The Lonely Dead

by April Henry

  I turn away and knock my forehead into the cold window. “Oh God.” I close my eyes. “Do you think I could have done it? That I could have killed her?”

  “Of course not. But things don’t look good for either of us.” He sighs. “Look. How about if we go someplace and talk? Maybe together we could figure out what really happened to Tori. Because right now, I don’t trust the police to find the truth.”

  Relief floods through me. “Okay.”

  “What about that little park across the street from the Hillsdale library? There’s usually never anyone there.”

  When he gets out of the car, Luke brings his backpack with him, so I bring mine. The park, with just a picnic table, a slide, some swings, and a few bare trees, is deserted. Across the street, a half dozen people are gathered in front of the library, waiting for it to open.

  Luke takes a seat on one side of the picnic table, and I sit on the other. Even though I’m wearing my coat, I’m cold. Luke has slipped on gloves. I wish I had some.

  “You’re the one who knew Tori best,” I say. “Was there something going on in her life that could have led someone to kill her?”

  “Tori? She had a lot of friends, and she also had a lot of enemies.” He pauses a moment. “That never bothered her, not as long as everyone was paying attention. But it’s hard to see anyone hating her enough to kill her.”

  “Who do you think did it, then? What about Mr. Conner, that creepy neighbor?”

  “He’s, like, ninety.” He shakes his head. “Tori could beat him up.”

  “Supposedly it doesn’t take that much strength to strangle someone with a rope or whatever. What if he jerked that bolo tie over her head and surprised her?” Luke still doesn’t look convinced, so I move on. “Or what about her dad? I heard he came home early and was really mad when he found the party.”

  He tilts his head to keep his hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, but he’s still her dad.”

  I think of Charlie and his talk about Occam’s razor, of the simplest answer being true. “But her dad still fits into that whole ‘suspect the boyfriend/husband’ dynamic you were talking about. He’s a man with a close personal relationship with her.”

  He shakes his head. “I just can’t see it being her own father.”

  I move on. “And what about Mr. Hardy?”

  “The teacher?” His eyebrows rise. “What about Mr. Hardy?”

  Luke either doesn’t know or he’s faking it. If I tell him the truth, how can I make him believe me? “I heard a rumor they might have been dating. Or whatever you want to call it.”

  “No,” he says, then repeats it with more strength. “No. Even Tori wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that.”

  I decide to skip telling him about my pen recorder. It will just make me look weird, and besides, not one of them said anything damning. “But if we don’t think of another suspect, the cops are going to keep looking at us.” With my index finger, I trace the initials carved into the table. HA + PR.

  “Maybe all we have to figure out is why they think that—and then work to negate it.” He reaches for his backpack. “Let’s each make a list of reasons the police might think we did it. Then we can trade lists and figure out how to counteract those things.”

  He takes out a notebook and a pen, and I do the same.

  When I’m done, my list looks like this:

  1.  Tori used to be my friend but then decided she wasn’t.

  2.  She told people I was mentally ill.

  3.  She made fun of me for being different and for being overweight.

  4.  She embarrassed me in front of everyone at the party.

  5.  I don’t remember everything about that night.

  “Done?” Luke asks. When I nod, we trade notebooks. His list reads:

  The cops always look at the boyfriend first.

  And things had been over between Tori and me for a long time. We weren’t making each other happy anymore.

  Every time I’d try to break up, Tori would flirt with other guys just to make me jealous, to force us back together.

  Lots of people have heard us argue.

  And I have no alibi.

  Luke raises his head from reading my paper. “Oh, that part about embarrassing you at the party goes for me, too. Give me my notebook back for a second.”

  “Let’s trade. Because I have the alibi problem, too.”

  We both add to our lists and then swap them again.

  He looks back down at mine. “What’s this about being mentally ill? Is that like how Tori told me you sometimes saw things? Do the police know that?”

  “They know that a long time ago I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. But now I’m sure that the diagnosis is wrong.”

