'OK.'
'Door County,' Amy added. 'That's not even an hour away from us.'
'Where are you going with this?'
'I don't know.'
'Did you know her? Was she on one of the dance teams from the other schools?'
Amy shook her head. 'No.'
'Then what's up with you?'
'It's just a feeling.'
Amy took out her phone again and ran a Google search to see if any other newspapers had picked up the story. She saw that the Milwaukee paper had already filed a report on the murder. Local girl killed on vacation - that was big news back home. The Journal Sentinel reporter had tracked down a yearbook photo of Glory Fischer that was posted with the article. Amy stared at the dead girl's face, and her sense of unease grew. She told herself that she'd made a mistake and that she was confusing Glory with someone else, but she didn't think so.
Glory was the girl she'd seen. The one Gary was talking to. She'd seen them together that Friday night.
'What's wrong?' Katie asked.
'I recognize her,' Amy said.
'The girl who was killed?'
'I saw her. I remember her from the hotel.'
Katie looked dubious. She grabbed Amy's phone again and eyed Glory's picture herself. 'Are you sure? Yearbook pictures make everybody look like everybody else.'
'I know, but I think it was her.'
Katie closed the cover of her laptop and shifted in her seat so she was sideways. She pulled her skinny legs underneath her. She was medium height and lean compared to Amy, who had a big-boned, muscular frame. Katie poked Amy in the shoulder.
'OK, so you saw her. I know it's creepy.'
'It's not just that. It's who I saw her with.' 'Who?'
Amy opened her mouth and closed it. Her eyes darted around the bus to see if he was nearby, and her full pink lips sank into a frown. 'This is crazy. I must be wrong.'
'Come on, you're freaking me out, Ames.'
'It's nothing,' Amy insisted. 'Write your article.'
'Tell me.'
'There's nothing to tell. I'm a dork.'
'You think that's news to me? Spill it. What did you see?'
'Forget it. You've got a deadline. I'm going to sleep.' Amy gave her it hollow smile.
She waited until her roommate was typing again, and then she closed her eyes. Her blond curls splashed across her face. She tried to convince herself that she was being stupid. She wasn't sure of anything; she'd made a mistake. Or if she hadn't made a mistake, maybe it didn't mean anything at all. What she'd seen, what she'd heard, was a misunderstanding.
She breathed slowly in and out. She was certain she wouldn't be able to sleep, but the vibrations and noise worked on her brain like 11 drug. Glory Fischer went away. The bus went away. She was back at school in Green Bay.
In her dream, Amy practiced a dance routine, solo, in the center of the gymnasium, moving to the beat of a song by Kristina DeBarge. She knew her moves were feline and sexy, and she wished she had a crowd to admire her, but the gym was almost deserted. She could see only one person in the uppermost row of the bleachers, almost invisible in the shadows, and she realized it was her old dance teacher from high school in Chicago. Hilary Bradley. She hadn't seen Hilary in years, but she looked the same, still pretty and confident, exactly the kind of woman Amy wanted to become. Hilary waved at her and cheered.
Seeing Hilary made Amy want to hit every step, to show off how good she was. She wanted to dazzle her and make her proud. Instead, she felt her body lose the rhythm of the music. Every motion felt awkward and clumsy. It was as if she couldn't remember dancing before in her life, as if her mind had erased every move she'd ever learned. She stuttered. Tripped. Stopped. Her face grew hot and red with embarrassment. She stood in the center of the lacquered floor, frozen.
The music ended. The gym had an echoing silence. She stared up at Hilary and wanted to shout an apology to her for failing, but Hilary was gone. The bleachers were empty.
She heard sarcastic clapping, slow and mean. She realized someone else was with her in the gym. She wasn't alone.
It was him. Her coach. Gary Jensen.
