Over Your Dead Body (28 page)

Mills held the phone in front of him, then sighed and put it away. “Fine,” he said. “You’ve got twenty minutes.”

“You can give me way more than that,” I said.

“Every house on this street saw us park and come inside,” he said. “If there’s more than twenty minutes between us entering and us calling the police, it’s going to look suspicious as hell.”

“Easy,” said Nobody. “This isn’t
The Wire
.”

Mills sneered at her, and I looked back at the bodies. Twenty minutes.

Come on, bodies. Talk to me.

I was never more comfortable than when I was around dead bodies. They were calm, they were predictable, they were everything that put my mind at ease. Trying to decipher the vagaries and intricacies of human interaction was exhausting, like running a marathon with your mind. But puzzling over a dead body was relaxing, like a crossword or Sudoku. What were these bodies telling me?

They were face down in their plates—not just head down, but literally face down, as if they were looking at their plates when their heads lowered. Sara’s plate was covered with the cascade of her hair, black streaked with gray; I lifted some strands of it and saw that her head and plate seemed the same as her brother’s. There didn’t seem to be any force of impact on the food, which you might have seen if their heads slammed down. So they lowered their heads slowly, and straight forward.… I repeated the motion with my own head, seeing how it felt. “They fell asleep,” I said.

“Why?” asked Mills.

“I’m working on that.”

Nobody lifted Officer Glassman’s arm. “Why are their arms hanging straight down?”

“Because they’re … ah—” I almost said
because they’re asleep
, but that only described the current position, not how they got in that position. What had their hands been doing when they fell asleep? No one eats with their hands straight down at their sides; they’d be up on the table, or maybe resting in their lap. I looked at the silverware—it was scattered across the table, like it had been dropped haphazardly. Two knives, two spoons, and a fork. “Where’s the other fork?” I lifted the other side of Sara’s hair, but it wasn’t under there.

“Here,” said Nobody, stopping to pick it up from the floor under Sara’s chair. She handed it to me with her cuffed hands and scrunched her nose into a sniffing scowl. “It smells.”

I held it close to my nose; it smelled strongly of chemicals, like maybe a cleaning solution. “It’s not bleach, but it’s something like that.”

“Poison in the food?” asked Mills.

“The smell’s too strong,” I said. “They’d have known it was there.”

“Unless the food was smellier than the chemicals,” she said. She leaned in over the table, looking closer at the casserole. “Fish? And curry powder.” She sniffed again. “Pakistani.”

“How can you possibly know that?” asked Mills.

“I’ve been Pakistani a couple hundred times,” said Nobody. “Whoever used the curry didn’t know how, though. It smells awful.”

“That happens when you lace your curry with detergent,” I said. I grabbed Officer Glassman’s head and raised it, revealing his face covered with flecks of rice and herbs and his mouth full of a thick, white froth.

“Drain cleaner,” said Mills. “I’ve seen that effect before. There’s no way they would have just dozed off like this, though—swallowing drain cleaner is horrifically painful. It eats you apart from the inside.”

“Then there’s probably a sedative in there as well,” I said. “One drug to knock them out, another to kill them, and strong, smelly food to cover it all up.”

“Why would a Withered kill with poison?” asked Nobody. “Doesn’t he have claws or … maybe teeth? Jessica and Derek were cut to ribbons.”

“But Corey was hit with a truck,” said Mills. “It’s different every time.”

“More to the point,” I said, “why would he use poison when
I
never would?”

“Not everything is about you,” said Nobody.

“But almost everything here has been,” I said. “Jessica’s death stood out because it was the one idea that didn’t come from me. Now neither does this. I think we have to consider the possibility that we’re looking at two unrelated cases.”

“A Withered that’s reading your mind,” said Mills, “and a pedophile hunting little girls. Which makes this a revenge killing.”

“Murder-suicide?” asked Nobody. She looked at the scene, frowning. “Sara gets fed up with his crap and decides to take them both out, out of guilt for not stopping him earlier?”

“You have a one-track mind,” I said. “There’s no way this is suicide.”

“Why not?”

