Nearly Found (16 page)

I
N THE MORNING,
Reece was gone, and despite her saying she didn’t, Gena snored quietly on her side of the bed. I got dressed before the alarm went off and waited for her outside.

The short drive to Powell Ridge was somber. Quiet. I held Reece’s hand in the backseat, and I tasted the shift in his emotions, suffocating and sour when we rounded the final turn and the prison came into view.

Alex spoke to some guards at the gate, and then we were inside.

At the entrance, a correctional officer shook Alex’s hand and clapped him on the back.

“Finally grew enough facial hair to graduate kiddie patrol, huh?” He leaned into Gena and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Congrats, doll. I heard about the upcoming nuptials. When’s the big day?”

“Not soon enough,” Alex answered for her. “Thanks for helping us out, Simms. We appreciate all you did to get us in here.”

Simms shrugged it off. “I didn’t have to do much. Only one of you is going in with me, right? Last name Boswell?”

Alex pointed to me. “This is Nearly Boswell. Like I told you on the phone, she’d like to speak with Thomas Wiles. Thanks so much for pulling the strings for us.”

Simms looked confused. “No strings to pull, really. I’m not saying it isn’t great seeing you both, but she’s already on the list of approved visitors.”

“What do you mean, she’s already on a list?” Reece stepped forward. “What the hell does that mean, Petrenko?”

Alex and Gena exchanged wary glances.

Simms looked down his nose at Reece, directing his reply to Alex. “Certain inmates can request a short list of approved family and friends for regular visitation. The names are screened, and if the warden feels it’s appropriate, he’ll grant the request. After you called, I checked to see if Miss Boswell needed special approval, but she was already on Mr. Wiles’s list.”

A chill rippled over me. Reece stiffened.

TJ knew I would come. He wanted me here.

“He’ll be awful glad to see you,” Simms went on, oblivious to the sudden heaviness in the air. “He only put two people on that list, but his father’s an ex-con and doesn’t qualify. You’re the first visitor he’s had since he came here. The kid sent out a few letters when he got here, but I don’t recall him getting a single one back.”

“I don’t like this,” Reece muttered. “Come on, Gena. You know something smells all wrong about this. Let’s just go. He doesn’t have to know she was here.”

But he already knew. He had to know I would come eventually, or he wouldn’t have put my name on that list.

I was the only other person TJ Wiles had any desire to see. Not his ex-girlfriend, Emily Reinnert. Not Vince, his best friend since kindergarten. Not the uncle who’d practically raised him. TJ wanted to see me.

“Can I see him now?” I asked. The officer nodded.

I squeezed Reece’s hand, and he pulled me into an embrace. He whispered into my hair, “When it’s over, I’ll be here.”

• • •

Simms waited while I emptied my pockets before patting me down. Then he led me to the visitation area while he reviewed the rules. TJ would be shackled, he said. There would be no bars or Plexiglass between us. Simms caught the falter in my step and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be watching. Just don’t try to touch him during the visit, and don’t try to hand him anything across the table. You’ll be permitted contact twice, once at the beginning of your visit and once at the end, to hug or shake hands. If you want to, that is.”

“No, no I don’t want to.” My hands went cold and clammy at the memory of TJ dragging me through the cemetery. Covering my mouth, suffocating me. Pressing a gun to my head.

We were buzzed into a room with two rows of metal tables. One row for visitors and one for inmates, Simms explained. The rows were separated by nothing more than a four-inch ledge. Nothing to keep TJ from crossing the divide, except Simms.

He led me to an empty chair. Families chattered quietly over the small partition, their palms pressed flat to the tables to avoid the temptation to reach across and touch each other. Minutes passed. I sat on my hands.

A few heads turned when the door buzzed open. An inmate in a green jumpsuit walked in slowly, shackles rattling at his ankles. If it weren’t for the subtle limp, for the calculating gleam in those piercing eyes when they found me, I wouldn’t have recognized him.

