by Nolon King
If they went up there, they’d start playing HardCorp and telling the same twenty stupid jokes, like nothing had changed, and everything had. He needed to talk to someone, and these three were all he had. They needed to talk about it too, even if they couldn’t admit it.
His mom would say that they needed to do a better job of connecting, and she would be right, even though she rarely knew how to follow her own advice.
The other day had been rough. Elliot and Dane nearly tried to wipe the pavement with each other. Hard as it would have been to imagine that happening a couple of months before, it sure as hell looked like that was what would have gone down if they hadn’t been saved by the bell.
The two of them always had more friction than anyone else in the group, but it used to be brotherly rather than adversarial. Sometime over the last few weeks that mood had shifted. The two were just at each other. He didn’t want to lose either of them the way he’d lost Corban.
Because yes, Corban was a ghost. Levi hadn’t seen him all day. Maybe he was living over at Kari’s now. It would make sense, with her mom being dead and her dad being nuts.
Levi tried to smile at his friends, and was reasonably sure he succeeded. “Where do you think Corban is?”
Dane shrugged. “How would I know?”
“If he’s still attached to his dick, which he probably is, then the better question might be, Where is Kari’s mouth?”
Pussabo shook his head at Elliot. “He’s probably taking care of her. You know, after all that stuff.”
“Shows you exactly how fucked up my parents are,” Levi said. “It’s one thing for me to not know where he is, but right now neither of them cares. It’s like they live on another planet from the rest of us.”
“He’s from Mars and she’s from Venus.” Elliot nodded knowingly.
“Do you think we’ll colonize Mars in our lifetimes?” Pussabo asked. “And if so, do you think we’ll ever get to go there?”
Dane looked at Pussabo and gave him a look: What the fuck, Pussy?
Elliot said, “Maybe in our lifetimes. You’re probably gonna die young from Stupid Question Syndrome.”
“Seriously,” Dane said, returning their conversation to center, “when do you think this will all blow over?”
“Blow over?” Levi laughed. “How can it ever blow over?”
“Everything blows over,” Pussabo said.
Dane shot Elliot another look: Don’t you dare.
“Have you really not seen the news? Or listened to a word I’ve been saying? My mom is probably going to lose her license. Her husband is a patient; that’s a big fat strike one. But he’s potentially a serial killer? And she didn’t know? Or worse, she knew and did nothing? That’s strikes two through a thousand.”
“Shit,” Elliot said, without a punchline to chase it.
“There’s no proof,” Dane said. “It’s all hearsay … right?”
“Well, sure,” Levi agreed. “But perception is reality. She quotes her agent on that all the time.”
Dane shook his head, empathetic and emphatic.
“This is all just a part of the story. If you’re famous in this country, then you can get away with anything. And America loves a good comeback. Kobe raped some girl fifteen years ago, and tickets for his last game sold for twenty-five grand. The dude is a basketball legend and was up for an Oscar. But he put his dick in some girl against her will and everyone knows it. When this blows over, and it will, then your parents will have weathered the storm. They’ll be stronger for it, and so will your family.”
“Thanks.” Levi put a hand on Dane’s shoulder, grateful for a friend who always helped him see the better side. “I’m not trying to be a downer about all this, and sure, my mom’s deals have all disappeared just as fast as they showed up, and the network might cancel her show. Her agent thinks they will. He’s seen this thing before. Her next book is on hold and, fuck, you guys, you don’t know my mom. She can be a total bitch when she doesn’t get her way.”
Dane gave him a sour look. “Easy, man. At least you have a mom.”
Fucking Dane.
It wasn’t fair. Just because Dane had lost his mom, Levi was never allowed to bitch about his. And if there was ever a time when he deserved the latitude, it was now.
“Pussy has a mom,” Elliot said. “He just doesn’t know if she’s really his.”
The thing he couldn’t say — the thing that hurt the worst? Levi had lost his hero. He couldn’t remember when he didn’t want to be a comedian just like his dad.
But his dad was a monster. And Levi had always wanted to be just like him.
Chapter Forty-Eight
It hadn’t been a surprise when Adam arrived home to find Detective Sharpe sipping coffee with Selena. He’d been surprisingly polite, practically inviting him to the station for a chat.
What was the man thinking now? Adam wondered as he traced a scratch in the interrogation room’s beat-up metal table.
Thankfully, the girl with the blood-red lipstick hadn’t been working, even though it was her usual shift. Because Adam might have gone through with it, and now the guilt would be all over his face.
Adam agreed to answer any questions that the detective might have. Why not? He had bulletproof alibis for at least two of the murders. And he wasn’t connected in any way to all four.
“Where did you say you were going … right before you got back to your place?”
“I told you. Out for a drive.”
“Do you like to go out for drives? Is that something you regularly do?”
“Sure.”
“When was the last time you just ‘went for a drive’? You know, before today. Was it sometime last week? Like maybe last Tuesday afternoon? Maybe you went for a drive and wanted to see as much of this little burg as you could at once, so you drove up to Rancho Vista and—”
“I don’t have the gate code.”
