The Telling (30 page)

I shoulder by him toward the open door. There's more resistance in Willa's arm. She's dragging. I try to release her hand; I'm brave enough to go on alone, but she holds fast. The wind comes in waves of gray mist through the doors. All surfaces in the kitchen shine with salty spray. It's much cooler than it was in the sunny front yard. That's not unusual. The harbor has its own climate, its fog and wind kept trapped by the ring of houses and steep banks. We reach the door. I hear the air go out of Willa a split second before I look to the swing set.

Becca is a porcelain doll hanging from the top beam of the play structure. The chain of a swing is coiled around her neck. Her pink toenails are suspended a foot from the ground.

Her feet are slightly turned in on themselves; pigeon-toed. A skinny cream arm dangles at her side. Her other hand is caught between the chain and her neck. She tried to wriggle herself free before she suffocated. A thread of dried blood paints a line from the corner of her mouth to her chin. Her irises are frozen rolling back into her head, leaving too much unseeing white.

I think it before I catch myself:
Becca, you made my life small, and you deserved this.

I
close my eyes. The nightmare doesn't vanish. Parallels suggest themselves between the tableau of Becca hanging from the swing set and the dark make-believe of my childhood. This is the conclusion to Ben's story “The Lovely Scarecrow.” It's what I couldn't remember yesterday. The half man, half demon who snips off the beaks of birds falls in love with a girl and is rejected. He cuts off her nose and hangs her from a tree with bird beaks in a wreath at her feet. Even as a kid I knew that was hate, not love. Ben's Lana hunts down the wicked half man and strings him up in the same way.

I drop my hands. Becca has her nose. She wouldn't deserve that. I shake my head at myself. She didn't deserve any of this. It's as if the villains in our stories strolled out into the sun. As if Ben the vengeful hero did. He killed Maggie, Ford, and Becca's dogs. Did he come for Becca also? I make a noise, or else Willa does, because an officer kneeling with a camera looks up from his work and shouts out. A wall of police and detectives come at us.

“Don't look.”

“Get out of here.”

“Close your eyes.”

I try to resist their tide that's carrying me into the house. “This is . . . mine,” I say, pointing to Becca over their shoulders.

Willa mutters something like, “Be quiet.” She doesn't recognize the vignette in front of us. She only knows about the villainous monk and his rosary. I couldn't share all our stories with her if I wanted to; there are too many to remember.

“Take her down,” I say, and then Willa and I are pulled apart. We cross over the threshold as a cop hoists a plastic tarp into the air. It parachutes over Becca and the swing set.

I'm given a glass of water as I'm propped on the couch. It sloshes over the rim, trickling between my fingers. There are water lilies on the upholstery and tears seeping from my eyes, running until they streak down my neck. Sweeny offers a tissue as she crouches at my feet. I ignore it and crane to see the unnaturally blue tarp covering Becca. She can't even see the sky. Becca was a liar. She was selfish and nasty. But she wasn't a monster. She didn't deserve to be treated as one of the mad villains in our stories.

I understand why she tried to impress others with secrets. Being a girl in high school is a lot like being under a microscope, all your imperfections magnified and noted. I get not wanting to be defined by the messiness of your family. It's easier to point at some other girl and say,
Look what a loser she is
. Not right, but easy.

Still. Becca didn't deserve this ending. Not ever, but especially not after this last month. She'd say,
I've always been so jealous of your natural highlights. Your freckles make me smile. How did I survive without you before this summer?
All these little boosts built me up. Becca made me feel worthy in a way that only another girl can. She was all
entitlement, peppermint, and no judgment. And sitting on her lumpy couch, watching the suggestion of her body under the tarp, I forgive her. Maybe she would have grown into a better person. Maybe she would have ruined some unsuspecting girl's college experience. Doesn't matter; she didn't deserve to die.

Sweeny's hand is light on my knee. Willa is flanked by two policemen and slumped in an overstuffed chair.

