Deadly Little Lessons (18 page)

O
N THE RIDE HOME
, Wes and I dissect and discuss all the details of our visit to the pub, including the possibility that Brooke might’ve been either wrong or lying about nobody knowing of Tommy’s whereabouts.

“Maybe we should go back to the pub when Brooke isn’t working,” Wes suggests. “We can ask somebody else.”

“Definitely,” I say, having thought the exact same thing.

Wes takes a turn onto the Sumner campus and pulls up in front of the dorm to drop me off. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with?” he asks me. He and some friends are heading down to the beach for pizza by a fire.

“Maybe next time,” I say.

“Well, call me if you change your mind.”

“Will do, and thanks again.” I give him a peck on the cheek.

Back in my room, I sit down in front of my laptop to read Neal Moche’s latest blog entry.

From the Journal of Neal Moche


I scoped out his house again. Yesterday, when I knew he was working, I knocked on his door, pretending to be advocating for the environment. I even brought along a clipboard for signatures and some literature about environmental causes.


His girlfriend answered the door, but only opened it a few inches. It was weird looking at her up close. I mean, I’ve seen her plenty from afar (through the window of their house as I peeked in from the outside, and getting in and out of her boyfriend’s pickup truck), but there’s nothing quite like seeing what you pictured in your mind—what you pictured as a result of touching someone, that is—standing right in front of you.


“Do you have a few moments?” I asked her, not even giving her the opportunity to answer. I started rambling on about global warming, regurgitating what’d I’d read in one of the pamphlets.


The girl, probably around nineteen or twenty, shook her head and started to close the door, but I held it open with my foot. Startled, she released her grip on the door, enabling me to nudge it open and peek inside the house.


But it was her neck that I couldn’t quite get past. A pretty girl with long blond hair and big brown eyes, but with a massive scar. What I’d thought might be a tattoo of a religious cross (from the vision I had when I’d bumped into her boyfriend at the park) is actually a scar, with bubbled skin that’s crusted over.


“Please, just give me a second,” I told her. “Would you at least sign my petition?” I held out my clipboard, noticing the fear in her eyes. “Is there anyone at home who might like to show their support?” I peered past her, getting a good view of the house’s interior: broken floor tiles and junk piled everywhere on the countertops. “Is your husband at home?” I asked, hoping she might say his name.


She shook her head. Her hands were trembling. All the color had drained from her face. It felt uncomfortable being there, pushing her, keeping the door open when I was obviously freaking her out.


“Would you like to add both of your names to support the cause?” I continued, despite how shitty it felt. “After that, I promise to leave you alone.” I tried to hand her the clipboard and a pen, but she refused to take either, and so I had to resort to something drastic.


I pretended to trip and tumbled forward so that she’d have to break my fall. And so that I could touch her. For just a second, my hand caught her forearm and I closed my eyes, trying to sense as much from her as I could. I saw a key ring, loaded with at least twenty different keys, but before I could sense anything else, she pulled away from me.


I wanted to grab her arm back, but her entire body began to quiver and twitch. “Sorry,” I said, all out of breath. “I can be a real klutz sometimes.”


Keeping her head down and her gaze toward the floor, she placed her hand on the door once more. Finally I allowed her to close it, feeling like crap for having scared her in the first place.


Honestly, the longer I’m here, the more desperate I feel and the lonelier I get. I’m still not sleeping much at night, and when I do sleep, I dream of being someplace else, instead of following around some guy that I don’t even know, and terrifying his girlfriend.


By the time I get to the last line, my pulse is absolutely racing because of the way his words hit home—and how much I’m able to relate to his feeling of desperation and the lack of sleep that goes along with it.

Luckily for me, I have support, but I also know what it’s like to feel alone. My aunt knew it all too well. And, from the sound of things, so does Neal Moche.

I start to reread the entry, wanting more than ever to contact him, but a knock on the door interrupts me. I get up from the bed, assuming it’s Wes. But instead, when I open the door, a man and a woman flash their badges at me.

“Camelia Hammond?” the woman asks.

“Yes,” I say, looking closer at her badge. Detective Susan Tanner.

Dressed in a plain black suit, she looks beyond me, into my room. “Can we talk to you for a few moments?”

I open the door wider to let them in, suddenly noticing the campus security officer standing just behind them. “What is this about?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

Detective Tanner closes the door on the security guard, while her male colleague—twentysomething, with slick black hair and super-tanned skin—moves to stand at the back of my room, as if eager to take everything in.

“You paid a recent visit to Tracey Beckerman,” Tanner says in a tone that tells me this isn’t up for debate. She snags a notepad and pencil from inside her jacket. “Can you tell me about that?”

“What is it you’d like to know?” I ask, tugging nervously at my hair.

“How about why you went there, for starters?”

I swallow hard, noticing a sudden dryness in my mouth. I grab the day-old cup of water by my bed. There’s a layer of dust on top, but I drink it anyway.

