Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  Why does it matter who I am? Robert thought. What a strange thing to say.

  “This is your last chance,” Ellingham said.

  “What does it matter?” Vorachek said.

  “What does it matter?” Albert Ellingham almost quaked from the force of his speaking. “If you tell us where Alice is, I will speak to the judge. I’ll go to his house. I’ll plead on your behalf. You can keep your life. Even if you tell us where her body is . . .”

  There was just the tiniest quiver at the word body.

  Anton Vorachek stared at Ellingham for a long moment, and the look he’d had on the stand vanished. The mask was dropped and a human sat in front of them. A human who looked . . . sympathetic?

  “Go home, old man,” Vorachek finally said. “I have nothing for you.”

  “Then I will watch you die,” Ellingham replied.

  He stood and pushed back the chair. On the way back upstairs, George Marsh put a hand on his back.

  “He was never going to crack, Albert,” he said. “Tomorrow, it will end.”

  “It never ends,” Ellingham said. “Don’t you understand? Tomorrow, it begins.”

  Robert Mackenzie slept poorly that night, even worse than he had in the last brutal weeks. Usually he could beat through the horror and heat to get a few scattered hours, but this time he turned and twisted the entire night through.

  He went to the window and looked at the moon hanging over the city and Lake Champlain. It was almost ridiculous to say something felt wrong in a situation where everything was wrong, but something bad was coming.

  He dressed at dawn, splashing himself with cold water. He found his employer ready as well. They arrived at the courthouse early and stood in the hall, waiting for Vorachek to be brought around for this final day.

  On that last day, something changed. Instead of bringing Vorachek in through the back, as they had every day before, the police walked him around the front. Vorachek held his head high as he walked to meet his fate. The press crushed in and the crowd erupted in shouted questions and small explosions from the camera flashes.

  Robert would later remember that he didn’t hear the noise at all, that it blended in completely with the shouting and the flashes. Vorachek crumpled, possibly tripped. The crowd seethed, and suddenly someone started yelling, “Down! Everyone down!”

  George Marsh grabbed Albert Ellingham and pulled him into the vestibule of the courthouse. Robert Mackenzie was caught in a general wave of people and police lunging for the door. He heard cries of “shot” and “gun.” Everyone was screaming and running.

  Vorachek was dragged into the courthouse lobby, his shirt thick with blood, blood on his hands, smeared on his face. Leonard Holmes Nair, who was there that day, would later paint the scene, lashing red paint over the small form on the ground.

  The police pushed everyone back and a doctor came forward, but it was clear that there was nothing to be done. In his final moments, Vorachek attempted to speak. Mostly, blood and foamy spittle came from his mouth, but Robert was close enough to hear him say, “Did not . . .”

  Then Anton Vorachek died.

  28

  STEVIE STOOD AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE BALLROOM, HER SNEAKERS touching the chessboard of the black-and-white floor. The lights were dimmed—only a few of the gold sconces were turned on at half brightness, and beat in time with some unheard song. Around her, the rest of Ellingham was gyrating with glowing pink-and-green headsets on their heads, to music Stevie could not hear.

  “I feel like I’m walking into a metaphor,” Stevie said.

  “Hey!” Kaz danced over to them. He was wearing a black suit jacket with a red flower in the pocket. “Glad you guys could make it! Here.”

  Stevie and Nate were each presented with a pair of glowing headphones.

  “Just turn them on and dance!” Kaz said.

  With their headphones on, Stevie and Nate entered the ballroom. Stevie couldn’t help but be amazed again at the way this room played with light, bouncing it across and back with the mirrors. The faces of the masks on the walls grinned blindly at them.

  Stevie switched off the music, so she just heard everything in a slightly muffled way. Nate was looking around nervously and doing a jerky, faint bending-at-the-knee-in-time move. Stevie bounced along for a moment in a show of solidarity. It really did move her that Nate had done this.

  She glanced around and saw Janelle and Vi over on the side, their arms draped over each other’s shoulders, swaying together. Maris was nearby, in a shaggy dress, doing some complicated, slow move with Dash. They had both bounced back.

