This Is How It Ends

by Jen Nadol

  “Yeah,” he said shortly. “I just wanted to tell you something. No big.”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you listen to the messages and find out? Unless you’re too busy.”

  “Come off it, Trip.” I remembered him telling me once that the best defense is a good offense. “You’re acting like a jilted girlfriend.” I winced. Poor choice of words.

  “‘Jilted?’” Trip said. “Were you playing Scrabble at the nursing home last night?”

  “You got me.” I clicked through the prompts on my phone, held it to my ear, and felt my eyes go wide. “Holy shit,” I said. “They arrested Galen?”

  “Sort of,” he said.

  He was going to make me work for it, I realized. He really did act like a girl sometimes. “What does that mean? What happened?”

  “Nat found her vase.”

  “At Galen’s?”

  He shook his head. “She and John Peters were in town yesterday, walking to the library, and there it was, sitting right in Morris Headley’s window at the antiques shop.”

  “Holy shit,” I said again. “What did Galen have to do with it?”

  “They went in,” Trip continued, “and asked Morris where he got it. Which of course he couldn’t remember because he’s half-senile and doesn’t remember his name most days of the week.”

  I nodded. During high season Bob Willets had gotten into the habit of dropping in on Morris in the mornings, just to make sure he hadn’t opened the shop wearing only his boxer shorts, like he had one day last summer, scaring a busload of Red Hat ladies half to death.

  “Nat said he spent, like, an hour flipping through papers, finally coming up with the ticket.”

  “And Galen was the one who’d brought it in,” I guessed.

  “Exactly.”

  ***

  It was all the talk that morning at school. It had been scandalous that Nat’s dad had been murdered, doubly so when she’d been held for questioning. And now one of her classmates had been hauled in? OMG, as the cheerleaders might—and did—say. The hallways were buzzing. I bumped into John Peters on my way to physics, so I heard the biggest piece of news first.

  “My dad said they released Galen,” he told me, phone still in hand.

  “What? Why?” I said.

  “He swears he didn’t take it from Natalie’s house. Or give it to Morris Headley.”

  “But you were there with Natalie,” I said. “You saw the ticket, right?”

  “I did. And it was definitely his name on there.” John nodded. “But I guess they did a handwriting sample and compared it to the ticket and some other, older things Galen had signed. It didn’t match.”

  “So someone forged it?” I said. I was having a hard time following this. Galen was at the house, not at the house. Took the vase, didn’t take the vase. My head was spinning.

  “Seems that way,” John said.

  ***

  Mr. Ruskovich called me up to his desk when I walked in. I didn’t even hear him at first; I was still trying to unravel the things with Galen Riddock.

  “I’m planning to reopen our unit on forensics today,” he said quietly. “I’ve already spoken to Sarah McKenzie but wanted to double-check with you also, since I know you’re close to Natalie. We can always come back to this unit later in the year.” He watched me carefully, adding, “There’s no shame in being affected by what’s happened.”

  I nodded. “I know,” I told him. “I’m okay with it, though. Really. It’s an interesting lesson.”

  Which it was, but sitting at my desk as he explained the formula for determining the angle of impact felt surreal. I knew that when he finished, he’d walk across the room and open that door. I kept picturing him doing it and finding myself suddenly back in the Clearys’ living room, like the physics classroom was somehow a portal to that nightmare.

  Mr. Ruskovich split us into teams of two, pairing Matty with Chuck and me with Sarah. Maybe he thought that was a good idea, us both being friends with Nat. But it was really, really awkward. I’d barely been able to look at her today, dreading our shared class as much as I couldn’t wait for it. And now she slid into the desk beside mine, pulling it close enough for us to both see the notebook. I felt her in my space like she was coated with something radioactive.

