White Rabbit

by Caleb Roehrig

  I take another step forward, my scalp and the backs of my ears prickling. “Peyton … did Race kill Fox?”

  “He must have,” she whimpers back. “It had to have … He lied for me, because I was his alibi. Because he knew I’d back him up. It’s the only thing I can figure now.” She shakes her head tearfully. “I had no idea. I didn’t even know Fox was dead, I … I only put it together later. He lied because covering for me meant I’d be covering for him.”

  I look over at Sebastian, who meets my gaze, grim-faced and ill at ease. Peyton said she never caught up to Race on the drive back to Burlington; what if that was because the guy had pulled into a driveway and killed his engine after Arlo’s bike passed, and then waited for Peyton to go by before doubling back?

  How he might’ve managed it is pretty much irrelevant, though; with everyone else’s moves accounted for, there’s no one left but Race. He must be guilty. Glancing around us, I become aware of how much time passed while Peyton was recounting her story, dawn spreading over Fernwood Park in inexorable degrees. The sun must be above the horizon by now, but the oceanic fog surrounding us is still an endless bruise, only gradually relinquishing the pale purples and blues of early morning. The prickling in my scalp takes on a new intensity. Race is at least fifteen or twenty minutes late now. Where the hell is he?

  “Peyton,” Sebastian says, nerves rubbing his voice raw, “you need to tell all this to the police.”

  “Are you nuts?” Whatever hypnotic state she was in that had compelled her to bare her soul, she just snapped out of it. “I’m not turning myself in for fucking arson—it was an accident!”

  “Then tell them that—it doesn’t even matter!” Sebastian takes a sharp breath. “Don’t you get it? You’re the only one who can implicate Race in Fox’s death—you’re not safe until you tell the cops what you know!”

  “I’m not going to prison for something I didn’t even mean to do,” she insists vehemently, not even listening, “and if you guys say anything about all this, I’ll deny it! And how am I in danger, anyway? I’m Race’s alibi, remember? He wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” my boyfriend mutters through his teeth.

  “Are you delusional?” I squint at her. “Peyton, you’re only his alibi if you’re willing to cover up a murder! And that means that you’re also the only one who can prove he doesn’t have an alibi. Look around”—I gesture at the swarming mists, the limitless blank that engulfs us—“and ask yourself what the fuck you’re doing out here! Ask yourself what your pissed-off boyfriend needs to tell you that’s so important he doesn’t want to say it over the phone or in front of witnesses!”

  “You said he also asked Lia to come,” she argues weakly.

  “Of course he did—he thinks Arlo told her what he saw when they went back to the lake house!” I expel an angry sigh, try to will my nerves to settle their clamor, try to sound calm. “Look, Peyton. As far as Race is concerned, you and Lia might be the only two people left alive who can tell the police what really happened to Fox—especially after he slit Arlo’s throat to shut him up—so are you honestly willing to bet your life on the chance that the reason he tried to lure the two of you out here is so you could coordinate your fake stories?”

  “He wouldn’t hurt me.” It’s almost a question.

  “Yeah? How’s he feel about Lia?” Sebastian interjects, his voice sharp and hot, forcing her to look him in the eye. “He got any reason to think she’d lie for him after he killed Arlo? Because something makes me doubt it.”

  She bites her lip miserably, her expression torn—caught between having to accept what we’re saying or trusting what she’d rather believe; and just as she opens her mouth to speak again, she’s interrupted. From somewhere frighteningly close, somewhere just past the point of visibility in the mist, there comes a rustle of leaves and an abrupt thud.

  All three of us whirl, briefly pinned in place by fear, our eyes huge as we stare into the gray-blue void spreading around us—and then we spring into motion at the same time. I turn and lunge for the picnic shelter, taking cover in its stubborn shadows with Sebastian a half-step behind me, my heart thudding so hard I can feel it in my jaw. Peyton, on the other hand, spins on her heel and takes off at a dead sprint in the opposite direction, vanishing almost instantly into the fog.

