Had I scorned her, though? No, not really. I was honest in my surprise and confusion. Surely Becca won’t hold this against me.
I’ve never had a serious boyfriend—or a girlfriend—before. Becca wasn’t my first kiss, far from it, but I’m still a virgin in all the ways that count. That I’d shy away from an encounter isn’t an indictment of Becca, it’s simply my own inexperience with these things. Sex. The word is sex, Ash.
I have no real objections to having sex with Becca. But I’d also like to have sex with Rumi, and that’s what’s confusing. Maybe I just need to try it with both of them and see which one works the best for me.
But now is not the time. Sex equates to intimacy, closeness, secrets. And I’m not willing to give my body in place of my safety.
I open my laptop and check my intranet Goode email. Assignments. More assignments. An invitation to Dr. Asolo’s house for a supper party and discussion of Virginia Woolf four evenings hence. I look at the other addresses on the email; it’s been sent to everyone in the class. All eight of us. And the dean.
I RSVP yes, then scroll through the Goode-approved websites online for a while, which are excruciatingly boring—how many turns around National Geographic is a girl supposed to take? I finally activate my VPN and override the system. I haven’t looked to the outside world in weeks. I check my external email, the one I had before moving to America. Junk. Junk. Junk. I delete everything.
There is a draft email in the folder. What’s this? I think back to the nasty surprise from Vanessa last night, that Camille was spying on me. I don’t remember writing and saving any emails. Did Camille manage to get into my email, too?
I click on the draft but the second I do, I hear the onomatopoeic triggering whoosh that means the email has been sent. As Pavlovian as it gets, these notifications. I should talk to Dr. Medea about this. What a great study it would be. Can we shift perceptions with sounds, recode the world? AOL did it. Apple followed. Perhaps Ash Carlisle can, too.
I click on Sent emails, but the program crashes.
“Oh, bugger me.” I reboot, which means I have to go through all of the steps again, activate the VPN, override the system, log in to my email, but the Sent folder shows nothing recent. Weird. There must have been an old email stuck in the outbox from the last time I logged out. Its date would correlate to when I originally sent the message. Who knows what it was?
Still, I delete this email account entirely. No reason to have it anymore, this last vestige of my old life. It’s not like I’ve received anything except ads for new trainers and knickers in weeks. Nothing of worth. Nothing personal.
I have another account for that, like any good hacker. But there’s no way anyone can access it, nor can it be tied to me in any way. It’s totally encrypted, completely anonymous.
Just this small action makes me feel more in control. Good thing I haven’t done too many illicit online activities from my laptop, or I could have really gotten myself in trouble. Even though I’ve already wiped the computer, I double-check everything. Yes, it’s all gone. Besides, Camille couldn’t have found out much. Her knowledge came from outside the school. Her parents, undoubtedly. The prosecutor and the ambassador.
I give them both a cursory search online. Nothing leaps out. There is a small piece in the Washington Post about Camille’s death, but it’s more an announcement than a story.
I move on to the Marchburg Free Press archives and plug in the name Rumi Reynolds.
Nothing.
Not a surprise. He was a juvenile when his father committed the murder. I doubt even the American papers are so callous as to name an innocent child in a report.
I try again. Murder at Goode School.
The hits are immediate and extensive. I’m still amazed I didn’t come across the stories when I looked at the history of the school in the first place, over the summer, when the idea of attending Goode had been presented to me. I never thought to look to see if any of the students had died. Who does that?
It’s beautiful and old, and you’ll get a fine education. Be able to write your ticket to any college you want.
“Go away,” I say to my ghosts, and begin to read.
* * *
The afternoon bells have long finished tolling when I stop and stretch. I don’t know much more about the murder than what the rumor mill and Rumi himself told me, outside of learning an eyewitness at the scene helped prove the guilt of Rick Reynolds. That, and a detailed listing of the body parts found on his living room mantel. It wasn’t just the eyes. He took her breasts, too.
Fucking freaky shit.
Reynolds is serving a life sentence in maximum security at Red Onion down in Wise County. I look at the map I carry in my bag—it is in the far southwest of Virginia, on the border of Kentucky. He is very far away. I wonder if Rumi ever goes to visit? I never asked how he feels having a murderer for a father. I should. See if it compares to my experience at all.
I haven’t thought much about the rest of the country, but looking at the map, I see the vast spread of the United States, pushing westward away from my spot in tiny rural Virginia. What would it be like to get in a car and drive? I’d like to see the mountains of Colorado, the ocean along the California coast. One day, I will.
These thoughts are getting me nowhere, so I pull on my trainers and slip down the stairs to the back door. Yellow crime scene tape blocks the courtyard behind Main, and the shadow in the middle of the concrete slab must be the leftovers of Camille’s blood, permanently scarring the gray circle. The thought makes me feel queer, slightly dizzy and nauseated.
I backtrack and head down one more flight to the basement door, which opens out on the plaza leading to the gym. I take a deep breath to clear my lungs of the rotting air of the dorm, suddenly cloying and unwelcoming, and jog off toward the arboretum. I have no idea what the rules are today, but getting some fresh air and exercise seems like the proper thing.
