Trace of Evil

by Alice Blanchard

  “What sort of lifeline?”

  “Oh my gosh, she went above and beyond the call of duty. She asked him to write a paper that could’ve pushed his grade up to a C, if he’d bothered to hand it in. She gave him every opportunity to redeem himself, but he was full of excuses. She was more than fair.”

  “In your opinion,” Luke said, “was Riley a danger to himself and others?”

  “Oh, he was trouble,” Seth admitted. “There were fistfights.”

  “Is he capable of murder, in your opinion?”

  Seth closed the manila folder. “Honestly? I can’t imagine it. But if you think about it—raging hormones, academic pressures, neglect at home. It’s all there.”

  Natalie nodded. “We’ll need the names of the kids he hangs out with.”

  “Sure,” Seth told them. “It’s not a very long list.”

  10

  They split the list. Three names each.

  Down at the eastern end of the building, Natalie passed a group of rowdy boys who acted as if they owned the place, high-fiving and making a lot of noise as they stormed the corridors. Some of the shyer ones stuck to the shadows, ignored or barely acknowledged, the ache of alienation plastered all over their young faces.

  Natalie found two of Riley’s friends hanging out in the quad between periods, a rectangle of lawn surrounded by weathered picnic tables. She recognized sixteen-year-old Kermit Hughes, a pasty-faced Goth who couldn’t stop touching his pimples. His father worked at a gas station and his mother was a housewife who sold Mary Kay makeup.

  Fifteen-year-old Owen Kottler was a wide-eyed boy with scruffy brown hair and a skinny frame. His father was on disability, and his mom was a waitress. As a rookie cop, Natalie had gotten to know many of the residents of the west side. She loved these people. She’d earned their trust. She knew their families and the troubles that plagued them. Like so many west side teens, these boys wore army-navy surplus, drove around in their father’s battered pickup trucks, and dreamed big when they weren’t feeling small.

  Now she showed them her badge. “Detective Lockhart. Remember me? Mind if I ask you boys a few questions?”

  “Guess so, yeah,” they muttered, averting their eyes.

  “I hear Riley Skinner threatened Ms. Buckner about a month ago. Do you know anything about that?”

  Kermit balled up his fists and said, “Riley never threatened anyone.”

  “Are you sure?” She looked over at Owen. “Maybe he was upset because he was flunking out of school? Did he ever talk to you about that?”

  “He called her a ho once,” Owen blurted, to the dismay of his friend.

  “Shut up,” Kermit muttered, shoving Owen off balance.

  Natalie took out her notepad and pen. “Riley called Ms. Buckner a whore? When was this?”

  “It never happened,” Kermit insisted, glaring at his friend.

  Owen clammed up.

  Natalie had learned over time that if you approached a witness with an obvious agenda, they’d be more likely to lie to you. So she put her notebook away and said, “Kermit, how’s your mom?”

  “Okay, I guess,” he said with a shrug.

  “Is she still selling Mary Kay?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled.

  “I need a new lipstick,” Natalie said. “Tell her I’ll swing by sometime.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Now, in the meantime, I’m trying to figure out what happened yesterday, that’s all. When was the last time you saw Riley?”

  “After school,” Kermit said. “He gave me a lift home.”

  She got out her notebook and pen and jotted it down. “When was this?”

  “Quarter to three.”

  “Did he say where he was going after that?”

  “No.”

  “Were you at Haymarket Field last night?”

  The boys glanced at each other and shook their heads. She felt sorry for them. Their parents struggled to make ends meet. They clipped coupons and went without. They shopped at the 99-cent store and attended church on Sundays, dropping their hard-earned cash into the collection plate. Their older brothers and sisters were into drugs. Kermit’s cousin had been caught shoplifting. Owen’s uncle was in jail for petty theft. Life hadn’t exactly treated them fairly.

  “No?” Natalie said. “Because I can check it out. Hold on.” She got out her phone and did a search of Owen Kottler’s social media, found his Instagram page, and scrolled through the postings. “Well, look here, Owen. What about this?” She showed him a screenshot of himself, Kermit, and Riley, down by the old Shell station. “You posted this at seven thirty last night.”

