Accomplice (17 page)

Because I had stayed upstairs most of the evening, it was pretty easy to avoid going up to bed when my parents turned in. Instead, I brought down a huge box of photos of Chloe and me from the past few years and three different albums. I made a big production of setting up a workstation in the dining room. My mom totally ate it up.

“I think that’s a really good idea, Finn,” she said. “Would you like help picking out some pictures?”

“No, it’s really something I think I should do by myself.”

“That’s fine. Whatever you need.” She tipped her head, considering something. “I’m not sure if you know this, but it’s common at wakes or memorial services to display collections of photographs of the…person…being mourned. I’m sure that the Caffreys are going to want to do that, but Sheila and Brian might not be up for that right now. I bet they’d appreciate—”

“Yeah, okay.” My mom looked a little stricken, so I followed it up with, “I’m glad that would help out.”

She rubbed circles on my back and kissed the top of my head. Again I thought,
Will this be the last time?

“I’m sure it would help a lot,” Mom said. And that’s how I got started working on my Chloe Marie Caffrey Memorial Vision Board. Right around midnight, Dad came by and collected Chauncey for a walk, but then the dog trotted right back to his spot at my feet, under the table. Maybe ten minutes later, my parents drifted through the doorway of the dining room. Mom asked, “How long are you going to be up, do you think?”

I looked up at them both and summoned one last tragic look. “Um, not sure. I never expected this to help so much, but…it just makes me feel closer to her.”

“Oh, that’s good, sweetheart. Just try not to get hung up on finishing it tonight, okay? Tomorrow will be busy, but we’ll all have some downtime, and I’d rather you not try to deal with everything without having slept.”

“I slept all day, though.”

“That’s right, but it doesn’t always work like that. Just try to listen to your body.”

She bent down to kiss the top of my head and said, “We love you.”

And Dad echoed, “Love you, kiddo.”

I said, “Love you, too,” and I thought
last time, last time, last time
the whole while it took them to climb the stairs to the second floor. I waited through the toilet’s flushing, the softer rush of pipes, which meant someone
upstairs had turned on the sink. By the time I could convince myself that my parents were asleep, I’d filled fifteen pages with photographs of Chloe—first days of school, 4-H fairs, birthday parties. I found the pictures of the two of us dressed as Super Mario Brothers for Halloween. I made some pretty good progress on my weird fake memorial to my undead best friend. And then I dug out the bone from the bottom of one of the boxes of photos and gave it to Chauncey. I put on my jacket, then slipped out the back door. There were still lights on upstairs at the Caffreys’, so I was relieved that I’d remembered to wear my black tracksuit.

I ran off to bring Chloe home.

I had decided not to use the penlight, since I didn’t know if there were really cops parked at the bottom of the hill, protecting the Caffreys from the press. The moon was out, though, and my eyes adjusted to the dark pretty quickly. I tracked down Chloe’s sweatshirt first. Initially, I had trouble finding it and thought maybe Dean had come across the spot. Maybe that was the clothing the police claimed was evidence. But it just took some raking the ground and then Chloe’s sleeve peeked out from the dead leaves and mud. Digging it up creeped me out—it felt like I was unearthing a body.

It took me even longer to find Chloe—long enough that I was starting to panic and think that maybe she had just decided to hop on a bus instead. Or maybe she’d
gone straight to the police. But I heard her before I saw her. I heard twigs snap. I whispered her name and figured that if it turned out to be someone else, I’d just pretend to be mad with grief.

But she answered. I could see her frosting breath before I could make her out in the dark. She had the stupid shelf in her hand and it seemed so ridiculous. She’d tugged most of her braid out of her hair, and it looked like she had rolled in mud and dirt. She went to hug me and then stopped. I thought she was remembering what had happened that morning. But instead she said, “I shouldn’t get you dirty.” She grabbed her sweatshirt out of my hands and whimpered, “It’s cold. Finn, it’s wet.”

While she tugged her arms through the sleeves, I asked her, “Did you watch any of the news?”

