You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (18 page)

“You called me this morning, and you're calling me again tonight. Is this your way of trying to get back together or something?”

“No, not at all,” she said. “I just felt bad for you because Reed was one of your best friends . . .” That was true, but still, Ron had often referred to Reed behind his back as “that weasel,” which made Bonnie wonder how he described her to his other friends. “Anyway, I just wanted to offer my condolences, Ron. Don't try to read too much else into it. Listen, I need to scram. I have another call to make. Are you coming to school tomorrow?”

“Probably,” he grunted.

“Well, then I'll see you there. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Bye,” he muttered. Then he hung up.

Bonnie clicked off. Sitting at her desk, she stared down into her trash can. She was gazing at the pencil shavings she'd cleaned off her bedspread. She'd had to use a lint roller to finish the job. Maybe she was imagining it, but her bedroom still seemed to have that slightly acrid smell of freshly sharpened pencils.

When she'd seen those shavings, she should have known right then who had left them as a calling card.

Hell, Tanya was more upset about the pencil sharpener prank in the library than Damon had ever been. Tanya had never forgiven her for that. Tanya hated her. And she knew how to break into this house undetected.

The second time Tanya had come over, which had been years ago, no one else had been home that afternoon. The two of them had played in the backyard, and gotten locked out of the house. This was before either one of them had a cell phone. They'd made several attempts to get in—and finally tried a basement window on the side of the house, near the back, behind some bushes. With a little push, the lock gave, and she was able to flip up the hinged window. Bonnie had easily climbed down into the furnace room. But it was the creepiest spot in the house, dark and dank with unpainted, peeling plaster walls. At the time, the area had been crammed with boxes of junk they didn't know what to do with after the move. Bonnie remembered how anxious she'd felt—alone in the new house, in the bowels of that gloomy basement. Even with her friend hovering on the other side of the window, she'd raced upstairs as quickly as she could.

Since then, her father had installed some metal shelves along one wall to make a storage area across from the ugly monster of a furnace. But the room was still gloomy, and the lock on that window still didn't work. Billy and Tim had used it to get inside the house just a few weeks back.

And Bonnie was pretty certain her former friend, Tanya, had used that basement window to gain entry into the house earlier tonight.

It had been so long since she'd called her, Bonnie had to look up the McCallums' number. Fortunately, Tanya and her mother still had the same old landline. Bonnie dialed the number and counted two ringtones before someone picked up on the other end. “Hello?”

She recognized Tanya's voice. “Hi, Tanya, it's Bonnie.”

“I know,” she said curtly. “We have caller ID. What do you want?”

“I wanted to let you know I got your message. I got both of them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You left me two messages, one on my phone and one on my bed,” Bonnie explained. “I know it was you. Who else could it be? I mean, you're still totally obsessed with that little joke I played on Damon in the school library. If I could take it back, I would. It was a stupid thing to do. But it was like—six months ago, Tanya. And I think—”

“Wait a minute,” Tanya interrupted. “What are you prattling on about? You sound like a crazy person . . .”

“So you're going to pretend you don't know anything about the pile of pencil shavings on my bed?”

Tanya let out a surprised laugh, but it sounded forced. “Wow, that's perfect!”

Bonnie started pacing around her bedroom. “I know it was you who left them there, and I know it was you who called me, talking in that creepy, puppetlike voice. You're not fooling anybody, Tanya. No one else would know how to break into this house. But you saw me do it a few years ago. You know how it's done.”

“Listen, I have better things to do with my time, okay? I happen to have spent most of this afternoon and tonight rehearsing for the school play. We're doing
The Pajama Game
. We all went out for pizza afterward—until about a half hour ago. If you don't believe me, you can ask anyone who's in the play. So I was nowhere near your house tonight.”

Bonnie stopped pacing. “How did you know someone broke into my house
tonight
? I never said when it happened.”

“Yes, you did,” Tanya argued.

“No, I didn't,” Bonnie insisted. She'd caught her.

“Well, you implied it.”

“You might not have pulled the job yourself,” Bonnie said. “And you might have your alibi. But you put somebody up to it—or at the very least, you were in on it. I'm on to you, Tanya.”

“Oh, I'm really scared, I'm shaking,” Tanya replied. “Listen, if you ever find out who actually pulled these stunts, let me know—so I can send them a thank-you note. You're crazy. It's what happens to bulimic bitches. They go insane. Don't call me anymore.”

