Killing Britney (15 page)

thirty-five

Adam
could hear their muffled voices on the other side of the door, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He was worried they might be talking about him. He’d come to Madison to get away from trouble, but now he was afraid he might be in even more trouble than he’d gotten himself into in New Hampshire.

When the detective returned to the room, she was even less friendly than when she’d left. Her stare disturbed him. It was so accusatory.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Have you ever heard of a place called the Sanctuary?”

“Melissa took me there once. Why?” Adam ran his fingers through the part in his hair over and over, as though he were trying to pull the hair right out.

“Where is it?”

“It’s a park. Me-something. Some Indian name.”

“Menominee Park?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

The detective stuck her head out the door and shouted down the hallway. “Have you found her yet?”

A voice carried up the stairs. “Negative. We’ve covered the whole property. She’s not here.”

Adam frantically asked what was going on, but the detective ignored him.

“You’re positive?” she called out to the officer down the stairs.

“We can keep searching if you want.”

“Yeah, do that.” Turning to Adam, she said, “Come on, let’s go.”

“What’s going on?” Adam asked, but she was already out the door, scrambling into her jacket. He had no choice but to follow her.

They raced to Detective Russell’s car. As soon as she had the ignition going, Detective Russell cracked the window and, taking the wad of gum out of her mouth, lit a cigarette.

“At least tell me where we’re going,” said Adam.

“We’re going to Menominee Park to find Britney,” snapped the detective.

“What happened? Is she okay?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

Hitting a button on the dashboard, the detective squealed the cruiser out of the driveway and splashed through the puddles that the melting ice had left in the street. The siren shrieked and they chased off toward the park.

Adam was tense. His fear for Britney’s safety was overwhelming.

“Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

She just glared at him—she seemed tense and nervous too—and he shrank into his seat. It was no use; she wasn’t going to tell him anything.

He felt lucky to be up front for once. Every time he’d been in a police car before—just this morning had been the most recent—he’d been in the back, behind the bulletproof glass partition, sitting awkwardly on his cuffed hands, his back pressing into the hard plastic seat. It was nicer up front with handles on the door and plush vinyl cushioning behind him.

“So, we got this call, Adam,” she said. Her eyes were fixed on the road. Something in her tone filled him with dread.

“Yeah?”

“From the guys in forensics.”

“Okay—”

“And they … The gun that Britney’s father shot himself with. Have you ever seen that gun before, Adam?”

Heat rushed to Adam’s face and he began to sweat.

“Uh—I don’t know. I’d have to look at it.”

“So you might have.”

He shrugged. He didn’t want to tell her anything he didn’t have to.

“What would you say if I told you we found your prints on it, Adam?”

“I’d say—wait, I thought you said he killed himself?”

“I said it
looked
like he killed himself.”

“So, what? You think
I
killed him?!”

“Why don’t you tell me why your prints might be on that gun, Adam,” she said, with the smallest of glances in his direction.

He couldn’t speak as fast as he was thinking. “We both like to hunt. A while ago, right when I got to town, he was showing me his gun because we both liked to hunt and he wanted to show me his gun.” The panic he felt was like a nutcracker chomping down on his temples. “And so I held it and sighted it up and stuff to get the feel of it. I don’t even know where he kept it. I swear.” He could hear his voice as he spoke, and it didn’t sound convincing. The more afraid he got, the shriller he became.

The detective’s cheeks puckered in on themselves as she took a long drag on her cigarette, and then she said, “Tell me about New Hampshire, Adam.”

It was hopeless. He felt trapped. He wished she would stop saying his name after every sentence.

“I was having a hard time.”

Outside, the city streamed past, the coffee shops and boutiques and used bookstores and ramshackle wooden houses where the college students lived. The weather had turned. People were everywhere, strolling around like they’d just woken up from a hundred-year sleep to discover, to their amazement, that the world was still beautiful. Adam imagined what it would be like never to be able to walk like that again. He suddenly wanted to feel the wind on his face.

“Can I roll down the window?” he asked.

“No.”

The detective lit another cigarette.

“You had some trouble with guns in New Hampshire too, didn’t you?”

“It was in my car!” he pleaded. “I was going to go hunting after school! God! I didn’t do anything wrong.” He picked at the chipped chrome around the handle of the car door.

The police radio growled, and Detective Russell answered it.

