The Body Finder (4 page)

He just shrugged. “I'm just not.” And then he asked the question that Violet was most afraid of. “Why do you care if I call her?”

“I don't,” she lied. “I'm just surprised. I thought you would've called her already.”

“Hey, did you hear about Brad Miller?” he asked, already forgetting about the Lissie conversation. “He got his car taken away for getting another speeding ticket. Of course he tried to tell his parents that it was a setup.”

Violet laughed. “Yeah, because the police have nothing better to do than to plan a sting operation targeting eleventh-grade idiots.” She was more than willing to go along with this diversion from conversations about Jay and his many admirers.

Jay laughed too, shaking his head. “You're so cold-hearted,” he said to Violet, shoving her a little but playing along. “How's he supposed to go cruising for unsuspecting freshmen and sophomores without a car? What willing girl is going to ride on the handlebars of his ten-speed?”

“I don't see you driving anything but your mom's car yet.
At least he
has
a bike,” she said, turning on him now.

He pushed her again. “Hey!” he tried to defend himself. “I'm still saving! Not all of us are born with a silver spoon in our mouths.”

They were both laughing, hard now. The silver spoon joke had been used before, whenever one of them had something the other one didn't.

“Right!”
Violet protested. “Have you
seen
my car?” This time she shoved him, and a full-scale war broke out on the couch.

“Poor little rich girl!” Jay accused, grabbing her arm and pulling her down.

She giggled and tried to give him the dreaded “dead leg” by hitting him with her knuckle in the thigh. But he was too strong, and what used to be a fairly even matchup was now more like an annihilation of Violet's side.

“Oh, yeah. Weren't you the one”—she gasped, still giggling and thrashing to break free from his suddenly way-too-strong grip on her, just as his hand was almost at the sensitive spot along the side of her rib cage—“who got to go to Hawaii….” She bucked beneath him, trying to knock him off her. “…For spring break…last…” And then he started to tickle her while she was pinned beneath him, and her last word came out in a scream: “…
YEAR?!
”

That was how her aunt and uncle found them.

Violet never heard the key in the dead bolt, or the sound of the door opening up. And Jay was just as ignorant of their arrival as she was. So when they were caught like that, in a
mass of tangled limbs, with Jay's face just inches from hers, as she giggled and squirmed against him, it should have meant they were going to get in trouble. And if it had been any other teenage boy and girl, they would have.

But it wasn't another couple. It was Violet and Jay…and this was business as usual for the two of them.

Even her aunt and uncle knew that there was no possibility they were doing anything they shouldn't. The only reprimand they got was her aunt shushing them to keep it down before they woke the kids.

After Jay left, Violet took the thirty dollars that her uncle gave her and headed out.

As she drove home, she tried to ignore the feelings of frustration she had about the way her aunt and uncle had reacted—or rather
hadn't
reacted—to finding her and Jay together on the couch. For some reason it made her feel worse to know that even the grown-ups around them didn't think there was a chance they could ever be a real couple.

With her spirits dampened, she hoped that at least her cat wouldn't be around when she got home.

SLEEP WAS HARD TO HOLD ON TO THAT NIGHT,
elusive and slippery, evading her at every turn. She was restless, and her dreams were segmented and disquieting.

Swaddled in the darkest part of the night, everything suddenly felt wrong to Violet. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was that was bothering her, but it was there nonetheless, that unnamed distress, looming over her and making her feel helpless…powerless.

She knew that the new and improved Jay was partially responsible for these unwelcome feelings. But that wasn't really it…or at least, that was only part of what was troubling her.

Violet wasn't sure exactly what the rest of it was. She woke
twice to look around for Carl, assuming he was the cause of her midnight discomfort. She thought that maybe he was too near her, too soon after his kill. But when she looked for him, he was nowhere to be seen.

Finally, at just after six o'clock in the morning, as the sun was rising up through the gloom in an effort to conquer the sky, Violet decided to give up. There was only one thing she could do when she was feeling this way, only one way to clear her tangled thoughts.

She dressed quickly and quietly in shorts and a T-shirt. Despite the fact that the September day promised to be warm, it was still early and there was a damp chill in the air, so, as an afterthought, she also pulled a sweatshirt over her head.

She tiptoed out of the house, passing Carl in the kitchen and noting that the reek coming off him was beginning to fade already.

As she stepped outside, she took a deep breath of the dewy air while she put the earbuds from her iPod into her ears.

And then she jumped down from the porch and started running…slowly at first, an even, steady pace. She was acutely aware of the gentle rhythm of her feet pounding up from her soles and she concentrated on the tempo, letting it clear her mind as she synchronized her breathing into measured regularity with her footsteps.

As she reached the end of the road, she took a sudden, sharp left, leaving the blacktop in favor of a gravel trail that appeared between the stands of tall cedar and fir trees. She could feel the crunching of the gravel beneath her sneakers vibrating all the way up the muscles of her legs.

