Chapter Forty-Three
I sat in the passenger seat as Camille eased the Mercedes out of the precinct parking lot. My hands clenched and unclenched helplessly in my lap. I'd never felt so impotent in my life.
I kept my eyes on the smear of our headlights in the darkness. If I looked at her, I might break. "What happens next?"
"They booked Mia," Camille said. "Juvenile intake.
They'll hold her in detention overnight.
Tomorrow, at the earliest, they'll bring her before a juvenile court judge for a detention hearing.
It could take up to forty-eight hours. The DA will review the interrogation transcript, the evidence, and consult with the homicide unit.
They'll file formal charges after that."
I pictured Mia spending the night in a cold alien place far from home.
Stricken and devastated, curled on a thin mattress in some institutional room, lying alone, replaying Leah's scream, imagining the horrific last hours of her life, how she’d failed to save her best friend, leaving her out there to be killed.
How it had started with Mia, with that one terrible push.
I couldn't be there for her. Couldn't hold her. Couldn't promise it would be okay or mop up her tears. My chest constricted with a pain so visceral it felt like a physical wound.
"With that second skull fracture, we're not talking involuntary manslaughter.
They'll argue felony murder or possibly first-degree if they can show deliberation and malice, and they'll charge her as an adult.
If they try to transfer, we'll fight it, but given the publicity and the nature of the homicide, we need to be prepared for a murder charge against Mia. "
I saw Callahan's predatory gaze in my mind's eye.
"Mia will have to face the consequences for the part she played, I know that.
But I do not believe that she should be locked away for the rest of her life for this.
Someone else went back down the bluff that night, someone who wanted to make dead certain that Leah never came back up. "
"Yes," Camille said.
The terrible implications were still sinking in, reshaping everything I thought I'd known. During the interrogation, the shock had numbed me. I wasn't numb anymore. It felt like being flayed alive.
I pictured it. Someone creeping down the bluff in the darkness. Finding Leah broken and bleeding. Picking up that rock. Raising it. Bringing it down. The sound it would make. The deliberateness of it.
The same rock planted in Mia's room with Leah's hair stuck in dried blood.
The rock wasn't just evidence of Leah's tragic fall. It was proof of premeditated murder. Someone had gone back to that bluff, picked up a rock, crushed Leah's skull, and then carried that bloody rock into our home and placed it in Mia's room.
And I'd hidden it. Moved it. Contaminated it.
My vision tunneled. My hands shook. I pressed them flat against my thighs, trying to steady myself. If the detectives found out what I did, if they knew I’d discovered potential murder evidence and buried it in a hollow tree like some kind of criminal…
Camille's hands tightened on the wheel. The dashboard cast her tensed features in a ghastly blue wash.
"We have another problem. The camera. The chain of custody is broken.
You took a piece of physical evidence from the scene of a suspicious death.
You brought it to my home. Zara, a civilian minor, handled it and attempted to access it.
If the prosecution learns that, they will argue tampering, contamination, and fruit of the poisonous tree.
Best case, a judge excludes it. If the judge finds out I sat on this camera for even twelve hours, I could be disbarred. I'm already on the line, Dahlia."
My stomach dropped. I'd thought finding the camera was a victory. Instead, I'd contaminated the one piece of evidence that might be able to save Mia.
I was supposed to keep Mia safe. That was the only job that mattered. And I was failing.
Guilt burned beneath my ribs. I had to tell Camille everything. She would hate me, but I had to come clean. First, I told her about the sandy slippers, my worry that Mia had been lying about where she'd been that night, how she'd washed them without telling me.
"That doesn't prove anything," Camille said. "There's no evidence the girls were on the beach at any point."
Her words were meant to reassure me. They didn't. I had to keep going. I had to say everything. "There's more."
Camille winced. "Please don't say that."
I swallowed and steeled myself. "I found a strange rock in Mia's room, on her windowsill.
Someone put it there when we were out of the house.
A rock with blood on it. And a few black hairs.
Leah's. It's the murder weapon, I'm certain of it.
