The Little Woods (30 page)

“Okay,” she said, biting down on her lip. “But how could the killer know for sure that Noel thinks she killed Iris? I mean, it’s not like she’s advertising it.”

“I don’t know,” I said, pressing my fingers against my temples. “Noel didn’t tell anyone else about what happened that night, did she?”

Helen frowned.

“Oh God,” I said, my heart sinking. “She did, didn’t she?”

She closed her eyes. “She told Asta.”

“When did she tell her?”

“Right after we found Iris in the woods.”

“Jesus,” I said, shaking my head, thinking back to that night at the lake house. “That’s Noel’s secret? That’s the secret she told Asta? And Asta didn’t go to the police?”

Slowly Helen sank down to sit on her bed. She looked at me with dark and serious eyes. “No. She didn’t.”

I massaged my temples, as if it would help me extract whatever was percolating there. “Has Noel talked to you at all about going to the police?”

Helen sighed. “No. She’d never confess. She knows it would destroy our father,” she said, and she looked down at her feet, her cheeks flushed with shame.

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep hold of the thread. “So she wouldn’t confess, but the killer couldn’t know that. Unless …”

“What?”

“Well, the note didn’t suggest that she confess. It said
there is only one way out
. Confession isn’t exactly a way out, is it? It’s
a way to land in jail. What if that’s not what the killer wanted at all? What if
one way out
means suicide? Helen,” I said, barely able to speak the words I needed to say. “What if the killer knows that Noel thinks she killed Iris because Noel told her that she did?”

“What do you mean?”

“Noel told Asta.”

“Asta?” Helen laughed. “No.”

“Think about it, we know that Noel told Asta that she killed Iris. And we also know that she can exert an amazing amount of influence over Noel. And there’s something else. A while ago I had this really weird conversation with Asta about death and fruit flies, and I was totally creeped out by it. It was like she was having two different conversations, and I’m now thinking that maybe she actually was. I think she may have been using the opportunity to goad Noel, to kind of torment her without seeming to by getting me to say certain key things.”

Her eyes moved slowly around the room, her mouth opening and closing, as if she was searching for the words to say what she meant. “But that would have to mean that Asta killed Iris. I mean, think about what you’re saying.”

“I know. I don’t want to think that Asta could ever do a thing like that, but we need to consider everything. I think Iris had found out something about her killer and was planning on blackmailing them. Asta could have been the person she was going to blackmail. And there’s no way Asta could be sure that Iris wouldn’t suddenly change her mind and go to the police, so she had to get rid of her. People will do crazy things if they think their freedom is at stake.”

Helen shook her head and closed her eyes. “No, it doesn’t make sense. Besides, it’s too big of a coincidence that the one person Noel would confide in would just accidentally also happen to be the real murderer.”

“What if it’s not a coincidence, though?” I said, and for a moment the air hung stale and still between us. “When did Noel start spending time with Asta?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes wide. “When she started working for her as her lab assistant.”

“Which was when?”

“Um … October?”

“Which was after Iris was murdered,” I said, shivering a little, suddenly cold.

“Oh my God,” Helen gasped, fear in her eyes.

My voice was shaking as I continued, my theory forming as I went. “What if Asta took Noel on as her lab assistant so she could keep an eye on her, and when Noel confided in her, she saw her chance?”

Helen bit down hard on her bottom lip. “So, what then? You honestly think Asta’s been trying to get Noel to kill herself so that she will be blamed for the murder?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“But what could Asta be hiding that Iris could have found? What terrible crime could she possibly have committed?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, suddenly cold to my core. “But I think I might have an idea.”

My mind flitted to the image of Noel standing near the window, crying, and I wondered where she had gone. And then panic crept into my veins. “I think we need to find her,” I said,
pulling back the curtain, looking out onto the empty lawn. “I think we need to find Noel right away.”

We stared at each other a moment, the air tense and electric.

“Yeah,” Helen said, her lips white and shaking. “We have to find Noel. Split up and find her.”

“Okay,” I said, slightly incredulous. “Yeah.”

