Black Lightning (26 page)

CHAPTER 39

B
eing the center of attention wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. When Heather first arrived at school, it had been great. Everybody already knew that a body had been found in the park early that morning, but only Heather had known who had actually found the body, and whose body it was that her mother had stumbled across.

“Except it wasn’t really Mom who found her,” she explained at least ten times even before the first class. “It was our dog.”

Though she hadn’t actually been there, Heather built a highly detailed image of the scene in her imagination. By the third telling she was able to recite it as vividly as if it had been she herself whom Boots had pulled off the trail and led over to Joyce Cottrell’s maimed corpse. “He was tugging at the leash and barking like crazy, and finally Mom gave up and went to see what he’d found.” Heather felt a delicious shiver as she repeated the story her father told her when he’d gotten back from the park. “And then, when she saw who it was, she nearly
fainted!”
Though her father hadn’t actually said that, Heather was sure it must be true, because every time she tried to imagine what it would have been like to find Mrs. Cottrell’s body under one of the bushes in the park, she felt a wave of dizziness. Of course, her mom hadn’t actually fainted, since that would have prevented her from calmly finding a phone, calling the police, and then guarding the body until the authorities arrived, all of which Heather was pretty sure her mother had done.

“But who
was
it?” someone would invariably ask as soon as Heather let it be known that her mother had recognized the victim.

“Our next door neighbor,” Heather would reply. Then she would begin doling out the details of Joyce Cottrell’s life.

During first period it had been terrific. Everyone wanted to talk to her, and even hunky Josh Whitman passed her a note asking if she wanted to have lunch with him. But by third period, when Heather was almost five minutes late because people kept asking her questions even after the bell rang, she was starting to tire of telling the story. By lunchtime, when it became totally clear that the only reason Josh Whitman wanted to eat lunch with her was to hear about the murder, she was thoroughly tired of talking about it.

Now, as she and Rayette Hoover left the school at four, Heather was pleased to see that almost everyone else was already gone; at least she wouldn’t have to tell the story all over again. “Want to go over to Broadway and get a latte?” she asked Rayette.

“Okay,” Rayette agreed.

As they walked across Capitol Hill toward Broadway, Heather could tell right away that Rayette was struggling not to talk about the one thing that everyone in school had been talking about all day. Heather could also tell that Rayette was losing her battle, and silently made a bet that Rayette wouldn’t last out the next block. Within half a block Rayette’s curiosity got the better of her, but when she spoke, Heather had to give her friend points for trying to be indirect.

“What was it like having lunch with Josh Whitman?”

“He invited me to the prom,” Heather replied, injecting just enough excitement into her voice so Rayette actually fell for it, at least for a split second. Then Rayette’s lips stretched into a wide grin that exposed the set of braces she usually took care not to reveal to anyone.

“Get out of here, girlfriend!” she hooted. “That big football stud just wanted to know the same thing we all did! Now you just tell me everything you know about that woman who got killed. This is Rayette, honey! Come clean!”

“There isn’t anything to come clean about.” Heather sighed. “I mean, no one even knew Mrs. Cottrell. She was really weird. She didn’t have any friends, and she hardly ever even went out of the house except to go to work. Sometimes you could see her eating all by herself, just sitting at this really huge dining room table all by herself.”

Rayette shuddered. She’d always thought there was something spooky about the big house next door to the Jefferses’. Ever since she and Heather had gotten to be friends in sixth grade, she’d known the woman who lived there was kind of weird, but to think of her actually getting murdered … “What do you think happened?” she asked. “I mean, really?”

Heather shrugged. “How am I supposed to know?” she asked. “It’s not like I knew her or anything.”

“I didn’t say you should
know
what happened. I just asked what do you
think
happened. Like, was it someone she knew?”

Heather shrugged. “She didn’t know anyone.”

They were walking south on Broadway now. As they came to Prospect Street, Rayette stopped. “Let’s go up there and see where your mom found her,” she said.

Heather’s eyes widened. “They’re not going to let us do that. They’ll have the whole place blocked off.”

“No they won’t,” Rayette insisted. “Some guy got shot down by my uncle’s last year, and they didn’t have the cops out there more than a couple hours. Come on.”

Turning left on Prospect, Rayette started purposefully up the hill toward the park, and a second later Heather followed.

“Where was it?” Rayette asked as they came to the broad swath of lawn that stretched from Prospect up to the road that curved around the base of the hill containing the reservoir.

“I don’t think you can see it from here,” Heather said, not sure she wanted to go looking for the place where her mother had found Mrs. Cottrell. “Dad said Mom was up by the reservoir.”

“Then let’s go.” Rayette set off once more, cutting diagonally across the lawn to the place where the road came closest to the reservoir. Crossing the road, she scrambled up a steep, well-trod path that led to the flat track around the reservoir.

“Can’t we go around by the museum?” Heather complained. “This isn’t even a path!”

“It is, too,” Rayette retorted. “Besides, why should we go all the way around when we’re already here?” Pausing at the top of the slope while Heather caught up, she surveyed the area, immediately spotting a small knot of people who seemed to be staring into a thicket. Now that her goal was within sight, Rayette began having second thoughts. “ ’Spose there’s gonna be blood all over the ground?” she asked.

Heather grabbed her friend’s arm to steady herself; the very thought of finding a pool of Joyce Cottrell’s blood was enough to make her dizzy. “Can’t we just go over to my house?” she asked. “I mean, if we’re not going to go for lattes—” Before she could finish her sentence, she heard her brother’s voice calling to her.

“Hey, Heather!” Kevin was shouting, waving frantically. “Look over here! This is where Mom found her!”

