When we were finished, Mom put the car in the garage and we walked back to the house.
For the first time in a very long time, she asked, “How was school today?”
“Not so great.”
“How come?”
I hadn’t planned on telling her about Ashley, but now I thought that I should. I felt like I needed someone to talk to, and obviously it couldn’t be Dad. Besides, Mom already knew about the e-mails from [email protected].
“Remember Ashley Walsh?” I asked.
Mom dipped an eyebrow. “I remember the name.…”
“She and I used to be friends, like back when Dad coached my soccer team. She’s the one whose father lost his job and they had to sell their house and move into an apartment?”
“Oh yes,” Mom now recalled. “Tall and pretty. Sort of quiet.”
“That’s the one. Anyway, it turns out she was the one sending me those anonymous e-mails.”
Mom stopped and stared at me with a quizzical expression.
“She thought Dad was guilty,” I explained.
Mom scowled. “Lots of people thought your father was guilty, but they didn’t send anonymous e-mails.”
Suddenly, I realized that I’d just made a huge mistake. I never should have told her. If only I’d taken one more second to think it through, to imagine where it would lead. But now it was too late. She had me. I couldn’t even meet her eyes.
“You’re not telling me something, Shelby,” she said.
“It’s nothing, Mom.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” she said. All the lightness in her mood was gone.
“Mom, please …”
“But you’d tell your father if he asked, wouldn’t you?”
I felt awful. All those years that I’d taken his side against her without realizing it. All those years of believing him when he said Mom took things too seriously.
“She was one of them, Mom. One of the ones he took advantage of. That’s why she sent those e-mails.”
Mom’s face went blank, and her eyes had that faraway look. The one where it almost seemed as if she wasn’t seeing through them.
“Mom?” I said.
She didn’t respond.
“Hey, it’s been fun doing stuff with you this afternoon,” I said.
“Why don’t we cook dinner together tonight?”
Her eyes darted at me for an instant. She didn’t exactly leap at the suggestion, but she did nod. By then, there wasn’t a lot of time to prepare the meal, and the best Mom and I could do was make spaghetti and a salad.
“So I’m just curious,” Mom said as she chopped some carrots for the salad. “What happened between you and Ashley?”
“I’m not sure. After her dad lost his job and they moved into that apartment, we sort of lost touch.”
“Because her father lost his job and they moved?”
“I think it was more than that,” I said. “Like she had to spend more time helping her mom at home. And then, from almost the day she turned sixteen, she got a job at Playland. She works really hard. Like every day from one thirty till six and sometimes on the weekends, too.”
Mom nodded silently. We’d just finished preparing dinner when Dad called, sounding grim and rushed. “I have to go down to the police station. Something bad’s happened.”
I felt myself freeze. “What?”
“Gabe was just found … murdered.”
Chapter 38
FEELING AS IF the floor beneath my feet had just vanished, I grabbed the edge of the sink. “What?” I gasped.
“That’s all I know,” Dad said. “I have to go.” The line went dead.
I closed my phone and stood there, stunned.
“What is it?” Mom asked.
I told her about Gabriel. Mom turned on the TV. A reporter was standing in front of yellow crime scene tape. I recognized the canopy of the building in the background. “Police say a passerby discovered the body behind a Dumpster about two hours ago. It appears that Gabriel Gressen was struck on the head.…”
The scene switched to another reporter with Chief Jenkins, who looked even wearier and more beleaguered than the last time he’d been on TV. “We have no reason to believe that this incident is in any way connected with our investigation of the murdered girls.”
“Are you saying that because police believe the girls were asphyxiated, while Gressen was allegedly clubbed to death, it’s a different MO?” the reporter asked.
I scowled at Mom.
“Modus operandi,” she explained. “Police-speak for the way a criminal behaves.”
“I’m saying it because other than the fact that Gressen worked at the modeling agency, there is absolutely no evidence at this time linking these killings,” Chief Jenkins replied.
“So you don’t believe the serial-killer theory?”
Jenkins shook his head. “We have a suspect in custody for the murders of two of the missing girls. We know that suspect could have nothing to do with this new development. I think that theory was something cooked up by you media people to sensationalize this story.”
The reporter ignored the comment. “Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill Gabriel Gressen?”
“Gressen had significant gambling debts, which may or may not have played a part,” the police chief answered.
The camera cut to another scene, but I was no longer paying attention.
Gabriel was dead.
Murdered.
Mom turned off the TV and stood at the counter, staring into the backyard. I wondered if she felt the way I did, like things had spun so far out of control that we needed to stop listening in order to make some sense of it.
“What do you think?” I asked.
She shook her head and, without looking at me, said in a flat voice, “I feel sorry for you, Shelby.”
“Why?”
“That you have to be part of this.”
Before I could say anything more, a text came in from Roman: Talk!!!!!!????
I turned to Mom, who seemed to know who it was without being told. She nodded. “Go ahead.”
I went upstairs. Roman was waiting for me on the computer. “Can you believe it?” she gasped, sounding nasal.
