Chapter Twenty-Six
BURGERS AND BOILERMAKERS
The bar and grill in Dr. Phillips, a suburb at the western end of Sand Lake Road, was one of Loomis’s favorite places to eat, boasting “the best gourmet burgers in town,” according to him and their in-house marketing. Maggie pushed through the door, entering into a dimly lit cavern that offered coolness on two levels: chilled air and a hip black decor. The place was narrow and deep, smelling of barbecue and liquor. A full bar along one side, and an assortment of patrons at the tables. Mirrors on the walls and just enough neon to keep it from being tacky.
Maggie spotted Loomis seated close to a small stage area in back. Plated burgers, two pints of beer, and a pair of shot glasses on the table in front of him. She took a deep breath and crossed the barroom, a heavy-metal rock song banging at her eardrums as she went.
She’d spent the twenty-minute drive trying to convince herself that, despite her repeated refusal to believe them, the facts here were undeniable.
Dana was dead and Kristen was missing.
“You’ll be late for your own funeral,” Loomis shouted over the music as she approached.
She dropped into the bench seat, her back to the wall.
“Took the liberty of getting us burgers and boilermakers,” he said. “All hail Monday afternoons.” He pushed one of the plates toward her. “The Southerner,” he said.
Maggie lifted the bun lid. “No onion?”
“As prescribed.” He took a hearty bite out of his own burger, purring and rolling his eyes as he savored the patty. “So what’s with the long face?”
“I spoke with my dad.”
“And?”
Maggie told him about her conversation.
“Did Kristen know he kept the gun in the closet?”
“I never told her. In fact, I can’t remember ever telling anyone about it. Even Rita.”
“What about Bryan? Could he have mentioned it?”
Maggie shrugged. She had no memory of Bryan ever talking to Kristen. It didn’t mean it never happened, though. He was four years their senior; he moved in different circles. But she did remember the way he used to look at Kristen whenever she was at their house, and the way she’d flirt with him.
“I think Kristen killed Dana,” Maggie said.
“How’d you figure that?”
“Because . . .” She let out a breath, her heart suddenly drumming in her chest. “Oh boy.”
Loomis paused with his burger halfway to his mouth. “What’s up, Novak?”
“This.” She sat herself upright. “It’s why I wanted to speak with you face-to-face. To avoid any confusion.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Just be understanding. If possible. That’s all I ask. And nonjudgmental. That will help immensely. If you can. We were kids. Just seventeen, and stupid. Very stupid. I know it’s no excuse. And I’m not looking for any sympathy here. I was wrong, okay? Dead wrong. I know that. What I did, it’s unforgivable.”
He dumped his burger back on the plate. “Okay, Novak. You have my undivided attention. What did you do?”
Maggie stared at him, unable to find the words.
After a few silent seconds, Loomis picked up the two shot glasses and dropped them into the beers. Then he pushed one of the pint glasses toward her. “Drink,” he said. “All of it, all the way down, in one, and without stopping for breath. Then, you confess.”
In unison, they picked up their drinks and guzzled the mix of cold beer and malty whiskey. The chill of it temporarily dousing the flames in Maggie’s chest, the alcohol not merely crossing her blood brain barrier, but bursting all the way through it.
They slapped their empty glasses down as one.
Loomis belched.
Maggie said, “I ruined Rita’s life.”
Beforehand, Maggie had expected her confession to be a release. Finally getting it off her chest after all these years of it weighing her down would open up a feeling of freeness and a sense of relief. Instead, it came as a collapse, coming down around her like the demolition of an old institution that had harbored wicked secrets. Once the dust settled, more effort would be needed to clear the rubble away.
Maggie wasn’t sure if an anticlimax like this was the typical outcome in such colossal confessions, or if it was the result of the alcohol suppressing her mood. Either way, Loomis seemed slightly disappointed.
“You mean you bullied her?” he said, looking at her through partially closed eyes. “Isn’t that kind of run-of-the-mill schoolyard stuff?”
