“Please try,” Katie begged. Her phone buzzed, but she ignored it. “I think Steve might have had something to do with Rose Tatum.”
“The dead girl?” Bea said, and got quiet for a moment. “But everyone’s saying Mark was the last one—”
“I know what they’re saying,” Katie cut her off. She’d begun having doubts of her own, and it sickened her. “What if everyone’s wrong?”
Bea’s eyes filled with pity. “But, Katie, what if they’re right?”
“Call me if you find out anything,” she said, and grabbed her book bag.
As Katie walked out the door, her phone buzzed again. She left it in her pocket till she was outside. She took a deep breath of spring air and glanced around from the top of the building steps. A police cruiser rolled slowly past and then another. Her pulse picked up. She couldn’t help wondering if they were going to arrest Mark.
A couple of students walked by, staring at her, and Katie scooted over to a pillar, tucking her shoulder against the column to check her messages. The most recent two were from Tessa, and the words nearly made Katie’s heart stop:
You’re right. I have a secret, the first text said. And the second, Come to dr c’s now & I will tell you all I know.
It didn’t take long for the police to come calling after Rose was found.
They caught Mark at home between classes. No more playing nice and asking for cooperation. They had a warrant this time, signed by a county judge. They wanted to search several rooms at the headmaster’s house and Mark’s locker at the ice rink.
While the housekeeper kept them in the foyer, Mark called his dad, who arrived minutes after with the school’s general counsel. The lawyer looked over the paperwork and gave a grim nod. Mark’s father frowned.
“If you just tell us what you want, we’ll get it for you,” he told the police captain, but the officer asked him to stay back and let them do their job.
“You should get to class,” his dad suggested, but Mark couldn’t go.
His stomach was doing flip-flops. How could he leave when they were digging through his stuff? What were they looking for exactly? If they wanted to find strands of Rose’s hair or her fingerprints, they probably would. She was here at the party—no one was denying that fact.
Charlie had helped Mark clean up afterward, tossing sticky cups and mopping up puddles of beer. Mark hadn’t seen blood anywhere. Not a drop.
He stood aside, watching as they worked their way through the house. First, they focused on the basement rec room, then Mark’s bedroom and the maid’s room, where Mark had told them he’d passed out.
They rifled through drawers, tossed sofa cushions, and even asked his dad for the key to the liquor cabinet. A uniform wearing latex gloves and booties vacuumed lint from the rugs. They dusted doorknobs for prints and took the linens from the beds along with a pair of Mark’s shoes and his hairbrush. Everything got packed into big brown bags that were tagged and taken out to a waiting police car.
Annalisa moaned at the mess they left behind, and Mark’s dad didn’t seem any too happy about it, either.
“For God’s sake, this is my home, not a crime scene,” his father muttered to the lawyer, and then Mark overheard them talking about the cops issuing a warrant for the greenhouse, too. They wanted to confiscate pruning saws and shovels.
Did they think Mark had killed Rose, then used a saw from the greenhouse to cut off her hand and a shovel to bury her? They’d already fingerprinted him and taken a sample of his DNA. Was it just a matter of time before they cuffed him and hauled him off?
I’m sorry, he wanted to tell his dad again. Because all of this was his fault. He’d brought this on, even if he hadn’t meant to. And it wasn’t going away.
Before the cops had finished, when no one was paying him any attention, Mark skipped out. He took off on his bike, heading to the rink as fast as he could pedal. If they were going to paw through his locker next, he wanted to get there first.
He tried to remember what was in there. Dirty socks. Jockstraps. Helmet. Skates. Extra blades. Nothing that his teammates wouldn’t have. Nothing worth shit to anyone but him. Definitely nothing to do with that girl.
But when he got to the rink, there was a black and white Barnard police car sitting out front. Another one? Were they executing the search warrants all at once?
Breathing hard, Mark pedaled around back, dropping his bike to the grass and rushing in through the rear door.
He saw Steve and Charlie and a few other guys hanging around the coach’s office. “Dude,” he heard Steve mutter, “you’re in big trouble.”
