Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-Four
It took four hours to recount the odyssey I’d been on for the police, and I still wasn’t sure I understood everything that had happened.
After going through the two weeks I’d spent in Six Rivers, struggling to exhume every detail of every day, I laid out the clues I’d uncovered about Johnny’s connection to Autumn Fischer and the timeline before his death.
To call them clues felt like a betrayal. Like I was admitting that Johnny had something to hide. But that’s what they were—breadcrumbs I’d followed to the fraction of truth I’d managed to mine from the quiet existence my brother led in this town.
The investigative team had come from Eureka, setting up a search that should have happened months ago. No one had said it yet, but the odds that Autumn Fischer was alive were almost zero. Some would even say the odds didn’t exist.
I went through Johnny’s phone with the police, waiting as they logged each phone call, text, and Instagram direct message. I pried apart my brother’s life like an apple cut in two.
The door to the makeshift interview room opened and Amelia stepped inside. She looked like she hadn’t slept since the night Micah and I showed up here with the backpack.
“I think we have what we need.” She glanced at me, as if searching for any last hints as to what I may be hiding. “For now, at least.”
She tilted her head toward the hallway and I stood.
“I need to let you know,” she started, “you’re well within your rights to press charges against Sadie.”
She spoke the words dutifully, but her meaning was clear. She was hoping, for all our sakes, that I wouldn’t. That I’d chalk it up to the hysteria of a terrified, protective mother and move on. Honestly, that worked for me.
“And Ben?” I asked.
She glanced at the other closed door down the hall. “Still being questioned.”
I had to shoulder my way through the packed office, where officers were huddled at cobbled-together workstations over piles of papers. Irecognized some of them from Johnny’s house. They were the same pages I’d tried to make sense of for the last two weeks, lining up details so that things would click. But I was finally accepting that there was no riddling out the puzzle that was my brother. There never had been.
By the time I got out to the street, my lungs felt like they might explode. It was snowing, soft flakes floating to the ground in a sweep that made me actually feel how tired I was. Like I could sleep for years. For millennia. That if I laid my head down, I’d wake to another time entirely.
I reached up, gently touching the cut on my swollen cheek. Sadie’s blow had also managed to cut the inside of my mouth against my teeth, and it tasted like blood. I still had the urge to flinch, just thinking about the way she had suddenly snapped. I could still see her hand flying through the air. The sound when it struck me.
I took out my phone, finding my texts with Micah and formulating the only message I could muster.
Done.
Within seconds, he was typing a reply.
I’ll be there in a few minutes.
I liked the message and stuck the phone in my pocket, marveling at the fact that I believed him. We still hadn’t talked or made things right. But right now, wherever he was, Micah was grabbing his keys and his jacket, on his way to the car. He was coming to get me.
The door opened behind me and Sadie Cross stepped out, the red-faced woman from the street now gone. Only a few hours ago, that look in her eyes had been almost feral. Unhinged. Like she was ready to burn down this entire town for her son.
Johnny had done much worse for me.
She leaned against the window on the opposite side of the door, arms crossed over her chest. There were several seconds of silence before she finally spoke.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” she ground out. “Really sorry.”
I shook my head, meaning to dismiss the encounter entirely, but I was still reeling from it and I wondered if she could tell.
“It’s just”—she sniffed in the cold—“all this Autumn stuff. I wish it would end.”
That made two of us.
“That girl caused such a mess. Everywhere she went. And the way she broke Ben’s heart…” She wiped her nose with her gloved hand. “It was like she didn’t even care.”
I said nothing because there was nothing to say. I didn’t know what happened between Ben and Autumn, but I knew it couldn’t possibly justify anyone causing her harm. I didn’t think that was what Sadie was saying, but I also got the sense that she needed me to know that Ben had been a kind of victim. I couldn’t help but think that the same had been true about her. Johnny had never loved her back.
