Little Secrets

by Anna Snoekstra

  “Bang,” she said, pretending to shoot.

  “You shouldn’t play with that,” he said.

  The gun felt heavy in her hand. But still, it was amazing to think it could take a life. That you’d just need to squeeze your finger to kill someone.

  “Have you ever shot someone?”

  “Yeah.”

  That surprised her. “Killed someone?”

  “Nah.”

  She was glad of that. His hands would feel different on her body if they’d killed. Turning the gun over in her hand, she wondered what it would be like to be the cause of someone else’s death. To end a life.

  “I wonder what it would be like,” she said out loud.

  “To kill someone?”

  “Mmm.”

  His warm hands ran up the flesh of her legs, him barely looking at her as he said “Frank has.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “How horrible.”

  It didn’t seem possible that Frank could have killed someone and still seem so normal. Still just be that short, sweet guy who sat in the corner and got too drunk at closing. But then she thought of the way he’d panted, standing over Steve’s body. That look in his eyes, like somehow, he was enjoying it. But still, killing someone was different. If someone had taken a life it should color them. It should be something that everyone could see, a stain.

  Mia carefully pushed the gun back into Bazza’s holster. She didn’t want the thing in her hands anymore. She knew that if she were to kill someone, she’d have to stop living. It wouldn’t matter what they had done.

  “Frank kind of scared me last night,” she admitted. “I’ve never seen him like that before.”

  “He was just doing what he thought was right,” Baz said.

  Mia shrugged. “I know. But Rose said they really messed him up after we left.”

  “Yeah.” He brushed a hand over his face. “To be honest, I think it went too far. It got out of hand.”

  Mia kissed him on the cheek. She knew he was different, not like other guys. She sat up and pulled back on her dress, despite Baz’s painful groans of objection. Right now, those blue balls were working in her favor.

  She smiled at Baz over her shoulder. “Back in a sec.”

  Going to the bathroom, she knocked on the door.

  “Time to get out,” she called, before opening it.

  It took a moment for her eyes to make sense of what she was seeing.

  The hair dryer was floating in the bath. Her father was straining with effort, leaning forward, his walking stick at a right angle in the air. He was trying to flick on the power switch. His tear-streaked face was determined.

  “Don’t!”

  She rushed forward and pulled the hair-dryer cord out, fished it out of the bath and put it on the wet tiles. She wrapped her arms around her father. His bare skin was so hot against her arms. Her dress was drenched from the water and his sweat. He was crying quietly, shaking in her arms. She wanted to cry too. If she’d just taken thirty seconds longer she might have found him jerking, steam rising. Mia swallowed.

  “I’m going to make things better for us,” she told him quietly, “I promise.”

  28

  Bazza and Mia kissed passionately in a corner. Frank ignored them. He had been trying to get Rose’s attention all evening. He hadn’t slept a wink last night. Rose’s face screaming in his, Steve’s blood dripping off the tip of her nose, kept appearing on the backs of his eyelids.

  He didn’t feel remorse over what they’d done to that homo, no. But Rose was pure. She was innocent and he hated thinking that she had seen the side of his personality that thoroughly enjoyed cracking the ribs of people who tried to destroy his town.

  He approached her as she leaned over a table, wiping it down. The angle of her neck was so perfect, every part of him wanted to touch it.

  “Rose? I’m sorry.”

  She ignored him, just moved on to the next table and continued wiping.

  “You shouldn’t have had to see that,” he said to the back of her head.

  She didn’t even turn around when she spoke. “He didn’t do it, did he?”

  “Does it matter?” he asked. The way he saw it, Steve had been a kiddie fiddler waiting to happen. People were always going on about prevention, and that was exactly what he had done by putting that pervert in the hospital.

  Frank stared at Rose’s back, wishing there was something he could say. Something that would bring them back to the moment they had shared outside the café less than a week ago.

  A stray hair clung to her shoulder, glinting in the light. He plucked it tenderly.

  “I’ve got to know. Was it Baz?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Baz told Mia what was written in the note and she told you, right?”

  Rose turned to Frank and looked at him like he was dirt. “Does it matter?”

  “I guess not.”

  She turned back to the table. He would have to give her time to calm down. She would come around eventually.

  He’d had the shittiest of days. He’d been trying to sort out this crap with the fires, but it was way outside his know-how. Worst of all was the house call he’d had to make to the Rileys. He’d promised the wife he’d find the pyro. Now it looked like it was just some stupid dare among a bunch of kids. He’d already told Mr. Riley that, said the case had been passed on to child services, that rehabilitation was better than punishment, but the man had insisted he was wrong and who was Frank to argue? If he was going to argue with anyone, it wouldn’t be that guy anyway. Frank could see how tight his fist had been clenched on the table, how white his knuckles. Worst of all, they still didn’t have any rock-solid evidence. All he had was the loose lips of that little shit Denny, and he wasn’t saying another word.

  “Come on, Baz,” he said, taking out his car keys and jingling them as he headed for the door.

  Bazza extracted himself from Mia, following Frank like the obedient dog he was.

