Chapter One Lee #2
But there were only so many problems that Lee Turner could snowplow out of his father’s path, because he himself was a problem.
The kind that could kill you.
“Is there anything you need in town?” his father asked. “I can drive you a bit later.”
Lee shook his head. It was bad enough that he’d asked to stay with his father while he took a semester off school. He didn’t
want to make it worse by needing things. He could be like one of those pet turtles that you buried in winter, requiring nothing at all but a place to exist.
“Are you sure?” his father said, frowning. “You didn’t bring much with you.”
Lee realized he had to say something or his father would think he was lying out of politeness. Even when he tried to exist
as quietly as possible, he managed to mess up. “Maybe some more socks,” he said. “But I need some sun if I don’t want the
jet lag to knock me out before dinner, so I’ll just walk into town. You don’t have to drive me.”
His father smiled and Lee let out a breath—he’d given the right answer.
“It’s a beautiful walk,” his father said. “The South is still so green this time of year.”
“Is that why you moved here?” Lee said.
His father had always said he’d sell the house in New Jersey and move somewhere exotic after Lee went to college, but Lee
hadn’t really expected him to do it. Only a week into Lee’s first semester, his father had called to tell him that he and
his girlfriend were moving back to her home province in Japan, that he’d found an old country house for cheap and could work
remotely anyway, so why not?
At Lee’s question, his father’s smile thinned. “That, and it’s close to Hina’s family,” he said. Then he took a long sip of
coffee and looked out the window.
Lee stared at his father’s side profile, the nervous way he swallowed even though he hadn’t taken another sip.
The worst thing about Lee Turner—the part his father hated the most—was that he knew when people lied.
He could see it in the way their eyes dulled and their hands went stiff in their laps, in the nervous edge to their voices,
in the way their gazes flickered like candles in a storm.
He knew his father had secretly bought his mother a chocolate birthday cake that she had never gotten to eat.
He knew his mother was not really from Chicago like she’d told his father, but he could never ask her the truth.
He knew his father loved him but did not like him, and he knew his mother did not love his father.
He knew that his father had—for some reason—just lied about why he had come to Japan.
The Benadryl was starting to set in, blurring the edges of Lee’s vision. He set his mug on the table so he wouldn’t spill
it. As a fog crept through his mind, he cared less and less about why his father had lied. People lied all the time for silly
reasons—embarrassment, forgetfulness, nervousness. Lies didn’t always mean that the truth was important.
“Is the jet lag starting to set in?” his father said with a knowing smile.
Lee’s eyes snapped open. He’d been falling asleep sitting up.
“Apparently,” Lee lied, taking a scalding sip of coffee. He’d overdone it—he wasn’t supposed to be quite this sedated in front
of his father, and he was lucky he had jet lag as an excuse. The only thing worse than acting like a freak was acting like
a stoner.
“Take a nap,” his father said, clearing both their coffee cups. “I’ll wake you up in half an hour so it doesn’t ruin your
sleep schedule.”
“Okay,” Lee said, tugging a pillow under his head and lying down across the couch. His father ruffled his hair and Lee thanked
a god he didn’t believe in that he hadn’t messed up worse than this.
His body went numb, and he sank swiftly into unconsciousness. The sedatives had a way of dragging him into half sleep, where
he could still sense his father’s footsteps in the hall and the sword ferns whispering across the windows but his body was
made of cement and he couldn’t move at all. It was the only time he truly felt fine—when he was suspended between worlds.
He knew that probably made him a drug addict, but there were worse things he could have been—like a murderer.
The sedatives were his grandmother’s fault.
She’d come to stay with Lee and his father after Lee’s mother disappeared. Lee hadn’t slept in a week, certain that if he
stared at the open porch door for long enough, his mother would return. His grandmother took one look at his sallow skin and
bloodshot eyes and gave him some Benadryl. Twenty minutes later, for the first time in Lee Turner’s life, his mind fell quiet.
He remembered cicadas outside his window. They had always been there, screaming into the night, but he had never noticed them
until that day. He’d held a rainstorm inside his head for so long.
