a careful, disciplined man like Randy Cutter to the edge? What secret would he be willing to throw everything away to protect? I frowned, knowing the reason for Cutter’s irrational behavior must be clear.
He had acted out of fear.
The only answer was that he thought he might be implicated in some way in Amanda’s files. But how? Why?
For that I had no answer. Only a lot of speculation.
If one was to run with the assumption that Amanda had penned the lascivious tales on the blog (and at this point, I was 99.999 percent positive that was the case), then it became clear that Amanda was fairly sexually active. Okay, well, so, maybe “fairly” was an understatement. “Amazingly” might be more accurate. She had done the deed with her boyfriend, Jordan, but who else had received the, um, gift of her benevolence?
The blog was obviously the answer, but how to decipher the key?
Leaving the mess for the moment, I dug my printout of the blog from the voluminous depths of my purse, settled onto the sofa with my knees tucked beneath me, and began to read.
It was a task I should have undertaken before. Why had I not taken the time to go beyond the first ten pages? My only real excuse was the icky feeling that came over me the farther into the opus I ventured. The first few pages were the most innocuous, dealing primarily with boys at the high school. Lots of panting, lots of backseats. Typical kid stuff.
The bonfire following th
e big Stony Mill-Ouabache North football game more than a year ago seemed to be the kickoff for a whole new Amanda. Holy G-string, batgirl! The girl had certainly been making the most of her senior year, in more ways than one. It was at this point that Amanda began naming her conquests—not with real names, nothing as easy as that. No, Amanda had been too smart by half. She used aliases—Alligator Man, the Mole, Papa Bear. All the easier to make fun of them, my dear. But what was not clear to me was how many conquests Amanda had made in total.
I flipped through more pages, mesmerized by the tale that was unfolding before my eyes. At first it seemed to be a high school version of a secret swingers’ society, taking place at parties, raves, school dances, after games. All recorded faithfully in Amanda’s signature irreverent voice.
More disturbing, however, was an encounter that seemed to predate many of the others. Her first? A repeat encounter with someone Amanda described as Papa Bear. Someone considerably older than her. Someone who gave her gifts and who encouraged her Princess-perfect behavior, until . . .
When did the relationship stop? Or did it stop at all?
More importantly, did he know about Amanda’s tell-all blog? Did any of them? How many were out there, walking around Stony Mill waiting for the guillotine to drop?
So many questions. So many men. So little time.
The blog was overwhelming me. Darkness clung to the words, festering in the hidden nooks and crannies, sour and stale with the undercurrents of corruption and vice. I made myself stop after a time. It was simply too much for this small-town girl to swallow in large doses.
My phone rang at ten-thirty as I was restacking my collection of Magnum tapes on the shelves next to the TV.
“Hey, Sunshine. Are you doin’ okay?”
I smiled into the receiver. “You know, Marcus, you’re a real worrywart. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“I just wanted to see how you were holding up.”
“I’m fine. Just finishing up here. Have you heard anything more about Randy Cutter?”
“Nada. As in, not-a-thing. Oh, by the way, the news about the break-in at your place is out. Not sure how, but you know how people around this town are. My mom heard about it at the gas station tonight, of all places. And apparently Randy Cutter’s name is being bandied about as well.”
“Bandied about, how?”
There was a moment of silence, and then he admitted, “As Amanda’s murderer.”
I blinked, not sure I had heard correctly. Randy Cutter? Could it be? I thought of what I knew of him. It wasn’t much. A man in his mid-forties, ex-military, whose bearing still demonstrated that stiffness of spine and stature. How long he had lived in Stony Mill, I didn’t know, but I didn’t think he was an old-time resident. Perhaps one of our nicer big-city expatriates who came for the lower property taxes and business opportunities that our expanding population provided. I knew he was neat. Precise. A seemingly upstanding citizen. Was it all a front for deviant behavior? Could he possibly have killed to keep secrets safe? “What do you think, Marcus?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think it would be the first time a man has killed to save himself a little hardship.”
Neither did I.
“Liss and I are coming over on Saturday,” Marcus was saying, “to give your apartment a good airing with sage and incense. It will clear out any residual vibes from Cutter’s intrusion.”
I glanced around me with newly wary eyes. I had been so focused on cleaning up the mess that I hadn’t really thought about subjects paranormal. In fact, I’d been home so little in the last week that I’d scarcely thought about the strangeness I had encountered in my own apartment in the last two-plus months. Would Cutter’s intrusion make it worse? “That sounds like a very good idea,” I said, quick to agree to anything that would head wayward energies off at the pass. I was nothing if not slightly chicken.
“Great. Sure you don’t want me to sleep on your sofa and keep watch until then? I make a pretty mean cheese omelette, too.”
“Hmm. Tempting,” I said with a grin, “but you have your own life to live, and I know I’m safe with Cutter in custody. I’ll stick it out on my own.”
