White Rabbit

by Caleb Roehrig

  “But what happened?” I repeat impatiently. “What did you tell the police?”

  “What we agreed.” She flicks some ash off her cigarette, her expression unreadable. “They kept saying my story ‘didn’t match up’ with the one you guys told, but they wouldn’t be more specific. I figured they were bullshitting.”

  It’s a question, I realize. “They were. They must’ve been. I said exactly what we talked about, and then Peter sort of intervened, so the detective didn’t get much of a chance to cross-examine me. I don’t know if he believed it all, but I stuck to the script.”

  “I told them who my dad was, and they basically just took down what I said and thanked me for helping,” Sebastian puts in. “The officer I spoke to played hockey for the Catamounts my dad’s first year at the university. Being the son of Dominic Williams has its upsides. Sometimes.”

  “Well, anyway.” April blows out another cloud of smoke. “I was in there for more than a fucking hour, saying the same stuff over and over again until they finally told us I could go because they didn’t have enough evidence to arrest me. Yet.” She looks down at her hands. “I’m not supposed to leave town, though. It’s so fucked up. This whole thing is so fucked up.”

  “Somebody burned Fox’s house down,” I blurt at last, wondering how long we have before Peter and Isabel come out and our time to confer is officially over. “Apparently it happened while we were going around and talking to everybody. As far as they know, you were still at the lake house, so they can’t tie it to you.”

  April stares at me. “What?”

  “And Arlo’s dead,” Sebastian adds. Her head swivels sharply in his direction, her eyes popping open wider. “We found him at his house. I guess he and Lia went back out to South Hero after they left the first time, and Arlo must’ve seen what happened to Fox. We think he was planning to blackmail whoever did it, only—”

  “Then that’s why they let me go.” April gazes up at us, astonished. “It has to be. I mean, I was practically in jail—there’s no way I killed Arlo and did whatever to Fox’s house when they had me locked up in there. All that ‘don’t leave town’ stuff was probably because they didn’t want to admit they were wrong! Does this mean it’s over?”

  “Maybe.” I can see hope making a desperate break for freedom in her expression, and I really don’t want to be the guy to point out that relief is a little premature. There’s no question in my mind that Fox’s and Arlo’s deaths are tied together, but who knows how long it could take the police to establish that fact—and to realize that April couldn’t have been responsible? “Don’t forget that what happened to Fox is technically in the jurisdiction of the South Hero police—”

  “The Grand Isle Sheriff’s Department,” April corrects glumly. “They only mentioned it to me, like, eighteen times.”

  “Well, we’ll probably have to speak with them, too—all of us—before they’ll even think about officially clearing you.”

  “Awesome.” April nods sarcastically, letting out a puff of smoke. Her eyes play over me, then narrow. “This is an interesting look. What happened to your other shirt?” Her tone is neutral, but I can see curiosity waking up in her eyes as she gestures at the jersey I’m wearing. There is, of course, actually a reasonable explanation for why I had to change, but I fumble my chance to give it; my first instinct is to look over at Sebastian, my cheeks turning pink with heat, and April reads deftly between the lines. “Wait. WAIT. No. Way. No way! You two aren’t … I mean, are you?”

  “It’s not— Look, I had to change my shirt because—”

  “It’s cool, Rufe,” Sebastian says quietly. “I told you I’m okay with it.” He faces April, looking about as relaxed as a cat drowning in a toilet. “Um, yeah. Actually, me and Rufus are … you know. Um … together.”

  “Holy shit!” April claps a hand over her mouth, squeals, and does a weird little dance; then she tosses her arms out wide, and announces, “Welcome to the family!” Pulling Sebastian into a totally unexpected hug, she makes a conspiratorial OMG face at me behind his back. “I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out when we were riding around and you two were arguing like old ladies. My head must’ve been, like, two miles up my own ass.”

  “You had a pretty good excuse.” My cheeks still feel ridiculously warm.

  “Well, I won’t tell anybody if you don’t want me to,” she swears. “We all know you guys are keeping enough secrets for me.”

