Spirit Seeker (17 page)

“Don’t make him any more angry than he is,” Sara said. “He’s not thinking straight. He could go out of control.”

As I tried to get to the door, she hung on. I could see fear in her eyes. “Sara, he won’t hurt us!” I cried.

We heard the tires on Cody’s car squeal as it shot out of the driveway. Sara let go of my arm. Exhausted, I dropped into the nearest kitchen chair.

Sara glanced around nervously. “We should get out of here. We don’t belong in this house, and with the police coming …”

We heard the cars arrive. “It’s too late,” I said and got to my feet. “All we can do is explain why we’re here.” It sounded easy, but I dreaded having to face my father.

Dad and Bill arrived with half a dozen backup police. At first, Dad stared at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but his eyes turned hard, and he snapped, “Where’s Cody?”

“He left,” I said.

“Do you know where he was going?”

“No.”

Dad looked so angry that Sara clutched my hand. Her voice shaking, she said, “Honest, Mr. Campbell. Cody was awfully upset. He just ran out the door. He didn’t tell us anything except that he didn’t want to be arrested.”

“Put out an APB,” Dad snapped at one of the uniformed officers. “Tell them to double-check the Garnetts’ house in West U and in Lake Conroe.”

The man left to use a police radio. I could hear the crackle and the voices out on the driveway.

Frank and Mr. Ormond burst through the door
and into the overcrowded kitchen. Bill pulled out a warrant, handing it to Frank, and three officers left the kitchen, fanning out through the rest of the house.

I pressed against the wall, hoping to slip out of the house while there was so much confusion, but no such luck. The moment the kitchen began to empty, Dad turned to me with such a stern look that all I wanted to do was get out of there—fast!

“Sara needs to get home,” I said and tried to edge past Dad.

“Sara may be excused, but you stay right where you are,” Dad said. “What I have to say won’t take long.”

“I’ll wait for you in the car,” Sara said and was out the back door before I could answer.

I walked to the sink, reached into a cupboard, and pulled out a glass. The jumble of hardware hanging on the wall gave me a headache, and I needed a drink of water.

“You gave me your word you wouldn’t see Cody,” Dad said.

I drank some of the water and turned to face him. “Until this afternoon I’ve kept my word to you and to Mom. But when Cody called and said goodbye, it frightened me—Sara too. Just ask her. We didn’t know what he was going to do. He told me he’d wait for me only a little while. I didn’t have time to try to find you and ask your permission. Mom either.”

“You could have called 911.”

“I couldn’t. Cody just said goodbye. He didn’t
tell me what he had in mind. What if he was thinking about committing suicide and he heard sirens and knew the police were coming to his house? He might have panicked.”

Dad didn’t answer. He stared at a spot on the wall near the top of my head.

I tried again. “I thought I was doing what was right, Dad. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s the same set,” Dad said.

“What?”

He walked toward me, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and reached over my head. With the handkerchief covering his fingers, Dad pulled a ten-inch butcher knife from a rack on the wall.

I twisted around to watch, gasping as I saw the black-and-white bone handles and the empty slot third from the left. “It’s exactly like that knife set in the Garnetts’ house!” I exclaimed.

Dad studied the knife, turning it over and over in his hands. The blade was shining, but in the crevice next to the handle, I could see a few tiny streak of rust. Rust? No. I pressed a hand against my stomach and fought back a wave of nausea. Those streaks weren’t rust. They were blood.

“Looks like we have the murder weapon,” Dad said.

“It can’t be,” I murmured. “Cody wouldn’t have put the weapon in such an obvious place.”

“It probably didn’t seem obvious to him. He probably thought he was being clever, switching knives and burying the clean one to distract us. A lot of criminals do some pretty dumb things, like
leaving bloody clothing where it can easily be found, or burying it with the murder weapon in a backyard, leaving a freshly dug plot.”

“Cody’s not dumb!”

“Holly,” Dad said, “there’s another reason some murderers leave a trail to their doorsteps. Consciously or subconsciously, they know they’ve done wrong and they want to be caught.”

“I still can’t believe …”

“You did your best to help Cody,” Dad said. “But now you’ve got to face facts, Holly. Give it up.”