I shook my head. “No, I really can’t.”
On the screen, Roman sneezed, then blew her nose.
“You sick?” I asked.
“Not sure. It might just be allergies. But seriously, what do you think’s going on?”
“I truly … have absolutely … no idea.”
“The more Chief Jenkins denies that there’s a serial killer on the loose, the more I have to wonder,” she said, then blew her nose again. Even on the screen, I could see that her nostrils were bright red.
In the silence that followed, my head began to throb, and I realized that I’d been clenching my jaw. Massaging the sides of my head with my fingers, I tried to relax.
“If Janet was in custody, then who killed Gabriel?” Roman asked.
“I have no idea.”
“The pool of suspects is shrinking.” Roman actually sounded kind of excited.
“This isn’t Clue,” I reminded her. “We’re talking about real people. Real lives. You and I knew Gabriel.” Despite what he’d done in the beach-club bathhouse, I took absolutely no pleasure in what had happened to him.
On the screen a chastened Roman pursed her lips. “You’re right. Sorry … But think about it. Who’s left?”
“You mean, who’s still alive?” I asked. “Or who’s left who could qualify as a suspect?”
Roman sneezed again. “The latter. There’s Mercedes. What if she isn’t really missing? What if she’s just pretending while she goes around killing people?”
“She doesn’t drive, so she couldn’t have gotten to places like Hartford or Trenton. She isn’t strong enough to have taken those girls into the woods, tied them up, and killed them.”
“Unless she had help.”
That gave me a moment’s pause. Whit
had suggested the same thing a few days before. There were those tough-looking guys who dropped Mercedes at work each day. “What’s her motive?” I asked. “In the history of serial killers, has there ever been a young single mother?”
On the screen, Roman wiped her nose. “I don’t even have to look that one up. The answer’s no. But that leaves you know who.”
I had no idea who she was talking about. “Who?”
“Mr. Amateur Investigative Reporter, who always seems to know everything before anyone else? Pretty amazing for a beginning journalist, if you ask me.”
“You’re crazy, Roman.”
“Can you be sure?”
Could I be sure Whit wasn’t a serial killer? “He’s not crazy, Romy. He’s rational and thoughtful and nice.”
“So was Ted Bundy. Handsome, charming, honors student in college, politically active, killed at least thirty young women. Should I continue?”
“No, because then what you’re saying is, the night we were in the studio, he arranged to have himself bonked on the head in order to draw the suspicion away from himself?”
“Stranger things have happened. Seriously, Shels? It’s not completely impossible.”
Was there an iota of possibility in what she was saying? Just because I couldn’t imagine Whit’s being the killer, did that mean it wasn’t conceivable? After all, before yesterday I couldn’t have imagined my father preying on young women for sex. Was that part of the problem? That I wasn’t a man and therefore couldn’t imagine the things men could do?
“Like I said before, Shels,” Roman went on, “if it’s not him or Mercedes, then who is it?”
It was a good question, but there was one other person who’d been involved from the start. The person who, in fact, had connected two of the missing girls before anyone else, who could have been the one who hit Whit over the head, and who also was always among the first to know the latest news—Roman herself.
Chapter 39
AS SON AS I got off the phone, I called Whit but got his voice mail.
I sat on my bed, trying to think back over everything that had happened since that day the week before when Roman first linked Peggy D’Angelo and Rebecca Parlin to my father. Was there a crucial clue I’d missed? Something so mundane that I’d passed over it without a second thought?
My stomach began to growl, and I realized that not only had I skipped dinner, but I had barely touched my lunch after Ashley proved to me that she hadn’t sent the “kill you last” e-mail. As distasteful as the idea of eating felt at that moment, I knew I’d better get something into my stomach.
From what I found in the refrigerator, it was clear that Mom hadn’t had much to eat, either. I reheated a small bowl of spaghetti and had just sat down when Dad came in. My emotions were a jumble. If anything, now that I knew that he’d been involved with Ashley, I was angrier than ever at him.
“Any more of that?” He nodded at the plate of spaghetti.
I pointed at the refrigerator.
Dad nuked some spaghetti and poured a glass of tequila. From the way he gobbled down the pasta, it was obvious that he’d also missed a few meals that day.
I didn’t want to speak to him, but curiosity overruled my feelings. “Why did the police want to talk to you about Gabriel?”
“They’re talking to everyone who knew him,” Dad said. “Did I know who he owed money to, or ever hear anyone say they wanted to hurt him? Did I ever see him with anyone who looked suspicious?”
“Did you?”
Dad shook his head. “The only times I saw him outside of work, he was usually with a date.”
That brought another question to mind. “Was there one girl in particular?”
“No. I used to kid him that every time I saw him, he had a different piece of eye candy on his arm.”
I felt my insides go icy and black. “Not eye candy, Dad. Girls. Human beings. With hopes and dreams and feelings. Not objects.”
He bowed his head. “You’re right, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”
But it was too late. The dam broke. I couldn’t keep the anger from spilling out. “Maybe, if you’d understood that from the beginning, you wouldn’t have gotten into this mess in the first place.”
