The Girl I Used to Be (19 page)

He's talking about Angie Paginini. “Wouldn't there be more than just one or two girls if it was a serial killer?”

“Not if the killer kept moving.” Stephen's hair is cut so close I can see the little white dots of his scalp between the bristles. His eyes never leave the road. “If you kill someone in one state and then kill someone else in a different state, chances are pretty good no one will ever put the two murders together, especially if you don't leave evidence like shell casings or fingerprints or DNA behind.”

“Jason's a trucker,” I say. “That means he's always moving on.” I decide not to mention what I know about the FBI task force.

“Jason Collins?” He shakes his head and makes a sound like a laugh. “I don't think so.”

“He said some weird stuff to me last night. About how people are tapping his phones. And about how you're watching him.”

In the rearview mirror, I see Stephen's eyes widen. “Who? Did he mean me? That I'm watching him?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.” He looks thoughtful. “Of course, we're going to be reinterviewing Jason along with everyone else who was a friend of Naomi or Terry. We're following up all possible leads. But my money's still on it being a stranger.”

“But why? Why would someone just randomly kill people?” My stomach clenches. How can you ever let down your guard if there are monsters walking around who look like people?

He sighs. “Some people enjoy killing. They don't have any more reason than that. Thankfully, it's a very small percentage of the population.”

“But why kill a couple?” I shift on the hard seat. “Don't serial killers usually kill either all men or all women?”

“It could be he killed Naomi and then killed Terry when he realized she wasn't alone. And some killers are jealous of people who are capable of forming relationships, so they'll target couples.”

Like the couple on the Northern California beach that Duncan told me about. “But whoever killed her and that Terry guy took their car,” I protest. “And Naomi's kid.”

“Boy, you really have been reading up on it.” Even though he doesn't have his lights or sirens on, Stephen is still driving about ten miles an hour over the speed limit, his hands tight on the steering wheel. I wish I could reassure him about my “seizure” without telling him the truth. “Anyway, the two still might be related. He didn't keep the truck. Maybe he only took it so he could easily transport the kid.”

“But why didn't this guy just kill the kid?”

He looks pained. “Even a serial killer might balk at killing a toddler.”

I realize that it's more than that they simply couldn't bring themselves to kill a little kid. They still could have left me there in the cold woods with the bodies of my parents. They could have walked away and let chance decide whether I died from exposure or whether some other person venturing out in the wintry forest found me in time.

But instead they took me somewhere safe, a place where they knew I would be found. And then they let me go.

 

CHAPTER 41

LIKE I NEVER WAS

All day at work, I've had to answer questions about my blue plastic walking boot. My ankle's not even broken, just sprained, but the doctor wants me to wear the boot for ten days as my ligaments heal. After I was done at the hospital—I was able to talk them out of doing a scan of my head—Duncan picked me up in his mom's car and drove me to get the Mazda.

We talked a lot. He told me that he wants to be my friend more than he wants to be my boyfriend. I'm not sure he was totally telling the truth, but my truth is that I missed him. Plus I still need someone to help me figure out what really happened to my parents.

The only two good things about the boot are that it's on my left foot, so I can still drive, and that it allows me to work, because I can't afford to take time off. The bad news is it attracts a lot of attention, mostly from customers who want to tell me about the times they've sprained their own ankles. In detail.

The vinyl seat scorches me when I get into my car. Nora asked me to bring back some lemonade, but when I pull into my driveway, I see a cop car parked in front of her house. Her curtains twitch, and then Stephen steps out of her door, dressed in uniform, face flushed from the heat. “Just the person I came to visit,” he says, meeting me halfway down the walkway. “I wanted to see how your ankle was holding up. And I need your help to plan the new search.”

“Just a sec.” I hold out the sweating bottle. “I'm going to run in and give this to Nora.”

He shakes his head. “I was just visiting with her, but she said she wasn't feeling well. She's taking a nap.”

“She won't mind if I stick it in her fridge.”