Mark silently walked past. He wasn’t going to be baited into a fight this time.
“Hey, Summers, they said to keep back,” Charlie told him, but Mark didn’t listen.
He went around the rows of lockers, turning into the aisle where his locker was. “Um, excuse me,” he said to the two cops picking through his stuff, “but that’s my locker.”
“You’re Mark Summers?”
“Yeah.”
A uniform stopped him before he got too close, but he could see that the locker door was wide open. They hadn’t needed to crowbar it. His lock had been broken for ages. Mark hadn’t cared. He’d never kept anything valuable in there. He couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting to lift a bunch of sweaty nut cups.
“Just give us some room,” the officer said. “It won’t be long.”
Mark nodded, moving toward the end of the aisle.
They’d tossed aside most of his stuff except for a towel brown with dried blood—his blood, he was sure—which was quickly stuffed into an evidence bag.
Then one of the cops held something in his latex-gloved hand. “Looks like a burner,” he said, his gaze shifting toward Mark.
The other nodded. “Bag it.”
“That’s not mine,” Mark told them, because it wasn’t. He had his phone in his back pocket, and the one they removed from his locker looked like a crappy flip phone. A burner, the cop had said. The prepaid kind you used when you couldn’t afford a contract, Mark thought. The kind that kept your calls anonymous. Only he’d never seen this one before. “I don’t know how it got there,” he told them.
But he had a horrible feeling he knew whose it was.
Tessa’s eyes watched the clock. Was Katie coming or not?
“I can stay about another twenty minutes, but that’s all,” Dr. Capello said from behind her desk. “Then I’ve got to head to my office in town. Do you want to talk about whatever it is now? Is it so important that Katie be here, too?”
“Yeah,” Tessa told her, staring at the door, “it is.”
She’ll show, Tessa thought. She has to.
Another five minutes ticked past and then the door flew open.
Katie poked her head in, and Tessa jumped up from her chair, walking toward her. “You came,” she said. “I knew you would.”
“What’s up with you?” Katie whispered, looking past Tessa’s shoulder at the school shrink. “Why’d you want to meet me here? Why not back at the dorm?”
“Dr. C should hear this, too,” Tessa told her. She needed someone else in the room, someone who might actually believe her.
“Have a seat, Katie.” Dr. Capello gestured to the chairs near her desk. “Let’s hear what Tessa has to say.”
Despite her skeptical expression, Katie sat and placed her book bag on the floor by her feet. She pushed her long hair behind her ears, then settled back. “Okay,” she said, “I’m listening.”
Tessa’s armpits felt damp. She was nervous, even though she’d been gearing up for this for days. “I haven’t been straight with you,” she said, and forced herself to meet Katie’s eyes. “I didn’t mean to keep secrets, but I was scared. I wasn’t sure what to do, but then they found the girl, and I knew I couldn’t stay quiet—”
“Tessa, just spill,” Katie said, sounding tired. She looked tired, too. There were gray shadows beneath her eyes.
Tessa wet her lips. “I k
now something about the night Rose Tatum disappeared, more than I’ve told you. Something Mark can’t seem to remember.”
“Oh, my God.” Katie threw up her hands. “This is about bashing Mark? Been there, done that. Sorry, Dr. Capello, but I’m out of here.” She grabbed her bag and headed toward the door.
“I promised him I wouldn’t tell,” Tessa blurted out. She couldn’t let Katie leave. She had to listen! “He was totally trashed when he called me that night.”
Katie stopped and turned around.
Tessa swallowed. Her mouth was bone dry. “I thought he’d dialed me by mistake. He was rambling so badly I could hardly understand him. He said there was an accident … that she wasn’t breathing.”
“What are you talking about?” Katie took a step toward her. “Who drunk-dialed you? You can’t mean Mark?”
“Yeah,” Tessa said. “I mean Mark.”
Katie let her bag slide to the floor with a thump. “Liar,” she said, with such force it felt like a knife in Tessa’s heart. “Mark wouldn’t call you if he was dying and you were the last person left on earth.”
