The Devil Made Me

by Lorena May

  Lillia snuffles, and I take my arms from her, and just rub her back. “Felicity, I’m so- so sorry.” And she breaks into sobs again.

  Mrs. Lang speaks quietly now. “I think you should go.” We rise to leave, and she continues. “I do appreciate your coming to see us. The retraction. Your honest regret. But I can’t see you right now. I need you to leave.”

  We slink out the front door, walk quickly along the sidewalk and fall into my car. I waste no time in getting out of there. Who knows what will happen now. They may notify the police, especially when Felicity’s father is told. Lillia may be remanded. Darren may find out and who knows what he will do? But I feel a sense of relief, and when I look at Lillia I think she does too. Whatever might come, we’ll face. We drive home in silence.

  When we walk in the door Darren calls from the family room. “Jen? It was just announced. I think the woman murdered in her car was your old friend, Mia.”

  Chapter 18 ~ Jen

  Thursday, May 13

  Mia was murdered! I can’t connect the woman I saw at Erin’s funeral and the woman I see on the news. She was so alive. So lovely. Now both she and Erin are dead. There has to be a connection. A shiver crawls up my spine. I think back to the last time we were together as friends. The night that ended our friendship.

  We’d spent the latter part of twelfth grade planning for grad. Our dresses, shoes, hair, jewelry, nails . . . It was a foregone conclusion that Mia would be grad-queen, though we had to do a little more finagling than we’d bargained for. Mia’s date was to be Jordan, the cutest, most popular guy in school. The guy she swooned over.

  But when Graduation time came Jordan was out of the picture. A week earlier, Mia learned, he’d slept with Adrian. Rob, a friend of his, revealed Jordan’s faux pas. “I just thought you should know,” Rob confided.

  “That slut!” Mia sneered, her green eyes flashing. She promptly asked Rob to be her date, and with a sympathetic grin, he agreed.

  Mia was, indeed, Queen and she looked stunning in her burgundy dress, her thick, red hair fluffed around her face, Farrah Fawcett-style. I can still see her sitting on the stage in the gym, her long, lithe body erect, holding a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses. Her smile was wide and fake. Malevolent! She had a plan.

  Her parents, believing she was the angel they wanted her to be, agreed to spend the night at their lake house while she held a grad party at their place in town.

  We went to great pains to invite Adrian. She was popular with her own group of friends, so it was no easy feat. She had a wit and a lively, out-going personality. Besides being a lover of partying and free-spirited fun, she had no qualms about malicious gossip, bullying or deviant behaviour. No boundaries. Amongst her friends she was a leader in drug experimentation, sexual exploits and getting back at anyone she believed had crossed her. It was no secret that she’d led a group of kids in vandalizing cranky old Mr. Wither’s café, for example, after he’d kicked them out for loitering.

  Still, Mia was queen. She had a mansion to throw her party in, and we’d told Adrian that Jordan wanted her to come. It was enough to get her to agree. Of course, it meant some of her horrible friends might need to be there too. Sacrifices had to be made.

  The day before Graduation Mia, Erin and I walked home together from school, formulating our plot. “I’ve got a special gift for her,” Mia giggled. From her pocket she pulled out a piece of foil, unwrapping it carefully and holding it in the palm of her hand for us to see.

  “Ecstasy?” Erin gasped.

  “We pop it in her drink and bingo! She’s high as a kite. Then we go to town on her.” Mia said, her eyes blazing.

  “I’ve got markers.” Erin was delighted. “We can decorate that well-used body of hers!”

  “Where’d you get the ecstasy?” I asked.

  “From Tom, my neighbour. He can get all kinds of stuff.”

  I stood there, a smile on my face. All in.

  GRAD WAS DELIGHTFUL. A fancy dinner with our parents, mingling, oohing and aaahing over our dresses, shoes, hair, jewelry and nails. (Even my parents went along with it by grade twelve, as long as my dress was long with no cleavage.) We went through the motions as we charmed our families, congratulated each other, danced and secretly waited in anticipation for the big party.

  Mia’s house was palatial. She’d only invited a select group, but the numbers had risen to at least fifty enthusiastic grads, some of them Adrian’s followers.