Bonnie heard a click on the other end.

She had no idea where Tanya came up with this bulimia nonsense. If there were any basis for it, Bonnie might have been hurt or offended, but the accusation seemed like a diversionary tactic. Tanya knew she'd screwed up—giving her alibi just a bit too prematurely. So maybe she was with her theater group friends tonight. But she definitely knew about the break-in and the pencil shavings.

Bonnie wondered if Tanya had paid some stranger to do the job for her. She couldn't think of anyone at school who might have pulled this prank for her. Tanya didn't have any real friends at school now that Damon was dead.

The only person she ever hung out with was Spencer.

Bonnie once again glanced down into her trash basket at the pencil shavings. A shudder passed through her. She remembered that eerie, singsong voice on the phone:
Bonnie . . . you're next . . . you're next . . . you bitch . . .

 

 

 

They took a turn off Northeast Big Rock Road onto a tree-lined gravel drive. The Toyota Corolla's headlights pierced the blackness around them. Jostled by potholes in the crude road, the young man in the passenger seat braced his hand against the dash. His driver was still doing thirty-five. It sounded like a hailstorm as gravel ricocheted against the underside of the car. The high beams swept across a sign on the side of the road:

His driver finally slowed down as they approached a turnaround—with two trailers, a large greenhouse, and a lot with row after row of Christmas trees. The place looked deserted. There wasn't a light anywhere. Tall trees surrounded the property.

This was a dry run.

They would be back here tomorrow at this same time—with Bonnie Middleton in the trunk.

They'd already conducted their dry run in the Middletons' house earlier in the evening—and left her a little souvenir. The young man in the passenger seat had drawn a layout of the house, and they'd figured out their every move. Like the job they did on the Logans, they'd surprise them in their sleep. But the Middletons' house wasn't quite as isolated as the Logans'. Some pain-in-the-ass neighbor was bound to hear the gunshots at one in the morning. A couple of shots might be ignored. But in this case, there would be a minimum of four. So they'd decided to tie up Bonnie, the parents, and the boys. They'd chloroform Bonnie. As for the others, they'd keep them bound and gagged in their respective bedrooms. Before taking Bonnie out to the car, they'd go from room to room and slit each one's throat. They'd choreographed the whole thing in the bedrooms earlier tonight.

The young man had figured out that the drive from the Middletons' Queen Anne neighborhood to this spot outside Duvall had taken about a half hour. If by chance the chloroform wore off, Bonnie might kick and fuss in the trunk for a while, but she'd still be bound and gagged. Besides, in the last ten minutes of this dry run, they'd seen only three other cars between Route 203 and here.

The owners of this place didn't live on the premises. It seemed locked up pretty tight, with a tall chain-link fence around the Christmas tree lot. Both trailer doors had a shield-shaped decal from some twenty-four-hour-security place, but there were no cameras on-site.

They drove around to the other side of the greenhouse. The headlights shone on a big yellow contraption on wheels—with a trailer hitch. The thing sort of looked like a dinosaur—with its bulky, low body, a long, high neck, and the head tilted down.

“You ready to give it a try?” the driver asked, switching off the engine.

The headlights remained on.

The driver reached under the front seat and pulled out a large key ring with at least a hundred keys on it. Meanwhile, the young man got out of the car, opened the back door, and grabbed a bundle of logs from the floor. He hauled them over to the big yellow machine and set them by the conveyor belt that went into a big drum—part of the contraption's body. He listened to the keys jangle in his partner's hand.

The driver hovered over the operating panel, trying to find a key that would start the engine. “I'm narrowing it down,” the driver said. “Go back to the car. Pop the trunk, and get our friend.”

Retreating to the Corolla, the young man opened the driver's door and pulled the lever to unlock the trunk. He wanted this run-through to be as close to the real thing as possible. They needed a stand-in for Bonnie.

All it took was a pound of ground beef and some strychnine. They put the dead raccoon inside a gray, heavy-duty, extra-large trash bag and then dumped it in a big, oblong freezer. They didn't want it decaying.

Though the thing was huge—at least thirty-five pounds—they'd had an easier time fitting it into cold storage than they had with Reed. This thing had been dead. In Reed's case, they'd knocked him out, but had to bend his arms and legs at just the right angles to cram him inside the Frigidaire. So after all that maneuvering with the still-breathing Reed, it had been a snap tossing the dead raccoon inside its cold coffin.