Sharpe shrugged and nodded. “That’s easy enough to get. Maybe you had a friend. The two of you might be working together, swapping kills and trading thrills. Maybe your kids are friends, so you’ve got that in common. Maybe in that light your alibis start making a lot more sense.”
Adam shifted in his seat, working to remember what he promised his wife he would never forget.
Selena had given him a protocol, a specific way to behave both in public and private, a detailed procedure to follow that would keep his skeletons locked safely in their closet. But Detective Sharpe was sneering in the seat across from him, kicking at that closet door and using the bones inside it to rattle him.
“Ollie Harris isn’t my friend.”
“So, you’re colleagues, then?” Sharpe grinned and waited for Adam to answer.
“No,” he said through pursed lips. “We’re not colleagues.”
Sharpe studied Adam, ever so slightly nodding, now leaning back an inch in his chair.
But Adam refused to speak unless spoken to, because terrors were made in fissures of truth.
“Look, Mr. Nash. We know that you had something to do with it, but we also know that you couldn’t have done any of this alone. So you help us and we’ll be thrilled to help you right back. We just want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Your little confession? It looks good and bad. Bad for the obvious reasons. You’re obviously a nutty pile of shit who wants to hurt people. But good, because it looks like you’ve been trying to do right by the world by keeping your crazy in check, which is why we’re talking. So …”
And now he leaned forward.
“Do you want to start talking?”
“Not without my lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” Sharpe repeated. “Why would you need one of those? I thought we were having a conversation?”
“This isn’t a conversation, it’s an interrogation. One where you’ve already decided what you want me to say. So no, I’m not interested.”
Sharpe nodded. His eyes, face, and physical bearing were all suddenly so very understanding. The dete
ctive sighed and seemed to reset, settling down into his seat, his body now relaxed in what looked almost like surrender.
“Let’s start over.”
“You mean with my lawyer in the room? That’s a great idea.”
“Tell you what, why don’t we finish our conversation, just you and me, for the next few minutes. I think we’re close, and you know how it’s going to look if you lawyer up. I don’t want that for you or your wife or your family. People will talk. So what do you say, Mr. Nash? How about you give me another five minutes?”
Adam gave Sharpe a barely perceptible nod.
The man continued with a speech that seemed so rehearsed, Adam figured he’d given it hundreds of times already.
“I understand how this all happened, and if you’re willing to cooperate, then I’m sure a jury will, too. You’ve been having these compulsions for years, but you’ve never acted on them. Your old lady doctor has done a helluva job keeping your monster locked in the attic. Maybe something happened before and maybe not, we’re just getting started poking around Los Angeles. We’ll see if there’s anything back there that matches what we’re seeing here. But let’s just assume there isn’t, and that this is all fresh. I still don’t think that’s you. Because regardless of all that shit in your head, I’m pretty sure you’re a decent guy, Mr. Nash. You don’t want to actually see anyone dead, you just like to think about it. But then you met Ollie Harris, a man who was willing to see things through. Maybe you couldn’t help your curiosity, but then things ended up going a little too far. You couldn’t pull it back in, and now it’s everywhere. Like too much blood on the floor.”
Adam shook his head. “If that’s all you’ve got, then I think it’s time to call my lawyer.”
“You’re saying that you had nothing to do with any of this? That you don’t know a single thing that might help us solve this so that no more families end up dead?”
That was too much.
Adam wanted to stand, but instead he stayed put. “I would never want to see a family get hurt. Not ever. That’s disgusting.”
“Oh, right.” Sharpe nodded in understanding. “Just young girls, got it.”
Adam looked into the detective’s eyes without flinching and hoped that Selena had simply lost the pink box. “That journal isn’t even real. It’s a lie that has now become a rumor, thanks to the efforts of Channel Five and you fine folks at the Almond Park PD. But the journal will never be found, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a hoax.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“We can subpoena your wife’s records. She has plenty.”
“You don’t know the first thing about my wife.”
“I know more than you think I do. About both of you.” A knowing smile touched the corners of his mouth as the detective held his stare.
But Adam knew this was only a bluff. “Then charge me.”
More silence. A game of chicken to see who would break. Adam was in no hurry to go home, and it wasn’t like he could leave the precinct and head right over to The Inside Scoop. He would be fine right here for a while.
“I don’t want to charge you, Mr. Nash,” Sharpe said, his eyes and expression softening. “I just want to make sure that the bad shit that’s been happening doesn’t happen again. Can you help me with that?”
Adam shook his head. “No. I cannot.”
Sharpe slid the folder toward himself, then he opened it up and looked inside. He’d already done this several times, and had to know the contents by heart. But he wasted a few fat minutes with his eyes inside it anyway.
He finally set it back on the table and looked at Adam. “Okay. Forget about everything. Let’s just go back to that first murder. The one with the fire and that pretty red scarf. Was that first one premeditated, or did it just sort of happen?”
Adam waited to see if there was anything more. But there wasn’t, because they had nothing. He might be guilty of thinking like a monster, but he was innocent of the deeds that the detective suspected him of committing.