“Tara?”

“You’ve got me; what’s the news?”

“We’ve got test results on your 187. His hands are clean.”

“What’s that mean?” Adam asked once she hung up.

She looked him dead in the eye and said, “That means Britney’s dad didn’t pull the trigger. There was no residue on his hands.”

The street widened into four lanes, and the houses started to become interspersed with thick clusters of trees. They passed a wooden sign that said something Park, but it went by so fast that Adam couldn’t read it. With the snowbanks dwindling, everything looked slightly different. He couldn’t remember if this was the same place.

When they veered into the parking lot, he felt another shudder of dread. Up ahead of them was Britney’s yellow VW Bug. And parked right next to it was Bobby’s red pickup.

thirty-six

Adam’s
fear for his own safety had vanished as soon as he’d seen Bobby’s truck next to Britney’s car. He was too worried about her, worried for her life, to think of himself.

He and the detective splashed through the icy puddles in the parking lot toward the vehicles. No one was there, but soggy footprints in the slush and gravel pointed into the winding pathways of the park.

“This way,” shouted Adam.

They raced through the trees, brushing roughly past wet shrubs, kicking and stomping through the tangle of saplings that the melting snow had revealed.

When they got to the bench, they wheeled and stopped. The waterlogged footprints they were following led directly onto the lake. Fifty feet out or so, they stopped at a partially submerged brick-red ice-fishing shack, which had begun to tip through the ice toward one corner.

“Wait,” said the detective, “we have to find another way. It’s not safe.”

But Adam was already charging ahead. As he jumped onto the ice, he heard a loud popping sound below him, then a series of creaks and full-bellied groans from the ice adjusting to his weight.

Despite her best judgment, Detective Russell followed him.

Striding with great leaps, slipping and sliding, each step holding the possibility of breaking through, they rushed to the ice-fishing shack.

There was shouting coming from inside. A male voice. Bobby Plumley. “Help me,” he screamed. “Somebody, help me!”

Where was Britney? Why wasn’t she shouting too?

Adam got there first and he tried to pull the door open, but it was locked from the inside. From the way the door twisted, he could see that the lock was flimsy, nothing more than a hook through a metal loop.

“Where’s Britney?” Adam yelled. “Open the door, Bobby.”

“I can’t reach it. I’m stuck,” came the voice from inside.

“Bobby, let me in!” Adam pulled with all his might. With every yank, the shack rattled. Bobby was making a whole lot of noise, but he wasn’t opening up.

Detective Russell pulled her baton out of her belt, and with great precision she wedged it under the lock and twisted, snapping the metal in two.

The door flew open.

The hole in the ice was huge. As the water had warmed, the area where the fishermen had drilled to drop their lines into had spread. Now it was almost as wide as the shack itself.

Bobby had fallen through. His flop of hair was partially wet; it hung down over his cheeks. He’d lost his glasses, and the spots on his nose where they normally rested looked waxy. His lips were blue. With one hand, he grasped onto the bench built into the far wall of the shack, and there was a dark division of color where his snowmobile suit was soaked through. His other hand held what looked like a bundled-up article of clothing, golden leather and deep red wool.

He flopped the bundle up out of the water at Adam. It was Ricky Piekowski’s letter jacket. The one Britney never took off.

“I’m so cold.” Bobby was shivering. His lower lip shook like it was surging with current. He was crying.

“Adam, help me,” barked the detective. She had already scoped the shack out and was testing how tightly it was locked to the ice. On her directions, Adam braced his feet on the outer right edge of the door. She did the same on the left. They each took one of Bobby’s arms and, using the shack itself for leverage, they swung him up out of the water.

“Where is she? What did you do with her?” Adam yelled.

Bobby’s whole body shook and jittered.

“I w-w-was trying to save her.” Stammering, he tried to make himself understood. “I was …”

As what had happened began to sink in, Adam began to feel dizzy, weak. He let go of Bobby and sank to his knees.

Bobby stared through bloodshot eyes at Adam.

“This is all your fault! You saw she was happy and … I tried to tell her, but she wou-wouldn’t listen. She was upset. And … and … and …”

Suddenly Adam was on top of Bobby. He had him by the collar of his snowmobile suit. He shook him violently. He was shrieking, “You killed her! You killed her! You bastard!” The tears streamed down his face.

