Over Your Dead Body (24 page)

“But Glassman wasn’t even here the night Derek died,” said Marci. “Sara told us he’d left the day before.”

“Maybe he faked leaving early to build himself an alibi.”

“A person that careful wouldn’t turn around and kill a girl five hours after all of Main Street saw him talking to her. And then be found at the scene with injuries.”

I sighed and nodded. “You’re right. But what if … I don’t know. It’s too obvious to ignore, even if some of the pieces don’t fit yet.”

“Yet?”

“They might fit better when we learn more.”

Marci nodded. “For now, let’s focus on what we know. Both victims died the night after we talked to them.”

“Even better,” I said, “both of those conversations happened in Corey’s presence.”

“He’s still the best candidate,” Marci agreed. “I just wish we had more evidence.”

“Maybe he recognized us that first night,” I said. “Or he recognized Nobody’s presence or influence or something, and so when we left he killed Derek to try to lure us back. He didn’t kill anyone the first night because he didn’t have a plan yet. He was still thinking. And then the second night he put his plan into motion: It begins.”

“So what’s his plan?” asked Marci.

“I have no idea,” I said, shrugging helplessly. “Maybe it’s a message to us, or to someone else, or … well, it’s definitely about us somehow. Two murders in a peaceful town coinciding perfectly with our arrival is not a coincidence. We need to talk to his parents today, and maybe Brielle.”

“Seriously?” asked Marci. “Her sister was just murdered.”

“Of course,” I said. “You’re right. Maybe Paul, then.”

“It’s going to be hard to talk to anyone if the whole town’s in terrified mourning the whole time we’re here,” said Marci. She grimaced. “How many more do you think he’s going to kill?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.… Wait.”

“What?”

“There’s another correlation,” I said. “We’ve been here three days, and we talked to people on three days, but people were only killed on two of them.”

“Because he was still forming a plan on the first day,” said Marci. “Like you said.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe there’s another common factor we haven’t considered. What did we do on the second and third days that we didn’t do on the first?”

“We … were here during the daytime,” said Marci. “We went to … oh crap.” She looked me right in the eyes. “We went to church.”

I nodded. “Both days.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything,” said Marci.

“Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe it does.”

“We have to deal with stuff we can understand,” said Marci, frustrated. “Actual clues we can actually follow, instead of just guessing at shadows.”

“What, then?”

“We should … go look at last night’s crime scene,” she said. “There might be soulstuff, or claw marks, or some other evidence that the police won’t know is evidence because it’s too weird to be part of a standard murder.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “We’ll see if we can get close; it might be taped off still. And either way, I think we need to visit the cops.”

“You want to bring them in on this?” asked Marci. “I liked Officer Davis, but he won’t believe a word we say if we try to tell him this was a supernatural monster.”

I shook my head. “I just want to find out what they know—I can’t look at the bodies anymore, like I used to back in Clayton, so we’ve got to get our info some other way.”

“The cops won’t tell you anything.”

“Not on purpose,” I said. “That’s why we’re going to tell them something—they asked everyone who knows something to talk to them, so we’re going to go do it. We’re going to offer ourselves as witnesses to yesterday’s encounter between Jessica and Glassman. And while we’re in the building, we’re going to eavesdrop on every conversation we possibly can.”

“You’re crazy,” said Brooke. “They’ll ask for ID.”

“And we won’t have any to give them,” I said. “That doesn’t make us suspects, and whatever it does make us they’ll be too busy with the killings to bother figuring out who we really are.” I wavered back and forth, grimacing as I thought. “I’m 99 percent sure we won’t be suspects.”

Marci raised an eyebrow. “Are you willing to risk that 1 percent?”

“To kill a Withered?” I asked. “I’ll risk a lot more than that.”

“We can’t be on camera, though,” said Marci. “This is going to be national news, now more than ever, and we can’t be seen.”

“I know.”

Marci folded her arms intently. “If we get to the station and they have a camera, we come right back. We can’t risk anyone back home seeing us.”

“Obviously,” I said, then paused. “It’s a smart plan, but … you seem more emotional about it as well.”