He steps in front of me, and I'm suddenly conscious of the jut of his chest, the gun on his hip. “No, Olivia. You shouldn't go in there.”

The hair rises on the nape of my neck. Something is terribly wrong. I don't waste time arguing. I step to the right, then slip past him on the left, clomp up the two steps as fast as I can, and fling open the door.

Nora is sitting on the couch. Her lap is covered by a pile of afghans, and she's wearing those fake UGGs on her feet. Her head is tilted back against the cushions. Her glasses are lying on the floor.

Her eyes are open. Not moving or blinking.

“Oh my God—” I turn to Stephen, who has followed me inside, but then I see he already knows that something's wrong.

He closes the door behind him. I take a step back, but the coffee table catches me in the back of the knees.

He grabs my wrists and pulls me close. Through gritted teeth, he says, “You asked so many questions, turned up in so many places. So I ran you through our databases. Turns out you're not who you say you are.”

Inside, I'm frozen. Everything's wrong. Everything's twisted. “I don't know what you're talking about. I'm Olivia Reinhart.”

“Yes. And you're also Ariel Benson. Terry and Naomi's daughter. And once I saw that, it explained why you seemed so familiar.”

He looks over at Nora's still figure. “She saw me knocking on your door and invited me in. She realized I had figured out who you were. But the thing is”—his eyes flash back to mine—“she hadn't figured out who
I
was. Before she died, she said you hadn't told anyone else who you were.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Her heart just stopped,” he says, but I know he's lying. Or at least leaving out the part where he did something to make it stop, like put a sofa pillow over her face. “Now I need you to come with me so we get everything straightened out.” He shifts his grip so that he's holding both my wrists with one hand. Before I can react, he's slapped handcuffs on me.

“What are you doing? Am I under arrest?”

“Anything you say can and will be used against you,” he says, but isn't there supposed to be more to it than that?

He opens the door and makes me walk ahead of him.
Nora's dead, Nora's dead, Nora's dead
pulses in me. I clomp along, feeling as if I'm in one of my nightmares, the ones where I run and run but somehow stay in the same place. The neighborhood is deserted, everyone at work. The few people who might be home are probably hunkered down in the air-conditioning with the curtains drawn.

At his cruiser, he opens the door on the back passenger side.

This time, instead of easing me in, he pushes me into the seat and doesn't bother to tell me to use the seat belt. The windows are tinted, and there's no chance anyone will see me tucked back in the recessed space. Maybe I can jump out when the car is moving? As he closes the door, I reach forward and grab the handle with one of my cuffed hands. It doesn't open.

He gets in the driver's seat, slams the door, and starts driving. Fast.

The doubling thing is happening again. Just like fourteen years ago, I'm staring at the floor of a car. There's no bloody knife, but the muttering voice is familiar.

“What the hell just happened?” he says, but not to me. “How did you let it go this far, Stephen? You're a good husband, a good father, and a good cop. But then she had to come around asking questions. Trying to connect the dots. She didn't give you any choice. Just like her parents.” His voice is equal parts anguished and angry.

I raise my cuffed hands so I can touch Nora's necklace. It feels like an anchor. Like the only bit of goodness in this car. My eyes fill with tears, but I blink them back. I can't afford to fall apart now.

Where is he taking me? Because I'm pretty sure it's not to the police station. From between the two front seats, tiny, tinny voices drift up. Can I get to the radio somehow and call for help? But could I ever get the person on the other end to believe me?

My phone is in my back pocket, and he hasn't taken it from me—yet.

“So what really happened to my parents?”