“Trust me. This wasn’t playful teasing. It was bad. What I did, it put Rita through hell.”
“I thought you and Rita were inseparable.”
“We were. But things changed after Kristen came along. She was a latecomer. She moved here from Savannah in our senior year. At the start of the second semester.”
“And you did the honorable thing of letting her hang out with you guys.”
“It was easy. Kristen was nice. The three of us hit it off right away.”
“So what went wrong?”
“I’m not sure how it all started. But bit by bit, Kristen and I started doing more stuff together, slowly but surely leaving Rita out.”
“You ostracized your bestie.”
Maggie pondered it while Loomis chewed his food, her gaze on the foamy dregs sliding down her glass. Although her memories of that time were fairly intact, she’d buried them deep in the dark recesses of her mind, and the discomfort attached to them was still light sensitive. “I guess I didn’t realize that by letting Kristen in, I was pushing Rita out.”
“The folly of youth is thinking we know everything before we’ve experienced anything.”
Maggie looked up at him.
“I got no idea where that came from,” he said, smirking. “Seriously though, Novak. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Everyone has some questionable history behind them. We’ve all done stuff we’re not proud of, especially when we were young. Kristen was a bad influence on you, is all.”
“It doesn’t make it okay.”
“No, but it makes you human.” He took another bite of his burger. “What was the catalyst?”
“Everyone thought Rita was a lesbian.”
“Okay. I didn’t see that coming. Since when is a person’s sexuality an issue with you?”
“It isn’t. I always knew Rita was different. If anything, I would’ve said she was bi. I remember her liking just as many boys as she did girls.”
“Explains the marriage to Cullen.”
Maggie nodded. “Her sexuality never bothered me, or got in the way. To be honest, most of the time, I didn’t even think about it. We were just best friends, and our sexuality didn’t matter. In fact, there was only one time that Rita’s sexual orientation figured in our friendship.”
“You guys kissed.”
Maggie glanced around the barroom, feeling heat rise in her cheeks.
“Relax,” Loomis said. “Teenagers experiment all the time. It’s what they do. Hormones rage and kids do crazy stuff. Especially when alcohol is involved.”
“Are you speaking from experience here as well?”
He looked amused by her comment.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I was seventeen and impressionable. All I wanted was to fit in. It’s different for girls than it is for boys. Girls can be cruel. Boys sort out their differences with their fists and move on. Girls engage in psychological warfare. And it can last a lifetime.”
Loomis narrowed his eyes at her. “You didn’t just push Rita away, though, did you?”
She shook her head, the heat refusing to leave her cheeks. “We started calling her Helga.”
“You . . . Wait . . . What?”
“Kristen said it suited her better than Rita.”
“You called her Helga?”
“It was stupid, I know. Childish. I don’t know what I was thinking. Clearly, I wasn’t using my brain at all.” The lump was back in her throat, bigger than ever
. “Can we get out of here?” she said.
“Sure.” He peeled some notes from his wallet, tucking them under his empty glass. “Let’s go.”
Outside, the sun was low in the sky, dazzling, the air as hot as an oven. Orange-bottomed clouds peeking over the rooftops, and cars whizzing past on Sand Lake. Maggie felt a little light headed, a little too visible.
“You were scared of Kristen,” Loomis said as they left the rock music behind. “That’s why you went along with it.”
Maggie hadn’t made the connection at the time, or since, it seemed. But now that Loomis drew her attention to it, he was probably right. Without Maggie realizing it, Kristen had dominated her, turning Maggie into a reflection of herself. A bully. Maggie couldn’t pinpoint exactly how Kristen had pulled it off, only that it had been an insidious takeover, a slow and steady indoctrination campaign designed to turn Maggie toward Kristen and away from Rita. And Maggie hadn’t objected.
“It didn’t end there,” Maggie confessed as they began to stroll along the terrace of restaurants and boutique shops. “We totally embarrassed Rita at the lake.”
