The Girl In White

by Shannon Reber

  It appeared Ian had reached his limit. He leaned forward in a threatening pose and bared his teeth at her. “You saw Spencer kill my sister, didn’t you?” he growled at her, his nostrils still flared as he gnawed on the inside of his cheek.

  Adrian reared back. “What? You honestly think my brother hurt Emma? He tried to save her.”

  “What do you mean?” I cut in, worry tearing a hole in my gut.

  She lowered her chin to her chest, her shoulders slumped even further than they had been before. “Spence is weird. My parents adopted him when he was eight. It was a lot harder than they thought it would be. Then he came downstairs one morning, his eyes huge and he tells Mom she’s going to die. She laughed him off and took us to school. She was in an accident on her way to work. Died on sight. My dad went ballistic. He had himself convinced Spence cursed her since he was already sure he was a witch. He probably would have killed Spence too. A neighbor stopped him and the courts wouldn’t let Dad un-adopt him. So yeah, my brother is weird. He always knows when people are going to die. He used to try and save them. It just—”

  Ian got to his feet and took a step closer to her, his chin again raised. “You think this is funny, Adrian? Seriously?”

  She didn’t look intimidated by him in the least as she gave a negligent shrug. “Under normal circumstances, I’d love to watch people like you fall. This time, it’s not my thing. My brother tried to tell your sister to be careful. She actually spit in his face and slapped him too. So no, Ian. My brother didn’t kill Emma.”

  “Who did, Adrian?” I asked, suddenly positive that she did indeed know the truth.

  She hunched in even further and shook her head. “I kept my mouth shut for two years. Why would I tell you?”

  I leaned closer to her, my heart pounding so hard it hurt. “Because guilt is eating you up. If you tell us what happened, some of the shame you feel will fade. Your baby will grow up knowing that you were brave enough to stop a murderer.” I leaned even closer to her. “Adrian, whoever killed Emma is killing other people. Two guys have died in the last two weeks. If you tell us who did it, you will be saving lives.”

  Her eyes went wide. “He did it again?” she whispered, her arms wrapped tight around her torso as her whole body shook in what looked like shock.

  “Who, Adrian?” I pressed, praying she would respond.

  Her lip quivered as she looked at me before tears began to slide down her cheeks. “I had a crush on him for years. He was so hot. Then he comes up to me at the party and . . . it was like a dream come true. He wanted me. I thought it was my lucky night. He took me up into one of the bedrooms and I thought . . . but then Emma walked in on us. She stormed out and he followed her, pulling on his clothes as he’s running after her, begging, telling her I’m nothing.” A sob of sheer misery escaped her as she went on in that horrible recitation. “I was mad. I followed them. I don’t know why I followed them. I just did. They were standing by the stream and she tried to walk away from him. He grabbed for her. The cord on her sweatshirt got pulled free and . . . he wrapped it around her neck. I watched him strangle her.”

  One of the baby toys toppled over, making us all glance in that direction. There were so many toys around and Adrian had said her baby was eleven months old.

  “Adrian . . . the guy who murdered Emma is the father of your baby, isn’t he?”

  She rocked back and forth as she sobbed. “Y-yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anybody?” Ian asked, his voice far less harsh than it had been before.

  She continued to rock, her body shuddering at the horror of all she’d seen. “I was scared. I’d watched him strangle Emma. I was afraid he might have seen me . . . and I was scared of my dad.” She let out another moan of abject misery. “I was drunk and high that night. The last time he’d caught me like that, the rehab place he sent me to was like a prison camp.”

  A mix of sympathy and contempt filled me. She had refused to tell the police who had murdered Emma because she didn’t want to go to rehab . . . no. That couldn’t be it. There had to be something else.

  “He did see you, didn’t he?” I asked, my mouth working silently. “He saw you and threatened you.”

