“No, I don’t have any proof that you did anything, Bethany. Just that your name came up more than once. What about last Wednesday? The night Whitney was found hanging at her house?”
“I was at my youth group that night. Up at my church. You can ask Pastor Jeff. And who the hell would be pointing a finger at me anyway? That slime bag who calls himself Slick? ‘Greasy’ is more like it.”
Sam fought back a smile at Bethany’s description of the arrogant Devin. Instinct told Sam this girl was not involved. It also told Sam that being close to these kids could make Bethany a target as well.
Sam asked Bethany the name of her church, wrote it down on her notepad, along with the name Pastor Jeff.
“Is your mom gone a lot, Bethany?”
“Yep. She’s busy. Never really planned on having me. It just happened.”
“Well, for now I’m going to take your word for it that you had nothing to do with these murders. And they are murders. I’m not trying to scare you, but I want you to think about this. I want you to be careful. Lock the doors. Look behind you when you’re walking. Do you have a car?”
“Yeah, I have a car.”
“Do you park it in the garage?”
“No, my mom parks hers there and the rest is filled up with boxes we’ll never get around to unpacking before we have to move to the next crappy little town. Saves us time, at least.”
Sam felt a pang of emotion for the beautiful girl who was obviously lonely and tired of a nomadic lifestyle. Sam also knew that no matter what her instinct told her, she had to investigate this girl closely and look into every nook and cranny of her life.
“Well, maybe you should move those boxes somewhere else so you can park in the garage.”
“There’s a lot of boxes.”
“I’ll arrange for some help. And I have a few other questions I have to ask you.”
“What?”
The look of defiance came back, but not as fiercely as it had before, and Sam thought she had found a way through to the girl, despite her very impressive suit of armor, built from years of starting over in strange places with strange people.
“Have you ever heard of the choking game?”
Bethany looked away, pursed her lips, and then looked back at Sam.
“Maybe.”
“I’d like a yes or no answer, Bethany.”
“Maybe I don’t want to answer.”
“You don’t really have a choice.”
“Okay, fine, so I’ve traveled a lot, you know. I’ve lived in other countries, and more states and cities then any of these other Podunk Mormon kids. I’ve seen a lot.”
“And you’ve seen the choking game?”
“It’s not called that. That’s stupid. It’s called passout.”
Sam could see the tears building up in Bethany’s eyes again and knew she had hit on something.
“And have you played this game, Bethany?”
“Ya.”
“Did you play this game with Whitney and her friends?”
“Maybe.”
“Yes or no answers, please.”
“Why should I tell you anything?”
“Because I’m the good cop here. I’m sure you’ve watched enough television to understand the difference between good cop and bad cop. If someone else has to question you, they might not be as nice. Especially since you don’t have an alibi for the morning Jeremiah died.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t pin something on me I didn’t do.”
“What makes you think I’m trying to pin anything on you?”
“Because I’m not stupid. You have to solve this case. It’s your job. And you’ll do whatever you have to do to solve it, even if you get the wrong person.”
“But most people think these are just suicides, Bethany. They aren’t looking to pin them on anyone.”
“Nobody thinks they’re suicides. You should hang out in the hallways of the school. Then you might hear what people really think.”
Sam sighed. She had no doubt the community was buzzing. She was surprised there hadn’t been more vocal outbursts and demands for justice in a case that was as clear as mud. That, undoubtedly, would be coming soon. “I’m not looking for the wrong person, Bethany. I only want to stop your friends from dying. I want to understand. I want the truth.”
“First of all, they
weren’t
my friends. They used me for my mom’s alcohol cabinet, and a place to party and hook up, and then they screwed me over and tried to destroy me. They tried to make everyone hate me. I’m glad they’re dead.”
Sam winced a little. “They aren’t all dead, Bethany. Whitney is still alive.”
“Yeah? Well, I hear she’s just a vegetable in a diaper. So what? Maybe she deserves it. Maybe she should have treated people better. And you want the truth? I think that’s a lie. You
want
me to tell you Whitney was a nice girl who was attacked and assaulted. The truth is, she was a bitch.”
