by S W Vaughn
I’d been here for hours. The clock said it was almost one PM, and I was supposed to pick up Alyssa from school at quarter to three. What would happen if I wasn’t there? Would they have her stay there with the teacher? Put her on a bus and send her home to an empty, locked house? Call Social Services and take her away from her negligent mother?
By the time the door to the room opens a little after 1:30 and the female officer who talked to me before walks in, I’m frantic with worry. I try to swipe my face clean and look at her. “Excuse me. I’m sorry, but I really need to pick my daughter up from school soon,” I tell her, my voice foggy and pathetic. “Will I be able to do that? She gets out at 2:45.”
The officer glances at the clock and frowns. “Can she ride the bus home?”
“No. She’s only four, she’s in kindergarten,” I say. “There’s just me and her. She can’t be home alone.”
“It’s still going to be a few minutes before the detectives can talk to you, and I don’t know how long they’ll take,” the woman says. Her tone is businesslike, her stance rigid, but I hope I’m not imagining the slight warmth in her eyes. “Is there someone else you can call to pick her up?”
I struggle to keep my shattered hopes from showing. I don’t want to call someone, I want to get out of here, pick up my daughter, and put this nightmare behind me. But at least I don’t have to leave Alyssa stranded. “Yes, I can call someone,” I say in a small voice. “Can I use my phone?”
“Here, you can use mine.” The officer takes a cell phone from her belt, swipes at the screen a few times, and hands it to me. The dial pad is pulled up.
“Thank you,” I manage as I tap in Jill’s cell phone number. I only have two people on the list of adults allowed to get Alyssa from school in emergencies, and the other one is my mother. I don’t want her to find out where I am, and why. I’ll never hear the end of it.
Jill answers after three rings. “What’s wrong, did you lose my desk number?” she says teasingly.
“Jill. I need a huge favor.” A lump forms in my throat, and I turn my back and walk away from the officer, making my voice as quiet as possible. I’m sure she hears me anyway, but I don’t want her to. “I’m sorry, I know you’re at work … but can you pick Alyssa up from school and watch her for a while? She gets out at 2:45.”
“What happened?” Jill says, immediately concerned. “Are you okay, Celine?”
“No,” I whisper. Fresh tears form in my eyes, and I squeeze them shut, trying to make it stop. “I mean, I’m not hurt or anything. Oh, God, it’s a long story.” I draw in a shuddering breath. “I’m at the police station, and I … can’t leave yet.”
“Oh, my God. Did those stupid bastards arrest you about Rosalie?” Jill nearly shouts. “This is ridiculous. Sweetie, you need to lawyer up, right now. I mean it. Don’t say a word to them. I’ll get Jeff to go down there, and —”
“Jill, wait. Just a second.” Once again I’m grateful for her passion, but Jeff Lindstrom is a real estate lawyer. And if I do need a lawyer eventually, it’ll have to be a criminal defense lawyer. The thought of that makes me shudder. “I’m not under arrest,” I explain. “They want to ask me some questions. It’s just taking longer than it should, for some reason.”
“That means they’re trying to find a reason to arrest you,” Jill says. “Trust me, I know all about this. It’s disgusting what they’re doing. Do not answer any questions.”
I know she’s right, and I’m sickened that I don’t seem to have much of a choice. “I really don’t think Jeff can help,” I say under my breath, walking further away from the officer. “I mean, he’s in real estate.”
“Yeah, but he still went to law school. He knows enough to get you out of there.”
The idea of refusing to answer questions when the police ask them, of exercising my right to a lawyer, is so terrifying that it leaves me dizzy. But they are looking for a reason to arrest me, and I can’t let that happen. “All right. If he can get down here,” I finally say. “But please, just get Alyssa for me. She’s all I’m worried about.”
“I will. That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about,” Jill says. “We’ll be waiting at your place for you, and I’ll make sure you get there soon.”
“Thank you,” I say, my voice catching on the words.