Bill lumbered into the kitchen, Frank and Mr. Ormond behind him. Bill held out a hand. Draped over it was a cloth that held some money, four credit cards, a woman’s narrow gold bracelet, and two wristwatches. “We found this stuffed under Cody’s mattress, near the foot of the bed.”

Dad held out the knife and explained the switch.

“We’ve got more than enough to go on,” Bill said.

“The money, the credit cards, the jewelry his parents were wearing—if Cody stole them, then why leave them here?” I demanded. “Why didn’t he take them with him today?”

Frank groaned. “I can understand why he didn’t. What if he were caught with them in his possession? He was afraid, wasn’t he?”

Since Frank was looking at me, I answered. “Yes,” I said. “He was terribly afraid.”

One of the officers walked in from outside. He
held up a damp, badly wrinkled T-shirt. “This was in the washing machine out in the garage, along with a pair of jeans.”

“Wrap them up,” Dad said. “We’ll send them to the crime lab.”

Frank fell into a chair at the kitchen table and rested his head in his hands. “This is all so hard to believe,” he said. “Cody’s always been a good kid. He’s not the type.”

“There’s no ‘type,’ Mr. Baker,” Bill said. “As a rule, whenever somethin’ like this happens, neighbors and relatives say, ‘I can’t believe it. He’s always been such a nice boy.’ What triggers the change from a ‘nice boy’ into a killer? Maybe anger that’s built up over the years, or maybe an out-of-control temper that most people don’t see. Sorry, but we don’t have all the answers.”

Another uniformed officer came into the kitchen and began to talk to Dad and Bill. As Mr. Ormond joined them, I said to Frank, “I don’t believe, either, that Cody is the murderer.”

Frank lifted his head. His eyes drooped with sorrow as he looked at me. “I didn’t say I believed Cody didn’t kill his parents. I did at first, but now there’s so much evidence against him. Holly, I said it was
hard
to believe. That’s all.”

So many thoughts raced through my mind. I struggled to reconcile the inconsistencies.

Maybe I am stubborn. Maybe I’m just plain stupid
, I told myself.
But something here is all wrong. Why would Cody steal just a few pieces of jewelry and credit cards and then hide them? If he used the cards,
he’d be caught. There’d be no point in taking them. And wouldn’t he try to pawn the jewelry?

I could see the Garnetts’ living room the way it had been when I visited it with Glenda. The answer had been coming toward me when I panicked and ran. Glenda had said we could try again. Did I have enough courage?

“Someone knows what happened in that room,” I said aloud.
Maybe I can reach them. Maybe not
, I thought.

“Who are you talking about? You don’t mean that old neighbor with all the stories to tell, do you?”

“Ronald Arlington? No,” I answered.

Frank straightened, staring at me intently. “Who is this person, Holly? What do you know?”

The memories of the room flooded my mind, and I shivered at the blood and the fear and the terrible red glow. “It’s at the house,” I whispered. “I can’t tell you now because I don’t know if I can …”

Dad came up and rested a hand on my shoulder. “Go home, Holly,” he said. “Sara’s waiting to drive you.”

A
s Sara pulled up in front of my house, I said, “I’m sorry I got you into that.”

“It’s okay,” Sara said. “At that moment it seemed like the only thing to do.”

“I thought I could help Cody, but I didn’t.”

“No one can help Cody but himself,” Sara said.

“At least now you can give it up, Holly. It’s all over.”

I shuddered. “That sounds so final.”

Sara put a hand on my arm. “They’ll catch him,” she said, “and he’ll go to trial. It will be awful for you to read about it and hear about it while it’s going on, but remember—I’ll be there with you. That’s what best friends are for. Right?”

“Right,” I said, “unless …” I tried to smile and couldn’t quite make it, but I mumbled, “See you,” and climbed out of the Jeep.

As I closed the front door behind me, I called out, “Mom, I’m home.”

Mom called back, “I’m in the kitchen.”

As I walked toward the kitchen, something on the coffee table caught my eye, and I stopped. Transfixed, I stared at the amber barrette! I’d hidden it so carefully.

“Mom!” I yelled, “where’d you find my barrette?”

I heard the click of Mom’s heels as she walked from the kitchen. “What are you shouting about?” she asked.

“My barrette,” I said and pointed to it.

