Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  “The person they arrested for the Ellingham murders,” she said. “Anton Vorachek. He could never have written that letter. His English was too rough. Anyway, who announces they’re going to commit a murder?”

  “Pretty much every serial killer,” Nate said.

  “Very few serial killers do that,” Stevie corrected him. “The Zodiac was one of the only . . .”

  “In movies,” he said. “In books.”

  “Here’s another thing,” Stevie said, warming to the topic. “There’s an old mystery riddle. A man is found hanging in an empty room, locked from the inside. There is no chair, nothing for him to stand on. How did it happen?”

  “Stood on a block of ice,” Nate said. “Everyone knows that one.”

  “Right,” Stevie said. “It’s just like the one about someone being found stabbed to death in a locked room and there’s no weapon. The weapon was an icicle. It’s so well known that no one can use that device in mystery stories. It’s like saying the butler did it, but worse. It can never be ice.”

  “Yeah, well, this isn’t a mystery story.”

  “Don’t you wonder what Hayes was doing in the tunnel?”

  “We know what he was doing,” Nate said. “He was making a video or something.”

  “That’s what everyone thinks he was doing.”

  “What else would he have been doing there? No one else was down there with him, and even if they were, you don’t bring a few hundred pounds of dry ice along to make out. I’m not up to date on my kinks but I don’t think that’s one.”

  Stevie sat back and picked at her lasagna. She looked around the dining hall. She saw Gretchen coming in—rather, she saw Gretchen’s hair, but Gretchen was with her hair.

  Of all the people here, Gretchen possibly knew Hayes the best. She had been with him last year, definitely longer than Maris. And out of everyone at the school, she looked the most consistently shell-shocked. Maris was getting the sympathy, but Gretchen genuinely looked caved in. Stevie watched her at the counter getting a salad in a to-go box.

  “Writing is a lot of sitting down,” Nate said, finally answering the question. “It’s a lot of trying things out and screwing up. You saw it when we worked on the script.”

  “But we used things that existed,” Stevie said. “What if you’re totally making it up?”

  “It’s either amazing or it’s the worst thing in the world,” he said. “Sometimes it goes well, and it’s all you think about, and then, it’s gone. It’s like you’re taking a ride down a river really fast, and then all of a sudden, there’s no water. You’re just sitting in a raft, trying to push it along in the mud. And then you’ve become me.”

  “But you seem to be writing now,” she said.

  “Yeah, and if I talk about it, it will all go away.”

  He had finished talking, leaving Stevie with her thoughts. Her thoughts would not settle. The more she was alone with them, the more they whistled and spun.

  There was no point in trying to eat. Stevie composted the remains of her dinner and went back outside, loosely trailing Gretchen. She headed back to the art barn, and Stevie followed. Once inside, she lost track of Gretchen, but a few moments later she heard thunderous piano playing coming from one of the rooms. Stevie peered along the hall until she saw Gretchen at one of the pianos. She played wildly, percussing against the elements themselves. She wore tight athletic clothing to play, sort of like something dancers might wear—black tights, ballet-style slippers, a tunic top that tied at the waist.

  Stevie knocked at the window and Gretchen stopped playing abruptly. Stevie stepped into the practice room. She hadn’t planned what to say. Luckily, Gretchen spoke first.

  “You were with Hayes the other night,” she said. “You’re Stevie, right?”

  “Yeah,” Stevie said. “Sorry. I heard you playing and . . . could I talk to you?”

  “Weren’t you the one who found him?” Gretchen said.

  “I didn’t find him. I was just there when they did.”

  Gretchen nodded absently and looked at her salad container on the floor. She hadn’t touched it.

  “The other day,” Stevie said, “I walked in on you guys talking . . .”

  “Yeah,” Gretchen said. “Not a great last conversation to have. I was pissed.”

  “I know you dated him,” Stevie said. “And I know you broke up. But I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Gretchen said. “Yeah. It’s weird, being the ex-girlfriend of the guy who dies. You’re actually the first person who’s said sorry.”