But even deep in the woods, halfway to town, alone except for the squirrels and birds, I feel like I’m being watched.
54
THE SCHISM
I’m in luck. Rumi is at the coffee shop.
I mean, I was hoping to run into him, but I don’t realize how much until I see him, and my heart does a quick little dance in my chest. He is wearing a Goode baseball cap, looks as tired and wrung out as the rest of us, but he gives me a weak smile when I hurry in.
“If it isn’t our little Brit. Want some tea?”
“Espresso. Or...something stronger? If you have it.”
“Not sure that’s such a great idea today, Ash. The town is crawling with sheriff’s deputies and cops. Plus, the dean’s mother is back and on the warpath.”
“Oh. Right. Then, just the espresso.”
He makes me a cup, sets it on the counter. The china clinks on contact.
“Are you okay? It was your roommate who died, yes?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m okay. She and I weren’t close. Did you know her?”
Is it my imagination, or do his eyes shutter when I ask what seems like an innocent question? Camille wouldn’t fuck a townie.
His answer comes quick and vehement. “I don’t know any of the students at Goode.”
“You know me.”
“You’re different. You’re new. An outsider.”
“An outsider. Goodness, thanks ever so much.”
“Ash, sorry. That didn’t come out right. I meant it as a compliment. You seem, I don’t know...above all of this. These girls, they’re so wrapped up in their money and their prestige, stacking the blocks of their lives against the redbrick wall so they can climb over and escape. And escape to what? More privilege? More wonderful experiences and perfect families and insane wealth? None of them are real. You aren’t like them.”
“I’m more like them than you think, Rumi. Your view of my classmates is pretty harsh.”<
br />
“Wait until they cast you out, Ash. They will.”
Again, I’m struck by the bitterness in his tone, and the strange sense there is more here than meets the eye. And recall the sinking feeling I had this morning when Becca dismissed me like I was a piece of shit from her shoe. Back home in Oxford... No, Rumi. You’re wrong. I do know what it’s like to be cast out.
The door chimes and I look over my shoulder to see Becca and the twins saunter in. My heart skips a beat, whether from fear or longing, I don’t know. I am very confused. I like Rumi, I know I do. I came here hoping to run into him, to see if we can continue where we left off.
But there is something about Becca... She is a magnet, and I feel my body turn in the chair toward her in a gravitational pull. I don’t understand my visceral reaction to Becca Curtis. Is it that I want to see myself in this gorgeous, gregarious, troubled girl, like calling to like, shadows calling to shadows? Do I want something more, a physical and emotional connection?
Or do I see a way out?
I might never know for sure. I do feel a bit like the walls are closing in, though. And I know what happens when I get claustrophobic. I don’t make the best choices.
The light dies in my mother’s eyes. Her heart thuds to a permanent stop. Is she gone?
Get out, get out, get out.
I smile hopefully, but Becca rewards me with a sneer.
“What are you doing here?”
“Having a coffee,” I reply smoothly.
“Come outside, right now.”
I cast a glance at Rumi, who is watching this little play with undisguised curiosity, then stand and step out onto the sidewalk.
Though we are the same height, it feels like Becca is looming over me. The twins join her, standing on either side, a triumvirate of young goddesses.
“Did I say you could leave campus, Swallow?” Becca hisses.
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, Mistress.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Having coffee.”
“Sniffing after that townie is more like it,” Twin One says. “Just like that stupid roommate of hers. I told you I saw them together the other day, Becca.”
“Well, why are you here?” I ask. I’m trying hard to be reasonable. There’s something in Becca’s eyes that is scaring me. Is she high? She doesn’t look like herself. She looks possessed.
Becca laughs, a harsh caw. “You don’t get to ask questions, Swallow. You obey orders. And I order you to go back to the dorms and wait for my summons.”
“I thought you kicked me out this morning. When you wouldn’t let me sit with you.”
“Awww. Have you been crying, little Ash? Crying on the psycho townie’s shoulder about how unfair your life is? Your woe is me act is growing thin. Not only do you have dead parents, you have a dead roommate now, too. Go home and think about why all the people around you kill themselves, Swallow.”
The hateful jab burns through me like molten glass, shimmering and shattering in turns. I actually gasp.
“Becca. That is completely unfair.”
“Tell it to someone who cares, Swallow. I will see you back in the dorms. Go. Now!”
She whirls away, back into the coffee shop, with her minions on her heels.
I stand for a moment, slack jawed and hurt, then slowly start to walk back to Goode, the fury building in my gut.
How dare she?
How dare she?
55
THE TRUTH
Kate sees Camille Shannon’s family seated in the medical examiner’s waiting room, white-faced and tight-lipped, so she does an about-face and walks out the door, around the building to the back entrance, where discreet OCME vans deliver their cargo to the morgue.
She starts to badge the guard at the door, hand drifting to her waist until she remembers her creds are in her boss’s drawer. She tries a smile instead.
“Kate Wood. Charlottesville Homicide.”
The magic words work. The guard nods a greeting. “Heya. We aren’t expecting you, are we, Detective?”
“I’m here for my uncle. Sheriff Wood, Marchburg. The body from The Goode School?”
