by Elle Thorpe
The officer’s lip curled slightly, distaste in his gaze. “Who are you?”
I stepped in front of Banjo. “Not important. How about you tell me why you want me to come to the station? Again. I’ve already told you everything I know about the fire.”
The officer’s steely gaze landed squarely on me. “Perhaps. But either way, you can come willingly, or I can arrest you right here.”
My anger boiled. The officer looked at me with the same contempt he’d looked at Banjo. He knew then. Knew exactly who I was. Who I’d been, and what had happened in my past. Judgement rolled off him.
“Bartholomew Johns, is that you?” My aunt’s voice from the top of the stairs held a barely constrained anger. “You did not just waltz into my house and threaten to arrest my niece, did you?”
I glanced up in surprise, meeting her eyes. She swept down the stairs without a hair out of place or a wrinkle in her clothing. Nobody would have ever guessed she’d just been trying to sleep off a migraine. Her hand found the small of my back at the same time she noticed Banjo beside me. She frowned but ignored him, nudging me forward.
I dropped his hand.
The officer went a little pink around the cheeks, but he didn’t apologize. “New facts about your husband’s death have come to light, Mrs. Knight. You both need to come to the station. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
Selina took her purse from a coatrack by the door and stared the man down. “Try using your manners next time then, perhaps?”
The officer bit his lip and spun on his heel, disappearing from the doorway.
Selina sighed. “Let’s just get this over with, okay? I know you don’t like the police, but the sooner we get this done, the sooner you can get back to…” She cast a glance over her shoulder at Banjo, who hadn’t moved. “Whatever you were doing.”
Banjo’s sharp gaze darted to my aunt but quickly came back to me. I lifted my shoulder an inch and followed my aunt’s lead, picking up my purse and heading for the door.
“Lacey,” he called.
I stopped.
Banjo had his hands shoved into the pockets of his work pants. “See you around.”
I nodded. But I sincerely doubted it.
3
Lacey
Selina shifted on the hard plastic seats, clutching her purse on her lap. She hadn’t touched the desk in front of us, or the plastic cups of water the police officers had left for us. She cast her gaze around the dingy room, her nose wrinkled in distaste.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, not for the first time this evening.
I agreed, but I didn’t reply. Complaining about it wasn’t going to get us anywhere. The fact they’d put us in an interrogation room couldn’t mean anything good. The last few chats had been more informal. I’d given a statement. Then repeated it a few days later. Then answered some more questions. But that had all been in the hospital, our home, or the captain’s office. Today was different. There’d been a more serious vibe when the officers had come to our door. And there’d been no one here to greet us as we’d arrived at the station. We’d been left to wait, though why, I couldn’t work out.
The door swung open, and Detective Appin strode in. Another detective behind him, one I didn’t recognize, shut the door quietly. They took the empty seats on the opposite side of the grimy-looking table.
“Finally.” Selina shot a glare at the detective we were familiar with. He’d been the one who’d come to the hospital to take my initial statement, the day after the fire.
“We apologize for keeping you waiting, Mrs. Knight. But new information about your husband’s case has come in. We wanted to be sure we had all the facts before we discussed them with you.”
Selina sighed. “Fine, but can we make this snappy? We have a meeting at my niece’s new school tomorrow, and I don’t want her exhausted for it.”
It wasn’t late. Most ten-year-olds probably had later bedtimes, but nobody argued with Selina about it.
The detective turned to me. “Ah, that’s right. Orientation at Edgely Academy. That’ll be a big change for you all. Never in a million years would have thought they’d be turning the boys school co-ed. I hear they’re already building new wings to accommodate you all.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t in the mood for idle chitchat. And starting a new school year at Edgely Academy didn’t exactly thrill me with joy. Especially because we all knew the reason nobody could go back to our old school.
Appin seemed to get the idea I wasn’t interested and opened a folder on the table. “Right. Well, we’ve asked you both down here tonight because Lawson’s autopsy results came back.”
“Yes? So? We already know he died in the fire. This isn’t news.”
Appin grimaced. “Actually, he didn’t. The autopsy results found he was already dead before the fire started.”
My aunt let out a gasp, but my brain worked quicker. “How?” I demanded. “A heart attack? Stroke?”
The detective cocked his head to the side. “Stab wound.”
“What?” I choked out. “No, that can’t be right. I would have seen the blood…” Wouldn’t I? I tried to think back, but all I could remember were flames and heat. The floorboards in Lawson’s office were dark. Could I have missed that he was lying there, bleeding to death? Bile rose in my throat as I realized I couldn’t recall paying any attention to the floor. Why would I have? The walls being eaten up by flames had been kind of distracting.
Selina let out a cry of pain that ripped me in half.
I tugged my chair closer to hers and stretched my arms around her narrow shoulders. “Sssh, Sel. It’ll be okay.”
She trembled beneath my touch but then hugged me back hard. “Why?” she whispered. “He was a good man. There was no reason for anyone to hurt him.” She choked on the last words, but I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. She swallowed hard, her throat bobbing.