  “Peyton!” I hiss, but it’s no use; the soft shush of her track pants brushing together dies out, and the hazy morning fills again with an unbearable, moody silence. Sebastian moves closer, as if to prevent me from going after her; I don’t intend to—stepping back out into the open now could be suicide—but I want to, and the conflict burns in my gut. She’s the way to end this; she is the key to not only stopping Race, but maybe also saving my house from the bank. But if Race is out there …

  “What the fuck do we do?” Sebastian breathes almost silently in my ear, apparently thinking along the same track. Even the dark gloom of the shelter won’t hide us for long if Race comes looking; but running off blindly into the expanse of the park—where we can’t even see fifteen feet in any direction—won’t be much safer.

  “I don’t know,” I mouth back. Seconds tick by as I wait for something to happen, each moment an agonizing eternity, and cold sweat rolls down my back. Straining my ears, I listen for the sound of footsteps, breathing … but all is deathly quiet.

  Agitation roughens Sebastian’s voice. “Do you think that was Race?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeat, frustrated by my own indecision. If it was Race, did he go after Peyton? Or is he waiting for us to come out of hiding, so he’ll have a better shot at sneaking up on us? And what if it had just been, like, a clumsy skunk falling out of a tree? How long are we really prepared to just stand around like a couple of assholes while we wait to see if we’re about to die? “We have to get out of here.”

  “Okay.” Sebastian nods, but he makes no move to leave the protective darkness just yet, his eyes reflecting the weak, gray light that seeps in under the angled roof. “She’s … Peyton will probably go straight home. Maybe we can catch up to her.”

  “No.” I wipe sweat off my lip, still listening to the silence. “We have to go to the police now. It’s time. It’s way past time.”

  “But unless Peyton comes with us—”

  “We don’t need her. If we report exactly what she told us, word for word, it’ll be enough for them to round up her and Race both. We know they didn’t prepare their alibis together, so no matter what they say to the police, the details won’t match. It’s not perfect, but it’ll divert suspicion from April—and once Race is in the spotlight, it’ll be too late for him to go after Lia or Peyton or anybody else. Everyone’ll be safe.”

  “Okay,” Sebastian says again, sounding indescribably relieved. “Okay.”

  “On the count of three, right?” I inch forward, moving to the edge of the shadows, on the precipice of a milky-blue oblivion. “One. Two. Three.”

  We charge out into the fog, knees churning, feet coming down hard on the knotted ground as we race in what I hope to be the direction of the parking lot. I’m operating purely on instinct, and as soon as the picnic shelter dissolves behind us, a tremor of anxiety ripples through me. Without visible landmarks, we’re like the victims of a capsized ship, swimming aimlessly and just hoping to find land.

  We sprint past an unfamiliar flower bed, a stand of birch trees, and a forlorn picnic table etched with graffiti and decoupaged with bird crap. The amber beacon of the emergency phone blazes like St. Elmo’s fire somewhere in the distance ahead of us, and I correct course to the left. Air whistles past my ears, my shoes slip in the damp grass, and my lungs burn as frantic nerves gobble up my oxygen faster than I can suck it in.

  Then, the grayness before us darkens and solidifies, a barricade of trees materializing out of the mist like Brigadoon, and we skid to a panting stop. I start to turn, so I can look behind us—convinced I’m about to see Race flying at us out of the gloom—but Sebastian grabs my shoulder and give
s it a tug.

  “Over there,” he gasps. “Parking lot!”

  Without waiting, he takes off again to the left, where a telltale border of concrete wheel stops is just barely discernible at ground level, a family of alligators lying patiently in the grass. I hurry after him, but we slow to a cautious walk the second our shoes hit the paved lot, fragments of rubble and damp grit scratching the hard surface with intolerable volume beneath every footfall. With each sound we make, I feel increasingly vulnerable.

  Suddenly, Sebastian draws up short, and I collide with his back. His voice is high and stiff as he forces out, “Holy shit, dude.”

  Rising out of the mist before us, glistening with a delicate sheen of moisture and faced away at a daring angle in the center of the lot, is a sleek white automobile. Tracks crushed into the grass show where the vehicle jumped the curb, neatly circumventing the padlocked gate that guards the entrance to the parking area, clambering over the low wheel stops. I take in the car’s dramatic spoiler and the dark, angular lines painted along what’s visible of its side panels, and my heart launches so far up into my throat that it bounces off my uvula. It’s Race’s Camaro.