The door opened again, and Ben came out with Amelia at his side. The pale, dead look in Sadie’s eyes almost immediately vanished. She looked between them, expectantly.
Ben gave his mother a reassuring look that Amelia cemented with a smile.
“All done.” She was looking at Sadie, not Ben. “Autumn’s mother confirmed that Ben brought her home that night. According to the other kids at the party, he came back and kept drinking. Passed out until morning.”
My lips parted, ready to argue, but a loud gasp broke in Sadie’s chest beneath the hand she had pressed there. She looked as if the panic she’d swallowed down was finally detonating behind her ribs. She was genuinely frightened. No—it was more than that. She looked like she was in shock.
“Ben’s story lines up,” Amelia said.
Sadie was completely drained of color. She looked like she was going to be sick. “That’s good,” she said, her pleading eyes going to Amelia. It was meant as a question.
Amelia smiled. “Yes, very good. Like I said, you have nothing to worry about.”
Sadie was crying now, her nose turning bright red. Her teary gaze jumped back to Ben.
It occurred to me in that moment that maybe the reason Sadie had been so desperate when the police came for her son was because she hadn’t known where Ben was that night. It would certainly explain the unbridled look of surprise and relief on her face now. Maybe she’d been afraid that he was involved somehow, the way I was about Johnny.
Ben’s eyes were on his mother, and he looked almost puzzled, as if he, too, thought her reaction was strange. The boy-turned-almost-man looked frail and sick, his freckles darker on his skin than I remembered. Again, I had to ask myself what exactly Autumn had seen in him. But then I remembered what Sadie said about small towns and limited options. This kid would probably be running that diner in twenty years with his own kid on the high school soccer team. Autumn was the one who’d gotten out. Almost, anyway.
Ben glanced back at me before he walked Sadie to her car, and Amelia stood at my side, watching them.
“He was out of town the weekend Johnny died,” she said. “If you were wondering.”
I turned to look at her, my hands so tightly clenched in the pockets of my jacket that my knuckles ached.
“He was gone for four days,” she added.
The soccer tournament in Redding, I realized. Amelia had mentioned it when she explained why she hadn’t been in town when Johnny tried to call her. If the team had been gone for a game, Ben would have been with them. My mind tried to find a way around it, unable to let go of the last thread I had hold of. If Ben was gone, he couldn’t have killed Johnny.
“Sometimes the hardest kind of deaths to accept are ones like this, James,” Amelia said. “Accidents are the worst kinds of losses.”
She set a hand on my arm, gently squeezing before she went back inside, and I swallowed down the lump in my throat. I didn’t know if there was a world where I could believe that, after everything, it was an accident that killed my brother. A stupid fucking accident.
There was a kind of cruel irony in that.
Ben opened the door to his truck down the street, and before I’d even decided to, I was walking toward him. When he saw me, he drew back like he was afraid of me.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
He hesitated, wetting his lips. “Okay.”
“What happened at Johnny’s that night?”
Ben searched my eyes, his dark brows coming together. “What?”
“The night you were there with Autumn. Rhett said he heard someone arguing.”
He looked up and down the street nervously.
“I need to know, Ben.”
“I…” He twisted the ring of keys in his hand, mouth opening and closing. “Johnny thought…”
“What?” My voice rose.
“He thought he was my dad.” Ben spit it out all at once, immediately going flush.
I stared at him.
“He told me a few months before that.”
So, Micah was right. Johnny believed that Ben was his son. And when Sadie had refused to give him evidence, he’d most likely gone to Ben.
“And was he?” I asked.
Ben exhaled. “I don’t know for sure. I mean, I always kind of wondered, but my mom always said it was a fling with a logger. When I started really pressing her about it, she kind of stopped telling that story. When I asked her about Johnny, she just said…”
“What?” I whispered.