The next morning, he slipped the blister pack from his grandmother’s purse and took another Benadryl with breakfast, and a
blanket of snow fell over his mind once more. He decided this was where he wanted to live—out in the snow, where he couldn’t
feel his fingers or toes.
That was the night his father slept on the floor beside his bed, petted his hair until he thought Lee was asleep, and told
him he was a good boy for the first time Lee could remember. Lee pretended he was asleep, and his dad cried for a long time,
then kissed Lee’s forehead and went to his own room.
The next day, Lee asked his dad for more Benadryl, said it was the only way he could sleep. His father bought him as much
as he wanted because Lee was better and everyone could see it. He no longer told truths that no one wanted to hear. He no
longer stayed up late reading books backward just so he could taste the words differently. He no longer stared at cracks in
the ceiling and imagined them expanding, mapping his own doom above his head every night. He was normal. A good boy. Soon
after, he discovered melatonin, then valerian root, then Unisom, then Ativan.
It was never supposed to be a forever plan, but that just became another anomaly—Lee was scared to stop taking the pills but
could no longer remember what he was scared of.
His father shook his shoulder, warm hands gently extracting him from the tangled web of dreams. Lee opened his eyes and squinted in the sunlight, then his gaze shifted to his father, who was smiling fondly down at him.
He liked Lee when he was asleep, when he couldn’t say the wrong thing.
His father’s heartbeat echoed through his hand on Lee’s shoulder, warm and slow and steady.
He was fine, they were fine, and Lee was still sedated enough that it was easy to pretend James was nothing more than a dream.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” his father said, ruffling his hair. Lee leaned into the touch and his father laughed. “What are
you, a dog?” he said kindly.
“Woof,” Lee said, forcing himself to sit up. The sound of his father’s heartbeat fell in sync with his own—still slow from
sleep.
Even though the world felt like watercolors melting across a canvas, Lee knew from his father’s smile that this was for the
best. Lee Turner might have been a freak, a murderer, and a junkie, but he swore he would not be the one to break his father’s
heart.
Lee opened his laptop and began his search.
NYU student murder
NYU student found dead October 2026
New York University crimes
New York missing student
James Baldridge
Lee Turner
But no matter how many iterations he searched, there was no front-page spread in the New York Times about an NYU student found dead in his dorm, his roommate mysteriously missing.
Still, it had only been three days—probably too soon for any of James’s friends or teachers to file a missing persons report. No one had found a body. Not yet.
Perhaps it wasn’t smart to type those things into his own laptop, but if worst came to worst, he’d smash the hard drive and
drop it into the well outside. If the police actually got to the point of apprehending him and taking his computer, he was
already screwed. Lee cleared the browser history just in case, then closed the laptop.
There was still a problem. One single thought that itched beneath his skin, a question so troublesome that even the Ativan
couldn’t blur it away.
He couldn’t remember what he’d done with the body.
He remembered cleaning until the bleach seared his palms, scrubbing himself raw in the shower, then running away with untied
shoes. He remembered throwing his clothes into a bag, buying a train ticket and then a plane ticket, waiting for an Uber late
at night and wanting to rip his own face off because he thought for sure that everyone would see it in his eyes, MURDERER
MURDERER MURDERER.
But he couldn’t remember where he’d put James.
He’d woken up on the plane in a cold sweat, worried that he hadn’t actually gotten rid of the body at all, that he’d left
James in the hallway for the janitor to find. The police would catch him for sure. One roommate found dead and the other mysteriously
fled the country? He was as good as guilty.
But if he’d done that, someone would have found the body by now. NYU would have shut down until they figured out what had
happened. They couldn’t keep this kind of thing a secret from students.
But it seemed that, for now, no one knew a thing.
Still, Lee needed a better plan in case things went south. Japan had an extradition treaty with the US, so Lee wasn’t safe here if they came for him. But where else could he go, and with what money?
The sound of footsteps in the hallway pulled Lee back into his body, out of the dark crevices of his mind. He’d been zoning
out while staring at the stain on the kitchen wall. If his father walked in now, he’d see Lee sitting in front of a closed
laptop like he’d cast his brain out to another planet. That wouldn’t do. Lee stood up and crossed into the corridor before
he could run into his dad, who had already seen him once today and didn’t need to suffer through another encounter.