“Lana, can you hear me?” Sweeny asks, enunciating in an exaggerated way. The pocket of her silk blouse is stretched open by a compact digital camera. She was photographing the crime scene. Becca loved to have her photo taken. A man in a tan suit removes the glass from my hand. Everyone's staring. “Lana, is there anything you can tell me about what you just saw?”

Panic makes me shudder. My thoughts skip from Becca's hanged form to the outline of a monk clasping a rosary. They are stories, fiction, morbid fantasy. That's the problem. They belong inside an imagination and not splashed around Gant by a vengeful hero. I wonder at what point a vengeful hero becomes a villain. Did Ben become the villain long before this and I just didn't have the heart to admit it?

“You don't understand,” I mutter. “What's out there . . . it's out of my head.” I jab my temple. “It doesn't exist. It isn't supposed to be real.”

“Lana, do you have any idea who hurt your friend?” Sweeny squeezes my knees. “Is there anything you can tell me about the person who did this?” I want to push her hands off me. Her eyes are darting, pinched slightly, suspicious. She's right: I'm hiding something.

“I need to ask you some difficult questions, Lana.” She speaks
slowly and loudly. She doesn't need to. My senses are fine-tuned. I hear the swish of her silk blouse as she shifts her weight. “Your house is three down from here, correct?”

One quick nod from me.

“Did you see anyone out of the ordinary on your street this morning? Think hard. Did you hear anything?”

“No,” I say. “I was in my room. I can't see Becca's house from my window. I didn't hear a thing until the sirens.”

Willa's eyes are closed, her lips twitch, and her face is blotchy. She's trying not to cry. It's hard to stop thinking about Becca as the little girl with her hair in braids, her two front teeth, eyelashes, and eyes overwhelming her other features. Our friendship started with pumping our legs on my swing set, and it ends as she dangles by her neck from hers.

The tan suit slides a chair behind Sweeny. She roosts on the edge. She's taller than I am on the sunken-in couch, and it makes me feel younger looking up at a roomful of adults. “What did you mean that this is something out of your head?” Sweeny says. I make my face impassive. I hadn't meant to say that. “And while you were out on the deck, you said, ‘It's mine.' ” She glances toward Willa, whose eyes remain closed, and then refocuses her attention on me. “I'm certain that Ms. Owen heard it also.”

The uniforms and suits wait for my answer. They're a smear of square chins dappled with whiskers and stroked by thumbs, fists on hips, and doughy waistlines that spill over belts with each deep breath. Sweeny is the only woman in the bunch. She has a better poker face. Only the sweat stains bleeding through the fabric of her blouse hint at her anxiety.

I shove my hands under my thighs to hide their shaking. Willa's eyes open. I read them clearly.
Tell them.
Willa isn't the one who needs to find words for the impossible.
My dead stepbrother used to tell stories
;
I might have been addicted to their gore and adventure
;
I think that Ben found a way to come back; he's picking off the boys and girls who were cruel to me
.

Sweeny would have to consider me a suspect. All signs point to me as a killer, acting out stories only two of us knew. What's worse is that I have a motive. Maggie killed Ben. I despised Ford. Becca spread lies about me.

“I had a nightmare about blackbirds last night,” I answer at last. “We found the one with the dead dogs yesterday.” I am guilty for lying, but Becca can't be helped; she's gone. I wonder how gone, though, if our island is the kind of in-between place where the dead can exist.

Sweeny watches me. “Had anyone ever told you that rosary peas were poisonous before the day Detective Ward and I spoke to you about them?” I let the couch cushions swallow more of me. I fade into their pale, watercolor world. “I'm not asking because anyone suspects you, Lana.”
No, not yet.
“The coroner determined that Ford Holland, the boy who disappeared several nights ago, was poisoned by them also. These crimes are quite unusual, puzzling with surreal elements.”

“I didn't know about rosary peas,” I lie softly.

“Humph,” she sighs. Perhaps the note of disbelief isn't really there. Sweeny leans forward. “I adhere to one principle in solving my cases, Lana. I believe that without exception everything is related and that atypical events and violent crimes should be viewed in relation to one another. Common links need to be identified. Do you understand?”