  There was Gretchen, the jilted ex, discreetly in a corner with some other second years. And there, on the far side of the room, were David and Ellie. Ellie was wearing something black and shiny that, on closer examination, looked to be a bunch of trash bags bound together to make a goofy skirt, with a camisole on top. She was dancing a crazed, loopy dance with lots of swinging arms. David was not dancing, but was leaning against the wall, watching. Like Stevie, he was not dressed up. He wore his same rumpled jeans and a ragged green T-shirt.

  When Nate and Stevie entered the room, he pulled himself away from the wall and crossed over to them, taking off his headphones.

  “Nice tie,” he said to Nate.

  “Don’t be a dick to Nate,” Stevie said.

  “I wasn’t,” David said. “Nate. It’s a nice tie. And you’re dressed up. Are you Banksy or the Unabomber?”

  “I’m a pretty, pretty girl,” Stevie said. “Who likes to be comfortable.”

  Vi had also noticed Stevie’s presence, and was dragging Janelle across the room. Vi was properly dressed up in a dress shirt and yellow tie with white dots. Janelle had on a yellow skirt and a white blouse. Matching outfits to a dance. It was beyond anything Stevie could understand, but it was so right for them.

  “Hey!” Vi said with a bit of forced cheerfulness. “Everyone’s here!”

  Janelle looked down at the floor for a moment.

  “Yeah,” Stevie said. “I wanted to hang out. We wanted to hang out.”

  “I live to dance,” Nate said.

  “So, let’s dance,” Vi said.

  Stevie did not actually know how to dance. This seemed like information other people were born with, something that was as natural as walking. It was very puzzling to her how people managed to just pick it up. But Janelle wanted her to dance, and Nate had brought her to this dance, and right now she had to observe at a dance . . . so that meant she was going to dance. She tried the knee-bending thing first, but even Nate looked at her with pity. So she tried employing her arms instead, windmilling them like Ellie across the room.

  How this looked to David, who was standing there watching, was unclear. It didn’t matter. There was nothing left to lose.

  Janelle burst into uncontrollable laughter and had to lean on Vi for support. Then she wrapped her arms around Stevie’s neck.

  “You are ridiculous,” she said.

  “I know,” Stevie said.

  Janelle and Vi swung back into each other’s arms and started dancing more slowly. Stevie looked at David, but he had already turned and made his way back to the wall. She ignored the ache this caused.

  At the end of so many Agatha Christie books, Poirot would gather the suspects to look at them. If Ellingham was gathered in one room tonight, then she could examine everyone at once. Look for someone who would have reason to put that dry ice in that tunnel and never come forward. Look for the reason Hayes turned around.

  She rotated, taking in this room decorated in honor of masks and mischief. Commedia players on the wallpaper and masks supporting the lights. Everything was a trick with mirrors, making the room repeat.

  Where do you look for someone who’s never really there. . . .

  Albert Ellingham wanted her to think.

  Was it Gretchen? Gretchen, who openly confessed to doing Hayes’s work for him, to being furious? Gretchen who was owed five hundred dollars?

  “Come on
!”

  Janelle had come up behind her and taken her hand. She started to dance with Stevie again. Stevie tried to keep up, moving as best she could. It was good to see Janelle smiling at her, at least, and Vi gave a little nod of, It’ll be okay.

  Maybe this was enough. Just to be with her friends. Be a normal girl. Stop thinking you found a murder. Close your eyes and dance.

  Janelle squeezed Stevie’s hand gently, putting just a little pressure on the scratch she’d gotten earlier.

  Something shot through Stevie’s brain.

  Her hand. Something about her hand. A pain in her hand. A scratch. She put her attention there, on the back of her hand, focusing it like a soft spotlight. The hand would speak to her. The hand would tell its story if she let it.

  Her hand cycled through its memories. The cold that rubbed the skin dry. The warmth of the inside of her fleece pockets. The feeling of David’s skin . . .