  Sarah stared at our notes, biting her lip nervously. She glanced at me, then quickly back down, her cheeks flushed pink. “Let’s use this one,” she said, pointing to the length and width measurements of the first of our three splatters, labeled D. “One of them is a whole number, so it’ll be the easiest.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to focus but really more concerned with making sure I didn’t accidentally touch her. Mr. Ruskovich sauntered across the room toward the closet. I watched as he plucked the key and inserted it into the knob. Sarah tensed beside me as the door clicked open.

  Seeing it again was a huge relief, because the truth was that it didn’t look much like the real thing at all. The drops on a blank white sheet were a world away from seeing them in your friend’s house where you’d once met her dad in pretty much the same spot where he’d been killed.

  “How you doing?” I asked Sarah softly. She met my eyes, and I tried to ignore the connection between us, so strong it felt almost visible.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “It’s weird. But I think we can do this. Right?”

  I nodded with much more confidence than I felt. “Yeah,” I said, not sure if we were talking about physics or us or both. “We’ll concentrate on the equations. It’s just math.”

  We were about halfway through the first problem when Chuck and Matty stood to start mapping their calculations. I knew they’d get in there before us, which was fine, except for Matty’s smug grin and the L he flashed me before they went in.

  Mr. Ruskovich was having us work with six splatters—three for them and three for us—and we were taking turns mapping them. The only problem, as Mr. Ruskovich explained, was that by the end we’d be maneuvering around lengths of string taped across the closet, like the laser beams you see in heist movies when the thief has to make off with a priceless statue.

  “And it’s critical you don’t touch or move any of them,” he stressed. “Precision is key. Your convergence point needs to be as exact as possible, because you’ll also use it and the angles you’ve figured out to determine the height of the suspect. You don’t want to imprison the wrong person because you contaminated the crime scene.”

  Pretty unlikely here, since Mr. Ruskovich had built in a wide margin of error, with suspect heights ranging from the extremely petite four-foot-tall Miss Scarlet to the gargantuan Mr. Green at ten feet.

  “What is he, the Jolly Green Giant?” Chuck had asked.

  “Or the best new prospect for the Celts,” Mr. Ruskovich suggested.

  “They need it,” Matty muttered.

  We’d started on the third problem by the time Matty and Chuck returned to their seats. Sarah was flying through the equations.

  “I didn’t know you had such skills,” I told her.

  “Oh I got skills, boy.” She smiled, and I flushed, reading double entendres into everything she said. “It’s actually really cool if you can forget about . . . you know, the other stuff.”

  By the time we got into the closet with our string and tape and protractor, I’d done a passable job of forgetting the real-life crime scene. We taped one end of string to splatter D, and Sarah used the protractor to measure the angle, directing me on how to position the other end. “A little higher, higher, lower.” When she was satisfied we’d gotten it just right, I taped the string to the far wall. Sarah double-checked the angle, pronounced it good, and we started on the next, me doing the protractor work this time, both of us careful not to disturb anything as we taped our second string. It met up with our first one and the ones Matty and Chuck had done at nearly the exa
ct same location. We stood back and surveyed the scene.

  “Cool,” Sarah said, eyes gleaming.

  She took a quick measurement of the height of the probable point of impact. “We should be able to figure out who it is already.” Sarah slid into her seat and worked through some inscrutable set of formulas while I started on splatter F, our final one. After a few minutes she nodded. “Matty was right. It’s Professor Plum.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “How can you be sure?”

  “Look at the angle of impact of the two we’ve already done, the point where it happened, and think about the direction of spatter and the weapons. It couldn’t have been someone as short or tall as any of the others.”

  I looked at the scrawls on her notepad. “Uh . . . okay.” I had no idea how she’d figured that out so quickly. I’d always known Sarah was smart. It was part of what made her so amazing and her thing with Trip so confounding. I watched her toying with the numbers again, her brow furrowed.

  She looked up. “What?”

  “Uh . . .” I floundered.

  “You’re still in awe of my skills?” She smirked.

  “Actually, yes.”