  “He’s here,” Sebastian says tonelessly, shoulders taut and raised. “That was him. That was him, Rufus.”

  “Where’s Peyton?” I ask worriedly, eyeing the car as if it might explode. It felt like eons passed while we stood alone in the picnic shelter after she ran off, but it could only have been a few minutes before we followed after her, and this is the only way out of the park; she must have come by here. What did she do when she saw the car? Keep running? Stop to look for her boyfriend, convinced they were still on the same side? Did she even make it this far at all?

  “Shit. Shit.” Sebastian swings around, eyes doing a nervous dance. The Camaro’s rear windshield is tinted, impossible to see through, the black glass like a portal to some lonely hell. Is he in there? “We need to get the fuck out of here. We’ll get to the Jeep, and we’ll call the police.”

  I nod my mute agreement, still trying to burn a see-through hole in the rear windshield with my eyes, finally eager to trade my problems up to a higher authority. Only, that’s when I notice something that makes my heart stumble in my chest and a strange noise escape from my mouth. “Sebastian, wait.”

  “What? What is it?” Clearly anxious to keep moving, he stops long enough to follow the line of my arm as I point, to see what I’ve spotted: a fold of soft, gray fabric protruding through the thin seam where the lid of the Camaro’s trunk meets the body of the car. Sebastian shakes his head. “That’s … it’s nothing, Rufus. Come on—”

  “It’s Peyton’s hoodie.”

  “It looks like Peyton’s hoodie,” he corrects, fear mounting in his eyes, “which looks like a million other hoodies. Every player on every sports team at Ethan Allen has one that same color—including Race. He’s probably got a whole stack of ’em jammed in that trunk. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “She might be in there,” I whisper, unable to move. “We have to—”

  “To what?” He gets in front of me. “Haul her ass out and carry her half a mile to the Jeep? If Race comes after us, we’ll never get away from him! If she’s hurt, she needs the police, Rufus; we need to get the police.”

  “She might be dying, or—”

  “And she might be already dead with a knife in her face!” Sebastian exclaims, his voice rising to a point where it almost cracks, and I can’t resist the urgency in his tone; he’s not just arguing with me at this point—he’s practically pleading for me to listen. “It could even be a trap—think about it! We need to get the hell out of here.”

  He’s right, and I know he’s right. If that is Peyton in there, the odds she’s still alive are tremendously slim. The car is motionless, the air silent—nobody is kicking and screaming for help in the trunk. Leaving without so much as checking feels wrong, but wasting time is a risk we can’t afford. I let Sebastian pull me around the vehicle, but the driver’s side window drags my gaze as we pass, and I cast a fearful look inside, terrified that I’ll see Race grinning dementedly back at me.

  He isn’t there. The window is open, and the car is empty. But something catches my eye anyway: the dull gleam of a metallic object resting on the passenger seat, caught in a square of pale light cast down by the burgeoning dawn. When my brain computes what I’m seeing, I freeze in my tracks again. There are a million possible explanations. It could mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. And yet …

  “Come on, Rufus!” Sebastian halts when he realizes I’m not behind him anymore, glancing back with exasperation and concern. I barely hear him. Moving to the Camaro, as if in a trance, I grab for the door handle and give it a try. It’s unlocked. The interior lights pop on, and I hear Sebastian stifle an incredulous yelp at the same time that my suspicions are confirmed. “Rufus, what are you doing?”

  He makes it back to my side just as I find the trunk release and activate it, the lid popping open with a muted clunk. He practically bounces from foot to foot, his eyes darting frantically around the empty parking lot, on the lookout for a killer, but he follows me anyway as I step to the back end of the car and look down. My stomach drops, but it’s my boyfriend who gulps a shocked breath of air, taking in what we’ve discovered, and blurts, “What. The. Fuck?”

  27

  Curled up in the trunk, dressed in battered tennis shoes, track pants, and an oversize lacrosse hoodie—his hands and feet bound—is Race Atwood. And he isn’t moving.

