Choker (21 page)

“Hey,” Ethan said, startled. His hands came up around her. “Hey now,” he murmured as he patted her back. “What’s wrong?” He looked over her shoulder. Quickly, Cara reached behind her and pulled the door shut.

“Come on,” she managed to say. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Chapter 25

E
THAN BLINKED BUT RECOVERED QUICKLY. “OKAY,
yeah.” He led her down the steps. “Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s just walk, okay?” Cara started toward the sidewalk, trying to shake the image of Zoe’s crazed face from her mind. She walked faster and faster down the quiet sidewalk until she felt Ethan’s hand catch hers.

“Hey, slow down.” He pulled her back until she was walking next to him. “Just relax.” He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed firmly. They walked in silence for several blocks. Cara was glad he wasn’t pestering her with questions right away. She looked up at his strong face and his jaw, darkened with a few days of stubble. She felt the solid, reassuring weight of his arm around her shoulder, pressing into her collarbone. The horror of the bedroom scene receded a few notches in her mind, and she felt her body relax.

Ethan took her hand and pulled her across the street. “Where are we going?” Cara asked.

“Come on,” he said. “Lamont Park is right here.” He guided her toward the neatly groomed little park. In the summer, the place was alive with T-ball teams and kids scrambling over the jungle gym, their moms chatting on the benches. But today the playing fields were deserted. The jungle gym stood silently, the wood chips underneath smooth and undisturbed. The swings swung slightly in the breeze, silhouetted against the gray sky.

Cara sat down on one, grasping the cold chains. She dug her toe into the hollow that hundreds of little feet had made over the years. Ethan sat on the swing next to her. “So,” he said, twisting first right, then left, “are you going to tell me what was wrong back there? You came out of the house looking like you were about to pass out.” He looked down at her, his brows knit with concern.

Cara took a deep breath and shook her head. There was no way she could tell Ethan about Zoe. It would sound too crazy. “It’s my . . . cat,” she said slowly. “My cat just died.” She could hear the sobs gathering in her voice. But they weren’t for Samson, of course. “I found him right before you came.” Her voice sounded silly and false to her ears. She looked down at the toes of her sneakers pushing into the dirt beneath her feet. “I know that sounds so stupid, being upset about a cat, when Alexis is . . . missing.” She stumbled a little on the last word.

“No.” Ethan shook his head emphatically. He twisted his swing to face her. “It’s okay. Don’t worry like that.” He reached out and took her hand. She could feel his warm dry fingers close around her cold ones. She squeezed his hand tight.

“Do—do you think about Alexis?” she asked, almost in a whisper. The words seemed to flow out of her mouth unbidden. She waited for his answer, watching his face.

“Sometimes,” he said, low. “Sometimes . . . I think about you.” His face was close to hers now, so close she could almost feel the heat of his breath against her cheek. She waited, trembling as he stroked her thumb with his own. She imagined she could hear his skin rasping against hers. “Cara, I don’t know how I would have gotten through this last week without you.”

She stared at him. His face seemed huge, filling up her field of vision. He leaned over, and she closed her eyes. She felt his lips press down on hers. His mouth was cool and tasted like apples. Suddenly, she thought of kissing Zoe in the barn—her cold lips and fetid breath. Her breath caught suddenly, and she pushed the image away with all her strength.

Ethan must have sensed something. He drew back and looked down at her questioningly. She stared up at him, then stretched up toward him, lifting her face. Telling him she wanted more.

He was kissing her again. She felt his hand on the back of her neck, then in her hair, pulling her closer to him. She tilted her head and opened her lips slightly. His mouth pressed harder on hers.

They broke apart. Cara tried to control her breathing. Ethan was breathing hard too, his face dark and intense. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, a police siren wailed nearby. They both looked up to see a cruiser driving slowly down the street.

It pulled up at the curb in front of the park. The siren stopped, but the lights kept going, flashing red, then yellow, then blue, over and over. Two cops got out of the car. Even from this distance, Cara recognized the figures of Stanton and Fitzgerald. Her mouth went dry. Her fingers tightened around Ethan’s.

They watched the cops approach over the dry grass, their navy-clad figures sharp and defined against the soft autumn landscape. They stopped in front of the swings.

“Ethan, we’ve been looking for you.” Stanton stepped forward. “We’re going to have to ask you to come with us, Mr. Gray. Just down to the station for a few questions.”