Simms directed TJ to the bench across from mine. He leaned close to TJ’s ear and said, “You’ve done real good so far. You’ve only got a few weeks left in Level 5. Keep up with the good behavior, and you’ll earn a spot in a privilege pod.” To both of us he cautioned, “Now remember, you may not make contact over the partition. If you need to pass anything to him, set it on the ledge first. When you’re ready to go, raise your hand and I’ll come help you say your good-byes.”

Then Simms melted into the background, and all I could see were the hard planes of TJ’s face.

“You finally made it. What took you so long?” He folded his hands on the table. They looked strong, thick with callouses. If there had ever been anything soft about TJ, there wasn’t anymore.

“How did you know I would come?”

“Because you have questions.” He smiled. “And I have answers.”

“What kind of answers?”

“The kind that make you do stupid things. The kind that make you drive six hours through the middle of nowhere to sit across a table from the person who wants to kill you.”

“Then why don’t you?”

TJ’s knuckles were white where his fingers laced together. My breath held when his eyes darted to Simms.

“I could,” he whispered. “I could reach over this partition and crush your fucking throat. But then it would all be over too quickly. What would I do without you, Boswell? What would I do with the eighteen hours a day I spend staring at the walls in this place, dreaming of the day I get out, planning ways to break you?”

Goose bumps crept across my skin.

“Oh,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “Don’t bother feeling sorry for me. This place is a step up from where you come from.” I dug my nails into my palms, hating the way he said
you
, like Sunny View hadn’t been his home for the last five years. “I get three square meals a day, health care, and plenty of exercise. I’m even getting my GED—I get cyber-tutoring three times a week. Of course, they won’t let me meet with a tutor in person, given my history.” His shoulders shook and his eyes shone with silent laughter. He thought this was funny. He’d killed the students I tutored. Marcia, Posie, Teddy, and Kylie.

“So, let me guess,” he said, his gaze drifting to the ceiling. “My daddy is out of prison, and bad, bad things are happening.”

“How do you know?”

TJ laughed. “Think about it, Boswell. Bad people don’t stop doing bad things. You can stick them in a cage and make them behave when you’re watching. You can make them earn their freedoms—their TV privileges, their visitations, their parole—but you can’t change them. Bad can’t be fixed. And a little freedom—that little bit of room to maneuver without people crawling all over your back, watching your every move—is all it takes to stretch that muscle.” TJ tapped his temple.

So I was right. Reggie Wiles wasn’t as tightly watched as Gena thought. And he was using it to his advantage. Which means he probably dug up Karl Miller’s body. But how?

TJ leaned in, close enough to get Simms’s attention. “But you didn’t come here to ask me that, did you? Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”

“Tell me what you know about the Belle Green Poker Club.”

TJ eased back. “Only as much as you do. Friday nights in Fowler’s living room. Eating cookies and watching cartoons while our dads gambled away our college funds. They were into something dirty. One of them got spooked and called the police. And your dad ditched his best friend and left him to take the fall.” TJ studied my face—my eyes, my nose, my mouth. But it felt like he was looking straight through me. “You look so much like him. You both have that same damn smile. I see it all the time. Sometimes, when it gets really bad, I daydream about knocking your teeth in—”

“Who killed Karl Miller?” I asked quickly, hoping he’d answer without thinking.

TJ’s face split with a wide grin. He shook his head in disbelief. “You think because you’re sitting over there and I’m over here—that because I’m the one in shackles—I’m that stupid? Come on, Boswell. I’m in prison, I’m not incompetent.”

“But you knew Karl Miller was dead. You knew he was murdered.”

“Everybody does. It was on the news.”

“But you know who killed him. Don’t you?”

TJ licked his upper lip, thinking. I sat forward in my seat, waiting for his answer.

“You didn’t have to drive all this way. The answer to that is pretty close to home. Look in the mirror, Boswell.”