Bethany’s lips pursed, and a spark of anger flared in her eyes. Sam knew why this girl had been targeted. Not only was she not a Mormon, like just about everybody else at Smithland High, but she also was extremely beautiful. And she didn’t just sit back and take it. She had an opinion and wasn’t afraid to share it. The other girls would not have liked her encroaching on their turf. They wouldn’t have liked her independent spirit.
They wouldn’t have liked the fact that she was different.
“They all deserved everything they got.”
“You don’t really mean that, Bethany.”
“Maybe I do.”
“You want to go visit Whitney in the hospital? Her eyes are closed, but a machine breathes for her. In and out. It’s a tube they shoved down her throat, so that her brain won’t get starved of oxygen and cause permanent damage. Of course, they don’t know how long she went without oxygen, so it might already be too late. She might spend the rest of her life on that ventilator, never knowing who or what is around her. She might wake up, but be different. She might
really
have to wear a diaper for the rest of her life.
“She will probably miss homecoming and prom, and all the football games that are coming up. She might not ever go to another high-school activity. She might never even open her eyes again.”
“
Shut up!
” Bethany finally yelled. Her eyes had filled with tears again as Sam talked, but as hard as it was to continue, Sam knew she’d needed to push Bethany, to find out everything she knew. “Just shut up. I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with anything. I just wanted to make friends, okay? I wanted this place to be different. Instead, it was worse than anywhere I’ve ever been.”
Sam felt the beginnings of a headache at the base of her neck. “It’s hard to fit in, isn’t it?”
“What do you know? You’re obviously from around here. You’re probably Mormon, too. Everybody is Mormon, except for a few of us, and as soon as they figure out you aren’t going to join their church they either use you for what they can get or turn on you and abandon you. This is the worst place ever. I wish my mom had never made me move here. I wish I could go live with my dad in California. At least there you don’t feel like so much of an outcast, because just about everybody is an outcast. Of course, he doesn’t want me. An outcast from my own dad. Great, huh?”
“Bethany, teenagers are the same everywhere. I’m sorry you’ve had a rough time here.”
“You don’t know anything. I bet I’ve been more places in my life than you’ve ever even thought of going.”
Short of a cruise she had taken with some friends and a trip to New Orleans, Sam had not been anywhere, so she could hardly argue with Bethany.
Sam leaned forward and waited until Bethany met her eyes. “You’re probably right. And you know what else? I haven’t been inside a Mormon church since I turned eighteen. I turned my back on what everyone else around thinks is the only true thing. That makes me a bigger outcast than you could ever be. That makes me what they call an apostate. Exiled to Outer Darkness.”
Bethany blinked and then asked, “Why do you live here, then? Why do you stay here where people look down on you? I mean, you’re an adult. You could go anywhere. Why would you stay here?”
Good question.
“My family is here. My parents are getting old and they need me. And I guess because I’m too damn stubborn to let anyone drive me away.”
Bethany looked her up and down and then smiled, a tentative gesture, but it lit up her face like a spotlight was shining on it. She had perfect dimples in both cheeks. Oh, the girls must have hated her beauty.
“I didn’t hurt them, or try to get someone to hurt them. I hated them, but I didn’t hurt them.”
“I believe you,” Sam said softly. She also knew she had better get some protection on this girl. “But you need to be totally up-front with me. You need to tell me about passout.”
Bethany hesitated for another moment, and then finally said, “We only did it once. It was at a slumber party over at Whit’s house. They were all making fun of me because I had a weird accent and I didn’t belong to the church they belonged to and I thought getting baptized for dead people was creepy. So I told them they were dumb and immature and didn’t even know what it was like in the real world. Whitney kept pushing me, so I finally told them about the game. I just wanted them to feel as dumb as they made me feel. They’d never heard of it, and then I felt bad I told them. Because the one time I did it in North Carolina, I didn’t like it. It’s just a stupid head rush. I was sorry I said it. But of course Whitney made us all do it.”
“And how do you do it?”
“There’s lots of ways, I think, but I just knew the one where you all just get in a big group and hug someone tight, until they can’t breathe. Then just before they pass out you let them go.”
“And you all did this?”