As she entered the clearing, at the top of the pasturelands that stretched out before her, the sight of the mountain against the painted backdrop of the dawn made her draw a deep, appreciative breath.

Violet had been born and raised in Buckley, a little nowhere of a town that sat on a stretch of highway that joined the western and eastern halves of the state. Buckley rested in the shadow of Mount Rainier, in the foothills of the Cascades. She had seen the majestic white peak rising high above the Cascade mountain range more times than she could count, and yet she never tired of the magnificent view. The larger mountain dwarfed the smaller ones that surrounded it, making it look as if it was floating above them. It was like a beacon, even against the most brilliant sky.

What made it even more of an extravagance, something not to be taken for granted, was that the mountain wasn't out every day. Of course, Violet knew that it was always
there
; but in an area where the sun found itself cloaked by cloud cover more often than not, it was even more of a rarity to see Mount Rainier in its entirety, unobstructed by fog or the high clouds that often hung over the mountain from the top down…or flat-out obliterated by dense, dark clouds that blocked even the most tenacious light that tried to penetrate them.

She ran in the shadow of the mountain for as long as she could, until the trail she followed veered left again, winding around the rich, verdant pastureland that bordered the gravel pathway.

She was surprised that something so small as witnessing
the mountain at sunrise could make her feel so much better. But it did. Already the foreboding feeling that had been hanging over her was lifting, and she felt clearer, calmer.

She settled into an easy pace, allowing her thoughts to drift away, lost in her music and the steady cadence of her body's movements. She liked the feeling of control she had when she ran, that she was in command of her body, in charge of each muscle's perfectly timed movements. She felt strong as she looked down at her long, ground-eating stride, and felt powerful in at least
this
element of her life.

She passed several weak death echoes as she ran. She'd grown accustomed to these, the ones that didn't compel her—didn't
draw
her—and she was able to ignore them easily enough. She didn't know why these forgotten corpses didn't call out to her in the way that others did; she only knew that they didn't.

Not in the way the girl in the woods had when Violet was eight.

Emilee Marquez had been only fourteen years old when she was abducted on her way home from school. She was murdered before being buried in the soft soil where Violet had found her. The draw to find Emilee had been almost overpowering, something beyond Violet's control.

But why?

Maybe it was because not much time had passed, or maybe it was because of the violence of the girl's death. Or worse, Violet thought, perhaps it was because she was so aware of what was happening to her as she died. Maybe she understood
too much, and that memory was forever burned on to her body in the form of an echo.

The girl's killer was never found, but Violet would never forget the sound—the haunting voice—that had called her to the body. Sometimes she had nightmares that she would run into him, the man responsible, at the supermarket or at the mall, carrying the imprint of Emilee's death on him like some unspeakable shadow that he could never escape.

Violet pushed the unsettling thought away.

She slowed only once, when the heavy sweatshirt became too warm for her to wear any longer, and she tugged it over her head, tying it tightly around her waist with its sleeves. But she reached her stride again easily and settled back into her rhythm.

By the time she'd run full circle, reaching her house, her T-shirt was saturated in sweat, and she felt relaxed from head to toe.

It was the car in the driveway, and the man-boy perched on the hood waiting for her, that made her lose some of her newfound tranquillity.

He was grinning at her in a way that made her legs feel like they were made of nothing more solid than gelatin. They might have even quivered from something other than her early-morning run.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as she slowed from a jog to a walk and placed her hands on her hips. It would take her a few minutes to get her breathing back to normal. Longer if he kept smiling at her like that.

He shrugged. “I couldn't sleep. What about you?”

She opted for the obvious and filled her voice with as much sarcasm as she could. “I live here, actually.”

“Ha-ha, smart-ass. I was asking if maybe you couldn't sleep too.” He shook his head at her wisecrack. “You know, since you were running at six-thirty in the morning? I was gonna see if you wanted to go for a walk or something.” He eyed her up and down, looking a little disappointed as he hopped down from the car's hood. “But it looks like you already went without me. That's okay, it was a long shot anyway.”

Violet didn't like the way she was suddenly so eager to be near him. Even though they'd been nearly inseparable for the past ten years, it now felt urgent to keep him close.

“All right, let's go.”

“Are you sure?” He seemed skeptical. “I don't want to talk you into it.”

“No, really, I'm not ready to go inside and start my homework yet anyway.” She was already leading the way into the trees that surrounded her house, and he was following right behind.

They walked for a long time like that, with him tagging along in her wake, not saying a word to each other. It was normal for Violet to take charge once they'd entered the cover of the woods; she had done so since they were just little kids. And even though Jay was nearly as familiar out here as she was after all these years, he let her lead anyway, comfortably taking second place to her.