The final nail in the coffin of their friendship.
It had been late September, just weeks before the house fire on Oak Street. A humid evening humming with insects. The air thick with conjoined lovebugs.
And a clandestine meeting underway.
What had started out as a low-key prank had swiftly escalated into a full-scale attack on Rita. That morning, and behind Maggie’s back, Kristen had secreted a note to Rita, pretending to originate with Maggie. The note leaning heavily on Rita’s and Maggie’s one and only physical interaction—the kiss—and declaring Maggie’s undying love for Rita, as well as her desire to take their kiss to the next step.
“I never should have confided in Kristen,” Maggie said. “She used my secrets against me.”
The note had acted as a lure, drawing Rita to the clearing after dark, ostensibly to rendezvous with Maggie.
But Kristen had had other plans.
Under the impression that they were going to hang out with friends at the lake, Maggie had accompanied Kristen to the clearing in the woods.
“There were a dozen kids from school already there,” Maggie said. “And everyone except me was privy to what was about to happen.”
A lookout had alerted them, and the teenagers had melted into the trees surrounding the clearing, whispering at each other to “be quiet.” Kristen pulling Maggie into the underbrush, a finger pressed to her lips, indicating she should hush. Leaves getting in Maggie’s face and tangled vines underfoot. And Maggie wondering what all the secrecy was about.
Then, to her surprise, Rita had wandered into the clearing, coming to a stop at the sandy middle, calling Maggie’s name. Maggie had gone to respond, but Kristen had held her back, hushing her again and shaking her head defiantly. And that’s when the deafening chant, “Dyke, dyke, dyke!” had erupted across the clearing, a barrage of eggs being hurled at Rita.
Rita had stood there, unmoving with shock, as the eggs had rained down on her.
Horrified, Maggie had yanked free of Kristen’s grasp, clambering into the clearing, intent on rushing to defend Rita.
But Rita had just stared at her, a mixture of disbelief, loathing, and egg yolk on her face.
Then she’d spat out a single condemning word and fled the scene, leaving Maggie standing there alone, looking foolish, as the terrible chant had chased Rita from the woods.
“And that’s why my skin was crawling Saturday evening,” Maggie said. “I hadn’t stepped foot on Devil’s Landing since that fateful night.”
Maggie had come to her senses, severing ties with everyone involved. But by that point, the damage had already been done, and she’d spent the following days and weeks reaching out to Rita, only for Rita to reject all her attempts to broker peace.
“I was going to call at her home that weekend,” she said as they began to cross the parking lot. “Sit down with her and tell her how stupid I’d been and how sorry I was. But then . . .”
“The whole family supposedly burned to death in the house fire.”
“Yes. And I’ve always partly blamed myself for what happened. As a child, Rita was fascinated with fire. She used to set things on fire all the time. Trees, fields, dead animals. Her biggest conquest was a derelict shack in the woods.”
“Rita was a fire freak? I’m beginning to like her.”
“Joking aside, she even mentioned burning down the family home once, after she’d fallen out with her dad.”
“So when you heard about the blaze . . .”
“I thought the bullying had finally pushed her over the edge and she’d started the fire. All these years, I thought the whole family died because of something I did. Can’t you see how that might have messed with my head? I’ve carried the guilt around ever since.”
“No wonder you looked like you’d seen a ghost on Saturday night.”
“Exactly.”
They arrived at Steve’s Tahoe.
“You know,” Loomis said as Maggie popped the locks, “you could’ve told me all this. I am your partner. You can tell me anything.” He didn’t sound angry. He sounded wounded.
“It threw me,” she said, knowing that she would feel equally stung had he kept his hurt from her. “Realizing it was Rita lying there burned to death brought everything crashing back. The emotions, the pain, the blame. I couldn’t talk about it. Not until I’d gotten a handle on it myself.”
Her phone rang. She took it out, glancing at the screen. “It’s Nick,” she said. “I need to take this.”
“Have at it.”