“Yeah,” she said reluctantly. “Then Jeremiah and Devin and another guy, Mark something, came over. Whitney told them about the game. They wanted to do it, only they had this great idea.” Bethany paused, as if embarrassed. “Thought it would be cool if we were giving them blow jobs while they were light headed.”
Sam tried not to wince at Bethany’s words. “I thought you said that you had never had sex, Bethany.”
“A blow job’s not sex. Everybody does it.”
In Sam’s mind, the act of oral sex was more intimate than actual copulation. But she’d seen research that showed oral sex was very common among high-school kids, at least for girls pleasuring boys. She didn’t think it happened the other way around. She tried not to react as the girl talked. “So you gave them blow jobs?”
“We all took turns. And then the guys wanted to do it again, and Jeremiah … Jeremiah, he turned to me and said he wanted me to do him, because I did it best. And that made Whitney mad. And she and Jeremiah got in a fight, and then everyone left. And that was it. After that they started spreading rumors. No one was my friend anymore. And even though I was the only real virgin of all of them, they told everyone I was a slut.”
“And did Jeremiah ask you to do it again after that?”
“Yeah, all the time, but I wouldn’t. He was part of them. He spread the rumors. But he wouldn’t let it go.”
“What about the other girls, Tawny and Madison? Were they at the slumber party, too? Did they do the game with you?”
“Yeah, of course. Wherever Whitney went, those two nitwits went with her.” Bethany’s eyes filled with tears again, and they spilled, unbidden, down her cheeks. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? I showed them the game, and now they’re all dead. Even though they were mean to me, I didn’t want them to die. I lied when I said I wasn’t sorry. I
am
sorry.”
“I know, Bethany,” Sam said, wanting to pull the girl into a hug. Instead Sam reached out and squeezed Bethany’s shoulder for a long moment.
As Bethany cried, Sam pondered what she had learned. She was looking for a serial killer among a group of kids who were practicing a potentially fatal sex “game.” If it weren’t for the slide show, she might now be thinking these were, at the least, accidents. Attempts for a cheap high.
But if that were true, who finished up the slide show? And who put it in the seminary building?
And was this girl crying into her hands really innocent?
THIRTY-THREE
“Hi, Momma,” Sam said, sitting by the side of the hospital bed, in a metal-legged chair she had scooted as close to the bed as possible. She had left Bethany as soon as the girl was calm, giving her a card that had all the numbers where Sam could be reached. Then she drove to the hospital to sit by her mother’s side.
Sam reached out and grabbed her mother’s left hand, placing it in her own and stroking it gently as she talked in a gentle voice.
The room was sterile and cold, the smell of antiseptic almost overpowering. A vase sat on the night table to the side of the bed, filled with drooping daisies and petunias, undoubtedly brought here by her father, so “Ruthie could feel like she was at home, and not all alone.”
Other than that, there was nothing in this room that spoke of Sam’s mother, personalized her, or even evoked any memories of the woman she used to be. It was just a standard, psychiatric room in a hospital. Sam’s mother lay in the bed, staring straight ahead, not moving her eyes, seemingly looking off into the distance, gazing at who knew what.
“There’s a lot going on, Momma. I know Dad doesn’t like me to say anything, but Susanna is having some trouble. Whitney is in the hospital. She had an … an accident. Jace hates his mission, and wants to come home, and Roger Junior is having some of his own issues. I never hear from Amy. I don’t even know where she is. And you know what happened with Callie. That’s why you’re here.”
“You sure of that?”
Sam jumped up from the chair and turned to look at Roger Marcusen, one of the last people she wanted to see today. Her brother-in-law had red, bloodshot eyes and unkempt hair, and he was wearing a wrinkled shirt and old khakis that obviously hadn’t been pressed in a while. Susanna always took the utmost care with her family and their clothing. She was more worried about appearances than anyone else Sam had ever known—probably because Susanna had spent her teenage years trying to be mother to two needy girls and dealing with a mother who was completely vacant.
Roger’s hair, always thin, was now sparse on top and stuck out at odd angles, like he had run his fingers through it numerous times. It screamed angst. His jowly face was lined, and dark shadows were permanent fixtures under both eyes. He’d gained weight over the years, and he had a good-sized gut sticking out. He was nothing like the football player/stud he had been in high school.