Poisonous: A Novel (41 page)

No wonder her head hurt.

“Max.”

She looked up as Grace approached. “I called you earlier,” Max said.

“I’ve been busy—didn’t get much sleep last night. Follow me.”

Grace led her down through the heart of the police station. Instead of upstairs, she walked down a long row of smaller offices and interview rooms. She opened one door and stepped into a narrow room.

Through the one-way glass Max saw Tommy playing cards with a tall, lanky man. “Why’s Tommy here?”

“He told me he killed his sister.”

Max didn’t know what to say.

“He sleepwalks. He overheard his mother telling his sister that he was sleepwalking the night Ivy was killed.”

“I talked to her about it yesterday,” Max said.

“You knew?”

“A neighbor told me she heard Tommy’s bike that night. Elderly woman who keeps a log of every time someone makes her dogs bark. Which is often.”

“So Tommy was riding a bike while sleepwalking?”

“David researched it—it’s possible. There are some proven oddities with people walking in their sleep. One woman went out and had sex with men other than her husband and had no recollection of it.”

Grace stared at her blankly. “Do you actually believe that?”

“It was written up in a respected medical journal. It seems far-fetched, but I don’t know. That’s out of my area of expertise.”

“Mine, too. I had to call Tommy’s mother. I’m not going to hold him, but now I need to investigate his claim.”

“Austin is going to come in to talk to you.”

“About?”

“Something he didn’t tell anyone about the night Ivy died.”

Grace pulled at her short hair. “His parents are throwing a shit-fit over your show. And that article this morning has caused us nothing but problems.”

“That wasn’t an article.”

“I didn’t know your partner Kane was from Marin. That his family lives here.”

“Lorenzo is an ass.” Max had already made the calls. Lorenzo was done. “Any new developments on Travis’s death?”

“He was shot three times, twice in his chest, then once in his head, likely after he was already dead. We found the gun at the scene—in the water. It’s at the lab now. They’ve already run ballistics and it’s not a match to anything in the system. We’re sending the report to all local police, FBI, other states. I don’t expect anything from it. We’re running the serial number.”

“Ivy thought she was meeting someone the night she died. Travis thought he was meeting his friend Brian to go running.”

“We went through Brian’s phone and there were no messages, but he’s letting us dig deeper, see if something was erased. We have a warrant for both Brian’s and Travis’s phone records.”

“And the phone in Travis’s locker?”

“Not there. However, we have a witness, a teacher, who said she saw Travis texting on a small flip phone, which he then put back in his locker. His personal phone was a smartphone.”

“Are there cameras at the school?”

Grace raised an eyebrow. “Look, Max, I know how to do my job. Yes, there are cameras at the entrances. There are no cameras in the hallways. His parents let us take his computer and gave us full access. We’re going as fast as we can, but there’s a process. What we do have is a camera near where his truck was found. There’s footage of him getting out of his truck after sitting there for five minutes. Then he starts to jog down the path toward the mobile home park where Brian lives. That was at five fifty-four Thursday morning. Travis didn’t return. The coroner is performing the autopsy shortly, but I had a cop go through all the tape, and I think he was killed shortly after he left his truck. No one was seen coming out of the marsh for more than an hour, until three joggers started down the path at seven oh-two. There are no other cameras that show that part of the marsh.”

Grace paused. “There’s no evidence that the two murders were connected. One a push off a cliff, the other a gun.”

“But you know they are.”

“I’m treating them as connected, but of course I have to look at all possibilities.” Grace’s phone vibrated and she looked down. “Well, your young friend Austin is here. So many people seem to be dropping by today.”

Max was relieved. She followed Grace out to the lobby.

Austin got to his feet as soon as Grace and Max approached. He was in the same clothes he’d worn last night, Max noted. She wondered where he had slept.

“I want to talk to you in private,” he said to Grace, followed by a glance at Max. “I mean, Max can come, too, but I don’t want my parents here. You can’t make them come, can you?”

“What’s this about?”

“Ivy. Something I didn’t tell you about that night.”