Staring at the table, he nodded, unwilling, or unable, to look me in the eye. “I’ve … been thinking about that. And … I know this won’t mean very much. And it won’t make up for what I’ve done. But … once I get things under control … Or maybe I should say … if I get things under control … I’ve decided to see a therapist.”
It was easy to say, but sadly, I had learned not to count too much on his words. Dad was good at saying whatever he thought was expected without following through. I thought back to Gabriel. “Did the police say what they think happened?”
Dad chewed pensively and swallowed. “They don’t know.
They really want to believe that it’s got something to do with his gambling debts. Because if it doesn’t, then maybe Janet isn’t the killer after all and they may have arrested the wrong suspect. And that would look really, really bad.”
“Did you tell them about him trying to blackmail you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Dad let the air out of his lungs. “They know he had big gambling debts, so his needing money wouldn’t be news.”
I stared at him. Once again he was unable to meet my gaze. “But that’s not why you didn’t tell them, is it?”
He lowered his head. “No, it’s not.”
I went to bed still trying to make sense of it all, still feeling like the answer was right in front of me and I just wasn’t looking at it the right way. In the morning, neither Mom nor Dad was around, and Roman didn’t come to school. I assumed her sniffles the night before were from a cold and not from an allergy, but I sent her a text anyway, to find out what she was up to.
After lunch, I was sitting in math when I felt my BlackBerry vibrate. Assuming it was Roman texting back, I waited until class ended before I checked.
The text was from Whit: Meet @ rez asap!!!!
I texted back: Cant. @ schl.
He wrote: Lfe/dth.
Life or death? Was he serious? In any other situation, I would have considered it a gross exaggeration.
But not in this situation.
I left school and drove to the reservoir. Whit was waiting in his car. I parked and got out, expecting him to do the same. Instead, I heard his car engine start. He waved for me to get in.
I hesitated. If he wanted to go somewhere else, why had he suggested meeting here? Why couldn’t we go in two cars?
He lowered his window. “Come on, get in.”
I didn’t move. “Why?”
“I need your help with Mercedes.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain on the way,” he said impatiently. “Come on.”
Something told me not to. “I don’t understand.”
“I told you, I’ll explain in the car.” There was something different about him. Something urgent and tightly wound. I still didn’t move. His brow furrowed. “What are you waiting for?”
“Can’t we go in two cars?”
He blinked with astonishment. “You … don’t want to be in the car with me?”
I felt embarrassed and didn’t answer. Would he get angry?
Instead, his expression softened. “Oh, man. You really don’t know who to trust, do you?”
I nodded, feeling my face flush. Was I being incredibly unfair?
“I understand.” His grip tightened on the steering wheel, and he stared straight ahead, as if lost in thought.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“How to do it without you.”
Chapter 40
I GOT IN. Whit started driving.
“What made you change your mind?” he asked.
“You were willing to go without me.”
“How do you know I wasn’t faking it? Playing you?”
I looked at his profile
as he drove. From the side, his bent nose had a bump on the bridge. “Were you?”
He let out a snort.
“So where are we going?” I asked.
“To find her.”
“Because you’re thinking that if Dad is innocent and Janet couldn’t have killed Gabriel because she was in jail, that leaves Mercedes?”
“Yes, but not the way you mean it,” he said. “Mercedes didn’t disappear. She just wanted to make it look that way. I think she’s hiding because she’s scared.”
“Of?”
“The real killer.”
“So you think whoever killed those girls killed Gabriel, too?”
“It’s a lot more likely than someone killing him for money.”
“Why?”
He glanced at me. “If someone owes you a lot of money and you kill him, will you ever collect?”
He was right. “So you want to find Mercedes and see what she knows?”
He nodded.
“And you need me because you think I’m someone she’ll trust,” I said. “But what makes you think she’ll talk to me?”
He bit his lip. “I hope by the time we find her, you’re feeling a little more positive about this.”
The “Hispanic” part of Soundview was tiny—just three or four blocks of small houses squeezed tightly together with fenced-in postage-stamp lawns and first-floor windows covered with metal grates.
“What are we looking for?” I asked as Whit drove slowly up one of the blocks.
“Mercedes, or maybe one of her men friends.”
Young mothers pushed strollers along the sidewalk. Kids played in the street. Men sat on stoops. “There.” I pointed at a low brown car in a driveway. “I think I’ve seen her come to work in that one.”
Whit parked and reached for the door, but I didn’t move. “You sure about this?” I asked nervously.
He turned and looked at me. “No. Have a better idea?”
For a second, neither of us budged. Then, without a word, we both got out. As I followed Whit up the steps to the house where the brown car was parked, an old man with the stump of a cigarillo in the corner of his mouth curiously lifted his wrinkled face to us. On the porch was a worn, sagging couch; some empty beer cans; and a child’s Big Wheel. Whit rang the bell. A moment later the door opened a fraction of an inch, and a woman peeked out apprehensively.
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