The Telling (34 page)

“And one more time, explain why you started screaming when he approached the driver's side.” I fumble with the recorder as it almost drops; Sweeny's voice worms into my ear.

An impatient groan turns the recording staticky. “I already said that it was his face. It was all red.” My heart knocks between my lungs. Maggie. I thought I'd never hear her I-don't-give-a-shit, nasally pitch again.

“I see,” Sweeny says. Rustling of papers. “Is it possible you knew him and didn't recognize him because of the red obscuring his features?” These are questions that Sweeny asked Maggie the night on the highway. Sweeny interviewed Maggie five times in the week between Ben's death and Maggie's disappearance. These must be the recordings of those meetings. I don't have a clue how Dad got them; it's unlikely the police hand out suspect interviews. But I'm sure it was easy enough to find a sympathetic officer who'd make a copy.

“No, I've already told you. I. SAW. HIS. FEATURES. Clearly.” Maggie's voice is stubborn. A palm slaps the table. “He was a stranger. He came out of nowhere. He appeared with his face covered in blood, and of course I screamed.”

There's a long pause, and I study the window into the inner mechanism of the machine; the miniature tape has plenty of slack left to play.

Sweeny clears her throat. “Ms. Lewis”—there's conviction that she's onto something—“up until now you have described the suspect's face as covered in red paint. A moment ago you called it blood.”

Maggie grunts affirmatively. “I was thinking about it, and it looked a lot more like blood than paint.”

I go cold. Blood. Not red paint.

I jam the eject button and flip the cassette to see the handwritten label. It reads
JUNE 14 INTERVIEW W/M. LEWIS
. That's the last interview Maggie gave. She disappeared the next morning. She disappeared the morning after she told the police it was blood on the man's face rather than paint.

I replace the file's contents and slip it into the
W
s. So: A man with a face covered in blood killed Ben. The paint sounded like camouflage; I pictured it rust-colored, near brown. Red and bloody is more vivid and bizarre. I go soundlessly from the office. I can easily think back to all those days when Ben sat on the terrace, drawing birds in charcoal. I was all chin in hand, legs swinging from the chair as I grinned into the sunshine at him. One time I was annoyed with him. How could he sit still for hours to draw? “Pelicans don't have any red feathers. You're getting it all wrong,” I said, blowing through one of those bubble wands, sending a stream of glistening globes at him.

“I know that,” he said, swatting and popping the bubbles.

“So how come you made that feather red?”

“Because it's unexpected,” he answered.

I brace myself in the hallway. Was this detail there all along for me to snatch up? If Maggie had only recognized the blood on the man's face right away, would I have connected him to Ben's past? It isn't that I can remember a story where the villain painted his face with blood. It's closer to: I can remember remembering the image, a flash of red here and there, long ago.

Was a villain with a blood-splattered face in Ben's head and so when he was drawing in black and white, he couldn't help but let the red come through?

Willa and Principal Owen are abreast on the sofa. I stop. I wasn't expecting one of them. They're temple to temple, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. Their faces are shiny from crying. Pink-faced, all the lines that make Willa's mom look older aren't visible, and it's just their glaring resemblance that's obvious. I make out Dad's form through the windows at the table on the terrace. I reverse slowly, hoping to go unnoticed.

“Don't go, L,” Willa calls just as I'm about to disappear around the corner.

P.O. looks up and, defying all odds, smiles. “Good morning,” she says. “I hope we didn't wake you up.” She releases Willa and dabs at the corners of her eyes. The fabric of her blouse puckers between the buttons at her chest; her pencil skirt has ridden up from sitting low on the couch; she isn't wearing heels but loafers that are deserted by the coffee table.

“You didn't,” I say, inching uncertainly into the room.

Willa pats the cushion. I study her features for a trace of a fight. There's nothing but her sleepy morning smile and relief making her sag into her mother's side. Usually, she holds herself away from P.O. I roost on the arm of an adjacent chair.

“I'm here to apologize,” Principal Owen says, “to both of you.” I look up from staring at my knees, surprised. “What I said to you in the police station was uncalled for, Lana. I know that you've dealt with more than your share of tragedy this summer, and to throw that in your face was inexcusable.” Her eyes skitter over the coffee table
before landing on me. “I hope you'll accept my apology.”

