Killer pll-6

by Sara Shepard

  “Go away,” Spencer mumbled.

  Melissa sighed. “I just wanted to let you know that you can use my old laptop if you need it. It’s in the barn. I have a new computer at the town house. I’m moving there tonight.”

  Spencer turned slightly, frowning. “The renovations are done?” Melissa’s Philadelphia town house overhaul seemed to have no end—she kept tweaking the designs.

  Melissa stared at the creamy Berber carpet that spread across Spencer’s bedroom floor. “I have to get out of here.” Her voice cracked.

  “Is everything…okay?” Spencer asked.

  Melissa pulled her sleeves over her hands. “Yeah. Fine.”

  Spencer shifted in her seat. She’d tried to talk to Melissa about Ian’s body at Nana’s funeral on Sunday, but Melissa kept waving her away. Her sister had to have some thoughts about it—when Ian was released on house arrest, Melissa had seemed sympathetic to his plight. She’d even tried to convince Spencer that Ian was innocent. Maybe, like the police, she believed that Ian’s body had never been there. It would be just like Melissa to trust a bunch of possibly crooked cops over her sister, all because she didn’t want to accept that her beloved might be dead.

  “Really, I’m fine,” Melissa urged, as if she could read Spencer’s thoughts. “I just don’t want to be here if there are going to be search parties and news vans.”

  “But the cops aren’t searching here anymore,” Spencer told her. “They just called it off.”

  A startled look crossed Melissa’s face. Then she shrugged and turned around without answering. Spencer listened to her padding down the stairs.

  The front door slammed, and Spencer could hear Mrs. Hastings murmuring quietly and kindly to Melissa in the foyer. Her real daughter. Spencer winced, gathered up her books, shrugged into her coat and boots, and walked out the back door to Melissa’s barn. As she crossed the cold, vast yard, she noticed something to the left and stopped. Someone had sprayed LIAR on the windmill in the same red paint as the graffiti on the garage. A glob of red dripped from the bottom edge of the L to the dead grass. It looked as if it were bleeding.

  Spencer glanced back at the house, considering, then pulled her books into her chest and pressed on. Her parents would see it soon enough. She certainly didn’t want to be the one to break the news.

  Melissa had left the barn in a hurry. There was a half-drunk bottle of wine on the counter, and a half-filled water glass her normally anal sister hadn’t washed out. A lot of her clothes were still in the closet, and there was a big book called The Principles of Mergers and Acquisitions flung on the bed, a University of Pennsylvania bookmark wedged between the pages.

  Spencer hefted her cream-colored Mulberry tote onto the brown leather couch, pulled the CD of her dad’s computer from the front pocket, sat down at Melissa’s desk, and slid the CD into the drive of her sister’s laptop.

  The disc took a while to load, and Spencer clicked on her e-mail while she waited. At the top of her in-box was a message from Olivia Caldwell. Her potential mother.

  Spencer raised her hand to her mouth and opened the message. It was a link to a prepaid ticket on Amtrak’s Acela line, the bullet train to New York City. Spencer, I’m thrilled you’ve agreed to meet me! said the accompanying note. Can you come to New York tomorrow night? We have so much to talk about. Much love, Olivia.

  She peered out the window to the main house, not sure what to do. The lights in the kitchen were still on, and her mother passed from the fridge to the table, saying something to Melissa. Despite how pissed her mom had been just moments before, there was now a loving, comforting smile on her mother’s face. When was the last time she had smiled like that at Spencer?

  Tears welled in Spencer’s eyes. She’d been trying so hard for her parents for so long…for what? She turned back to the computer. The Acela ticket was for 4 P.M. tomorrow. That sounds great, she wrote back. See you then. She hit send.

  Almost immediately, a little bloop sound filled the room. Spencer closed her in-box and checked to see if the CD had finished loading, but the program was still running. Then, she noticed a flashing IM window. Instant Messenger must have automatically logged on to Melissa’s account when Spencer had turned on the computer. Hey Mel, a new message said. You there?

  Spencer was ready to type, Sorry, not Melissa, when a second message came in. It’s me. Ian.

  Her stomach flipped. Right. Whoever wrote this didn’t have a very good sense of humor.

