The Fixes (29 page)
Authors: Owen Matthews
And that's that.
Paige promises to keep quiet. They
all
promise to keep quiet. They drink coffee and eat croissants and spend the day in the theater room, watching the news.
Their faces never show up onscreen.
The police never knock at the door.
(
Holy shit
, E thinks.
We might actually get away with this after all
.)
Paige leaves the mansion the next morning.
“I just need to get out,” she tells the others. “Clear my head a little, get some space.”
She catches the way Jordan and Haley and E look at her. “I'm
not
going to sell you guys out, okay? I just need to be alone for a while.”
“I should get home, too,” Haley says. “Check on my mom and, like, try to act normal, I guess.”
“Keep your mouths shut,” Jordan tells them. “Anyone tries to talk to you about this, you let me know ASAP, okay?”
Paige and Haley nod.
“We're going to be fine,” Jordan says. “Just everyone trust me.”
KIK -- CAPILANO HIGH PRIVATE MESSAGE GROUP â 08/22/16 â 11:58 AM
USERNAME: Anonymous-9
MESSAGE: Another bat-shit crazy Suicide Pack production. Bravo. As if murdering Gatsby makes you all heroes. I know you're on here. I know you can see what I'm writing. Well, tick-tock, losers. Destiny is about to catch up with you.
There's a For Sale sign on Paige's front lawn when she gets home. No cars in the driveway, a lockbox on the front door.
(She hasn't been home since forever, due to the divorce and the acrimony and the constant stress. Couch surfing has been a much less uncomfortable living arrangement.
But right now, Paige needs her own space.)
She unlocks the back door and walks into the house. The air is still. The place is unnaturally clean. There's a stack of brochures on the kitchen counter, a real-estate agent's smiling face, a bunch of professional photographs of the house.
(There's nothing in the fridge but fucking Perrier.)
Paige pours herself a glass of water. Downs it, and leaves the empty glass on the counter, beside the brochures. Then she hauls her bag upstairs to her room.
Her room is different, too. Someone messed with her stuff. Her books are all hidden and her stuffed animals rearranged. Someone threw out her old journals, or moved them somewhere. Paige sets the bag down on the floor, kicks off her shoes. Pulls out her laptop and tries to connect to the internet, but she can't get a signal.
Even the freaking Wi-Fi is gone.
Paige lives like a squatter in her own home. She buys cookies and chips and soda from the little family-run convenience store down the hill, a box of stale Cinnamon Toast Crunch. She studies the case on TV.
(Or, rather, the
cases
.)
(
Her cases
.)
The murder. The bombing. She combs the newspaper's website.
died from massive head trauma. There were recreational drugs in his toxicology report. No signs of forced entry into the suite. Capilano PD is reviewing the St. Regis's security tapes now.
(No suspects yet in the Côte d'Azur bombing either.)
Rumors abound.
But no one in the real world is talking about the Pack.
(Yet.)
There's something else in the news besides bombing coverage. A little article, barely four paragraphs long:
MISSING MAN CONFOUNDS POLICE, FAMILY.
Paige doesn't know why she clicks through. Boredom, maybe, or just morbid curiosity.
The missing man is a sixty-five-year-old Vietnam veteran. He now works as a special effects technician for Grant StudiosâJordan's dad's company. He hasn't been seen in almost a week.
(He disappeared the day after Paige's Fix went awry.)
There's a picture beside the article. A man with white hair and a big, shaggy beard. Tattoos. He looks like an old biker thug. The article says his name is Michael McDougall. He'd worked with movie kingpin Harrison Grant for nearly twenty years.
Police don't have any leads.
A couple days later. Paige is sleeping late when she hears something outside in the driveway. Voices, two of them, a man's and a woman's.
(At first Paige thinks it's the real-estate agent. He's been coming around now and then, showing the house off to prospective buyers. He always looks at Paige with a mixture of pity and, like, desire.
Paige tries to stay out of his way.)
The doorbell rings.
(The real-estate agent has a key.)
Paige goes to her window and looks out at the driveway. Sees the unmarked police car parked by the front door.
It's not the real-estate agent this time.
It's the cops.
Two cops, in particular. Plainclothes detectives.
(You know who they are.)
Dawson and Richards. They badge Paige at the door. Ask if they can come in. Paige lets them in. She has nothing to hideâ
(here).
The detectives leave their shoes on. They follow Paige into the kitchen. Dawson picks up a brochure from the counter. “Your parents selling?”
“Divorce,” Paige tells him. “My dad's in some legal trouble at the moment.”
“So why's your mom leaving? Because he's getting locked up, or because the Feds froze his bank account?”
Richards gives him a look, and he holds up his hands, grinning a little. There's something mean about him that sets Paige on edge.
“You heard about the murder at the St. Regis,” Richards says. She smiles a little nicer, playing the good cop. “, the movie star. We're running the case.”
“We're working that bombing, too,” Dawson says. “The bathing suit store down on Main Street, the real trendy one. What's it called?”
“Côte d'Azur,” Paige says after a moment.
“That's right. Your friend owns it.”
“Her mom.” Paige's mouth suddenly feels very dry. “My friend Haley's mom. It's her store.”
“
Was
her store,” Dawson says. “Ain't much of a store anymore.”
“Have you seen Haley lately?” Richards asks. “We went by her house, but she wasn't around.”
“No, I haven't,” Paige says. “Why are you even looking for her, anyway?”
“There was a witness at the St. Regis,” Dawson says. “A busboy on his smoke break. Said he saw a girl outside the hotel on the night in question, about the time the medical examiner figuresbreathed his last.”
Paige feels her heart rate jump to double time. She tries to hide it. “I didn't hear anything about any witnesses.”
“We withhold information from the media,” Richards tells her.
“Can't keep our suspects
completely
in the loop,” Dawson says.
Richards reaches into her jacket, pulls out a piece of paper. “The thing is, Ms. Hammond,” she says, unfolding the paper, “the busboy's description sounds uncannily similar to
this
girl. And
that
girl looks a lot like your friend Haley Keefer.”
She slides the paper over to Paige. It's the composite sketch of Haley from the Room spree. When it showed up in the newspaper, Paige couldn't see the resemblance. Now, looking at it again, all she can see is Haley.
“Wait, what?” Paige says, hoping she looks shocked. “You think Haley killedand
robbed The Room?
And
bombed the Côte d'Azur? Is she a suspect in the nine-eleven attacks, too?”
“Not just Haley,” Dawson says. “She brought three friends to The Room, remember?”
“And, what? I haven't seen them, either, if that's what you're asking.”
The detectives swap another look. Richards takes the picture back. “You knew, didn't you? You guys were kind of an item?”
“We went out for drinks once or twice. He got me a job on the movie he was shooting. It didn't go further than that. He had a fiancée in Los Angeles.”
“What I hear, that never stopped him,” Dawson says.
“You lost that job, though,” Richards says. “A week or so before the murder. What happened?”
“How should I know?” Paige says. “The AD came up to me one day and told me they didn't need me anymore, so I went home. That's it.”
“Just like that, huh?” Dawson says. “No cause given?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“You're a pretty girl. That's all I'm saying.”
“There were three cocktail glasses in's room when security found the body, Paige,” Richards says. “One had been laced with a pretty powerful sedative.”
“You guys are just trying to solve every crime in town at once, huh?” Paige says. “No offense, but this sounds like a stretch.”
“That's what we thought, too,” Richards says. “Believe me, this wasn't the first theory we came up with. But then . . .”
She steps aside for Dawson, who holds out his phone to Paige. Onscreen, theVine is playing, an endless loop.
“What do you know about the Suicide Pack?” Dawson asks her.
