by Kara Thomas
I don’t know what everything means, so I decide the most logical place to start is with the murders. Since I found those letters in Tom’s drawer, I’ve already discovered one detail that contradicts the story I’ve accepted all these years:
Jack Canning never pointed a gun at Tom.
All I really know about the murders is what the police say happened, and I never had a reason to doubt what the police say happened.
They say that Jack Canning killed Susan and Juliana. They say he was a predator, that he was obsessed with Susan, that he saw the girls were alone and vulnerable and he pounced. They say the pictures of Susan, taken without her knowledge, only supported their theory.
I blink at the blinding white home page on my laptop. The search bar is accompanied by the message What are you looking for? It feels like a taunt.
There are several Jack Cannings in the world. I refine my search to include only Sunnybrook, NY.
At the top of the page are several hits for pictures. Juliana Ruiz, her hair in a high ponytail and silver hoops in her ears. Susan Berry standing next to her, wearing her slightly robotic smile. Her normally pin-straight blond hair is crimped, and she’s wearing pearly pink lipstick. The caption says this photo was taken during Spirit Week, on Time Travel Tuesday. Every grade was assigned a decade; the sophomores got the eighties.
I click through the images, a lump in my throat. More pictures of Juliana and Susan. There’s only one of Jack Canning—a blurry, unsmiling driver’s-license photo. His hair is dirty blond and his glasses take up half his face.
There are no other pictures of Jack Canning, no childhood shots of him snuggling the family dog or showing off a medal at a high school robotics competition. None of the usual pictures of murderers that the news likes to flash as they report that “he seemed so normal!”
I double back to the search results and scroll down. One headline jumps out at me: WHEN DEATH COMES TO TOWN. It’s hosted on the Crunch, a website we all used to dick around on in the library before the school blocked it. Calling the Crunch “news” is generous. It’s mostly garbage quizzes and celebrity gossip; it’s hardly a hub for serious journalism.
Yet, three years ago, someone there decided to write about the Sunnybrook cheerleader deaths.
I glance at my door to make sure it’s shut. Like I’m looking at porn or something. I gnaw on my thumbnail and pull up the article. I skim the profiles of Bethany Steiger and Colleen Coughlin and the horrific details of their car accident. The writer must have spoken to someone in Sunnybrook; their account is eerily accurate, down to the part about the paramedic vomiting at the scene.
The first mention of the murders is several paragraphs down. It starts with the night before homecoming, describing Juliana’s and Susan’s excitement for the following day’s festivities.
My chest grows tighter. The details of the murders read like a horror novel: The killer had draped a bath towel over Susan’s naked body. I skip the rest of the description of the crime scene, unsure how much more I can stomach.
To many, it was an open-and-shut case, one without the media circus that accompanies a drawn-out trial. Jack Canning was dead, taking his reasons for killing the girls to the grave with him. The elderly Mrs. Canning was moved to a nursing facility and died shortly after.
And yet, many who knew Jack Canning are still unable to reconcile their perception of him as a childlike, gentle giant with the man police say viciously killed two teenaged girls. One has to wonder if the circumstances surrounding the murders created a perfect storm for a hasty investigation. The town was still reeling from the gruesome deaths of Colleen Coughlin and Bethany Steiger. Almost everyone who worked for the Sunnybrook Police Department had a personal connection to the girls. Were the police wearing emotional blinders?
By the time I’m done reading, nearly an hour has passed. At the bottom of the page is a headshot of the author of the article: Daphne Furman, blond and serious. Probably in her early thirties.
There’s a contact email for Daphne in her bio. I open my inbox and begin writing.
Hi, Ms. Furman. I’m Jennifer Rayburn’s sister. I read your story “When Death Comes to Town” and I have some questions.
I hesitate for a moment before sending the message off. I sit back in my chair, gnawing at my chipped pinky nail. Turn my computer off, swallow two Motrins with water from my bathroom tap, and go to bed.
* * *
—
When I wake in the morning, I have a response.
Hi, Monica. Call me Daphne. What are you doing Saturday morning? We should talk. I can come to you.
* * *
—
In my head, I break down the agonizing wait for Saturday. Twenty-four hours; nine class periods; one dance team practice; one awkward Friday family dinner at Ristegio’s, the Italian restaurant in town; and one restless night’s sleep. All hurdles to clear before I can talk to Daphne Furman.
I’ve been Googling her obsessively since she emailed me back. Daphne graduated from the University of Virginia eight years ago with a dual major in English and journalism. (She also played lacrosse.) Until a few years ago, she wrote exclusively for the local paper in her hometown of Westchester. “When Death Comes to Town” was her first piece published on a major website.
At some point, a long-dormant memory lights up in my brain. Rumors, three years ago, about a reporter harassing the families of the dead girls. Murmurs among my parents’ friends about that reporter. People said it with a tone usually reserved for child molesters and animal beaters: that reporter.
Daphne Furman has to be that reporter. And now I’m meeting her for coffee to discuss my dead sister.
