"Yeah," Carrie said. "No lights, no warning, nothing. Just bam."
"We went right into the guardrail," Josh said. "No big deal. We weren't going very fast. I thought, Shit, I crushed the fender. And I started to back up. But then he hit us again – "
"Oh, but surely – " Father Dominic began.
Josh, however, went on as if the priest hadn't spoken.
"And the second time he hit us," Josh said, "we just kept on going."
"As if the guardrail weren't even there," Felicia put in.
"We went straight over." Josh slipped his hands back into his pockets. "And woke up down here. Dead."
There was silence after that. At least no one spoke. There was still the sound of the waves, of course, and the crackling of the fire. Spray from the sea, blown by the wind, was coating my hair and forming little ice crystals in it. I moved closer to the fire, thankful for its warmth…
And realized, all in a rush, why the RLS Angels had gone to the trouble of building it. Because that's what they'd have done if they'd still been alive. They'd have built a fire for warmth. So what if they could no longer feel its heat? It didn't matter. That's what live people would have done.
And all they wanted was to be alive again.
"Troubling," Father Dominic said. "Very troubling. But surely, my children, you can see that it was just an accident – "
"An accident?" Josh glared at Father D. "There was nothing accidental about it, Father. That guy – that Michael guy – came at us on purpose."
"But that's ridiculous," Father Dominic said. "Perfectly ridiculous. Why on earth would he do such a thing?"
"Simple," Josh said with a shrug. "He's jealous."
"Jealous?" Father Dominic looked appalled. "Perhaps you aren't aware of this, young man, but Michael Meducci, whom I have known since he was in the first grade, is a very gifted student. He is well liked by his fellow classmates. Why in heaven's name would he – No. No, I'm sorry. You're mistaken, my boy."
I wasn't sure which universe Father Dom was living in – the one where Michael Meducci was well liked by his fellow classmates – but it sure wasn't this one. As far as I knew, no one at the Mission Academy liked Michael Meducci – or even knew him, outside of the chess club. But then, I had only been there a few months, so maybe I was wrong.
"He may be gifted," Josh said, "but he's still a geek."
Father Dominic blinked at him. "Geek?" he ventured.
"You heard me." Josh shook his head. "Look, Father, face facts. Your boy Meducci is nothing. Nothing. We" – he pointed at himself, then gestured toward his friends – "on the other hand, were it. The most popular people in our school. Nothing happened at RLS unless it had our seal of approval. A party wasn't a party until we got there. A dance wasn't a dance unless Josh, Carrie, Mark, and Felicia – the RLS 'Angels' – were there. Okay? Are you getting the picture now?"
Father Dominic looked confused. "Um," he said. "Not quite."
Josh rolled his eyes. "Is this guy for real?" he asked me and Jesse.
Jesse said, without smiling, "Very much so."
"Okay," Josh said. "Then let me put it to you this way. This Meducci guy? He may have the sparkling GPA. But so what? That's nothing. I've got a 4.0. I hold the school record in the high jump. I belong to the National Honor Society. I play forward on the basketball team. I've been president of the student council for three years in a row, and for a lark, this spring I tried out for – and got – the lead in the school drama society's production of Romeo and Juliet. Oh, and guess what? I was accepted to Harvard. Early decision."
Josh paused to take a breath. Father Dominic opened his mouth to say something, but Josh barreled right along.
"How many Saturday nights," Josh asked, "do you think Michael Meducci has sat alone in his room playing video games? Huh? Well, let me put it to you another way: do you know how many I've spent caressing a joystick? None. Want to know why? Because there's never been a Saturday night when I didn't have something to do – a party to go to or a girl to take out. And not just any girl, either, but the hottest, most popular girls in school. Carrie here" – he gestured at Carrie Whitman, sitting in the sand in her ice-blue evening gown – "models part-time up in San Francisco. She's done commercials. She was homecoming queen."
"Two years in a row," Carrie pointed out in her squeaky voice.
