Angel of Death

by Ferguson, Alane

  Cameryn tried to keep her tone even. It embarrassed her that Lyric would reveal her bizarre theories in a group like this. In Lyric’s house, with her beads for curtains and her psychedelic posters covering every inch of her bedroom walls while incense wafted, Cameryn would listen to any wild hypotheses and try to give them their due. But this was different. She tried to telegraph this to Lyric, but for once her friend’s psychic connection failed her. Lyric kept right on talking.

  Eyes bright, Lyric began a list of the dead. “Dr. J. Irving Bentley. His body was found in the bathroom. He burned a three-foot hole though the floor, with only one section of his leg left intact on the linoleum. Everything else, even his teeth, turned to ash.”

  “Lyric—”

  “Mary Reeser. All they found of her was backbone and a shrunken skull the size of a baseball, plus a foot in a slipper—I think it was black satin—and ten pounds of ashes. Helen Conway burned up like a Christmas log.”

  “All right, all right. Lyric, you’ve made your point. It’s an interesting theory, except Mr. Oakes didn’t burn up like that. He didn’t turn to ash.”

  “You told me he was cooked.”

  Cameryn winced. That part wasn’t supposed to get out, and she could get in real trouble if her father discovered she’d told Lyric and then Lyric, in turn, had announced it to a table of A-listers at the school. For an instant she hoped no one noticed, but then she heard the whispers buzzing as this new piece of information got passed down the table. “Cooked,” she heard someone say, followed by, “No way! ”

  “We really don’t know anything yet,” Cameryn declared loudly while shooting Lyric a hard look. “That was just a theory. The autopsy results aren’t in yet.”

  Undeterred, Lyric said, “Maybe Mr. Oakes had a partial spontaneous human combustion. Maybe this is something new.”

  “Yeah, like that’s what happened,” Kyle murmured under his breath.

  Now it seemed everyone at the table was looking at Cameryn, trying to read her reaction to this latest theory. “It doesn’t do any good to speculate,” she argued. “Not when the results aren’t in.” She could feel the heat rise in her cheeks as she saw Lyric as the others must see her: a blue-haired girl with wild theories, probably believing in the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot. Cameryn didn’t want these students to think she was like that. Her interest was real science, not hokey Internet theories.

  When Lyric stated, “I’m just trying to think outside the box,” Cameryn forced a smile and murmured, “It’s more like outside reality.”

  The kids at the table laughed at this, and Cameryn felt her spirits buoy. “Ooooh,” Jessica cooed, “sounds like trouble in paradise.”

  Shocked and stung, Lyric glared at Cameryn, her eyes blue lasers. Cameryn held up her hands and said, “Sorry, Lyric, I didn’t mean it to come off like that.”

  “Well, it did!” Adam said, speaking up for the first time. His pale skin looked even more pallid as he stood beneath the humming cafeteria lights. “Lyric put a lot of work into this idea. We were on the computer half the night, printing files. You can at least keep an open mind.”

  “But Adam, those people you’re talking about were piles of ashes, which Mr. Oakes was not, so right there your theory doesn’t fit. Besides, we know what causes spontaneous human combustion. There’s something that starts it, like a dropped cigarette onto the chest of a person who has already died. The nightshirt or whatever starts to burn and the person’s own fat becomes the fuel. That’s not what happened here.”

  Indignant, Lyric grabbed her lunch and stood up beside Adam, gripping the tray so hard her fingers blanched white. “We know? It’s bloody amazing that you always know everything about everything! I think Adam and I will finish our pizza somewhere else.”

  Cameryn was incredulous that Lyric would work herself up and overreact that way. She didn’t know what to say. She could feel her own body tense as she stared, her gaze faltering, at Lyric’s indignant expression. It was obvious Lyric was waiting for her to react, but Cameryn didn’t know what to say with an audience looking on. She and Lyric had fought before, but never in front of witnesses. Unsure, Cameryn said nothing.

  “Okay, well, have a great lunch,” Lyric told her, glaring. Then, turning on her heel, she stomped off with Adam trailing behind.

  Now Cameryn did find her voice. “No, Lyric, wait! ” she cried, but Kyle, with his steadying hand, whispered, “Let her go. You guys should work this out when it’s just the two of you. Cammie, I like Lyric, I really do, but . . . she seems a little intense.”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  “Who probably needs a little space right now. Don’t you think?”

  Cameryn bit her lip as she watched Lyric’s retreating figure. Adam had draped his thin arm across her, like a shawl, and Lyric’s head was bent as she listened to whatever it was Adam was telling her. A moment later they were gone.

  “I don’t even know what happened there,” Cameryn said softly. “I don’t understand why she got so mad.”