Saturday morning is mid-sixties, with not a cloud in the sky. I told Daphne I could meet her at the Sunnybrook Starbucks at ten. My bike is one of those old-fashioned cruisers, with a mint-green body and peach wheels. I dump my phone and wallet in the basket and head off for town as soon as my mom and Petey leave for his soccer practice.
I ride past the gazebo on Main Street, past the sign welcoming me to Sunnybrook in gold-painted letters. Beside it is a town directory boasting our annual craft festival and award-winning microbrewery.
Leaves crunch under my tires, and a breeze knocks loose some of the hair I pinned away from my face. I turn down the alley next to 2nd Street and leave my bike in the rack outside the post office; no one ever locks anything around here because no one ever steals.
Every year the businesses on Main Street try to outdo each other with a scarecrow dress-up contest. On the telephone pole in front of the day spa, a scarecrow wears a bathrobe and has fake cucumbers for eyes. Outside Starbucks, a hipster scarecrow in a flannel shirt sips a latte from a paper cup.
A blonde with her hair in a stubby braid is seated at a two-person table by the window, a laptop open in front of her. Daphne looks younger than she does in her picture on the Crunch’s website. A black Under Armour jacket is zipped up to her chin, and she’s wearing pearl earrings.
She looks up. Spots me and waves. “Monica?”
I nod. Consider the empty chair waiting for me. An untouched scone sits on a napkin next to Daphne’s laptop, which she shuts.
“Thank you for coming,” she says, as if she’s the one who reached out to me. “Do you want anything?”
“I’m okay.” I slide into the chair, eyeing Daphne’s cup of water. What kind of journalist goes to Starbucks and orders water?
Daphne gives me a disarming smile. “I’m guessing you want to talk about my story on the cheerleaders and not the one about the five best videos of cats knocking things off tables.”
I flush. Return her smile. “How on earth did you guess?”
Daphne seems to clam up. She taps a finger on the lid of her water. “I spent six months working on that article. I never expected the reaction that it got.”
“Well. I think people
may have resented some of the things you suggested,” I say. “About how the police did their investigation.”
“I didn’t write the story in a vacuum, Monica. Everything in there—I got that information from talking to people.”
“But you didn’t talk to the police directly.”
Daphne’s fingers move to the surface of her laptop. “Not for a lack of trying. The thing is, I didn’t set out intending to cast doubt on anyone. It was supposed to be a profile of the girls and Sunnybrook. Then days after it was published, people were emailing my editor accusing me of attacking the police.”
Yet somehow she wound up implying that the police didn’t do a thorough investigation—that it was impossible for them to be objective when they knew and cared about the girls.
“Emotional blinders,” I say. “That’s what you accused the cops of having.”
“I didn’t accuse them of anything.” Daphne leans forward, resting her forearms on the table. Lowers her voice. “There are lots of details about that night that don’t line up.”
My stomach sours. “Like what?”
“There weren’t any signs of forced entry at the Berrys’ house that night. If the girls were so creeped out by Jack Canning, why would Juliana open the door for him? The door had a peephole. She would have seen it was him on the porch.”
“How do you know the door had a peephole?”
“I told you. Some people were willing to talk to me.”
I pinch the fleshy area between my thumb and my forefinger. A trick to get rid of nausea, my mom always says. “But Jack Canning was basically a sex offender. Or he should have been.”
Daphne’s mouth forms a condescending little smile. “Do you know what he did?”
“No.”
“He was caught in a car with his girlfriend by her father,” she says. “He was twenty, and she was seventeen. Her father almost beat him to death.”
Four years. The age difference between Brandon and me is twice that.
I pinch the space between my fingers harder. “He had pictures of Susan in his bedroom. She was fifteen, and he was in his thirties. That’s totally different.”
“You’re right.” Daphne sips her water. “But the police never found bloody clothes at Jack’s house. Juliana had cuts all over her body. The killer would have gotten her blood on him.”
“But he would have had plenty of time to get rid of them,” I say. “It doesn’t prove anything.”
“Also true. Like I said. I didn’t have an agenda to prove he didn’t do it. In all likelihood, he did do it. But facts are facts, and not all of them support the police’s conclusion.”
I think of the other details in “When Death Comes to Town.” Throwaway lines about the other girls, gleaned from comments from friends and family who were willing to talk to Daphne.
The students at Sunnybrook High remember Bethany Steiger as a party girl, but a responsible one; she would never drink and drive. Her family has vehemently denied rumors that Bethany was texting at the time of the crash.
Jennifer Rayburn was always smiling. At the beginning of that year, if you told anyone who knew her that Jen would take her own life, they would have thought you were insane.
My mouth has gone dry. “That part in your article about how no one could believe my sister would kill herself—who told you that?”
Daphne’s face softens. “Everyone who would talk to me. Jen was very loved.”
“I know,” I say, my throat tight. “I have to go.”
Daphne reaches into her laptop bag. Fishes out a card with her email and phone number and hands it to me. “If you need anything, give me a buzz. I’d be more than happy to talk again.”