  Owen’s eyes widened. “Well, um…”

  “It’s okay. You can still change your statement,” she told him gently. “It’s not too late. I’m looking for any information that might be helpful to the investigation.”

  “We rode our bikes over there around seven,” Owen confessed.

  She glanced at Kermit. “You were there at seven o’clock? Riley, too?”

  The school bell rang, and both boys grew tense.

  “I can’t be late for class,” Owen pleaded, wiping his sweaty forehead.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to your teachers,” she reassured them. “You won’t get into trouble, okay? When did Riley arrive at Haymarket Field exactly? Do you remember?”

  Kermit shrugged. “We got there around seven. Riley came a little later.”

  “How much later?”

  “Seven fifteen. Seven twenty.”

  Natalie jotted it down. “I see from your Instagram page, Owen, that Riley wore a gray hoodie and a green flannel shirt over a pair of jeans. Is that the same outfit he wore to school?”

  “I don’t remember,” Owen said.

  “Kermit? Did he wear this outfit when he dropped you off yesterday?”

  “No. He had on a T-shirt that said ‘Dumbnation.’”

  “‘Dumb Nation’? What color?”

  “One word. ‘Dumbnation.’ Black with yellow lettering.”

  “What else? Jeans or chinos? Sneakers? What?”

  “Cargo pants,” Kermit said.

  “Right,” Natalie said. “Lot of pockets. What color were the cargoes?”

  “Black.”

  “Black again. Anything else? Type of footwear?”

  “Vans slip-on checkerboards,” Kermit said. “Like mine.” He showed her.

  “Nice. And while the three of you were at Haymarket Field last night, did you see Detective Buckner arrive at any point?”

  “Yeah,” Kermit said.

  “When was this?”

  “Eight thirty, I think.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “We heard tires squealing, and a car came swerving into the field. Detective Buckner got out, and he was shouting at us. He said we were holding, but there’s no way he could’ve known what we were up to from that far away. Then he got in Riley’s face and started yelling something about Ms. Buckner … we were all freaking out.”

  “What did Detective Buckner say about Ms. Buckner?” Natalie asked.

  “Crazy stuff.”

  “Do you remember specifically?”

  Kermit shrugged. “Something about … did you kill her? And we said, ‘Kill who?’ It made zero sense, because like … who would kill Ms. Buckner?”

  Natalie nodded. “Then what happened?”

  “Riley took off running. So Detective Buckner tore after him.”

  “I have to go now,” Owen said urgently. “I’ve got a test.”

  “Don’t worry, Owen, I’ll talk to your teacher. Just a few more questions.” She took a breath. “Backing up, Kermit, after Riley dropped you off at your place around quarter to three yesterday, did he say where he was going?”

  “Just that he was gonna see India later,” Kermit said.

  Natalie masked her confusion. “India Cochran?”

  “Yeah. He said he was going over to her place.”

  Natalie had known sixteen-year-old I
ndia ever since she and Ellie attended daycare together. India was just like Ellie, top of her class. College-bound. What was she doing with a troubled kid like Riley Skinner?

  “Riley didn’t kill anyone,” Kermit insisted. “I mean, yeah, he likes to talk trash, and he’s messed up, but he’d never hurt Ms. Buckner. He was trying to make a name for himself, and Ms. Buckner was helping him. Why would he kill her?”

  “How was she helping him?” Natalie asked.

  “With his music. He’s a rapper. It’s totally lit.” Kermit unzipped his backpack, took out his phone, and showed her an amateurishly produced video. The track had a good beat.

  I look into your eyes and see lotta regrets,

  Not your typical bullshit teacher ignorance,

  No more Dumbledores or Dead Poets Society.

  You tryna be good, but I wanna be free.

  Flunk or pass? I don’t know. Too many questions to ask,

  Too many tests to take, too many pointless essays to hack.

  Do my grades tell you who I am?

  Do they make me a better man?

  Can you see into my soul, Mrs. B.?

  Do you know who I am from my Fs and my Ds?

  What the hell? How’d I get myself into this jam?

  It’s a mess. So much stress. I don’t know who I am.