Whoever used it to crack Leah's skull open put it there to frame Mia. "
"What did you just say?" Camille turned her head and gaped at me. Her eyes were bright with disbelief. The car drifted onto the shoulder. Camille jerked the wheel and corrected. "Where the hell is it?"
"I hid it. It's at the playground behind the community clubhouse. There's a hollow oak by the swings. That's where I put it."
Camille's brows rose. "Are you serious right now?"
"I had to." I swallowed, fear tight in my chest, my breath coming fast and shallow. "They already suspect her. If they found the murder weapon in my daughter's room, they’d lock her away for decades. Who would believe that it was planted? That we're being framed? No one. I panicked."
For an eternal moment, Camille didn't speak as she nosed the car onto a side street by a darkened strip mall and put the car in park beneath the weak halo of a streetlight. The engine hummed. Rain ticked on the windshield.
She turned to me, her spine straight, her body stiff with barely controlled fury. "That is obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence. If the state finds out you moved that rock, they will charge you. And they will leverage that to crush Mia."
"I used gloves and a plastic bag," I said lamely. "Mia and I didn't touch it. Could it have the killer's fingerprints on it?"
"It's unlikely the oils could be picked up even after 24 hours on a rough, irregular object, but that's not the relevant point here.
" Her nostrils flared. Her voice dropped, becoming quieter and more precise, each word deliberate and clipped.
"Do you understand what you did? Not just to your daughter's case, but to me?
To Zara? My license is at risk, my reputation, my career.
I'm committing professional suicide right now. "
I understood her anger, I did. I hated the position I'd put her in, but I was too desperate to flinch now. "It was one of the girls, I know it. We must stop them, Camille. No one else will. Please."
For a long moment, Camille didn't say anything.
Abruptly, the anger seemed to drain out of her.
With a sigh, she leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes, deflated.
"Don't think I don't understand, Dahlia.
Because I do. I understand more than you know.
I get what this place can do, how it gets inside of you.
How the people embrace you, make you think you're safe, then they tear you to shreds. "
I looked at her in the shadowed darkness. I'd never heard Camille sound so uncertain or admit to anything resembling weakness, a chink in her impenetrable armor. Out of all of us, she was the confident, unshakable one. The one who always knew what to do.
"I worry about Zara, too," she said in a near whisper, as if confessing her deepest secrets.
Or her deepest fears. "I worry every single day.
She thinks she's invincible because society tells girls like her that they're untouchable as long as they're beautiful, as long as they smile pretty.
If they fit in, say and do the right things, wear the right clothes, and believe the right things.
But as soon as you don't, as soon as you fall out of line… "
Camille touched one of her gold hoop earrings.
"They could've turned on Zara as easily as they did Leah or Taylor before her.
And Mia. Those girls, they ruin lives for entertainment, out of boredom.
They're the ultimate mean girls. And the thing is, so are their mothers.
They're still mean girls, just older. They don't change.
They learn to hide it better behind their charm, their beauty, their polished manners. "
For the first time since this nightmare began, I didn't feel so completely alone.
Camille understood what I struggled to articulate—the suffocating pressure of this place, the disquieting way it smiled while it sharpened its knives.
She knew what it meant to be an outsider here, to never quite know who to trust, forced to watch your daughter navigate waters teeming with sharks in ponytails and designer clothes.
We were mothers trying to keep our girls safe in a place that ate its young.
We sat in the hum of the car for a beat. I placed my hand on Camille's arm. "They think they can get away with murder. We can't let them. They'll just do it again."
Eventually, she nodded. "Whatever you think of me, Dahlia, I do know that."
Camille's phone buzzed hard on the console. She seized the phone. "It's Zara. She’s still trying to recover the corrupted files." She typed out a text: Keep working on it.
Camille shifted the car back into drive.
We rolled out of the parking lot. Her expression had closed, all business again.
"We need to build a timeline with an alternate suspect.
We need to instill doubt. The person had to know Leah was down there, and they had to get back down to Leah in the dark without being seen. They had to have a reason to risk it."