They'd taken the raccoon out of the freezer last night—so it would thaw. They wanted its body temperature and density consistent with a live human being's. After all, this creature was a stand-in for someone who would be unconscious, but very much alive.

As he opened the trunk, the young man got a waft of rotting meat. Even with the plastic bag around the defrosted thing, some of the smell was escaping. The trunk was going to stink for a while. It would be a very unpleasant journey for Bonnie Middleton if she happened to regain consciousness in there tomorrow night.

Grabbing the plastic bag by its drawstrings, he hoisted it out of the trunk and then dropped it to the ground. He guessed Bonnie was about three times the weight of this thing—maybe more. It would take the two of them to carry her.

They had only one bundle of logs to go with the raccoon. With Bonnie, there would be three bundles. He wanted just the right proportion of wood pulp with the blood and ground flesh. He wanted to see it spray out of the mouth of that huge dinosaur-like machine.

With a grunt, he lifted the heavy-duty trash bag and carried it toward the conveyor belt. Just then, he heard the engine start to churn. His partner had found the right skeleton key among the ones on the ring.

Now they knew how to switch on the big wood chipper.

And all they had to do was feed it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 

“H
i, Diane, it's Spencer,” he said into the phone. He sat on a bench in front of an upright piano in a little, windowless room. The walls were gray—with an egg-carton surface to keep the noise in. Though it was somewhat muted, he could still hear some guy next door singing, “Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes . . .” Spencer had discovered these individual rehearsal rooms off a narrow hallway of the third floor in the school's music-arts wing. It was a good place to escape—especially during lunch hour, when hardly anyone was here. He didn't feel like people today—and he didn't feel like lunch either: liver and onions. Most of all, he wanted complete privacy to call his therapist.

He'd gotten her answering machine again, but it was okay this time. “Thanks for calling me back,” he said for the recording. “Sorry I couldn't pick up. I was in chemistry class. I'm really glad you can see me. Tonight at seven sounds great. I'll be there. Thanks again, Diane.”

He clicked off, and then shoved the phone into the pocket of his chinos. He tinkered around on the piano a little. His mom and dad had made him take lessons from age eight to ten. He'd never been very good at it. But in the hospital, the therapists encouraged him to take up some kind of hobby. Even if he was mediocre at it, playing the piano seemed a better option than painting, sculpting—or making baskets, which, believe it or not, was actually on their occupational therapy activity list. He still didn't think he was very good. That was why this little room with no one else around was the perfect place for him to tinker on the keys.

He'd only been at it for a couple of minutes when the door squeaked open a crack. There was a little porthole window in the door, but Spencer couldn't quite make out who was on the other side of it. He stopped playing and stood up.

Bonnie poked her head in. She was wearing jeans with a clingy burgundy sweater. Her dark hair was down around her shoulders. “Please, don't stop,” she said. “That was really pretty. You're good . . .”

Spencer shrugged. “It was just ‘Heart and Soul.'”

“Well, it was nice.” She stepped into the little room. “Listen, I'm not stalking you. I—” She hesitated and let out a little laugh. “I'll bet no one actually says that unless they're a stalker. The truth is I was looking for a chance to talk with you, and I followed you here, which I guess means I was, like, stalking you.” She rolled her eyes and laughed again. “I'm sorry . . .”

“What did you want to talk to me about?” Spencer asked. As much as he liked Bonnie, he still didn't completely trust her. Was this awkward-cutesy thing just an act?

Bonnie suddenly seemed serious. “I've seen you and Tanya McCallum together from time to time,” she said. “And—well, you heard her the other day, telling that story about how I emptied out a pencil sharpener on the back of Damon's head while he was napping at one of the library's reading desks . . .”

Sitting back down on the piano bench, Spencer nodded. “Yeah, I remember . . .”

“Well, to hear Tanya tell it, I might as well have burnt down an orphanage and eaten the only surviving child. Anyway, the point is, someone broke into my house last night and dumped a pile of pencil shavings on my bed.” Her voice cracked a little. Spencer could tell she was genuinely upset. “And earlier—yesterday afternoon, practically right after I said goodbye to you, I got this bizarre call from someone with a blocked number, and they told me in this weird voice, ‘You're next, bitch . . .'”