Gary walked toward her. He wore a black turtleneck and gray slacks. His black dress shoes tapped on the floor. He smiled at her, but his smile was like the snarl of a wolf. She heard herself begin to explain and ask for another chance, but he said nothing at all. He came up to her until he was so close that she smelled burnt coffee on his breath, and then, still smiling, he wrapped both hands firmly around her neck and began to choke her. His fingers were strong. Amy struggled. Pushed back. Fought. She tried to scream and couldn't. She waved at the bleachers, but no one was there to rescue her. Amy sucked for breath and found nothing. Her eyes closed.
Then they opened.
Amy awoke with a start, lurching forward, her heart racing. She was back on the bus, which rattled on as if nothing had happened while she was gone. Outside, she saw highway signs for Nashville. She'd been asleep for almost two hours. The other girls on the bus were still sleeping, too, their tousled heads dipping off the seats into the aisles. Beside her, Katie dozed, her article finished, her laptop closed and packed away.
Amy cupped her hands over her face. The dream had unnerved her.
'You OK?'
Amy jumped as a hand touched her arm. She looked up and saw Gary Jensen standing over her, and she recoiled. He smiled at her, and it was the same hideous smile from her dream. His hand on her bare skin was warm. She had to remind herself that it wasn't real. He hadn't been trying to kill her a moment ago.
'Oh,' she said. 'Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Bad dream.'
'Take it easy, Amy,' he said. 'We'll be stopping for a break soon.'
'Good.'
'Great job in Florida. You were a star.'
'Thanks,' she said.
Gary winked. He continued toward the front of the bus, and she watched him go. She wondered if he knew how much she disliked him. He'd been the dance coach and a physical education instructor at Green Bay ever since she'd arrived at the school three years ago from her high school in Highland Park. He knew his stuff, and as a coach he had an eye for what worked and what didn't in their routines. But that wasn't the only thing he had an eye for. The girls on the team all talked about it in the locker room. The coach was a flirt. A lech. He was in his middle forties, widowed, with a head of thinning brown hair that she knew he colored. He biked. He stayed in shape, and he made sure everyone knew it with his tight shirts and jeans. He was the kind of teacher who never made an overt pass, because the university frowned on teacher-student relationships, but you got the signal in his attitude and his grin. She'd felt the come-on when she was a freshman in the way he looked at her and touched her. If you wanted more, he had more to give.
Gary sat down near the driver and glanced back down the dark aisle of the bus and saw Amy watching him. Something in her expression obviously made him uncomfortable. Normally, she had warm blue eyes and an easy, infectious laugh, but not now. He looked as if he were about to come toward her again, with a question on his lips. Instead, he turned away and sank into his seat.
'What is it?'
Amy glanced at her roommate, who had awakened and was staring at her. It's nothing, Amy told herself.
But she didn't think it was nothing.
'I saw Gary talking to the girl who was killed,' she murmured.
'Gary? Are you sure? When?'
'Last night. Late, around eleven o'clock. I saw them on the terrace of the hotel. At first, I thought it was one of the Green Bay girls, but then I realized it wasn't.'
'Did you hear what they were talking about?'
'No, but Glory looked upset.' Amy shook her head. 'If it was really her. I just don't know.'
'All the coaches talk to the girls from different schools,' Katie reminded her.
'But this is Gary.'
'I know you don't like him, but that doesn't mean anything. I profiled him in the paper last year. He didn't seem like such a bad guy.'
'What about the thing with his wife?' Amy asked.
'Wasn't that an accident?'
'There were rumors.'
'I think you're getting paranoid.'
'There's more,' Amy said. 'There's something else.'
'What?'
Amy could see the back of Gary's head. A reading light bounced off the pate of his skull. It was almost as if he could feel her stare, because he looked up into the driver's mirror. She saw his pupils glow the way a cat's eyes shine at night, and she felt a shiver of fear as their eyes met. He reached up and turned off the light above him.
'My room was next to his,' Amy said.
'Yeah, so?'
'I couldn't sleep last night. I was awake sometime after three in the morning, and I heard footsteps in the hallway. I didn't look out, but I heard Gary's door. He was going back into his room in the middle of the night.'
