by Kara Thomas
did u leave because of what my uncle said?
It wasn’t that,
I type back, probably too quickly.
I’m seeing a neurologist today. Here on LI
I’m anxious to move the conversation away from my busted-up head. Before Amos can begin responding, I fire off another text:
Do you think I should call the sheriff’s office and tell them about the guy in the Merry Mackerel who was watching me?
The conversation window goes static; Amos has read the message but isn’t responding. Finally, he replies:
Can you keep another secret?
of course
There were FBI agents here last night
Seriously??
yep. theyre “assisting w the investigation”
between u and me…I think Marian called in a favor
I swallow.
Why are you telling me all this?
Amos is typing. The ellipsis disappears, then reappears. When he finally sends the message through, I’m surprised it’s so short.
bc Kat trusts you
and she’s the only person in this family I don’t hate
I squeeze my eyes shut against the threat of tears. Amos is talking about Kat like she’s still alive. It doesn’t mean anything—Amos having hope doesn’t change the odds they’re not alive—but it’s enough to propel me off the couch. Maybe, it’ll even be enough to get me through the day.
I scrape my hair into a bun, survey the wreckage of my room. My gaze lands on the clear plastic bag resting beside my basket of unwashed laundry.
The sight of it immobilizes me. I’d assumed the sheriff took the clothes I was wearing on the mountain as potential evidence, but Mom must have brought them home with her. My heart batters my rib cage as I loosen the string on the bag.
I pull out the ribbed gray tank top first and turn it over, realizing I’m looking for blood.
I toss the tank into my laundry basket and move on to my shorts. The thighs and butt are smeared with dirt. I close my eyes, attempt to quiet my mind long enough to picture the area off the trail where I woke up.
I chuck the shorts. The jangling sound they make when they hit the pile of dirty clothes roots me to where I’m sitting.
There’s something in the pocket.
I stick my hand inside. Produce a set of keys, a silver Infiniti logo imprinted on the fob. I swallow my heartbeat, close my eyes, fingers closing around the shape of an enamel pineapple.
Outside my room, the doorbell rings.
NOW
Why did I have Kat’s car keys in my pocket?
The doorbell rings again, cutting through the thoughts forming a squall in my brain. I say a silent prayer that whoever is at my front door is selling something and jam the keys into the top drawer of my desk.
When I open the front door a slender black woman and a stocky white man are standing on my porch. Her face is wrinkle-free, while the man’s face is scarred and plagued by rosacea. When he sticks a hand in his pants pocket, his suit jacket moves to reveal a gun.
I’m pretty sure they don’t have Thin Mints with them.
“Claire Keough?” the woman says through lips slick with raisin-colored gloss. Her hair is in a bun and she’s wearing silver hoop earrings.
“That’s me.” My voice cracks guiltily, as if I’m doing something wrong by existing. My thoughts drift to Kat’s car keys; I have to balance a palm against the doorway to steady myself.
“We’re with the FBI’s Long Island office,” the woman says. “Is now an okay time to talk about what happened last weekend?”
I pause, my arm still outstretched, holding the door open. I will the tremor in the crook of my arm to go away. “Can I just, see your badges or something?”
The man shoots the woman an amused look, but he opens his jacket and removes his wallet. She follows suit. I examine each ID card and badge with shaking hands. Her name is Nicole Cummings. His is William Novak.
I step aside to let them in; as I shut the front door behind them, Agent Cummings retrieves an Altoids tin from inside her jacket and pops one as she considers the living room. Agent Novak crosses to the fireplace, enormous Popeye arms folded across his chest.
He’s eye-level with a frame on the mantel, examining the picture in it. Kat and Jamie Liu and me, dressed as the Three Musketeers for the tenth grade Halloween dance.
There are FBI agents in my living room. I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming—Amos had told me they were assisting with the case.
“We’ll be working closely with our counterparts upstate,” Cummings says.
“Okay.” I sit on the chaise portion of our sectional couch, feet planted firmly next to each other on the carpet, hands on my knees.
“How are you feeling?” Agent Cummings asks. “The ER doctor we spoke with said you came in pretty banged up.”
“All right, I guess,” I say. “I’m seeing a neurologist this afternoon.”
I glance over at the mantel, where Agent Novak is holding the framed photo of Jamie Liu, Kat, and me. On the couch, Cummings takes off her jacket, revealing sculpted bronze shoulders.
“I can turn the AC on,” I say.
“Don’t,” Novak says, replacing the photo.
I stare at him; he nods to the living room wall where our Nest is located. “Not worth your dad throwing a fit about someone messing with the thermostat.”
“It’s my mom.” I swallow. “How did you know?”
Novak shrugs. “No AC cranking on a day like today—someone’s a stickler about the bill.”
Cummings raises her eyebrows at her partner as he moves from the mantel and sits on the arm of the love seat adjacent to the couch. “Agent Novak tortures his daughters the same way.”