  “Be right back,” she said. “I have to . . . go to the bathroom.”

  The music changed and everyone began to move more frantically. Stevie knocked the headphones off her ears and craned her neck to look around. There was one person she needed to see, one person who was always there whether you noticed her or not. And she was there, of course, sitting on one of the low benches by the windows, working her phone. Stevie made her way over.

  “I need to see your pictures from the day in the garden,” she said.

  Germaine peered at her curiously.

  “Why?”

  “Because I do, Germaine,” she said. “Please. I’ll owe you. Please.”

  “I like I’ll owe you,” Germaine said. She flicked through her phone for a moment and then held it toward Stevie. Stevie swiped until she found what she hoped was there—a clear shot of Hayes sitting and acting like he was working on his laptop. She zoomed in.

  Her heart thudded.

  “Hey,” Nate said, coming up behind her.

  “Wait,” Stevie said. “Wait a second.”

  The three of them stood in their puddle of silence as everyone gyrated around them.

  Stevie pulled up her own pictures of Hayes’s room. The fan-art wall, the bureau, the desk, the computer . . .

  She swore under her breath in a continuous stream.

  In Germaine’s pictures from Saturday, Hayes’s computer was scratch free. But when it appeared again in Stevie’s photos from her room search after his death, there were three clear marks down the front, like the claw marks of a cat. They were three marks she had seen before on her own hand, when she reached under the tub on that first day.

  “What’s happening?” Germaine said, watching Stevie’s face closely.

  Someone had taken Hayes’s computer and hidden it under the tub.

  Why would you do that?

  Think, Stevie.

  If you needed to look for something, maybe evidence that you had written a show that Hayes was taking credit for, a show that was going to be a movie. Maybe you did something to mess with him. Maybe you killed him by accident. And then maybe you had to cover your tracks afterward. Make sure there was nothing on his computer identifying you as the true author.

  Janelle and Nate could be eliminated. They were not at Ellingham last year. That left Ellie and David.

  It had come down to this.

  Ellie, who loved art and went to Paris and got tattoos. Ellie who was funny and careless and maybe tried much too hard. David, who lied. David, whose parents were dead. David, who held everything in. David, who messed with people.

  The lights in the room flashed pink and pulsed, like rose-colored fingers reaching for the ceiling. The eyes of the masks glowed.

  Either one of them was capable of getting out at night. As for Hayes’s fingerprints on the ID? Simple. You just gave it to him to hold.

  Intent. Planning. Maybe the goal was just to get him kicked out and everything went wrong.

  Of the two, David should have known better. He studied more math and science. David would likely have had a better sense of what that much carbon dioxide might do. Ellie, on the other hand, might have liked the idea of the artful cloud of fog.

  Could it really all come down to a few scrapes on a computer?

  “What is going on?” Nate said.

  “I’m still working that out,” Stevie said.

  “Let’s just talk to Larry right now,” he said. “Let him get the police.”

  “The police didn’t get this far,” she said. “I got this far. And I can get the rest of the way.”

  “Don’t say things like that,” Nate replied. “It makes me feel like you’re about to get us both killed or something.”

  “No,” she said. “We just have to go home.”

  The dance ended at midnight. Stevie watched to make sure all her Minerva people were in sight. Janelle and Nate were by her side. Ellie and David walked ahead of them. David occasionally turned around to look at Stevie curiously.

  Could she have kissed a killer? What did a killer kiss like? Could a killer be as warm as David had been? Was that what made him so attractive to her? Was that the thing she had recognized in him from the very first moment she saw him, when something about his face reminded her so strongly of something she knew, something she wanted to fight?

  Or Ellie, skipping along now in her trash bags like a deranged ballerina? Could she have playfully led Hayes into that tunnel with a bottle of wine? Told him to just go ahead?

  Germaine Batt followed them for a bit. She said nothing, but was always just a few footsteps behind. Stevie could practically feel her listening for hints as to what was going on. She would have followed them all the way to Minerva if she could, but at the juncture with the collection of statue heads, a group of her housemates turned in the direction of Juno and Stevie loudly wished her goodnight. Germaine squinted a bit in frustration, but she left with the others.