Josh nodded. "Two years in a row. Are you starting to get it now, Father? Is Michael Meducci dating a model? I don't think so. Is Michael Meducci's best friend like mine, Mark over there, captain of the football team? Does Michael Meducci have a full athletic scholarship to UCLA?"
Mark, obviously not the group genius, went, with feeling, "Go Bruins."
"What about me?" Felicia demanded.
Josh said, "Yes, what about Mark's girlfriend, Felicia? Head cheerleader, captain of the dance team, and, oh yeah, winner of a National Merit Scholarship because of her superior grades. So, keeping all that in mind, let's ask that question again, shall we? Why would a guy like Michael Meducci want people like us dead? Simple: he's jealous."
The silence that swept in after this statement was almost as penetrating as the smell of brine permeating the air. No one said a word. The Angels looked too self-righteous to speak, and Father Dom seemed stunned by their revelations. Jesse's feelings on the subject were unclear; he looked a little bored. I guess to a guy born over a hundred and fifty years ago, the words National Merit Scholarship don't mean much.
I pried my tongue from where it had been stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was very thirsty from my long hike down, and I certainly wasn't looking forward to the climb back up to Father Dom's car. But I felt compelled, despite my discomfort, to speak.
"Or," I said, "it could be because of his sister."
C H A P T E R
13
Everyone – from Father Dom to Carrie Whitman – blinked at me in the firelight.
"Excuse me?" Josh said. Only his tone was more impatient than polite.
"Michael's sister," I said. "The one who's in the coma."
Don't ask me what made me think of it. Maybe it was Josh's reference to parties – how no party began until he and the other Angels got there. That started me thinking of the last party I'd heard about – the one where Michael's sister had fallen into the pool and nearly drowned. Some party that must have been. Had the police broken it up after the ambulance arrived?
Father Dominic's shaggy white eyebrows went up. "You mean Lila Meducci? Yes, of course. How could I have forgotten about her? It's tragic – very tragic – what happened to her."
Jesse piped up for the first time in some minutes. "What happened to her?" he asked, lifting his chin from the knee he'd been resting it on, his foot propped up against the boulder he was sitting on.
"An accident," Father Dom said, shaking his head. "A terrible accident. She tripped and fell into a swimming pool and very nearly drowned. Her parents are losing hope that she'll ever regain consciousness."
I grunted. "That's one version of the story, anyway," I said. Michael's parents had obviously cleaned it up for the principal of their daughter's school.
"You left out the part," I went on, "about how she was at a party in the Valley when it happened. And that she was completely blotto when she went under." I narrowed my eyes at the four ghosts seated on the opposite side of the fire. "So was everybody else at this particular party, apparently, since nobody noticed what happened to her until she'd been under long enough to curdle her brain." I looked at Jesse. "Did I mention the fact that she's only fourteen years old?"
Jesse, still sitting on the boulder, his hands around the propped up knee, looked at the Angels. "I don't suppose any of you," he said, "would know something about this."
Mark looked disgusted. "How would any of us know about some geek's sister getting wasted at a party?" he demanded.
"Perhaps because one – or all – of you happened to be at the party at the time?" I suggested sweetly.
Father Dominic looked startled. "Is
this true?" He blinked down at the Angels. "Do any of you know anything about this?"
"Of course not," Josh said – too quickly, I thought. Felicia's "As if" was not very convincing, either.
It was Carrie who gave it away, though.
"Even if we did," she demanded with unfeigned indignation, "what would it matter? Just because some stupid wannabe drank herself into a coma at one of our parties, how does that make us responsible?"
I stared at her. Felicia, I remembered, was the National Merit Scholar. Carrie Whitman had only been homecoming queen. Twice.
"How about, just for starters," I said, "making alcohol available to an eighth grader?"
"How were we supposed to know how old she was?" Felicia asked, not very nicely. "I mean, she had enough makeup slathered on, I could have sworn she was forty."
"Yeah," Carrie said. "And that particular party was by invitation only. I certainly never issued an invitation to any eighth grader."
