Truly, Madly, Deadly (16 page)

It had been nearly a week since Maggie’s memorial, and things at school were slowly—so achingly slowly—getting back to normal. Sawyer’s suspension had been suspended itself, no one on the administrative board willing to mull over an incident with a dead girl and one who seemed barely alive.

Lunch hours were back to being loud and raucous even if the general murmuring in the halls was peppered with guesses about the autopsy, about what may have really transpired the night Maggie died. Sawyer felt like a zombie most days and slept like the dead most nights—a thick, dreamless sleep that settled over her in heavy waves, making her feel sluggish and tired the mornings after. She wasn’t taking the Trazadone regularly now. Regardless of how much she slept, she still found herself yawning, found herself resting her head on her arms, eyelids desperate for a few more minutes of sleep at any moment.

She still jumped each time the house settled, still felt her stomach do a roller coaster drop every time she spun the combination on her locker. She found herself backing away from crowds at school, bowing out of student events. It wasn’t difficult as word of what happened at Maggie’s memorial had gone viral and Sawyer had reached general social pariah status. She was even starting to avoid Chloe and Cooper, partly because she didn’t have the energy to try to be social or normal, partly because she thought—vaguely—that her distance was possibly the only thing that could protect her two friends.

Sawyer woke up on Thursday morning, still crushed under the weight of sleep, under the pressure of trying to chase every errant thought out of her mind. The newspaper was strewn casually across the kitchen table when she finally trudged downstairs, dressed in dark-washed jeans and a heavy gray hoodie, hair wound in a sloppy, top-of-the-head bun. Her face was freshly washed and free of makeup; the buttery pallor was obvious, as were the heavy purple half-moons underneath her eyes. The ensemble had become her signature look over the past few days. Tara was at the table already, cup of tea steaming, elbows resting in her hands. Sawyer stood in the doorway, worrying her bottom lip.

“Tara?”

Tara looked up slowly, her hair a mess of tangles and snags, her usually healthy-looking pink face a sallow yellow.

“I thought morning sickness was supposed to end in the first trimester.” She rested her forehead on the table. “And in the morning.”

Sawyer smiled, a small bit of guilty relief washing over her. “Well, it is morning—I’m sorry about the multiple trimester thing. How about I make you some dry toast?”

Tara chuckled mirthlessly. “Your father thinks we should name this baby dry toast.”

“I guess it is pretty much the Dodd family cure-all.” Sawyer paused, fingers kneading her palm. “Tara, about the nursery—”

Tara looked up at Sawyer and shook her head. “It’s okay, Sawyer.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You’re right, it isn’t, but I’m willing to look past it if you can assure you me that this is it.”

“It is,” Sawyer said, nodding emphatically.

“I know this has all been a bit rough for you.” She rubbed her palms over her basketball of a stomach. “And fast. But I really do want us all to be a family.”

“Me too,” Sawyer answered, surprised to find that she actually did. She reached for the paper and Tara stopped her, her fingers gentle on Sawyer’s forearm.

“The news isn’t good,” she said, blue eyes wide.

Sawyer reached for the newspaper anyway, her breath hitching in her throat when she saw the blaring headline, saw Maggie’s face smiling at her from the front page. “Teen Suicide Was Murder, Coroner Says.”

“I’m sorry, Sawyer. Your father said you two had been close.”

Sawyer heard Tara speaking to her, vaguely, but everything was muffled. Heat surged through her limbs, closing like hot fingers around her throat. Sawyer gripped the newspaper and willed her eyes to focus, to avoid the innocent smile on Maggie’s face, to read the newsprint underneath.

Seventeen-year-old Hawthorne High School student Maggie Gaines was found dead in her home late Tuesday night from an apparent suicide. The autopsy revealed post mortem ligature marks and fibers in the teen’s throat are consistent with death by asphyxiation.

Sawyer’s stomach went to liquid and scanned the paper, pulling sections apart. “Is this all there is? Don’t they say anything else?”

“What else would you want to know?”

“Well, do they have any suspects? Did anyone come forward or see anything?”

Was
there
a
note?

Tara stood up and pulled a box of Chex from the pantry. “There hasn’t been any more information. I’ve been up since four, and the news report basically says the same thing. Cereal?”