“He was desperate.”
“He’d never be that desperate.” Katie exhaled loudly. “What a story, Tessa!” She shook her head. “How long did it take you to make it up? Almost two weeks, I guess, since Rose disappeared.”
“He made me swear I wouldn’t tell!” Tessa couldn’t give up. Katie had to understand. “He threatened to have me expelled!”
“Liar,” Katie said again.
“I’m not.” Tessa squished her eyes closed, the words echoing inside her head. You’re a liar! their adopted mother had shouted at Peter whenever he’d denied stealing from her purse or breaking something. Even when he hadn’t done it—even when Tessa was the guilty one—he took the brunt of it. They were always yelling at him or arguing about him. He’s too damaged, she’d heard their mother crying behind their parents’ closed bedroom door at night. Something’s wrong with him. I can’t control him. He’s a ticking time bomb.
“Please, Tessa, go on,” Dr. Capello said in that soothing voice that always tried to get Tessa to say more than she wanted. “I’d like to hear the rest.”
Tessa opened her eyes and focused on the shrink. She couldn’t look at Katie yet.
“Okay,” she said, and swallowed again. She knew what had happened that night. She could recite every detail. She’d gone over it a thousand times in her head. “I started over to the headmaster’s house but I chickened out. I couldn’t do it. I tried to pretend nothing had happened. I didn’t want to believe he’d really done it, until they found her in the woods. I thought he was too drunk that night to know what he was saying.”
“Have I got this right?” Katie said, and began ticking off points on her fingers. “Mark killed Rose, then called you for help. And when you didn’t show, he cut off her hand, dropped it off for me at Amelia House, and buried her in the woods. Did I leave anything out? Like maybe you ran into aliens or morphed into a werewolf?”
“Don’t do that,” Tessa said, hating the way Katie stared at her with such disappointment, as though she didn’t like her, much less trust her. “I don’t know why Mark did what he did. I’m not a shrink. But all those things happened, whether or not you want to believe me.”
Katie’s eyes turned bright with tears. “Then why didn’t you say something before now? Why did you wait so long? It doesn’t make sense, Tessa. None of this makes sense.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you!” Tessa cried out, wondering why Katie couldn’t see that by now. It was so obvious. “All I’ve been trying to do is look out for you! Since the day we met, that’s all I’ve done.”
“Look out for me? Is that what you call what you’ve been doing?” Katie’s voice shook. “I think you want to scare me, Tessa. Things haven’t been right since I started seeing Mark. That’s when I started having the bad dreams. That’s when I started feeling like someone was watching me. When maybe it was you all along.”
“No.”
“So you didn’t sneak into the library stacks and set a rose on my bag during midterms?”
“No,” Tessa said.
“How do I know you’re not standing over me while I sleep, saying my name?” Katie went on, like she didn’t believe her. “Did you watch me while I slept last night? Did you have a rose in the room? I found a petal—”
“No!” Tessa bristled.
“I saw your pale hair, I saw your pale skin.” Tears began to skid down Katie’s cheeks. “It was you, Tessa. Who else could it have been?”
“It wasn’t me!” Tessa clenched her hands into fists.
Katie brushed at her cheeks and said nothing.
Tessa could hardly breathe.
“Ladies, let’s take this down a notch, okay?” Dr. Capello interjected. She got up from her desk and put a hand on Tessa’s shoulder. “It’s been a very tense couple of weeks,” she said. “Sometimes it’s easy for people to confuse reality and subconscious desires when they’re under a lot of stress—”
“I’m not confused,” Tessa said, pulling away from her. “Everything I told you did happen.”
“Give me your phone,” Katie said through her tears, holding out her hand. “If Mark called you that Saturday night, his number will show up.”
Tessa shook her head. “He didn’t use his own phone,” she said. “The number came up anonymous, like those disposable phones you buy at Walmart. I think it was the dead girl’s.”
“Do you see what I mean?” Katie turned to Dr. Capello. “She’s making this up! When it comes to Mark, she’ll say anything.”