  “Can I ask you about Hayes?” Stevie said, sliding in and sitting on the floor.

  “What about Hayes?” Gretchen said.

  “I just . . . I’m confused after what happened, and I feel like maybe if I knew more about him, I wouldn’t be.”

  Gretchen considered this for a moment.

  “You know what I am?” she said. “I’m pissed. I’m pissed that I can’t be pissed at him. It’s like he’s done it again.”

  “Done what again?” Stevie said.

  “Played me,” she said, shaking her head. “I feel stupid. And if I ever say anything bad about him, I’ll be a monster. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

  “I don’t think it makes you a monster to tell the truth about someone.”

  “It does if that person dies in a weird, tragic accident.”

  “What was it he took from you that he wasn’t giving back?” Stevie asked. “That thing I walked in on?”

  “Oh,” she said. “He borrowed five hundred dollars from me in the spring. That five hundred was money I got from teaching piano at a summer camp. It was pretty much all the cash I had. I wanted it back when we got back to school this year. I know he made money off that show. He’s been promising to pay it back, but I don’t think that was ever going to happen. You know, like . . .”

  She shook her head and wiped away a tear quickly.

  “God,” she said. “Why am I crying? I’m so mad.”

  Stevie looked away as Gretchen settled herself.

  “Hayes was one of those people who seemed like he had it all together,” Gretchen said, wiping her face. “He could act; that’s how he got in. But inside? There was no there there. People did things for him because he was handsome, and he has—had—that voice. You’d do him favors. You know when you like someone. You do dumb stuff. You do stuff you know makes no sense.”

  Up until very recently, Stevie would not have known that. But now she had a pretty good sense of it. Maybe you go through their stuff, for instance.

  “I was just so into him,” Gretchen said. “But last year . . . he used me. Like, really used me. First, he asked for a little help with his paper on Jonathan Swift. He asked me to read it, maybe make some edits. So I did that. Then he was doing a production of The Glass Menagerie and he was busy, and he said he didn’t have time to write an essay on Dryden, and would I help him out by just finishing a little of it? Then I was doing some of his French units so it looked like he was working on that. Then, one day, he asked me to write his ten-page midterm on Alexander Pope, and I realized just how much of Hayes’s work I had done.

  “When I said no to that, he was annoyed at first, but then he was all apologies. He said he knew he’d asked too much. Everything went back to normal. Later, when we had broken up, I found out I wasn’t the only one doing his work. He met people online, other people around school. There were probably four or five of us doing everything for Hayes. Four or five of us.”

  Gretchen sniffed for a moment.

  “There was a week or two in there I thought I loved him,” she said. “When Hayes turned it on, it was on. But then things got bad. One night, we were all sneaking off campus to go to some party in Burlington. Ellie Walker had a few of her burlesque friends drive up along the back road with their lights off. We slipped out and were meeting them. There’s a spot where the cameras don’t work that well and if you time it right, you can get out. But it happened that some grounds guy was
working out there that night because there was a report of a bear. He had a car on the road and was keeping watch and he caught us. The guy said he was going to report us. Hayes said to him, ‘Wouldn’t it be terrible if they found pot in your car? What if you got busted for dealing to students?’ The guy looked terrified, and Hayes smiled and said, ‘Just kidding.’”

  “Seriously?” Stevie said. That was a side of Hayes she had not seen.

  “Seriously. That was when I should have been done. I should have turned and gone back to my house. Ellie was so mad at him for that. She smacked him on the back of the head on the way to Burlington and yelled at him, told him that was no way to treat people. Hayes said sorry. Hayes always said sorry. He said it was a joke, but . . . you don’t get to say that, you know? You don’t get to frighten people and threaten them and say you’re only kidding. Because you’re not.”

  A picture was developing, and it was not a pretty one.