  What makes you so confident? So positive? So damn sure?

  Where’d you get that big bleeding heart of yours?

  Do you shop in the mall for your Jane Goodall tees?

  Where’d you get those eyes that into-the-future sees?

  How do you know so much, Mrs. B? Tell me.

  Is this real? What if I can’t live up to your ideal?

  Maybe I’ll piss you off? Eventually pull a Mom, hit a vein …

  We’re talking seppuku, or a run-of-the-mill hang.

  Here’s lookin at you, kid. I’ll commit hari-kari.

  You do you, I’ll do me—only you will be sorry.

  Whaddya think of that, Mrs. B? How’s your plan sounding now?

  I’m lost in a forest of tears and phonies, I wanna bow out.

  Are you gonna let me go? Or are you gonna hold on?

  How will you live with yourself once I am gone?

  You’ll be what—sad? Glad? Relieved?

  No more flunkies to worry about. No more deaf ears and pleas.

  I can’t picture that. Who’s your next loser gonna be?

  Not me. I’ll be floatin up there, in the air, where I’m free.

  Kermit turned off the video and crossed his arms.

  Natalie felt the surprise in her solar plexus—Riley had given a confident performance. Here was an angry young man, writing about suicide and self-harm with more insight than she’d expected. It revealed feelings of failure and acquiescence, perhaps even grudging gratitude for Daisy’s concern.

  She couldn’t square it in her mind with the theory that she and Luke had been floating about a sociopathic student who’d brutally murdered his teacher. Although you never knew. Reality didn’t have to make sense.

  “Kermit,” she said, “I’d like a copy of the video.”

  “Where should I send it?”

  She gave him her department email address, then said, “Okay, guys. Let’s go. I’ll explain your absence to your teachers.”

  11

  Upstairs on the third floor, Natalie found Daisy’s old classroom, where twenty-five bored-looking students sat fidgeting in their seats, jiggling their feet, and tapping their pens. The substitute teacher wrote instructions on the whiteboard, her silver-rinsed hair cropped short and layered like rose petals.

  Outside the door, a makeshift memorial covered a small area of space on the floor—an overflowing pile of flowers, stuffed animals, unlit candles, and thoughtful handwritten notes. Natalie picked one up at random. “I will miss your beautiful smile and your encouraging words.” Nearby were five items carefully arranged in a circle—a bird feather, a stone, a votive candle, a Dixie cup full of water, and a picture of Ms. Buckner cut out of last year’s yearbook.

  Natalie recognized the Wiccan ritual honoring the dead. The four items surrounding Daisy’s picture represented air, earth, fire, and water. Natalie and her friends used to perform a similar ritual on occasion. You sat in a circle, holding hands and chanting, “I call upon the elements, and invite the powers of the four directions to watch over Ms. Buckner’s soul. By air and earth and fire and rain, we will remember you.”

  There weren’t that many actual witches in Burning Lake, although Wicca was a legitimate religion now. It had been legal to practice since 1986 due to a landmark court decision, but the local Wiccans made sure everyone understood they only did white magic, and that they had nothing to do with Satanism, which was another breed altogether. There were two official adult covens listed in the phone book, with about eighty members each, but there were many more unofficial covens hidden from public view. On the surface, it would appear that Burning Lake had a sparse Wiccan population, but that was due to the fact that many of them were still in the broom closet.

  Conversely, no one knew exactly how many practicing Satanists there were in Burning Lake, except for the small group of about two dozen adherents who’d planted their church here. Rumors of animal sacrifices and devil worship had floated around for years, but the police investigations into, say, last year’s spate of missing pets, had subsequently exonerated the church members, who seemed for the most part to be nice people.

  During her sophomore year in high school, Natalie had formed her own coven with her best friends Bobby, Adam, Max, and Bella. The love, the bond between these five friends, had once been so solid, so unbreakable—never would they not be linked somehow, they swore, across time and space, regardless of where life hurled them. They would be like quantum particles, always feeling what the others felt, even if they were thousands of miles apart. This just had to be true. Sixteen-year-old Natalie couldn’t imagine it otherwise.