“You saw this kitchen when we ate here on Sunday—it was covered with dirty dishes she’d used in cooking. The same when we helped bring back pans and plates from the town meeting. Sara leaves the dishes until after she eats, habitually. So if she’d cooked this meal the kitchen would still be messy. Somebody else cooked it.”

“Or the killer cleaned the kitchen,” said Mills. I glared at him, and he held up his hands. “I’m just saying. Weirder things have happened.”

“Sara loves cooking,” said Nobody. “Why would anyone have to cook for her?”

“Because there’s a meal-share program for the out-of-town police,” said Mills, snapping his fingers. “I saw the sign-up sheet on the wall at the station. Hang on.” He dialed his phone and held it to his ear, waiting while it rang. “Hi! This is Agent Mills again, I believe we spoke earlier today? That’s right. Absolutely charming. Listen, I have one more question about Officer Glassman, if you don’t mind. Who was on the list to feed him last night? Yeah, I can wait.” He looked at us. “She’s checking the chart. Set that down really carefully so they can’t tell we moved it.” I set Officer Glassman’s face back into his plate, trying to match the impression in the food exactly. “Whoa,” said Mills suddenly. “Are you kidding me? What idiot set that up?” Nobody and I looked at each other, then back at him. “Okay, well, my apologies first of all, and second, you’re going to want to send some black-and-whites to pick her up immediately, and then send some more on over to the Glassman residence. That’s right. As soon as you can. And then pack up your desk, because you’re fired—I know I don’t have the authority, and I’m sorry, but the writing’s on the wall after that food chart you put together. Thanks, bye-bye.”

He looked at us, shaking his head. “This casserole came from Brielle Butler, Jessica’s sister.” He shoved his phone into his pocket and walked back out toward the porch. “Effing eff.”

21

Brielle was at home when the police arrived, planning Jessica’s funeral with her parents and little brother. We weren’t there for the arrest, obviously, but we were back in the station by the time they brought her in. They were surprisingly gentle with her. I’d always heard that cops got really rough with people who kill other cops, but I guess they hated traitorous cop pedophiles more, just like Marci had said. They practically treated her like royalty.

Not that this made Brielle any less arrested.

“She looks sad,” said Nobody. I glanced at her warily, studying her face; those kind of dreamy, semilucid statements often marked a change in personality. Had the sight of Brielle brought this one on? Did the nature of the trigger affect which new girl would take over? I looked back at the closed door of the interrogation room, wondering who would be sitting beside me in a moment. Marci again? One of the others? Or someone completely new?

Agent Mills sat down beside us. “The chief’s assistant swears she changed the food rotation at the last minute, precisely because she didn’t want the Butler family making food for the Glassmans—not that she thought they were capable of poisoning anyone, obviously, but because she didn’t want to torture them with the association. Swears up and down she canceled the meal completely. Brielle and her parents insist the same thing.”

I glanced at Nobody again. She was staring intently at her hands. “So who made the food last night?”

“The community volunteer in charge of the food rotation was, you guessed it, Sara Glassman. So we don’t know who she picked in the last-minute switch. We can search her house for a written record as soon as the forensics team is done with it, but barring that, our only chance of tracing the food is if someone can identify the casserole dish.” He leaned back in his chair, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “I miss the days of BTK.”

“You look too young to have worked BTK,” I said. “He was caught years ago.”

“True,” said Mills, “and thank you. But I was in college during that whole final thing, when he came out of retirement and sent new letters and all that stuff with the floppy disk and the DNA. That’s why I went into serial killers in the first place—because that investigation was brilliant. Start to finish. The people involved, the procedures they used, the combination of new technology and old school legwork; that’s what I wanted to do. And so I studied and I graduated and I joined the FBI—and it’s gross and full of dead bodies and sick minds, but it’s awesome, you know? I’ve read your file, I know that’s what got you hooked, too. Looking at a crime and using all those pieces to crawl into someone’s head. Like you did with the Glassmans.”

“And then they saddled you with me,” I said.