“That Cryker guy, he’s usually up in the teachers’ lounge, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’m going to grab him and head over to Asta’s house,” she said. “You start with the dining hall. If you see Cryker first, send him to Asta’s. I’ll be waiting.”

Helen was on her feet and moving toward the door before I had time to slip on my shoes. When I emerged into the afternoon sun, she was nowhere in sight. The day was strange. Clouds moved quickly across the sky, and the atmosphere was thick with electricity, the kind that precedes a storm. I started asking people, asking anyone I passed, but no one had seen Noel. I checked in the dining hall, in the library. Nothing.

I had to be wrong. Everything I’d said about Asta, it was all theoretical. It couldn’t actually be true. There had to be a reasonable explanation for it. I was walking faster now, and then I saw Carlos sitting on a bench, reading one of the detective novels I’d lent him. He nodded when he saw me.

“What’s up, Calista?”

“Have you seen Noel?” I asked, trying not to seem too frantic.

He nodded gravely. “Went past with Asta not ten minutes ago.”

“Asta? Where were they going?”

“They went toward the woods. I asked if they were going on a nature walk and if I could come, but they said no. Must be a girl thing.”

“Listen, Carlos,” I said, grabbing his arm. “I’m going after them. Go find Cryker and Helen at Asta’s house. Tell them where I’ve gone.”

“Cally, what’s going on?”

“Just hurry, okay?” I called over my shoulder, already jogging, then running toward the woods. I pushed my way through the fence, doing my best to choke back my fear. On the other side of these woods I might see something I didn’t want to see. I might find something I didn’t want to find.

I plunged deeper into the woods, the forest around me silent save for the feathery wavering leaves and the whispering growth of the massive trees, but there was something else there too—a feeling of darkness, of despair. Maybe Brody was right about some places just being bad. I pressed onward, the possibilities I’d considered seeming increasingly outlandish as I went.

A moment or so before I emerged into the clearing, I had a flash of darkness, of evil, but when I saw them sitting there at the edge of the pond, peaceful, just staring out at the water, I was finally able to exhale. I had been wrong, and that was okay. It was good to be wrong.

The sky was growing dark now, and the wind was picking up, playing with Asta’s gossamer locks, lighting up her skull like a halo. From behind like that, they looked beautiful, as if they were having a gentle chat, student and mentor, but then I saw that Noel was shaking, her whole body trembling. My
heart throbbed again as I took a step toward them, but a twig broke underfoot, and slowly Asta turned her head, her blond hair billowing around her.

“Cally, go back to school,” she said. “You’re not allowed to be out here. You’re breaking the rules.”

“Noel?” I said, my voice cracking. But she didn’t move. Head down, facing the lake, she was shaking. And then I saw it, blood trickling down, pooling on her bare thigh. “Noel!” I cried, and rushed to her.

She looked up at me, her eyes sick and distant, the gray beneath them harbingers of a darkness closing in around us. Her face was blotchy and she was crying. In her hand she held a razor blade.

I grabbed it from her, shoved it into the pocket of my jeans, and grabbed her wrists. The blood was trickling from them, oozing like crimson-black buds.

“My God, what are you doing?” I looked for something, anything, to staunch the flow. Lamely, I wrapped my flannel around the torn flesh.

“Helen?” she asked, looking up at me with pupils dilated like saucers.

“No, it’s Cally. What are you on? What did you take?” Beside her on the ground was a handwritten note—a suicide note. My focus turned to Asta. She stared straight ahead at the pond, her body perfectly still.

“I did it, Cally,” Noel managed to say, her voice shaking. “I killed her. I killed Iris.”

“You didn’t. I know you didn’t. And even if you had, this isn’t the way, Noel.”

She shut her eyes and shook her head. “It’s better this way.”

I was applying pressure to the wounds, but it didn’t seem to be working, and as soon as I’d make headway with one wrist, the other would streak forth unexpectedly.

“Asta!” I screamed. “Do something. Will you fucking do something?”

But she didn’t say a word. She just stared ahead into that still water. That was when I realized how quickly I needed to act. I leaned down to Noel, pretending to adjust my makeshift bandages. She peered up at me, the light seeming to cause her pain.