Grace looked pained. Another gray area. “Austin, I should call your parents.”

“No.” He swallowed nervously and then blurted out the whole story. “I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I mean, I didn’t think my mom would believe me, but I swear to you, this is the truth.” Austin told her about changing Ivy’s Instagram profile and embarrassing her, how she cut her arms with a kitchen knife right in front of him. “Max says that those cuts change everything. I swear, I didn’t think it would matter.”

Grace stared. They’d drawn a bit of a crowd as well, but Austin seemed oblivious.

“What time did this happen?” she asked.

“Everything else I said is true. Ivy came home at eight, mad. She left after ten and didn’t come back.”

“Austin, do you remember that you told me you went online around eleven that night?”

He nodded. “I know—this means I have no alibi. But I didn’t kill Ivy. I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t me. Max said you might look at the case differently if you knew Ivy cut herself.”

Grace glanced at Max. “You’re right.”

Jenny Wallace ran in to the station. “Tommy, is he okay? An officer called me and said he was here. What happened? Is he hurt?”

“Calm down, Mrs. Wallace. Tommy is fine. But we need to talk.”

*   *   *

David drove to San Rafael and located the Crosses’ home. As he was about to knock on the front door, Emma called him. He sent her a quick text message that he was going into a meeting and would phone her back in an hour.

Fortunately, Brittney hadn’t been able to cut off his cellular communication with his daughter. He was looking forward to the birthday dinner he had planned at his dad’s house tomorrow. He just hoped Brittney didn’t change her mind.

When Stephen Cross opened the door, David introduced himself. He saw one of his daughters sitting in the living room beyond. “Maddie told me she called your hotline, and why. I decided to let her talk to you.”

Cross closed the door behind David. Max should be here, she knew how to talk to people and get them to tell her things they didn’t want to. But David was on his own.

Cross brought out coffee for the two of them, black, and they sat down. “I didn’t see the show about Ivy Lake until after Maddie talked to me last night, then I watched it on the Internet. I didn’t realize her murder was still unsolved. Maddie told me she called the hotline but got cold feet. She then showed me this.”

He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to David. “She doesn’t have the envelope anymore, but said it had been postmarked from Corte Madera the second week of July last year.”

David read the typed letter. It was short but creepy.

I thought you might like to see this clipping from the local paper. Karma.

Attached was a printout of the news story about Ivy’s death. David had read it before. It revealed that Ivy had been killed early in the morning of July 4 and the cause of death was a fall from the cliffs at the preserve, autopsy pending.

“Maddie didn’t tell me about the letter until last night,” Cross said.

“I didn’t think—it kind of creeped me out, but I just thought it was sent by a friend who knew how much Ivy hurt me.”

“What exactly happened with Ivy before you moved?”

“That girl just wouldn’t leave Maddie alone,” Cross said. “I even spoke to her mother, but Mrs. Wallace didn’t consider it important. She said she’d talk to Ivy, but I could tell she wasn’t going to do anything.”

Maddie said, “Ivy told everyone that I was cutting, but that wasn’t the main reason I needed to get out of there. She … she told people about my therapy. I was going through a bad time and everything was worse because of that. And my therapist was prescribing me antidepressants that didn’t work, and my moods were all wacky.”

“We changed psychiatrists when we moved, and found that Maddie was being overmedicated,” Cross said.

“One day in class I started crying, and then Ivy posted on her blog that I had gone off my meds.”

“That was it,” Cross said, his jaw set. He wasn’t a large man, a bit soft around the edges, but it was clear his daughters meant everything to him. That, David understood. “My girls have been through enough in their young lives. They lost their mother in a car accident, and Maddie still has nightmares about that night. I took the job here in San Rafael and we moved. It was the best decision I ever made.”

Maddie nodded. “I wish I could have been stronger then.”

Cross squeezed her forearm. “You are strong.”

“Do you still talk to Amanda Wallace?” David asked, although he knew the answer.

“Poor Mandy,” Maddie said. “She and Ivy didn’t get along, and I don’t blame her. Between the divorce, and then they moved so close. Ivy was a year older than us. Ivy was just flat-out nasty to Amanda’s brother.”