Ethan looked from one cop to the next. “Can I ask what this is about?”

The officers’ expressions were blank. “I’m afraid Alexis Henning’s body has been found,” Stanton said. “That’s all we can tell you right now.”

Cara heard Ethan’s breath catch in his throat. His hands tightened convulsively.

So Alexis was dead. That was it. She was dead.

Cara felt a hysterical urge to laugh. She bit the inside of her cheek, hard. Alexis was
dead
. The force of what that meant suddenly hit her full on, and her hands grew cold and slack on the chains. She could feel herself toppling forward slowly toward the ground.

Someone grabbed her shoulder. She looked up into Fitzgerald’s impassive face. “All right, Miss Lange?”

Cara nodded. She knew her face was paper white. Ethan was standing between the two cops now. He looked somehow smaller, shrunken, next to them. As if he were already fading away from her. “Ethan,” she whispered.

He didn’t respond. One of the cops grasped his arm above the elbow and turned him toward the cruiser.

Frozen to the swing, Cara watched, the cold rubber strap pressing into her, as Ethan climbed into the back of the car and then was gone.

Chapter 26

C
ARA RAN STUMBLING THROUGH THE SILENT STREETS.
Ethan’s gone, Alexis is dead,
her mind droned over and over. Her chest heaved. Tears and snot dripped from her nose.

She burst through the front door of the house. “Zoe!” she shouted into the gloom. Her breath sobbed in and out of her lungs. She clenched her fists. “Zoe!” she screamed again. Her voice broke.

Zoe appeared at the top of the stairs. She’d changed out of the red lace nightgown and discarded Samson, God knows where. Now she was wearing jeans and a black turtleneck. She glided down the steps toward Cara. As she drew closer, Cara could see that she’d wiped the makeup from her face. It was perfectly bare and shone with cleanliness. Her hair looked freshly washed, hanging in a silken curtain on either side of her face. In spite of herself, Cara caught her breath. Zoe was as beautiful as the first day she’d arrived, sitting at the edge of Cara’s bed. The fetid smell was gone, Cara realized too. As if it had never existed. Only a faint scent of lavender soap wafted toward Cara.

“Yes?” Zoe smiled pleasantly, as if Cara were an unexpected visitor.

For a moment, Cara was thrown off-balance. She stood uncertainly as Zoe watched her, still smiling gently. “The police came and took Ethan away,” she finally said. The words sounded hollow.

“Oh?” Zoe nodded and raised her eyebrows, as if Cara had just told her she’d always hated cantaloupe. “That’s too bad.”

Cara blinked. “What?” Then she recovered. “Yes, it is too bad.” She stepped closer to her friend, the rage building in her chest again. “Alexis is dead, Zoe! She’s dead, and Ethan is being investigated.” She leaned in. “I know you did something to her. I know it!” Her voice rose to a hysterical scream.

“Yes.” Zoe smiled and nodded, still with that pleasant, polite smile on her lips.

Cara stopped. “Did you say ‘yes’?”

“Yes.” Zoe nodded. “I killed the bitch. And I stuffed her body in the rafters of that old barn you love so much.” She smiled pleasantly and sat down on a straight chair in the foyer, crossing her legs daintily. She stroked the upholstered cloth arm of the chair with her fingertips. “Took awhile, too. The killing, I mean. I’d forgotten how long it takes to strangle someone,” she said almost dreamily.

Cara’s breath caught in her throat. Zoe had killed Alexis. And it wasn’t the first time she’d strangled someone. Zoe’s own words echoed hauntingly in Cara’s head.
I did something bad, Cara. But it’s not anything worse than what he did to me.

Zoe stared off into the distance for a minute, then seemed to snap back to reality. “Anyhow, once she was dead, it was pretty easy to drag her out to the woods. Getting her up into the rafters, now
that
was a chore.” She laughed, a bright, happy laugh. “Dead weight, Cara. Have you ever felt true dead weight?”

Numbly, Cara shook her head. Her eyes were locked on Zoe’s sweet, angelic face.

“Well, let me tell you, I could have used a hand.” Zoe’s voice changed. “Where were you, Cara?”

Cara stared at her, not sure she’d heard her right. “What do you mean? I was with Ethan that night.” Her lips were numb.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Zoe pinched the chair arm again, harder this time. “Out there, having fun with your new boyfriend. While I was out in the cold, shoving your worst enemy into the rafters. She got stuck halfway up, did you know that, Cara? She got stuck and almost fell all the way down to the floor.”

