Chapter 3 #4
I can literally feel her long-suffering expression on the other end of the line.
‘Nope. Not my circus, not my monkeys, Novelle. Look, if this isn’t about the package, then what are you calling me for?
I thought we had a deal that you wouldn’t.
In fact, this better be good. I told you not to contact me and yet here you are, messaging me.
Calling me like we’re besties. What the fuck, Novelle? ’
‘You free tomorrow? Daisy will be on campus.’
‘What time?’ She sounds like she’s got her game face on, now.
‘Her old Lit class was at ten. They don’t know she changed majors, remember?’
‘I remember. What do you need from me?’
‘Pretend you’re in her classes. Her friend from English Lit. Get her away from whoever they send with her.’
‘Way ahead of you, Novelle. Think it’ll be Nurse Nasty with her?’ she asks derisively.
So she already knows about the nurse. I suppose Daisy will have been in contact with her now she has a new phone.
‘I don’t know, but there’s no way they’ll let her go anywhere alone.’
‘Daisy put on the chat that the nurse was talking to Joe about not wanting to shadow her all day, so maybe Joe will send someone else,’ Mav interjects from his place by the window.
‘I’ll be there,’ Lu says. ‘It works out, actually. Pretend you don’t know me if you see me, Novelle. Daisy’s Simp One. Daisy’s Simp Two. Later.’
She hangs up and I give a world-weary sigh as I glance at Blake and Mav.
‘Of all the people to become Daisy’s BFF,’ I say, ‘it had to be Lu Garrett.’
‘I kinda like her,’ Mav mutters and turns back to stare outside at the dark.
‘Did she just call me a simp?’ Blake mutters and then gives a shrug when I nod. ‘Okay, but dibs on Daisy’s Simp One. I’m no number two.’
‘What do you think Garrett is planning?’ Mav asks, ignoring Blake.
‘Who fucking knows?’ I say, leaving the room to go downstairs.
In the hallway by the front door, there’s an envelope on the bureau with my name on it.
‘When did this come?’ I ask one of the guys who’s loitering in the kitchen.
‘Some girl brought it. Dark hair. I think she’s in drama. It only just came a few minutes ago, Admiral.’
I turn away with a noise of discontent, shaking my head because one of the guys should have brought it up to me as soon as it arrived, and I come face to face with Laurie.
‘Oh!’ She stops short with a surprised look like she didn’t even see me. ‘I heard you didn’t live here anymore.’
‘What the fuck are you doing here, Laurie? You were banned, remember?’
‘I was just here to see if Marcus wanted to hang but he’s not around,’ she chirps, sidling past me.
I don’t tell her that he’s not welcome here. She probably already knows that. He’s just an excuse to come to the KIP house.
My eyes narrow at her as she stands in front of me.
‘Don’t worry. I’m leaving now.’
She saunters toward the foyer, giving me a little finger wave and a simpering smirk, and then slamming the front door shut so hard that the pictures on the wall in the hallway rattle.
‘Bitch,’ I mutter, making a mental note to ensure that every single KIP brother knows that there will be hell to pay if she gets in here again as I climb the stairs.
Back up in Blake’s room, I rip off the top of the manilla envelope. Inside is a green file. It’s not labelled, but as I take it out, a small note falls to the floor. I pick it up.
Couldn’t get original out of building. Took copies. Shannon
‘What is it?’ Mav asks.
‘This is everything they had on Daisy ten years ago after Larson was found dead in the woods near school.’
‘Where’d you get that?’
‘Lu Garrett has a contact in the town hall. I asked her to get the details of what happened. I don’t remember much. I was a kid. Just like she was. Anyway, she told me some things before Christmas and I got curious.’
Blake turns around, gazing at me quizzically. ‘Curious about what?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t have a lawyer, just some half assed social worker who didn’t give a fuck about her. She said she doesn’t remember what happened that day, really.’
‘That could be trauma,’ Blake supplies thoughtfully.
‘Maybe. Or maybe there’s more going on. Nothing ever seems straightforward where our girl is concerned. I think we can all agree on that.’
Mav, now sitting on the bed, takes the file from my grasp before I can even open it properly and I scowl at him.
He ignores me as he inspects the relatively thin folder from the outside. ‘Doesn’t look like they had much to me.’
‘They didn’t need much,’ Blake says from his desk, turning around. ‘She confessed, right?’
I nod. ‘But, as I said, she couldn’t remember anything.
She lied to the cops in the interrogation.
They left her in the room alone with the information about the case.
She read it while they were gone and used what she found out about the crime to tell them everything they wanted to hear.
She made up a bullshit but plausible story.
Then my dad made a deal, and she was gone. ’
Mav hands it back to me.
I open it and start reading. At first, everything seems normal. ‘Mike Larson was found on the tenth of March,’ I say. ‘Her birthday.’
‘Jesus, it happened on her birthday?’ Blake asks.
‘Yeah,’ I frown. ‘I’d forgotten that part. Larson was usually a dick to her at school, but that day he kept following her around, trying to give her thirteen birthday bumps. Knowing him, they were punches. Hard ones. He hated her. Never knew why.’
The guys are quiet.
‘Anyway,’ I continue reading, ‘Daisy had been running on the track at Cross Country practice. When everyone else was done, she stayed out there to do a few more laps.’