The implication sank like a stone in my heart. “You think my dad killed Karl Miller?”

TJ smiled. “The simplest explanation is often correct.”

“You’re a bastard!” I whispered harshly.

TJ set his jaw. He inched forward like he was ready to come out of his seat.

Simms’s shadow appeared beside me. “Maybe it’s time we wrap this up. We don’t want anyone to get carried away and do something they’ll regret.”

“But—!”

“Thomas can earn weekly access to video-visitation. If you all want to try this again, maybe that would be best. Come on, Mr. Wiles. Let’s get you back to your cell.”

TJ didn’t stand up. His eyes locked on mine. “I’d like a hug good-bye.”

“That’s Miss Boswell’s prerogative, and based on what I just saw, I don’t think—”

I stood and slowly stepped out from the bench.

TJ leered, like a heeled dog, careful not to pull on his leash. He waited until I nodded my consent to Simms. When TJ stood, I had to crane my neck to see the hatred in his eyes. He could kill me. Right here and now. I took a trembling breath, inching up on my toes as his arms came around me. There was too much fabric. No place to reach his skin through his jumpsuit. Reaching up to his neck seemed too risky a thing to do. But I had to know if there was any truth to what he’d said.

“Did my father really kill Karl Miller?” I whispered into his shoulder, softly enough to draw his head closer to mine.

His lips grazed my ear and I shuddered at the iron-hot rush of his hatred for me. It left a dry burn that felt like it would never be quenched, and I looked to be sure Simms was close.

“The secrets are in the club,” TJ whispered back, “but you don’t have all the players. One is still missing—the one with all the answers. Find the missing player, and the truth will come to light.” As crazy and elusive as his answer sounded, TJ tasted like he believed every word.

His palms pressed tightly against my spine, crushing the air from my lungs. I pushed him away, and Simms took his elbow with a cautionary warning.

“Thank you for coming to see me, Nearly Boswell. I’d almost forgotten how it feels to hold you. And now . . . now I remember.” Simms marched him toward the door while I stood there, my legs watery and my spine numb. “You’re all I think about, Nearly,” TJ called over his shoulder. “My reason for waking up in the morning. We will see each other again. I promise.” His voice was sweet, juxtaposed against a sinister smile. He would have killed me if no one had been watching, I was certain of it.

Simms handed him off to another guard and escorted me back to where Gena and Alex and Reece were waiting. When he saw me, Reece leaped to his feet. He pulled me into his arms, flooding both of us with relief. But the taste of fear was slow to recede, and we were both reluctant to let go.

Gena took my hand. Her touch was like warm milk and honey, and it soothed the tightness in my throat. “How did it go? Did you find the closure you needed?”

I let go of her hand, even though she couldn’t taste the lies. “It went fine. I think I found what I came for. Thank you for bringing me.”

O
N
M
ONDAY MORNING,
I had no choice. I put pink slips in Eric’s, Jeremy’s, and Vince’s lockers after third period, checking the box marked “Urgent,” and requesting their presence in the computer lab after school.

Reece hadn’t let me out of his sight after Gena and Alex dropped us off at my trailer on Sunday afternoon, only leaving when my mother finally pushed him out the door at ten so I could get enough sleep for school. In the morning, he’d shown up early to give me a ride, then he’d texted me during lunch to make sure I was okay. When I’d texted him back to tell him I was staying to meet with Eric, Jeremy, and Vince, he’d insisted on being there too.

He perched on a lab table at the back of the room. We waited, the clock quietly ticking off the minutes while I prepared myself for the very real possibility that nobody would bother to come, even if I had told them I had new information about each of their parents. I wasn’t surprised to see Eric arrive first. If it had been my father, I’d be hungry too. He slid into the same chair, looking curious and alert, like some of the fog of bereavement had lifted.

“I’m missing practice for this, trailer trash. This had better be—” Vince stopped.

Reece stood. My breath held. For a long moment, they stared at each other. Vince peeled off his sunglasses and took a seat. “This had better be good, Boswell.”

