Fatality (17 page)

Verne’s words filled the car like cigarette smoke. Rose choked on them. It occurred to Rose that this was a black SUV in which they sat. She squinted at the dashboard. A Dodge Durango. The second witness on I-395 had been correct.

For a person who liked to surround herself with facts, she had been rather negligent about acquiring the right ones.

“You’ve protected me all these years,” said Verne, “and don’t think I’m not grateful. I heard how you stole a police car so you could hang onto your diary. But they’re ganging up on you, Rose. Tabor, your parents, the cops, everybody. They’re going to force you to talk, Rose.”

His frown had become so intense that his eyes bulged. His face and neck were bright red, like a man playing high notes on a trumpet and running out of air.

Rose tried to ask what he had actually done, and how, but she could not seem to speak. “Frannie Bailey?” she whispered, finally.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” Verne told her. “I didn’t plan it. I just got mad and I acted. That’s the kind of guy I am, I don’t hang around. I didn’t even know it happened until she was lying there.”

This could not be true. Frannie Bailey had been killed inside her house, and surely Verne and the rocks and the landscaping project had been outside. Verne had had to follow her in, carrying his rock.

Rose did not want to think about this.

She reached for the door handle but there wasn’t one. She ran her fingers over knobs and latches, armrests and protrusions. There was no door handle. It was like the back of the police car. You could get in by yourself. But you couldn’t get out by yourself.

“I removed it, Rose,” said Verne. “You can’t get out.”

It was time to take Verne seriously. That had been Frannie Bailey’s mistake—not taking Verne seriously. But Rose could think of nothing to say or do. She continued to study the door, unable to believe that it was no longer an exit.

She wondered when he had taken off the door handle. Recently? Just for her? Her mind felt as dislocated as a shoulder. Only the past was becoming clear.

It didn’t kill me to know the truth about my parents and it won’t kill Dad, either, she thought. It will shock him and sadden him, but we will soldier on, because it will matter to him to be kind. What will kill me is Verne.

So in the end, I suppose my father is never going to know he isn’t my father. It took me four years to get to a place where I could think calmly about the truth. But Verne isn’t going to give me four years.

The phone in her purse rang.

“Don’t answer that,” said Verne.

She answered it.

“Rose!” yelled her brother. “What is going on? Alan just reached me. I had to run all the way back to my dorm to look up your cell phone number! Alan has
my
number but nobody has your number. What else is new, Rose? Nobody has your number! I’m a lunatic here! Two thousand miles from whatever you’re doing!”

My half brother, thought Rose.

But his was not the voice of somebody half caring. Or half loving. It was the voice of somebody entirely furious and entirely scared.

“Verne killed Frannie Bailey,” she told him. “I suppose that’s why he dropped out of the band that night. He really did have other things to do. I think he must be the one who tried to run over me.”

She could actually hear her brother swallowing hard. “Where are you now?” he said.

“With Verne in his car.”

“God,” said her brother prayerfully. “Hand him your phone. Let me talk to him.”

“Tabor wants to talk to you, Verne,” said Rose, passing the phone, and to her amazement, Verne took it in his right hand and continued to steer haphazardly with his left.

“Tabor, she was protecting me, you know. She always had this huge crush on me. I never knew what to do about it.”

It occurred to Rose that Tabor might believe this.

How ghastly. She had been so careful to provide no reason for stealing the police car. What if people really and truly thought the reason for stealing the police car was to protect Verne from a murder charge? What if in some horrid way she was forever bracketed with Verne?

Telling her parents the truth seemed good after all. She even wanted CJ Pierson to know, and Megan Moran, and Craig Gretzak. She wanted Alan and Chrissie and Ming to know.

Up ahead were a lot of emergency lights. They swirled around, heating the pavement, glaring across the intersection, the way they had at her own house only a few weeks ago. It occurred to Rose suddenly that there had been no emergency that day. Questioning her about a four-year-old crime did not require strobe lights.

Those cops were just being hotshots, she thought. Those lights were half the reason I went squirting out of the house like water from a firehose. If they’d been calm, I would have been calm, and none of this would have happened.

