Shadow Hills (34 page)

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“You have to work hard to not learn things when you have a photographic memory,” Brody said by way of explanation. He had his dumb stoner-act down pat—to the point that I sometimes forgot he came from a long line of mutant geniuses.

“Do you think the Banished had something to do with Mr. Carr?” he asked after a pause.

“I don’t know what to think. I lost the bracelet about a week and a half after school started, and then I found it the night of the dance, lying in the grass right next to Mr. Carr’s hand. I don’t know how or where he got it.”

“Maybe that was what he found that day.” Brody leaned forward. “He did ask me once if I knew you, if you had ever been over to our house.”

A shiver traveled up my spine.

“Which I guess means I’m wrong about Mrs. Carr and the whole affair thing.” Brody looked faintly disappointed. He seemed to like Mrs. Carr about as well as she liked him. “Do you know how your bracelet could have gotten there? Did you break in before?”

“Monday was the first time I’d ever been in your house. But I did see something else that day.” I chewed on my thumbnail. “Actually, I mostly overheard it—and I think it might partially explain the bracelet thing.”

“Yeah?” His eyebrows quirked up inquiringly.

“You were right. About Mrs. Carr. She was there, kissing someone.”

Brody was tapping his foot so hard the whole table rattled.

“You mean, after Mr….” He trailed off.

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You’re not the slut cheating on your dead husband.” Brody took a deep breath. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking like that to you. I just … Mr. Carr was always nice to me, you know?” I could tell Brody was struggling to keep his voice steady. “Who was the guy with her?”

“I didn’t see his face. All I could tell in the dim light was that he was slender and had light brown hair.” I paused. “But Mrs. Carr did accuse him of dropping something on the floor that Mr. Carr found.”

“Do you know why some guy would be carrying your bracelet around?”

“I really have no idea.” My brain felt like a big mess of deadend information. “Do you think Mrs. Carr might have killed …”

“No. I would, except I saw her that night. She was at the punch table the whole time. She didn’t even leave to go to the bathroom.” Brody snorted. “Keeping us children safe from the horrors of alcohol while outside her hus—”

The sound of the chapel bell cut through the stillness of the cafeteria. We were about to be late for the assembly.

“We’ll talk about this after, okay?” Brody threw his backpack over his shoulder, and I grabbed my purse.

As soon as everyone was seated, Headmaster Grimsby told us all of our morning classes had been canceled for police interviews.

“To fill you in on how we will proceed, I have Police Chief Bradbury here.” Grimsby motioned to the uniformed officer at the back of the stage.

The police chief stepped up to the podium. “We will be bringing you in twenty at a time to the in-school suspension room for semiprivate interviews.” The cop cleared his throat, making the mic pop loudly. Several jittery students—including myself—jumped at the sound. “The Shadow Hills police force would like to thank you in advance for your patience and cooperation.”

As much as the school was pushing their line that Mr. Carr’s death was a natural one, I had a feeling the cops were leaning more toward my point of view. Why else would they waste time interviewing students? I wondered if Mrs. Carr had already been questioned. Brody said she hadn’t left the dance, but she could have arranged for someone else to kill her husband. Maybe someone she was sleeping with.

“To make this as orderly as possible, we are going to call students by advisor. The first group will be Mr. Sherwood’s advisees, Ms. Cardinal’s advisees, Mr. Strobe’s advisees, and Ms. Brooks’s advisees.”

As we filed out of the building, I saw that Brody was with Ms. Brooks’s students.

Seeing me at the end of the line, Brody dropped back.

“Did Zach tell you about the cops?” he muttered out of the side of his mouth.

“What about the cops?” My chest started tightening up.

“They’re BVs who are extremely skilled at getting into people’s minds. They’re taught techniques to help them decode your thoughts without even touching you.”

“B-But they can’t maintain that kind of thing for any length of time, right?” I spurted, clinging to what Zach had told me.

“The Council is in charge of hiring the cops in Shadow Hills, and they make sure only the ones with the best mind-control abilities and concentration get put through the training. And if they don’t perform to the Council’s liking, they assign them to desk jobs and traffic patrol.”