Reece sat behind him.

Jeremy was next to arrive. “What’s he doing here?” He jerked his chin at Reece, as if reading the thoughts of the rest of the room.

“Yeah,” Vince piped up. “This meeting is supposed to be private.”

Eric, Vince, and Jeremy angled their chairs toward one another, as if they’d come here together. They whispered to each other, careful not to let Reece overhear. I watched, surprised, as something began to take shape. Not an organized or cohesive one, but something that loosely resembled a club. Maybe having Reece here was the right move.

“I went to Powell Ridge this weekend.” The whispering quieted. “I talked to TJ. He didn’t exactly come out and say it, but he also didn’t deny that his dad could be behind the messages, which means Reggie is probably the one who dug up Mr. Miller’s body. One thing’s certain: TJ definitely knows more than he’s saying.”

Eric shifted in his seat. “What
did
he say?”

I knew what Eric really wanted to know. Because it’s the same question I would have wanted the answer to. “He didn’t tell me who killed your dad.” It was the truth. TJ hadn’t come out and said my father killed Karl Miller. “But he gave me a clue.”

“A clue?” Vince blurted. “What does he think this is? Some kind of game?”

“It’s always been a game to him.” That’s why he’d always dealt in riddles. Why he’d always framed his clues to have more than one right answer. Because he liked to watch me struggle to figure them out. He liked to see me fall off course. It made him feel in control. This was no different.

“What was the clue?” Jeremy asked.

I closed my eyes, recalling TJ’s whispered advice. “He said, ‘The secrets are in the club, but you don’t have all the players. One is still missing—the one with all the answers. Find the missing player, and the truth will come to light.’”

“Great, so you go find your daddy, and then all this twisted shit will be solved.” Vince said it as if the answer were obvious.

I shook my head. TJ’s meaning wouldn’t be so simple. It would be buried deeper. Closer to the bone.

“Emily,” Reece said. “Emily is the missing player.” We all turned to him. “She’s the one with all the answers.”

Vince glared at Reece over his shoulder. “Who invited you to have an opinion?”

Jeremy leaned forward in his chair. I could see the wheels turning in his head. “Of course. Emily and TJ were conspirators. She knew him better than anyone. She would know Reggie too. And her father was in the club, which makes her one of us. She’s the one. The one of us who’s missing.”

“No way,” Vince said with a hard shake of his head. “She doesn’t have anything to do with Wiles or his fucked-up family anymore.”

“You know where she lives?” Reece goaded him. It was a rhetorical question. We all knew where she lived.

“Better than you.”

“Then you know her McMansion backs up to the ninth green. You could probably throw a rock from her window into the hole where they found Miller’s dad.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. We all live on the green,” Vince argued, gesturing at everyone but Reece and me. “Even Eric.”

“Think about it.” Reece leaned forward, getting in Vince’s face. “If anyone’s capable of sneaking around, planting letters, and marking up dead bodies, it’s Emily Reinnert.”

Vince shook his head. “No.”

“She aided and abetted a serial killer.”

“She’s got nothing to do with this!”

“You don’t know that,” Reece said.

“She’s on house arrest, jackass! You, out of everyone, ought to know she can’t even take a piss without telling the police where she’s going.” Frustration colored Vince’s cheeks an angry red. “There’s no way she’s involved with TJ. She’s moved on.” He slouched in his chair, his arms crossed defiantly.

“And Reggie is in the custody of a halfway house, but maybe that didn’t keep him from stirring shit up. I’m not saying Emily’s guilty of anything. I’m just saying, she might know who is.”

“So we talk to her,” Jeremy said. “That’s easy enough. We’ll just ask her.”

“She doesn’t talk to anybody,” Vince said, his voice gravelly with some emotion I couldn’t quite place. “She doesn’t want to see anyone. She never leaves her house.”