  “I don’t…” Sebastian stares, his face blank and uncomprehending. “I don’t understand. This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Yes it does,” I say numbly, squeezing my eyes shut, the image already burned into my mind. Race’s skin is pallid, his eyes closed, his mouth sealed with tape—at a glance, it’s impossible to tell whether he’s alive or dead. His hands are bent awkwardly beneath his chin, and the red stain on one finger is dark and ghoulish under the sulfurous lights of the trunk. “It does make sense. Go look at what’s sitting on the passenger seat.”

  Sebastian circles back to the driver’s side door, still hanging open, and peers into the vehicle. “It’s a can of spray paint. So wh—”

  The minute the words are out in the open, he makes the connection. His eyes meet mine, his lips parting in surprise, and I turn my gaze back down to Race. To the finger dyed the same vivid scarlet hue as the words emblazoned across Fox Whitney’s front door: LIAR. COCKSUCKER. DRUG DEALER. RAPIST.

  When we were talking to Race and Peyton earlier in the night, I’d been thinking about blood, looking for blood—and I’d seen it in that split-second glimpse of the guy’s fingertip. As if Fox’s murderer could have washed away every trace of the crime except for that single one. But spray paint won’t come off with just soap and water, and if Race had hooked his finger too far over the nozzle of the canister when he was using it—

  “This still doesn’t make any sense,” Sebastian insists flatly, his expression stricken. “Peyton burned down the Whitneys’ house—she told us! I mean, her story … she couldn’t have made that up.”

  “She didn’t. The story was true.” I can picture her face again perfectly, her frightened expression, her trembling chin. “It just wasn’t her story. It was his. Race is the one who went to Fox’s house; Race is the one who accidentally set it on fire. Peyton is … Peyton—”

  “No.” Sebastian shakes his head, unwilling to believe we were so duped.

  “She played us. She didn’t know what Lia knew, and she needed to find out if Arlo had said anything about her. She knew that if he had, Lia would ignore her calls, so she texted from Race’s phone instead. Because of that, and because…” I shoot him an uneasy look. “Because if Lia had to die, the phone records would implicate Race.”

  “No way. No way, Rufe, that’s nuts. You saw her when she was telling us what happened tonight—she was losing her shit! Peyton’s not that good of an actress!”

  I’m just about to speak when a vo
ice interrupts from somewhere behind me, and my heart all but lunges out of my chest and runs away down the street like a spooked horse. “Peyton is better at a lot of things than people give her credit for.”

  I pivot, and there she is: standing on the other side of the Camaro, having emerged from the heavy fog as silently as a cat, her green eyes hard and glittering. She appeared so quietly, it occurs to me that she could easily have been shadowing us this whole time, matching us stride for stride as we stampeded through the park in our flight from the picnic shelter.

  “I’m a fucking great actress. You should’ve seen the performance I gave Arlo tonight.”

  “Peyton,” I begin, intending to say something brilliant and persuasive; but my brain rusts to a complete halt as I stare at the frightening emptiness in her expression.

  “This can’t be real—it doesn’t make sense.” Sebastian still refuses to believe, his eyes traveling from Race’s prone body to Peyton’s cold, serious face. I can tell by the way her right arm moves that she’s holding something, but her hand is hidden from view behind the Camaro. I imagine a giant butcher knife, and the four-thousand-pound car between us suddenly seems ridiculously insubstantial. Sebastian is scowling, frustration and fear catalyzing his anger. “Race didn’t have anything to do with it at all, did he? You killed Fox and then torched his house, and … and then—”

  “No.” I force myself to think it through, to focus and clear my mind—take a breath and step back. “Peyton snapped, just like she said, but she went back to the cottage to get her revenge—not the Whitneys’ house. She knew April was out cold, because Lia told her about the cough syrup, remember? Race didn’t hear that part. Peyton was the only one who knew there’d be no witnesses—and that there’d be somebody to frame.” The air feels swollen around us, pressing in close. “Race was the one who spray-painted the Whitneys’ door, and he must have told Peyton. Maybe he demanded that she cover for him. Maybe he said she owed him an alibi to make up for cheating with Fox.”