Every Last Fear

by Alex Finlay

  “Matthew,” a voice said from behind him. It was the FBI agent. Keller.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “I heard you had some excitement this morning,” Agent Keller said.

  Matt didn’t understand. He hadn’t reported the guy who’d shoved him into the street. It was just a few hours ago.

  She held up her phone, displaying a story from some web news rag. The headline read: SURVIVOR OF “A VIOLENT NATURE” FAMILY ATTACKED.

  Matt groaned.

  “There’s also a feature story about your family in this morning’s edition of the Times.” She said it like a warning. “Are you okay? What happened? Were you really attacked?”

  Matt told her about the man with the cleft lip scar.

  “Why didn’t you call me? Or report what happened to the NYPD? What if—”

  “I’m fine, just some bruises. I didn’t get a good look at the guy and he didn’t get anything, so there wasn’t anything to report.”

  Keller didn’t seem thrilled by his response, but she couldn’t do much about it. She retrieved a sheet of paper from her handbag. “This has the name of the consular officer who will meet you at the airport. He’ll know where to go, but just in case, I also included the address of the police station and the name of the local officer in charge of the investigation.”

  Matt glanced at the paper, then folded it up and tucked it into his front pocket with his passport.

  “Hopefully it will be pro forma,” Keller said. “You’ll sign some papers and they’ll release the bod—release your family. The consulate will help with the paperwork for their flight home.”

  Matt nodded.

  Keller handed him a folded copy of the Times. He glanced at the front page. The photo was a punch in the gut. It was a selfie of his family in front of a sign for the Cancún airport. They were hamming it up for the camera. Where the hell had the Times gotten the shot? He realized that his mom had probably posted it on Facebook, the place where she pretended that their family was doing just fine, thank you very much. Under the photo, a caption:

  EVAN PINE (51), OLIVIA PINE (51), MARGARET PINE (17), THOMAS PINE (6).

  Under the selfie were separate shots of Matt and Danny. The one of Matt was another Facebook grab of him last summer. Danny’s was his mug shot.

  “I don’t want to read this.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” Keller said. “But these local cops have been being difficult. If they need additional confirmation that it’s your family, the photo may help. It also may remind them that the world is watching how they handle the case.”

  A distorted voice blared from the overhead speakers. It was hard to understand, but travelers started lining up to board.

  “All right,” he said. “I’d better get going.”

  “This will probably help.” Keller gave Matt his wallet and smartphone.

  “Thanks.”

  “You have no idea what a pain it was. The bouncer has a business on the side selling phones. There’s no money in your wallet.”

  There never had been.

  Matt looked at the face of the iPhone, cracked from the hundreds of times he’d dropped it. The phone was fully charged—thanks to Keller, no doubt. The device’s wallpaper was a photo of Jane, one she’d uploaded herself. She looked particularly regal in the shot.

  “You find anything helpful on it?”

  “We haven’t looked. We needed your password. And your permission.” Keller looked at him. “You mind?”

  Matt thumbed the sensor, unlocking the device. He took a deep breath before checking his text messages. There were hundreds of them. Many from unfamiliar numbers, but dozens from friends. There were no new messages from his father. One text from his mother, saying they were getting on the plane and that she loved him. Something she did out of habit whenever she flew. The fatalistic precaution in case the plane went down.

  But then he saw it. The unread text from Maggie.

  Excerpt from

  A Violent Nature

  Season 1/Episode 4

  “Holmes and Watson”

  INT. PINE FAMILY HOME – HOME OFFICE

  Twelve-year-old MAGGIE PINE sits behind a cluttered desk. File boxes and mountains of papers fill the space. In the background stands a homemade crime wall, complete with red string zigzagging from newspaper clippings to photographs to other clues mounted on the board by pushpins. Maggie wears a T-shirt with the picture of a horse on it, metallic braces on her teeth.