  A moaning sob escaped her as she nodded. “Now, I keep quiet so he doesn’t find out about my Preston. I have to protect my baby. I have to. He can’t find out Preston is his.”

  I scooted closer to her and laid my hand on her arm. “Adrian, you’ll never feel safe until you go to the cops and tell them what happened. He’ll always have that over you. If you go to them now and tell them the truth, that guy will pay for what he did.”

  She turned her red-rimmed eyes to look at me, a mix of terror and hope written all over her face. “Will you do it for me? Tell them you saw it and he’ll never have to know I told you.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t, Adrian. My statement is already on record. I was in Philadelphia when it happened and the cops know that.”

  She turned her eyes down and did some more rocking, hardly seeming to be with it at all anymore.

  “Who did it, Adrian?” Ian demanded, his voice shaky as he watched her go to pieces in front of us.

  She curled herself into a defensive ball, her body sliding to the floor. “Dylan Funar,” she moaned.

  I opened my mouth to speak, to ask questions, to object. Baby toys began to fall from their places. Pictures fell to the floor. Glass shattered. The air turned so cold, it was like we had been transported to Antarctica.

  And like an angel of death, Emma appeared in front of us. Her face was purple. The bruises around her neck were visible. The hatred in her eyes was directed at Adrian.

  She didn’t look like a ghost. She was hardly translucent at all. It was like she had returned from the grave to exact her revenge.

  Adrian let out a piteous wail. She began to rock again.

  With the kind of smile that made my blood run cold, Emma stepped closer to Adrian. She extended her hands out in front of her, the sparkly string of her sweatshirt in her hand. It was like she intended to strangle Adrian.

  Without a conscious thought, I stepped between the two. “Emma,” I said, my little finger extended out between us.

  She stopped, her eyes moving from my eyes to my hand. She seemed startled for a moment before she lifted her little finger as well. It was like it was a reminder of the things that had been good.

  Her finger didn’t touch mine. As her eyes met mine though, it was like we were on the same wavelength.

  I wasn’t sure if Adrian could be believed. I didn’t know. What I knew was that the evidence had been given and we had to take it to the police.

  Emma began to fade again. As she did, the slightest trace of a voice floated through the air. “Help me, Maddie,” she said and all of a sudden she was gone.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Emma Gregory had not been able to remember what had happened on the night she died. Hearing that stupid tramp who had slept with her boyfriend talk about being afraid made her angry, though. Adrian didn’t know what fear was. Emma was determined to change that for the girl.

  She remembered the night she died. She remembered the look of demented fury on Dylan’s face when she’d told him they were done. She remembered the feel of that cord around her neck and how it had felt as she had fought for air that would not come to her.

  And now, she found out that the stupid tramp who screwed her boyfriend had seen her death and had said nothing? Adrian would pay. That was all there was to it.

  The bold white of the world made her feel like she was encased in ice. It was like death had wrapped its arms around her again. Her brother had failed her. Maddie had failed her. Adrian deserved to suffer. And Dylan . . . his failure was beyond her capability to understand.

  She had spent her entire life with Dylan hanging around, watching her. He had made it clear that he loved her. How could he have turned that off and done something so terrible to her?

  The sparkly string was around her neck. It glowed as
bright as the white world that was hers. Rage. Malice. Malevolence. She would make them all pay. Every one of them.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “She’s a liar!”

  Ian’s words rang in the air. They hung heavy over us as Adrian and I drove to the police station. Ian had refused to go with us.

  The look on his face as he had gotten out of my car made me feel lonely. It was clear he never intended to see me again. Why did that hurt me so much?

  With everything which had happened that day, the loneliness had only compounded. It had felt like Ian and I would stand together to face down what had happened. The fact he had bailed on me was . . . no.

  That wasn’t fair. We had been through so much in the last few hours. He was having a hard time handling it. I could understand that.

  The police station was almost exactly the same as the last time I had been there. Stale coffee, sweat, and despair scented the air. Even the same officers seemed to be sitting in the same places.