“Noel,” I whispered. “I need you to trust me. I need you to run. I’m going to help you to your feet and when I say run, you run as fast as you can back to campus, and you get help.”

She squinted up at me, screwed her eyes up a bit, then nodded.

“Okay,” I said aloud. “Now, let’s get you to your feet.”

But as soon as I pulled her up, Asta stood and dusted off her skirt.

“Cally,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking of doing, and I want to advise you against it. We can work this out all together. You don’t have to create a drama.”

She moved toward me, and I could see something off in her eyes. And every instinct in my body told me to run, but instead I screamed, “Run, Noel! Now!”

As soon as Noel took off, loping like a wounded antelope, Asta sprang to terrible life—an ancient goddess, her hair twisting about her, lunging after Noel—and before I knew what I
was doing, I found myself barreling into her, putting my full weight into her chest. She was screaming, trying to get Noel to stop, unwilling still to relinquish control. And my world was a mass of white hair and fury, rage and chiffon. Soon I had her on the ground, a knee to her chest. Fingers darted up, clawing my eyes, tearing at my cheek, heat and fire rising there, something wet and salty trickling down, and then I was holding her off with one arm while my other hand searched my pocket for the razor. In a moment I had it, and then she was biting my arm and I slashed at her, slicing her cheek, blood flowing. I sliced at her hand for something like good measure, and then she was weeping, crying like a child, and I held the razor flush against her throat.

And just like that everything stopped, all the frenzy, the raging, the screams. Suddenly she was perfectly still, glaring up at me with ice-blue eyes, the sockets of which were now pooling with blood from her cheek. And I stared at the tip of the blade resting flush against the pulsating beat of her carotid artery.

“Cally,” she gasped. “What in the name of God are you doing?”

“I know you killed her,” I said, a primal rage throbbing within me. “I know you killed Iris. Why? Why did you do it?”

“Cally,” she said, her voice calm despite her labored breathing. “Cally, it’s me. It’s Asta. Please, think about what you’re doing. You don’t want to do this.”

“Why did you kill her?” I yelled. “You argued that day. It wasn’t the phone call that spooked her, because there was no phone call. It was you she was afraid of.”

“Please, Cally, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You argued that day in the bio lab. She found something out about you, and whatever it was scared her. What was it? Tell me.”

“Cally, it’s me. It’s Asta. Let me sit up and we’ll talk about this like adults.”

“I’m not a fucking adult. Tell me what it was. She confronted you about it in bio lab. Alex saw you arguing. She was going to blackmail you, wasn’t she? You couldn’t let her do that, and you had to get to her before she told anyone else. You had to act quickly, that same day, didn’t you? You followed her up here and you killed her because no one could find out what she knew. What was it? What did she find?”

“Cally, I want you to close your eyes. I want you to breathe. Imagine air coming in at the base of your spine.”

I was crying now, faltering. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was crazy.

“Good,” she said in that smooth, calm voice, and part of me still wanted to please her, wanted to trust her. I looked at her, and seeing the fear in her eyes, I suddenly felt like a lunatic. I released my grip.

“Good,” she said. “Now, I’m going to sit up. Put that silly blade away like a good girl. That’s right. That’s a good girl. Now let me sit up and I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you about Clare.”

Her name pierced me. My breath caught, and I let go of Asta. She pulled herself up and wiped the blood from her eye with the edge of her sleeve as if she were removing a gnat from
a glass of champagne. She steadied herself and stared out at the pond. I noticed I was shaking.

“Cally,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking, probably more than you do. I need to make you understand what happened. I’m a person, Cally, just like you, and I make mistakes. We all make mistakes.”

I stared at her, my mind numb, Clare’s name still pulsing inside me like the steady drip of a faucet. Asta focused her gaze on me, the emptiness in her pellucid eyes the only sign that something was wrong.

I shook my head and stared out at the lotus flowers lounging in that pond as if nothing had ever gone wrong. “Tell me what happened,” I said slowly. “I know they didn’t die the night of the fire—Clare and Laurel. Tell me what really happened. What happened to my sister?”

She put a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes. “I don’t know for sure,” she said. “I think … I think she drowned. They both drowned.”