  MAGGIE

  My brother Matt loves movies and watches, like, a trillion. So one night my best friend was sleeping over and we were spying on him, like we always do, and I saw part of this movie, I don’t remember the name of it, where these lawyers, like, saved the day by digging through boxes at the clerk’s office. So it gave me the idea.

  C.U. on Maggie’s hands digging through a box. She retrieves a sheaf of papers. She’s beaming, proud of the find.

  MAGGIE

  So when we went back to Nebraska to visit my grandpa one time, I went to the county clerk and told her I was doing a school project—it wasn’t a lie; Mrs. Melhoose said I could—and the clerk let me dig through the old case files. And I found this.

  INT. STUDIO

  EVAN PINE sits on a stool, the background dark.

  EVAN

  Maggie brings me copies of notes from a couple of police interviews. One about a suspicious man at the house party that night, the last place Charlotte was seen alive. The other, a tip from an anonymous caller who said Charlotte’s murder looked a lot like two others in Kansas. After Danny went to prison, several other girls in Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri were killed in the same way: their heads smashed in with large rocks.

  INSERT – NEWSPAPER HEADLINE

  “Break in the Smasher Case: Plainville Man Arrested for String of Grisly Murders.”

  EVAN

  The prosecution failed to turn over the reports. If we could’ve looked into the Smasher back then, we might not be here right now. The failure to give Danny’s lawyer the reports broke the law; they’re required to turn over exculpatory evidence. And we got our first big break for seeking post-conviction relief.

  INT. PINE FAMILY HOME – HOME OFFICE

  Evan and Maggie sit at the desk together studying the case file.

  EVAN (V.O.)

  From then on it’s been Magpie and me. Holmes and Watson, though I’m not sure who’s Holmes and who’s Watson.

  CHAPTER 12

  MAGGIE PINE

  BEFORE

  “Your boyfriend’s here.” Harper moved her eyebrows up and down.

  Maggie had already seen Eric at the doorway to the high school’s tutoring center. She rolled her eyes. “Cut it out.”

  “Seriously, he’s into you. He only comes on the days you’re here. Like, he’s literally, almost, like, stalking you.”

  As with most of their generation, Harper overused like and misused literally. Maggie looked across the Center. It was filled with the usual cast: jocks who were trying to pull their grades up to a C so they could take the field, stoners who’d been given the choice between the Center or detention, and the nerds who tutored them. Well, except Harper, who was what some would call a hot nerd. Eric strutted through the room—that was the word, strutted, high-fiving other boys as he made it over to the check-in table.

  Standing before them now, he grabbed the pen to sign the log, then offered a rakish smile.

  “Any chance you can help me with algebra?” he asked Maggie.

  Her face reddened as she felt Harper’s sideways glance. “Sure.”

  Eric smiled again and directed his blue eyes at an empty desk in the corner. He gestured for Maggie to follow.

  Maggie tried not to get wooed by his charm. Eric was royalty at their school, literally, as Harper would say, and for once with proper usage. Homecoming king. Maggie’s older brother Matt would call Eric the archetype from an eighties John Hughes movie. She had to admit he was dreamy. Dreamy—what an old-fashioned word. She w
as starting to sound like her mother.

  She sat next to Eric, who flopped open his textbook. “I don’t get rational expressions.”

  Maggie tried not to look surprised.

  “I know, I know, you were doing this stuff in fifth grade.” His face flushed as if he were actually embarrassed. He was adorable even when he was uncomfortable. The world was not fair.

  “No, rational expressions are super hard,” she said, lying. “And they’re pointless. When in life are you ever going to use them?”

  “Right?” he said. “But I bet you will at MIT.”

  Maggie’s heart fluttered: he knew where she was going to college.She scooched closer, and for the next half hour tried to stay professional while helping him work through some problems. He smelled of cheap cologne and masculinity. But she needed to keep her thoughts in check. Guys like Eric Hutchinson were trouble. And they usually didn’t appreciate girls like her. They would someday, her mom assured her, but it took longer for the male brain to develop.

