“Yeah, he was like that,” said Jeremy. “He was always nice to people. He’d take care of people. He thought of other people before himself, you know?”
Sam realized that didn’t sound much like a psychopathic killer. Psychopaths were pretty self-centered. But psychopaths were also really good at blending in and pretending to be normal. Sam knew a lot about psychopaths. He used to wonder if he was one. But he’d realized that if he was, he’d be better at pretending to be normal, and he wasn’t very good at that. Plus, he really wanted to be normal, and he was pretty sure most psychopaths thought that normal people were weak.
“I mean, that’s why he did it,” said Patrick. “He did it for Lola.”
“Or he took the fall for her, man,” said Jeremy.
Sam cleared his throat. “The, um, physicality of the Ward murders doesn’t seem in line with Lola doing it.”
Jeremy curled his lip. “So, she started it, and she asked him to finish it. Whatever.”
“The point is, it wasn’t his idea,” said Curt.
“Yeah, it was all her,” said Patrick.
“So,” said Sam, “you all knew Lola.”
Curt leaned back in his chair. “Kind of.”
“How’d you meet her?”
“The mall,” said Patrick. “We used to hang out in the arcade there. Sometimes girls would come by too.”
Huh. Well, that matched Todd’s version of events. “This would be which mall?”
“The one in Cumberland,” said Jeremy. “Closest mall around.”
“Look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s not a lot to do around here when you’re young,” said Patrick. “Going to Cumberland is kind of it.”
Sam had never heard a young person claim that the place they lived was teeming with things to do. He suspected it had less to do with the place and more to do with the age. Most adolescents and people in their early twenties were broke, and they couldn’t go to bars. “So, Lola came into the arcade one day.”
“Yeah,” said Patrick. “I don’t actually remember when she showed up in particular. Lots of people would come through there. She was just one of the girls.”
“We didn’t know she was twelve,” said Jeremy. “She looked older.”
“Yeah, she said she was like sixteen or something,” said Curt. “Which is still young, I mean, but…”
Patrick reached for the pitcher of beer. “Nick never had much luck with girls. When we were in high school, he was kind of pudgy and he was really into Wicca and stuff, and people called him a fag a lot.”
“They said that about all of us,” said Curt.
“More with Nick,” said Jeremy.
“Anyway, he just never had a girlfriend or whatever,” said Patrick. “She was like the first serious girl he ever dated. Which is pathetic, because he was twenty-three, I know.” He spread his hands.
“So, he was kind of like… like a kid about it,” said Curt. He gestured to Sam. “Do you remember your first high school girlfriend?”
“Sure,” said Sam, even though he hadn’t had a girlfriend until sometime in college. He’d spent too much of high school thinking about Hannah. Thinking about the fire.
“Well, he was like that about it,” said Curt. “He thought they were soul mates. He like worshiped her. Everything she said was perfect, and he couldn’t stop talking about her, and he was so into her. It was annoying, but we all knew he’d get over it.”
Jeremy sneered. “We thought he’d get over it.”
All of the guys looked away.
Sam surveyed them. It was clear that they all had been close with Todd, that they’d felt they had a genuine friendship with the guy. And he didn’t feel as if these guys had any real reason to lie. However, he supposed it could simply be Yoko Ono syndrome. They hated their friend’s girlfriend. That was typical. Their friend had done something bad, and they couldn’t reconcile blaming him, so they found someone else to blame. “What makes you think that Lola was the one who wanted her parents dead?”
“Well, who else would?” said Patrick.
“Maybe Nick,” said Sam. “From what I understand, Lola had difficulty getting out of her parents’ house to meet up with him. Maybe he wanted to see her all the time, and he thought that getting her parents out of the way would mean they could be together constantly.”
“It wasn’t like he was obsessed with her,” said Jeremy.
“He sort of was,” said Patrick.
“Yeah, but not the way he’s making it sound,” said Jeremy. “Not in a sick, twisted way. It was just the normal way that people like each other at the beginning of a relationship.”
Sam scratched his jaw. “In a normal relationship, people don’t go on murder sprees.”
Jeremy sighed.
“It was her idea,” said Patrick. “She was manipulating him into doing it. She was holding out on him until he did it.”
Sam and the others all turned to Patrick.
“Holding out on him?” said Sam.
“What are you talking about?” said Curt.
“He never told you this?” said Patrick.
“You were his best friend, man,” said Jeremy.
Patrick rubbed the back of his neck. “He said that she wasn’t going to, you know, do it with him unless he killed them.”
“Seriously?” said Jeremy. “That’s so fucked up.”
Sam remembered what Todd had said in jail. That the relationship hadn’t been consummated until after the murders. He found himself perversely drawn to the idea of Lola offering a sexual reward for Todd’s brutal violence. Something about it made him feel… well, turned on. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “But you never heard Lola say something like that?”
“Well, why would she tell us that?” said Patrick. “Anyway, maybe it wasn’t exactly like that. Maybe he kind of said it more like after he did it, then they’d get it on.”
“But you still thought he was joking about killing her parents?” Sam cocked his head.
“Of course I did,” said Patrick.
