The Girl In White

by Shannon Reber

  As coldheartedly as possible, I clicked on the ME’s pictures. “Brace yourself,” I whispered as they appeared.

  Ian’s body jerked with a mix of shock and horror as the photos came up. The bruising around Manuel’s neck was exactly like the pictures of Emma . . . identical. Deep purple bands started under his chin. They encircled his neck, not in the way you saw on TV but radiating upward.

  Bile rose in my throat. Just like Emma. Why was Detective Bukowski so determined not to listen to me about it? The bruising was identical.

  “Maddie, breathe. Come on, Mads. It’s okay.”

  I stared at those horrible bruises and again, things began to click into place. Something was there. I didn’t know what it was. Something had most definitely caught my attention.

  I closed my eyes and counted to three before enlarging the photo. My stomach churned. My vision flickered. Pain. Manuel had suffered like Emma had. It was so clear to me.

  The bruises around his neck . . . there was something slightly shiny inside one of them. Holy blue screen. It was one of the sparkles from Emma’s sweatshirt string. Whoever had killed Emma had indeed killed Manuel and probably CJ too. I had known it before. That proof, small though it was, clarified everything for me.

  “She texted you to pick her up,” I whispered, my eyes still fixed on the screen. “Where was she?”

  Ian sat still for a second before he drew his knees up and rested his arms on them. “She didn’t tell me. I found out later that she had gone to a party. I talked to every person who was there. No one remembered seeing Emma.”

  I closed my eyes and thought over everything I knew about my friend. She had always loved parties. She was the center of attention every time.

  If no one remembered seeing her, that meant she either hadn’t gone at all or she had been waylaid along the way. Emma’s killer had been at that party. I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  NINETEEN

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ian asked as we got out of my car the following morning.

  He’d asked me that same question about a dozen times as we’d driven through the city. I had no answer, though. I didn’t know if it was a good idea. I didn’t know what was right and wrong anymore.

  I glanced over at Ian, surprised by how exhausted he looked. There were dark circles under his eyes and his usually neatly groomed appearance was more rumpled than I’d ever seen him. He hadn’t even shaved, which told a far more compelling story to me than the shadows under his eyes.

  My own appearance was a little shabby as well. My hair was pulled back in a braid, my t-shirt, and jeans a little rumpled. I didn’t care. All that mattered was to solve the mystery that had been set before us by the ghost of Emma.

  I was sure that was it. Emma wanted us to know who had killed her, yet she couldn’t communicate with us. There had to be a way to make it easier for her. Everything I had read about the paranormal world seemed like a bunch of bilge.

  Ian stopped me as I reached out to knock on the door, his hand a little shaky as he did. “Maddie, you committed a crime. If you admit to it, it’s possible he might turn you in. I don’t want to see you get in trouble like that.”

  “Me getting in trouble is the last thing I’m worried about. This is important, Ian. You know that as well as I do. Stop worrying about me and help me figure this out.”

  He ran his hand over his face and groaned. “Maddie, I will always worry about you,” he said and rapped his knuckles on the door.

  We waited for a few seconds before a muffled curse came through the door. It was flung unceremoniously open and Erkens’ grumpy face was made clear. He didn’t look any happier to see Ian than me. “What?” he barked as he turned to pick up a pile of files that had obviously been knocked to the floor when he’d come to answer the door.

  I tipped my chin back to look down my nose at him, hoping he would pay attention to me. I was tired of being shrugged off. “The chief of police calls you in when there’s odd cases because his son was attacked by a banshee eight years ago. You saved the kid but were honest in your incident report. You said specifically what had happened and because of that, you were asked to retire. The chief—”

  Erkens turned to look at me, his brow furrowed as he folded his arms. “I’m aware of my history, Madison. I’m also aware of yours,” he frowned from Ian to me. “And I’m not a deaf old man. Your voices do indeed carry through the door.” He curled his lip slightly. “In answer to your question, no I will not turn you in for whatever law you broke. Now, why are you here?”