  “That guy, the security guy?” Gretchen said. “He left, maybe three weeks later. I don’t know why. I always wondered. That was it for me. I broke up with Hayes. It was on April first, so I think he thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. He took it really well. A little too well. He said he understood. Everything was good for a day or two, and then he texted me and said he wanted to talk for a minute, nothing serious. Could I meet him in the art barn? So I did. Once I was there, he suddenly goes into this whole performance. He starts saying how much he loved me and how he can’t believe I cheated. I mean, it was Oscar-worthy and it came out of nowhere. I didn’t cheat on him. He kept saying all this stuff I’d supposedly done, all made up. And there were lots of people in the room next door, so everyone heard it. When he was done, he nodded to the wall and smiled at me and wiped his fake tears. He was trying to get me back by making me look like a villain. He already had someone else lined up, by the way. Beth. That girl he hooked up with in Chicago? That was already going on.”

  She stopped for a moment and shook her head.

  “This is why I can’t talk about it,” she said. “No one wants to hear this about a guy who died.”

  Stevie let this statement linger for a moment. A new idea popped into her head—suddenly she had the words for something that had been eating at her thoughts.

  “Do you think he wrote his show?” she said.

  Gretchen looked over in confusion.

  “What, the zombie thing?” she said. “Definitely not.”

  Stevie didn’t expect such a firm answer to a question that had just come into her head.

  “I told you,” Gretchen said. “He didn’t do his own work.”

  “He told me he wrote it,” Stevie said.

  Gretchen gave her a what did I say face.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Stevie said, getting off the floor.

  “Are you with David Eastman?” Gretchen asked as Stevie was about to leave.

  Stevie gulped.

  “No,” she said after a moment.

  “Oh. I thought you were. I was going to say, good luck with that.”

  Stevie wanted to ask what this meant, but Gretchen had turned back to the piano and began playing again. It was passionate and powerful, the music drumming out of her furious hands.

  25

  STEVIE’S HEAD WAS THRUMMING AS SHE MADE HER WAY BACK TO Minerva. That was what was bothering her. What if Hayes hadn’t written The End of It All? What did that mean?

  Well, for a start, that movie he was talking about—that could have gotten kind of complicated.

  When she arrived home, she found Pix opening a number of boxes in the common room.

  “What are those for?” she asked.

  “Hayes’s things,” Pix said quietly. “His parents have asked me to box up his room so they wouldn’t have to do it. It’s the least I can do.”

  There was a key on the table with a cardboard tag hanging off it that said 6. The key to Hayes’s room.

  “Are you doing that tonight?” Stevie said.

  “Tonight, tomorrow,” Pix said. “I have a meeting in half an hour and I’ll probably start afterward. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Stevie said. “Fine.”

  Back in her room, Stevie considered this development. Hayes’s things would be gone soon. Which meant information would be gone. Not that she needed information. It’s just that something . . . something . . . something was wrong. And the answers to what was wrong might be up in his room. For example, maybe there was an answer about The End of It All?

  What would that give her, though?

  Stevie paced. She walked around the room, staring at the edge of her case board peering out from under her bed. No good had come of her looking in rooms upstairs, but . . .

  Stevie returned to the common room.

  “You know,” she said to Pix, “I feel like I need to help. Can I put together these boxes?”

  “Sure,” Pix said. “Sure. That would be great, Stevie.”

  Stevie smiled the smile of the lying and took Pix’s seat at the table. The key to Minerva Six was next to her.

  “I’ll head off,” Pix said, grabbing her field jacket from the hook by the door and covering her peach-fuzz head with a woolen hat. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Stevie said. “It’s just good to have a project.”

  “I get that,” Pix said. “Back soon.”

  As soon as she was gone, Stevie took the key.

  Hayes’s room was dark when Stevie let herself in. The curtain was drawn. There was a towel hanging on the back of the door. She set this by the crack at the bottom of the door to keep light from escaping, in case anyone came by. She slipped her shoes off to lessen the sound of her steps on the floor, then stepped gently across the room to Hayes’s desk, turned on the desk light, swiveled Hayes’s chair toward the center of the room, and sat down.