  “She was hurt because you blew off her theory,” Kyle told her. They were at the end of the lunch table, Kyle at the corner and Cameryn next to him. He pulled her toward him so that her back was now turned toward the rest of the table, and his voice was so soft she wasn’t sure she understood his next words. “I think I know how she feels.”

  This checked Cameryn. She could feel herself wilt.

  “You do?”

  Gently, Kyle placed his fingertip beneath her head and turned it. He moved her hair, and his lips sought her ear, touching it as lightly as a butterfly. When he whispered to her, she could feel a flush warm her skin, as though the words themselves could leave the barest imprint on her flesh. They were in the cafeteria, surrounded by a cacophony of noise, the slamming trays, the eruptions of laughter, and yet the two of them were alone in their own private, whispered space.

  “Will you laugh at me if I tell you something?” Kyle asked.

  “No. I’d never laugh at you.”

  She turned her face toward him, so close now their foreheads touched, and they held that pose for almost a minute before Kyle said, “Because, believe it or not, I have a theory, too.”

  His breath was hot between them.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure I should say it out loud. Not here, anyway. Not now. I’m not sure it’s even right. But it just keeps going through my head, again and again.”

  “I’m the assistant to the coroner. I think you should let me decide. Does it have anything to do with extraterrestrials? ”

  Kyle’s brown eyes darkened. “I’m not kidding, Cammie.” “Sorry,” she said. “Don’t keep me in suspense. Lunch is almost over, and I won’t be able to wait until after school. So tell me!”

  Kyle took a breath and let it out slowly, a warm plume of air on her lips. For a moment he was quiet, blinking. Then he whispered, “I think . . . I think I might know who killed Brad.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “NOW I’VE HEARD it all,” her mammaw cried. “First a man dies with no explanation, and then the small-town rumors start flying like feathers in the wind. You know the story about gossip and feathers, girl?”

  “Yes, Mammaw, I know the story,” Cameryn replied. It was one of her grandmother’s regulars, a morality tale she dragged out whenever she saw the need. Throw a handful of feathers into the wind and then try to catch them, which was impossible because the feathers had already been swept to the four corners of the earth and no one could ever gather them up again. Mammaw said the story was Irish, but Cameryn doubted this.

  She couldn’t help but think her mammaw’s hair looked like feathers. White tufts stood out from her head, curling softly at the ends like down pulled from a pillow.

  When she spoke, her soft Irish lilt curled the edges of her words, too. But Cameryn knew better than to be fooled by the soft periphery. In addition to her Irish looks, her grandmother possessed an Irish temper, and her eyes, when angry, didn’t r
esemble the blue sky so much as cold steel.

  “Don’t go ignoring me when I’m telling you a truth,” Mammaw said now. “You’re accusing a perfectly wonderful man on no evidence at all. It’s shameful, is what it is! ”

  Her father, who was sitting in the easy chair, looked up reluctantly from his book. “Ma,” he said, “give it a rest. I think you’ve made your point.”

  “A point’s not made until someone listens,” Mammaw retorted.

  “Why are you jumping all over Cammie? It’s not her theory. She’s just telling us what Kyle thinks.”

  “And I’m reminding you that the rambling of a young boy can do a man a lot of harm. The story should go no further than this room!”

  Patrick closed the book and slowly set it down on the table beside him, beneath an imitation Tiffany lamp that had a shade made from plastic instead of glass. He’d been reading an old Louis L’Amour book, one in a series of Westerns her father called his “guilty pleasures.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, and his glasses rose up on the tips of his fingers.

  Cameryn sat perched on the end of the couch, elbows on knees. “Mammaw,” she protested, “I’m not saying Dwayne Reynolds did anything—I’m saying it’s possible Kyle’s right about him. Maybe Dad should call the sheriff so he could check it out.”

  “On what basis? Because your new boyfriend has an itch?” Mammaw demanded.

  Patrick sighed. “All right, all right. Let me hear the facts one more time. Cammie, tell me again, please.” He took off his reading glasses and dropped them into his shirt pocket. “Slowly this time. Why does Kyle think Dwayne Reynolds is a killer?”

  “Because Dwayne is the only one who had the key to Mr. Oakes’s house. Remember, Dwayne gave the key to Kyle when he sent him over there. He took it off his key ring and gave it to him. You’ve got to admit that’s a little strange.”

  Her father shrugged. “That’s thin at best. I have a key to our neighbor’s home, too, and they have ours. A key, in and of itself, does not make a person a killer.”

  “Of course not. But Dad, Kyle knew both men and, well, I don’t want to say any more. Not now, anyway.” She looked at her grandmother’s face, still square and angry. There was more to the story, but Cameryn dared not tell it with her grandmother in the room.