“Really?” My voice came out squeaky.

“Yes.” Brody assured me. “And the higher the emotions of the people they’re talking to, the easier they are to read, so if there’s stuff you don’t want them to know …”

I thought of Zach and the trouble he could get into with the Council for telling me their secrets.

“How do you keep from being found out?” I had a feeling that with his pot habit, Brody was pretty skilled at hiding his thoughts.

“It’s easier to do if you’re a BV. More complicated neural pathways and all that.”

I nodded like I understood.

“But just for insurance, I keep an image that is connected to a sound right at the forefront of my mind.” Brody grinned mischievously. “I use the music video for Jane’s Addiction’s ‘Been Caught Stealing.’”

“How does that help?”

“The noise and pictures generated in your mind cause a sort of feedback that makes everything else hard to get at. It’s like a radio that’s half on a station, half not; you can hear that a DJ is talking, but you can’t make out the words.” Brody sped up his lecture as we reached the entrance to the building. “Also, you want to keep your emotions as calm and level as you can, so try to relax and take some deep breaths.”
Yeah, ’cause it’s really easy to relax when you’re lying to a cop
.

Getting the song running through my head was simple—I decided on “Skeleton Boy,” a Friendly Fires song I knew all the words to, so I wouldn’t get tripped up—but picturing the video was proving to be harder than I expected. My brain was obviously not wired in the same visual way Brody’s BV mind was.

I concentrated on taking long slow gulps of air as I walked over to the desk that Chief Bradbury was sitting behind. I gave him a shaky smile and sank into the chair across from him.

“You’re Persephone Archer, correct?” He wrote something down on a pad of paper in front of him.

“Yes.” I did my best to pull up images from the “Skeleton Boy” video.

“And you are the one who found Mr. Carr?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What were you doing outside while the dance was going on?”

“I was hot from dancing. I needed to get out in the cool air.” I pictured the band dressed in black with the bright white snow falling all around them.

“Did you see anyone else while you were outside? Before or after you found Mr. Carr?”

“No. It was foggy. I couldn’t see much at all.” I thought of the fake snow forming stick figure skeletons on the guys.

“What about sounds? Did you hear anything?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Did you know Mr. Carr well?”

“Not really. He was my swim teacher, but I didn’t have any contact with him outside of class.” Silent singing and lying did
not
go hand in hand. It felt like I was trying to pat my head and rub my belly at the same time. Except a hundred times harder.

“Did you notice him acting strange in class? Did you see him get into arguments with anyone?”

“I thought the doctors decided he had an aneurysm. Do the police not believe that?”

Bradbury looked flustered; he clearly hadn’t expected a student to question him. “It’s not that—I was just wondering if you had seen him display any signs of head pain. Maybe the night of the dance?”

I started the song over again in my mind as I tried to decide
whether or not to say anything about Mrs. Carr. Brody thought it was a waste of our time to look into her, but it wouldn’t hurt to have the cops check it out just in case he was wrong.

“Well, I did notice Mr. and Mrs. Carr arguing at the dance at one point. Could that have caused an aneurysm?”

“That’s not really my area of expertise. But I can certainly run it by someone from the medical staff.”

Chief Bradbury scribbled something in the notebook, then handed me a business card. “This has the number for my direct line. Please call me if you remember anything more.”

“Thanks.” I dropped the card into my purse. Once I was out of the ISS room, I felt a million times better. I’d made it through the interview, and I was almost positive I hadn’t been mind read. If he’d been able to pick up on my jumbled thoughts, he’d have kept me there a lot longer.

I was halfway to the SAC when I heard footsteps behind me in the courtyard. I turned around, expecting to see Brody. Instead, I came toe-to-toe with Trent.

“Hey, Goldilocks, where you going in such a hurry?” He brushed a piece of long hair out of his eyes, and something on his finger flashed in the sun. A large rectangular ring inlaid with a green striped stone.

Trent was wearing a ring just like the one in my vision. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it earlier. That was the ring he’d been wearing the first time he cornered me, gripping my hand so hard I couldn’t get away. Could Trent possibly be the one who had killed Mr. Carr?