"If you want to hold someone responsible," Felicia said, "how about the idiot who brought her in the first place?"
"Yeah," Carrie said angrily.
"I don't think Susannah is the one holding you responsible for what happened to Michael's sister." Jesse's voice, after the shrillness of the girls, sounded like distant thunder. It shut the others up quite effectively. "Michael, I believe, is the one who killed you for it."
Father Dominic made a soft noise as if Jesse's words had sunk, like a fist, into his stomach.
"Oh, no," he said. "No, surely you can't think – "
"It makes more sense," Jesse said, "than this one's argument" – he nodded briefly at Josh – "that Michael did it out of jealousy because he has no … what is it? Oh, yes. Dates on Saturday night."
Josh looked uncomfortable. "Well," he said, tugging on his evening jacket's lapels. "I didn't know the skank they fished out of Carrie's pool was Meducci's sister."
"This," Father Dominic said, "is too much. Simply too much. I am … I am appalled by all of this."
I glanced at him, surprised by what I heard in his voice. It was – if I wasn't mistaken – pain. Father Dominic was actually hurt by what he'd just heard.
"A young girl is in a coma," he said, his blue-eyed gaze very bright as it bored into Josh, "and you call her names?"
Josh had the grace to look ashamed of himself. "Well," he said, "it's just a figure of speech."
"And you two." Father Dominic pointed at Felicia and Carrie. "You break the law by serving alcohol to minors, and dare to suggest that it is the girl's own fault she was harmed by it?"
Carrie and Felicia exchanged glances.
"But," Felicia said, "nobody else got hurt, and they were all drinking, too."
"Yeah," Carrie said. "Everybody was doing it."
"That doesn't matter." Father Dominic's voice was shaking with emotion now. "If everyone else jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would that make it right?"
Whoa, I thought. Father D obviously needed a little refresher course in student discipline if he thought that old line still had any punch.
And then my eyes widened as I noticed that Father Dominic was now pointing at me. Me? What had I done?
I soon found out.
"And you," Father Dominic said. "You still insist that what happened to these young people was not an accident, but deliberate murder!"
My jaw sagged. "Father D," I managed to say when I'd levered it back into place. "Excuse me, but it's pretty obvious – "
"It isn't." Father Dominic dropped his arm. "It isn't obvious to me. So the boy had motive? That doesn't make him a killer."
I glanced at Jesse for help, but it was apparent from his startled expression that he was as baffled by Father Dominic's outburst as I was.
"But the guardrail," I tried. "The loosened bolts – "
"Yes, yes," Father Dominic said, quite testily for him. "But you're missing the most important point, Susannah. Supposing Michael did lie in wait for them. Perhaps he did intend, when they turned that corner, to ram them. How was he able to tell, in the dark, that he had the right car? Tell me that, Susannah. Anyone could have come around that corner. How could Michael have known he had the right car? How?"
He had me there. And he knew it. I stood there, the wind from the sea whipping hair into my face, and looked at Jesse. He looked back at me, and gave a little shrug. He was at as much of a loss as I was. Father Dom was right. It didn't make any sense.
At least until Josh said, "The Macarena."
We all looked at him.
"I beg your pardon?" Father Dominic said. Even in anger, he was unerringly polite.
"Of course!" Felicia scrambled to her feet, tripping over her evening gown's long skirt. "Of course!"
Jesse and I exchanged yet another confused look. "The what?" I asked Josh.
"The Macarena," Josh said. He was smiling. Smiling, he didn't look anything like the guy who'd tried to drown me earlier that day. Smiling, he looked like what he was – a smart, athletic eighteen-year-old in the prime of his life.
Except that his life was over.
"I was driving my brother's car," he explained, still grinning. "He's away at college. He said I could use it while he was gone. It's bigger than my car. The only thing is, he had this stupid thing put in so that when you honk the horn it plays the Macarena."
"It's so embarrassing," Carrie informed us.