I try to return her friendly smile, but the whole interaction has frayed what’s left of my nerves. It has everything to do with Kat’s car keys, tucked in my desk drawer. How long will it take Agent Novak to sniff out I’m hiding something?
“Claire.” Agent Cummings’s voice draws me back. There’s a question at the end of my name, as if it’s not the first time she’s said it.
I blink until my vision returns. “Sorry. I still get headaches.”
Novak shifts on the arm of the seat, pulls his ankle up and rests it on his opposite thigh. Cummings fishes the Altoids tin from the balled-up jacket beside her. “We’ll try to make this quick so you can get back to resting.”
I nod, then shake my head when Cummings offers me an Altoid. She pops a mint in her mouth and says, “We know the sheriff in Sunfish Creek already interviewed you—we’ll try not to make you repeat yourself too much. Can we go back a bit further? When did Kat and Jesse tell you they weren’t going to prom?”
“Um, April, I guess? I asked Kat if she wanted to go dress shopping and she told me she didn’t think they were going to go.”
“When did they decide for sure they weren’t going?”
“I don’t know exactly.” A slick of sweat comes to the back of my neck. “Two weeks before prom, when I asked Kat what they were doing after the dance, she said she and Jesse were going up to the lake house instead. She said Ben and I should come too.”
“She waited until two weeks before prom to tell you they weren’t going?” Novak peers at me. “You two didn’t talk dresses, hair and nail appointments or whatever, before that?”
The implication is clear: prom minutiae is something best friends discuss.
I shrug. “I guess she was embarrassed to talk about why they weren’t going. It was too expensive for Jesse—the tux, the ticket, and whatever.”
Novak blinks. “Mari
an Sullivan-Marcotte’s granddaughter skipped prom because of money?”
I press the heel of my hand to my brow bone; now I really do have a headache. “Jesse would sooner die than let Kat pay for everything.”
I don’t realize what I’ve said until the silence balloons to something tangible. I drop my hand to my lap. “I didn’t mean that literally—I’m just saying he’s sensitive about being broke.”
Cummings pops another Altoid, as if she hadn’t heard me. “Who is Ben, and why didn’t he go to Sunfish Creek with you all as planned?”
I hook an arm around my neck, my skin warming with embarrassment. “My ex-boyfriend.”
Novak’s eyes lift; I am terrified he’s going to make me explain catching Ben about to play oops I dropped my towel with Anna Markey, but he clears his throat. “So, you and Ben were supposed to drive up to Sunfish Creek after prom. Instead, you hitched a ride with Kat and Jesse.”
I see myself in the passenger seat of Kat’s Infiniti, slunk low and dozing off, the enamel pineapple on her key chain swinging like a hypnotist’s pendulum. I nod, swallow to clear my throat. “Um, about Friday night—something happened and I’m not sure it’s important.”
Novak and Cummings stare at me.
“We lost signal on the GPS and had to stop at this place called the Merry Mackerel to get directions,” I say. “Inside, there was a man by the pool table. He was definitely listening to me when I gave the address for the lake house.”
Cummings’s fingers go still around her Altoids tin. “You remember what this man looked like? What he was wearing?”
“He had red hair and a beard. He was wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt.” I lean forward, knot my hands together and rest my forehead on them. “My dad and I saw this man yesterday when we were distributing fliers—I recognized him—”
“Yes, the sheriff brought us up to speed on that,” Novak says. “Now, what about this man you saw at the Merry Mackerel?”
I look up a bit thrown by Novak’s abruptness. “I was getting to that—the guy I saw on Bobcat Mountain has a Confederate flag sticker in his truck window, and he has red hair too.”
“You think the man you saw Friday night in the bar was the same man you saw Saturday on the mountain?” Cummings asks, her expression inscrutable.
I move my palms to my knees. “What if he saw Kat’s car Friday night and thought we had money. He could have been following us the whole weekend.”
Novak tilts his head. Surveys me a bit before saying, “It’s an interesting theory, but the man from the mountain couldn’t have been the same man you saw in the Merry Mackerel Friday evening.”
I swallow. “How do you know?”
“Because he was camping on Bobcat Mountain Friday night,” Novak says. “He couldn’t have been in two places at once.”
I sink back into the couch cushions, the blood draining from my head. It takes me a beat to recover my voice. “What about the other people who might have been hiking or camping? Did anyone else come forward?”
“We don’t believe anyone else was camping on the mountain Saturday night.” Novak props his fist under his chin, studies me for a reaction. I break eye contact, catch a glimpse of the TV over his shoulder. I picture McAuliffe’s face on the screen, that brief sound bite for reporters. We will be focusing on the area below Devil’s Peak.
My breathing goes shallow. “But still—someone else could have been there, right? Besides the man I remember. Someone else could have…”
My voice falters. Agent Cummings slips her Altoids tin inside her jacket pocket, her eyes never leaving mine. “Someone else could have what, Claire?”
Have done this. Someone else besides Jesse could have done this. I glance at Novak, a statue on the edge of that armchair.