“That’s what we now have to work out.” He turned to me, his calculating gaze sweeping my body. My skin crawled.
“Don’t even think about accusing my niece.” Selina’s voice sharpened into steel. “Lawson was the only father she knows and she nearly died in that fire herself. There’s no way she did this.”
The detective folded his arms across his burly chest. “And you, Mrs. Knight?”
If this situation hadn’t been so bleak, I would have laughed. My aunt was three inches shorter than me, making her a full foot shorter than my uncle had been. She barely ate and probably weighed one hundred and twenty pounds on a fat day. But besides all that, the woman wouldn’t hurt a fly. She might have been a bit of a snob, and too focused on her looks, but she was also the woman who put milk out each night for a too-skinny neighborhood cat. And the woman who’d shooed the help away when my friends came over, because she wanted to make sandwiches for us herself. But most of all, she was the woman who worshipped the ground her husband had walked on. While her friends all slept with their gardeners, and men from their gyms, my aunt’s attention had never swayed. She’d met Lawson at the door every night, ready to kiss him and ask him about his day.
Selina’s gaze narrowed. “I was at home with a headache, and my entire staff can vouch for me. Don’t you people talk to each other? I’ve already told you this.” She pushed to her feet, hauling me up with her. “If you want to talk to us further, contact our lawyers. And in the meantime, how about you do your job?”
She dragged me toward the door, and the detectives made no move to stop her. But in the doorway, I put on the brakes.
“The man who pulled me from the fire. What do you know about him? Did you even investigate him?”
“We still have no proof there was anyone else there that night, but—”
My blood boiled. “Why do you need proof? I’m telling you someone was there. That makes me a witness!”
The detective held his hand up. “Stop. You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say, while we have found no proof of another person being in the building that
night, we are taking your accusations seriously. We researched the letters you told us about. The ones you say were on the man’s shirt.”
I froze. “SVHF. You found out what they mean?”
The detective leafed through his papers. “We believe so. There were a few options, but we believe the most likely is Saint View High Football.”
“Saint View High?” my aunt asked. “You think one of the thugs from that God-awful hellhole of a town killed my husband?”
I mulled the idea over in my head. Saint View, despite its pleasant-sounding name, was anything but. Saint View was the wrong side of the tracks so to speak. Inside the Providence estate where we lived, there wasn’t a house worth less than two million dollars. The developers had bought out a huge area of old buildings and bulldozed as much as they could. The school and the church had been the only things left, and only for the fact they were heritage listed and the local politicians wouldn’t allow them to be torn down. But just fifteen minutes across town, outside the gates of our community, the suburb of Saint View sat, an ugly blip on the radar. Mostly full of low-income housing, it was a notorious hot spot for criminals, drugs, and violence.
“We have no suspects at this stage. Just…interests.” He narrowed his eyes at me when he said it.
I wasn’t intimidated. I had nothing to hide. I took two steps back into the room and placed my hands on the table, leaning down so I was eye height with the detective. Amusement sparkled in his eye.
“You can suspect me all you want, Detective. But you’re wasting your time. I suggest you look elsewhere. Before you botch up yet another investigation.”
I shoved the table, hard enough for it to push into Appin’s belly, but he didn’t comment. He knew what I was talking about. He’d been the detective on my parents’ case years ago.
He’d failed then. But I wasn’t a helpless five-year-old anymore. I wasn’t going to take his ineptitude lying down this time. I’d be down here at his office every damn day until he worked out who’d murdered my uncle.
Selina and I were both quiet on the drive home. She stared out the window and clenched her fingers around the strap of her bag in an attempt to keep them from trembling. I drove, eyes trained to the road, apart from the odd glance to the passenger seat to make sure my aunt was okay.
“I can’t believe this,” she whispered eventually. She seemed smaller, her slight frame hunched in on itself. “Why would someone want to do this to him? He was a good man. Everybody liked him.”
I stopped at a traffic light and tried to keep my fingers from tapping on the wheel impatiently. “Did he know anyone from Saint View High? The principal? Their football coach?”
She shook her head, dark hair falling around her face gently. Even this upset, she was still beautiful. “I don’t think so? I can’t imagine why he’d have anything to do with the principal of a school like that. And he didn’t even like football. Maybe they got in, hoping for money?”
“In a school? How much money would be kept on the grounds on a Sunday night?”
She mulled that over. “Perhaps for the computers and equipment, then? But surely someone would have seen something if that were the case. A truck or van leaving the premises.”
“I don’t think this was a random attack. The man knew my name.”
My aunt darted a worried glance at me. “Are you sure he said your name? You were so out of it that night, sweetheart…”
I shot her a look as the light went green and I let the car roll forward. “Please don’t say you don’t believe me either.”
She reached across the gearshift and gripped my arm, squeezing it reassuringly. “Of course I believe you. Always. It’s just that none of this makes sense.”
“I know.” I swallowed hard. “Appin thinks I’m lying, doesn’t he? You’ve known him a long time.”
She nodded. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks.”