Spencer frowned. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

“I wondered if maybe Tanya put you up to it,” Bonnie said.

“I don't know a thing about it.”

“Are you sure? She's not paying you—or blackmailing you to do this stuff?”

“Blackmailing?” Spencer shook his head. “No, I swear . . .”

“Well, Tanya's involved in this somehow,” Bonnie said. “The pencil shavings on my bed were her idea—only she must have gotten someone else to break into my house and plant them there . . .”

Spencer thought about Reed Logan. “Has anyone smashed a window in your house or keyed the family car?” he asked. “Have you found any dead animals—squirrels, cats, or raccoons—at your door?”

She frowned at him. “I don't understand . . .”

“Last week, Reed told me someone broke into his house and emptied a shelf in the family refrigerator. And a couple of days later, Reed suffocated inside that same refrigerator. Don't you see what's happening? “

With a baffled look, Bonnie shook her head.

“They sent him a message before they killed him. With that small pile of pencil shavings, I'm pretty sure they're sending you a message, too.”

She laughed nervously. “What—are you saying I'm going to end up buried under a pile of pencil shavings or something?”

“I don't know. But you got a phone call saying you're next. Someone broke into your house—”

“Yes, I figured it was Tanya. That's why I'm trying not to take it too seriously.”

“Well, you should,” Spencer warned her. “You should take it very seriously. I think you're right that Tanya's in on it. I have a feeling she was somehow involved in what happened to Reed, too.”

“But Tanya's all talk. She's harmless. You don't really think I'm in danger, do you?”

“It's not just you,” Spencer said. “When they killed Reed, they killed everyone else in the house.”

Wide-eyed, Bonnie stared at him.

“You should tell your parents what's happened. Get the police in on it. Do whatever you can to protect your family and yourself.”

Bonnie folded her arms in front of her like she was suddenly cold. She took a step back and bumped against the egg-carton wall. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Spencer could still hear the guy singing and playing the piano next door.

“When you talk to the police, could you leave me out of it?” he asked. “I don't want to get involved any deeper in this. Somebody's trying to set me up for Reed's murder, and the police already suspect me. Plus they know about my past. That stuff you overheard Reed say about me the other day is true.”

He felt so vulnerable and exposed divulging this to her. He knew he probably shouldn't have. He waited for some kind of reaction.

“I know,” she said finally. “I looked up your aunt on Google and found the story about you and—and your parents.”

Spencer glanced down at the tiled floor. His hands gripped the sides of the piano bench. “I guess you think I'm some kind of monster or something,” he muttered. “Don't you think you're taking an awfully big risk being alone in here with me?”

“Everybody deserves a second chance,” she said. “Besides, I got the impression the older boy was mostly responsible for what happened.”

“It was my finger on the trigger,” Spencer muttered.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Though he appreciated how she tried to be understanding, Spencer frowned and shook his head. “Are
you
going to talk about it?”

“You mean, spread it around school? No, your secret's safe with me.”

“Thank you.”

Bonnie opened the door as if she were about to step outside, but then she hesitated. She glanced back at him. “By the way, I think you were right earlier when you said someone was trying to set you up. Reed got an anonymous text about you being in the sanitarium. And the texter said you were to blame for bothering Reed and his family.”

“How do you know this?” Spencer asked, standing up.

“I asked Reed if what he'd said about you was true, and he showed me the text.”

Spencer wondered why the police hadn't questioned him about that. Maybe they didn't know. Had Reed's killer stolen or destroyed his cell phone?

“Well, I—I better call my mom and tell her about the phone call and the break-in,” Bonnie said, opening the door wider. She had a perplexed look on her face. “Maybe when I tell her, it'll sink in just how serious this is. I still don't want to believe it. Anyway, thanks for your help. You might have even saved my life.”

“Hey, Bonnie,” he said—before she ducked out. “Did you mean that about people deserving a second chance?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And after reading about me, you don't think I'm—horrible?”

Bonnie shook her head. “No,” she replied, “not at all.”

Then she stepped out to the hallway.

* * *

“Anyway, I'll be helping Tanya with her play rehearsal after school.”