  Erin and I took on the responsibility of making sure Adrian got there. After the dance we cornered her, sweet smiles pasted on our faces. “Hey, Adrian, let’s party! Jordan is waiting.” Arm in arm, one of us on either side of her, we walked the short distance to Mia’s house.

  Mia was waiting at the door, and she couldn’t have been more pleased to see us. “Adrian!” she cooed. “Good to see you. Jordan’s not here yet, but I’m sure he will be right away. I’ve got a drink for you.” And she handed Adrian the spiked concoction.

  We all had drinks so strong we shuddered as they went down, and my memory becomes hazy. I remember lots of laughing, the fuzzy faces of school-mates, and of Mia’s older neighbour, Tom, with a couple of his cool friends. All the while I watched for the ecstasy to take hold of Adrian.

  Soon Adrian was all over everyone; clinging, kissing, patting. “Whore,” Mia whispered to me as we watched her prance from one guy to another, showing off her large boobs, gyrating her hips provocatively.

  “Let’s get her,” Erin said, winking at Mia and I who stood whispering in a corner. We struck.

  “Jordan asked me to bring you to him,” Mia said, sidling up to Adrian who was laughing raucously with a group of her friends.

  “See ya later,” she chirruped as she happily followed us to Mia’s bedroom. I held my hand on her back guiding her along. Once we had her inside, we slammed the bedroom door behind us.

  “You’re all about fucking my boyfriend, aren’t you?” Mia snarled as we shoved Adrian onto the bed. “You fucking slut.”

  Adrian’s dilated eyes flew wide as we held her down. Mia cast her strong dancer’s legs over Adrian’s, holding one shoulder on the bed while I held the other.

  Erin delightedly pulled her dress up, holding her thick, black marker high above her head. “Let’s label you for all to see!” she screamed demonically. “Hmmm, what shall we say? Oh yes. ‘Fat whore’ for one.” And she firmly wrote across Adrian’s wide, white stomach.

  “How about ‘fucking slut’?” Mia hollered. Erin dutifully wrote along her arms.

  “Easy lay!” I bawled. Erin wrote on her forehead. All the while Adrian screamed and twisted and struggled.

  The door banged open. There stood Tom and three of his friends, swaggering in their tight jeans and leather jackets, smirking, lips curled.

  “Thank you, Ladies,” Tom growled. “We’ll take over now.” The four thugs unzipped their flies. They laughed and swivelled their hips suggestively, leering at the terrified girl on the bed. Tom, with his jeans below his knees, climbed onto her first, looking down, laughing, swerving his erect penis in large circular movements. His friends stood close by, hooting and cheering.

  Even in my drunken state I felt my insides drop. Erin, Mia and I stumbled off the bed and out of the room. But we heard the thumping, the screams, the grunting and chortling from Tom and his friends. We knew what was happening.

  “Shit!” Mia’s face was white as we huddled in the bathroom.

  “What did you think could happen, dumb-ass?” Erin’s voice was filled with panic. “You invited those yobs here. This was all your idea!”

  “This is rape!” I said.

  “Duh!” They looked at me through wild eyes.

  “You’re as much to blame as anyone.” Mia reminded me.

  The walls of the bathroom closed in on me. I gasped but couldn’t breathe. What have we done? On rubbery legs I opened the door and stumbled away. Down the hallway filled with shadows of people, up stairs to the large living room where partiers huddled a
nd sprawled, I wobbled across the floor to the entrance where I stumbled around looking for my shoes. I couldn’t find them. I opened the door and raced, bare-foot, through the archway down the front steps to home. Except from a distance, I never saw Mia or Erin again.

  Later I heard that Adrian’s big brother, Jim, who was a few years older than her, beat the shit out of Tom and his friends. He and buddies of his put Tom and the gang in the hospital. I never heard whether or not anyone was charged for either the rape or the beatings.

  Now both Erin and Mia are dead. Is this some vendetta? Am I next?

  Chapter 19 ~ Darby

  Friday, May 11

  Mel wanders into Darby’s office to find her staring at the pictures, arrows and scribbles on her white-board. “It’s a month now, since Erin Morgan’s murder, and what in the hell have we got?” He releases a puff of air from his lips.