  “But the police don’t know that.” He pushes my notebook back to me. “You should add that to the list.”

  I do, right after not having an alibi.

  7.I have been diagnosed as schizophrenic.

  I pass the notebook back. He gives me a half smile.

  Now Luke knows all my secrets. But he doesn’t care.

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 10:01 A.M.

  WOULD IT SURPRISE YOU TO KNOW

  Across the street, the library doors open, and people begin to file in. “Do you mind if I take a break and head over there?” I ask Luke. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “No worries.” He smiles. “I’m not going anyplace.”

  I walk through the double doors feeling lighter than I have since I found Tori’s body. At least Luke believes I’m innocent.

  But the lightness doesn’t last. Because that’s not enough, is it? The problem with both our lists is that everything on them is true. And none of it looks good. Not for me. Not for Luke.

  When I push open the door to go back outside, I spot a plain dark blue sedan parked behind Luke’s Subaru. Charlie’s uncle, the detective, is walking up to the picnic table, straight toward Luke. My stomach does a flip.

  I want to run, but I make myself walk unhurriedly back across the street. I try to act unconcerned, but I can’t even remember how I normally hold my head or swing my arms.

  “Adele,” the detective says. He has the same high cheekbones as Charlie, and his eyes are the same shade of golden brown. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Detective Lauderdale. Detective Geiger and I are working Tori Rasmussen’s case together.”

  Mechanically, I shake his outstretched hand.

  He answers my unspoken question about how he knew where to find us. “I went by the school to talk to Luke. When I learned he wasn’t there, I called him, and he told me where you were. And actually we wanted to speak to both of you. Luke’s already agreed to come down to the station. We just have a few more questions.”

  Luke and I exchange a glance.

  “Okay,” I say slowly. There doesn’t seem to be any other choice. I remind myself that all the evidence against us is circumstantial. Maybe things don’t look good, but they’ll never turn up anything proving one of us did it.

  Lauderdale insists we take his car. Luke sits up front with him, while I sit in the back. Everyone’s mostly quiet. Luke’s face is open and relaxed. I take deep breaths from the abdomen and tell myself we’ll be fine.

  When we get off the elevator, Detective Geiger is waiting in the hall. “Hello, Adele,” he says. “I’m glad you were able to come by. I just have a few more questions for you.”

  “Okay.” I turn to Luke, but Lauderdale is already ushering him into an interview room. I realize we aren’t going to be questioned together, and my courage starts to desert me.

  Everything is the same as before. The same interview room, the same chairs, the same gray file folder, the same tape recorder, the same verbal reminder that I am free to leave at any time. I brace myself, waiting for Lisa’s head to push through the floor again.

  But it doesn’t.

  “This thing is snowballing, Adele.” With cupped hands, Geiger pulls one knee toward his chest and leans back.
“There are going to be arrests, and soon. But if you tell us everything you know, you’ll be in a better position with the grand jury.”

  A better position? “But I’ve already told you everything.” I’m still distracted, looking at the floor behind him. Lisa told me she mostly just slept. Maybe she’s still sleeping.

  “We’ve been working this case hard. We’ve been talking to everybody: Jazzmin and Ethan, Petra and Laquanda, Justin and Murphy, Dylan and Sofia. We know what happened that Saturday. And now it’s time for you to do the right thing and clear up the inconsistencies. You’re hiding something, Adele.”

  “But I’m not.” At least not anything I can tell him.

  Geiger groans in disgust and turns away. After a long stretch of silence, he turns back, his face set. “We know you’re a good person in a bad situation. Help us to see your side, Adele. Help us to understand what happened that night.”

  “Nothing happened. I just left the party and went home.”

  He continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “Did you just snap? It’s understandable, really. Everyone says she was awful to you that night. That she publicly humiliated you. Did you feel like you had to finally shut her up?”

  “What? No!”

  Geiger won’t stop. “That girl had a temper. Everyone says so. Did she catch up with you and threaten you? Were you afraid for your life? Were you forced to do something first before she did something to you?”