“Stop,” Cara whispered. Her stomach churned. An image of Alexis’s bright blond hair hanging down from the rafters flashed into her mind. A single white arm, dangling, the fingertips pointing at the floor. That day in the barn. The day after the party. The flash of white in the corner. Alexis had been there, hanging right above Cara’s very head, this entire time.

“Why, Cara? Why should I stop?” Zoe’s voice grew a little louder. “Why? I did it all for you. Everything’s been for you. All this time. And have you appreciated what I’ve done? First, that fat bitch Sydney—”

Cara backed away, her hands pressed to her mouth. “Sydney? You mean she didn’t . . . drown?” Her voice rose to a gaspy shriek. She stumbled over a pair of shoes on the floor, and almost fell.

“Then Alexis. I choked them—I thought that’d be fitting. A little payback for the girls who called you Choker. Besides, how could you be with Ethan with Alexis in the way? All for you, sweetheart, all for you.” Zoe suddenly ripped the arm of the chair out from the base savagely.

Cara jumped. Zoe stood up and walked toward her slowly. Her violet eyes blazed in her paper-white face. “And have you appreciated it? Have you said ‘Thank you, Zoe’ just once? No.” She stopped an inch from Cara’s face.
“‘When are you leaving, Zoe?’”
She mimicked Cara’s voice. “That’s all I get. Running around with Ethan, leaving me alone.
You owe me
, Cara.
You owe me
.” She was almost screaming.

Cara took another step back. She felt something solid behind her. The door. She pressed herself against it. “Sydney, too? You killed both of them? Zoe, you have to tell someone,” she whispered. “The police. You have to tell the police.”

Zoe snorted. “Sure, Cara. I’ll just waltz in there: ‘Hi, folks. Let that nice boy go. I’m your murderer—right here.’” She pointed to her chest, then flipped her hand at Cara dismissively. “You always did live in a dream world, Cara. Maybe it’s time to wake up.”

In her mind, Cara saw Ethan sitting at a metal table in a harshly lit little room. Two cops were standing over him, shouting. His face was streaked with tears. She shook her head. “No, Zoe.”

Zoe turned around, and Cara shrank back at the venom in her face. “What did you say?” Zoe asked. Her voice was dangerously quiet.

Cara trembled, but she forced herself to go on. “If you won’t go to the police, I will. I’ll tell them everything.” Her voice barely rose above a whisper. She pressed her palms to the door behind her. It felt cool to the touch.

Zoe studied Cara’s face, smiling a little. Then she shook her head. “You left me back with my stepfather, Cara. You were the only one who knew how bad it was,
and you left me behind to rot
. So you won’t go to the police. You can’t. You owe me, Cara.”

“I didn’t ask for this!” Cara suddenly screamed. She felt something loosen and burst inside of her. “I didn’t ask you for any of this! I don’t want it. I don’t want it.” She broke off suddenly, and feeling behind her with one hand, shakily lowered herself onto the straight chair. She bent over and hugged her chest to her knees, pressing her face into her jeans.

“We’re in this together, Cara. And you know it.” Zoe wrenched open the door, yanking it so hard, it smashed the plaster of the wall behind it. She flew down the steps, her black hair fanning out behind her like a pair of wings, and fled into the dimming afternoon light. Cara hugged her chilly upper arms, the only comfort left to her, and watched her go.

Chapter 27

T
HE NIGHT FELL SLOWLY. SHADOWS GATHERED IN
the corner of the kitchen, where Cara sat at the table, the picture of her and Zoe on the bike before her. The light grew dimmer, and the gray squares of the windows gradually grew black.

Zoe killed Alexis. She killed Alexis and stuffed her body in the rafters of the barn. Cara had a sudden urge to get up and go down to the barn, even though she knew the body was gone. Just to see the space with her own eyes. But a small, sane part of her mind told her to stay. Zoe was out there somewhere. And she was angry.

Vaguely, Cara thought she should get up and turn the lights on, but something held her in her seat. Some thought that if Zoe came back, she’d be harder to find in the dark.

The last light was gone from the sky now. The refrigerator and stove were just squatting hulks in the dark kitchen. The clock on the wall ticked inexorably. That was the only sound. Cara sat still. She didn’t move a finger. She barely breathed. If she held perfectly still, if she didn’t budge one inch, then Zoe couldn’t find her.