Winter (Four Seasons #1) (16 page)

Janie
Peterson, March 15
^th

Decapitation.
Found 3 miles outside Rock Springs off the I80

“
They figured
out the correlation between this symbol and decapitation pretty
quick. Seemed like the most popular way for this guy to kill.
Nearly half the victims went out that way, and it always seemed
like there was a struggle before hand. Most of the officers who
worked the case, still working the case, thought the killer let the
girls go before he tracked them down.”

“
Why? Why
would he do that?”

Luke finishes
his beer and puts the bottle in the sink. He gets another two out
of the fridge and sets one down in front of me. “Sometimes they
like the chase,” he says awkwardly. “There was no real way for
these girls to escape. He took them out to abandoned areas a couple
of miles from the road. It was probably enough to give them a
fleeting hope of escape. In truth, they didn’t stand a
chance.”

Bile rises at
the back of my throat, making my mouth sweat. My mind takes me back
to the trailer for Way Out Of Wyoming and the ragged, terrified
breathing of the girl who had been running for her life. I don’t
need to see the movie to know the poor girl the actress was
portraying didn’t make it. My hand shakes when I twist the top off
my second beer, closing my eyes as the cold liquid snakes its way
down my throat.

“
Easy. We
don’t want a repeat of last time. If this is too hard for you, I
can keep looking and give you the updates if I find anything.”
Luke’s trapped with that look of worry again, and I shake my head.
There’s no motivation like the thought of having my father’s name
cleared to keep pushing me forward.

“
I can’t,” I
murmur, quickly draining more than half my beer. “This is
important. I’m probably gonna have nightmares for the rest of my
life but I can’t give up. My dad would never give up on me.” Luke’s
laugh startles me. It’s short and sharp and perhaps a little
derisive. I bristle and rock back on the stool. “What was that
for?”

Luke’s eyes
sharpen when he looks at me. “What’s
what
for?”

“
Laughing like
that. I can’t do this with you if you think I’m crazy. My dad was a
good man, Luke. I’ve spent the past five years defending him to
everyone but you. I don’t have the energy to start now. I didn’t
think I needed to.” I’m about five seconds from boosting out of my
seat and fleeing the apartment, and Luke can see it in my
eyes.

“
I wasn’t
being a jerk, Avery! I was laughing because of how ridiculous this
whole thing is. I guess I’m bitter. You don’t have to defend Max to
me. I know he was a good man. He wasn’t just my science teacher in
high school, y’know. He was my friend. He was the only one who
helped me when I needed it.”

I can’t
picture that—my dad helping Luke. He’s been gone for so long that
I’ve forgotten who he was to the outside world. Every memory that I
covet of my father relates to what he meant to
me.
The side of him that had been a
teacher at my school, that had been a volunteer at the local fire
station, that mentored young boys in the Breakwater community on
his weekends, has been practically forgotten. I hang my head a
little and wrap my arms around my body, making myself small. “My
dad mentored you?” I ask quietly.

“
Yeah.”

I can’t look
at Luke. He sounds a little angry. I want to know why, but I can’t
ask. The only boys Dad mentored in Breakwater were from broken
homes, young men who had suffered in the foster care system, the
victims of various forms of abuse and neglect. Luke comes from a
good home. His mom and sister are sweet; I’ve known them my whole
life. His father and mine were members of the same shooting club
for crying out loud. I still remember them going out hunting
together on the weekends before Clive Reid was killed—shot by a
misfiring rifle when I was just eight. Luke would have been eleven
or twelve at the time. If my dad was helping Luke then it was
probably because of that—the grief he must have suffered from his
own father’s death. And that is probably a wound Luke doesn’t want
re-opening. I respect that, know exactly what that’s like. I down
the rest of my beer and keep my eyes off him, not sure how to act.
Focusing on the file is probably the best thing I can do, even if
makes me want to throw up.

“
Rock Springs
has to be seventy miles away from Breakwater,” I muse, staring down
at the photocopied image. The copying process has captured the many
fingerprints that rim the picture. It looks like a lot of people
have handled the original, probably poured over it, trying to work
out what it means. Luke remains silent for a minute. His voice is
strained when he speaks.

“
Doesn’t
matter. Killers like this aren’t afraid to travel with their work.”
He collects up my empty beer bottles and discards them in the sink
with his, and then rifles in the counter draw, rattling loudly. I
know what he’s looking for.

“
Since when
did you start smoking, anyway?”

He has the
pack in his hand when he turns around, and his face looks stormy.
“I don’t normally. Casey started a couple of years back. I used to
have the occasional one when we were out at a club or something.
Since we broke up I’ve probably smoked about four cigarettes. This
pack’s over a year old.”

That probably
explains why he doesn’t even have a lighter. He ignites his gas
cooker and hunches over it so that his t-shirt hikes up a little
exposing his lower back. His cigarette’s burning when he turns
around. I avert my eyes, worried at how intensely I was staring at
that small strip of bare skin. Luke still looks
stressed.

My bad temper
and I are the reasons for the uneasy tension radiating off him.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” I tell him, finally manning up
enough to meet his eyes. He shrugs and takes a drag off his smoke,
his jaw muscles ticking.

“
It’s okay.
You have every reason to be defensive. I’m guessing your dad never
mentioned he knew me.”

I shake my
head. “Dad never said anything about the people he mentored. He
told me when I was little that it was confidential. That promising
to keep a secret was sometimes the only way you
could
help someone.”

“
I loved that
about him, Avery. I trusted him. He was kind to me. I was jealous
of you for so long.”

My hands still
on my beer bottle. “What? Why?”

“
I don’t know.
I guess there were days…” He clears his throat and looks past me
out of the window to the city beyond, the lights and the traffic
and the masses. “There were days when I wished he was my dad,
too.”