"And the night we were killed," Josh went on, "I laid on the horn as we were turning that corner – the one Michael was waiting behind."
"You're supposed to honk when you go around those hairpin curves," Felicia said, excitedly.
"And it played the Macarena." Josh's smile vanished as if wiped away by the wind. "And that's when he hit us."
"No other car horn on the peninsula," Felicia said, her expression no longer excited, "plays the Macarena. Not anymore. The Macarena was only hot for about the first two weeks after it came out. Then it became totally lame. Now they only play it at weddings and stuff."
"That's how he knew." Josh's voice was no longer filled with indignation. Now he merely sounded sad. His gaze was locked on the sea – a sea that was too dark to be distinguishable from the cloudy night sky. "That's how he knew it was us."
Frantically, I thought back to what Michael had told me, a few hours earlier, in his mother's minivan. They came barreling around that corner. That's what he'd said. Didn't honk. Nothing.
Only now Josh was saying they had honked. That not only had they honked, but that they had honked in a particular way, a way that distinguished Josh's car horn from all others....
"Oh," Father Dominic said, sounding as if he weren't feeling well. "Dear."
I totally agreed with him. Except …
"It still doesn't prove anything," I said.
"Are you kidding?" Josh looked at me as if I were the crazy one – like he wasn't wearing a tuxedo on the beach. "Of course it does."
"No, she's right." Jesse pushed himself off the boulder and came to stand beside Josh. "He has been very clever, Michael has. There is no way to prove – in a court of law, anyway – that he has committed a crime here."
Josh's jaw dropped. "What do you mean? He killed us! I'm standing here telling you so! We honked the horn, and he purposefully rammed us and pushed us over the cliff."
"Yes," Jesse said. "But your testimony will not hold up in a court of law, my friend."
Josh looked close to tears. "Why not?"
"Because it is the testimony," Jesse said evenly, "of a dead man."
Stung, Josh stabbed a finger in my direction. "She's not dead. She can tell them."
"She can't," Jesse said. "What is she supposed to say? That she knows the truth about what happened that night because the ghosts of the victims told her? Do you think a jury will believe that?"
Josh glared at him. Then, his gaze falling to his feet, he muttered, "Well, fine then. We're right back to where we started. We'll just take the matter into our own hands, right, guys?"
"Oh, no, you don't
," I said. "No way. Two wrongs do not make a right – and three most definitely don't."
Carrie glanced from me to Josh and back again. "What's she talking about?" she wanted to know.
"You are not," I said, "going to avenge your deaths by killing Michael Meducci. I am sorry. But that is just not going to happen."
Mark, for the first time all evening, rose to his feet. He looked at me, then at Jesse, and then at Father Dom. Then he went, "This is bogus, man," and started stalking off down the beach.
"So the geek's just going to get away with it?" Josh, his jaw set, glared menacingly at me. "He kills four people, and he gets off scot-free?"
"Nobody said that." Jesse, in the firelight, looked more grim-faced than I'd ever seen him. "But what happens to the boy isn't up to you."
"Oh, yeah?" Josh was back to sneering. "Who's it up to, then?"
Jesse nodded at Father Dominic and me. "Them," he said quietly.
"Them?" Felicia's voice rose on a disgusted note. "Why them?"
"Because they are the mediators," Jesse said. In the orange glow from the fire, his eyes looked black. "It's what they do."
C H A P T E R
14
The only problem was that the mediators couldn't figure out just how, exactly, to handle the situation.
"Look," I whispered as Father Dominic dropped a white candle into the box I was holding, and dug out a purple one. "Let me just call the police with an anonymous tip. I'll tell them I was driving along Big Sur that night, and that I saw the whole thing, and that it was no accident."
Father Dominic screwed the purple candle into the place where the white one had been.
"And do you think the police follow up on every anonymous tip they receive?" He didn't bother whispering because there was no one to overhear us. The only reason I'd lowered my voice was because the basilica, with all its gold leaf and majestic stained glass, made me really nervous.
The Mediator #3: Reunion Page 11