“The sheriff was asking me all of this stuff about Jesse,” I say. “Whether he was depressed or jealous—it’s like he thinks Jesse pushed Kat off the ledge.”
I wedge my hands, now trembling, between my knees, and watch Cummings and Novak for a reaction. Anything to indicate that they think Jesse pushed Kat off the ledge.
“You don’t think that’s what happened,” Agent Novak says evenly. “Why?”
Because I know Jesse. It sounds so stupid—it’s exactly what every woman says that I’ve rolled my eyes at while watching Dateline, the deluded sisters, mothers, wives. He’d never hurt anyone—I know him.
But this isn’t a TV show—this is my life. These are my best friends. And they were in love. And not the hormone-fueled, all-consuming type of love that ends with an argument and mangled bodies at the base of a cliff.
No—Kat and Jesse’s was the type of love that was difficult to witness. The type of couple you’d see kissing in public and lose your breath and think, What if I never have that? Jesse was not a jealous boyfriend, depressed that his girlfriend was departing for Boston College and leaving him behind. For Kat, there was no leaving Jesse behind; he’d wait for her or he’d follow.
It makes no sense Jesse would throw that all away—that he would kill the person he loved most in the world, and then himself.
It had to be someone else.
I close my eyes, and I’m back in the Sunfish Creek emergency room. Running a finger over the streak of blood on my arm. Why was there so much blood on my arm when the cut was on my palm?
“Claire?” Cummings’s voice draws me back.
I tug at the neck of the T-shirt I slept in, letting some ventilation in. I can’t help but let my gaze wander to my bedroom door.
“Everything all right?” Novak asks.
I crane my neck toward the living room TV, as if I’d really been trying to catch a glimpse of the time displayed on the cable box. “I—yeah, I just have to get ready to go to the neurologist soon.”
“Of course,” Cummings says. “Just one more thing and we’ll get out of your hair. By any chance, do you know your blood type?”
My stomach turns over. “Not off the top of my head—why?”
“Purely for elimination purposes at this point,” Novak says.
To eliminate my blood from someone else’s blood. Which means they have blood. They found blood and obviously they need to know who it came from. I tamp down the panic flaring in my chest. “I, um, donated blood last spring. I think I have the donor card in my room. Lemme check.”
“That would be great.” Cummings smiles. There is something carefully placating about her tone that wasn’t there before. You’re so helpful. You have nothing to be afraid of.
I duck into my room, yank open the top drawer of my desk with shaking hands. I’m half hoping I’d hallucinated finding Kat’s car keys in my shorts, but there they are, sunlight from the window over my desk glinting off the enamel pineapple key chain.
Why would she give me her keys?
To escape? If not from the redheaded hiker, maybe another stranger. We were three out-of-town kids, parking an expensive car in the lot, camping out in a top-of-the-line tent. A prime robbery target.
Why did I escape and they didn’t?
It doesn’t make any sense. Kat was a star athlete, and I would fake my own death to get out of running the mile in gym. How did I get away from our attacker—whether it was a stranger or Jesse—and she didn’t?
Why would I have her keys?
I push the keys to the back of the drawer and root through the junk inside. A Metro card, some stamps, an oily squeeze-tube of Carmex.
I move aside an expired library card to reveal the blood donor card.
My blood type is A negative.
I collapse into my desk chair, holding the card to my chest. I could just say I couldn’t find it, but then what? If they don’t get the answer from me, they’ll get it from someone else, like the Sunfish Creek hospital.
I stand up, push my chair in, and head back out into the living room.
; “A negative,” I say, handing Cummings the card.
She looks it over and hands it back to me. “You’re tougher than me. I can’t give blood. I just pass out.”
Cummings’s eyes flick to her partner. “Well, I think we covered what we needed to, right, Bill?”
“For now.”
Cummings hands me a business card with her contact info. “If you think of anything else and need to reach us.”
“Okay,” I say. It must come out a little too slowly, because Novak pauses in the doorway, jacket tossed over his shoulder.
“Is there anything else?” he asks.
I shake my head, slowly, walk them to the front door.
The second the lock clicks into place behind them, I run to the bathroom and throw up.
* * *
—
I am at my desk, my hand trembling under the Ativan pill I’m tipping into my palm.
Mom told me I should only take them to sleep, but my anxiety level is beyond an emergency right now. It’s at DEFCON 1, can’t-breathe-through-the-crushing-panic anxiety.
My brain pulsates as I pick over the conversation with Cummings and Novak. They hadn’t answered my question, about other people besides the redheaded hiker being on the mountain last Saturday. It was a warm weekend day, a clear night by all accounts—that man and Kat and Jesse and me couldn’t have been the only people who decided to go for a hike. We had to have encountered some other person. The wrong person.
Because if we didn’t, and the redheaded hiker has been ruled out…that only leaves the three of us.
I’m pacing my room; I’m not sure when I made the transition from sitting at my desk to standing. My fingers move to the base of my neck, thinking of Amos’s story about his friend’s car accident.