“Well, okay,” Andrea said into the phone. She was sitting at the tall glass-top breakfast table. She'd been struggling through all the grammatical problems with a four-star general's autobiography when Spencer had called. The last time Spencer had mentioned Tanya, he'd said she'd gotten on his nerves. Andrea didn't quite understand why he wanted to hang out with her this afternoon.

“How late do you think you'll be?” she asked.

“Well, that's the other thing. I called Diane, and she agreed to see me tonight at seven. So I'm just going to catch a bus up to Capitol Hill. I'll grab some dinner before I see her. That Greek place, Vios, is right near her office.”

Andrea was glad he'd get some time in with his therapist. After the terrible day he'd had yesterday, he probably needed a professional's shoulder to cry on. “What time do you think you'll be done? I'll come pick you up.”

“That's okay. I'll catch the bus back.”

She nervously drummed her fingers on the table. She didn't like the idea of him wandering around in a different part of town after dark—not with some killer on the loose. “No, listen,” she said. “Fifteen or twenty minutes before you think you'll be done, why don't you call me? I'll be there by the time you guys wrap it up.”

“The bus is fine, Aunt Dee, really. Hey, I got to go. I'll be late for English. Take care.” He hung up.

As Andrea clicked off the line, she couldn't help wondering how much of what Spencer had just told her was the truth.

She could almost hear Luke again:
I think he's a terrific kid, and I like him a hell of a lot. I thought I knew him, too. But it turns out that I don't really know him at all.

True to his word, Luke had slept in his study last night—if he'd slept at all. She certainly hadn't. Her eyes were sore and her bones felt brittle from fatigue and stress. Five cups of coffee this morning had only given her heartburn. She and Luke had barely talked before he'd taken off for the theater. He'd kept things polite and distant. He hadn't tried to conceal his disappointment in her.

After putting up with a clingy, demanding, neurotic wife, he'd probably thought he'd found a real prize with her—until yesterday. Poor Luke, it wasn't just Spencer who suddenly seemed like a stranger to him.

Andrea climbed off the bar stool. She stood in the kitchen for a moment—long enough to realize she'd never searched Spencer's room before. Had she been foolish to blindly trust him ever since he'd moved in with her after his release from the hospital?

She headed upstairs to his bedroom. Spencer still hadn't put his personal stamp on it yet. His room in the Ballard apartment had Bill Murray movie posters on the walls. But this was still Luke's guest room. On the walls were a big framed map of the world and a pair of framed prints—old posters from the Seattle World's Fair of 1962. It was all very neutral. Except for some books, DVDs, and a fortune-telling Magic 8 Ball on one of the built-in bookshelves, there was nothing of Spencer's in this room. The majority of personal effects belonged to Damon.

She knew it was silly, but she grabbed the 8 Ball off the shelf and turned it upside down. “Should I even be in here?” she asked aloud.

She gave the ball a little shake, then turned it over and read the response:
It Is Decidedly So.

Did she really think Spencer had somehow managed to get his hands on a gun—a kid with a murder conviction and five years in state-run mental hospitals and juvenile detention centers?

Of course he could have found a gun.

It Is Decidedly So
.

The closest thing Luke had to a gun was a fake revolver from one of his stage plays, which he kept as a paperweight on the desk in his study.

With a sigh, Andrea started looking through the desk drawers. It was almost like searching through a vacant hotel room's desk. Except for a couple of receipts, a Seattle's Best Coffee punch card, a few Bic ballpoint pens, and a notepad that had
Luke Shuler
by a cartoon smiling sun (obviously a freebie from a soliciting charity), she didn't find anything in the top center drawer. It seemed as if neither Damon nor Spencer had used the desk much. The rest of the drawers were empty—except for the bottom left drawer. She found a big manila envelope—stuffed with old birthday cards and photos Spencer had saved. She didn't know he had them. The pictures were of his parents and him. She didn't keep any pictures of Vivian and Larry on display. She'd figured it would be too painful for Spencer. Plus she didn't want to explain to visitors who they were and what had happened to them.

It was strange, how Spencer had these snapshots hidden—like contraband. Stranger still, he had several photos of himself in recent years—from rare upbeat moments during his time in those state-run facilities. Andrea had also taken dozens of photos of him in the last six months—especially when they'd first moved to Seattle. But none of the photos in this envelope were from after 2009. It was as if his life had stopped that year—as if that kid in those pictures had died along with his parents.