  I pulled the band from my braid and let my hair fall around my shoulders. It made me feel a little less trapped, at least sort of.

  The idea that Dylan might have been the one to kill Emma was excruciating. I had no idea if I believed Adrian. It was painful even to contemplate. Dylan had been Ian’s best friend since they were five years old. If that kind of thing was inside him, why didn’t any of us know?

  Adrian glanced over at me as she finished filling out the sheet of paper the cops had given to her. She looked even more hollowed out than she had before and desperately in need of her drug of choice. It was disconcerting to realize that a drug addict was the only witness available.

  “You don’t believe me,” she said in a defeated tone, her body hunched into that defensive position yet again.

  I let out a long sigh and shrugged. “I don’t know what to believe, Adrian. I’ve known Dylan my entire life. I’ve never seen him do anything questionable or even close to violent. I KNOW that he loved Emma. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea that it was all a lie.”

  Adrian gave a downtrodden nod, her eyes flicking around like she expected someone to arrest her. “Why do you think I never told you people? I knew you’d think it was a scam. I knew you’d call me a liar. You people are so blind when it comes to each other.”

  I opened my mouth to argue. I closed it when Detective Bukowski moved in our direction. It was like his eyes were lasers pinning me in place.

  “I’m not doing this. No one will believe me,” Adrian snapped and stood up, ready to run.

  I jumped up and got in front of her, my hands held out in a pleading way. “Adrian, I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m telling you it’s hard to believe. Last week, I thought Ian was the one who had done it. I actually went and spoke to the girl he’d been on a date with the night Emma died to make certain he really had been with her. I’m trying not to jump to conclusions either way. I don’t know you. It’s a lot easier to trust someone I know. That can be a serious trap, though.” I nodded to Bukowski as he stopped next to me, my eyes still fixed on Adrian. “Please, tell Detective Bukowski what you saw. Let them do their job. Please, Adrian.”

  Tears began to stream down her cheeks again as she stared at the floor. Slowly, she took out her phone and handed it to me.

  I shot her a confused look but clicked the play button on the recording she had brought up. And that was when my world imploded.

  Dylan’s voice came out of the phone’s speaker, clear and distinct even around the murmur of the voices near us. “You want to die, Adrian?” he asked and a sound like someone being slammed into a wall came next. “No one will believe you. Go ahead, Adrian. Tell everybody you saw me kill Emma. I’ll tell them you’re a stoner and they won’t even look at me.”

  “But I saw you strangle Emma. I saw you carry her to her house and make it look like she hung herself. I saw it all,” Adrian’s breathless voice said from the speaker.

  “And me and about a dozen people saw you that same night shooting up,” Dylan’s voice said and a cold laugh came next. “You think that because your daddy’s a cop you’re going to scare me? You’re pathetic. I’ll kill you before I’ll let you screw up my life. The Gregory’s need me now. They can’t stop leaning on Dylan. They love me. No one loves you, do they, Adrian?”

  A small sound of some kind of pain from Adrian came out of the phone, which made my heart skitter in my chest.

  “Get away from me, Adrian. If I ever see you again or hear anything about you blabbing about Emma, you’ll die.”

  She pulled the phone back and turned off the recording before she handed it to Bukowski. “Dylan Funar murdered Emma Gregory,” she said in a far stronger voice than I had expected to hear from her.

  My eyes remained fixed on the phone. Dylan. He truly had done it. He had murdered Emma, carried her to her house, and made her death look like a suicide.

  The part that still didn’t make sense was how the ME had missed something which must have been obvious. My heart sank as the thought registered in my mind.

  “Detective, I think you should check the Medical Examiner’s bank accounts to see if any payments have been made to him by Dylan. I’d guess that Emma would have scratched Dylan when he was s-strangling her. The ME never mentioned that in his report. Her death was listed as suicide, nothing more.”