  Darby stands, wide-legged, hands on hips, staring at the muddle of evidence. The phone rings. Darby glances at the caller ID. ‘Sergeant Becker’. “She grabs the phone. “Hi, Jill. Tell me there’s something fucking solid for once.”

  Jill’s voice is filled with excitement. “Darb, we just got a call from the men’s shelter. Don, the guy who runs it, said that one of the clients has confessed to Mia’s murder. A man named Andy.”

  Darby rakes her fingers through her hair, grimacing. “Andy?” Could it be? “But what about the blonde Mia had lunch with? And how would Andy get into Mia’s car?”

  Jill remains silent. “Thanks, Jill. I’ll see what Mel thinks.” Darby hangs up, and turns to look at Mel through narrowed eyes.

  “Let’s bring him in and see,” Mel says. “Did we get anything on Kristin Harmer?

  “No cameras, no pictures anyone can identify and a fake address and phone number! She gave the club the number to City Hall and they didn’t even notice. Fuck!” She paces the length of her office, her harried strides making short work of the space. “And now a fucking confession that doesn’t make sense?”

  Mel frowns as he sits at Darby’s desk and scrolls through the file on her computer. “It says here hair samples that didn’t appear to be Mia’s were found on the passenger’s seat of Mia’s car. Of course, they could be her daughter’s, husband’s . . . anyone’s. Andy’s?”

  “No word on DNA or prints from the scene?” Darby asks.

  “No prints they can match other than Mia’s. The DNA from the hair samples doesn’t match anything in the system.”

  Darby stops pacing, and looks at Mel, head cocked, eyes narrowed. “Do you think it’s worthwhile to get DNA from anyone who might be remotely involved?”

  “Absolutely,” Mel says. He looks up at Darby’s messy white-board. “Erin was last seen with a man and a blonde woman. Mia had lunch with a blonde woman. No one saw a man with Mia at the club. We know she’d golfed with this woman several times No Facebook post with a hideous woman on Mia’s page.

  “Hmmm. The ass-hole must’ve done that on Erin’s own computer. Or she may have been forced to post it.” Darby pauses, her eye-brows furrowed. “Could they have known Mia was being watched?”

  “We’ve talked to neighbours and nobody saw anything out of the ordinary. No cars or strangers lurking near the house.”

  “A woman from their past? Maybe a man dressed as a woman? Could Sean or Andy pass as a beautiful woman? That’s hard to imagine. Maybe Marnie or Adrian? Or someone else they bullied?” Darby taps her fist against her lips. “Let’s check with Seattle police and see what they’ve got on Marnie. We may need to pay her a visit.”

  Mel scrutinizes the computer screen, raising his eye-brows. “Apparently Graham has inherited half of Erin’s estate. Her nieces the other half. Did they analyze his art paper?”

  Darby cocks her head, her mouth twisted. “The water-color paper he uses is standard. You can get it at any art store. I think it’s the same perp, Mel. Is Graham back in the country? Did he know Mia?” She nibbles her lip. “Any word on Adrian White?”

  Mel shakes his head, scratching the back of his neck, as he scrolls through files on his computer. “Jill’s people called Graham Braun’s office and place of residence. He’s still incognito.” Peering at the computer, he says, “Adrian White vanished into thin air right after graduation from High School. Her parents filed a missing person’s report, but she was thought to be a runaway. She’s completely vanished. No one has seen or heard from her since. Presumed dead. “

  “Ugh! Fuck!” Darby threw her hands up. “I’m going to talk to Jen. She’s the only butterfly left. Then we’ll question Andy. Let’s bring him in.”

  AS DARBY PULLS UP ON her bike, Jen’s white Toyota turns into the driveway. She waves when she sees Darby. After she’s parked in the garage she bustles out to greet the officer, biting her lips, her eyes rapidly blinking. She’s extremely nervous Darby notes. Why?

  “Don’t be worried.” She pats Jen’s arm. “You’re not in trouble.”

  Jen releases an anxious laugh and says, “Come in. The kids should be home. I always have a little extra work Fridays, so I’m late. But they’re old enough . . . “Her voice trails off as she leads Darby through the garage door into the back entrance.

  “Lillia? Logan?” Jen calls.