  “I didn’t touch her, I swear.” I remember the feeling of her weeping in my arms, but what I just said is true, at least if you’re talking about the living Tori.

  Geiger’s chair is on wheels, and he keeps inching it closer. He offers me another excuse, another out. “Sometimes it might feel like you’re just standing on the outside, watching what happens. Like it’s not really you doing it at all. Is that what it was like Saturday night?”

  “I didn’t do it,” I say between gritted teeth.

  He leans back and crosses his arms, shaking his head in disappointment. “Do you know what Measure 11 is, Adele?”

  “It’s some kind of law about kids being tried as adults.”

  “Right. Under Oregon law, even if you’re as young as fifteen, if you commit certain types of crimes, you must be tried as an adult and you must go to prison for a legally mandated period.” Geiger’s voice punches each must. “Those crimes include murder. And the mandated term for murder is twenty-five years.”

  It only takes a second to add it up. I would be forty-two when I got out. I close my eyes and swallow.

  “Would it surprise you to know that two people claim to have seen you arguing with Tori in the parking lot of your apartment building that night?”

  Startled, I open my eyes. “What? Who?”

  He doesn’t answer, just asks another question. “Would it surprise you to know that another witness saw a girl—described as ‘a bigger girl’—getting out of an old truck in the back parking lot of Gabriel Park around midnight Saturday? And that she appeared to be dragging something heavy into the woods?”

  I try to imagine myself dragging Tori. But her dress wasn’t dirty, and neither were her feet. Although does that really mean anything if she was already dead when she was dragged? After all, the Tori I see doesn’t show any marks from the autopsy. She looks exactly the way she did at the moment of her death.

  “I swear to you, the last time I saw Tori alive was when I left the party. And then I went home. There are other people you need to be looking at.” I offer him the same suspects I did before. Only it’s even more important that he believe me. “What about that creepy neighbor of hers, Mr. Conner, the one I told you wanted to give me a ride? Or how about her dad? I heard he came home early, and he got mad about the party. And there’s our student teacher, Mr. Hardy—I think there was something going on between him and Tori.”

  Geiger is silent for a long time, mulling over what I just said. Finally, he’s listening to me.

  And then he speaks, and I realize I can’t read him at all. “Adele, stop throwing dirt in my eyes. You’re flailing around, trying to get me to look at anyone but you.” He makes a disgusted sound. “We know you practically grew up at the Rasmussens’. And how do you repay them? By casting aspersions on Mr. Rasmussen. And by denying Tori’s family the peace of having an answer.”

  There’s a knock on the door and then it opens. Detective Lauderdale sticks his head inside. “Mark, would you mind stepping out for a second?”

  I feel like I’ve been spinning around in an industrial-sized dryer. I don’t know what to think about all the things Geiger just said. I miss Lisa’s commentary. I put my hand over my mouth. “Lisa?” I whisper.

  But the floor stays flat, and my head isn’t aching. Like Rebecca at the museum, Lisa said my presence woke her up. So why isn’t she here now?

  Geiger comes back in. He slaps his palms together, like he’s dusting them off, like he’s just finished something. “Detective Lauderdale tells me that Luke has already been very forthcoming. You need to get ahead of this thing, Adele, or his story is the only one that’s going to be told. And in Luke’s story, you don’t look too good.”

  All the blood leaves my face. “Why? What did he say?” How does this fit with what Luke said in the park? How can he have turned against me? It feels like I’m falling. I put my hand out and steady myself against the wall.

  “Was it the two of you that night, working together? Was it all Luke’s idea?”

  “No! Stop it! I didn’t even see him after I left the party.”

  “Only one person can cut a deal, Adele. And if I were you, I’d want to be that person. Otherwise, this could all get hung around your neck.”

  Lisa said it was legal for the police to lie to suspects. I grab hold of that thought. Maybe Geiger’s just making everything up. Maybe no one saw me in the apartment parking lot or at the park. Maybe Luke isn’t telling them anything.