Curt tugged on one of his mangled ear lobes. “We were kind of into some dark stuff back then. We all listened to certain kinds of music and watched horror movies and we… well, we joked about stuff like that. We always used to joke about blowing up the school and stuff when we were in high school. We even like kind of planned it out once or twice.”
Jeremy laughed. “Oh yeah, I remember that. Patrick was making those maps with the routes all planned out.”
“It was a joke,” said Patrick, glaring at them. “We wouldn’t have done that. And neither would Nick. He changed after he met Lola. She fucked with him.”
“You don’t even have to take our word for it,” said Jeremy. “Lots of people thought Lola was creepy as fuck. Hell, her own aunt wouldn’t take her in after the murders. She had to go to foster care.”
“Lola had an aunt?” said Sam.
“Still does,” said Curt. “She lives in town. But she didn’t want anything to do with Lola. She knew that little bitch killed her sister.”
*
“You write books?” Sabrina Calhoun was standing on her front porch. She was rail thin, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She had that prematurely aged look that comes from smoking too much and spending too much time in tanning beds. Her skin was like creased leather. She had short-cropped hair. But her eyes were big and soulful—like Lola’s. Sam could see the resemblance.
“I do,” said Sam.
“Like with paper and words and shit?”
Sam stifled a snicker. “Those are the ones.”
“Why are you trying to talk to me?”
“I’m writing about Lola Ward,” said Sam. “I understand you’re her aunt.”
“Oh,” said Sabrina. “Right. Well, hell, what do you want to know?”
Sam stepped up onto the porch and got out his recorder. “Would you mind if I recorded this conversation?”
Sabrina eyed the recorder. “What for?”
&nbs
p; “So that I get what you said exactly. That way, if I quote you, I’m quoting your exact words, not my memory of what you’re saying. It’s more accurate.”
Sabrina sucked on her cigarette. Her whole face creased up.
Damn. Sam really couldn’t afford to take up smoking again. He never wanted to look like that.
“I guess it’s all right.”
“It might pick up a little better inside,” said Sam. He gestured to the street in front of them. “If a car comes through while you’re talking, it’ll drown you out.”
Sabrina considered. “My house is kind of a mess.”
“I don’t mind,” he said.
She didn’t invite him further in than the foyer. He had to hold the recorder up since there was nowhere to put it. The foyer itself wasn’t messy, but it was bare. The house smelled bad too. Like rotten things.
Sabrina put her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray that sat on the staircase to the upper level of her house. “What do you want to know about Lola?”
“Why didn’t you take her in after her parents were killed?”
“Couldn’t. I didn’t want that girl around my own kids.”
“You have children?” Sam hoped he didn’t sound as surprised as he felt. This house didn’t exactly seem like a great place to raise kids.
“Two,” said Sabrina. “Both grown now. They don’t live with me anymore.”
“I see,” said Sam. “Why didn’t you want Lola around her cousins?”
“That girl…” Sabrina hugged herself. “Lola scared me. She was always a weird little girl, even before she went through that phase where she wanted to wear all the dark makeup.”
“Weird how?”
“Well, this one time, when Lola was a little girl, Paula had dropped her off with me for the afternoon. I don’t know how old Lola was at the time. Maybe five or six. Anyway, I let the kids run off and play for a bit, but then I saw that my kids were together outside in the backyard, and Lola wasn’t with them. So I went looking for her, and I found her up in the bathroom. She had one of my safety razors. She’d smashed it up on the floor. I asked her what she was doing, and she told me she was trying to get the blade out of it. But she was confused, because she’d seen pictures of straight razors, and she couldn’t figure out why there wasn’t one of those in mine. There wasn’t much too weird about that. Kids do funny things sometimes. I explained to her that those straight razor blades go in different kinds of razors than the one I had. She was disappointed. I asked what she wanted one for anyway, and she got this funny look on her face, and she said, ‘To cut people and make them bleed.’” Sabrina pursed her lips.
“You thought she was serious?”
“It was the way she said it,” said Sabrina. “It was really creepy. She did something with her face, and it was like… it was like she wasn’t a little girl at all. It was like something else was living inside her. Like a demon or something. That wasn’t the only weird thing she ever did, of course. She was always getting in fights with my kids, pulling their hair and pushing them.”
Kids get in fights, Sam thought. Of course, if Lola was a violent child, then maybe it meant something.
“Biting them,” said Sabrina. “Once she drew blood. She tormented our dogs. She was always following them around and pulling out tufts of their fur. And she always thought stuff like that was funny. One time I had her in the car, and we went by some road kill, and Lola thought that was the funniest thing she ever saw. You should have seen her, craning her neck back to look at it as we drove away, giggling like it was a circus clown or something. There was something not right about that girl.”
Sam had to admit that he’d felt the same way the first time he’d met Lola. It wasn’t anything he could quite put his finger on, but he’d had a moment when he thought those exact same words. Something not right about her. “What do you think about the accusations that she killed her parents?”
Sabrina shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t want to think that. I wouldn’t want to think that my own niece killed my sister. And she was just a little girl when it happened. But…” She took a deep breath. “Well, I can’t say it wasn’t in the back of my mind when they were asking me to take her in and raise her. I thought I might end up on her bad side, and maybe she’d get someone to kill me too.”