* * *
Chapter Eight
Cab sipped a Starbucks iced latte through a straw and watched Tresa Fischer and Troy Geier behind the window of the interview room. It was late afternoon on Sunday, and the police headquarters building on Riverside was uncomfortably warm, the way it usually was. The counselor who had been with the two teenagers for most of the day had departed ten minutes earlier, leaving them alone. Cab had received word that Delia Fischer, Glory's mother, had landed at the Fort Myers airport, and he wanted a chance to sit down with Tresa and Troy individually before Delia arrived. He knew that once the victim's mother was in the building, the two kids would be more guarded with their answers.
He took his coffee into the interview room, where Tresa and Troy waited in silence, ignoring each other. Tresa sat at the interview table and drank a can of Diet Sprite. Troy, who was a fleshy sixteen year old, drank root beer and leaned against the wall. To Cab, the silence between them felt hostile. They weren't friends.
'Your mom's on her way,' Cab informed Tresa. 'She'll be here in an hour or so.'
Tresa didn't look happy with the news. Cab guessed that the girl would bear the brunt of guilt and blame when Delia arrived. As the older sister, she'd failed. I trusted Glory with you, and now she's dead.
'Troy, I'm going to ask you to wait outside,' Cab told the boy. 'Hang around, though, because I need to talk to you, too. Ask one of the officers to fix you up with some chips or a sandwich if you're hungry.'
Troy grunted and pushed himself off the wall. He put down his empty bottle of root beer and left the room without a word. Tresa's eyes followed him, and Cab thought his first impression about the two of them was correct. Tresa didn't like her sister's boyfriend.
Cab sat down at the interview table opposite Tresa and gave the girl a reassuring smile. At nineteen, Tresa still had a naive way about her that made her look younger than she was. She was extremely skinny for her height, which made Cab wonder if she had an eating disorder. She played with her straight red hair between her fingers and stared vacantly at the wooden table. Her pretty blue eyes were rimmed in red, and her face was marked with streaks of tears. Talking with her earlier, Cab had found her to be painfully shy, a loner without a support network of friends. He'd offered to ask some of the other dancers from River Falls to stay behind with her, but Tresa hadn't given him a single name of someone who was close to her. It was also obvious in her answers about her family that her sister Glory got most of the attention from their mother. Tresa, who was clearly artistic and smart, had been left to live in her own world.
'I know it's been a long day,' he told her. 'I appreciate you being patient with us. It probably seems like we cover the same stuff over and over, and you know what? We do. But that's usually how we find the details that help us figure out what really happened.'
'Do you have any idea who did this to Glory?' Tresa asked. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.
'I wish I could say yes, but we don't, not yet,' Cab admitted. 'I'd like to make sure that we haven't missed anything important. OK?'
Tresa nodded without enthusiasm. 'OK.'
'You came down on a university bus from River Falls with the rest of your team last Monday and Tuesday, is that right? And Troy and Glory drove down from Door County on Tuesday and Wednesday?'
'Yes, they took turns and drove straight through,' Tresa answered. 'They got here around ten o'clock Wednesday morning.'
'Did anyone else from Door County come down at the same time?'
'No.'
'Did Glory and Troy bunk with you in your room?'
'Uh huh.' She added quickly, as if her mother were already listening, 'Glory and I shared the bed, and Troy took the couch.'
Cab noticed the girl fidgeting. She was hiding things, and she wasn't good at it. 'Tresa, I need to know who your sister was, even if there's stuff that wasn't so good. Understand?'
Her eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean, teenagers do things that their parents don't always know about. I don't care about that. I just need to know if Glory was involved in anything that might have gotten her into trouble. See?' 'Yeah, I get it.'
'So it doesn't matter to me who slept in what bed, but I would like to know if Glory and Troy were having sex while they were here.'
Tresa hesitated. 'What difference does that make?'
'Maybe none at all,' Cab admitted, 'but I need to get the whole picture.'
'OK, yes.'
'You know that for a fact?'
'Yeah, I came back from practice once, and they were in bed together.' Her tone was pinched and unhappy.
'You sound like you didn't approve,' Cab said.
'It wasn't any of my business.'