Mills smiled thinly. “And nothing ever made sense again.” He pointed at the closed interrogation room, where Brielle was waiting in hopeless terror. “She would have made sense: angry sister wreaks horrible vengeance. The narrative works. You know what they found when they picked her up? That cop with the mustache, right there by the desk, he told me the whole story. She kept saying ‘How did you read my journal? How did you read my journal?’ So they found the journal, and there was the whole plan: she hated Glassman and she wanted to kill him. She even laid out the poisoning thing, all right there in ink on paper. And yet the chief’s assistant canceled the meal, and the family spent the entire afternoon and evening at the church cleanup with dozens of witnesses. She has the perfect motive but the perfect alibi.” He sighed. “And not a speck of curry powder in the kitchen. We have a tiny town with five murders in under a week, and none of them make sense, and the best suspects end up as victims, and
nothing makes sense
. I’m literally starting to wonder if there’s a gas leak in town, because everyone’s crazy.”

“No, I’m not,” said Brooke’s body. She looked mostly asleep.

“Everybody move,” said a voice, and we looked up at the crowd of cops and detectives and secretaries, which were no longer milling or arguing, but moving in a single direction. Mills and I stood up.

“What’s going on?” asked Mills.

“Town meeting,” said the cop with the mustache. “Davis wants to talk to everyone again, tell ’em to stop taking matters into their own hands and let us work.”

I pointed at the interrogation room. “What about Brielle?”

“Released to her home,” said the cop. “Too much evidence in her favor.”

I watched him turn and walk out the door, then looked back at Brooke. “You awake?”

“Huh?” she looked up.

I took one of her cuffed hands, both to help her to her feet and to help her feel at ease for my next question. “Who are you?”

“The one and only,” she smiled. “Original flavor.”

“Welcome back,” I said, pulling her up. I was relieved to have Brooke again, but couldn’t help but feel a pang of loss that she wasn’t Marci. Would Marci ever come back? Or had I finally lost her for good? The thought made me feel awful, like I’d just killed a puppy. It was Brooke’s body, and it should be Brooke in charge of it. I was a horrible person for even thinking about anything else, let alone wishing for it. I kept my voice even and changed the subject. “Do you remember Agent Mills?”

Brooke looked at him, pursing her lips. “Iowa?”

“One license plate,” said Mills. “Come on, I’ll drive us to the meeting.”

“Take off her cuffs first,” I said. “No more demon, no more cuffs.”

Mills stared at us a moment, then sighed and pulled out his little silver key. “Just three days, you said. Just give us three days.” He pulled the cuffs away and slipped them in his pocket. “Now I’m screwing with crime scenes and untying a demon.”

“I’m not a demon,” said Brooke, rubbing her wrists. She stopped suddenly, cocking her head to the side. “Was I Nobody again?”

“You’re always yourself,” I said calmly, leading her to the door. “Deep inside, you’re always you.”

22

With the church burned down the meeting was held in the local school, which had a large gym for basketball games but no efficient way to cool it in the summer. Brooke and Mills and I pitched in pulling out bleachers and setting up chairs as the townspeople slowly heard the news and started trickling in. None of them were happy, and many of them were terrified. A lot of the people I’d seen with families last time were now here alone, having left their kids and spouses at home. No one wanted to be outside. Ingrid had to drag Beth practically kicking and screaming. Almost a full hour after we arrived the meeting began, and Officer Davis stood in the center of the basketball court to speak.

“Thank you all for coming to another meeting,” he said. “I assume most of you have heard the news about the latest deaths, but I wanted to make sure you heard it from me, as an official, credible source. No gossip and no backbiting. At approximately 10:30 this morning the Glassman family, Sara and her brother Luke, were found dead in Sara’s home. They appear to have died sometime last night. Some form of poison appears to be involved, but I want to stress that it is too early for me to speculate on exactly what happened, or how, or why. I urge you to show the same restraint.”

“You’re supposed to be keeping us safe!” shouted a man in the front row. The crowd was restless, some muttering, some shaking their heads. Their terror was quickly turning to anger, now that Officer Davis was making himself a focal point.

“That’s what I want to talk about next,” said Davis, shouting over the low rumble of voices. “Just stay calm, stay calm. Let me talk.” The room quieted. “That’s exactly what I want to talk about next.”

“I’m sweltering,” Brooke whispered, fanning herself.