“You told me to leave the TV off.” She sounded bored.

“I know, but did you turn it on? It’s okay—we can talk about it.” But she just looked up at me, so I knew she hadn’t.

“You told me not to, and I was going crazy all day trying to make sure that every little thing was back in the exact same spot. I didn’t use the sink or the shower, and I fluffed out the cushions of the sofa, in case you could see my outline sunken into it. I checked the stations on the TV and the radio, but I couldn’t figure out if it smelled like me in the basement. Maybe we should have
left potpourri or something.” She was rambling, and I wondered if she was okay, if being out in the wide night for the first time in so long was screwing with her head.

“It’s okay, Chloe.” I tried to figure out how to say it. I thought of how it would feel from her side—she hadn’t even gotten on TV. She’d sat in a cellar for days, for nothing. I tried to be really clear. “Chloe, we can’t do this. We have to go home and wake up our parents.” She went to speak, but I shook my head, kept going. “They arrested Dean today. Really arrested him—last time they brought him in for questioning or something. But today it was all over the news—they charged him with murder.”

“Well, they can’t do that.”

“Chloe—I saw it. It was like a mob scene.”

“There’s no body.”

I took a deep breath, made myself keep going. “The cops came to your house today. They said they had evidence, that they found your clothes—why did Dean have your clothes?” I saw Chloe and Dean in my head, sitting across from each other on his bed. He’d pull her shirt over her head, reach behind her back. He would have cupped her chin with his fingers and tipped her face up to his. But that wasn’t the point. “We knew we’d be doing this, Chloe. How could you risk letting him keep your clothes?”

For a moment, I had the awful thought that maybe she’d done it on purpose, that maybe Dean was really convenient that way. But Chloe didn’t say that. She rubbed her eyes and then her temples. And then, “Well, when I come home, everyone will know there hasn’t been a murder. They’ll just release him again.”

“Not if you say you can’t remember anything. You can’t be sure it wasn’t Dean and be so unsure about everything else. Honestly, the timing looks awful, anyway. He’s arrested and then you magically appear. People are going to suspect. We might as well just come forward before—”

“People aren’t going to suspect.” Chloe’s voice had gone cold, like when she’d spoken about her mom. “And if you tell them, they’ll never believe you. It’s too insane.”

“So we have to go in together.” I couldn’t believe I needed to convince her. I expected that she’d cry, that she’d be angry. But I figured on just telling her that we would face it together, that no one could hate us indefinitely. Especially her. No one could be angry with Chloe for long.

“You don’t get it. This is the kind of thing that will follow us forever. I can’t go home and tell my parents I did this. You can’t, either—”

“Of course I can’t. But I will.”

“No. You won’t.” She tossed the wooden shelf from one hand to another. “We have to go forward, just how we said we would. They’ll let Dean go. They can’t convict him with jeans and underwear.” She saw my stricken face. “And the times won’t match up. It’ll never even get to trial.” She kept going. “You have to just hit me with this like we said. Because otherwise, the only other option is for me to go back and say I broke out of your grandmother’s basement. I’ll say that you tricked me and kept me locked down there.” My skin crawled, but Chloe kept talking. “I’ll tell them that you scared me, that you’re weirdly obsessed with me.” She shrugged like it meant nothing. “I’ll tell them about this morning.”

I didn’t know when I had started crying. My face was wet and it was hard to breathe and I said, “Chloe?”

“It’s okay.” She said it kindly. All of a sudden, her voice went really gentle. “Just think about it. People might eventually decide I’m lying, but they’ll know I’m not lying about all of it.”

I couldn’t make it make sense. “What’s happened to you? It’s his whole future, for christsakes.”

She sobbed a little and I thought I could maybe snap her out of it, but she just stepped back from me. She said, “I know how horrible it sounds, but we said one of us would probably want to back out. We said the other had to stay strong. Remember? We said we had to be resolved.”

“That was before we got Dean arrested. Chloe, we can’t do this. It’s the rest of his life.”