  “I like your shirt,” he said.

  Maggie looked down at the vintage AC/DC T-shirt, one of her dad’s favorite bands. “You know tutoring is free, right? You don’t have to flatter.”

  “I’m not. It’s cool.”

  “All right, focus…” She smiled.

  They continued with the problems. Then Eric said, “How’s your brother’s case going?”

  This wasn’t as surprising as Eric knowing where she was going to college. Maggie had been a major character in the documentary. The faithful daughter and sister helping chase down leads. It had given her a moment of celebrity at school, but it was more of the pitying variety. Though some of the internet trolls speculated that when she got older—she’d been only twelve when the documentary was filmed—she’d be quite the beauty, like her mother. Or her “hottie” brothers.

  Ugh. It was all the world seemed to care about. And in pure hypocrite mode, here she was fawning over handsome Eric.

  “We’ve had some setbacks with the case, but I got a great tip the other day,” Maggie said. “Setbacks” was an understatement. The United States Supreme Court wasn’t a setback; it was the end of the road. But Eric likely wouldn’t care about the intricacies of the legal system. Or was she underestimating him?

  “A tip? You mean like evidence or something?”

  “Yeah, wanna see?”

  He nodded as she pulled out her phone.

  “I run social media for the case. We get a lot of weirdos and trolls, but also some legit people. And we get tips now and then.” She tapped and swiped as she spoke. “Usually it’s nothing, but then this came in.”

  It was a jostling cell phone video, the first two seconds a blur of bodies, music blaring in the background.

  “What is it?” Eric said, leaning in closer.

  “It’s the party.” She was assuming that Eric, like everyone else, understood the shorthand from the documentary. The night her brother’s girlfriend, Charlotte, was killed, she’d attended a house party. Danny had been there too, like all the seniors. The local police had raided the festivities, and Danny and Charlotte had been separated in the melee. Witnesses reported seeing a very intoxicated Danny later that night at an after-party in a cornfield; Charlotte was never seen alive again.

  “It could be him, the U.P.,” Maggie said, pointing at the screen.

  “You mean, like, the Unknown Partygoer?”

  He’d definitely watched the documentary. The Unknown Partygoer had become a thing—Facebook memes, late-night talk-show bits, even shirts. The filmmakers focused on the fact that the police had identified everyone at the party that night except for one guest. A white male who a witness had aged anywhere from his early to late twenties and who no one seemed to know. The person the documentary suggested was the real killer. Who many believed was a loser named Bobby Ray Hayes, the Smasher. Maggie put the video in slow motion.

  Eric looked on, seeming fascinated.

  “The date stamp shows it was the night of the party. Phones weren’t as sophisticated then, but we can tell that much.” Maggie directed a finger at the screen. “There’s Danny.” On the tiny screen, her brother was laughing before downing the contents of a red Solo cup. He wore a tank top, showing off his bulging biceps and looking like a bro with a group of boys in letterman jackets. Right before the video turned black, they saw the silhouette of a face.

  “There,” Maggie said, freezing the video.

  “You think it’s him? Like, the real Unknown Partygoer?” Eric asked.

  “I’m not sure. But it raises more questions than it answers, because that is not Bobby Ray Hayes.” Her father had never believed the Hayes narrative. The pieces didn’t fit as perfectly as the documentary had suggested.

  “Holy shit. Who sent it to you?”

  “I don’t know. It was an anonymous tip.”

  “What do the cops say?”

  Maggie sighed. The cops couldn’t care less, particularly the Nebraska cops in charge of the investigation. As far as they were concerned, Danny Pine’s case had brought them nothing but public scorn and even death threats. One of the cops who’d interrogated Danny had committed suicide after the Netflix series aired.

  “They didn’t return my calls. They never do—they say the case is closed.”

  “Well, that’s”—Eric searched for the word—“it’s bullshit.”

  Maggie smiled. She liked him.

  “So, tonight,” Eric said, “some of us are getting together. At Flaherty’s house.”