Willa's smile lifts up hopefully. “Uh, okay, sure,” I say. I wasn't harboring a grudge. My issue with P.O. has only ever been that she rides Willa and never gives her credit for all she does impossibly right.

“I know you've been a friend to Willa,” she continues, “and I don't want the two of you to think I'm not grateful that you have each other. A friendship like yours is worth preserving. When parents experience fear for their child, it can manifest in a way we don't intend. Even parents make mistakes.” She lets out a short, abrupt laugh. “I hope you can forgive and forget and that we can continue looking forward to all that's in front of you girls.”

I force on a smile. I see Willa's mother's shining yellow brick road of expectations going on for miles ahead of Willa, leading anywhere she wants it to, really. I'm happy for my best friend. She's lucky that her mom is here. My road isn't as certain.

I'm mostly mute until they leave. All our parents were notified as soon as Fitzgerald Moore was taken into custody. Relief and reconciliation with Willa make P.O. motherly. She offers to go back-to-school shopping with us over the weekend. My stomach drops. Becca missed senior year by
five days
. Willa doesn't explain why she's going home with her mom—it's obvious. This is what kids do. They're guided home, tucked under their parent's arm, protected long after they can protect themselves. That's what having a mother means.

I don't bother with Dad on the terrace. I couldn't handle hearing about sadness and hats. My resolve snowballs as I retrieve Maggie's note and head for Josh's.

When I arrive, Carolynn is twisted on herself like a pretzel in the
lap of a chair. Rusty and Duncan are slumped against the fireplace's hearth. Duncan listlessly raps his knuckles against the brick. He uses too much force for it not to hurt. Only Josh is on his feet and alert. He was on the porch pacing, waiting for me as my car parked in his driveway, and he's circling the coffee table restlessly now that we're in the living room. I'm too nervous to meet his eyes.

“So, Skitzy-Fitzy,” Rusty says first. His baseball cap is backward, and
RUSTY PIPE
glares at me, embroidered in our school colors—purple and black.

Duncan thwacks his knuckles harder. He isn't wearing his skipper hat.

“We can't believe it,” Josh says. He's springy and bouncy, back to operating as the core's spokesperson; the villain has been caught and order restored. His pluck and optimism are taking a cautious gander around. “None of us expected this. We've seen that guy around for years.” He palms his forehead in a stunned way. “We even gave him a six-pack once, junior year. You never think anyone could be capable of . . . of what was done to B.” He ends in a whisper.

“Even the town mental patient,” Duncan says.

A wisp of a groan from Carolynn, and Josh continues, “We know what to
feel
, obviously. We're broken up for Becca. Becca, Ford, Maggie,
and
Ben.”

Carolynn's cheek is resting on the chair arm. A few strands of honey hair are scattered across her eyes. “Why are you so quiet?” she asks in a lifeless voice.

I've wadded my hands up in my hoodie's sleeves. Here they are, trying to make sense of Skitzy-Fitzy as the murderer, and I'm about to tell them they're wrong. Becca's killer is out there, unpunished. “I'm
quiet because I can't figure out a way to say what I need to.” I hesitate and then offer her Maggie's note, which is folded into quarters and slightly damp from my palm.

She reads it lying sideways. I fixate on an antique chessboard on an intricately carved wooden table in the shape of an elephant. The pieces are pale-gray stone. The queen is an inch taller than the king, and I wonder if that's the case in most chess sets. Even if she isn't always bigger, she's so much fiercer. The queen is deadly, able to sweep spaces in every direction. She homes in on her mark and then goes to battle. The king is feeble, limited in his moves and usually fatally vulnerable without the queen's defense. I stop thinking of the pieces as a queen and a king and begin to picture them as just a boy and girl.

Maggie's note travels around the group and Josh, the last to read it, lets it drift to the coffee table. Dread is splashed over their faces. My shoulders cringe.

“Tell me that Skitzy-Fitzy is somehow this
He
who had been hunting Ben,” Carolynn says. She's sitting upright in the chair, gripping the arms, her nails digging into the leather.