“All right. Promise to call if you need me?”
“Promise.”
I hung up with a bemused smile on my face. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Marcus had feelings for me . . . Naaah. Ridiculous. He was just being nice. Brotherly, even.
I was brushing my teeth when the next call came.
“Someone breaks into your apartment and you don’t even bother to call your mother to let her know you’re all right?” was the greeting.
“Hi, Mom. I’m fine. Really. I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Margaret! What have you been up to? What aren’t you telling me?”
I shrugged. “I have no explanation, really. I’m just thankful they have the man in custody. It was luck that made that cop—”
“Officer.”
“—Officer, then—pick up on Cutter’s presence on the street. I’ll sleep just fine tonight knowing he’s down at the station.”
She hemmed and hawed over the phone line. “Well, at least you’re safe. I’m sending your father over tomorrow to install a dead bolt on your door and to check all the window locks. No sense in having the instance repeated, and we’ll both sleep better if that’s been done.”
I was feeling all warm and fuzzy, basking in her motherly concern for me, which was really quite touching, when she ruined it all with:
“Are you quite sure this doesn’t have anything to do with that woman you work for? She’s foreign, isn’t she?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked, exasperated.
“There’s no need to take a tone, Margaret, I was asking a simple question. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with being foreign. It’s just that we don’t really know her people, do we, and with some things in life, a person’s history must be taken into account.”
My mother had a funny thing about knowing everybody else’s business, past, present, and future. “Well, I’m sure even outsiders have history, Mom. We just aren’t always privy to it.”
“And that’s really part of the problem, isn’t it? People move around sometimes to hide who they are, don’t they? Would you rather place your trust in the person you’ve lived next door to your whole life, or someone who could be a drug lord or a bank robber or even an axe murderer in a town across the state line?”
Considering that the neighbor we’d lived next door to for the majority of my formative years had spent hours on end shooting at all the squirrels, groundhogs, and chipmunks, and even cats and dogs, who were unfortunate enough to wander into his yard, I wasn’t so sure that proximity was a fair measure of the reliability of a person’s nature.
“Well, good night, then, dear. Just remember to jam a chair up underneath the doorknob of your outer door for now.”
“All right.”
All right? What was I saying?
A chair? Was that really necessary?
I was starting to feel jittery again, and I knew there was no need, dammit, not with Cutter in police custody.
I didn’t use a chair, but I did check the locks again. Twice. And then I sat up against the pillows on my bed, my knees tucked up under the blankets and my teddy, G.T., clutched to my breast as I stared bead-eyed into the shadows.
There was something in my apartment. I would swear to it. Something small and shadowy, about the size of a cat. I could see it darting around the outer edges of the room. Like a rat (gulp!) but noiseless. In fact, completely silent.
There was more than one.
Worse, I could stare right at the shifting shadowy bodies, then switch on the light, and there would be nothing there.
Well, I say worse, but I think that was probably better. I’d have peed my pants if there did prove to be little creatures peering back at me, blinking in the sudden light. Of course, when I turned the light back off, they would reappear,
darting helter-skelter around the baseboards and across the floor.
I tried to remember what I’d read about the shadows, and the debate about what kinds of creatures or entities they actually were. Some said they were brownies, some theorized fairies, some said they were the spirits of animals. I didn’t know what to think, except that I wished they’d find someone else’s home to hole up in.
Crap. Maybe I wouldn’t be sleeping tonight after all.
With a sigh, I switched both bedside lamps on. At least with the lights on, I didn’t have to see the creepy little buggers.
Had they always been there? Had I just not noticed? Was it the same with all of the otherworldly things I had seen or witnessed in the last few months? Had I been blinded by the popular modern belief that such things were figments of a collective imagination?
I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
Chapter 18
The ringing of the telephone woke me up.
I opened my eyes and blinked in confusion at the lights. Oh. Oh, yeah.
More insistent ringing.
Phone. Right.
I threw the covers back and swung my legs over the edge of the bed in one quick movement that sent a sheaf of papers flying. The blog. I’d spent the wee hours avoiding shadows of one kind by immersing myself in shadows of another. An interesting diversionary tactic, but one that seemed to have worked. Judging by my current level of grogginess, I’d fallen asleep at some point during the night.
I stumbled out to the living room and grabbed the phone receiver before it could shrill again. “’Lo?”
Tongue. Not functioning. Definitely not enough sleep.
“Maggie! I just heard! What happened? Was it really Randy Cutter? I’ve been in his store downtown. That’s where I bought the armoire in Greg’s and my bedroom. I can’t believe it. What on earth was he thinking? Do you really think he was involved in the Roberson girl’s death? Well, the town will sleep easier at least. It’s better to know than to not know at all. At least now I don’t have to worry about letting Jenna ride her bike on our sidewalk.”
