Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
MADELINE
The text to Emily takes forever to send. I don’t want to spook her too much, but I also need her to understand we need to meet up. This is serious now. My thumb hovers over the screen, typing, deleting, and then typing again.
Need to talk. Urgent. Can you meet in an hour? Library?
Three dots appear immediately.
Emily: Okay. But not the library. Too many people. The old church on Fifth. The one that’s closed. Give me an hour.
I show Luke. He nods, jaw tight. “Gives us time to pay someone a visit first.”
“Who?”
“Caleb,” he says, and his voice has a dangerous edge to it. Caleb and Luke have gotten into a few fights on the ice, but that’s not abnormal. But right now, Luke looks like he might pound Caleb into the ground, and I feel like I’m missing something.
“His family owns the boathouse. That footage didn’t walk itself to the cops. He gave it to them. And he cut it.”
Oh my God. Right. I was so focused on talking to Emily.
“Maybe he didn’t know—”
“He had to.” Luke pulls me toward the parking lot, his hand wrapped around my wrist; he’s afraid I’ll disappear or someone might snatch me up.
“That camera is motion-activated. It caught Grant at four a.m. but not the party? Not us going in earlier? That’s bullshit.
Caleb messed with the footage before he handed it over. ” Luke isn’t wrong.
We find Caleb behind the athletic building, leaning against his truck, smoking a vape like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He sees us coming and straightens up, sliding it into his back pocket.
“Locke.” Caleb’s voice cracks slightly. He holds up his hands. “Look, before you do whatever you’re thinking of doing—”
“You gave them the footage.” Luke steps in close, crowding Caleb against his truck. “You edited it. Cut out the party, cut out us going in earlier, just left Grant at four a.m., looking guilty as hell.”
“I didn’t edit anything!” Caleb shoves back, but I don’t move.
We’re not on the fucking ice right now. I’ll lay his ass out.
“Jesus, man, you think I’m some kind of movie editor?
I don’t know how to do that shit. My dad asked me to check the cameras after the cops came around asking everyone on the lakefront for footage from that night. ”
He pulls out his phone, swiping through screens.
“Look. Here’s the email I sent them. Raw files.
All of them. That’s all I found. I don’t know what to tell you.
Grant was going in at four a.m. The camera’s ancient.
It only records when it senses motion, and it’s pointed at the door, not the whole property. ”
Luke doesn’t back down. “You didn’t see us earlier? The party?”
“No! The camera probably didn’t trigger. I don’t know, bro.” Caleb drags his hand through his hair. “I didn’t even think it was a big deal until I went down there to check things out. I figured if I didn’t see anything, there was no point even sending it to you or the police, but I saw…”
He stops, swallowing.
“Saw what?” I ask. Stop keeping me in suspense here!
“Blood.” Caleb’s voice drops. “Inside. On the floor. Not a lot, but enough. I thought someone got hurt at the party, maybe a fight or something. I don’t know, but with Murphy missing and then the rumors about a body in the lake, I had to, man. Come on.”
Luke stares at him, the anger draining slowly, replaced by something worse. Realization.
“Grant went back,” Luke says quietly. “He went back to the scene of the crime at four a.m., and you caught him.”
“I guess so.” Caleb shrugs, actually appearing apologetic for once. No jokes. Shit is now real for everyone. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know it would get him arrested. I thought... I don’t know what I thought.”
Luke steps back, dragging his hand down his face. “Fuck.” I second that fuck, third it too. Caleb doesn’t know shit, and now I really want to know what Grant was up to. One thing is for sure: I’m not talking about any more details in front of Caleb.
“We need to get going,” I say, touching Luke’s arm. He looks down at me, understanding my silent message. Georgia has been eerily quiet. Normally she’d whisper a few comments under her breath for my ears only, but nothing. I’m sure she’s reeling with all of this information coming out about Grant.
Luke nods, still processing. He points at Caleb. “If you’re fucking lying—”
“I’m not!” Caleb’s voice cracks. “I swear to God, Locke. I just pulled up the footage that was there. That’s it.”
We leave him there, heading in the direction of Luke’s car.
I twist in my seat, checking on Georgia. She’s staring out the window, her face pale and unreadable. She hasn’t said a word since we left Caleb.
“You okay?” I ask her.
“I think it might be my fault,” she finally says, her eyes meeting mine. That’s when I see they’re filled with tears.