  Sarah held my eyes for a second. “Are you thinking what I am?”

  Unless she was thinking how unbelievably hot she was, no. “What?”

  She cast her eyes quickly over to our classmates and teacher, all busy with their work. “We should use this.” She gestured at the paper.

  “Use wha—” I stopped, my jaw literally hanging open. “You don’t mean at Nat’s . . .”

  I almost told Sarah no way, but I was finding myself sucked into the whodunit along with all the Buford High gossipmongers, the developments with Galen turning it into a real puzzle. If the receipt at Morris Headley’s had been forged, did it mean someone was trying to frame Galen? Or had he just been smart enough to fake his own signature when he’d pawned it, as unlikely as that seemed?

  I nodded. “Okay. Let’s run it by the others.”

  ***

  It didn’t go so well.

  “No way,” Natalie said immediately. “You can’t be serious.”

  I looked at Sarah, wondering if we’d made a terrible error in judgment.

  “Nat,” she said calmly. “The cops are getting nowhere. Things keep going around and around. Why shouldn’t we look into it a little?”

  “I . . . just . . .” She shook her head, tears in her eyes. “No.”

  Sarah watched her for a second, then nodded. “Okay,” she said, soothing. “You’re right.” She put an arm around Nat. “I’m sorry. We were just trying to help.”

  “I think we should still get together, though,” Trip said. “We can do it at my house and just talk through what we know. There’s a lot going on here, and I’ll bet you any money we’re hearing more than the cops are.”

  “Not that they’d have a clue what to do with it anyway,” Tannis said.

  “We’ll do it Saturday night. Okay?”

  It was a typical Trip suggestion that wasn’t so much a suggestion as a command. I could see that Natalie wanted to say no, had had enough of all of this, but instead she asked, “Do you mind if I bring John?”

  “John Peters?” Trip asked.

  “Duh! Who else?” Tannis rolled her eyes. “He’s Nat’s new boyfriend, dummy.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Trip raised his eyebrows. “Why do you want him to come?”

  “He might be able to help.”

  Trip thought about it for a second. “Yeah, okay. As long as you think he’s not going to be pissed that we’re, like, messing in ‘police business.’”

  ***

  After Natalie and Tannis left, Trip turned to me and Sarah. “Listen,” he said. “What you suggested to Nat earlier?”

  I nodded, anticipating a rebuke.

  “I think it’s a great idea. Probably stupid to mention to Nat,” he added. “I mean, do you really think she wants to go back to the living room and measure her dad’s blood?”

  “No.”

  “But you should do it.”

  “Behind her back?”

  “It’s for her own good,” Trip said. “You still have the keys?”

  I did, having locked up when Trip loaded the car the last time we’d been there. I’d found them in my coat pocket later but when I tried to return them to Nat at school, she’d told me to “throw them in the sewer.”

  “You can’t take Tannis, obviously,” Trip continued. “She’ll just puke her guts out again. I wouldn’t even tell her, just in case she decides to tell Nat. I can come, but it’ll have to be after practice, which gets pretty late. It’s not like I can contribute much anyhow. Let’s face it. This is a job for nerds . . . like you two.” He smiled broadly.

  Sarah stuck her tongue out at him, and he tried to grab it. She shrieked and jumped away, laughing.

  I watched them, thinking, Is this for real?

  Is Trip really flirting with his girlfriend, who I have the hots for—and who I made out with just yesterday—and then sending me off alone with her for hours on end?

  I guess he figured there was no chance she’d be into a nerd like me.

  But I knew that was just a lame-ass excuse to make myself feel better. The proverbial devil on my shoulder. The reality was that Trip trusted me. He’d never in a million years think I was the kind of guy who’d make a play for his girlfriend.

  And I was an asshole for having betrayed that. It wouldn’t happen again.

  “What do you think?” I asked Sarah directly, vowing to get myself in line, stop thinking about her. I hoped she’d make it easy and back out.