She promises again that everything’s going to be fine, and we hang up. As I turn to hand the phone back to the officer, I’m startled to see the detectives standing near the open door to the room. How long have they been here?
“Are you all set with your daughter?” the woman says.
I nod. “Yes, my friend’s picking her up. Thank you.”
She doesn’t say that I’m welcome. She just returns her phone to her belt, walks past the detectives, and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.
I swallow and move toward the table on unsteady legs, and all but collapse in one of the chairs. Even though it’s proven pointless to talk to them so far, I give it another shot anyway. “I tried to tell you before that I was just coming down here to talk to you,” I say. “I think I might know who killed Rosalie.”
“Really. Do you think this same person killed Teryn Holmes?” Chambers pulls the other chair away from the table, turns it around, and sits backwards to stare at me. “Because we think you did. She was poisoned, and someone attempted to make it look like a suicide. Again.”
“Oh my God,” I whisper, not even trying to stop the tears. “She is crazy. She killed them both.”
The detectives look at each other. Garfield opens his mouth, but I cut him off with a surge of desperate bravado. “My phone,” I blurt. “I’ve been getting threatening texts. Just look at it. Hannah Byers killed them, and she’s threatening me too, because of Brad.”
“All right,” Garfield says slowly. “We’ll check it out.”
He leaves the room, and I shudder beneath Chambers’ drilling glare. “Please. I didn’t kill anyone,” I say, wincing as I remember that I’m not supposed to talk to them until Jeff gets here. But I’m not answering any questions — I’m telling them what I planned to in the first place. “I’m sorry I screamed like that at the hospital. It’s just that I was already coming to talk to you, and … well, there you were. It scared me.”
Chambers’ features seem to ease a little, but I can’t tell for sure. “If you were receiving threatening texts, why didn’t you report it?” he says. “Especially if you knew who was sending them.”
“I didn’t know who it was. Not until this morning, when I talked to Brad,” I tell him. My heart is hammering like a drum, but I can’t freeze up this time. “Hannah … she’s his ex-girlfriend, from high school. He says she was crazy jealous. And she was just discharged from a psychiatric hospital a few weeks ago, before she came to Wolfsbrook. She was there for five years. Again, I didn’t know any of this when I was getting the texts. They’re from an anonymous number.”
The detective’s eyebrows go up. “You’re sure about all this?”
“Positive,” I say.
Garfield comes back in with my phone and hands it to me. I unlock the screen, tap through to the message thread, and wince as I read the first one again. I know what you did. Murderer. “I’m not a murderer,” I say as I give the phone slowly to Chambers. “Like I said, she’s crazy. But … she’s not talking about Rosalie or Teryn.”
Chambers looks at the screen while Garfield reads over his shoulder. After a long minute, Chambers glances at me. “Who is she talking about, then?”
I sigh and bite my lip. “Joan Carpenter. We went to the same college, and she … well, she started this little group. The Brad Dowling Fan Club. And I found out about it.”
The whole story comes out. How I’d stumbled across a tiny, private online forum in my freshman year of college — I’d bought used textbooks, and someone had scribbled the URL in the margin of my biology book — found out it was all about worshipping Brad, who I was already friends with at the time, and decided to join for a laugh. How
gushy and silly and sad it had all seemed. There were only about a dozen users, and all of them were anonymous, with handles like IHeartBrad and Brad4Life. But I’d ‘befriended’ the forum owner and president, and she told me her real name.
That was when I showed Brad the forum and told him who’d started it. And it turned out he had an elective with Joan — they were both sophomores at the time — and he’d confronted her about his ‘fan club’ in front of the whole class. I wasn’t there, of course, but people said she’d been completely humiliated and fled the classroom in tears.
The next morning, Joan was found dead in her dorm room. She’d hung herself, after she wrote a long, miserable post on the forum about how ruined her life was now that everyone knew the pathetic truth, and she would never have a chance with Brad.