“Then we have to go to her,” I said. “Jeremy and I can’t go. The restraining order won’t let her within one hundred feet of us.”

“Vince should go,” Eric said.

“No, not Vince.” Reece had his work face on. All method and strategy. The same face he used to talk to Gena about cases while he was narcing. “He’s too close to her. We can’t trust him with this.”

Vince flew to his feet. Reece followed. They stood eye to eye.

“Reece should do it.” We all turned to stare at Jeremy. “Reece should be the one to talk to her.”

I shook my head as the group continued to argue. Last time Emily and Reece saw each other, her boyfriend shot Reece in the shoulder. Definitely a stupid idea.

“Hear me out,” Jeremy interrupted. “Emily is a felon. She killed people, maybe not willingly, or by her own hand, but in a lot of ways, she was responsible. She’s been in jail. She’s being watched all the time. And she’s not going to trust any of us. But she might trust someone who’s walked in her shoes.”

Reece stiffened.

There was a challenge in the lift of Jeremy’s chin. “What? I’m not saying anything we don’t all already know. Everyone knows Reece spent time in juvie. It’s no secret that he was involved in that shooting in North Hampton last year.” But it was a secret that Reece was a narc. I held my breath, hoping this was the extent of what Jeremy knew. That Reece’s secret was still safe.

“So, I’m assuming he’s probably got some kind of probation officer checking up on him all the time. Am I right?”

Reece gritted his teeth and nodded.

“All I’m suggesting is that Reece and Emily can probably relate to each other on some deep, morally ambiguous level.” My hand curled into a fist. Part of me wanted to deck Jeremy for cutting open the scars of Reece’s old wounds. The other part of me knew he was right. If anyone could lure Emily into spilling her secrets, it was Reece.

“I’m not doing it.” Reece looked at me, almost apologetically.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. “We could record everything. If she is involved and confesses anything, we’ll have it on video.”

“Think about this, Leigh. Think about what you’re asking me to do.”

“I have. It’s our only option.”

“That’s fucked up,” Vince said. “No way am I letting this asshole sneak around in Emily’s bedroom.”

“Who says I have to sneak around. Ten bucks says she invites me—”

Vince threw a punch. It grazed the side of Reece’s face. Reece let it ride, wiping any traces of Vince away with his sleeve. He didn’t look apologetic anymore.

“Fine. I’ll do it. But remember,” Reece said to no one in particular, “you wanted this.” Then he walked out.

• • •

On Friday night, we all stood outside Emily’s house, hidden from view behind her backyard fence. Reece held open his button-down shirt, exposing his chest while I floundered with the camera. He cringed as I used a strip of duct tape to fix the thin, short cable flat against his sternum, and narrowed his eyes at Jeremy. “Where’d you say you got the wire?”

“It’s not a wire. It’s a spy cam. From a highly reputable online vendor.” Jeremy unpacked a receiver from the box and flipped up the antennae.

“It’s a fucking nanny cam, is what it is,” Vince mumbled.

Reece shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“This thing is no different than the surveillance equipment government spooks use,” Jeremy said. “If you make it into Emily’s room, this thing will transmit full video up to three hundred feet away.”

“
If
he makes it into her room, I’ll eat my shorts,” Vince muttered.

Jeremy ignored him, carefully connecting adapters and cables to his laptop. “The camera will do its job. You just worry about doing yours.”

The evening air held an early autumn chill and my hands were shaking from the cold.

“Hurry up, will you?” Reece clenched his abs against a breeze as my icy fingers pressed the adhesive to his skin.

“I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing,” I muttered. All I knew is that if Emily touched Reece’s chest, she’d know he was wired. And I wasn’t sure if that thought was terrifying or some form of consolation. “There, that should do it.” I snapped the tiny camera in place on his shirt and slowly fastened each button, letting my fingers graze his skin on the way down, tasting the exact moment when his irritation turned to longing.