I can't tell Carolynn that, but I do share everything I know. I explain that Ben used to tell stories and that parallels appear in the murders. I tell them about Sweeny's suspicions, Ben's mysterious past, and the stolen photo album that may possess our only clue.

This is how I end: “I'm driving to Swisher Spring. I think that Maggie was staying in one of those abandoned miner's cabins. I believe that the album could be where she left it. It's possible that she tried to bargain with him and it's what got her killed. I have to check at the least. It was important enough for him to send Maggie into my house for it. Maybe it isn't even a picture he was after? Maybe it's
a bigger clue that connects him with the murders? I already called Sweeny and left her a message. After they have the album and the truth from me, they'll be able to find who really killed Becca.” I spin on my heels, one more glance at the queen standing taller than the entire army of pawns, knights, bishops, and rooks. Taller than the king.

I stride to the front door. I am a ship cutting through waves. I am the queen on a chessboard. My hand closes around the knob as Carolynn catches me.

Her soft hand wraps firmly around my wrist and I face her. She releases me, brushes the hair from her wide eyes, crosses her arms, and pops a hip. “In what universe do I not go with you?” she asks.

I turn around fully to see that all three boys are moving, a bit uncertainly, but in the process of ambling to the front door to follow us.

Five minutes later we're in Duncan's SUV.

The core puts out light. I'm not talking the optical illusion kind, like glitter bouncing off a disco ball. I mean that the core puts off the molten warmth of the sun. I feel it warming me from the inside out.

My hands are doing that weak-knuckled thing as I dry them on my jeans. Carolynn is examining the spray can of Mace attached to her key chain. Rusty's baseball bat is slanted in his lap. He sees me looking and grins. “I can hit an eighty-mile-an-hour fastball. You better believe I can hit this dude's head if needed.”

Duncan flexes the arm not steering and winks over the muscle. “I'm always armed,” he says.

For a fleeting moment, I recognize how dangerous it is to love someone as much as I love Ben or the others love Becca. Love that strong weathers death. It makes you walk into a fight; it makes you
a queen on the chessboard. It's why we're hiking into the preserve with a killer on the loose. Waiting for Sweeny to call us back, telling our parents what we've learned, and booking it to the safety of our homes is the smarter play. And the last time we felt this indestructible was just before we found Maggie. Those were the minutes that sent us spiraling out of control. But to hell with whatever we should have learned that day. To hell with the smarter play. Ben and Becca deserve this. They deserve our braver selves.

The SUV catches air bouncing over a speed bump, and as gravity smacks the car back to the road, I wonder if I'll look back in a day or seven and think,
That was my chance to love myself more than I loved a ghost, and I blew it
.

A
t the trailhead we take the right fork that stems from the dirt access road to the shore. The left fork snakes to Swisher Spring. We plan to veer off the demarcated trail halfway to the coast in search of abandoned cabins that rest undisturbed in the preserve. This was the same course Ben and I charted when we went in search of ruins between the trees.

“Did you ever find any?” Rusty asks. He swipes his bat at vines hanging near the trail, like he's a guide with a machete clearing a path in the Amazonian jungle.

“Yes,” I answer. I hop over a creek bed with trickling water that bisects the trail and point out a fat glossy frog on a round river rock to Carolynn. She jumps to avoid squishing it with her boot and ends up alongside me. “A few. One was full of all these old iron tools, and another looked old-fashioned, like it was built out of Lincoln Logs.”

“So he might have gone back and brought Maggie at some point,” Carolynn says. I nod. “Do you remember where they are?”

“Not really. We just stumbled on them.” Ben and I only searched together for ruins that one afternoon.

Duncan walks, staring at his cell. He says something to Josh that I don't catch, and they stop abruptly. We form a huddle around Duncan's phone. He's pulled up a map of the preserve. “We're about here,” he says, thumbing a quarter mile or so past the trailhead. “Swisher Spring is a mile to the west. I say we go west, until just before the spring, and then toward the shore a few hundred yards, and then back east to the trailhead. Then, another few hundred yards up the trail, we'll walk another mile to the west. We search the preserve in vectors, so we don't miss anything. We do it until we reach the shore, and then we repeat the pattern to the east of the trail on the way to the car.”