  “You guys are being really quiet,” Janelle said.

  “Just feeling all excited,” Nate said stiffly. “From dancing.”

  “Have either of you ever been to a dance before?”

  “Nope,” they answered in unison.

  The night had a theatrical quality to it. The moon was obligingly low and yellow. A huge harvest moon, furiously bright in the clear, dark sky. Like a spotlight.

  “Do you have some kind of idea what you’re doing?” Nate asked Stevie quietly.

  “Some kind of idea,” she said. “But you won’t like it.”

  29

  ONCE INSIDE, PIX DUTIFULLY CHECKED THEM ALL IN AND WENT UP TO bed. It looked like Ellie and David were about to go to their rooms when Stevie said, “Who wants to play a game?”

  Nate threw her a confused look.

  “What game?” Ellie said.

  “I never,” Stevie replied.

  “I like that game,” Ellie replied. “David, come play. I’ll get us some wine. We can’t play it without wine.”

  “Then we should play in someone’s room,” he said.

  “Let’s go to my room,” Ellie said.

  Nate gave Stevie a look, a concerned look, but Stevie nudged him on.

  Ellie’s room, while technically the same size and shape as Stevie’s, was a kind of different world. The walls were covered in sketches and flyers written in French. There was a ratty rug on the floor that was embedded with a thick smell of incense. There were loads of mugs and cups and bowls from the kitchen, all dirty and some collecting mold. Pens and paper were all over the floor, and dried candle wax spilled on the edges of the furniture.

  “You’ve all played, right?” Ellie said, settling herself on a cushion on the floor and pulling a bottle of wine out from between her bedside stand and bed. “You start by saying I never, and then you give an action. If you’ve never done it, you don’t drink. But if you have, you confess by drinking. It’s simple. I’ll show you. I’ve never made out with anyone in this room.”

  She smiled broadly and looked over at David. David side-eyed her.

  Neither Stevie nor David moved at fi
rst, then Stevie reached for the bottle and took a very tiny sip, just enough that the wine touched her lips and the scent flooded her nose. She set the bottle down, and David slowly reached for it.

  Ellie laughed.

  “And that’s how it’s done,” Ellie said. “Now you, Nate.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve never been to a dance before tonight.”

  “You said that earlier,” Janelle said.

  “Nothing in the rules about established facts,” he replied.

  Janelle sighed deeply and took a short sip, then Ellie, then David.

  Janelle was next. “I’ve never started a fire,” she said.

  Only Ellie drank, and she took a long sip. Now it was David’s turn. He leaned back against Ellie’s bed and stroked his chin for a moment.

  “I’ve never gone through someone else’s room,” he said.

  Stevie paused, and then drank. This caused everyone to look at her, but no one said a word. It was Stevie’s turn now.

  “I’ve never taken something that didn’t belong to me,” she said.

  Janelle and Stevie didn’t drink. Nate did—at least he lifted the bottle.

  “Pretend I drank,” he said.

  “Oh, no,” Ellie said. “You have to drink. What did you take?”

  “Who hasn’t taken something?” Nate said. “Everyone does that. How can you go through life without taking something that doesn’t belong to you, even by accident?”

  “That’s true,” Janelle said, reaching for the bottle. “This game is kind of intense, and I don’t really drink, so . . . I may be out.”

  “Then I’ll have to play,” Ellie said, reaching behind her to get Roota. The saxophone was resting next to her bureau.

  Roota.

  What had Ellie said about Roota? I had to have her. I didn’t have the money at the time, but I found a way. I made a little art, I got a little cash, I got Roota.

  “How much was Roota?” Stevie said as Ellie went to put the mouthpiece in her mouth. “I was thinking about maybe getting an instrument.”

  This got disbelieving looks from most present.

  “About five hundred bucks,” Ellie said. “But worth it. She’s been a true friend.”