When I got to the top of his jeans, I slipped my fingers around his waist, warming them against his bare skin. He shivered, bending his head to give me a slow, hot kiss. I don’t know why I returned it so fiercely. Maybe because Jeremy was standing behind me. Maybe because Reece was about to stand under Emily’s bedroom window and ask her to let him up. Maybe because I wanted to make a point, that he was mine, if only to prove something to myself. I leaned up on my toes, crushing his mouth to mine, careful to avoid the wire as I pressed him up against Emily’s fence.

“Jeez,” Jeremy whined in a loud whisper while he adjusted his laptop. “Is this absolutely necessary? Like, right now?”

I pulled back, but Reece held me in place and kissed me some more. Maybe because he wanted to make a point too. He tugged gently at the silver chain around my neck, freeing the pendant from my shirt. Then he brushed his nose gently against mine, and whispered, “This is who I am. Right now. This. Promise me you’ll remember that. Okay?”

It sounded like a disclaimer. Tasted like an omen. And the feathery lightness in my chest became a lead weight as I watched him walk through Emily Reinnert’s gate.

• • •

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Jeremy asked when Reece was out of sight. He and Eric hunched down behind the fence, facing out onto the darkened line of trees that shielded us from the golf course.

“I’m fine.” I snuggled into my jacket and hood and scooted close to Jeremy so I could see the video on his screen. Eric leaned over his other shoulder. Vince stood on the edge of the tree line, with his back to us.

“Sit down, Vince! She’s going to see your big dumb head!” Jeremy barked. Vince flipped Jeremy off and dropped to the ground, refusing to look at the screen. But I didn’t have a choice. I needed to see this, to hear it for myself. If anyone’s secrets were being revealed tonight, I wanted to know.

A brick wall came into view, and then the white-painted wood trellis that climbed to Emily’s second-floor bedroom window. It was bare, stripped of any dying vines, and I could imagine Reece standing in front of it, placing the best footholds in his mind. Planning his next move.

“Emily!” Reece’s whispered shout came from both directions, one real, the other recorded. “Emily, down here!”

We heard the snap of a window lock.

“Reece! What are you doing down there?”

Vince glanced at the screen.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” Reece said, deep and slow and flypaper sweet.

“Me?” Emily sounded nervous. Maybe a little suspicious.

“I mean, you know . . . your situation,” Reece corrected.

I chewed my lip. It hadn’t been an innocent slip-up. Reece didn’t make those kinds of mistakes. “I know how lonely it can be. I thought maybe you could use some company.”

“What would you know about it?” she snapped back.

“More than you might think.”

She was quiet. I could picture him standing there, looking up at her with his thumbs hitched in his pockets. Could imagine the suggestive tilt of his head.

“Then tell me.”

The camera panned left, then right, as if Reece were checking his surroundings. “More than I want to admit from down here. Besides, it’s cold out here. My hands are going numb.”

Another pause. “Fine. Come up then. If you want to, I mean.”

Vince grumbled to himself, inching closer to the laptop. There was a scrabbling of noise and a blur of movement on the screen. The trellis came into focus. Then the open window. Then Emily’s bedroom, her hand reaching to pull him inside.

He held it too long, not long enough to be an obvious come-on, but long enough to make me bristle inside.

The camera panned slowly around the room. Over the bookcase full of cheer trophies and ribbons and yearbooks. A desk and mirror that looked more like the cosmetics counter at a fancy department store. A bed piled high with pillows.

Emily appeared in front of him. Her hair was long and loose around her shoulders, over a snug Hello Kitty sleep tee and a pair of plaid pajama bottoms tied low enough to leave a swatch of bare skin above her hips. I hardly recognized her. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but then again, she’d never really needed any. She was still beautiful, but in a tragic sort of way. She raked her hair back from her eyes and I cringed looking into them. It was the first time I’d seen them this closely since she stood before me, crying and pinning a suicide note to my chest while she’d apologized for her role in TJ’s plan to murder me.