And then Chloe started shrieking. “It’s the rest of
our
lives. Don’t you get what people will do to us? We’ll be a joke for years. You can’t just back out of this. You don’t get to just bail.” And when I hushed her, I realized that I lost. Because if I were really ready to turn myself in, I wouldn’t have cared who heard her screaming. I would have felt relieved that we were about to be caught.

And I could lie and say that I didn’t know what we were doing to Dean West the minute my fingers closed around that piece of wood. That I hadn’t noticed how kids had talked about him at school after the police had come to get him. Or how people had openly stared at him in the diner. The minute Chloe showed up bleeding, Dean’s chance for full exoneration evaporated. It didn’t even matter if they could prove that he was in custody when she was injured. People would just call him an accomplice. And worse. There would always be doubts, phone calls, hate mail. I knew all that. “It’s his whole future.” I said it again, pleading with her.

Chloe nodded at me. “You’re really just trading his for ours.”

I felt myself shaking and gripped the plank in both hands. Stepped back and twisted my body away from hers. For a second, when I swung back, I pictured letting the piece of wood sail out of my hands. It would
disappear into the dark trees. Maybe that’s what Chloe thought would happen, too. But I didn’t do that. I held on and turned back toward her and aimed for her temple, for the place near her ear, where her hair felt like silk. I hit her hard.

At first, she just stood there and I thought I’d messed it up. The woods sat silently around us. “Chloe?” My voice shook. She went to take a step toward me and stag-gered a little. She felt for her jaw, sank down to her knees. I went to reach for her and she waved me away. Her hand was dark with blood. “You shouldn’t touch me,” she said, kind of laughing a little, kind of singing.

“Oh God, Chloe. Oh God, I’m so sorry.” I backed away, felt sick.

“Don’t throw up,” she said. “It’s okay, but you can’t throw up.”

“Chloe—” The blood ran down her cheek and ear.

“You should go.” She tried to stand and then stumbled, fell forward. “It’s okay. You have to get back to the house. It’s okay.” She moaned a little.

“I don’t think you should be alone. I don’t know that you can make it back.”

“Now you’re so worried about me.” Her voice rose up and fell down.

“Chloe.”

“You’ll come and find me if I’m not back in an hour.” Her hair was matted and the right side of her face was
already swelling. She sat down fully on the ground and put her head between her knees. “I can’t believe you really did it. It’s okay. It’s okay. Finn, you have to go back to the house.”

“Chloe, I’m so sorry. I’m really sorry.” It was hard to look at her. I started to back away, in the direction of our fields.

“Wait—you have to take that.” I followed her hand to see she was gesturing toward the plank. I felt sick again. “We can’t just leave it here.” I thought about what Chloe had said, that she could claim I’d kept her in the cellar like some insane person. She caught me staring at it and then her. “Hide it. I won’t know where.”

I nodded, picked it up, and looked down at her.

“It’s okay,” she told me. “We’re going to be okay.” She said it one last time before I left her there and sprinted home.

I figured the lake was the safest place. It’s not like they would drag it again. And once the piece of wood sank into the muck, that’d be it, anyway. I hurled it as far as I could and then heard the deep splash in the dark. I ran the rest of the way back to our stables. Pumped some water out of the spigot and washed my hands, dried them on my jeans. The lights were off at the Caffreys’ and only our porch light glowed. I slipped inside the house and the dog rushed up and knocked me back a bit. So I knelt down, pressed my face into his wheat-colored fur, and tried to stop shaking.

I forced myself to open up another box of pictures and spread them out over most of the table. Later on, when everyone told the story, my mom would probably say in her breathless hippie way,
It must have been like looking up and seeing another photograph of Chloe, hung in the window
. The truth was that mostly I sat with my face pressed close, so that the glass kept fogging up and I’d have to wipe it with my sleeve.

It was hard to think about anything else than how hard I had hit Chloe, of how I had even kind of hated her when I did it, so maybe that meant I had hit her too hard. She could have been crawling around the pine-needled ground, trying to make sense of where she had found herself. She could have been bleeding to death, I guess.