Luke’s never
said anything like this to me before. He’s never even given me a
hint that he knew my dad beyond being in his class at school and
finding his dead body. A hard lump forms in my throat. I can’t pick
apart my churning emotions long enough to work out how I feel: sad
for him; curious; hurt because of that pained look in his eye. The
anger I feel is a little confusing and it takes me a second to work
out why it’s even present. Luke clearly shared a bond with my
father, something strong enough to still devastate him five years
after his death. A bond strong enough to make him leap to my dad’s
defense even after everything that’s being said about him. This
revelation makes things a little clearer now. Luke actually shares
a little of my story—the humiliation and the pain of people
slandering someone important to you—and some sick part of me
doesn’t want to share it.

“
I need
another beer,” I tell him, pushing back out of my seat. Instead of
asking him to pass me one, I get up and fetch it myself. His eyes
follow me around the breakfast bar and into the fridge, burning
into the side of my cheek. The pressure of his gaze is unbearable
and has my heart pounding in my chest. I look askance to find him
poised in an awkward stance, frozen absolutely still. He doesn’t
blink.

“
D’you want
another one?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

“
Thanks,” he
whispers. He takes the bottle out of my hand and we both flinch
when our fingers touch. I don’t like the electricity that comes
with that contact. It makes my head spin in an unwelcome way. The
smoke from Luke’s cigarette fills my head and I suddenly realize
how close I’ve gotten. I frown and reach past him slowly, and the
expression on Luke’s face flickers. I hit the extractor fan button
behind him and the whirring sound that sucks the smoke out of the
air sucks away the tension with it. Luke gives me a wry smile and
takes one last drag on his half smoked cigarette before backing
away to repeat the process of running the butt under the tap and
throwing it away. I return to my seat, fighting the color
threatening to rise in my cheeks. Everything just got mighty
confusing in the last five minutes. Everything.

Luke is all
business when he turns back around. The conflicted look has
disappeared. “So this is probably really unlikely, but did your dad
keep a journal?”

“
No, not that
I know of.”

“
Do you think
your mom would have kept it if he had?”

A scathing
laugh escapes my lips. “I have no idea. I doubt it. She got
removers to come and pack up her stuff when she moved here so she
wouldn’t even have to go through his things. I’m pretty sure
everything he owned was left in the house.”

“
Wait, she
still owns the house in Break?”

I shoot him a
wary glance. “I own it now.”

“
What?”

I slug back
more beer. I know where this is headed. “I inherited it when I
turned eighteen. Mom expected me to sell it. She was pretty pissed
when I told her I wanted to keep it.” That argument had been one of
the nails in the coffin of our dead relationship. I can still
remember the disgusted look on her face when she told me I was sick
and needed help if I wanted to cling onto a mausoleum where ‘that
kind of evil’ had lived. I know Luke is staring at me again, like
he expects me to say something else. I don’t.

“
We should go
search for a diary, then. I can’t believe the place has been
sitting there empty all this time,” he mutters.

“
Well, it is
out of the way from town. You’d never notice it’s been permanently
empty all these years. It’s not like you’d ever drive past it on
your way somewhere.” I’d always loved how secluded our family home
was, how far away from the world I’d felt living there with just my
family and crazy old Mrs. Harlow next door. Mrs. Harlow died a year
after I’d moved in with Brandon, and now my uncle is the only
person who ever goes up there. He makes sure the place is secure
and in good repair. Keeps the heating running on low in winter to
avoid damp. I used to drive up there when I was feeling
particularly crushed by the kids bullying me at school; I’d think
about setting it on fire, razing it to the ground, but I’d never
had the nerve. “I’m not sure about going back there, Luke. I…I
don’t think I can.”

Luke opens his
mouth to speak but the loud buzz of the intercom interrupts him.
“Food’s here,” he says, heading to the door. He brings the Chinese
into the kitchen and dishes up in silence. When he gathers the
photo and some other papers that have fallen loose from the file,
neatly tucking everything away so we can eat, I’m secretly glad. He
doesn’t bring up going back to the house again until we are halfway
through our meal.

“
You know, if
he did keep a journal or a work diary or something we might be able
to disprove Colby Bright’s theory. He could have alibis back in
Breakwater the days those girls were killed.”

Alibis. It
sounds like such a guilty term to use, but he’s right. “Maybe…maybe
you could collect the keys from Brandon and go up there next time
you’re home?” I ask hopefully. Luke looks uncertain.

“
I wouldn’t
know where to look for anything, Avery.”

“
Brandon could
help you.” I’m being such a coward and I know it, but I haven’t
been able to pluck up the courage to go into that house since I
became its legal owner. I’m still not ready.

“
Maybe,” Luke
compromises, but I can see the doubt in his eyes. We finish up our
food and I wash the dishes while Luke pretends not to watch me. In
turn, I pretend not to notice and rinse out our beer bottles and
shove them in the recycling.

“
Are you still
getting a taxi back to Columbia?” he asks when I’m done. I glance
up at the clock on his wall and scowl. It’s almost
midnight.

“
Yeah, I’d
better call one now.”

“
Wouldn’t your
boyfriend come get you?” he asks, leaning forward onto the counter.
My shoulders tense, hearing the odd note in his voice.

“
If he had a
car he might. Like I said at the hospital, he’s not…I’m not really
sure if he’s my boyfriend. We’re just hanging out.” Telling Luke
that Noah and I are ‘just hanging out’ probably makes me sound
slutty, and I find myself stammering over an explanation. “Not that
we’re…not that I…we’re not—”

Luke smiles
and brushes a hand back through his hair, disturbing it into that
ruffled, just fucked look. “It’s okay, Avery. It’s good that you’re
with someone. You should be happy.”