“Oh, yeah. Go on in. Dr. Singh’s got her. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”
“Thanks, man.”
The autopsy is wrapping up when Kate arrives. The ME is a young woman, they get younger and younger, it seems. The old-school, cigarette-smoking, tuna-fish-sandwich-eating, gray-haired men are becoming obsolete, making way for shiny new MEs fresh out of school with expertise in cutting-edge forensics and more. Kate wonders for a moment if Tony feels the creep of white-male-privilege obsolescence in his department, then decides no, he’s too young and progressive. He has a high number of female staffers because he respects their abilities, not because he wants a nice view day in and day out.
Irrelevant, Kate. Focus.
“You want to ask the parents, or should I?” the dark-haired ME is asking a redheaded tech in a stained coat as Kate enters the autopsy suite.
“Ask them what?” Kate gives the ME a wave. “Kate Wood, Charlottesville Homicide. I was on scene last night. Dr. Singh?”
“Call me Jenn, please. This is my lead investigator, Ron.” Ron gives her a peace sign. “And this is a sensitive case, so I’ll need you to sign a nondisclosure if you want to get read in.”
“Seriously?”
“Family’s request. Unusual, but it happens. They’re pretty high profile.”
“All right.”
“The forms are on the counter. Ron, can you get her squared away?”
“Sure.”
It’s a standard NDA, so Kate signs her life away.
“You’re Tony Wood’s niece?” Singh asks when she rejoins her.
“I am. I assume he’ll need to sign one, too?”
“Already has, he faxed his an hour ago. So, I’ve just finished up. I see no defensive wounds, we scraped her nails and there’s no tissue. There was a good set of fresh, developing bruises on her left biceps, one oval in the front, four in the back. Someone had a hand on her arm, holding her pretty tight. That could have happened anytime in the past forty-eight hours. Can’t say one way or the other if she was manhandled over the edge, though. Some small fibers in her throat, too.”
“Was she gagged?”
“Don’t know. No sign of fibers anywhere but in her throat, no abrasions around her mouth. Could be something was shoved in her mouth to keep her quiet, could be she inhaled something hugging a friend. Without any other indications, there’s no real way to know, but I took samples. My most surprising finding, though, was a fetus, approximately seven, eight weeks. That’s what we need to ask the family about. Paternity DNA. Whether they want to know who got their daughter pregnant. I was told they don’t know who might be responsible.”
“Oh, wow. We found a prescription for Cytotec, the pills were missing. We assumed she’d taken them.”
“She may have. It’s possible the pills didn’t work. Normally, they’ll discover that on a follow-up and do a scrape. She might not have gone for the follow-up.”
“Or she did and when she found out the pills didn’t work, she changed her mind. Or didn’t take the pills in the first place. Unless we find some more data, it will be hard to tell.”
“Which is why paternity will help. Find the baby daddy, find out more of the story.”
“I can’t imagine they’re going to say no. I’m hearing the mother is trying to make a case against the school already. If it’s someone with ties to the school, that will help her lawsuit. Nothing else remarkable?”
“I’m afraid not. The trauma from the fall is pretty typical, she had a skull fracture, subarachnoid hemorrhage, cervical fractures, spine compression, and deep lacerations to the back of her head, all consistent w
ith a fall from a height. The fall caused her death, for sure. We’re running a standard toxicology. BAL was elevated, she’d had a couple of drinks. Can’t say she was drunk, but there was alcohol on board. Without any other data, I’m going to withhold the ruling on suicide or homicide until we get the toxicology back.”
“What’s your gut?”
“Mmm. Not enough data to determine. I’ll have the report typed up from dictation and sent to your uncle.”
Cagey lady. Kate doesn’t blame her, she wouldn’t want to be the one making this determination. “I appreciate it.” They shake, and Kate heads out the back again, trying to avoid the family. She doesn’t want to face them, to see the emptiness, the grief she knows she will find.
She calls Tony from the car, fills him in. Debates whether to head straight home or drive another hour into town. She hasn’t been to DC in a while. She could grab a hotel and a show. Chances are there’s a band she’ll like at one of the venues. Maybe a cute guy.
In the end, though, she heads back to Marchburg. She’s curious enough about whatever Oliver has sent her that she wants a glass of wine and her laptop. See if there’s anything else to be gleaned from this case, see if she can answer her instincts, explain to them that they aren’t getting the whole picture.
* * *
It is late when she gets back. Tony is gone, off handling a car accident down the mountain. She finds an anemic red wine in the back of his pantry, puts it back, and pours herself three thick fingers from his bottle of Lagavulin.
Tony’s place is comfortable, simple. A bachelor pad. He needs a girlfriend, the woman’s touch to make it a bit homier.
She curls up on the sofa with her laptop and the scotch, opens the email from Oliver, laughs at the dirty limerick he’s written—so sly, Oliver is—then clicks open the file.
It is on the third page that she finds the photo. It’s part of the crime scene shots from the day of Damien Carr’s death. It is a reproduction of a painting, a classic family portrait. The label says Sylvia and Damien Carr with their daughter, Ashlyn.
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