“If the police have found Rose Tatum’s phone, they’ll know if a call was placed to Tessa,” the school shrink said, like she was the voice of reason. “They’ll check it for evidence.”
Tessa rubbed damp palms on her skirt.
“But can anyone prove that it was Mark who called her?” Katie asked. “What if it was someone else?”
“Who else do you think it was?” Tessa asked. “Rose was already dead.”
“Why are you doing this, Tessa?” Katie asked, the tears coming faster now. She wiped her sleeve against her nose. “Are you trying to make things even worse?”
“No.” Tessa shook her head. “I’m trying to make them better.”
“Better for you?” Katie murmured. “This is so messed up—you’re messed up.” Then she snatched her book bag and ran out of the room. The door slammed, and she was gone.
Tessa shut her eyes, gritting her teeth as Dr. Capello rattled on. “I have to call the headmaster,” she was saying, and picked up the phone, “and I’m sure you’ll have to tell your story to the police, too.…”
You’re messed up, messed up, messed up.
Why couldn’t Katie just accept that Mark was no good for her? Then she could stop wasting time on someone who didn’t really love her and move on with her life.
“I really wish you’d let me help you,” Dr. Capello said, not for the first time.
Tessa sat there, still as stone. She didn’t need help from the shrink. The only other person she’d ever been able to truly count on besides herself was her brother. She wished Peter could swoop in and rescue her now. But Tessa knew she was on her own.
Katie ran out of the building, not sure what to do next. Tessa’s sudden confession was beyond surreal, worse than any nightmare. How many times in the last four years had Katie turned to Tessa when something went wrong? And then she’d begun to count on Mark as much as Tessa, maybe more. But now Katie didn’t know who or what to believe. She felt completely lost. Where was she supposed to go when she wasn’t sure who to trust anymore?
Katie didn’t go far. She ended up on a bench across from the building, sitting in the shadow of a giant oak. Brushing tears from her cheeks, she watched students walk past and tried to remember how it felt when her only fear was an upcoming exam, not whether or not her best friend was a pathological liar and her boyfriend a murderer.
A campus cop car pulled u
p in front of the administration offices. The chief of campus security got out from the driver’s side just before Dr. Capello emerged from the building, escorting Tessa down the steps.
Katie got up and stood beneath the shade of the tree, staring as Tessa climbed into the car. The security chief exchanged a few words with Dr. Capello before he got behind the wheel and drove off. The school shrink lingered a moment before she turned and headed toward the faculty parking lot.
Instinctively, Katie grabbed her bag and ran after her.
“Dr. Capello, wait up!” she called, reaching the lot just as the psychiatrist tossed a leather case onto the passenger seat of her Volvo.
Dr. Capello shut the door and straightened. “Katie?”
“I need to talk about Tessa. She’s seriously messed up.”
“I know you’re concerned,” Dr. Capello said as she rounded the car to the driver’s-side door. “But we have to let the police take over from here. It’s out of my hands. If Tessa’s making things up, they’ll figure it out.”
“It’s not just that. There are so many things I can’t explain.” Katie knew something wasn’t right with Tessa. And it went beyond Rose and The Box and resenting Mark. “I get the feeling it has to do with the fire.”
Dr. Capello frowned and checked her watch. “I wish I could help you, but I’ve got appointments in town. I’m already late.…”
“Great,” Katie said, feeling butterflies in her stomach at what she was about to do. But she couldn’t just stand around doing nothing. “Let’s go,” she said, and opened the passenger door. She set Dr. Capello’s briefcase on the floor with her book bag.
“Um, Katie?” The psychiatrist peered over the hood. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going with you,” she said, because it was the only way. “I have to find someone who was there the night Tessa’s house burned. Someone like Virginia Cottingham,” she said, remembering the name of the neighbor from the article in the Barnard Gazette that she’d read on Tessa’s MacBook. “So if you’d drop me off at Mayfield Avenue, that’d be perfect.”
Very Bad Things Page 11