“I didn’t kill her,” I say as the detectives look on, stone-faced. “But it’s my fault she’s dead. What I did was stupid and mean, and I was probably trying to impress Brad, even then. I’ll feel responsible for Joan’s death all my life … but I’m not a murderer.”
Neither of them say anything for a moment, and I start to think maybe there’s a way they can arrest me for Joan’s death. But then Chambers leans forward and sighs. “So you think this Hannah knows what happened, and now she’s targeting you,” he says. “What was her last name, again?”
“Byers. Hannah Byers,” I tell him. “And yes, that’s what I think. I found a newspaper photo online of her and Joan together at an Oslow State game. They knew each other.”
“What about the rest of these forum users, the fan club?” Garfield says. “Is the forum still active? We may have to look into all of them, and anyone who’s been involved with Brad Dowling. I hate to say it, but this does seem to be an ex-girlfriend out for revenge.”
I actually laugh, surprising myself. “Well, Detective, good luck with that,” I say. “I’m sorry. I guess you don’t know that Brad dated about half the juniors and seniors in high school during the year he was there, and probably twice that many girls once he got to college. Most of them still live around here.”
Chambers groans aloud. “Nothing’s ever easy, is it?” he says, shaking his head. “All right, Ms. Bauman. It would be very helpful if you could point us to that forum and anything else you find online. And we’ll need to have the tech department go through your phone, to see if they can trace the source of these texts. Is that going to be a problem?”
“No, it’s fine.” I can grab a pay-as-you-go phone and have my number temporarily transferred. And I’m happy to let them find out who’s doing this. “Does this mean I’m not a suspect anymore?”
“You weren’t a suspect. You were a person of interest,” Garfield says.
I don’t believe him, but I’ll let it go for now. “What about Hannah?”
“I think we’d better question her right away,” Chambers says with a glance at his partner, who nods in agreement. “As in now. Do you have an address for her?”
I nod and tell them the address of the Quintaine property. “I’m sure it’s her. It has to be,” I say. “Everything lines up.”
“Are you a detective now, Ms. Bauman?” Chambers’ brows quirk into a sardonic lift.
My face heats up, and I hope it’s not as red as it feels. “No, of course not. I just …”
“Don’t worry. If she doesn’t have a rock-solid alibi, we’ll bring her right in,” he says. “We’ll make sure you’re protected.”
Somehow I don’t feel safer knowing that. After all, they haven’t done a great job at figuring out what happened to Rosalie and Teryn so far — they thought I killed them. And I’ve found out more about what’s really going on than they have. But I won’t mention that, because maybe they’ll arrest me for insulting them or something.
Apparently they can do that. I’m finding out all sorts of things I never knew the police could do, along with a few things they can’t do.
Like find the right people who’ve committed a crime.
Garfield takes my phone from Chambers. “I’ll get this into processing,” he says. “Meet you outside?”
Chambers nods, and stands as his partner walks from the room. “Sit tight, Ms. Bauman.”
“Wait. You’re not leaving me here again, are you?”
“Only for a minute. I’ll have Officer Koch come in to take your statement, and then you’re free to go,” he says. “She can take you back to your car, if you’d like.”
“All right.” I assume Officer Koch is the woman who let me use her phone. “Will you let me know what happens with Hannah? I’m going to have my number switched to another phone, so you can still contact me.”
“We’ll keep you as informed as possible,” he says, which doesn’t answer my question.
He leaves the room, and I lace my fingers together and squeeze hard. I will not cry. Not anymore. And even though I’m being let go, and the detectives are going to talk to Hannah right now, I have no faith in their ability to stop any of this.
So I’ll have to do it myself.
19
It’s almost seven by the time I make it home with my car, a replacement phone, and a gut full of raw, thrumming nerves. Jill’s already gotten Alyssa fed, bathed, and in her pajamas, and I let her stay up half an hour past her bedtime so I can see her longer. I don’t tell her what’s happening — I just say that I had a work emergency, and apologize half a dozen times for not being here. I feel terrible lying to my daughter.