He hesitates, but then the words rush from him as if they have been dammed up for years. “First, you have to understand what was going on back then. My dad had been sick forever. Cancer. And then he died. The economy sucked. My mom couldn't get a job. I was living at home, going to community college, making a few bucks doing yard work. Me and my mom and my little sisters were living off what we could get from the church pantry, and half the time the shelves were bare. Deer season was over, but my sisters were crying from hunger. They needed to eat. So I took my rifle and I went out into the woods. I saw a deer moving through the trees. I swear to God, I didn't see a person. I saw a deer, the flick of its white tail. So I shot it. But—but when I took out my knife and went to gut it, I found Terry. Terry Weeks. And he was dead. Wearing these stupid white gloves that Naomi must have made him. And I'd killed him.”

Thoughts tangle and collide in my head. Now I know the truth. This man who is only a few feet from me has killed three people I loved. My mom and dad, and now Nora. I want to scream and shout and rage. I want to punch through the Plexiglas that separates us, slide the handcuffs over his head and strangle him. But I push back the anger and the tears and the fear. There will be time for all those later—if I live.

I force myself to speak calmly. “Couldn't you have just turned yourself in and explained?” While his attention focused on his memories, I try to move my cuffed hands around to my back pocket.

“Explained what?” He makes a sound like a laugh. “That I was hunting out of season? That I had just killed a guy? I already wanted to be a cop, but shooting Terry meant that would never happen. Shooting Terry meant my life was over. I was still in shock when I heard Naomi calling for him. She came around a tree and found me with my rifle over my shoulder and my knife in my hand. I tried to explain to her it was an accident, but she went crazy, hitting me and screaming. I only meant to push her away. That's all.”

My lips curl back. The emotion I've been holding at bay starts to leak out. “Push her away? You stabbed her nineteen times.”

Through the Plexiglas, I see him shake his head. “I just wanted her to be quiet, to leave me alone so I could think. But she wouldn't stop fighting, stop screaming. I didn't have any other choice. She even tried to take the knife away from me.”

“Yeah, to stop you from killing her!” I strain, my shoulder twisting. My fingertips brush the top of my phone.

His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror, and I stop moving. “It was already too late. I couldn't make it better. I couldn't bring Terry back to life. It was Naomi or me. There weren't any other choices. But it was the hardest thing.” His voice is hoarse. “It was awful. Do you think I haven't lived with that for years? Do you think I don't have nightmares, that what happened isn't in my thoughts every day?” His voice breaks. “And then when it was over, I heard this noise. It was you, trying to run away on your little legs. I hadn't even noticed you until then.”

“Did you think about killing me?” The tears are falling from my eyes now, disobeying me.

“No,” he says, but I hear the lie in his voice. “No,” he repeats more softly. “How could I do that? You weren't much younger than my little sister. I could have left you there, and you would have frozen to death. But I kept you safe. I didn't touch a hair on your head. Because of my sisters, I knew how to talk to little girls. I got close and then grabbed you up, carried you to Terry's pickup, and put you inside. Then I went back to get his keys, but the first pocket I looked in was full of money. I had no idea where it had come from, but I took it and hoped people would think it explained things. The whole time I was patting him down, Naomi was looking right at me. I tried to close her eyes, but they wouldn't stay. I knew she couldn't see me, but it felt like she could. So I wrapped her in the tarp I had brought for the deer. Then I hightailed it out of there.”

Again, his gaze meets mine in the rearview mirror. “You actually fell asleep on the drive. And when I saw the billboard for Walmart, I went there. I looked up at the light poles to make sure there weren't any cameras. I leaned over and opened the door of the truck for you. I told you your mommy and daddy were waiting for you inside. You looked at me once, and then you took off. I drove up to Portland, parked in the long-term lot, and wiped the truck down. And then I took a Greyhound back to Medford and hiked back to get my car, a few miles from where it happened. I was home by the end of the day.”

I try to make sense of everything. “So was Benjy with you that day?”

“No. But he came out for the search after Naomi's body was found, and he must have seen me. I found one of Terry's hands that day, still in a stupid white glove. Animals probably dragged off the rest. I hid the hand in my pack and buried it later. Even if Ben had tried to tell someone about what he saw me do, that was also when he started talking about the FBI listening to him.”