‘Was that normal?’ Mav asks.
I nod. ‘She enjoyed running, and she was more relaxed when she’d had some extra time alone to get lost in it after practice.
The coach said she went out there an hour later and Daisy was gone.
She thought Daisy had been picked up by April, but my stepmother came by the school to get Daisy a few minutes after that and no one could find her. ’
I glance up at the guys who are now giving me their full attention.
‘Go on,’ Mav urges. ‘We want to know everything.’
‘There was a search,’ I read and nod again.
‘I remember that. They got a bunch of volunteers and walked through the woods in a line for hours. It says that Daisy was found just after dark sitting against a tree. Taking a nap is what it says in the report.’ I huff.
‘Larson’s body was a few feet away under some leaves and mud like she was trying to hide him. Her blood was all over him.’
‘How did he actually die?’ Blake asks.
‘A stick through his sternum. There was a sharp branch covered in blood at the scene, and there were splinters found in the wound. He’d been dead for hours, the autopsy said.’
I frown at the paper, my eyes flicking back over it. Something’s bothering me. But what?
‘She took a nap,’ I mutter. ‘After killing someone?’
‘Maybe she was exhausted from trying to bury him.’
My expression deepens and my forehead begins to hurt a little between my eyes from the force of my scowl.
‘She would never have fallen asleep there,’ I say.
Blake gets up and takes the paper from me, perusing it himself. ‘Not even if she was bushed?’
‘No, if she was really that tired, she would have gone somewhere warm, dry, and safe. She wouldn’t have just sat against a tree on the damp ground.
And it says that the body was covered in mud and leaves.
The leaves, maybe, if they were dry, but she would never have voluntarily put her hands in cold mud.
Not back then. Not for anything. Her sensory issues were profound.
She could barely stand the wind on her skin. There’s just no way.’
Blake turns the page. ‘She was really out of it when she was found. They thought she was on something when they brought her in, but they didn’t even do a tox screen to find out.’
I snort. ‘My father probably paid them not to. Didn’t want any record of his stepdaughter doing drugs.’
‘Was she?’ Mav asks. ‘Doing drugs? I mean it’s a little young, but maybe some older kids tricked her or something, like Marcus and the others did that night when they got her drunk.’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know who would have given her anything. She didn’t mix with the other kids mostly, and the upperclassmen ignored her.’
‘There was a keyring found nearby,’ Blake remarks. ‘Daisy said it wasn’t hers, but they never looked into it, just figured since it was close to the school, it wasn’t relevant to the crime.’
‘Did they actually do any police work at all?’ Mav sneers.
‘Wait…’ Blake goes to his computer and brings up a camera visual.
‘That’s my father’s office at the Novelle house,’ I say, leaning forward to look over his shoulder.
‘I saw this earlier when Daisy asked me to look. It didn’t seem like anything important then, but...’
He presses play.
‘This is the night of the accident.’
I watch as my father lurches up, sitting at his desk and putting his head in his hands.
‘Was he just on the floor?’
‘Looks like. I thought he was drunk, but watch.’
I stare at the screen, eyes unblinking so I don’t miss anything. I watch my father sway in his chair a little and then cross his arms on the desk and put his head down.
‘He’s asleep,’ Mav says. ‘So what?’
‘He’s taking a nap,’ Blake says.
I look at him sharply. ‘You think there’s a connection? That’s kind of a leap, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe.’ He shrugs. ‘Seems a little weird, though, don’t you think? Two people in your life who ‘took naps’ and couldn’t remember stuff afterward? They might be a decade apart but it sounds to me like they might have found something in a tox screen. Maybe they were drugged.’
‘By who? Why?’
‘Maybe Daisy never killed anyone at all. Maybe the same person killed Larson and April. Maybe the same one who got rid of Detective Black. I mean, if they set the fire in the lab at the Novelle Center, too, and Applegate is right about the connection with the fire that killed Mark Evans, then—’
‘All this could be the same guy.’ I finish. ‘Over almost fifteen years. Four murders.’
‘More.’ Blake says, taking a breath. ‘What about the officer who was first on the scene after April’s accident?
He was found in the river a few weeks later, remember?
No way that was an accident. There are probably more we don’t even know about.
He’s not just a stalker or a murderer. He’s a serial killer. ’
‘And he’s obsessed with our girl,’ Mav mutters. ‘Jesus. We need to tell her. She’s been beating herself up for years. She was sent away from people she loved for years, and maybe she didn’t even do anything.’
‘Anyone recognize the name Winters?’ Blake asks, squinting at the file.
‘Nope. Why?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, trying to think of how I know it. ‘I’m sure they were one of the wealthier families in Richmond once, but there aren’t any here now. Why?’
‘Because Daisy’s file mentions them. Just one line. Like an afterthought. Called Winters regarding suspect. No knowledge.’
‘Why would they contact the Winters about Daisy?’ I wonder aloud. ‘Did you find anything on them at all when you were looking at Daisy’s history?’
Blake shakes his head. ‘They never came up once.’
‘You’re sure? What about April’s history?’
‘Nada. I’d remember.’
I sit on the bed heavily and take out my phone, but my message still hasn’t been read. She’s not awake.
‘Tomorrow,’ I say. ‘Maybe she knows something about why the cops would have spoken to them. We’ll tell her all this stuff when we see her.’