I don’t look back at her as I stand and push my way out the side door. There are too many thoughts pinballing in my head. Too many awful, awful scenarios to consider.
The worst is that Jack Canning might not have killed Juliana and Susan. Tom may have killed an innocent man, and a guilty one could be walking free in Sunnybrook.
But if Jack Canning didn’t kill Susan and Juliana, why did he have pictures of Susan in his dresser drawer?
If Jack Canning didn’t kill Susan and Juliana, why were his last words I’m sorry?
I promised Rachel I would come over and help her run through our routine. No one wants to say it, but we all know that if Rachel can’t land the triple pirouette by Monday afternoon, Coach might pull her out of the competition routine.
The Steigers’ basement is not like normal people’s basements. Alexa, Rach, and I have spent many nights down here, lounging in our bathing suits in the Jacuzzi tub, sipping the virgin strawberry daiquiris we made behind the bar. A few years ago, Rach’s dad installed a full gym with equipment more expensive than the Planet Fitness my mother and Tom go to. Rachel and I have dragged the treadmill to the corner to make room for her to dance.
My phone is synced with the Bluetooth speaker. I back up the music to the 1:20 mark in the song, to the prep for the pirouette. She’s anticipating it too much, trying to overcompensate with speed when it’s all about keeping the turning leg straight.
Rachel runs through the routine from 1:20, and I don’t realize that the music has stopped until she joins me by the speaker. She drags the back of her hand over her sweaty forehead. “Was that better?”
Truthfully, I hadn’t even been paying attention that time. “You’re getting there,” I say, and Rach seems content.
“I need a break,” she says, fanning her face with her hands.
I grab my phone and close out of the music player. My heartbeat picks up when I see that there’s a text from the last person my sister talked to.
I shoot a glance at the open door; in the other room—her dad’s “man cave”—Rachel has turned the TV on. I type out: Which part?
“Mon! What are you doing in there?”
I keep one eye on my phone as I head into the other room, where Rachel is on the leather couch. She’s lying on her back, hands folded over her stomach, which rises and falls to match her rapid breathing. “Do you wanna get pizza?” she asks.
“I thought you were cleansing.”
“Eff that.” Rachel tilts her head back to look at me. “Are you still sick? You’re kind of pale.”
My phone buzzes in my hand. “I have to pee,” I say. “Be right back.”
Once I’m shut in the basement bathroom, fan on, I sit on the edge of the Jacuzzi tub and open the most recent text.
I feel a surge of irritation.
The person is typing; the ellipsis disappears, as if they’ve deleted their response. I may have struck a nerve. A knock at the bathroom door makes me jump. “Monica? Are you okay in there?”
“Yeah. Coming.” I flush the toilet and wash my hands for show, resting my phone on the edge of the sink. As I’m drying my hands, a text lights the screen.
* * *
—
Rachel and I split a veggie pizza and watch an unfunny comedy on HBO before she drives me home. As she’s pulling into my driveway, my phone buzzes.
I sit up so straight I hit my head on the ceiling of the car.
Rach puts the car into park. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” I turn to look across the street; the driveway to the unfinished house is still empty, the woods on both sides completely still. “I thought I saw a deer.”
I palm the ceiling and climb out of the car. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Sure. See you Monday.”
I watch Rachel pull away, itching to cross the street to the unfinished house. But I’m not stupid; I’ve considered the possibility that this is a trap and whoever is texting me may be a psychopath.
A psychopath who definitely knows where we moved.
When I look up, I spot movement in our kitchen window. My mother, probably, prepping dinner. Keeping
an eye on the driveway, awaiting my return. Even if she weren’t already up my ass, she’d have questions if she caught me lurking around the property across the street.
We keep the front door locked all the time, and I don’t have my key on me. I input the code for the garage and take the door inside that leads into the kitchen. Mom is over the stove, using a spatula to break up the hunk of pink meat crackling in the frying pan. The menu chalkboard on the fridge says that tonight is turkey chili.
She doesn’t turn around. “You’re home late.”
“It’s not even five.”
Mom calls into the living room. “Petey, what are you doing?”
Petey shouts that someone just burned his entire village to the ground, and Mom shouts back that he needs to put down the game, change out of his soccer uniform, and read a few chapters of Where the Red Fern Grows before dinner. I want to tell him not to waste his time, that the dogs die at the end and everything sucks.
When my mom’s back is turned, I cross the kitchen to the sink and peer out the window. The house is still there, existing in an entirely nonthreatening manner.
“What are you looking at?” My mother’s voice sounds behind me.
“Nothing. Do I have time to walk Mango before we eat?”
My mother’s eyebrows knit together. “Why do you need to walk him right now?”
“Because he’s put on weight and I don’t want him to die.”
She blinks and shakes her head. “Be back in fifteen minutes.”
I grab the leash from the key rack and call out to the dog. “Walk? You wanna go for a walk?”
Mango trots into the kitchen at once, sitting at my feet obediently. I attach the hook through the loop in his collar and leave out the front door. The second we step outside, he bolts forward, dragging me down the driveway, tail bobbing up and down like he can’t believe his luck.