  “It’s okay.” Sebastian takes a breath. “It’s okay if you want to tell people.”

  And then all of a sudden, she seems to register what we said earlier. “Wait. You guys went back to Arlo’s?”

  “Yeah.” For some reason, I don’t want to tell her about the agreement I made with Isabel, so I just say, “We knew there was something Lia was holding back, so we talked to her again—and when we told her what happened to Fox, she finally admitted that she and Arlo had returned to the cottage after everybody else left.”

  “Apparently, Arlo saw something in the kitchen while they were there,” Sebastian continues. “The reason we went over to his place was to ask about it, but…”

  “But he was dead?” April predicts dismally, and Sebastian nods. My sister’s forehead ladders with anxiety and she tosses her hands out, smoke twisting off her cigarette and melting into the mist. “What the hell is going on?” She rubs her eyes, and then asks, “Is Lia doing okay?”

  “Yeah, more or less. She flipped when we told her about Arlo, but she was holding it together when we left.”

  “Did she know?” April studies our faces, her tone shrewd. “About Fox, I mean. If Arlo saw something, then he must’ve—”

  “He didn’t.” I cut her off. “Or, she says he didn’t. She heard it from Hayden.”

  “Hayden? Why the hell was he—” She interrupts herself this time, waving the question off into the night. “Never mind—I don’t wanna know. Nothing about tonight makes any sense.” Then, with a mirthless smirk, April mutters, “She must’ve been thrilled when she found out, though.”

  I frown. “What do you mean? Why would she be thrilled?”

  April freezes up, flustered, like someone who’s just been caught out. “Well, Lia wasn’t exactly … She was really pissed at Fox tonight. That’s all.”

  “Okay.” My scalp starts prickling again. “Care to elaborate on that?”

  April sighs unhappily. “Sometimes Fox and Lia rubbed each other the wrong way, you know? They’d bicker or whatever, and then get over it. But tonight…” She trails off, pursing her lips and glancing to the side. “Tonight she found out that Fox had been selling pills to Javi, and she kinda went apeshit on him.”

  “Javi?” Sebastian blinks so fast it’s like he’s trying to send a message in Morse code. “You mean ‘Javi’ as in ‘Javier Santos’?”

  “Lia’s brother?” I hazard.

  “He’s fucking thirteen years old!” Sebastian explodes. “He’s in the eighth grade! Fox was seriously selling drugs to middle school kids?”

  “I didn’t know anything about it,” April declares firmly. “Arlo was still pissed after he and Fox finished pounding on each other, so he told Lia the whole story, and she went fucking bananas on Fox; hitting him, calling him names in Spanish … the whole deal. Anyway, he just laughed her off. Told her to, and I quote, ‘Go suck a few dicks and calm down.’ That’s why she made sure I knew all about what happened between Fox and Peyton. Another little secret Arlo had decided he didn’t have to keep to himself anymore.”

  “April.” I stare at her in disbelief, trying to figure out what the hell is going on behind those guileless blue eyes of hers. “Why didn’t you tell us any of this? We were supposed to be trying to prove that somebody else might’ve done it—you paid me two grand to find proof that somebody else might’ve done it—and you didn’t think to point out that Lia had a really good reason to hate Fox?”

  “She was pissed off!” April exclaims. “That doesn’t mean she killed him. She got her revenge by m
aking me want to kill him, remember? If I’d told you about the one thing, I’d have had to tell you about the other, and that part makes me look guilty.” She sucks in some air. “Besides, I was sure it was Arlo. You were sure it was Arlo.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. Her reasoning doesn’t make sense, and there’s a defensiveness in her tone that’s causing my hackles to rise. “She had a motive, April. Why the hell wouldn’t you want us to know that?”

  “I had a motive, Rufus, remember?” she retorts sarcastically, chucking her cigarette to the ground. Then, squeezing her eyes shut, she leans back and exhales through her nose. “When I found out that Peyton had fucked my boyfriend, I really lost it, okay? I mean, really. Way more than Lia. I went for Peyton, just like I said, but after she ran out of the house—like a damn coward—I … I went for Fox, too.” She opens her eyes and sets her jaw, defiant. “I threatened him. With the butcher knife.”