“So you’re still friends.”

Mandy glanced at her father. “No, not really.”

“What happened?”

“We go to different schools. I mean, we’re not that far away, but we don’t have the same friends.”

Cross interjected. “Maddie had a hard time after the move, and Amanda had as well. They’d been friends for a long time, but Amanda started calling Maddie every day. At first, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but she didn’t stop.”

“I didn’t want to hurt her feelings,” Maddie said. “We’d been best friends since forever, our entire lives. But I couldn’t go visit her all the time, and I couldn’t talk every night. It got to be too much.”

Cross concurred. “I called Jenny Wallace and told her that Amanda had sent Maddie two thousand text messages one month.”

“Two
thousand
?”

“Mostly short. Like, what are you doing, did you see this movie, read that book. Amanda told Maddie everything that was happening in her life. We ended up changing her phone number.”

“I didn’t want to,” Maddie said. “Amanda was so lonely. I was really her only friend. When we were younger, it was cool. We liked the same things, the same books, the same clothes. We used to say we were twins.”

“Amanda was a nice kid,” Cross said, “but her mother was a basketcase during her divorce, and Amanda started spending more and more time at our house. At first, that was fine, but then I had to put an end to it when Amanda started staying over every night. Moving her clothes into Maddie’s drawers. I assumed she was trying to move in because she was so miserable at home.”

“And how was Amanda when Ivy posted about your cutting and your therapy?”

“Horrified,” Maddie said. “But…” She glanced at her dad.

He said, “This is your story, Maddie. You choose who you share it with.”

“Amanda knew about the cutting. My psychiatrist thinks Amanda didn’t want to tell anyone because it was
our
secret, even though she knew it was bad for me. I couldn’t stop—like people who can’t stop drinking alcohol. And Amanda would be there for me to talk to, but I think she was one of the reasons I kept cutting myself. She was … needy. Oh, God, that sounds so bad.”

“It’s accurate,” Cross said. “Maddie started getting sick, trying to keep Amanda happy by responding to all her messages, doing her schoolwork, juggling chores and her therapy, and making friends. It was too much.”

David suspected he knew the answer but asked anyway. “When was that?”

“I had a talk with Jenny Wallace in her office,” said Cross, “shortly before the Fourth of July holiday. Two or three days before.”

“This past summer?”

“No, a year ago. About eight months after we moved.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told her about all the texts, the phone calls, the e-mails. And that Amanda had shown up at our house that weekend with an overnight bag. Jenny was shocked—she thought the sleepover was planned. She’d brought Amanda to the house on a Friday right after school got out, and picked her up Monday. I didn’t say anything when she picked her up, but that weekend was hell for Maddie.”

He looked at his daughter.

She said, “I realized that Amanda wanted to be just like me. I mean, we always liked the same things, but when I came here, I started doing other things, you know? Like I always liked soccer, but Amanda didn’t so I never played. Here I made my high school team. And then she said she was going to play soccer, too—and I know she hated it. And then we played music, and she’d say she didn’t like something, and then when I said I did, she said she did, too. It was … weird. And sort of creepy.”

“My other daughter Kristen is the one who told me the truth,” Cross said, “and then I had that talk with Jenny. The night after, Jenny called back and said she’d spoken with Amanda, that she was upset because she didn’t realize she’d done anything wrong, but she understands. And that was the end of it.”

“She never called me again,” Maddie said.

Chapter Thirty-three

Max sat with Austin on a bench while Grace escorted Jenny down the hall.

“I don’t feel any better,” Austin said.

“You will. Lying only helps in the short term, to keep you out of immediate trouble.”

“I wasn’t trying to protect me.”

“You were protecting Tommy. I understand, but eventually, the truth comes out. It always does.”

“If I never wrote that damn letter for Tommy, none of this would have happened.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Someone killed your sister.”

“It could have been an accident. If I had told the truth from the beginning, they wouldn’t have thought she was murdered by anyone.”