“The sooner Brooke’s body gets recognized,” said Marci, “the sooner I might get evicted from it.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

We set out to look at the crime scene only to find it already swarmed with people pressed up against the line of police tape, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of anything they could. Marci and I worked our way to the front, but other than some plastic tarps that were almost certainly covering blood stains, we couldn’t see anything. A handful of state police were on the scene, working more to keep people out than to actually examine the evidence, and I wondered if they were already done or if they were trying to keep the scene clean for an incoming forensics team. Two grisly child murders in half a week was national news; we might get FBI. I wondered if it would be anyone I knew.

Was that Attina’s plan? To make this so high profile it became too risky for us to stay and hunt him?

We pushed our way gently out of the crowd, waved solemnly at Pastor Nash, who stood near the back of the crowd, and headed toward the police station. Marci started working on our story, conjuring something placating to tell the police if they demanded ID, while I put together the beginnings of a plan to kill Corey. Only the beginnings, though. Killing a Withered was just as delicate as tracking one; if you knew their powers you could do it fairly easily, but otherwise it was all but impossible. We’d have to start the way we always started: the speed-bump test. But how to arrange it? We couldn’t just be in the truck when we hit him—we’d end up in jail or worse—and if he survived we would have exposed ourselves for nothing. It had to be more subtle. But how?

And did we dare to do it in the first place? What if Corey, despite all our suspicion, was innocent? What if he was just a weirdo with poor social skills, and his Facebook announcement was a pure coincidence? “It begins” might just as easily refer to … I didn’t know, a garage band or something. Maybe his mustache was coming in. Maybe he was binge watching something online. I, of all people, couldn’t condemn a guy just for being suspicious and not fitting in.

But how could I know for sure? Every moment I didn’t act was another moment when someone could get hurt. Better to have the plan ready, so I could employ it when the target was confirmed.

Assuming I could get hold of a truck in the first place, how would I do it? Maybe if I aimed the truck just right and stacked a bunch of bricks on the gas pedal? If he was in a specific place, like the tables in front of Kitten Caboodle … but how could I keep him from seeing it coming, and getting out of the way? How could I limit the collateral damage? Maybe if I caught him at night, drunk at the drive-in theater, or walking home in the dark. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to do it, like a junkie sitting and staring at a hit of meth—just sitting there, waiting, filling up my entire mind. I looked at every truck we passed, wondering how to steal it, how to rig it, how to clean my own DNA off it.

We arrived at the police station only to find it almost as crowded as the crime scene—though most of the people here were in police uniforms. There were too many just for this department; they had local police, state police, and volunteers from all over the region. Most of them were milling around in the parking lot and by the front door as if they were waiting for something—an order or an announcement.

There was an ambulance in the parking lot. That was new, but I didn’t know what it meant. There were no cameras or news crews.

One of the officers stopped us as we tried to walk to the front door.

“Do you have business here?”

“The officer at the church meeting told us to contact him if we knew anything,” said Marci, putting on her most innocent voice. “We were with Jessica a lot yesterday.”

“And that’s it?” asked the cop. “You hung out with the victim? Do you have more than that?”

“Officer Glassman was there,” said Marci, dropping her eyes. I couldn’t tell if she was really embarrassed or still acting.

“Damn Cuddles,” said another cop, walking up next to the first. “Send them through.”

The second officer motioned for us to follow him. He led us past the crowd of police and into the station itself, where we could hear someone yelling in one of the offices. The cop pointed us to the waiting area: seven or eight plastic chairs, most of them already filled with what I assumed were other witnesses. Marci and I sat down, Boy Dog panting languidly at our feet, and I strained to hear the shouting.

“… another one? How the hell am I supposed to explain this?”

The response was too muffled to make out. The first voice shouted again.

“You’re not getting out of this with a transfer, Luke!”

Officer Davis, the one from the church meeting, was yelling at Officer Glassman. “Another one” didn’t refer to the dead body, but to Glassman’s history with underage girls. I glanced at Marci, and she shook her head.