  I pulled my laptop from my bag and walked to his desk. “I know how good your record is with solving cases, so I hoped you might be able to help us figure out what all this means.” I opened the file of pictures and pointed to the sparkles that were embedded into Manuel’s neck. “I gave Emma a sweatshirt with this glow-in-the-dark, sparkly string. I looked at the pictures of her body and found that the string is not present in the things that she was found with.” I swallowed the lump that rose in my throat. “I think that whoever killed Emma used the string from her sweatshirt to do it, then hung her in the garage to make it look like a suicide. Now, he’s doing it again. I don’t know why he chose Manuel and CJ. In the pictures of their bodies, there are sparkles in the wound around their necks.”

  He didn’t look at the pictures at all, his eyes fixed on me. “What do those two boys have in common with Emma?” he asked, his voice a tiny bit less gruff than it was before.

  “Me,” Ian answered as he rubbed at the back of his neck. “CJ was a good guy, a good friend. Manuel . . . we knew some of the same people and hung out every once in a while.”

  Erkens pointed at Ian like he had given the right answer. “Why would anyone target you?” he inquired, his eyes fixed on Ian.

  “Whoever is doing this wants me to suffer?”

  “It’s possible,” Erkens agreed. “There are other possibilities.”

  I scowled at the man. “What kind of possibilities?”

  “The kind you aren’t going to like.”

  I jabbed my finger at the laptop. “What I don’t like is the fact that two guys were killed in the same way Emma was. Whatever you’re thinking happened, I think whoever killed Emma was at the party she went to that evening. What if the common denominator isn’t Ian? What if it’s all of us? What if whoever is doing this has some kind of grudge against us? If anyone knew anything about our group, they’d know the best way to hurt one of us was to hurt one of the others.”

  Erkens raised his hands to stop me, deep furrows in his brows as he looked at me. “Madison, the thing you learn when you’re investigating crimes is that the most obvious answer is often the truth. What is the most obvious answer?” he asked like a teacher trying to get a student to give the right answer.

  “That’s the problem. Nothing is obvious.” I rested my hip on a tiny corner of the desk that wasn’t cluttered with books and files. “Emma was perfect. Everybody loved her. No one would have hurt her.”

  Ian shot me a disbelieving look before he turned his eyes down. “No, Maddie. Emma wasn’t perfect. There were a lot of people who didn’t like her. You never saw that because you chose not to. She was not the perfect girl you believed her to be.”

  “That’s not true,” I snapped, straightening up to stand at my full height.

  Erkens cleared his throat to cut in before I could speak. “Cut your sister out of this equation,” he said and nodded to Ian. “Who in your life knew Manuel and CJ?”

  “All my friends.”

  “And who didn’t like them?”

  Ian shrugged. “A lot of people didn’t like Manuel. He was a dick when it came to women. If he wasn’t stealing a guy’s date, he was hitting on another woman. Lots of people didn’t like him and lots of them did.”

  “What about CJ?”

  Ian stared at a spot on the wall, his face filled by sorrow. “CJ was bookish. He went on one date freshman year and spent the rest of his time studying. I don’t think he
and Manuel ever met.”

  “Which of your friends knew both guys?”

  “Spencer Ezra knew them both and he also knew my sister,” Ian said in a cold tone, his eyes still fixed on the wall.

  My mouth fell open. “Wait, seriously? Spencer went to our school?” I asked, not having recognized him in the least.

  Ian sneered in a way that made it clear he liked Spencer as much as I liked Infinity. “I told you his sister was in my class, Maddie. I wouldn’t say Spencer was going to school, though. He was there occasionally. Adrian was probably the smartest girl in my class but just didn’t do her homework like she thought she was too smart to bother. She was in rehab by the time she was twelve.”

  “I don’t remember any of this.”

  He scowled and shrugged. “I did my best to keep you and Emma away from them. When there was trouble at school, you’d find Spencer right there. I didn’t want you two to be associated with that kind of person.”

