Forty feet. Twenty. A scream knots in my throat.
Just as I spin the wheel and bump off the gutter and into the thwack-thwack of new corn, the SUV swerves around me. It’s going sixty, seventy miles an hour, far too fast for me to make out who’s driving. I jam hard on the brakes. Leaves churn up from my grill, smacking my windshield, and I bounce over stubbly ground.
Finally I get the car back on the road. By then the SUV is nothing but a pair of taillights swallowed into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Becky Sarinelli died, Sheriff Kahn came down to speak to the students.
I remember we were herded into the gym and the windows beaded with the condensation of all that body heat; outside, it was a cold October. I don’t know why they asked Sheriff Kahn to break the news—not like any of us hadn’t heard it already, anyway.
“Certain tragedies can’t be explained,” he said. I remember that because it was so obviously a lie. We all knew why Becky had killed herself. It wasn’t inexplicable at all. It was because of the photos. “Ms. Sarinelli was in a lot of pain. And I’m here to tell you that you got options. If you’re in trouble, you can talk to your parents. You can talk to your teachers.” They had him using a microphone and I remember that felt wrong. “You can come down to Blyck Road and talk to me.”
Sunday morning, that’s exactly where I find myself. Then, same as now, Sheriff Kahn looked like the last person in the world you’d ever want to talk to if you were in trouble. His whole mouth droops along with the line of his mustache, and the blunt furrows of his forehead read like a billboard for shut up and bear it. He’s tanner than I remember, and blingier, too: in addition to his big class ring, a gold necklace is nested beneath his uniform, and he checks a thick gold watch just often enough for me to know he finds me an inconvenience.
“I’m telling you,” he says, with a heavy sigh, after gesturing me into a seat across from his desk. “Got home just a few days ago, and I wish I could turn around and head right back on vacation.”
“Where were you?” I ask.
“Sarasota. Got a condo down there. Swampy as hell right about now, but I like it when tourist season’s over. Besides, all I do’s sit in front of a pool anyway.” His teeth are whiter than I remember, too. I can just see him in Sarasota, greased up and mahogany-colored, tanning oil quivering in his chest hair. “Now, what can I do you for?”
“I came about Monty Devue.” This is at least half true.
“Oh, sure.” Sheriff Kahn’s expression turns even sourer. “Sorry, but I can’t help you there. Turned the whole thing over to the county prosecutor.”
I think of Monty when he was six or seven, bending over to scoop a caterpillar from the asphalt, holding it carefully in his palm. “Do you know if they plan to charge him?”
Kahn settles back in his chair, crossing his hands on his stomach, so his watch catches the light. “Arson’s a serious business, especially in drought time.”
Behind him, a bulletin board is pinned with memorabilia, ancient municipal notices, five-year-old local newspaper clippings about the police department’s latest successes, and a flyer advertising the date of the Monroe County Police Department cookout. No surprise, Optimal is listed as one of the sponsors.
The air in the office is so dry it feels like trying to inhale sawdust. “He says he didn’t do it,” I point out.
“What do you expect him to say?”
“All your evidence is circumstantial.”
“He boasted about getting revenge. The kid’s a firebug, too. He’s got all sorts of disciplinary problems.” Kahn’s losing patience. He leans forward again. “Listen, Abigail—”
“Miss Williams,” I correct him, and he smiles like I’ve just told him the name of my doll at a tea party.
“You used to know Monty as a kid. But kids change. And even their own parents don’t know the difference.” He leaned forward. “Did you know Monty got in trouble last September for threatening a classmate?”
He grins when I react. “You didn’t know? Tatum Klauss. Cheerleader, straight A-student. Nice kid.”
“Threatening her how?” I say.
“Hanging around too much. Following her after school. Showing up when he wasn’t invited.” Sheriff Kahn is obviously enjoying himself. “One time she came home from a party and found him waiting for her.”
I want to believe it isn’t true. At the same time, I know Monty, and remember how he would fixate on things. I once spent forty-five minutes trying to coax a dead turtle out of his arms. He just kept clinging to it, trying to make it come back to life.
“I never said he didn’t have problems,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean he started the fire. Look. You said it yourself. Monty’s been threatening to get revenge on Gallagher since the fall. But we only recently came down to investigate Optimal. Don’t you think that’s a big coincidence? We could have lost a key paper trail.”
If he gets what I’m implying, he doesn’t seem to—which makes him either very dumb or very smart. He doesn’t even blink. “So you of all people should appreciate how serious this is.”
I’m tempted to tell Sheriff Kahn about the car tailing me last night, but I’m sure he’s the type to chalk it up to female hormones.
I switch tactics. “You were sheriff back when I was in high school,” I say, “back when Kaycee Mitchell disappeared.”
This time, he’s not quick enough to repress a slight ripple that moves his expression into one of distaste. “Oh sure. Biggest to-do this town’s ever had. Hysteria. Teenage girls going cuckoo.” He smiles thinly. “You weren’t one of them, were you? One of the…?” He holds out both hands, mimics a small seizure, the wild flapping of the hands.
“No. I wasn’t.” I’d seen what real sickness looked like. I knew that being sick didn’t make you special. It just made you sick. “I just wanted to know whether you ever considered the possibility that she wasn’t making it up.”
“No,” he says shortly. “It was all for attention. Everyone knows that. The other girls copped to it afterward.”
“You mentioned hysteria. That spreads by copying, emulation. It doesn’t mean there wasn’t some truth in it.”
He smiles again. “That’s just like a lawyer,” he says. “Always trying to make the plain facts more complicated. Kaycee lied and got embarrassed when it all blew up.”
Every single person who talks about Kaycee mentions that she was a liar. But if she really was sick, she was the only one who wasn’t lying. At least, not about that.
“Running away because she didn’t want to admit she’d been faking it seems pretty extreme. Especially if she was as good a liar as everyone says.”
He waves away the distinction. “That’s old business, anyway. Can’t see why it matters to you.”
A memory surfaces: sophomore or junior year, I was passing Misha and Kaycee in the hall when Misha began to bark. That was her newest cruelty—I was ugly as a dog, she said, and she had started growling whenever I passed.
But that day Kaycee was with her. She turned to Misha and slapped her hard, once, in the face, so quickly and unexpectedly I almost missed it. And for a moment all three of us froze, stunned—Kaycee, lit up with fury and something else, something I couldn’t name. Misha, shocked, her face slowly flushing with color.