It didn’t matter that the whole thing was her idea or that she was the one who dragged the stupid plank into the woods. If we found her the next day curled up near a fallen tree trunk frozen and smeared with her own blood, then I would be responsible. I kept remembering how the board had stiffened in my hands, the sick crunch it made when it connected. I almost went back out, thought about letting Chauncey out, so that I could chase him to the edge of our property and find Chloe on the outskirts, just in time. But then I rubbed the window clear again.

Even though I’d been sitting there waiting, at first I thought she was a deer. She was crouched on all fours, off in the distance, and moving so slowly, it looked like she’d stilled in fear. I stopped myself from screaming before realizing that I didn’t have to stop myself from screaming anymore. And then I took off running, again, letting the screen door slam loudly behind me.

“Chloe!” I called out. “Chloe!” The shadows shifted in front of me, and I turned back to see lights winking on in both houses. I ran to meet my best friend, who had
galloped off through the pasture almost two weeks before. I promised myself that as long as she could find her way back to normal, then I would let her. We’d never fight about the past few days, the decisions we’d made. They were lousy ones all around, but Chloe had been closed up in a dark cellar for days. She had the right to lose her mind a little.

Even knowing what to expect, I stopped a couple feet from her and gasped. Her head was still bleeding—it streaked down her face and neck and some of it had even spattered across the collar of her sweatshirt. But she’d also been busy. Her whole right arm was scraped. Her jeans were torn at the knees. “Jesus, Chloe. What did you do?”

She sort of lunged forward into me, clung to my shoulders and leaned in. “Does it look good?”

“Yeah, you look terrible.” I wrapped my arm around her waist and she clung to my neck and we just inched our way across the field, staring out at our houses. I saw my mom step onto the back porch and then my dad follow. Chauncey circled my parents in excited laps, barking.

“Where are my parents?” Chloe whimpered. “Where are my mom and dad?” She started crying then, really crying. It was hard to keep us standing upright.

Then I heard my mom yell her name and then yell, “Oh my God. Sheila—Sheila!” We could see my mom
run to the Caffreys’ door, frantically knocking and trying the locked door. “Help them, Bart. Help them.” And then again, “Sheila!” I thought of what Chloe had said about her mom, wondered if she was too doped up to react. But then we saw the Caffreys’ back door swing open. My mom waved her arms and then the three tentative figures stepped out into the floodlights.

Mrs. Caffrey screamed Chloe’s name. She knelt for a second like she’d been knocked down and then she ran toward us. Her white nightgown billowed and she screamed Chloe’s name again and again. By the time she reached us, I glanced past her and saw Mr. Caffrey halfway there. I slid out from under the loop of Chloe’s arms and stepped away, watched them swoop in and gather her up. Both Chloe’s eyes were closed—one of them looked swollen shut—but her smile split her face and tears seeped from both eyes. I thought back to all the times that I’d believed she hadn’t understood what her family was going through aboveground.

My parents stood together on the grass between the Caffreys’ place and ours. Cam stood next to my mom, and my dad kept stepping forward and then turning back to my mom. I reached out and realized my mom wasn’t just waving her arms; she was making the sign of the cross, over and over again. I tried to arrange my face to look like I’d just seen a miracle. But when I asked my parents, “Do you believe it?” I meant,
Are you buying
this?
And judging from the tears in their eyes and my mom’s fluttering hands, they thought it was an act of God and not us.

We all ended up in the Caffreys’ great room, and in the light, Chloe’s injuries looked even worse. What had looked like a scrape on her arm was actually closer to a gash. It gaped when she moved and I almost got sick, imagining her doing it to herself. I couldn’t force myself to look at her head. My mom had the Caffreys’ cordless phone in her hand, and she kept saying they needed to call an ambulance, but Mrs. Caffrey kept alternating between holding Chloe close to her and then asking, “Where have you been?” And “Oh God—what happened?” over and over again. Chloe just kept shaking her head and then groaning because it must have hurt to shake her head. By this time her speech was slurred, so none of us could really understand much. She got out, “It was dark and cold.” Which wasn’t necessarily untrue. A few times I also heard her say, “I woke up and my head was all bloody.” Also probably accurate.