“No.” She licked paper-dry lips, snatched her book bag from the floor where she dropped it. “Thanks.” She glanced at the clock, startled. “I’m late. I’ve got to go.”

Sawyer tore down the front walk, her blood pulsing, coursing so hotly through her veins that she didn’t even feel the cold drizzle that began to fall. She started the car and zoomed out of Blackwood Hills Estates, the empty, gaping houses shapeless blurs through the Accord’s rain-splattered windows.

Students were milling about the school when Sawyer pulled up; she beelined for the junior hall and spotted Chloe waiting under an awning, checking her watch and tapping her foot impatiently.

“I’ve been waiting forever for you.”

“Sorry.” Sawyer shrugged. “I got a late start.” She swallowed. “Did you hear about Maggie?”

“
Everyone
heard about Maggie. Everyone’s freaking out. They think there is some crazed killer on the loose.”

Sawyer stepped away from her best friend. “Don’t you?”

Chloe shrugged under her big coat. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about that. What have you heard?”

“Just what I read in the paper. That she was strangled. There were fibers in her throat.”

“Red fibers,” Chloe informed.

“How did you know that?”

Chloe gestured over her shoulder at the pool of kids behind her. “Gossip.”

Sawyer checked her watch. “Why is everyone out here? The last bell should have rung two minutes ago.”

“It did.”

“Grief counselors again?”

“I haven’t seen them, but there are cop cars everywhere.”

Sawyer stiffened, ice water going through her veins. “Cop cars? Do they think—is there something that led them back here?”

“Like what? Clues or something?” Chloe shrugged again. “I don’t know. Last I saw that short, fat detective guy was going into Principal Chappie’s office.” Chloe leaned close, her voice dropping. “I heard that she was strangled—or suffocated or something—with the sash from her choir dress.”

Sawyer felt her face pale. She thought back to Maggie’s memorial, to her mother noting that there had been no red sash with her daughter’s black satin choir dress.

“Red fibers,” she whispered.

“Hey, let’s go in.”

Logan was inside the school, striding down the hallway. He pushed open the doors and smiled at Chloe and Sawyer. “Hi, Sawyer.”

“Hey, Logan. It’s nice to see you. What are you doing in here?” She tried to hide her unease, but her voice sounded false, insincere, even in her own ears.

“I took the early bus. I was working in the computer lab, so Principal Chappie let me stay inside.”

Chloe’s eyebrows shot up. “So you’ve been inside the whole time? Do you know anything? Did you hear the police talking?”

“About Maggie’s murder,” Sawyer said.

Logan’s jaw dropped open. “I thought Maggie committed suicide.”

Chloe shook her head. “No, it was all over the papers this morning and on the radio. What, do you live under a rock?”

Color bloomed in Logan’s cheeks. He held up his iPod. “I was plugged in all morning. Someone murdered Maggie?”

Sawyer narrowed her eyes at Logan, trying to read his expression. Was he feigning ignorance to hide his crime?

“Your brother didn’t tell you?” she asked.

“Stephen? No, he doesn’t tell me anything that happens at the station.” Logan turned to Chloe. “So, do they know who did it? Did they catch him?”

Sawyer shook her head.

“Why? Does anyone know why?”

“She was kind of an über bitch.”

“Chloe! She’s dead,” Sawyer snapped. She saw the hurt look in Chloe’s eyes and sighed. “She wasn’t very nice, but she didn’t deserve to die.”

A throng of kids pushed through the open door then, separating Logan and Sawyer by a few arms’ length. Just before the crush, Sawyer was sure she heard Logan mumble the words, “Like Kevin.”

She couldn’t shake the chill that rolled through her.

Homeroom passed with a textbook discussion of teen suicide, the teacher lecturing on how many lives are cut short by bad, spur-of-the-moment decisions. Her eyes flashed to Sawyer when she said this and went round and sympathetic; Sawyer’s eyes started to water.

She raised a hand. “Can I go to the nurse, please? I don’t feel so well.”

Mrs. Fluke nodded her head and scribbled out a pass; Sawyer picked up her bag and stepped out into the deserted hallway. Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket, and she slid it out: a text from Chloe.

U OK?

JUST NEED AIR, Sawyer thumbed back.

BRB?