  “I asked him if he’d ever been arrested and he said no.”

  Ian scoffed. “Yeah, Maddie. That’s because his dad was a cop. There were a couple of times he should have been arrested but it’s like the cops are loyal to the kids of their own. Honestly, he scares me.”

  I gaped at him, my jaw practically on the floor. “He didn’t say anything about it,” I faltered, confused by the whole situation.

  “What would he say, Maddie?” Ian asked, still not looking at me. “My sister loved to go to parties and he was always at the parties she went to. From what she said to me, I think he asked her to dance once and didn’t like it when she said no. He is not the kind of guy who lets go of his grudges.”

  I huffed, frustrated with Ian’s habit of finding anyone who wasn’t like him to be wrong. Spencer had been perfectly nice without a single deplorable quality and Ian acted like he was a monster.

  Guilt filled my mind at the hypocrisy of that thought. When Ian hadn’t done anything at all, I had convinced myself he had murdered Emma. I had known him all of my life and had still doubted him. To accuse Spencer simply because he wasn’t the same kind of good boy Ian was seemed equally wrong.

  Everything seemed wrong about the entire situation. Why would anyone have killed Emma? Why after two years of no one knowing that they had done it, would they begin killing others in the same way? That seemed massively shortsighted for someone who had been smart enough to hide Emma’s murder from everyone.

  Ian looked at me and extended his hand. “There’s a diner down the block. Come on. There’s room to spread out and they have free WiFi.”

  I looked over at Erkens, my brows raised in question. “Will you help us, please?” I asked as I closed my laptop and stuck it in my bag.

  He scowled at me and nodded. “I was hired to figure out this little mystery. This is MY job. You two need to back off and let me do it,” he grumped in a way that was almost a sulk.

  “Then do your job,” I snarked and took Ian’s hand, eager to get out of that chaotic mess of an office.

  Erkens growled like the angry bulldog he resembled. “You two are children. You need to ease off. There are horrors out there that you can’t possibly fathom. Stay away from my investigation.”

  I didn’t speak. Ignoring things that made me angry was the best way to deal with them in my world. So yeah, I ignored a lot.

  I didn’t know what to do. I had thought Erkens would be able to help us click some of the puzzle pieces into place. The idea that he thought we were too young was condescending in a serious way.

  Ian glanced at me as we got into my car, his eyebrows drawn together as he ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Maddie, what if he’s right? We don’t know what we’re doing. All we know for sure is that three murders have been committed and that Emma’s ghost wants us to figure out what happened. What if all we’re doing is putting ourselves in danger?” he asked as he turned on my car, his eyes fixed on the road in front of us.

  I stared at the road as well. “I believed for two years that Emma was a coward, that she gave up. I’m not going to let Manuel and CJ’s families believe that as well. If someone is targeting you or me, then we’re already in danger if we look into this or not. I’m not giving up. I refuse.”

  He let out a long breath and nodded. “I knew you’d say that,” he said and held out his hand between us. “Let’s do this, Sherlock.”

  I laid my hand over his and gave it a squeeze. “How about I be Nancy Drew and you can be Joe Hardy,” I said with a tiny smile.

  He smirked a little and nodded. “Just please promise me you won’t do your sleuthing thing alone. Please, Maddie. I need to know you’re safe.”

  I turned to look fully at him, at the dark circles under his eyes, and the unshaven state of him. He wasn’t worried. He looked more frantic than anything else.

  I didn’t like the idea of having him standing guard over me. Neither did I like the idea of facing that mess alone. There had to be a gray area we could agree on.

  I let go of his hand and picked up his phone from the center console. I downloaded a GPS app before doing the same to my own phone. When they were linked so both of us would know where the other was, I turned the phone to show him what I’d done.

  “I will keep you informed. If anything goes wrong, there’s an alert inside this app. It can let either of us know if something goes wrong. If you’ll promise to keep me in the loop, I’ll make you that same promise.”

