Chapter 31
It’s a solid ten minutes before my pulse returns to normal, but Mamma ruins that short reprieve as she turns on the television, picking a docuseries featuring a police hunt for a notorious serial killer.
I can’t help but keep glancing at the street beyond the safety of my walls where my very own neighborhood serial killer lives.
“Solve the murder yet?” Luca jokes as he tromps casually down the stairs.
Mamma glares with a look that tells him this is no laughing matter, but Luca is immune to Mamma’s opinion by now.
“I’m going to cook a meal. Something hearty. We can’t figure this out on an empty stomach.” Mamma returns to the kitchen and makes a point of clattering pans and dishes.
Luca wanders into the living room, loitering near the edge of the sofa with his gaze glazed over watching the TV show. He picks up the bag I had hidden behind the sofa and forgot about.
“You ever going to open this?”
My hands feel clammy. “I’m not sure I want to.”
“Oh, stop being scared. I’ll open it for you,” he offers, curiosity scribbled all over his face. “It’s probably a grocery delivery.”
Except that there is no receipt pinned to this bag. And it was dropped off right before Detective Yankovic arrived this morning. It’s pretty convenient if Fred only had to walk across the street to drop it off.
“Wait!” I dart forward, snatching it out of Luca’s hands before he rips it open and destroys any fingerprints. Just in case it’s something I feel safe turning over to the police.
“Just open it already.”
I untie the first bag’s knot. The bag flaps open, revealing one more inside.
I unknot that one next and reach in. Something wet sloshes inside.
A piece of bloody flesh? I pull my shirt sleeves down over my hands and slowly pull the object out, careful to keep my skin from touching it.
When I realize what it is, I instantly feel nauseous.
An organ would have been better than this.
“What is it?” Luca asks.
It’s the shirt Janet Vick was wearing when I found her in the water. But dead women can’t package and drop off their clothes from the grave. I hold it up with my sleeve-covered hands, inspecting it to see if there’s a message somewhere among the folds of wet fabric.
“What are those stains?”
Stains is too domestic of a word to describe what’s covering the front of the shirt. It’s soaked with mud and blood. Pinned to the collar is a note on a slip of paper that is halfway disintegrated from the bloody river water. It’s a single line printed in a blocky font and all caps:
YOU MISSED SOMETHING.
My heart stops, flips, then swan-dives into panic.
Luca takes the shirt from me, rubbing all kinds of his skin cells on it while examining it. “Interesting.”
“Don’t touch it!” I scream. “You’re going to mess up the DNA evidence or whatever.”
He scoffs at me. “Uh, I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed, sis. There’s no way your DNA isn’t already all over this… and I’m sure whoever sent this knows that.”
My brain tries to generate answers like a dying printer spitting ink blobs. Fred, or Marshall? Or are they working together? They are close friends, after all.
“Shari, what are you going to do?”
I wish my brother would stop staring at me like I’m already booked for a life sentence. I stare at the shirt, at the note, at the evidence someone holds over me.
“I, I don’t know,” I manage to say.
“You can’t turn this in to the police,” he reminds me, as if I don’t already know this.
“Then what the heck am I supposed to do with it?”
My skin feels icky and wet, crawling with the sensation like I’m wearing the soaked blood-stained shirt myself. I storm through the kitchen toward the bathroom, because my bladder is about to explode from all the coffee, and I might possibly throw up while I’m at it.
Mamma hovers behind me, holding a plate full of spaghetti carbonara out toward me.
“Eat. Then after you’ve got a full stomach, let’s tell Detective Yankovic everything, including how you sunk the body.
If you explain it all, the worst you’d get charged with is tampering with evidence, which is a lot better than first-degree murder. ”
What my mother is suggesting has to be a joke. “I was innocent last time and ended up in jail. Unless you’ve forgotten? Or do you think I was guilty…”
“You’re acting like you killed someone! And we both know you didn’t, Shari.”
I stiffen and Mamma notices.
“Oh, Shari,” she whispers. “You didn’t, did you?”
“Of course not,” I hiss.
But there’s something my mother doesn’t know about me, and if she found out, well, she’d think I’m capable of anything. Even murder.