'Did you not like the idea of your little sister having sex, or did you not like the idea of her having sex with Troy?'
Tresa shrugged. Her grief couldn't overcome years of sibling rivalry. 'Glory's been having sex since she was thirteen.'
'With Troy?'
'No, Troy's just the latest.'
'What about drugs?' Cab asked.
'Yeah, Glory liked to do grass. That was her, not me. I'm not into it;
'OK. How about this week? Did Glory use any drugs while she was here?'
Tresa nodded. 'She and Troy scored some on the way down. I told her not to use it in the room, because I didn't want to get in trouble. But I smelled it. I told Troy to get rid of it, but I don't know if he did.'
'You don't like him, do you?'
'Who, Troy? He's OK, just dumb. He's a stupid puppy dog, and Glory liked to yank his chain.'
'Was it serious between them?'
'He thought it was, but I don't think she did.'
'Did you see Glory with anyone else while she was at the hotel? Did she hook up with any other boys?'
'Not while I was around, but I wouldn't put it past her either.' Tresa lowered her eyes and looked guilty. 'I shouldn't talk like that. I'm sorry. You must think I'm a shitty sister.'
'No, I don't. I asked you to be honest with me.'
Tresa nodded. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
'Would Troy get jealous if he saw Glory flirting with someone else?' Cab went on.
'You mean, would he hurt her? I don't think so. Troy's a big kid, but he's a wuss. Everybody treats him like dirt.'
Cab thought that was an interesting comment. In his experience, when you poked the bear long enough, eventually it poked back. 'When you woke up early this morning and Glory wasn't in bed, was Troy in the room?'
'Yeah, he was zonked out on the couch, snoring away.'
'Was he there all night?'
'As far as I know.'
'Could he have left and come back without waking you up?'
'I don't know. I guess. I don't think he did, but I can't be sure.'
'Let's start at Saturday night and move backward, OK? I know we've covered some of this before, but bear with me. Was Glory in your room when you went to sleep?'
Tresa sighed. 'No. Last time I saw her on Saturday, she was swimming in the hotel pool. That was around nine o'clock. I went back to the
room to read. Troy came back about half an hour later by himself, because he wanted to watch a movie on HBO. I crashed around eleven thirty, and Glory wasn't back yet. Troy had already fallen asleep in front of the TV.'
'Were you worried that Glory hadn't come back?'
'No. Glory stays out late a lot.'
'Was she hanging out with anyone else at the pool?'
'Not while I was there. There were a few girls from the various teams in the water. Some guys, too. Glory didn't know any of them, but I don't know what happened after I left.'
Cab nodded. They were still trying to identify the other teenagers who'd been in the pool on Saturday night, but so far, they'd had no luck. 'You told me earlier that Glory was acting strangely on Saturday.'
'I guess so. Yeah.'
'Describe it again for me, OK?'
Tresa rubbed her eyes with both hands, fighting off exhaustion. She looked upset. Kind of angry, too. She snapped at Troy a lot during the day. I wasn't really paying attention. I was upset, too, because I choked during my performance on Friday, so I kept to myself that day. I just figured Glory was pissed off because we had to go home, you know? No more sunny Florida, back to dreary cold Wisconsin.'
'Did she say anything to you about what was bothering her?'
'Glory wouldn't do that.'
'What about on Friday? How did she seem to you then?'
'During the day, fine.'
'And at night?'
Tresa shook her head. 'I don't know. I didn't see her in the evening. I mean, I saw her right after I blew it in the competition, but I didn't want to talk. She gave me a hug, but I needed to get out of there. I don't know what she did after I split. I went off on the beach by myself, and I didn't get back to the room until real late. She was already in bed.'
'Was Troy with Glory at your performance on Friday night?'
'Troy? At a girl's dance show? No way.'
'Where was he?'
'In the room, I guess.'
'I talked to a hotel employee who saw Glory at the event center on Friday night,' Cab told her. 'He said she ran past him, and she was crying, and she looked scared. Do you have any idea why?'
The Bone House Page 6