  But of course, she didn’t. “I already told you I think we should do it,” she said. “If you’re game, Riley, I’m in.”

  CHAPTER 22

  WE PARKED ABOUT A HALF mile up the road from the Clearys’. It wasn’t much of a hiding spot, but it seemed better than leaving my car in front like a neon sign, just in case Natalie drove by. Or Tannis or the cops. Or the killer.

  Sarah and I walked back downhill to the trailer. Our breath came fast as we picked our way carefully through the front yard.

  I dug my hand into my jeans for the ring of keys and then propped the screen door with my hip as I fit the key into the lock, my stomach feeling sour. I looked over my shoulder at Sarah. “You ready?”

  She nodded, looking as jittery as I felt.

  I opened the door, and a stale, tangy odor wafted toward me, tickling the back of my throat. Neither of us moved for a few seconds. Maybe she was having the same second thoughts I was, but if I questioned it, I had a feeling we’d wind up bolting for the car, so I stepped inside. Sarah followed, pushing the door gently closed behind her.

  We stood there staring at the walls, splashed with dark droplets.

  “It’s just math. Right, Riley?” Sarah’s voice sounded high and quavery.

  “Right.” I let my bag slide to the floor, then knelt beside it. Focus, I thought, willing myself to breathe deeply, which might have been a mistake. There was an undercurrent of something rancid. Rotting food, probably. No one had taken out the trash here or cleaned the dishes. The power was probably shut off, with things moldering in the fridge.

  “You okay?” Sarah asked.

  I nodded, but I really didn’t feel okay. She put her hand on my shoulder, and for once I didn’t think about how it felt to have her close or touching me. I was too busy trying to stay conscious.

  “We can do this,” I muttered.

  “That’s what you told me in physics,” she reminded me.

  I took another deep breath, feeling the dizziness pass. I unzipped my bag. “Okay, let’s get started.”

  Once we got into the numbers, it was much better. Sarah took the tape measure, leaving me to record.

  “This one look good?” sh
e asked, standing just beside the blood-soaked couch.

  I glanced over and nodded. She stuck a Post-it with an A on it beside a long splotch. It matched the other Post-its left by the police, but with Sarah’s distinctive sharp handwriting. She took the measurements, calling them out to me, then started hunting for splatter B.

  Beside the phone was an ashtray, empty but with the scattered dust of old cigarettes on the bottom. There were rings on the table, overlapping one another like a Spirograph design made by someone who hadn’t quite been able to get the hang of it. I guess Mr. Cleary hadn’t believed in coasters. Trip’s mom would have had a fit. I snorted, the idea of her somewhere like this so ridiculous.

  “What?” Sarah glanced over.

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  We did the next three splatters the same way—Sarah marking and measuring, me note taking and scanning the Clearys’ living room. They’d never bothered to put photos up or hang anything on the walls, except for a bizarre oil painting of a clown. It looked like it had been done with a paint-by-numbers kit, and sure enough, when I got closer, I saw R. Cleary scrawled at the bottom.

  Opposite the sofa was an old TV on a stand, with books and a few games stacked on the shelves. None of it looked like it had been touched in about fifteen years. I wondered if it was stuff they’d bought for Natalie, maybe even played with her when she was a kid. Or if it had always sat there unused, little Nat left to manage for herself just the way she was now.

  “What ever happened to Natalie’s mom?” I asked Sarah.

  She glanced over at me. “Nat said she left them. Years ago. When Natalie was seven or eight.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “I don’t think Nat knows.”

  “She hasn’t talked to her in all those years?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “That’s kind of crazy, don’t you think?” I asked. “That her mom would just take off like that?”

  “Why?” She gave me a funny look, then turned back to the wall. “Happens all the time, Ri.”

  Oh, shit. I’d forgotten about her mom. “You don’t talk to yours, either?” I asked gently.