  * * *

  Jean was barely out the door when Rose came around the back, straight to Will’s room. She’d been thinking about him all day. It was terrible; there were so many other things she should be focusing on, but her head kept coming back around to him. She’d been to the shop and, red faced, bought a packet of condoms. It had been a long time since she’d had sex—years. She’d been so determined not to put any roots down in Colmstock that she hadn’t done a lot of dating. Plus, none of the guys in town had ever been very appealing. But this was different. She couldn’t focus on anything else but him all day, couldn’t think straight.

  She rapped a knuckle on his door.

  “Hi,” she said, when he opened it.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, face formal.

  She couldn’t believe it. Was he really going to do this? Was he going to act like nothing had happened between them last night? Then he broke into a smile, grabbed her arm and pulled her into his room.

  “What time do you call this? I’ve been waiting for you all day,” he said, closing the door. Then his mouth was on hers, his hands were in her hair. They made it to the bed, and her legs wrapped around his waist. His body pressed her into the mattress, all his weight on her, and he was heavy but she wanted more. She wanted to be even closer to him, to put her hands through his skin.

  She reached down to undo the top button of his jeans.

  He closed his eyes, his forehead pressing against hers. “You really are a go-getter, aren’t you?”

  “Apparently I’m trouble.”

  She slipped her hand under the tight line of his underwear, feeling the searing hot flesh underneath. She bit his earlobe, tightened her teeth slightly. Underneath her hands, she could feel a tremble going through his body.


  He pulled her shorts off and then stood to remove his own clothes. Rose ripped the condom packet she’d had in her pocket open, took out the little white circle. He sat down on the bed and she swung on top of him, one knee on either side of his hips, and rolled the condom on.

  “Hi,” she said, nervous all of a sudden, her face so close to his, so close she could see the tiny flecks of different shades of brown in his eyes.

  He grinned, pulled her face to his and kissed her again, one hand tangled in her hair, the other stroking down her spine. She pushed him inside her slowly, then sat down hard, the impact of his body against hers making her want to scream with relief. They moved together, and she pulled off her singlet and bra, wanting to feel his warm flesh against hers. He gripped her waist.

  “I’ve got to slow down,” he whispered.

  “No.” She grabbed the skin of his lower back, pushed him deeper, so deep it almost hurt. She didn’t care if it was over too soon. They had all night.

  * * *

  Rose woke with a start. It was time. The ceiling fan revolved above her head. She watched as the reflection from the streetlight slid around on its shiny plastic surface. After another ten minutes of listening to Will’s breathing, making sure he was truly asleep, Rose carefully got out of the bed. She sat on the edge, waiting, making sure her movement didn’t wake him. She dressed in the dark, slid her feet into the shoes waiting at the side of the bed and slung her bag over her shoulder.

  As she walked through the tavern, she picked up the pink rubber gloves from next to the sink. She stood still on the footpath. It was almost four in the morning now and the street was totally empty. The only movement came from inside the police station. The white fluorescents were on in there. There were a few cops inside, the poor souls on night duty. They worked, hunchbacked on computers, or just stared into their cups of coffee in the break room.

  Within an hour, the place would be blazing with action. Now it was the slow pace of any other uneventful night. Just the occasional callouts to domestic disputes—although if you had seen one woman lying through her bruises you’d seen them all. There would be a car crash, as reliable as clockwork, but if you’d seen one head smashed into a steering wheel you’d seen them all.

  If the blinds of the incident room had been open, Rose would have seen the board mocked up with the photographs of five young girls and five identical dolls. The first note taped up in the center, scrawling handwriting on a piece of blue-lined paper.

  Rose reached a pink rubber hand into her bag, very carefully withdrawing a plastic sleeve. From within the sleeve, she removed a piece of blue-lined paper, covered in scrawl. A sibling to the one taped up on the board inside the incident room, though this one had taken her even longer to write. Carefully, so carefully, she folded it in half.

  PART 4

  Liars prosper.

  —Unknown

  29

  “Posey!”

  Laura ran toward her from the school gates.

  “Want to go to the library?”

  “Yeah!” Laura said, taking her hand.

  “How was your day?”

  “It was okay, but they canceled our excursion to go to the museum.” Laura kicked at a rock.

  “Why?”

  “Dunno. Cos they’re dum-dums.”

  Rose laughed. “But what was the reason they gave you?”

  “Umm...” The little girl thought hard. “They said they needed more supervision because of recently events.”

  “Recent events?”

  “Yeah! But really it’s because they’re dum-dums. Tara said she was happy because she gets bus sick and because it’s three hours she would definitely get sick.”

  “Did you want to go?”

  Rose hoped she’d say no. She hadn’t thought about her articles this way. She knew they affected the cops, but she hated them now anyway. She hoped Frank popped a blood vessel trying to decode her note. But she’d never in a million years thought it would affect the school.

  “Yeah,” said Laura, “but mostly because I wanted to see Tara puke.”

  “Ewww!” Rose said, jokingly.