Sawyer was about to text that she would be right back when the clanging of a locker distracted her. One bank up began the junior hall, where her locker was located. Principal Chappie, Detective Biggs, and an officer Sawyer recognized, with a sinking feeling, as Stephen Haas, were standing shoulder to shoulder, watching as the principal unlocked a student locker. Sawyer silently counted the rows—
one
bank
down, three lockers in.

Logan’s locker.

A cold sweat broke out all over her body; for the first time since the note appeared in her locker, Sawyer was able to suck in a deep, relieved breath. She liked Logan, but if there were something in his locker that incriminated him as her admirer, that pointed to him as the one who killed Maggie, Sawyer wanted him stopped. Her eyes shifted over Stephen, and she briefly wondered if he knew that this was his brother’s locker.

She choked on her deep breath when she saw Detective Biggs lean over, stepping backward with something wrapped around the edge of his pencil.

It was a long, crimson sash.

“Oh no, Logan,” she whispered. But she stopped cold when the men turned and Sawyer could see that it was
her
locker door that was pried open—and that the edge of the sash was still in there.

Sawyer’s eyes were wide. She sucked her breath in and flattened herself against the wall, praying the bank of lockers to her left would allow her some cover. She could hear the men talking, their voices harsh but muffled. When they quieted, she chanced a peek, her stomach rolling in on itself as she did. Detective Biggs was pawing through her things. He handed out items—her chemistry book, her math book—to Stephen, who held out latex glove–covered hands. Detective Biggs slowed when he came to a large envelope Sawyer had never seen. Her breath sped up when she noticed its telltale mint-green color. Biggs slid open the envelope and pored through it, handing each piece to Stephen as he did. The article about Kevin’s death. The peanut butter wrapper and what Sawyer surmised was the folded printout of the anaphylaxis web page. A large photograph of her and Kevin. The crumpled test paper from Mr. Hanson’s classroom. There were a few other things that Sawyer couldn’t make out, but the last item the detective pulled out made her blood run cold.

Detective Biggs sighed and handed Stephen the framed photograph of her and Maggie that had been on the Gaines’s mantle. The glass was cracked, and even from where Sawyer was standing, she could see that Maggie’s face had been scratched out.

Sawyer’s feet were moving before she knew she was running. Her book bag thumped against her hip; she didn’t breathe until she pushed through the wide double doors and felt the sting of the cold, damp air on her face.

“Oh my God,” she moaned, doubling over.

The mumbling voices of Principal Chappie and the officers were coming down the hall and when Sawyer straightened up, she saw the threesome opening the door to Mrs. Fluke’s classroom.

Her cell phone was chirping by the time she had unlocked her car door. It was Chloe—

WHERE RU? CHAP & POLICE LKNG 4U.

Sawyer sucked in a shaky breath, then started typing.

GETTING ANSWERS.

***

The police station parking lot was nearly deserted, and for that Sawyer was relieved. She still chose a parking spot that camouflaged her car as much as possible, just in case.

“May I help you?” The woman at the front desk was in uniform, her hair clipped short and her face freshly washed.

Sawyer pasted on her best eager smile. “Yes, actually. I am from the school paper. I’m supposed to interview Officer Haas.” She neglected to note which school paper, and the young officer didn’t ask.

“He is not in the office right now.”

Sawyer nodded. “Right, he told me that. He should have left a file for me. Some questions. Basic stuff”—she smiled brightly, willing an innocent blush into her cheeks—“about becoming a cop and all.”

The officer nodded kindly at Sawyer and pointed with her pencil. “Haas sits over there. Do you know where the file is?” She craned her neck. “Looks like there’s a big stack.”

“Oh, yeah, he told me exactly. He said it would be right there on his desk.”

“Knock yourself out.”

Sawyer beelined to Stephen’s desk, quickly sifting through the stack of manila file folders, silently thanking God that the little police department had money for silk plants, but not for a digital file system.

Gaines, Maggie,
was the third file down. Sawyer shoved it in her bag and was ready to leave when something else caught her eye—another folder, another file.

Anderson, Kevin.

She looked around, confident that no one was paying attention to her, and slipped that one in her bag as well.

“Finding everything you need?” The female officer was smiling at Sawyer, looking over her shoulder.