  Maybe.

  Geiger’s blue eyes drill into me. He won’t be satisfied until I say I did it. It would be so easy to embrace his version of me, his version of what happened. If I took the blame, then his incessant questions would finally stop.

  But I can’t. I won’t. I press my lips together and say nothing.

  He sighs. “Adele, do you know what we found in your grandpa’s truck?” It’s clear he thinks I know the answer. But I don’t. And I don’t think I want to.

  “No.” Can he hear the tremble in my voice?

  He reaches into a folder and then passes me two photos. One shows a dozen strands of red hair stuck against gray fabric. I realize it’s the back of the truck’s passenger seat. On the floor next to it is a yellow ruler. The second photo is taken at an angle. Hidden underneath the seat is a high-heeled slip-on sandal.

  It’s Tori’s.

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 4:17 P.M.

  THE LAST PIECE OF THE PUZZLE

  After Detective Geiger tells me he is going to take me back home, I ask, “What about Luke?”

  He shrugs as he pulls his car keys from his pocket. “Let’s not worry about him, Adele. You need to be thinking about yourself now.”

  When Geiger pulls into our parking lot, I get out of the car without saying goodbye. I head for the stairs, my head bowed under the rain that has begun to fall. Lunchtime has come and gone, but I’m not hungry at all. Once inside the apartment, I walk straight to my bedroom. I kick off my shoes, fall on my bed, and pull the covers over my head.

  Sleep is the only escape I can think of. It always worked when I was on my meds. Only now it won’t come. And when I finally manage to doze off, Tori haunts my dreams, crying again in my arms. Lisa McMasters makes an appearance, too. Both of them demand I help them.

  I awake tangled in the sheets. I’m sure Detective Geiger was lying when he claimed that in Luke’s version of what happened that Saturday night, I didn’t look so good.

  Pretty sure, anyway.

  But does it really matter what Luke said? Because the hair and the shoe can’t be explained away. Ge
iger said they were testing them for DNA.

  I think we both know the DNA will be Tori’s.

  The only explanation is that I got drunk, blacked out, and killed Tori.

  I figure the detective is just waiting for that last piece of the puzzle to snap into place before he goes to the grand jury and presents the case for why I should be arrested for Tori’s murder. It’s not like he needs to worry about me going on the lam. Where would I go? I’m seventeen. I’ve got no money and no passport, and now I don’t even have access to a vehicle.

  A knock at the front door makes me start. Have they come for me already?

  But when I look through the peephole, it’s Charlie standing on the front step, nervously shifting from foot to foot.

  I open the door.

  “I came by to apologize for this morning. For going to get Officer Werdling. I thought he could stop those people from attacking you.” He sighs. His eyes never leave my face. “I never thought you’d be the one to get in trouble.”

  Stepping back, I let him in. “Getting suspended from school is the least of my troubles.” I slump down on Grandpa’s recliner.

  “What do you mean?” He sits on the couch.

  “You know your uncle, the detective? I got a chance to meet him today.”

  “What?” Charlie looks surprised, then worried. “Where?”

  “When he took me and Luke down to the station.” My eyes sting as the reality of my situation hits me again.

  “You were with Luke?” Charlie tilts his head like that’s the important part.

  “We both got suspended for fighting. We ended up at that little park by the library, talking about why we were suspects. Luke thought things looked bad for him because he was Tori’s boyfriend.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Charlie says. “If a girl or woman is murdered, more than half the time it’s by her current or ex-partner.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t look good, but I look worse. Because your uncle came looking for us and drove us downtown. He took Luke into one interview room, and I ended up back with Detective Geiger. And Geiger showed me these pictures of what they found when they searched my grandpa’s truck. Behind the seat, there was this clump of red hair and a shoe.” I blink, and a tear rolls down my face. “Charlie, it was one of Tori’s sandals. I remember them from the party.”