“She’s so cold.” Mrs. Caffrey rubbed Chloe’s good arm, wrapped her in the blanket that had been folded on the top of the sofa. “Her clothes are soaked. Amy, look at what they did to her face.” Mrs. Caffrey’s voice sounded panicked, like she thought someone would break in and take her daughter away.

My mom looked at me. “Finn—why don’t you go get a warm washcloth and a fresh change of clothes for Chloe?” I nodded and hopped up, happy to have something to do. From Chloe’s drawers, I grabbed a set of flannel pajamas, socks, and a sweater in case she wanted to wear it over her clothes. I ran back out and looked down at the scene in the great room. Mr. Caffrey and my dad were setting Cam up at the coffee table with a drawing pad and some charcoal pencils. Our moms hovered over the sofa where Chloe was stretched out. My dad called over to my mom, “Honey, I think you need to call nine-one-one.”

I ran to the linen closet outside the hall bath, grabbed a washcloth. I figured it could only be good for us if Mrs. Caffrey helped Chloe change out of her clothes, so I was trying to be helpful enough that we’d get it done before one of the adults finally pulled it together enough to call the police. I took the stairs down two at a time and handed off the pajamas to Mrs. Caffrey.

Chloe’s dad squinted and wrinkled his brow. “Sheila,” he said, “I don’t know if we should do that yet.” He knelt down to Chloe. “Is it just her head? What if she has other injuries?” His voice choked off.

Mrs. Caffrey sobbed and asked, “Chloe—did someone hurt you, honey?” I almost said,
Look at her head, for God’s sake.
But then I realized—Chloe’s mom was talking about rape.

But Chloe piped up from her concussion country and said, “I’m so cold,” so pathetically that her dad nodded at her mom and Mrs. Caffrey gently tugged her left arm through the sleeve. When she went to free up the other arm, Chloe moaned.

Her mom looked up at me and said, “There should be some kitchen shears in the butcherblock.” I scuttled off to get those, but when I went to hand them to her, Mrs. Caffrey said, “You know what? I’m shaking so much.” So my mom took them and cut Chloe’s clothes off her body.

I ran the kitchen sink until the water steamed and then brought the wet washcloth in. Mrs. Caffrey sponged off the blood from Chloe’s shoulder, neck, and face. She held open the pajama shirt while Chloe wriggled in one arm and then the other, but Chloe’s breath hissed when the shirt brushed up against the cuts. “I’m sorry, dar-ling,” she said, then tugged the blanket more tightly around Chloe’s shoulders.

My mom stood up, went to the kitchen, and returned with a plastic bag from the grocery store. “Here—let’s just put everything in here in case anyone needs to take a look at it later on. Chloe, can you hear me? When was the last time you had any water? Are you hungry?”

And then I guess my dad figured he’d step in before they sat Chloe down to a five-course meal. “We need to contact the authorities. If you don’t want her in an
ambulance, that’s fine. But it looks like she needs stitches and medical attention, and, well, people need to know that Chloe’s home.”

Everyone stopped. Except for Cam’s pencils scratching across the page, no one made a sound. My dad looked embarrassed. But Mr. Caffrey stepped forward and said, “Jesus, Bart, you’re absolutely correct.” He flipped open his cell phone. “I’m going to call Detective Stewart.” His voice boomed through the huge room. Mrs. Caffrey nodded. I reached down to squeeze Chloe’s shoulder. We’d done a really good job. The next part would be pretty hard and she would be on her own for it.

It was a long night. The police cars showed up first and then the first aid squad. Chloe’s mom and dad rode with her, and my parents and I stayed back at the Caffreys’ with Cam. Seeing them lift her up and into the ambulance scared me. The doors closed, and I knew that she could tell them whatever she wanted.