  Another bloop. You there?

  Spencer looked at the unfamiliar IM screen name. USCMidfielderRoxx. Ian had gone to USC, and he played midfield in soccer. But that didn’t mean anything. Right?

  The bloops kept coming. I’m sorry I left without telling you…but they hated me. You know that. They found out that I knew. That’s why I had to run. Spencer’s hands began to shake. Someone was messing with her, just like they’d messed with Ian’s parents. Ian didn’t run. He was dead.

  But why was there no trace of his remains in the woods? Why hadn’t the cops found a single thing?

  Spencer waved her fingers over the keys. Prove it’s really you, she typed, not bothering to explain that it wasn’t Melissa. She shut her eyes, trying to think of something personal about Ian. Something that Melissa and Spencer would know. Something that wasn’t in Ali’s diary, either. The press had done an exposé of everything Ali had written in her diary about Ian, like how they’d gotten together after a soccer game the fall of seventh grade, how Ian had crammed for the SATs using a Ritalin pill a friend had given him, and how he hadn’t been sure if he really deserved being named the Rosewood Day varsity soccer team’s MVP—Ali’s brother, Jason, was far more talented. Whoever was pretending to be Ian would know all that. If only she could think of something super private.

  Then the perfect thing came to her. Something she was pretty sure that even Ali didn’t know. What’s your real middle name? she typed.

  There was a pause. Spencer leaned back, waiting. When Melissa was a senior in high school, she’d gotten drunk on eggnog on Christmas Day and confessed that Ian’s parents wanted him to be a girl. When Mrs. Thomas popped out a boy, they decided his middle name would be the girl’s name they’d chosen for him. Ian never, ever used it—in old Rosewood Day yearbooks Spencer had leafed through when she was yearbook editor, he hadn’t even listed a middle initial.

  There was a bloop. Elizabeth, said the message.

  Spencer blinked hard. This wasn’t possible.

  The light in the kitchen in the main house snapped off, enveloping the backyard in darkness. A car slid down the cul-de-sac, schussing loudly over the wet pavement. Then Spencer began to hear noises. A sigh. A snort. A giggle. She jumped up and pressed her forehead to the cold, thick windowpane. The porch was bare. There were no shadows by the pool, the hot tub, or the deck. There was no one creeping around the windmill, although the newly painted word LIAR seemed to glow.

  Her Sidekick buzzed. Spencer jumped, her heart hammering. She glanced at the computer again. Ian had signed off Instant Messenger.

  One new text message. With shaking hands, Spencer pressed Read.

  Dear Spence, When I told you that he had to go, I didn’t mean he had to die. Still, there’s something really sketchy in this case…and it’s up to you to figure out what it is. So better get searching, or the next one “gone” is you. Au revoir!

  —A

  10 SOMETHING’S SKETCHY, INDEED

  The following morning, Emily cinched the hood of her pale blue anorak tight and ran across the icy blacktop to the Rosewood Day Elementary School swings, her friends’ special meeting spot. For the first time all week, the long driveway was free of news vans. Since everyone now thought Emily and the others had made up seeing Ian’s body in the woods, the press had no reason to interview students.

  Across the courtyard, Emily’s friends were gathered around Spencer, staring at a sheet of computer paper and her cell phone. Last night, Spencer had called Emily to tell her that Ian had IM’ed her
and that A had sent a text. Afterward, Emily hadn’t been able to sleep a wink. So A was back. And Ian…maybe…wasn’t dead.

  Something hard hit her shoulder, and Emily whirled around, her heart leaping to her throat. It was only an elementary-school boy pushing past her, running for the ball field. She placed one hand in the other, trying to stop it from trembling. Her hands had been shaking like crazy all morning.

  “How could Ian have faked his death?” Emily blurted when she reached the circle. “We all saw him. He looked…blue.”

  Hanna, bundled in a white wool coat and faux-fur scarf, raised her shoulders. The only color in her face was her red-rimmed eyes; it looked like she hadn’t slept much last night, either. Aria, wearing a thin, trendy-looking gray leather jacket and green fingerless gloves, shook her head, saying nothing. She wasn’t wearing her usual sparkly makeup. Even neat-as-a-pin Spencer looked disheveled—her hair was in a greasy, lumpy ponytail.