I shake my head, even though I worry I do. In my peripheral
vision, Willa cranes forward; a puzzle's been presented for her to solve.

“There have been an unprecedented number of violent deaths perpetrated on this island over the last two months. First your stepbrother's in June, then Ms. Lewis's, followed by Mr. Holland's, and now this gruesome hanging. Their proximity in location and time would be enough to link them, at least preliminarily; their uniquely surreal circumstances strengthen this link. As a detective, it's my job to ask how these victims are connected. Are they the random victims of one killer? Are they connected only by location and season? Or do they have more in common?”

My inhale is harsh in my ears.

“At first glance you are a common link,” she says purposefully. “There has to be a reason for that, correct?” She tilts her head, waiting. I give her nothing. “Why would an ordinary teenager be connected to four separate tragic deaths when most go their entire lives without suffering one? Detective Ward believes that you are not ordinary or innocent. He's been exploring the possibility that you are either directly involved or that you know the perpetrator and are keeping his or her name from us. We're still looking for Fitzgerald Moore. We've been told by several community members that Ben had a friendship with him and that the Holland boy's older brother attacked him several years ago.

“We've been to his campsite, and it doesn't appear that he's slept there for a week or more. The detective here believes that you may be keeping quiet because of a misguided sense of compassion for this sick individual. I may not agree with my colleague, but Mr. Moore's whereabouts do need to be ascertained.” She raises a nail-bitten finger. “It
is my suspicion that our focus should be trained not on you, but rather on your stepbrother.”

I wait; so does Sweeny. Ward's glare pins me to the couch. They couldn't possibly suspect what I believe. I'm bewildered, and it must show, because Sweeny gives Ward a meaningful glance before she continues. “I'm operating under the assumption that Ben's death was the inciting incident to all this. It led to Maggie, to Ford, and now here, to your friend.” Her eyes flick toward the terrace, where the breeze rustles the tarp. “I believe that finding your stepbrother's killer means finding the perpetrator of these related crimes. Scorned girlfriends don't usually plot carjackings. I knew Maggie was withholding information from us, and I suspected that she conspired with the unidentified man on the highway. Was the murder premeditated? Was it a carjacking gone terribly wrong? What if Maggie wasn't more than an unwitting accomplice?

“This is a theory that I've spent the last two months searching for proof of. Ms. Lewis's body being found suggests that she was under duress, perhaps to keep quiet about the identity of Ben's murderer. What if under coercion, Maggie was prompted to show up at your home as she did? Perhaps she was not the mastermind of the attack and instead was tasked with drawing Ben from home that night. If this is the case, it isn't Maggie's anger with Ben over the end of a relationship but this unknown man's motive in question. Few teenage boys have deadly acquaintances. At first I looked at possible enemies of your father and stepmother.” My eyebrows pinch. I've been thinking of Ben's killer as Maggie's accomplice, her friend even. What if this isn't the case? What if she couldn't describe the shadow man's face because she was afraid to?

Sweeny's theory means that Ben shares a killer with the others, with Becca, and if that's the case, then there are no traces of Ben left over. Ben isn't a vengeful hero or villain. “Your father is well liked in the community; we didn't find any grudges against him. But Diane was more difficult to investigate,” Sweeny continues, “both because there's little information available and because she wasn't forthcoming when I interviewed her in person at Calm Coast. We can't compel her without evidence that she's willfully withholding. And her doctors are adamant that she may not have the mental faculties to remember.”

“She's sad,” I whisper.

Sweeny frowns. “True as that may be, it's unusual when the mother of a dead child doesn't cooperate fully.” An awkward moment passes. “I believe that if I find your stepbrother's killer, I will have found the person guilty of all this.”

An abrupt ache is opening up in my chest and I want to touch my knees to it, curl into a ball, and go invisible. “Are you aware that Ben went to eight different schools in eight states during the six years before Diane married your father, Lana?”

My fingernails dig into the fleshy stuffing of the couch. When we were little, I knew that magical things appear out of nowhere. To me, Ben was the most magical. I wanted Ben to be past-less. It meant that there was nothing else to know about him. “No,” I say.