Chain Letter (30 page)

The officer was young and handsome. He had a neat brown mustache and a dark blue uniform
that fit him perfectly. He stood outside his car with her. His face supplied the sympathy
the doctor’s had been missing.

“Yes, I was, miss,” he said and touched her arm. “I’m very sorry your friend was killed.
I understand she was only eighteen.”

Alison nodded and sniffed. “I’m sorry, too. But I’m also confused. The doctor inside
said Fran ran straight into a tree?”

“That’s correct. The tree was a tall olive at the side of the road. She must have
been doing sixty when she hit it. Both the tree and the car were destroyed.”

“Do you think she was run off the road?”

“There was no sign of skid marks. Usually when someone runs you off the road, you
have a chance to hit the brakes. But maybe not. The accident’s going to be thoroughly
investigated. I wish I could tell you more. I really am sorry.”

Alison started to turn away and go back inside to find Tony. She needed his strong
arms now more than ever. She just hoped that when she found him, he would open his
arms to her. Yet she hesitated before leaving and asked the officer what was probably
another stupid question. It was just something she felt she had to ask.

“How exactly did Fran die?” she asked.

The police officer looked uncomfortable. “From the force of the impact.”

“Her body got smashed between the car and the tree?”

The cop fidgeted. “Not exactly, but close enough. I can tell you for certain that
she died instantly.”

The odd purple color of the chain letter envelope flashed in her mind, along with
the sick purple and red lights of the nightmare she’d been having when the phone rang.
She remembered the dream then—the invisible people crying in the smoky distance. It
was a memory that made her shudder.

“Tell me exactly how it was,” she said.

The officer looked down. “You don’t want to know.”

“I need to know.”

“Her head went through the windshield and struck a thick branch of the tree at an
unfavorable angle. That broke her neck and—”

“And what?”

The officer looked puzzled. “I’ve been to a hundred serious car accidents, and I don’t
know how it happened. It must have been the shattered glass of the windshield in combination
with the impact of her skull on the tree.”

“What are you saying?”

The officer lowered his gaze once more. “Your friend was decapitated in the accident.
We found her head in a nearby bush.”

S
aturday morning the surviving members of the original ill-fated “gang” met at the
city park beside a kiddie rocket ship in the play area. Joan Zuchlensky was present,
finally back from hiking in the mountains. The gang had met in the same spot a few
months earlier, after Kipp received notice of his “small service” to perform. That
time Kipp only had to tell everybody he cheated on his SATs to please the Caretaker.
But life had become tougher. Kipp received a letter in the mail that morning, even
though Fran hadn’t passed hers on to him. Fran’s name was no longer on the list, but
otherwise the letter was identical to the one Fran had received. A coded ad had appeared
in that morning’s edition of the
Times.
Decoded it said:

Burn sister’s entire right arm.

“Who wants to open this meeting?” Alison asked. She was sitting on the park bench
outside the concrete circle that surrounded the rocket ship and the playing sand,
Brenda beside her. Of them all, Tony decided, Alison looked the palest. Of course,
she had been the closest to Fran. Yet none of them looked too hot. Even Kipp had lost
his smile. He was very protective of his little sister.

“We don’t need to formally open it,” Joan said “We just need to start talking.”

“Fine,” Alison said. “We’ll all start talking at once.”

“Are you going to hassle me?” Joan asked Alison. “Because if you are, I’d just as
soon leave now.”

Alison seemed to be too hurt to argue. “I’m not going to hassle you.”

“Good,” Joan replied. She wasn’t dressed in her usual leather and metal style. Her
platinum hair was short and unadorned, almost as white as her T-shirt. She had on
blue jeans, a shade too much lipstick, but a pound less makeup than when she was in
school. Her voice sounded tough as ever, though.

“Why don’t I start things off,” Kipp said, sitting at the end of the rocket slide
with the chain letter in his lap. “I’ll list what we know about this letter and the
situation as a whole. Then I’ll list what we don’t know.”

“Sounds good,” Tony mumbled. He was sitting in the sand, off to the side from everyone
else. It was eleven in the morning,
and he hadn’t gone to bed yet. Maybe when the others left, he would lie down in the
sand and take a nap.