  Mike Flaherty. Another member of senior class royalty.

  “You mean like a party?” Maggie asked.

  “Not really,” Eric said. “Well, sorta. But maybe you could stop by. It’s the last blowout before everyone leaves for spring break.”

  In the Pine home—after what happened to Charlotte—few dangers were greater than a high school house party. Maggie wasn’t sure whether it was because her father thought there was real peril or if it was just the memories it conjured.

  “Maybe,” she said, surprised it had escaped her lips. The Center’s bell rang.

  “Maybe,” he repeated, drawing out the word, flirtatious. He gave her a crooked smile. “If you come, we can work more on algebra.”

  “Really? You do a lot of math at parties?”

  “You wouldn’t want me to fail out, would you? I’d lose my scholarship,” Eric said earnestly. She’d heard that he’d been admitted to the University of Michigan on a lacrosse scholarship. The school was normally well out of reach for a C student, again proving that life was not fair.

  “Maybe,” she said again, butterflies floating in her stomach.

  “I’ll text you the address.” Eric grabbed his book, then strutted out.

  Why was it that they all strutted?

  Maggie returned to the check-in desk to help Harper close the Center. They had to finish the log and lock up the room.

  “What was that about?” Harper asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  Her best friend gave her a look.

  “He invited me to a party.”

  “At Flaherty’s?” Harper said, her mouth agape. Of course she’d already been invited. They were best friends, both bookish young women, but Harper had a wild side, and drifted seamlessly between social groups. One day it was a movie and pizza at Maggie’s, the next hiking with the nature club, the next a rager with the jocks.

  “Yeah. He said it was more of a get-together than a party, though.”

  Harper shook her head, like Maggie was being naive. “And…?”

  “And I don’t know. You know how my dad feels about parties.”

  “Mags, we’re graduating and you haven’t been to a single party. You haven’t had one drink. And don’t get me started about sex. Do you really want to go to college so, like, pathetic?”

  Maggie swatted her friend with a sheath of papers.

  “Come on, let’s go tonight,” Harper said.

  “Let me think about it.”


  “What’s to think about? You’re sleeping over at my house anyway, so you don’t have to ask your dad. And if the party sucks, we leave.”

  Maggie wanted to go. Wanted to see Eric. But she didn’t like sneaking around. Didn’t like the betrayal of a house party, of all things. “I’ll think about it.”

  * * *

  And think about it she did.

  By ten that night Maggie and Harper were pulling up to Mike Flaherty’s house in the back of an Uber.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.” Maggie watched as the group on the front porch cleared a path for two boys carrying a keg of beer up the steps and through the large front doors. Flaherty’s dad owned a chain of car dealerships, and the place was a sprawling McMansion. The Uber driver honked at some kids who were blocking the half-circle driveway.

  “Relax,” Harper said. “It’s gonna be fun. And you look amazing.”

  Maggie tugged up her top. She’d borrowed it from Harper, and it showed way too much cleavage. She’d also made the mistake of letting Harper do her makeup. And she’d nixed her glasses for contacts. They felt like grains of sand under her eyelids every time she blinked.

  Inside, Maggie’s stomach churned at the scene: a throng of kids bouncing to the beat of pounding dance music, the smell of beer, sweat, and weed.

  “Where are his parents?” Maggie asked. It was her first ever high school party. She hadn’t expected it to be so, well, cliché.

  Harper shrugged. She led Maggie through the great room, which was now a dance floor filled with kids twerking and grinding. There was even a cheesy DJ bobbing behind a sound system.

  They wound through the crowd to the dining room, a formal number with a chandelier, and the site of an epic beer pong game on the long table. Mike Flaherty was at the head of the table wearing no shirt, and some type of headband tied around his forehead. Muscles rippling, Mike stood on tiptoes and took a shot like a basketball player at the free-throw line. The small white ball flew in the air, bounced, hit the lip of a red cup but missed, prompting a so close groan from the crowd.