  Mammaw wore beige pants made of stretch material and a cotton top bedecked with bright tulips, far brighter than her dark expression. She seemed to realize that Cameryn was holding back. With her usual tsk, she picked up a doll’s cloth body and its plastic head, hands, and feet, and stuffed them into a sewing bag.

  Because Mammaw repaired dolls for fun and a little profit, as a child, Cameryn had often seen old dolls in various degrees of wholeness flung across her home. Arms, legs, heads, torsos—it was a joke between them that these dissected doll parts might have fueled Cameryn’s desire for the real thing, building her passion for forensics. “Freud would have a heyday with you,” her grandmother often quipped.

  Now Mammaw was poised beneath a doorway, the doll’s plastic head angled crazily from the bag drooping in her hand. “It’s clear to me you want to be alone with your father,” she said. “It’s late and I’m going to my room to do a bit of stitching. I’ve got to piece this wee one together. But Cammie”—she gave Cameryn a hard look—“I can’t help but notice you’ve placed a lot of stock in that new boyfriend of yours. Be careful where you put your heart.” With that, she was gone.

  “All right, now,” her father said, his voice curt. “Tell me the rest of it.”

  She hesitated.

  “I know you, Cammie. For your whole life I’ve watched that clever mind of yours spinning ideas. Out with it.”

  Cameryn straightened. The game had turned deadly serious and she wanted to be careful how she framed the strange accusation, because she wasn’t sure, even now, if there was truth in it. She remembered the words Kyle had whispered and how she’d wondered at their audacity. The bell had rung in the lunchroom, the kids had scattered, but Kyle, not caring if they were late, had pulled Cameryn into an alcove. As he spoke to her he did a curious thing: He wound her long hair around his finger until his fingertip blanched white. It didn’t hurt her at all, just a gentle tugging, like a small dog feeling a leash.

  “Cammie,” Kyle had said at last, “I think, maybe, Brad and Dwayne were . . . more than just friends. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “You’re insane.”

  “I saw them. I was driving on Blair Street, late. They were in the alley together.”

  “When?”

  “About two months ago,” he’d whispered. His voice had been low, quiet. “Brad was leaning his head against Dwayne, and Dwayne had his arm around him, tight. They were walking like that, and then I couldn’t see them anymore.”

  “But . . . Dwayne’s married.”

  Kyle’s dark eyes had fluttered briefly. “As if that matters, ” he’d said. “A week ago something else happened. I was with Dwayne, working on a photo project at his studio and Brad just kept calling and calling Dwayne’s cell. Dwayne was getting really upset. He left the room at least three times to talk to Brad. I heard him raise his voice.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Justin this when he interviewed you at the house?” she’d demanded.

  “I guess I didn’t put it together, not until I saw Dwayne at the memorial just now. It’s like it clicked. Maybe it’s nothing,” he said, and she could tell he was already doubting himself. He’d unwound her hair from his finger, and it stayed in a perfect curl. “Now that I’ve said it out loud, I think Lyric’s theory’s better. Just forget it.”

  “I’m not sure I can. Are you going to tell the sheriff?” Kyle shook his head. “And get sucked into the vortex? No, I just wanted to bounce it off of you and see if you thought I was on to something. Your face is telling me everything I need to know. Look, we’d better go. We’re both already late, and I don’t want to lose my perfect GPA. Boy Scout, remember?”

  "Kyle! ”

  He’d looked at her with his warm eyes.

  “Don’t tell what you just said to me to anyone else,” she’d requested. “Not until I think about it.”

  The hand rose up again, only this time the fingertips grazed his forehead. “Scout’s honor,” he said.

  All this Cameryn summed up for her father, who looked at her, disbelieving. “So Kyle’s intuition is based on some pretty weak observations,” she concluded. “Should I say anything to Sheriff Jacobs, or let it pass?”

  “Let me think about what I should do with this,” Patrick answered, unknowingly echoing his daughter.

  “Okay,” she agreed, relieved to leave the responsibility behind her. But her father wasn’t done with her just yet. He turned on the gas fireplace, and Cameryn heard the familiar clicking, then the gentle burst of flames as Patrick settled back and took his glasses out of his pocket. But instead of putting them on, he placed the stem of them between his teeth.

  “Tell me about this boy,” he said.

  “Kyle? He’s great. An overachiever, heading for college on the East Coast.”

  “He’s a fast mover,” her father said. “You’ve never been one to lose your head over a boy, Cammie. You’ve always been the cautious type.”

  “And your cautious daughter’s not had a date in months. You know, I don’t get it. Why is everyone so freaked out about me kissing Kyle?”

  There was a beat. “You kissed?”

  Cameryn’s heart jumped at this slip. “That’s not the point,” she said. “I guess I’m surprised people aren’t happier for me. Even Lyric’s acting funky. I think she’s jealous.”