  “Hi, Mom!” come two voices, one from the basement, one down the hallway. Darby follows Jen to the kitchen.

  “Please. Sit down.” Jen gestures toward the oak chairs by a table covered in school books. Her hands tremble. She wraps them around her middle a moment, then awkwardly pulls a chair out and sits down.

  Darby leans toward her, speaking in a soothing tone. “Jen, have you heard about your old friend Mia?”

  Jen nods, eyes wide.

  “I’m here because we’re concerned you might be in danger,” She looks relieved! What’s going on here? Darby wonders. “You, Erin and Mia were known as the three butterflies. Is that right?”

  “Yes. But it’s a long time ago . . .”

  Darby looks at her intently. “Both Erin and Mia received a dead Monarch butterfly before they were killed. Have you gotten anything like that?”

  Jen shakes her head. No.

  “And they both were getting calls where the person on the other end didn’t speak. They just heard breathing. Anything like that?”

  Jen tilts her head, thinking. “I guess I’ve had a couple of calls where no one spoke. I-I didn’t think much of it.”

  Darby continues. “They both received a letter, words pasted onto stationary that said, ‘You will pay’. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Jen’s breath takes a little hitch. “I think I told you before – That’s what Sean said to us. But I’m positive it’s not him. I see him often because his daughter is in my class. I don’t think he bears a grudge.”

  Darby nods. “Both Erin and Mia were found holding one yellow rose. Does that mean anything to you?”

  A flash of terror flickers in Jen’s eyes. Darby watches her swallow, then narrow her eyes. “Did you say one yellow rose?”

  “Yes, it was clasped in their hands. Their hands were folded across their chest. Is there something about a yellow rose that connects?”

  Darby watches as the color drains from Jen’s face. Her breathing becomes quick and shallow. She shakes her head and speaks, gradually remembering. “Mia had a bouquet of yellow roses when she was grad-queen at our graduation,” she says. “But how would he – who’d know that?”

  Darby shrugs, raising her eye-brows in question. “Can you think of anyone? Maybe someone who was upset she became grad-queen?”

  Jen tilts her head, thinking back. “Yes . . . There was a girl. Adrian was her name. She and Mia were both in the running for queen, but Adrian was caught stealing and she was dropped.” Jen’s face flushes, and she shakes her head. “Well, that’s not entirely true. As I’ve told you before, we were mean girls.” She stops and looks entreatingly at Darby. Darby gives her a slight smile of understanding. “We stole a teacher’s purse from behind her desk one day at lunch-time. Having wa
tched Adrian open her locker, we figured out her combination and put the purse in there, knowing there would be a search when the teacher discovered her purse missing. Sure enough, that afternoon the administration staff searched everyone’s lockers. When they found the purse in Adrian’s they dropped her as grad-queen. She got into a bunch of trouble.” Tears form in Jen’s eyes and her mouth becomes slack. ‘We were horrible.” She hugs herself tightly again, her shoulders slumped.

  “Have you seen or heard any sign of Adrian?” Darby asks, bending to reach Jen’s forearm and stroke it lightly.

  “No. She disappeared right after grad and, as far as I know, was never seen again.”

  “Any idea what might have happened to her?”

  Jen shakes her head. No. “We heard she’d run away.”

  “Do you think she left because of the situation with the stolen purse?”

  Jen bites her lip. She takes a deep breath. “An even worse thing happened.” And it spills. Through tears Jen tells Darby the story of the ecstasy, Mia’s party, their part in all of it, and the gang-rape.

  Darby feels a flush of adrenaline running through her body. When Jen’s tears have subsided she asks, “Did Adrian have anyone close who may be seeking revenge for that?”

  “She had an older brother who, I remember, was protective of her. Their family was pretty dysfunctional, and he looked out for her.”

  “Do you remember the brother’s name? Any description?”

  “His name was Jim? John? James? Something like that. He was probably five years older than us, so I didn’t really know him. But he was tall, brown hair . . . He pretty much ran the ranch they lived on I remember.”

  “Adrian didn’t live in town?”

  Jen shakes her head. “No, they lived on a ranch outside town. Country kids took the bus into school. There were lots of kids who lived on farms and acreages.”