She didn’t want to see the place at all, but knew that she’d better try to get Kevin home before their parents found out what he was doing. Heather followed Rayette over to where Kevin, together with Justin Reynolds, was regaling half a dozen people with the tale of the discovery of the corpse earlier that morning.

“There was blood all over the place,” Kevin was saying. “And she was all torn up. Boots was chewing on her arm, and—”

“Kevin!” Heather shrieked, grabbing her brother and clamping a hand over his mouth to silence him. “Come on! We’re going home right now!”

Kevin struggled to get loose from his sister’s grip, finally managing to free his mouth. “Help!” he yelled. “She’s trying to kidnap me!”

The group of people who had been listening raptly to Kevin only a moment before were grinning now at his attempts to free himself from his sister.

“Did your mom really find the body?” someone asked Heather.

“Oh, God,” Heather groaned. “Why did Mom even have to come up here this morning?” Yet even as she uttered the words, Heather was drawn, like iron filings toward a magnet, to the spot where Joyce Cottrell’s body had been found. Rayette Hoover, staying close to her best friend, felt all the bravado she had voiced only a few minutes before begin to drain from her, but like Heather, she found herself unable simply to walk away.

Both girls had to see.

Yet when they had finally threaded their way through the knot of people, to stare down at the now empty space beneath the brush where only ten hours earlier Heather’s mother came across a disemboweled corpse, there was little left to observe—only a few scraps of yellow plastic tape where the police had cordoned off the area, and an area of earth scraped clean of the fallen leaves and windblown detritus that was scattered through the rest of the thicket.

The very lack of anything to see gave the spot a feeling of loneliness and abandonment. With a shudder, Heather realized that her imagination had not even been close to conjuring what her mother must have seen. Even with all the evidence of Joyce Cottrell’s body having been removed, she felt a coldness that penetrated far deeper than the chill of the afternoon. “Come on,” she said, unconsciously reaching out and taking Rayette’s hand in her own. “Let’s go home.”

Kevin followed her only a moment later.

Not a word was spoken until the three of them turned the corner onto Sixteenth East, and as they moved down the block toward the Jeffers house, they caught themselves gazing past Heather and Kevin’s house to the one just beyond it.

Their paces slowed until at last they came to a stop, all of them staring silently at the house that seemed to loom ominously next door to the Jefferses’. It was Rayette Hoover who finally found her voice: “It … it sorta doesn’t look the same, does it?”

For a long minute all three peered at the forbidding structure. Until today it had been nothing more than the home of the neighborhood eccentric who had been feared by the smaller children and mocked by the older ones. The fact that there was now a yellow tape strung across its broad porch told them all they needed to know, though they still edged close enough to be able to read the words
CRIME SITE—DO NOT CROSS
, which were stenciled on the bright plastic.

“Oh, Lord,” Rayette breathed. “She must have gotten killed right here.” Her eyes wide, she turned to gaze at Heather. “Didn’t you hear her scream or something?”

Heather shook her head, unable to tear her eyes away from the house. On the second floor was the room where she was pretty sure Mrs. Cottrell had slept. When she was at work, the lights always went on and off all over the house. Everyone on the block knew they were on a timer. But when she was home, only that one room on the second floor was ever lit.

The one right across from Heather’s own bedroom.

Suddenly it became very important to her that she remember exactly what had happened the previous night. She tried to reconstruct the evening. Her parents had had a fight—well, not exactly a fight. But there had been enough tension in the house so that instead of gathering in the living room to read and watch television together the way they usually did, the family split up. She remained in her room even after she finished her homework, and Kevin had stayed in his, and she knew that their mother had gone to bed early while her father had stayed downstairs, reading by himself for a while. But he hadn’t stayed up very late: even before she’d gone to bed at ten, he’d knocked at her door, then stuck his head in to say good night to her. It was only a little bit later that she’d gone to bed herself.

Gone to bed, and read for a few minutes, and then gone to sleep.

Mrs. Cottrell hadn’t been home yet when she had gone to sleep—she knew that because she’d been sitting at her desk right by the window for almost an hour while she struggled through a geometry proof. The lights next door kept going on and off, practically screaming out that the place was empty.

Heather felt an odd chill as a vague memory came back to her. She hadn’t really thought anything about it at the time, but now …

Someone on the sidewalk.

Not right in front of the house, but across the street. A man in a dark coat. She hadn’t seen him very well. He’d just been walking along the street, but then he stopped, and for a second Heather thought he was looking at her. Then he’d continued up the street. Though she looked out the window a couple of more times, he hadn’t come back.

At least she thought he hadn’t.

What if she’d actually seen the man who killed Mrs. Cottrell, and hadn’t done anything about it? “Oh, God,” she breathed out loud. “Maybe I could have saved her.”

“What?” Rayette Hoover demanded. “What are you talking about?”

Swallowing the lump that had risen in her throat, Heather told Rayette and Kevin what she’d seen. “What if it was him?” she asked. “What if it was really him? What if he came back later?”

“What if he
saw
you?” Rayette suggested, scanning the block herself, as if half expecting to see a dark-coated stranger eyeing them from somewhere down the street. “Let’s go in, okay?” Taking one last glance at the house next door—which had now definitely taken on a scary look that made Rayette glad she lived six blocks away, even if her block wasn’t quite as nice as this one—Rayette strode up the walk to the front porch and reached into the planter that stood in the corner farthest from the front door to fish out the key she knew the Jefferses kept there, then stiffened as she realized what she’d done. Again she scanned the block, relieved that there still seemed to be no one observing her. But as she turned back to the front door, Rayette saw Kevin glaring scornfully at her.