But she’s far too young to understand any of this, and she’ll only be frightened.
Jill stays the whole time while I tuck Alyssa in, read her an extra story, and spend a long time hugging her. When I come out from the bedrooms, she has a bottle of chilled wine and two glasses set out on the coffee table. “I think you can use some of this,” she says.
“Absolutely. You’re a lifesaver,” I breathe as I collapse on the couch and scrub a hand down my face. “God, what a nightmare. Thank you so much for helping me with all this.”
Jill frowns slightly as she pours the wine and hands me a glass. “I’m sorry about Jeff,” she says. “I can’t believe he wouldn’t go down there. I was trying to find another lawyer for you, and … you know, I almost sent Danny.” She snorts and rolled her eyes. “If I’d done that, you’d probably still be there.”
“It’s fine. I got out of it,” I say, sipping the cold, sweet wine with relief. “Thank you for trying, though.”
“No problem.” Jill lifts her own glass and drinks. “And you really didn’t answer any questions?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t give them a chance to ask. I had plenty to tell them.”
“Yeah, about that.” She scooches closer, her eyes wide. “Now you have to tell me. Something about that Hannah chick being batshit nuts?”
Laughing feels good after all I’ve been through today, even though nothing about Hannah is funny. I’ve only told Jill a tiny bit about the whole mess, because I didn’t want Alyssa to hear it.
So I give her the story.
By the time I finish, we’ve both drained two glasses of wine and Jill is pouring herself a third. “Holy God, she is one screwed-up princess,” she says after a moment. “Do you think she killed her parents, so she could get their money?”
I give a startled blink. I hadn’t even considered that, but if she really killed two women just because they used to date Brad, maybe she was capable of parent-cide too. “I don’t know,” I say. “They did say it was arson, and they never found the culprit.”
“I’ll bet she did. And then she hid out in the wacko hospital until things died down, so she could carry out the rest of her dastardly plans.” Jill chuckles and gulps more wine. “Oh, boy. Or maybe I’m just drunk.”
I shrug. “Who knows? There’s so much crazy in all this, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Yeah, Wolfsbrook has our very own homicidal maniac.” She sits back, raising an eyebrow. “So how did you get the cops to let you go? You never said.”
A hot surge of gui
lt murders the nice buzz I’d been building. I haven’t told Jill about the texts — or about Joan. But now that I’ve confessed to the police, maybe it’s time I came clean with my best friend. She deserves to know, even if she thinks I’m awful for doing it.
“The thing is … someone’s been threatening me,” I say in a faltering tone.
“What?” Jill looks horrified. “How? Since when?” she says.
“I’ve been getting anonymous texts. It started the day of Rosalie’s funeral,” I admit softly. “The last one was Tuesday, when I went to see Brad. When Teryn died.”
“Oh, my God. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t.” I take a slow breath, shaking as I let it out. “Whoever it is, probably Hannah, they know something I did. Something I’m ashamed of.”
Despite my resolution to stop crying about all this, tears prick my eyes. I blink them back. Damn it, I’m going to be strong. I have to be.
“Honey,” Jill says gently, giving my free hand a squeeze. “Whatever it is, I doubt you need to be ashamed of it. You can tell me.”
Yes, I do need to be ashamed. I can’t let myself off the hook for this. I did this thing, and I have to own up to it, because it was wrong. But what I don’t have to do is keep beating myself up over it. I can feel bad without letting it control my life.
And I can tell Jill without going to pieces. So I do.
I keep my explanation short. She listens, her lips twitching a few times. And when I get to the end of the story, she bursts out laughing.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry!” she stammers, still giggling. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny that she’s dead. Not even a little. It’s just … a fan club, for Brad?” Another full-throated laugh bursts from her, and she claps a hand over her mouth. “It’s mostly the wine, I swear. And I’m a horrible person for laughing. Okay, I’m going to stop now. Promise.”