  His eyes met mine as he pulled up in front of a diner not far from Erkens’ place. “I promise,” he almost whispered.

  And that was when things began to go downhill for us. We had no idea what was coming. It seemed fate was determined to intervene in our lives. Pain. Anguish. Loss. It was coming for both of us and we had no idea at that time.

  TWENTY

  “You want some coffee, dearies?” a middle-aged, overweight waitress asked as Ian and I slid into a booth in the diner.

  Ian turned the mug that waited on the table over and nodded to the woman. “If you want to leave the pot, it’ll save you from having to fill it every couple of minutes.”

  The waitress chuckled and shook her head. “Sorry, dearie. I don’t approve of allowing coffee to cool down. I don’t mind refilling your cup,” she said as she filled it, her eyes moving to look at me. “Would you like some?”

  Normally, I’d say no. I had never liked coffee at all. Right then, all I wanted was a rush of caffeine. “Please,” I said as I pulled out my laptop.

  “We’ve got some fresh apple crepes that are mouthwateringly tasty.”

  Ian looked at me before he nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good. Thank you.”

  I ignored both him and the waitress, dumping a load of sugar into the coffee to make it a tiny bit more palatable. I made a face as the first drink hit my system. It didn’t taste as bad as I remembered, though it was not my favorite drink at all.

  Ian leaned his elbows on the table, his smile snide. “Making faces while you drink coffee is grounds for war, Maddie,” he said and moved around to sit on my side of the booth, his eyes fixed on the screen. “What’s your plan?”

  I took another drink, that time not really minding the flavor at all. “I plan to overload on caffeine and sugar and then go through the files to see if I can find any inconsistencies. Whoever killed Emma was probably at the party. The cops know Emma was there so I plan to check up on their information.”

  He leaned closer to read over my shoulder, the smells of coffee and soap filling my nostrils. That scent was one his skin had carried as long as I’d known him. He never wore cologne or aftershave. He always smelled like he’d just gotten out of the shower and had a cup of coffee.

  I wanted to lean closer and breathe him in. That was stupid, though. We were there to figure out who the murderer was, not to get all gooey in the middle of a crowded diner. That was something I wasn’t a fan of. Public displays of affection tended to make me twitchy.

  I bumped my elbow to the side to get him to back off and motioned him over to
his side of the booth. “I need elbow room,” I said, doing my best not to be swept away by him.

  “I’m blocking the view of your screen, Mads. If I leave, people who walk by us will see what you’re looking at. I’m guessing that’s a bad idea since I’m pretty sure what you’re doing is illegal.”

  I scowled at him. “Thank you so much for saying that out loud in a public place. You’d make an amazing spy,” I griped, though couldn’t help the smile that came to my lips.

  He was such a hot guy. His unshaven face somehow made him even more attractive, probably because it was unusual. He looked . . . ugh. What was wrong with me?

  I had known Ian Gregory my entire life. Everything had changed between us, though. We were something special to each other and both of us felt it.

  I no longer saw him as Emma’s big brother. I saw him as Ian, a good man who was willing to help me with this investigation despite his reservations.

  His tired eyes met mine and right then, I was glad he sat so close. The support of him being there was all I needed. We would figure this out. That was all there was to it.

  I looked at my laptop and did my best to focus past the fluttery feeling in my stomach. The people who had gone to the party the night of Emma’s death had all been interviewed. It was time to look through what they’d said and see if I could spot anything that didn’t add up.

  So that was how we spent our morning. We drank loads of coffee, ate the most mouthwatering crepes ever made by man, and sat side by side. If we were doing anything else, it would have been the most amazing way to spend time together.

  I blinked, my eyes moving over the same place on the screen about five times before the thought registered. “Ian, you said Spencer’s sister was in your class, right?” I asked, almost fumbling my cup of coffee in my excitement.

  He nodded, his jaw going tight.