“This new chain letter was written by someone who knew about Neil’s chain letters,”
Kipp began. “The wording is almost identical. The envelope it came in
is
identical. But this chain letter can’t have come from Neil because he’s dead. That’s
a fact. Tony buried him. But the person who wrote this new letter also knows how far
Neil took us through his ‘Columns.’ You’ll remember we were all in Column Two when
the truth finally came out. This person has started us off in Column Three. You all
follow where this is leading?”

“Neil had an accomplice,” Alison said.

“It seems like it,” Kipp said. “And a mean one at that.”

“Neil didn’t have an accomplice,” Tony said. “He was my friend. I was with him when
he died. He would have told me.”

“He didn’t tell you he was the Caretaker to begin with,” Brenda said.

Tony shook his head. “It’s not possible.”

“I have to agree with Brenda,” Kipp said carefully. “Neil was physically and mentally
ill. He was very weak toward the end. Having an accomplice would explain how he was
able to do all the stuff he did before he died.”

“If Neil had an accomplice,” Tony asked, “how come this person didn’t know about Alison?
She’s not on the list.”

“I can’t explain that,” Kipp admitted.

“Wait a second,” Joan interrupted. “We’re acting like babies.
How do we know this new Caretaker was responsible for Fran’s death? She ran into a
tree. The police think it was an accident.”

“It could have been an accident,” Tony said. “We all know how upset she was. She couldn’t
have been driving very well.”

“I suppose it’s possible,” Kipp said. “But it’s a hell of a coincidence.”

“Are you guys nuts?” Alison broke in. “The Caretaker promised Fran would die if she
didn’t drown her puppy. Well, she didn’t and she’s dead. That’s not coincidence. That’s
cause and effect. And are you forgetting how she died? She was decapitated! Talk about
a horrible death.” Tears sprang into Alison’s eyes. “Let’s not fool ourselves that
she wasn’t murdered.”

“I think you’re being overly dramatic,” Joan told Alison. “People lose their heads
in accidents all the time. My dad’s a cop, you know. He’s told me plenty of stories
like this.”

“The cop who was at the scene of the accident didn’t know how it could have happened,”
Alison said bitterly.

“He was probably a rookie,” Joan said.

“Goddamn you, I talked to him!” Alison swore.

“Hold on, you two,” Kipp interrupted. “Both of you are making good points. As I said,
that Fran should suddenly die is an amazing coincidence. But if she was murdered by
the new Caretaker, how did he do it? Fran was in a devastating car crash. The Caretaker
couldn’t have been in the car with her when she crashed. He wouldn’t have survived.
That leaves
the possibility that she was run off the road. But even the cop Alison talked to didn’t
think that was likely.”

“He didn’t say it was impossible, though,” Alison muttered.

“All right,” Kipp said. “Let’s say she was run off the road. What about her losing
her head?”

“Would you guys please quit hammering that point?” Brenda asked, and now she began
to get teary as well. “You’re making me sick.”

“We have to talk about it,” Kipp said. “We have to talk about everything that’s happened
if we’re to get out of this situation alive. Now, how was she decapitated if not by
the accident alone? Did the person who ran her off the road stop and hack off her
head?”

“It’s possible,” Alison said.

“Not really,” Kipp said. “The guy would have had a few minutes at best. It’s hard
to cut someone’s head off. You’d need a saw, and a coroner would spot saw marks immediately.
It must have been the impact with the tree in combination with the shattered windshield—like
the cop told you, Alison.”

Alison stared at him. “I cannot believe that you of all people, Kipp, could turn this
into a simple accident.”

“I’m not,” Kipp replied. “I believe she could have been run off the road. I’m simply
not buying the scenario that she was purposely decapitated.”

“Could we move on, please?” Brenda complained.

“We have to come to conclusions before we move on,” Kipp
said. “Was Fran’s death an accident or not? Let’s take a vote.”

“I say it was an accident,” Joan said.

Brenda glanced at Alison. “Accident,” Brenda said.

“Brenda!” Alison said in disbelief.

“It doesn’t make sense she could have been murdered while driving down the street
in her own car,” Brenda said. She gave Alison a quick hug. “I’m sorry.”