She craned her neck to see what was going on ahead of them. Somebody must have had a terrible accident to require so much assistance. Rose twisted in her seat to look behind them and see if an ambulance was coming, in which case she must convince Verne to yield, but behind them were even more police cars.

Verne was still talking to Tabor. Rose had failed to listen in on them. She wondered briefly how she had ever achieved honor roll, she who checked out of listening mode when it mattered.

Verne caught sight of the chaos in front of them. “What is this?” he demanded irritably. He did not slow down, although every car in front of him did. Rose threaded her fingers along the edges of her seat belt, wondering whether the air bag would work, as they were about to crash into several police vehicles. Bad enough I stole one, she thought. Now I’m going to wreck an entire convoy.

At last Verne braked, the car skewing to the left since he was driving one-handed and still talking to Tabor.

“I can see a terrible accident way up the block,” said Rose, leaning forward and squinting. “Oh, wow, it looks as if two cars flipped. One is a white van. Verne, it’s little kids! They’re crying. They’re hurt! Oh, Verne, it’s really a mess. Those poor people.”

The landscaping company had been right to put Verne on the bottom of their list of recommendations. It never occurred to him that Rose could be lying, that she didn’t see one thing farther up the block except more police. She had, however, seen Megan Moran and Craig Gretzak.

Verne came to a full stop.

An officer walked slowly toward them. Verne lowered his window one inch. Through the slit, the officer asked courteously to see Verne’s license. Verne told Tabor he’d have to call back and handed Rose the phone.

“Rose,” whispered her brother. “Get out of the car.”

But Rose could not get out of the car.

“License?” said Verne to the policeman, frowning. “I thought there was an accident.”

“Yes, sir. Bad one. Real mess.”

Verne twisted in his seat in the way of men who keep their wallets in their back pockets.

He doesn’t think he’s guilty of anything, thought Rose.

A terrible comparison crept into her thoughts. Her mother, too, never felt guilty of anything. Like Verne, she simply didn’t want to be caught.

But I loved her, thought Rose. And I wanted Daddy to go on loving her. I wanted them to love each other. I wanted them both to love me. I was so afraid they would get a divorce and I would be the one and only single and complete reason.

Verne removed a small plastic rectangle from his thin wallet. He handed it through the slit of the window.

“Mind lowering the window a little more, sir?” asked the officer.

It was clear that Verne minded a lot. Rose understood. Opening the window would let the law in, like a breeze.

Verne pressed the button that lowered his window.

The officer’s hand was inside immediately, fingers feeling for the lock.

Rose released her shoulder strap.

The click was unmistakable. Verne whipped around. The fingers that had once brought a rock down with sufficient force to break a skull now closed on her wrist with sufficient force to snap it.

But Verne could not prevent his own door from being opened. There was a horrible scrabbling moment of wrestling and grunting.

Frannie Bailey died like that, thought Rose, watching Verne fight. One horrible scrabbling moment and then nothing.

Megan Moran opened Rose’s door. She was no weakling, this former basketball player who had made it to Boston. She whacked Verne’s knuckles with the handle of her gun and he screamed in pain and let go and Rose was yanked out of the car and onto the pavement and hustled to safety.

Rose thought of happy young men—boys, really—making music in a basement, dreaming of becoming rock stars even though they had only basement talent.

All but one of those boys went on to other talents. This boy …

“You lead a very exciting life, Rose,” said Megan Moran.

“That has never been my intent,” said Rose. She and Megan laughed like old friends.

Perhaps by now they were.

“B
UT HOW DID YOU
know to set up a roadblock for Verne?” asked Rose.

“Alan called us,” said Megan. “Almost too late, but that seems to be your lifestyle.”

“Alan called you?”
She was astonished. How could Alan possibly have known who and what the danger was?

“Yup. Letter A in the book of crushes.”

“It was not a book of crushes,” said Rose stiffly. “It was a diary.”

Megan Moran looked skeptical. She changed the subject “May I ask why you got into a car of the type that tried to run you over? In fact, the
actual
car that tried to run you over? Anjelica says you couldn’t even remember the driver’s name. Yet you cut school and drove off with him.”