“Georgia—” I start to take off my seat belt to climb into the backseat, but Luke’s arm comes across, pinning me back to my seat.
“What the hell?”
“You wear your seat belt when the car is moving.” Oh my God, he’s rude. It’s sweet but annoying.
“You’re doing twenty-five!” We’re right on the edge of town.
“Two seconds, Buttercup.” I roll my eyes at him as he pulls over, parking on the side of the street. I see a church ahead of us. I’m guessing this is it. “There,” he says when he puts the vehicle into park. I roll my eyes at him, my attention going back to Georgia.
“We’re talking about Grant, aren’t we?” Her brows rise. Does she really think I don’t have eyes?
“Grant went back,” Luke says again, more to himself than us. It better not be Grant. I’ll kill him myself. Luke might not know it, but it’s bothering him because he likes Grant. He let him past that wall he always has up. He’ll never admit that, but again, I’ve got eyes. “Why would he go back?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly.
“Maybe he forgot something,” Georgia suggests.
“At a murder scene? At four a.m.?” Luke slightly turns in his seat so he can see her. “No. He went there for a reason.”
“Come on, we will come back to this after we talk to Emily,” I tell them. I don’t want her to bounce out on me.
The building looms behind a chain-link fence, boards nailed over most of the doors. I see a paper nailed into the door about an upcoming auction for the property.
Emily cracks the door open before Luke can try to open it.
“This is creepy,” Georgia says, and I nod.
“You’re not alone,” Emily states.
“Yeah, she’s not going to an abandoned anything alone.” Luke pushes the door open more. Emily hurriedly takes a couple of steps back.
“Can she go anywhere alone?” Georgia mutters from behind me. I bite back a laugh.
“Did anyone see you?” Emily asks, quickly shutting the door.
“Just us,” I say.
“Georgia, right?” Emily asks her. They went to school together.
“Hey,” Georgia responds.
Inside smells of mildew and candle wax. Emily leads us to a back room where papers are spread across a collapsing altar—photos, printouts, and old emails. I can tell it’s all about their relationship. She brought proof.
“I came back because of this,” Emily says, her voice trembling. “I came back to confront Coach Murphy. To tell the truth.”
“Did you kill her instead by chance?” Luke asks, and I smack his chest with the back of my hand. I can’t believe he just asked that.
“We saw that you reported her and then retracted.” Emily nods. “I believe you,” I tell her. Her head drops forward. I reach out and grab her hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong. She was wrong.”
“Well, now she’s dead, and I hear she has a new ah…”
“Victim,” I fill in for her.
“Victim.” She nods again, repeating the word.
“But you never took this to anyone once you got here?” I ask, motioning to all the papers that are spread out.
“That was the plan.” She closes her eyes for a moment.
“Then I get here and find out she’s missing, then dead.
” Emily wrings her fingers together. “I got scared. I thought, what if they think it’s me?
I come back to town, and suddenly she’s dead.
I have a motive—she messed up my life, made me recant, and made me look like a liar. ”
“Shit, yeah,” I agree. That doesn’t look good.
We ourselves thought she was guilty of it at first. So I don’t blame her.
Plus, who are we to judge? It’s not like we rushed off to the cops when we found a body.
I mean, at points I thought it wasn’t real, but it was.
Now that Grant’s been arrested, it’s really real.
“Did you kill her?” Luke asks again. I’m going to kill him when we get out of here.
“No!” Emily’s voice cracks. “But I have proof of what she did to me. Photos, texts, emails. I was going to go to the police with it. Finally tell the truth. But now she’s dead, and I either did it or I’m just smearing her name posthumously.”
I glance over to Georgia. “Occurring after a person’s death.”
Right, I knew that.
Georgia steps forward, picking up one of the photos.
“Who told you that Murphy has a new victim?” I ask.
“Oh, an ex.” She rolls her eyes. “Kind of an ex. I don’t know.
We were friends and fooled around, but I’m definitely gay.
He was the one that kind of helped me figure that out.
Nonetheless, he wasn’t too happy when I pumped the brakes and told him that.
I actually opened up to him some, but then shit got weird, and I cut contact when I left town. ”
Luke and I share a look. “Who was it?” I ask because he must still be around if he knows Murphy has been sleeping with another student.
“Oh, it’s a local, Joey.” She nods in the direction of town. “His family owns the auto shop.”
How does the plot keep thickening?