“You want proof the Withered are evil?” she whispered. “It killed the girl instead of the child molester.”

“Listen!” shouted Davis. “I don’t care what excuses you have! I don’t care that you risked your life or got a few cuts or whatever pathetic excuse you’re trying to give me. This town’s ready to explode, and instead of solving their problems now I’ve got to deal with some dirtbag officer and his dirtbag fantasies.” He paused, while Glassman murmured something I couldn’t hear. “Do you think that matters?” asked Davis when he was done. “Of course it was all just gossip—that’s why you haven’t been fired—but this is evidence. If you’re so damn innocent this time can you explain what you were doing with her at 1:30 in the morning?”

“At least he’s as mad about this as we are,” said Marci.

“I’m trying to hear,” I said, but stopped speaking abruptly when another officer walked briskly around the corner, headed straight for us. I looked up, rehearsing my story one last time, but he walked right past us toward Officer Davis’s door. His face was grim, his teeth clenched.

“That’s not good,” said Marci.

The newcomer opened the door, and we caught the second half of Officer Glassman’s muffled argument: “… even talking about this! How is it even an issue? So you don’t believe in bigfoot, fine, neither do I, but then it was a bear, or the biggest wolf you’ve ever seen—the coroner’s report is going to back up everything I’ve said, no matter what you think I was doing with that g—”

“Quiet!” said Officer Davis. I could just barely see him through the door, and he looked furious. I wanted Glassman to keep talking, to say more about the monster he’d seen, but Davis turned to the man who’d opened the door and snapped at him: “I said no interruptions.”

“Unless there was another dead kid,” said the cop at the door. Every head in the waiting room swiveled toward him in unison, and the entire police station seemed to be suddenly on edge, listening. “Now we have.”

“No,” said Davis.

The cop in the doorway shook his head. “A local boy named Corey Diamond just got hit by a truck, in his own bedroom. Dead on impact.”

“Holy mother,” whispered Marci.

“In his bedroom.…” Officer Davis spluttered, trying to find words. “That’s … Dammit. Is it an accident or another murder?”

“That’s the thing,” said the cop. “We don’t know.” He swallowed, like he was nervous. “There wasn’t anybody in it—the truck was completely empty when it hit.”

18

“I think someone’s reading my mind,” I whispered.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Marci.

I looked around the police station, as if expecting to see a clawed, hairy monster peeking out from around a corner. “It’s the only explanation.”

The entire police station was buzzing with noise, cops and civilians and even suspects in their interrogation rooms, shouting and whispering and arguing and praying. What was going on? Who was behind it? Why were they doing it? Even Boy Dog was barking, little yips and growls of agitation. I felt a pain in my hands and looked down, realizing that I was gripping the armrests so tightly that the skin of my knuckles, chapped from wind and sun, was splitting open across the bones. Someone was reading my mind.

“We need to get out of here,” said Marci again, grabbing my arm.

I felt a sudden burst of anger—how dare she touch my arm!—and pulled away, feeling furious and terrified and guilty all at once. I shouldn’t react like that; Marci was my girlfriend, I loved her, of course she could touch my arm. Then I remembered it wasn’t even her fingers that had touched me but Brooke’s, and I felt another surge of anger, followed just as quickly by another surge of guilt. I shouldn’t feel like this. I couldn’t allow myself to feel like this.

I needed to burn something.

“Close that door!” shouted Officer Davis. “Let’s keep some semblance of propriety in this station!” The cop with the message stepped into Davis’s office and closed the door behind him, and the noise from the waiting room only got louder.

Marci stood up and grabbed my hand with Brooke’s fingers, trying to pull me out of my seat. I clenched my teeth and gripped the armrests tighter, willing my skin to split open, relishing the sharp, tearing pain of it. “John,” she whispered, and I closed my eyes and tightened the muscles in my neck, flexing them so hard my head began to shake.
Get out of my head
, I thought,
get out of my head!
I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself.
Whoever you are,
I thought,
I’m going to find you and tear you apart with my bare hands. Do you hear me? I’m coming for you!