The detective was preoccupied by something on her hand. She studied her fingers, rubbed them together. She held her hand up to her face and smelled it. Pulling Adam off Bobby, she pointed to a spot nearby and said, “Stand there.” Then she turned to Bobby. “What happened?”

“She took off running. I was scared. I remember what she was like right after her mother died. So I chased her and she ran faster and I almost caught her, but I slipped and fell on the ice and she ran into this shack and she sat on the bench. She was crying. We were both crying. She was writing something—here.”

He dug in his pocket and pulled a crumpled, wet piece of loose-leaf paper out of it.

“I have it here. I grabbed it from her.”

The detective grabbed the paper and smoothed it over her knee. Studying it with the same scrupulous attention she’d been giving to her hand.

“She wanted to kill herself. And I tried to hold her back. I tried to pull her out toward the shore, but she fought with me and the ice cracked under us and she lunged up and locked the door and then she jumped, feet first, into the water. I couldn’t hold on. I had her by the sleeve of her jacket, and it slipped off her in my hands. I saw her go under. She … I couldn’t stop her.”

“She’s down there?” Adam shouted. “Then she might still be alive!” He darted for the hole in the ice, stripping off his jacket, ready to dive in and fish Britney out, but Detective Russell caught him by the waist and held him—kicking and screaming—back.

“It’s too late,” she said. “You can’t save her.”

He struggled against her, pried at her fingers and kicked at her shins, but her grip was tight and he couldn’t get loose of her. Eventually, he sank to his knees and buried his head in his hands.

The detective was reading and reading the note Bobby had given her.

When Adam could speak again, he asked, “What’s it say?”

She handed it over.

The paper had been soaked through and become translucent, but the words scrawled on it had been written in ballpoint pen. They were still clearly legible:

I’ve had enough. I’m through with all of you.

It wasn’t signed.

“This isn’t Britney’s handwriting,” he said “It’s not Bobby’s either, but it isn’t Britney’s.”

“I saw her writing it! I pulled it right out of her hands!”

“Yeah, just like you saw me kill all those people. You’re full of shit, Bobby.”

Bobby lay limp on the ice, staring at the sky, as though out of sheer exhaustion. A wry smile cracked over his face.

Adam handed the note back to the detective. “Detective, this isn’t her handwriting. I swear.” She took it without even looking. She was still focused on the ice-fishing shack.

“We should get off this ice,” she finally said. She carefully folded the note and put it in the pocket of her jacket.

“Come on, Bobby, I’ll help you up.”

She reached out and, taking Bobby by the wrists, pulled him to his feet. Then she turned his hands over and looked at his palms.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Bobby, you know when you fire a gun, the residue gets all over your hands. I’m going to have to place you under arrest.”

Bobby squirmed; he kicked at her shins and twisted violently, but he couldn’t break her grip. Finally he bit her, and as she reacted, he swung his elbow into her jaw.

He was off, racing toward the shore. The ice underneath him was popping and cracking.

The detective dashed after him and, struggling to his feet, Adam followed.

The melting ice was almost impossible to run on. There were thin spots everywhere, hidden by the slushy layer on top, and twice Adam’s lunging foot fell through into the icy water. The detective and Bobby were having similar problems, but Bobby, with his head start, was gaining ground.

Digging his toes into the soft surface, Adam pushed to catch Bobby—he’d reached the shore. He had an exposed root in his hand and was struggling to pull himself up onto the land with it. Adam dove. He grabbed Bobby’s boot, but Bobby twisted and kept climbing. The boot slid off into Adam’s hand with such force that it threw him sprawling backward.

And Bobby was off again, on land now.

Adam was right behind him. When Bobby swung around the wooden bench, Adam jumped right over it and almost nabbed him, but Bobby grabbed a trunk and spun himself quickly in a new direction.

They chased through the trees.

They’d lost the detective.

Bobby kept weaving and dodging, gradually making his way toward the parking lot and his truck. When he hit the edge of the woods, he broke into a sprint.

Adam was losing ground. There was no way he’d catch him now.

Then, just as Bobby was about to reach his truck, the detective leapt out from behind Britney’s VW Bug and grabbed him. She twisted his arm behind his back, lifting him almost off the ground.

“Bobby Plumley, I’m placing you under arrest,” she said, “for the murders of Britney and Edward Johnson.”