“Mrs. Beckerman mentioned that you knew Sasha’s real name,” Tanner continues when I don’t answer quickly enough.

“Right,” I say, proceeding to tell her about my interest in the case and how I stumbled upon Mrs. Beckerman’s Web site while researching summer programs.

Detective Tanner scratches behind her ear with the pencil; her hair is the color of the graphite. “Yes, but
why
did the case interest you so much? Because it seems you put in a lot of effort to get here.”

“I just found out that I was adopted, too.” I glance at the other detective, who’s standing between my closet and minifridge. His face is completely expressionless.

“So, if the fact that both you and Sasha were adopted is initially what got you interested in Sasha’s case, what’s keeping you interested now?” Detective Tanner stares at me, pencil to paper, ready to jot the answer down.

“I’ve been sensing things about Sasha,” I say, feeling my heart hammer.

Her beady brown eyes narrow. “Sensing things?”

I nod and then tell her about my power of psychometry, how it comes to me when I’m doing my pottery, and how this isn’t the first time I’ve experienced it. “I’ve used my power in the past,” I continue, “to help save my boyfriend’s life. And then to save the sister of a girl I went to school with.”

“Really?” she asks; a tiny smirk crosses her chalky lips.

“I’m not joking.” My tone sharpens.

“Then what
are
you doing?” She raises an eyebrow.

“Getting frustrated,” I snap, “that a detective who’s been working on a missing-girl case for over two months isn’t more open to the possibility that certain people may be able to see and know more than she does.”

The male detective accidentally knocks a box of crackers off my fridge.

“I’m aware of people who
claim
to have psychic abilities,” Tanner snaps back. “We’ve even consulted with psychics to get help with various cases.”

“And so why not consult with
me
?” I ask. “Ask
me
about the daisy I sensed or the letter
t
that I sculpted. Maybe then I’ll tell you about the girl who called me.”

“What girl?” Tanner takes a step forward, clearly interested.

“She wouldn’t give me her name, but she sent my friend and me on a wild-goose chase.” I open my night table drawer and pull out the plastic bag with the money clip inside. I explain how Wes and I went to the Blue Raven Pub and found out that the initial
t
on the clip stands for Tommy. “And yet he supposedly has a
W
marked on his hand; it’s either a scar or a burn.”

Exactly like what I sculpted.

Detective Tanner writes everything down and then snatches the money clip without so much as a thank-you.

“The thing is,” I tell her, “I have no idea how the mystery girl who called me even knew about my interest in Sasha’s case, never mind how she got my phone number.”

“Did you tell anyone you were looking for Sasha? Anyone at all?”

“Just my friend Wes Mayer.”

Tanner writes Wes’s name in her notepad, then asks a slew of questions about him—where he’s from, how old he is, if he knows Sasha, and why he followed me to Sumner.

“It wasn’t Wes,” I say.

“Well, it was
someone
,” she says, closing her notepad. “And you can bet we’ll find out who. But, rest assured, you’ve already been a great deal of help, even if this turns out to all be a hoax.”

“Hoax?”

“You
have
heard of false leads, haven’t you?” she asks. “What if the mystery girl who called you and the bartender at the Blue Raven Pub are actually working in cahoots? What if that’s why the bartender didn’t want you to question anyone else who works there?”

“So you believe me about my powers?” I ask.

“I make it a rule not to believe or disbelieve too much of anything—until all reasonable doubt is dissolved, that is. I wouldn’t be a very good detective if I did otherwise.” Surprisingly, she doesn’t ask me anything more. Instead, she hands me her business card, shoots her mute partner an urgent look, and then leads him out the door.

The tape recorder positioned in front of me, I finish writing my monologue in the dirt floor, using my finger as a pen. And then I close my eyes and channel Kathryn Merteuil from
Cruel Intentions
, one of my favorite manipulative characters.

I start my recording over at least a dozen times before I finally get the tone right. “I’m so glad he allowed me to tag along that night,” I say into the microphone. “I know I must’ve been such a nag, asking him all kinds of questions about stupid stuff, like what kind of sports he liked to play and if he’d seen any good movies lately, trying to keep him talking. I figured the longer he talked, the longer I’d get to be with him. He was so sweet to me, too, even though I was a pest. Maybe it was his sweet side that caved and let me leave with him.

“I just didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to face my parents. I hated them for lying to me about being adopted. That’s why I’d packed my suitcase. I’d planned to run away anyway, but this new friend gave me a quicker way out. He was older, so I figured he could take care of me, and he
has
taken care of me. It’s been so great here, having this time away to think and to fully appreciate how lucky I’ve been. I have him to thank for that. He’s been my teacher as well as my friend.”

I press
STOP
and then lean back against the wall, hoping I’ve played the role convincingly. I slide the tape recorder and microphone through the hole, wondering if Misery’s been questioned by the police yet.

I wash my wound and change the bandage for a third time, unable not to wonder if the burn mark might actually be the letter
t
, if it might stand for Tommy, the guy she’d wanted me to meet.

The guy who I think took me.