It was already getting warm. The forecasts predicted late-
summer temperatures in the low eighties. Violet loved this time of year, relishing the lingering sun before it was cast away by the wintry gloom. Summer generally arrived late in her part of the world, usually waiting until July was well under way before making a regular appearance, so the persisting summerlike temperatures were welcome for as long as they wanted to stick around.

“So, are you going to the lake today?” Jay asked, finally falling into step beside Violet as their pace slowed. They headed nowhere in particular when they hiked like this, exploring places they'd been more times than they could add up, both on, and off, the well-known paths.

Violet shrugged. “Are you?”

She already knew the answer; they both did. Today was the big end-of-summer party at Lake Tapps. Kind of a last blast before the sun disappeared for the year. Pretty much everyone they knew would be there.

Jay shrugged too. “I was thinking about it.”

Inwardly she smiled at the prospect of spending one of the few remaining lazy summer days with him at the lake. “Yeah?” she questioned, not needing him to actually ask her along. “Maybe I'll go too.”

He grinned, practically beaming at her, and an unfamiliar warmth that had nothing to do with the weather crept through her. “Cool. You can drive,” he suggested.

She shook her head. If it had been anyone else, she'd probably feel like she was being used, but instead she loved the exhilarating feeling of having something he didn't have,
especially in light of the fact that he suddenly seemed to have
everything
that she wanted. “Fine, then you can buy me gas,” she added, raising her eyebrows and daring him to say no.

But the accident happened before Jay had a chance to respond.

And it was all his fault. At least that's how Violet would remember it when she replayed it in her head. If he hadn't been smiling at her like that when she'd looked up at him she would never have lost her concentration…or her footing.

But he had been…and she did. And when her foot failed to clear the thick, gnarled root that crossed the path in front of her, Violet felt herself careening off balance. She kept moving forward even when her foot did not, and before she knew what was happening she was plummeting toward the ground.

Jay tried to grab her, but it happened so fast.

Her hands hit the ground first, scraping against the compacted dirt, followed just milliseconds later by the sensation of the jagged rocks on the pathway ripping at the tender flesh of her knees.

When she stopped sliding, she wasn't sure whether she was hurt more physically or emotionally.

“Vi? Are you all right?” Jay asked, right beside her now, pulling her off the ground.

Tears burned in her eyes, and it wasn't just from the painful sting radiating up through her hands and knees. Humiliation threatened to overcome the hurt.

Jay hauled her up. She could smell his musky scent in his
sweatshirt, and she tried to hold her breath against it. This was bad…this was a bad,
bad
place for her to be.

“Are you hurt?” He pulled her away just enough so he could look down at her.

She bit her lip, trying to will the tears away. She blinked and looked back at him. “I'm okay,” she responded, but her voice broke, making her words sound puny, pathetic even.

He cringed as he bent down and looked at the angry red scrapes on both her knees. He reached out to lightly brush away some of the dirt from them, but she knew that he was afraid of hurting her, so he barely touched them. “We'd better get you back so we can clean those up.” He straightened, and then surprised her by picking her up as he started to carry her along the trail.

She struggled against him.
“I can walk!”
she protested, feeling even more like a baby as he held her in his arms.

He looked down at her in disbelief. “Are you sure? 'Cause I think I just saw you trying, and it didn't work out so well for you.” He didn't seem inclined to let her down just yet; he just kept walking.

She laughed but insisted again through her teary giggles, “Seriously, put me down! I feel stupid enough already—I don't need you treating me like an invalid.”

He slowed down unsurely before setting Violet on her own two feet. Internally she cursed herself for being so stubborn, and she wished that he'd put up more of a fight. Why couldn't he have insisted on carrying her all the way home?

Instead, he reached out and grabbed her hand. “If it's all right with you, I think I'll keep ahold of you anyway. I don't
want to be responsible for letting you fall again.”

She didn't argue.

The walk home went way too quickly for Violet. Jay had led her through the trees and into the clearing behind her house in no time at all.

Her parents had already gone for the day before she and Jay arrived back at her house. Her dad was working, as he did almost every Saturday, even when it wasn't tax season, and her mom had rented out a booth at the farmer's market to display some of her paintings.

Jay insisted on carrying her up the back steps and into the kitchen, and this time Violet didn't complain when he lifted her. He set her down gently on the kitchen counter, and then he rummaged through the cupboard while Violet told him where the Band-Aids were. He came back with bandages, gauze, cotton balls, antibacterial wash, and two tubes of ointment. It seemed like overkill to Violet, but she didn't say anything. She wanted to see what he planned to do.

“Okay, this is probably gonna sting,” he warned as he leaned over and began cleaning her wounds.

It
did
sting, more than Violet let on, and she had to bite her lip as the tears came back all over again. But she let him keep working without even flinching, which was no small feat as he stripped away the layers of dirt from her skin.