  “How do you know that, Miss Meyer?”

  I didn’t look at him. “You already know that I hacked the police files,” I stated, certain that was why he had made the issue of me giving him the truth the week before.

  Bukowski nodded. “I do, yes. I also know that you and Erkens have met a couple of times. That kind of thing, both you breaking into police files and talking to a crazy ex-cop are going to look very bad if this ever goes to trial.”

  I didn’t respond. What was there to say? Dylan had murdered Emma. Ian didn’t want to speak to me ever again. Serena was dating Dylan. It was like the whole world had crumbled in around me.

  Bukowski motioned me to a chair before he led Adrian off to one of the offices. There was compassion in his eyes.

  I sat down in the chair Bukowski had directed me to and buried my face in my hands. Emma. Yes, she’d had flaws. She had been my best friend, though. We had grown up together, learned everything that was important while we were together. And she had been murdered by the guy who had claimed to love her.

  Things began to click into place as I thought about them. The night Emma had shown herself to Ian and me, Dylan had been puking in the bushes. She had come to me twice that day. Was it all because of Dylan? Could she have been trying to warn me?

  The fact she had come to both Ian and me told me far more. She had shown us how she’d died, then had been with us when we’d heard Adrian’s story. And what was with the white dress?

  I took my phone out and began to run a search. Emma had seen Dylan cheating on her with Adrian and had been killed shortly after that. Or was that even true? Why would she have been wearing the sweatshirt I gave her if she’d been at a party? That was NOT her usual party attire.

  I scanned through several articles until one caught my attention. The woman in white was a legend of a ghost that haunted a certain stretch of road, searching either for her children or her murderer. It all depended on the legend. It looked like most of the sightings of a woman in white, she would get into someone’s car and simply vanish. Emma had been far more active than that, though. Why?

  Why would she be searching for anything at all? Dylan was alive. He had been half a block from her on the night we had seen her as we’d left the party. Why hadn’t she told us what had happened?

  Oh. She had tried. Every time I had seen her, Emma had been trying to talk to me. She hadn’t been able to make herself understood. She had looked furious the last few times I’d seen her. What did that mean?

  If she was trying to tell us what had happened to her and couldn’t make herself understood, that would explain the anguish and fury she had shown us. She had also come at Adri
an with what had looked like the string of her sweatshirt.

  As I read, it became clear there were far more legends out there than I had even known about. Could more of them be real? Ugh. What a stupid thought.

  Erkens was a paranormal investigator. Of course there were more legends out there than the ones I knew about.

  I ran my fingers back through my hair, my mind a muddle of odd questions and even odder answers. The paranormal world was vast. I would have to accept that.

  If I did, I could also accept the fact that Spencer Ezra could indeed see when someone was about to die. Could he be some kind of creature or merely a guy with an ability?

  “Miss Meyer?”

  I looked up, startled to find Bukowski standing over me. I hadn’t even noticed him. My mind had been so focused on everything I had realized, the memory of the fact I was in a police station had faded away.

  I looked around, worried not to see Adrian with him. “Please tell me you didn’t arrest Adrian,” I said, rising to stand next to the guy so he wasn’t looming over me anymore.

  He folded his arms and shook his head. “No. I did not arrest Miss Ezra. I might arrest you, though,” he said in such a light tone, it almost seemed friendly.

  I didn’t respond. I held out my hands, waiting for the ax to fall.

  He looked at my hands for a second before he motioned me toward the door. “Miss Ezra left ten minutes ago. She was a little upset after everything she had to tell us.”

  I looked at the door before turning my eyes on him. “I’ve known Dylan Funar my whole life. I wouldn’t have believed he was capable of this. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes, though. The only thing that bothers me, is why would he have killed Manuel and CJ? He got away with murdering Emma. Why would he draw attention to himself like that?”

  Bukowski folded his arms and pursed his lips. “Miss Meyer—”