It was hard to believe. Trent
was
incredibly creepy, but he didn’t seem off-his-rocker psychotic. And he didn’t strike me as the type to put himself in any kind of danger. I couldn’t see Trent attacking Mr. Carr unless he had some self-serving reason for it. Or unless Mr. Carr was the one who initiated the confrontation … I looked at Trent with narrowed eyes. Was he the guy I’d seen with Mrs. Carr? Trent was small, but taller than me and slender, with dark blond hair that could easily be mistaken for light brown. I’d thought the guy was older than Trent, but how much of that was just a presumption that he was Mrs. Carr’s age? Mystery Man had been wearing a leather jacket that might make someone Trent’s size look bigger.

The whole idea seemed crazy, but I also wouldn’t put it past Trent to have an affair with Mr. Carr’s wife. On the other hand,
there was the detail of his ring not being cracked.
Maybe my vision wasn’t a revelation of a past event. Maybe it was a warning, a glimpse into the future
. What if that hadn’t been Mr. Carr in my vision? What if it was going to be Zach?

“Cat got your tongue?” Trent raised an eyebrow, and I snapped my gaping mouth shut.

“I have to meet someone.” I turned and started walking quickly back to the ISS room.

“The hospital is in the opposite direction!” Trent called after me.

I ignored him and kept going. I needed to find Brody to tell him about my new suspect. Luckily, I caught sight of him just as he was coming out of the building.

“Hey! How was your inter—”

I grabbed Brody tightly by the upper arm and pulled him behind one of the redbrick walls that hid the campus Dumpsters from view.

“Jesus! What’s up with you?” He rubbed his biceps tenderly. “You’ve got quite a grip for a small person.”

“I think it’s Trent.” I disregarded the “small” comment, which would’ve annoyed me at any other point in time.

“You think what is Trent?” Brody shook his head in confusion.

“I think Trent is the person sleeping with Mrs. Carr—and I also think he might have been the one who attacked Zach. His build and coloring are very similar to the guy I saw in your house, and he knows that Zach is in the hospital. I haven’t said anything about it, have you?”

“No, but Trent could have found out some other way. They are related.”

“But they hate each other, and their dads don’t seem real fond of each other either.”

“Yeah, but Trent was at the dance. I saw him. How could he have done it?”

“It would have been easy for him to leave the dance for a few minutes without being noticed.”

“Do you have any other reason to suspect him?” Brody was still unconvinced. If I told him my graveyard vision story, he would just think I was crazier. I’d have to lie. Again.

“I recognized Trent’s ring. I think maybe the guy with Mrs. Carr had the same one.” I hadn’t seen the guy’s hands, so there was a chance he had been wearing it.

“You mean that flashy thing Trent always wears? The malachite ring?” Brody caught my look. “It’s a green striped stone.”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“Okay. I’ll follow Trent around, see if he does anything suspicious. But you have to promise not to get yourself hurt in the meantime. I can just imagine what Zach would do to me if I got his new girlfriend killed.”

I felt a fluttering in my heart at Brody’s statement. Girlfriend. I was Zach’s girlfriend. Of course, the “killed” part wasn’t so great, but we would just have to make sure that didn’t happen.

Letting Brody do all the Trent stalking should have freed me up to study in the library, but all I seemed to be capable of doing was staring blankly at my French book, lost in thoughts of the
Banished, Trent, and Brody.
My life keeps getting more and more confusing
.

Had Athena been involved in this stuff? It was pretty obvious that she’d been a daughter of Hekate and that she’d wanted to come to Devenish to find out more about Shadow Hills and Rebekah Sampson. But what did her bracelet have to do with anything? It didn’t look like the one pictured in the file—it certainly wasn’t copper. And I couldn’t imagine that Athena would have met a scary energy-sucking guy like Damon Gates and not put something about him in her journal.

She probably never knew that BVs existed
.

Still, it was strange that the guy Mrs. Carr was having an affair with had had Athena’s bracelet in his possession at some point. With Mr. Carr, it made sense: I’d asked him to look for it, and if my interpretation of his note in the file was correct, he’d been concerned that the bracelet meant the Banished had an interest in me.