“She would just answer with, You don’t want him to be your dad, Ben. Believe me. ”
A white-hot anger rose up in me and immediately, my instinct to defend my brother was there again. But as I stood there, tracing the echoes of Johnny in Ben’s face, I struggled to find fault with Sadie. She had her reasons for not wanting Johnny to be Ben’s father, and I couldn’t deny that at least some of them might have been valid.
“So, why were you arguing that night?” I asked.
Ben hesitated. “Johnny wanted to talk. Autumn and I had already broken up, but she was the only one I’d told about it, so she came with me. But Johnny just kept saying that he wanted to get a test, and I don’t know. I just got freaked out. Told him to leave me alone. To stop calling me.”
So, that’s why Autumn had been at Johnny’s that night and also why Ben had been acting so strange toward me since I got to Six Rivers. I couldn’t imagine what all of this had been like for him. Finally getting answers only for Johnny to be ripped from his life before he could even wrap his head around it.
“Doesn’t matter now, I guess,” he said, reading my mind. “It’s too late.”
His eyes flicked up and there was that flash in them again. An almost imperceptible glint that I could swear I’d seen a million times. It was like seeing my brother from a far distance.
“That day you came by Johnny’s, did you take something from his desk?”
Slowly, Ben’s eyes widened.
I lifted up an open hand. “You’re not in trouble. But I think I know what you took.”
He stared at me, jaw clenching.
“I just want to know why.”
He searched my face, as if looking for reassurance.
“It’ll stay between us. I promise.”
He sighed, shifting on his feet. “I kind of…broke into Johnny’s cabin last summer.”
“What?”
Again, his eyes dropped to the pavement. “I don’t really know what I was looking for. I guess some kind of proof that he was my dad. But I saw that note from Autumn and I just…Things with her had been different. She was different, hanging out with Johnny a lot, and I was…I don’t know. I was jealous.”
I waited.
“I started to think that maybe something was going on between them, and when I asked her about it, she was pissed. But I didn’t believe her.”
Slowly, I was putting it together. This is where the rumors had started, I thought. Not with Sadie. It was Ben.
“I saw the note on the board by his desk and I knew Autumn had written it.” Now he looked embarrassed. “I told my mom that I thought Autumn was hooking up with Johnny. I knew she was going to break up with me and, I don’t know, I guess I just wanted to get back at them both.”
“Why would you need to get back at Johnny?”
“Because he did change everything for Autumn. He’s the reason she wanted to leave. The reason she applied to Byron.” He swallowed. “I didn’t want anything to change.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s how Micah had felt. When I left Six Rivers, he hadn’t said a word. He hadn’t argued or tried to stop me. He’d barely even said goodbye.
“So, why’d you come back and take the note?”
“Ever since what happened to Johnny, I’ve felt bad about starting the rumors about him. It never really died out. I just didn’t want anyone to find that note and think it was, like, confirmation or whatever.”
My mouth twisted. Olivia was right about this kid. He was fragile. But in the end, he’d been trying to protect Johnny like the rest of us.
Micah’s truck pulled up in front of Amelia’s office, the engine roaring and tailpipe pumping a steady stream of exhaust.
“Ben, I want you to tell me honestly. Do you believe Autumn was having a romantic relationship with Johnny?” I tried to keep my tone even, my stare fixed on his face.
“No.” He paused. “At least, I don’t think so.”
I let out a long, heavy breath, my hands finally unclenching. Ben got into the truck, pulling out onto the street, and I watched him drive away before I made my way to Micah’s truck. Smoke was in the cab, and I opened the door and climbed inside. Micah had already clocked the cut on my face before I had my seatbelt on.
“What the—?”
“It’s nothing.”
I batted his hand away when he reached for me, but Micah cupped my chin, forcing me to look at him. He inspected the cut on my lip, tension hardening the look in his eyes.
“What’s going on?” His hand slid from my cheek.
I stared out the windshield, a cold, empty feeling flooding my veins. “He didn’t do it.” I whispered. “Johnny didn’t do it.”