“I’m not saying another word until I talk to my lawyer.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Corban lay in his bed, mindlessly swiping through LiveLyfe, getting angrier by the image, but unable to look away from the posts that fueled his rage. People were cruel, and his classmates the cruelest.
He had never felt more alone. Corban was furious with his father, disappointed with his mother, disconnected from his brother, and devastated by the loss of Kari.
Looking through LiveLyfe was probably the last thing he should be doing to cope. But dealing with the anger over his classmates’ postings was easier, or at least more straightforward, than facing the rest of his feelings head-on.
A knock on the door, then, “Corban?”
Adam said it softly, as though his name itself was an apology.
Go away.
Corban said nothing.
Another knock, then Adam repeated his name slightly louder.
Seconds passed. The door opened a few inches, just enough for Adam to poke his head inside. “You in here?”
Without lifting his eyes from the tablet, Corban said, “You know I’m in here.”
Adam entered, walked to the edge of Corban’s bed, and sat. “Mind if I sit?”
“I mind a lot of things.”
“I’m sorry, Corban.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“But I haven’t done anything wrong here. There’s—”
“Are you kidding me?” Now he was looking at his dad. “You haven’t done anything wrong? Do you even know what you’re saying? You want to MURDER PEOPLE!”
Corban was up off the bed. He couldn’t lie down, and he sure as hell couldn’t sit there and listen to his father claim he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I don’t want to murder people,” Adam replied.
His calm, measured tone only made Corban’s madder.
“I saw the notebook.”
Adam flinched, but responded without hesitation. “Then you know that I’ve never actually done anything, Corban. I’m sorry I have these sick fantasies, I know they’re wrong. But your mother has helped me for a long time, and I’ve never once acted on any of them, so—”
“Congratulations. You only imagine doing disgusting evil shit.”
Adam slowly nodded. “I understand how you feel, but you can’t help what your brain does. You can only help what you do with the information. And I try to do all the right things. I’m dealing with this the best way I know how.”
“You’re a real inspiration.”
“What if I liked rape porn, Corban? I don’t, but a lot of people do. Would you think I was a rapist if I did?”
“Probably. A rapist and a coward.”
Corban couldn’t take any more. He stomped downstairs, where he found Dane sitting in the living room, reading a magazine.
“What are you doing here?”
Dane looked up, closed the magazine, and dropped it on the sofa beside him. “Killing time, I guess.”
“Where’s Levi? Are they all upstairs?”
“No. Your brother’s on some sort of HardCorp fast, so he’s outside with Elliot and Pussabo. They’re playing basketball. Or swimming. Who knows.”
“Why aren’t you with them?”
“I guess I’m just a little sick of Elliot’s shit.”
“Yeah.” Corban nodded. “But why not just go home?”
Dane rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you go to my house and see how long you can deal with my dad.”
“Fine. Then you can stay here and deal with mine.”
They shared a laugh. It felt surprisingly good rolling through Corban’s throat.
Corban didn’t mind Dane, now that he didn’t have to hang with his brother at the same time. The two of them had always gotten along, until Corban’s recent falling out with Levi.
“Your dad’s not all bad, man,” Dane said.
“You don’t live with him
.”
“No, I don’t. But I live with mine and he’s worse.”
Corban sat, because why not. “I never understood the problem you have with your dad. He seems like a nice guy.”
“Sure, he’s nice enough.”
“Why are you saying it like that?”
“Like what?” Dane asked.
“Like nice is a four-letter word.”
“It is a four-letter word.”
“You know what I mean.”
Dane shrugged. “My dad is a perfectly nice guy, but he doesn’t give a shit about me.”
“Sure he does.”
“No, he doesn’t. My dad doesn’t even know who I am. Even the one thing we have in common, my going to Stanford, is a totally different thing for each of us. He doesn’t know anything about me. And do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because he never fucking asks. And when he does, he can’t even hear what I’m trying to say. It’s pathetic. He’s been telling himself the same stories ever since my mom died. He can’t get over it, and he has to drag me down with him.”
Dane’s face had soured. He exhaled sharply and shook his head.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be such a downer. I’m just trying to say that I get where you’re coming from. Your dad can be annoying with the jokes and whatever, but you have it pretty good. You have an amazing mom, and at least your dad knows who you are.”
“Yeah, he does. Which is why he’s spent my entire life wishing that I was a little more like Levi.”
Chapter Fifty
Levi sure felt a lot like his father.
By that, he meant out of control, or most of the way there.
Even on Saturday he couldn’t escape what people were saying, let alone stop them. Memes were multiplying all over LiveLyfe, and now he was getting texts from numbers he didn’t recognize, saying unspeakable things about him and his family.
After a lifetime of being Mr. Popular, being ostracized hurt like nothing else. The shunning hung on Levi like a shadow in winter. Even the last of the summer heat wouldn’t warm the chill dogging him on his walk to campus. Even if his world was falling apart, even if he spent the whole day alone, he wasn’t going to miss An Almond Summer, the school’s annual carnival.