  For Natalie, high school had been a living, breathing nightmare. Rumors spread like wildfire. Nobody trusted anybody else. Natalie and her artsy friends knew that they sucked—but at least they sucked with integrity. They prided themselves on standing up for the underdog. Their defensive weapons of choice were snark and derision. They called themselves “brilliant misfits”—in private, where there was no need for modesty. They amused themselves by boasting about how talented they were, since it boosted their morale. On the outside, they were losers. On the inside, they outshone the entire school.

  During Natalie’s witchy phase, she and her friends would stay out long after sunset, watching dusk dissolve into twilight, and twilight disappear into a velvety blackness, where the stars blinked on one by one, and they worked their magic—hexing other kids who picked on them, wishing luck to those in need, relishing their newfound sense of empowerment. But the deeper she and her friends got into the concept of evil, the more her thoughts touched on the wet, squishy sound of a stick stabbing into the bloated guts of a dead raccoon … the one thing she wished to erase from her mind.

  Of course, reality was vastly different from adolescent hopes and dreams, and Natalie hadn’t heard from any of her old pals in quite some time. After Bella ran away, they all took off for college, scattering across the country. Occasionally, she’d bump into Bobby Deckhart, who was working as an accountant now, or Max Callahan, who was developing some sort of music app. But Bella was gone. Drugs took Adam.

  Now she continued down the hallway, looking for room 312. She paused in front of Ethan Hathaway’s English lit class at the end of the corridor. The room was filled to capacity. The students were mostly silent. Not a lot of foot-jiggling. All eyes were on Mr. Hathaway, a tall handsome man who leaned against the lectern and read aloud from a book of poetry.

  Natalie didn’t know much about Hathaway, only what Grace had told her. He was fortysomething and unhitched—a prize catch in this town. Except that, according to Grace, he’d gotten mixed reviews from some of the ladies he’d dated. They ca
lled him antisocial, standoffish, bookish, too serious.

  Now she observed the sophomore class through the glass panel. Most of the girls were paying rapt attention, but not everyone was impressed. The boys in back looked bored, propping their chins in their hands and slouching over their desks, idly tracing flaws in the varnished wood.

  The English teacher was a good-looking man. Tall, bespectacled, and square-jawed, with toned, sinewy limbs. He spoke calmly, with conviction, and possessed the kind of dignified sincerity that wasn’t easy to fake. No wonder some of his students had crushes on him. He paused for dramatic effect before turning the page and continuing in a stage whisper, “‘O, that you were yourself! But, love, you are…’”

  Some of the girls practically swooned.

  Ellie was seated up front between her two best friends, India Cochran and Berkley Auberdine. Another close friend, Sadie Myers, sat next to Berkley. India’s black skirt was inappropriately short, and she swung her long leg with seductive synchronicity, while nodding to the sound of Hathaway’s voice. Ellie, Berkley, and Sadie were doing variations of the same theme. Four hypnotized seductresses. And yet, despite the Goth attire, Natalie was struck by Ellie’s clean-scrubbed earnestness.

  She’d known these girls since they were fat little babies. She’d been to all of Ellie’s birthday parties and had witnessed many dramas. She recalled sitting in the kitchen with Grace and overhearing little blooms of laughter followed by little outbursts of disagreement. During the sugar highs, Ellie and her friends would run around the yard, twirling their colorful skirts like flowers that had grown legs.

  Today, they were dressed head-to-toe in witchy black—okay, so this was the coven. Ellie, India, Berkley, and Sadie. Four fast friends. Hanging out in New Age bookstores and metaphysical shops after school, just like Natalie and her friends had done.

  Funny—her niece had never mentioned Riley before, and Grace monitored Ellie’s friendships closely. If Riley knew India well enough to drop by her house after school, then Ellie would certainly know about it.

  Natalie checked her watch. Fifteen minutes to kill before next period. She logged on to Instagram and perused India’s social media pages. It felt wrong to be spying on them, like a transgression. They still called her Aunt Natalie. Once upon a time it was Auntie N. She knew their lovely mothers. It troubled Natalie deeply, but she knew she would have to reconcile her dual roles in their lives going forward.