“Well, I sort of knew him,” said Rose. “Anyway, it worked out in the end.”

“Risky,” said Megan Moran.

“Basketball players should be comfortable with risk,” said Rose.

“Basketball is a game. Murder is not.”

Rose had no response to this. Poor choices seemed to be her specialty.

Megan Moran suddenly put an arm around Rose and hugged her, as if they were sisters, or teammates.

The intersection was now immobilized by police. Traffic was being intercepted and directed down other blocks. The police were listening to long, earnest explanations from Verne, whose hands were fastened behind his back. His metal cuffs gleamed in the sunlight. Every car motioned by took its time, hoping to figure out what was going on. SUVs had the distinct advantage of being high enough for a good view. Rose didn’t care how high up off the road they were; strangers were never going to figure this one out.

To her surprise, two vehicles were suddenly waved through. The first was Alan’s, big and square and dark. Chrissie was waving madly out the passenger window. The second vehicle, a small, pale shadow of the first, was Anjelica Lofft’s.

Anjelica parked where the police told her to, but Alan steered around the police and pulled up, as had a number of vehicles before him in the last few days, at Rose’s side. Chrissie had to run around the whole car to reach Rose, but Alan had only to step out, so he got there first, hugging Rose fiercely, but not as if he liked her. It was the hug of somebody who wanted to be sure she was still alive and breathing before he crushed her ribs. The hug of a big brother’s friend.

“You’re
crazy”
said Alan, just as Tabor would have wanted him to. “I would have had a heck of a time explaining to Tabor why I let you get killed.”

“She isn’t crazy,” said Chrissie, just as Rose would have wanted Chrissie to. “She really didn’t see anything and she really didn’t know anything. So there.” The girls finished hugging and Chrissie said, “But really, Rose, Alan is absolutely right. Getting into a black SUV after a black SUV tried to kill you! You
are crazy.”

Anjelica was joining them, so Rose could not explain that going with Verne had been a handy escape from having to talk to Anjelica. “I didn’t even glance at what Verne drove,” she admitted. “It seemed logical that Tabor would fly home early. And he’d call a buddy to pick him up because Mom and Dad were at work. And he’d want me to meet him, since I was his reason for coming home.”

Verne was being placed in the backseat of a police car. An officer’s hand pressed down on top of Verne’s head, forcing him to bend, just like on TV. And even though they were only a hundred feet away, and even though they knew what was happening, and to whom, and why, it remained just as unreal as TV.

“I’m having trouble imagining Verne as a murderer,” said Alan. “I was fourteen and he was eighteen when Tabor had the band. Anybody who was a high school senior, I pretty much respected.”

“It wasn’t Tabor’s band, though,” said Chrissie slowly. “It was Verne’s. It must have crushed Verne when it turned into Tabor’s. Proof that Verne couldn’t even run a basement band.”

“Why did Verne kill Frannie Bailey?” asked Anjelica.

Rose shook her head. “For no reason. Verne told her that he was smart enough to be her business partner instead. She laughed and said he was way too dumb. His feelings were hurt. So he killed her.”

Anjelica had tears in her eyes. “I loved Frannie,” she said. “She could be very blunt. She hurt everybody’s feelings. Routinely. But to kill her! Oh, Rose, you are so lucky to have escaped.”

When Verne’s fighting feet and hands had been corralled in the back of the squad car, the police shut the door and he was trapped. Rose knew how it felt. Knew the smell and the sense of horror. “I don’t think Verne would really have done anything to me,” she said. “He was calm. He thought—” But Rose didn’t want them to know that Verne thought she loved him. And she didn’t want to talk about the passenger door he had fixed so that she could never leave.

Anjelica sniffed. “Verne was probably calm when he cracked Frannie over the head. He was probably calm driving on 395, examining the trash crew to see who was the girl with blond hair. He’s probably calm during all his homicidal moments.”

Alan was laughing. “You know, Anjelica, you’re okay.”

Exactly what I need, thought Rose. Alan falling in love with Anjelica.

Chrissie Klein imagined that Friday night drive in the brown Navigator.