“But it does. He’s going to waste all his time investigating you, and me, and not paying attention to the facts. I don’t want him on this case. Ask for someone else.”
Selina sighed. “Who, though, Lace? He’s the most senior detective they have. And I have no pull with the police department. Even if I did somehow manage to persuade them to give the case to someone else, you think he wouldn’t have his nose all in it? It would just make things worse. He’d be embarrassed in front of his colleagues and he’d come after us twice as hard.”
Frustration rose inside me, and I gripped the wheel tighter. “So what? We just let him fuck this whole thing up like he did with my parents’ case?”
A dark shadow crossed her face. “Language. But, no. Not like that. That can’t happen again. I can’t stand the not knowing.”
An idea bubbled to the surface, and I pondered it in the silence that fell over us. My aunt would never go for it. I knew she’d be horrified, even by the thought. I’d seen the way she’d wrinkled her nose at the mere mention of Saint View. But the more I thought it over, the more it seemed like the only way. I had a chance now to do something I hadn’t when I was a kid.
I had a chance to make this right.
If the police weren’t going to investigate properly, then I would.
“Enroll me at Saint View High.”
My aunt’s head snapped in my direction. “What?”
Her eyes were huge, as if I’d just punched her in the gut. But surprise I could work with. It was better than an outright refusal.
“Seriously, Selina. SVHF. Saint View High Football. Doesn’t it make sense that someone there might know Uncle Lawson? Maybe someone he worked with? Or went to college with even?”
“I suppose,” she said slowly. “But what are you suggesting? That someone held a grudge since his college days?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I want to find out.”
“By enrolling at the school?”
I went quiet. We were almost home before I answered. “I can’t just do nothing. Not again. Please. I’d rather do this with your blessing, but I’m nearly eighteen and I can enroll myself If I have to.”
Selina sucked in a deep breath, and I knew why. I’d always been a good kid. Perhaps it was the fact that my aunt and uncle weren’t my biological parents, and I therefore still subconsciously felt like I always had to do the right thing in case they decided to give me up. I never stayed out past curfew. I did all my homework and got good grades. I had a perfect attendance record. But this wasn’t some insignificant thing, like getting another award at school. This was something I had to do. “Please, Selina. I have to.”
I pulled the car into the driveway and hit the beeper for the electric doors on the garage. They rolled open agonizingly slowly, while Selina pondered my request. I didn’t dare glance her way. I was full of bravado. I might have been able to enroll myself if I’d wanted to, but the fact was, Selina could find other ways to stop me. Take my car, so I couldn’t get there. Or worse, kick me out entirely for going against her wishes. I didn’t want either of those things. I loved my aunt. I had a nice home with her, and I didn’t want to lose it, right after losing Lawson.
But I had to do something.
“You’ve got that look in your eye,” Selina said with a sigh.
“What look? I don’t have a look.”
She laughed. “Oh, but, sweetheart, you do. You look just like your mother. Full of fire and determination.”
My heart squeezed. I barely remembered my mother. I’d blocked out so much of my early life, it was like a black hole. I remembered the way she’d made me feel, more than her appearance. And deep in my heart, I still knew that she hadn’t just disappeared of her own free will. She’d loved me. She wouldn’t have just abandoned me.
My eyes filled with tears. She’d been stolen from me. Just like my dad. And my uncle. I kept losing people, and I didn’t know why.
Selina leaned across and pulled me into an awkward hug. She sighed. “So, what does one wear on their first day of public school?”
4
L
acey
Saint View High had all the charm of a prison block.
Kids streamed from all directions, headed for the stairs that led up the squat, bare cement building, looking as thrilled as if they were headed to a funeral.
So many nameless faces. There wasn’t a single soul I recognized.
My attention caught on a couple, making their way across the patchy grass of the quad. She was a cute blonde, with athletic legs, shown off by a skirt so short it was little more than underwear. The guy she hung off was tall, his broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist. She talked animatedly about something I was too far away to hear, while he appeared bored, his gaze wandering around the crowd, as if he were searching for someone. Or perhaps searching for an escape from his girlfriend. His gaze caught mine, and I looked down quickly, embarrassed at being caught staring.
My cell buzzed in my backpack, the ringtone lost to the crowd of teenagers forced to divert around me. I fished it out and answered the call without checking the caller ID, just grateful I had something to do to busy my hands.
“Girl! Where are you? I thought we were meeting on the steps, but it’s five to, and you’re a no-show. Are you in the parking lot or did you sleep in?”
Shit. Meredith. Orientation at Edgely Academy. We’d organized to meet beforehand, and I’d completely forgotten. I cringed. “Actually, neither. I’m standing in front of Saint View High.”
There was a moment of surprised silence, then, “Uh, okay. But why?”
I sighed. “Too long to get into right now. It all happened last night. I’ll call you tonight and explain, but I’m not coming to orientation today.”
“Okay, I’ll get your schedule for you.”
“No need. I’m not coming at all.”
“What?”
“I promise, I’ll call you tonight. Love you.” I hung up before she could ask any more questions.