“Hey, Nick. What’s up?”
“I just got off a difficult hour-long call with Casey,” Nick said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it. I suppose it had to happen at some point. The end result is, we’ve agreed to meet and talk things through.”
“Nick, I’m thrilled for you.”
“Well, it’s a start.”
“Was he able to . . . ?”
“Off the record, he confirmed the Grigoryans were offered witness protection in exchange for Big Bob turning state’s evidence against the Moreno family.”
“That’s excellent news.”
She saw Loomis mouth the word WITSEC? and she nodded.
“However,” Nick said, “he couldn’t say if the Grigoryans took up the offer, or where they may have gone if they did. But he was able to advise that exhuming their corpses would be an unnecessary waste of tax dollars.”
“Thanks, Nick. I owe you.”
“I’ve put it on your tab.”
“So,” Loomis said as Maggie hung up, “your hunch was right. The Grigoryans were in witness protection. Good call. Not sure how it helps our case, though.”
“No, but this does. Take a look.” Maggie showed him the photo on her phone of the wind chime sail she’d found at the crime scene, and then a shot she’d taken less than an hour ago of the wind chime itself hanging beside Kristen’s front door.
“So that’s what that little guy is,” he said.
“Either Kristen gave it to Dana, or Dana took it herself. Either way, it connects Dana with Kristen, present day.”
Loomis looked deep in thought. “And if your pops is right about Kristen stealing his revolver . . .”
“He’s not often mistaken.”
“It probably means . . .”
“You’re about to come to the same conclusion I did.”
Maggie had already visualized Dana and Kristen’s encounter as she’d driven to the Whiskey, drawing up a loose time line in her head that started with Dana arguing with Cullen Saturday afternoon, followed by her storming out and going someplace to blow off steam. Her bumping into Kristen, and a whole fount of pent-up pain welling up inside her. All those immobilized emotions suddenly breaking loose and taking flight. Dana tailing Kristen back to the mobile home in Kissimmee. On her mind, revenge, in the form of verbal combat. Payback wi
th words. A desperate Kristen reaching for the revolver she’d kept all these years. Her shooting Dana, perhaps in what she believed was an act of self-defense. A fatal mistake that had seen her transporting Dana’s lifeless corpse to the clearing at the lake, intending to burn all evidence of the crime. Kristen planting the evidence at the Cullen house, then quitting her job and taking off.
“Kristen killed Dana,” Loomis said. “Do we have any idea where Kristen is now?”
Maggie opened the driver’s door and climbed inside. “Her neighbor said she hasn’t been home since Saturday. And her place of work told me she quit this weekend.”
“We need to put a BOLO out on her.”
“Already did that on the way here.”
“Countywide?”
“Statewide. All agencies.”
“Any family in the area?”
“Not that I know of.” She started the ignition, letting the vents blast cool air at her face. “Kristen is originally from Wisconsin. She came here with her dad, after her mom died. When we met up a few years ago, she told me he passed away. Right now, she could be anywhere.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE WITCHING HOUR
Something woke Maggie, jarring her from her sleep. Probably a noise outside, or the dull ache still pinching at her ribs where her attacker’s sneaker had left its mark.
She cracked open her eyes, the familiar layout of her bedroom resolving out of the darkness. She was on her “good” side in her bed, facing the curtained window. The digital alarm clock on the nightstand reading three a.m.
Not for the first time in the last twenty years, she’d been dreaming of the cruel prank played on Rita at Devil’s Landing. Not just reliving it, but actually living it in dream state. Instead of Rita standing in the middle of the clearing, being bombarded with eggs, it had been her, Maggie, stripped naked, dripping in gasoline. Demons cowering in the tangle of trees surrounding her, their eyes glowing blood red and their voices like breaking glass. Shredding laughter, and jeers of “Bully! Bully! Bully!” ringing through the woods.
It was like something Alice might have experienced through the looking glass, she thought.
Maggie let out a hot breath.
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