“It was no accident,” Alison insisted, pushing Brenda away.

“What do you think, Tony?” Kipp asked.

The question startled Tony. He had been watching and listening but from a distance.
He had almost forgotten that he was part of the group. It might have been the stress
of Fran’s death and the missed night of sleep, but his old friends all looked like
strangers to him. These people he had gone to school with for years. Even Alison.
They had hardly spoken to each other before they parted at the hospital the night
before.

“I think we’re not seeing the big picture,” Tony said. “I think we’re asking ourselves
the wrong questions.”

“Whether Fran’s death was accidental or not is a vital question,” Kipp said.

“Do you think it was an accident?” Tony asked him.

“I just don’t know,” Kipp said. “Do you?”

Tony shrugged. “Who knows? Who can know? Something weird is going on, that’s for sure.”

Kipp showed impatience. “What’s your point?”

“Who’s sending these chain letters and why?” Tony asked. “That’s the only thing that
matters. All this other stuff is just that—stuff.”

“I agree,” Joan said.

“All right,” Kipp said. “We can talk about that. Do you have any suggestions, Tony?”

Tony nodded. “The loose end we had last time, after we found out the Caretaker was
Neil, was that we never discovered who the dead man in the desert was.”

“Do you think someone connected to him might be sending the letters?” Alison asked.

“Yes,” Tony said.

“Why?” Alison asked.

“Revenge,” Tony said. “We ran the guy over, after all.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Kipp said quickly. “Talking about him won’t do us any
good. We talked about him three months ago and went around in circles. We don’t know
who the man was, and we’re probably never going to know who he was. We’ve got to take
steps that can help us right now—”

“Last time it was one of us,” Joan interrupted, eyeing Alison. “It could be one of
us again.”

“None of us would kill Fran,” Alison said.

“She was scared,” Joan said. “She ran off the road.”

“Yeah, while you were conveniently unavailable,” Alison snapped at her. Joan jumped
up, fire in her eyes.

“Are you saying I wrote these sick letters?” Joan demanded.

“You’re the only one in the group who’s sick enough to have done it,” Alison shouted
back, and the fact that she was contradicting herself of a moment ago didn’t seem
to bother her.

“You bitch,” Joan swore, taking a dangerous step toward Alison.

Alison stood slowly. “What are you going to do, Joany? Try to make my day?”

“Stop it,” Tony said quietly. “Joan is not the Caretaker.”

Alison gazed at him incredulously. “I can’t believe you’re taking her side.”

Joan laughed. “Looks like you don’t have him wrapped around your little finger like
you thought.”

Tony waved away both of them. “You two fight whenever you get together. Sit down and
let’s figure out what we have to do next.”

Alison continued to stare at him before she nodded. “All right,” she said and sat
back down. Joan strolled over and leaned against the rocket ship, studying her nails
and looking bored. Kipp resumed command of the group.

“The demands made in these new letters are much stronger than Neil’s ever were,” Kipp
said. “In fact if they continue the way they’re going, none of us is going to do any
of them. I’m sure as hell not going to hurt Leslie.”

“But what if it’s a choice between hurting her and being killed?” Brenda asked Kipp,
real anxiety in her voice. Kipp’s reaction was a combination of fondness and surprise.

“But you said you thought what happened to Fran was an accident,” he said.

“Kipp, I’m serious,” Brenda said. “What if?”

Kipp was disgusted. “There is no
what if.
I’m not going to burn my sister’s arm. It’s as simple as that.”

“Why don’t we go to the police?” Alison suddenly blurted out.

Tony sat up with a start. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding,” Alison said firmly. “With everything that happened with Neil,
no one died. No one was even hurt, except Neil. But this round of letters has only
begun, and already one of us is dead. We can’t fool around this time. We have to go
to the police.”

“If we go to the police, I go to jail,” Tony said flatly. “If that’s what the rest
of you want, tell me now. I’ll have to find myself a lawyer.”

“You don’t have to go to jail,” Alison said.

Tony felt a stab of anger. “You know what I love? I love it that out of everyone in
this group, you’re the one who’s making this suggestion. I just love it, Ali.”