“What about it?” Mom looked puzzled.

“I thought I … uh … lost it. Where did you find it?”

“It was sticking up behind one of the sofa cushions. Is that where you lost it?” She smiled. “Any other questions?”

My gaze was drawn back to the barrette. The red-gold of the amber lay still and cool and deep. Maybe its appearance was a sign, telling me what I should do.

“Well?” Mom asked.

“Could I borrow your car?” I asked. “I’ve got a couple of things to take care of.”

“Like what?”

“Like …” I remembered two library books that were overdue. “Like the library, for one thing.”

“If you’re going to the library,” Mom said, “there’s a book you can pick up for me. They
called and said it had come in. I’ll write down the name for you.”

Deliberately, I took my white barrette out of my hair, replacing it with the amber one. Under my fingertips the amber felt cold and hard.

I ran upstairs and picked up the library books just as the phone rang. I snatched it up on the first ring. Cody? But it was Sara’s voice.

“Holly,” she said, “what did you mean when you said, ‘Unless’?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What you said when I took you home. We were talking about Cody and how it was over for him, and then you said, ‘Unless’.”

“So?”

“Don’t play games with me, Holly,” Sara said firmly. “What did that ‘unless’ mean? What have you got in mind?”

“Sara, you are my best friend. I only meant that I’m going to try one more time to prove that Cody isn’t guilty.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I promise I’ll tell you if it happens,” I said and hung up. The phone rang again, but I ignored it.

As I reached the kitchen, Mom handed me the phone. “It’s Sara,” she said.

“I’ve got to go out. Right this minute. I promised I’ll call you later,” I said to Sara. Without waiting for an answer, I hung up.

Mom had finished writing the book information on a piece of notepaper. “Thanks,” she said and handed it to me along with her car keys. “When will you be back?”

“Soon,” I said. “Six-thirty or seven. In time for dinner.”

W
ednesday. 5:00
P.M.
It took less than five minutes to pick up Mom’s book. I jumped back in the car and headed straight for West University.

I parked in front of the Garnetts’ house. Then I ran across the street and up the winding path to Glenda Jordan’s front door. I knocked, expecting the door to open at my touch, but no one answered. I knocked again, but the house was silent. I walked down the driveway and peered into Glenda’s junglelike backyard, but it was empty. So was her one-car garage. Cautiously I reached up to touch the amber in my barrette. It was cold and lifeless.

Discouraged, I trudged back to Mom’s car, but I stopped, my hand on the door handle. If I were going to make contact with the spirits in the Garnetts’ house, it would have to be soon. Very soon. Tomorrow the cleaners would come to take up the rugs and scour the room. According to what Glenda had said, the atmosphere wouldn’t be the same.

I had no choice but to try it alone. Before I could change my mind, I stalked up to the front door, unlocked it, and closed it firmly behind me.

Slowly I crossed the entry hall and entered the living room. The air in the house had been stirred by the presence of others, and I remembered that the police would have been here, searching for
Cody. “It’s all right,” I whispered aloud. “They’ve gone and I’m here. It’s all right.”

Trying to duplicate what Glenda had done in every way possible, I went to the entertainment center, found a tape, and popped it in.

I sat in the chair I’d been in before and carefully repeated what Glenda had instructed me to do. Palms resting upward in my lap, I closed my eyes and began thinking about my toes, willing them to relax. My thoughts moved upward: hips and back, shoulders, and arms, and, last, my neck and head. My breathing slowed. In and out, in and out, along with the music that grew in volume and swirled through my mind. I could sense the amber glowing as its warmth radiated through my body. It was time to seek the spirits. It was time.

“M-Mr. and Mrs. G-Garnett,” I whispered, as I had before. “Here I am again—Holly Campbell. Cody’s friend. Help me learn the identity of your murderer. Show me. Please … show me.”

I pictured the room as I had before. In my mind I watched Cody place a CD in the player and turn to me, his arms outstretched. Then, as before, the music in my mind became harsh and discordant as the vision of Cody faded. I opened my eyes to a rush of hot red air that pressed against my back and head. The smell of evil was bitter and horrifying and wrapped itself around me.

At the edge of my consciousness I began to hear footsteps again. And as before, they slowly came closer … closer … closer.