  “You mean…” I try to get my head around this. “You mean the knife we found in your hand when we got to the lake house tonight? The one that killed him?”

  “Yes, obviously,” April snaps in a harsh stage whisper, her eyes shooting to the door of the station, making certain we remain unobserved. “I told him I was gonna cut his balls off, and I made sure he believed me. Lia was the only one who saw me do it, though. She’s the only one who knows. And I was afraid that if I sold her out—”

  “—she’d sell you out right back,” I conclude wearily. I feel like a dog tied to a stake, running in furious circles and never getting anywhere.

  Sniffing, she adds, “And I really thought it was Arlo.”

  “You could’ve told us.”

  “You kept saying we had to go to the cops.” She thrusts her hand at me. “I knew you didn’t want to believe I was innocent, so the last thing I was about to do was tell you how I’d pulled that knife on Fox. I needed you to take me seriously.”

  We all eye each other for an unfriendly moment, and then my shoulders sag. Once again, she’s got a point—the same rage that flows through my veins flows through hers, and I know exactly how far beyond reason it can push you. While crushed in the grip of my anger, I’ve raved, destroyed things, hurt people; if I’d heard the whole story, after finding her the way we did tonight, I might never have let her buy my assistance.

  “Well, what’s done is done,” I finally remark, still unable to keep the acid out of my voice. “It’s too late to go to the cops and change your story now.”

  “You know,” she begins quietly, staring off into the swirling fog that turns Battery Park into a depthless, gray sea on the other side of the lot. “I’m not sure I even would. I think I’m kinda starting to realize that Fox was never who I thought he was. He cheated on me, screwed his best friend’s girlfriend, sold drugs to kids … if Lia did kill him, I wouldn’t blame her. And as long as I don’t take the fall for it, maybe I don’t even care, either.” April faces me again, her gaze level and cold. “Maybe Fox deserved it.”

  21

  Sebastian doesn’t speak a word as we cross the pavement and get into the Jeep; he doesn’t speak as he turns the engine over, as he starts for the exit, or even as April waves good-bye, disappearing into the fog and shadows that thicken behind us as we drive away, the desolation of afterhours Burlington almost sinister in its totality.

  Finally, however, the tension that fills the cab—heavy and unbreathable as wet cement—becomes too much for him to bear. “She didn’t do it.”

  “Sebastian—”

  “I’m telling you, Rufus: Lia. Didn’t. Do it.” We stop at a red light, and he turns to face me, his expression apprehensive but earnest. “I know stuff is … complicated for us when it comes to her—and I know that’s my fault—but seriously. This isn’t just me refusing to admit she’s got flaws and stuff. She does. But I know her, Rufe; I’ve known her for a long time, and she’s just not capable of something like this.”

  “We still need to talk to her,” I answer him carefully. I’ve spent weeks resenting Lia, embittered by what I believed was Sebastian’s happiness with her; but now that I have him back again—now that I know the truth of how he feels about me—I no longer experience a reflexive surge of ugly jealousy when her name comes up. For his sake, I even want to believe his assessment of her character … but I’m just not sure I can. “We need to hear what she has to say.”

  “What can she say?” he counters. “Fox was selling pills to her kid brother! Anybody in her position would’ve gone apeshit on his ass—so what? Lia’s got a temper, but she’s not Hayden. I guarantee you she ripped Fox a new asshole, put his secrets on blast, dropped the mic, and then walked out the door; that’s her style. She’s not a killer.”

  “According to Peyton, she was the last one to leave the house,” I remind him, although I don’t feel very good about it. “And we only have her word for what happened when she and Arlo went back there.”

  “Are you serious?” He screws up his eyebrows in irritation. The light turns green while he’s staring at me, and when I gesture to it, he hits the gas pedal angrily. “You really think she stabbed Fox, staged the crime scene, and then just waltzed out and hopped on Arlo’s bike? Or maybe when he went back to settle things with Fox, she ran in first and beat him to it.”