  “It fits,” Spencer croaked. “Ian pretended to be dead, and he called us to the woods because he knew we’d go to the police and tell them we saw him.”

  Aria sank down onto one of the swings. “But why wouldn’t Ian just run? Why would he put on a show for us?”

  “When the cops found out he was missing, they started searching for him immediately,” Spencer explained. “But then when we saw his body, they turned their attention to the woods instead. We distracted them for a few days, long enough so Ian could really escape. We probably did exactly what he wanted us to.” She gazed up at the clouds, a helpless expression on her face.

  Hanna sank onto her left hip. “What do you think A has to do with this? A lured us into the woods so we’d see Ian. A is obviously working with him.”

  “This text makes it pretty obvious that Ian and A were in cahoots,” Spencer said, shoving her phone at them. Emily read the first two lines again. When I said he had to go, I didn’t mean he had to die. Still, there’s something really sketchy in this case…and it’s up to you to figure out what it is. She bit her lip hard, then gazed at the dragon-shaped slide behind them. Years ago, whenever something or someone at school scared her, she would hide inside the dragon’s head at the top until she felt better. She felt an overwhelming urge to do that now.

  “It seems like A helped Ian bust out,” Spencer went on. “They worked together—when Ian met me on my back porch last week, A threatened that if I told the cops, I’d get hurt. If I would’ve told them, they would’ve rearrested Ian…and he couldn’t have escaped.”

  “A was worried about any of us saying anything,” Emily piped up. “All of my notes said that if I didn’t tell A’s secret, A wouldn’t tell mine.”

  Hanna looked at Emily, a curious smile on her lips. “This A knows some secrets about you?”

  Emily shrugged. For a while, A was taunting Emily about how she’d kept her sexuality from Isaac. “Not anymore,” she said.

  “What if Ian is A?” Aria suggested. “It still makes a lot of sense.”

  Emily shook her head. “The texts weren’t from Ian. The cops checked his phone.”

  “Just because the A notes weren’t coming from Ian’s phone doesn’t mean they weren’t coming from Ian,” Hanna reminded her. “He could have had someone else send them. Or he could have gotten a disposable cell or a phone in another name.”

  Emily put her finger to her lips. She hadn’t thought of that.

  “And all those tricks he pulled the night we allegedly saw his body are pretty easy if you know how to use a computer,” Hanna went on. “Ian probably figured out how to delay sending a text so that we’d get it the moment we saw what looked like his dead body. Remember how Mona sent herself an e-mail from A to throw us off? It’s probably not that hard.”

  Spencer pointed at the piece of computer paper. It was a printout of the IM exchange between her and Ian. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to the lines that said, They hated me. They found out that I knew. That was why I had to run. “Ian signed off before I could ask who ‘they’ were. But what if this is much bigger than Ian planning an escape? What if Ian really did find out something huge about Ali’s murder? What if he thought that if he went on trial, explaining what he knew, he’d be killed? Faking his own death wouldn’t just get the cops off his back, it’d get whoever wanted to hurt him off his back too.”

  Aria stopped swinging. “Do you think whoever was after Ian might come after us if we figure out too much?”

  “That’s what it sounds like,” Spencer said. “But there’s something else.” She pointed to a few lines of text at the bottom of the computer printout. It was the IP address of where the Instant Messages were from. “It says Ian IM’ed us from somewhere in Rosewood.”

  “Rosewood?” Aria shrieked. “You mean he’s still…here?”

  Hanna’s face paled. “Why would Ian stay here? Why wouldn’t he skip town?”

  “Maybe he’s not done searching for the truth,” Spencer suggested.

  “Or maybe he’s not done with us…for turning him in,” Aria said.

  Emily heard a whoop behind her and jumped. A crow was slowly circling the playground. When she turned back to her friends, their eyes were wide, and their jaws were tense.

  “Aria’s right,” Hanna said, picking back up on the conversation. “If Ian’s alive, we don’t know what he’s up to. He still might be after us. And he still might be guilty.”

  “I don’t know,” Spencer protested.

  Emily faced Spencer, confused. “But you told the cops it was him! What about that memory you had of seeing Ian with Ali on the night she died?”