  Yes, she was going through another room. But her reasons were good, and that was what mattered. She was here because something about Hayes’s death was bothering her, and Hayes couldn’t do anything to help himself.

  That sounded like a good excuse.

  The first step was to take in the scene—not looking for anything in particular. Just to take it in, as it was. She allowed herself to gently spin in the chair, getting a panoramic view.

  This was how Hayes left things in his life. He had come to his room to prepare for the show. His bed appeared to have been made, but then disturbed. The top blanket was twisted and pulled up. Hayes’s desk was a dumping ground for all kinds of things—computer, hair products, cables, camera, microphone, piles of fan mail and fan art. There was a bag from a bookstore sitting on the desk shelf. Stevie picked this up and pulled out the contents. Four books on acting, all apparently unread, a receipt sticking out of the top of one of them. The books had been purchased at a store in New York on August 26, just a few days before Hayes went back to school. There was another bag of books on the floor. These were all plays: David Mamet. Sam Shepard. Tony Kushner. Tom Stoppard. Arthur Miller. Shakespeare.

  “What a dudely selection,” she said to herself. She ran a finger along the spines for cracking or signs of use. There were none.

  Into the desk drawers. The first one contained sticky notes, packs of good-quality pens, three Moleskine notebooks. With the exception of one notebook and one pack of pens, all were still wrapped, and only one pen had been removed. The next drawer, a bigger one, contained mostly cables. The last drawer was empty.

  She made her way around the room clockwise. The bureau was piled with bath and styling products, all in disarray. She had a brief look in the drawers. She examined a drawer of colorful boxers. She pushed these to the side, looked for anything underneath. Nothing remarkable. The same went for a drawer of T-shirts, another of socks. Around to the closet, which was already partially open. His clothes all looked fairly new, all normal labels like J. Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch. Mall brands, but the more expensive ones.

  On the mantel were several containers of Ben Nye stage makeup—most sti
ll open, with powder spilled onto the black surface. There was silver-gray hair liquid, buff powder, spirit gum, bone wax, latex, pancake base, pencils of various colors, blood capsules, used sponges and brushes, and weird little pieces of fake skin. A comb was stained silver from the hair treatment. There was a kit on the floor that looked like a tackle box that had even more makeup inside. It was all messy, but it was professional.

  The fan art—that was the main feature of the room. It took up two walls. Stevie examined it all under the tiny glow of her phone flashlight. Most of it was drawings of Hayes as Logan. So many drawings. Some in black-and-white pencil, some in color. Some were rough and amateur, but some were of a very high quality. There were also letters, poems, photos of Hayes with fans, hearts, cards . . . every variety of paper communication was there. The larger objects were on the floor or the fireplace—stuffed animals, cross-stitch, a model of the End of It All set with a tiny Hayes in clay.

  Hayes’s room was, in short, a tribute to Hayes. Riddle, riddle, on the wall, who’s most famous of them all?

  She took pictures of it all, starting in one corner of the room and working section by section. It took about half an hour to do it all. By the end, she had a fairly clear picture of someone who was interested in the business of being Hayes.

  Stevie turned her attention to Hayes’s computer. The top had a thick patina of stickers—again, mostly for Hayes’s show, but a few for online channels and skiing. There was a scrape down the front as well. Hayes hadn’t been too careful with the laptop, clearly. There were very few files on the computer. One was marked IDEAS. She opened up a text document that simply read:

  Summer camp that trains killers

  Camp that trains spies

  Spies who

  Camp?

  A world where you can

  The list ended here.

  “I think Hayes was out of ideas,” she said to herself.

  She did a search on his computer for files related to The End of It All. There were loads of emails, but only a few video files—one long one and lots of short ones of similar size, as if the long one had been cut up. The main one was dated June 4, and the others June 9–14.