“You were frightened of her,” said Sam.
“You met her?” said Sabrina.
“Yes,” said Sam.
“You didn’t think she was a little bit scary?”
Yes, Sam thought. But he shook his head. “She seemed very sad.”
Sabrina chuckled, a raspy sound. “Well, maybe she’s got you under her spell then. All you need to do is ask around. Go up on the Pot State campus. Half the kids there went to middle school with her. They all remember her, and they’ll tell you. She was wrong somehow.”
*
“Yeah, we knew her,” said one of the group of college students. They were huddled outside one of the buildings, all puffing on cigarettes.
Sam was beginning to think everyone in town smoked. Or at least everyone who’d known Lola. He wanted a cigarette, but he didn’t have any, and he knew it would be bad form to bum one from these guys.
“She was a couple years ahead of us,” said another.
“We weren’t close or anything, but we knew her by sight.”
“And?” said Sam. “What did you think of her?”
“Freaky.” The girl who’d spoken had fingerless gloves, and her cheeks were bright red. “Even before the murder stuff, I thought that about her. She was kind of scary.”
“Yeah,” agreed the first guy. “She used to bully the littler kids in the primary school out of their money and stuff. I don’t know if she ever really hurt anybody, but she had this razor blade that she carried around, and she’d threaten the kids with it.”
“You saw her do this?” Sam asked.
“Well…” The first guy shrugged.
“I did,” spoke up another one of the group. “She did it to me. Every day for months. I’d try to hide from her, but she always found me. I hated that chick. Like really hated her.”
Sam scrutinized the girl. She looked serious, like she was telling the truth.
Hmm… So Lola was a bully.
“But do you think she was responsible for the murders?” Sam asked. “Do you think she’s guilty?”
The college kids all exchanged glances.
“That guy had to help her,” said the girl with fingerless gloves. “She didn’t do it on her own. But I think she had something to do with it.”
“Yeah,” said the bullied girl. “She’s not like an innocent victim or something.”
*
“Well, I thought I’d cracked it,” Sam said into the phone. He was in his hotel room in Keyser, lying back on the flower-pattern bedspread. “I had a really great angle. Lola was a baby slut who accidentally got tangled up with a crazy killer. But… I don’t know if it’s holding up.”
“I like the angle where she killed them,” said Petra, on the other end. “If she’s lying about that, you’d be the person who could get her to spill, Sam. You’re good at that shit.”
“I’m not going to say she killed them unless she did.”
Petra laughed. “You don’t want her to have killed them, do you?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Sam. “I want to find the truth.”
“So, what’s it looking like?”
“Well, everyone in town thinks she’s guilty,” he said. “I talk to Nick’s friends, and they said he was this really loyal guy who’d do anything for a friend, and that his loyalty kicked into overdrive for Lola. They all said that he wouldn’t have done it if Lola hadn’t been around. And then I talked to Lola’s aunt, who was so freaked out by her niece that she refused to take her in and forced Lola to live in foster care.”
“You feel sorry for Nick?”
“No,” said Sam. “He killed people. No one can deny that. Even he doesn’t deny it. And I don�
��t care how ‘in love’ you are, you don’t kill people. So, there’s something obviously wrong with him. But the way his friends talked about him today, well, it kind of…”
“Made you feel sorry for him.”
“No.” Sam sighed. “Maybe.”
“Well, that’s not bad,” said Petra. “Giving Todd a little bit of humanity simply makes the story more interesting.”
“I’m supposed to be giving Lola humanity. She asked me to tell her story.”
“Well, is it hard to give Lola humanity?”
“I don’t know.” He rolled over on the bed. “Yes. Kind of.”
“Sam,” said Petra. “You think she did it, don’t you?”
“No,” he said. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“You think she did it, and you don’t want her to have done it.”
“I don’t have any desire about this whatsoever,” he said. “I guess what I can’t understand is why she’d tell me to write this book if digging into everything was going to make her look so guilty. It’s pretty clear that she was in a relationship with Todd, something that she denied previously. So, she’s got a history of lying, and nobody fucking likes her. Everyone thinks she’s scary and strange. So why would she possibly think this book is a good idea?”
“I don’t know,” said Petra. “Maybe there’s more that you haven’t dug into. Maybe if you go deeper, you’ll find something else.”
“Maybe.” He stared up at the ceiling.
“How you holding up, Sam?”
“Holding up?”
“After the stuff with Daphne?”
He sat up. “Hell, I wasn’t even thinking about that.”
“Good,” said Petra. “Don’t. Throw yourself into your work. That’s the best thing right now.”
“Best thing for me or best thing for our bank accounts?”
She laughed. “Is there a difference?”
He chuckled too.
“Look, Sam, whenever you need to bounce off some ideas, you can call me. I’m here for you.”
“Only because I’m about to make you an insane amount of money, right?”
She laughed again.
*
Someone was knocking at Sam’s hotel room door, but that didn’t make any sense, because no one knew he was here. He strode across the room to open the door.
The Girl on the Stairs Page 7