  Spencer shoved her hands in her coat pockets. “I’m not sure if I really remember that…or if it was just what I wanted to believe.”

  Emily’s stomach burned. What was true…and what wasn’t? She stared across the playground. A group of students were marching down the sidewalk into the sixth-grade wing. More students passed in front of the long line of classroom windows, walking to the coat closet. Emily had forgotten that sixth graders didn’t have proper lockers; they had to put their stuff in cubbies in that tiny coatroom. The coatroom used to get so stinky by midmorning, smelling like everyone’s bagged lunches.

  “When Ian talked to me on my back porch, he told me that we had it wrong—he didn’t kill Ali,” Spencer went on. “He wouldn’t have hurt a hair on Ali’s head. He and Ali always flirted, but she was the one who escalated it to the next level. Ian thought for a while that she was doing it to make someone angry. At first I thought she meant me—because I kind of liked him. But Ian didn’t seem to buy that theory. And the night she died, he saw two blondes in the woods—one was Ali, one was someone else. At the time, I thought he meant me. But he said maybe it was someone else.”

  Emily sighed, frustrated. “We’re going by Ian’s word again.”

  “Yeah, Spence.” Hanna wrinkled her nose. “Ian killed Ali. Then he tricked us. We should go to Wilden with the IMs. Let him deal with it.”

  Spencer snorted. “Wilden? He’s done a good job convincing all of Rosewood that we’re crazy. Even if by some miracle he does believe us, no one else on the police force would.”

  “What about Ian’s parents?” Emily suggested. “They got a note from him too. They’d believe us.”

  Spencer pointed to another line on the IM exchange. “Yeah, but what would that do? His parents would have yet more proof that Ian’s alive, but they might tell the cops that his IMs came from a computer in Rosewood. And then the cops would track him down and rearrest him.”

  “Which would be a good thing,” Emily reminded her.

  Spencer gave her a helpless look. “What if this is a test? Suppose we do tell the cops or his parents…and something happens to one of us? Or what if something happens to Melissa? Ian thought he was IMing her, after all.” Spencer rubbed her gloved hands together. “Melissa and I don’t get along, but I don’t want to put her in danger.”

  Aria stepped off the swing, grabbed Spencer’s phone, and looked at A’s text. “This n
ote says now it’s up to us to figure it out…or we’ll be next.”

  “Meaning?” Emily stuck her boot into a patch of snow.

  “We have to prove who Ali’s real killer is,” Aria answered matter-of-factly. “Or else.”

  “Do you think the killer is the person—or people—in Ian’s IMs?” Spencer asked. “The people who hated him? The ones who found out he knew?”

  “Who hated Ian?” Emily scratched her head. “Everyone at Rosewood adored him.”

  Hanna snorted. “Guys, this is retarded. I don’t really feel like playing Veronica Mars.” She unzipped her bag, pulled out an iPhone from the inside pocket, and turned it on. “The best way to stay away from A is to do what I did: get a new phone and an unlisted number. Voilà, A can’t find us.” She started jabbing at the phone’s screen.

  Emily exchanged a wary look with the others. “A has gotten in touch with us in other ways, Hanna.”

  Hanna pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes, still texting. “This A hasn’t.”

  “It doesn’t mean that this A won’t,” Spencer said firmly.

  Hanna clamped her lips together, looking annoyed. “Well, if Ian is A, I guess we won’t have to worry. Because Ian has no way of getting my new phone number.”

  Emily gazed at Hanna, not quite sure how Hanna could be so certain…especially if Ian really was still here in Rosewood.

  “So do we search, or not?” Aria said after a moment.

  The girls stared at each other. Emily had no idea how they could even attempt to search for Ali’s real killer. They weren’t cops. They didn’t have forensic experience. But she understood why they couldn’t turn to the cops—after the Dead Ian Scandal, the cops would just laugh at them and tell them to stop wasting their time.

  She stared across the courtyard. More sixth graders paraded toward the classrooms. A few gathered around a sign hanging outside the door, talking giddily. “I’m going to find a piece,” said a brunette girl with sparkly clips in her hair. “Yeah, right,” said her friend, a petite Asian girl with a high ponytail. “You’ll never figure out those clues.”