  “I bet it would have gone everywhere! It would have been so gross!”

  * * *

  The kids section of the library was empty. This was rare; usually after school was one of the busiest times. Today, Laura had the whole place to herself. Rose laughed as Laura rolled around on the carpet, whispering, “It’s all for me!”

  “Laura,” Rose said, reaching out to touch her, “are there any kids in your class with the last name Gerhardsson?”

  “Girl or boy?”

  “Either,” she said.

  “Nah. There’s Stephanie G., but her G is Godden.”

  Rose knew it wasn’t going to be that easy, but it was worth a try.

  “Okay, well, I’ll be back in a sec,” she told Laura. “Pick a book and I’ll read it to you.”

  “Really?” Laura’s eyes lit up and she jumped to her feet and rushed to the shelves.

  Rose went up to the mezzanine. She flicked through the books, trying to find any other mention of the Zodiac Killer. It was such a great story.

  Writing like a deranged psychopath had been harder than she’d thought. What she’d written in the note had seemed laughable, it was so over-the-top, so ridiculous. She couldn’t believe everyone thought it was for real. Still, if she was going to write another one, it had to be even more intense. She had to up the ante, somehow, if the story was going to be considered interesting enough for Sage.

  So far, her articles had been short and simple. But the Sage Review was a real, proper newspaper. Her article couldn’t be salacious. She had to make the story sound plausible. When she’d called the deputy editor and said she had got her hands on another note, he’d asked if this one showed signs of intent. The way he’d asked, she knew the answer he was looking for. She was hoping to get a bit of inspiration from the Zodiac, but there didn’t seem to be anything.

  Enjoying the quietness of the library, she leaned her head on the window. Ideas swam through her head. Creepy words and imagery that the public would eat up. Why was it that people loved such fucked-up stuff?

  The glass was hot against her head, but felt soothing. Her shoulders relaxed, her muscles loosened. She hadn’t even realized how tight she’d been holding herself. This was going to work. Everything would be fine. No one would ever find out, and even if they did, what was the worst that could happen? It was only pen and paper. Frank might yell at her but she could deal with that. She’d get a job, she’d help Will find his kid, then she’d move to the city. Maybe he would come back too after he’d worked everything out here. Mia would forgive her soon. It was all going to be fine. Slowly, when her forehead felt smooth and her muscles slack, she opened her eyes, looking down onto the charred debris of the courthouse.

  Her brow furrowed again. There was something down there that was out of place. She craned her neck, trying to get a better look. There was rubbish, silver and bright against the tones of black, in the gap between the courthouse and what was left of the storage shed. The rubbish looked like chip packets. And next to them, what looked like a dirty white T-shirt. It shouldn’t surprise her that some homeless person was desperate enough to move in for shelter but she was. It was so dangerous in there. Surely sleeping with the fossickers would be preferable; they protected their own. Her muscles tensed again.

  Laura would probably trash the children’s section if she left her much longer, so she hopped back down the stairs. Rose couldn’t help but laugh when she saw what Laura had done. The beanbags were all stacked in a corner, creating a sort of cubby house, four on the bottom and one on top as a roof.

  Rose got down on her knees. “Knock, knock.”

  “Who is it?” Laura called.

  �
��The boogeyman.”

  “Is not,” Laura said.

  Rose squeezed inside the little cavern. Laura was sitting next to a pile of books. The light looked orange in there, shining through the gaps between the red beanbags.

  “You have to read all of them,” said Laura, pointing to the pile.

  “Okay,” Rose said; she wanted to make up for the canceled excursion, even if it was just that Laura missed out on seeing some poor girl puke. She picked up the first book, Fitcher’s Bird, and began to read.

  * * *

  When she finished, they bundled up Laura’s books and went to the counter.

  “You’ve got your library card?” Rose asked her.

  “Yes.” Laura put her backpack onto the floor and began shuffling through it, pushing aside her exercise books and a lunch box. Rose wondered what Laura’s lunch was like now that she wasn’t at home to make it. The bread of her sandwiches was probably torn and holey. Laura held the library card up to her, smiling widely as though she had genuinely been worried that her schoolbag might have eaten it.

  Rose handed her the two picture books back. “Now give these to the lady behind the counter.”

  She was trying to encourage Laura to do these things for herself now that she was getting a bit older. Growing up in that house, the kid was going to have to learn to be self-sufficient fast.

  The two of them stood side by side in front of the counter. The librarian was scanning books; the mechanical process of the way her hands moved without really looking at them reminded Rose of drying dishes in the tavern. She waited with Laura, knowing how annoying it was to be constantly interrupted while you were trying to finish a menial task, but when the stack of books was done the woman started on another.

  “Hi,” she said, thinking that perhaps the librarian just hadn’t noticed them. The woman considered them, her face hard, and then went back to the books. Laura looked up at Rose, unsure, her library card still in her outstretched hand.

  “Can my sister please borrow these books?” Rose asked and then jumped as the woman banged the pile down, came over and ripped the card out of Laura’s hand. The librarian put the two picture books through quickly, not even looking at them.