The police questioned me that night, too. Not formally or anything. Just sitting in the Caffreys’ kitchen. What was I doing up so late?
Working on a photo memorial.
What made me look out the window?
The dog must have barked—I got scared.
How did I know it was Chloe?
I didn’t.
What was she doing when I found her?
She was on her knees, trying to crawl.
Most of it, I didn’t even have to lie about. They asked me if I’d heard anything, though. And I said it sounded like there might
have been a bunch of deer or maybe a black bear in the area, because I heard a lot of twigs snapping, like something was moving through the woods.

Detective Stewart looked at the other cop. “You heard someone moving in the woods?”

“You know, like animals or something.” I acted like it had just occurred to me. “Oh my God. You don’t think the guy who hurt Chloe was there? Why would he bring her back to the woods near our farm?”

“Why do you think a guy hurt Chloe?” Oh, this Detective Stewart thought he was so slick. He’d probably been utterly certain that Dean had killed Chloe because she made fun of how he talked or something. It screwed up his whole game if I heard someone in the woods.

I erased my face, so that it was blank and open. “Well, Chloe’s face was…” I bit my lip like it hurt me to remember. It wasn’t acting so much anymore—it was more like just leaving key pieces out. “Chloe’s face was really banged up, so I thought it had to be a guy, a man.”

Detective Stewart looked up at my parents. “Anything odd over the course of the night? Unfamiliar sounds around the property?”

Dad slowly shook his head. “We would have called it in. Last night was rough around here. It wasn’t exactly a normal day.”

Other Cop nodded, straightened his back. Dad forced the issue. “Must be a tough thing to tell a mother that her daughter’s been murdered.” He worked his jaw back and forth.

“Yes, sir.” Other Cop folded his arms in front of his chest. Mom sat up, like she’d just taken the room’s temperature or something and was thinking of keeping it home from school.

“Bart?” she asked, alarmed.

“I’d just figure that you’d want to make sure the girl was actually dead.”

My mother gasped out loud.

“We appreciate that, sir.”

“Are you going to be releasing the West boy?”

Detective Stewart stepped between my father and the other police officer. “Mr. Jacobs, unfortunately we can’t comment on an ongoing police investigation.” Dad turned his full gaze toward him. “I will say that we still have a young lady who was obviously subjected to some harm. Let’s hope the head injury is the extent of it.” My dad looked down. “Now, no one’s jumping to any conclusions here. But we brought Dean West in for a reason. And we’re going to see this through.”

I honestly couldn’t tell if my dad wanted to make sure they let Dean go or kept him locked up.

“Is Dean still a suspect?” I asked.

“Finley!” My mother scolded me and glared at my dad.

Detective Stewart raised his hands as if to calm everyone down. “That’s fine, ma’am.” He smiled a little at me. “We’re just working hard to keep this town safe for you and your friends.”

If I were any kind of decent person, I would have said,
Dean is my friend.
But my mother was looking steadily at me so I stepped back into the great room to check on Cam. I heard the cop say, “We just have a couple routine questions for you, Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs.” Cam was bent over his sketchpad, shadowing in the flank of a thoroughbred.

“That’s an amazing animal, Cam,” I said. “Can you imagine racing him?” Cam didn’t look up, but he clucked happily. Chloe had been so sure that he wouldn’t even notice that she was gone, but Cam seemed glad that she was back. Relieved. I wondered what the past week and a half had been like for him.

Chloe once told me that she knew that Cam didn’t always absorb conversations, but that he tuned into the mood of the house. And I’d seen it, too. If I showed up and Chloe was losing it, stressed out about an AP Chem test or something, Cam would be the one rocking and pacing. If Mr. and Mrs. Caffrey were fighting, Cam would be in the kitchen slamming cupboards or going nuts with his blurting noise.

Chloe’s mom called the house, and while my mom spoke to her, my dad led the police officers out the door. Detective Stewart said, “We’re going to have a couple guys out here, combing the area, as soon as it’s fully light.”