  “I don’t think anything yet,” I say as calmly as I can, trying not to become frustrated by the sarcasm in his tone. “I’m just observing the facts.”

  “Yeah, well, there are a lot of ‘facts’ that you’re not observing. Like, how about the fact that Fox was banging Peyton, and that Race found out about it and tried to kick the guy’s ass in half—and we still haven’t done anything to rule him out. Maybe we should be going over to his place right now. Lia and Arlo passed him on the road; maybe he turned around after that and went back to the cottage before they did!”

  “Maybe.” I swear I don’t want to argue with him, but he’s making it extremely difficult not to. “But Peyton was behind him, remember? She’d have seen him if he doubled back, but she confirmed what Race said about the two of them driving straight to the Atwoods’ house after the party broke up.”

  “She could be lying for him. She was sleeping with the guy’s best friend—maybe she feels responsible for what happened, and thinks she owes it to Race to keep him out of trouble.”

  “She’d have to feel pretty damn guilty to help Race cover up a murder he committed. I don’t see it. Not to sound judgmental or anything? But I’m not sure Peyton Forsyth is even capable of that much remorse. In the fifth grade, she literally stole a bunch of valentines from a disabled girl, and then had her mother complain to the school board when our teacher punished her for it.”

  “I’m being serious, Rufus.”

  “So am I!” I pick through my words. “Look: I agree that we still need to follow up on Race and Peyton, and if you say Lia couldn’t have done it, I’ll try to give her the benefit of the doubt—for you. But she’s kept a lot of stuff from us tonight, and we need to get to the bottom of it before we can just scratch her off the list. That’s all I’m saying.”

  The problem, of course, is that there’s so much more to say.

  Like how we only found Arlo’s body because Lia sent us to his house; like how it was only after she knew we knew that the guy was too dead to confirm or deny her version of events that she told us about the return trip to the cottage; like how we also only had her word that she learned of Fox’s death from Hayden—or that Hayden even went to her house at all tonight—and that he was the one who left the bruises on her arms. Said and done, for all we know, she got them while murdering Arlo.

  It’s definitely worth remembering that Arlo had been sitting on his porch with a rifle all night, apparently expecting trouble … and yet his killer managed to get close enough to slit his throat. How? There are a lot of reasons that math doesn’t make sense, and only a couple of likely solutions. If Lia told us the truth about the trip back to the cottage, then for some reason Arlo had to have let his killer talk him into putt
ing his weapon down; if she was lying to us … well, then, the only conclusion worth jumping to is that she’s the murderer.

  The idea doesn’t please me. Sebastian and I are just starting over, and I really don’t want Lia to be an obstacle between us again—I really don’t want to kick off our reconciliation with another stupid fight. But the fact of it is, I can’t help seeing a pattern of manipulation in the way that Lia has disclosed information to us. When we were clumsily fishing for motives for Fox’s murder, she directed us to Arlo while making it seem like she was trying to defend him; then, once Arlo was dead, she openly directed us to Hayden. Maybe she’d even directed Hayden straight to Lyle Shetland, hoping that my brother would get himself killed and tie up all her loose ends for her.

  Unable to say any of that out loud, I keep my mouth shut until we’re at the curb in front of the Santos house again, both of us struggling for something neutral to say. Nothing appears to have changed since our previous visit, and Sebastian fires off a short text announcing our arrival, then falls into step beside me as we make our way to the basement door.

  Lia lets us inside, barely allowing us to clear the threshold before slamming the door closed again and twisting the deadbolt into place. She looks terrible, dark circles expanding under her eyes, and I smell alcohol on her breath as she whispers, “What happened? Did you find Lyle? Did you talk to him?”

  “Sort of. I mean, not exactly,” Sebastian hedges uncomfortably, his body tense and his gaze aimed at the floor. Just like that, I realize that in spite of all his arguments in the car, he’s got his doubts about her innocence, too. “Have you heard from Hayden?”

  “No, thank God.” Lia shifts from one foot to another. “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? Did you talk to Lyle or didn’t you?”

  “It’s complicated.” Sebastian scratches his elbow.