Chapter 31 Caulder
Caulder
I don’t trust Ms. Dorman—I don’t buy her story about going outside for cell reception—but I also don’t think she’s the killer.
For one thing, she’s pretty fucking small, and I doubt she would’ve been a match for Lucas or Mr. Jay.
For another, Emerson said he was attacked by a guy.
Though I guess she and Coach could’ve tag-teamed it.
But that really doesn’t seem like him, and I feel like I’d know after almost four years on the team with him.
Still, there’s too much that Ms. Dorman’s not telling us.
After we give her the full rundown of what’s happened, she purses her lips.
She makes us swear not to leave the kitchen while she grabs something from her room, returning with her purse right after.
She pulls a charger out of it, then plugs her phone into an outlet, eyeing it periodically as if watching it will make it magically have service.
“We need to be prepared,” she says when she sees me looking. “Mr. McCullough may try to call.”
“If he was going to the Death Van, why isn’t he back yet?” I ask. “It feels like it shouldn’t have taken this long.”
“He’ll be back,” she says. “Just wait. He’ll be back, and then we’ll sort all this out.” She says it with the frantic tone of someone trying to convince themselves of something. Avery and I exchange a look.
“I’m going to sit in the living room,” Avery says, and Ms. Dorman’s eyes dart to her, then to the couch visible from our stools.
“Fine,” she says. “But nowhere else.”
Avery nods and heads to the couch, sitting as far away from the kitchen as she can get, her back to Ms. Dorman. I follow her and sit in a chair nearby, also facing away from the kitchen.
“What do you think is going on?” Avery asks, her voice low. “What happened to Lucas?”
Anxiety tightens my shoulders. I don’t know what happened to Lucas, and my thoughts keep flipping from “walking around is better than unconscious” to “if he really was fine, why wouldn’t he come find us?” Then there’s the fact that Emerson disappeared, too.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “All of this…It’s fucking weird. And I don’t like that Coach isn’t here yet.”
She nods. “You don’t like it because you’re worried he…ended up like Mr. Jay? Or you don’t like it because he could’ve been the one to do…that to Mr. Jay?”
I consider this. “I mean, both, I guess. McCullough practically recruited him to join us. And Jay played baseball when he was here, so they were close. Why would he kill him?”
Avery nods. She fidgets with the edge of the couch cushion she’s sitting on, running her fingers across the seam.
“Do you think the others are okay?” she asks. “I’m worried—”
Her hand stills, and she looks down, reaching into the couch cushion and pulling out a phone. I recognize it immediately as Lucas’s—how many times have I seen him with it in his hands, filming every moment of our lives?
“This is Lucas’s,” Avery says, turning the phone over. “It must’ve fallen out of his pocket when Emerson moved him. Do you think he was filming when he was attacked?”
It’s not the worst suggestion. Lucas was pretty much always recording.
“Maybe,” I say. “Do you know the passcode?”
She laughs. “Of course. Don’t you?”
We all know Lucas’s passcode. He’s constantly flinging his phone at us and telling us to get a shot of him doing something. And then telling us how he fucked it up and to do it again.
“One one two four one seven!” Lucas would shout. “Hurry, you’re missing the light!”
Something bitter burns in my throat at the memory. When Lucas was here—here but unconscious—I was able to tell myself that he’d be okay, that we’d get him the medical attention he needed and it would all work out. But now that he’s gone, panic is starting to seep in.
What if he never comes back?
I shake off the thought, though. I refuse to let it in.
I nod at Avery. “Let’s see what’s there.”
She types in the numbers, and immediately, Lucas’s phone lights up, welcoming us to his exceptionally well-organized home screen. Lucas has customized icons for everything. He also has everything color coded, set against a quote on the background:
I’m obsessed with giving the audience something they don’t see coming. —Jordan Peele
It’s like someone grabs my heart in a vise.
Anyone who met Lucas knew that he had dreams, plus a carefully constructed plan to achieve them.
He wanted to be a world-famous film director, and in the meantime, he was building up his YouTube channel with short horror films and vlogs.
Lucas was obsessed with the future, was obsessed with where he was headed and how to get there.
And now, he’s disappeared without a trace, and we’re about to go through his phone. The guilt of what I’m doing rises like bile in my throat, but I bite it back. Lucas would understand. He’d want us to have answers.
“Do you want to do this?” Avery asks, holding the phone out to me. “You’re his friend.”
I don’t point out that that actually makes me feel like shit because I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to have a reason to look through his phone. But right now, it’s the only way to help him.
“Sorry, Lucas,” I mumble, then open his photos.
Lucas is just as organized here as he is on the rest of his phone. There are albums like “September B-Roll” and “September 1 Vlog.” I navigate over to his “Recents” album, looking for shots of the house, and try swiping through everything he just had open.
I jump when an image of myself appears on the screen.
Of course Lucas was filming me. But somehow, it’s still disconcerting.
The first video is from right after we left the hotel.
I’m sitting in the van, headphones on, typing on my phone.
Marlene and Avery are sitting up ahead of us, playing Uno, textbooks on their laps as tables.
In the video, my eyes jump to them as I type.
Well, not exactly. Not to both of them. My stomach twists as I see what Lucas’s camera sees: My eyes fall almost exclusively on Avery, wavering only to return to my phone and then back again. I stare at her, my eyebrows pinched together. In worry, of course. In doubt. But also…
I close the video and go back to the album. I don’t want Avery to see me lingering.
I tap a video of us entering the Airbnb. Mr. Jay calls after Kaitlyn, and I watch through Lucas’s camera as she waves him off. I swipe again. And then—
“There,” Avery says. “It’s him filming the house from outside.”
My heart lurches, because she’s right. Lucas has the camera flipped in selfie mode, recording his face under an umbrella as he walks around the outside of the house. He’s got his hood up, and he’s walking along close to the side of house.
“Hey, y’all,” he says. “Welcome back to my channel. I’m coming to you today with a place that’s absolutely sick. Just look at it.”
There’s more footage of the house as he gets several sweeping shots. The video ends, then starts again inside the house. He pans across the hallway before moving through his room upstairs, showing off the furniture and architectural design.
“This place has some weird history, though,” he says. “I’m gonna put some links down below so you can check it out for yourselves, but I’ll give you the CliffsNotes. This house is an almost exact replica of the house from North by Northwest, complete with its own creepy-ass cliffs.”
He points the camera to the window with a view to the cliffs, the ocean stretching out beyond.
“But that’s not all,” Lucas says, leaving the room and entering a new one. “Mr. Jay—a fellow film buff and brand-new teacher at Coastal Canyon—discovered a truly epic collection of Hitchcock memorabilia. Right, Mr. Jay?”
My stomach lurches as the camera pans to a still-alive Mr. Jay, beaming at the camera as he points to a display case full of props.
None of them mean anything to me: a stuffed black bird, a gold necklace, a hotel key.
But when Lucas turns the camera back to selfie mode, he looks like a kid let loose in his favorite toy store.
“This is the real shit, folks,” he says. “And it’s not just props. These people have old cameras, rolls of film, flare guns. Mr. Jay, what do you think?”
The camera flips back to Mr. Jay, who runs a hand through his messy, curly hair. I want to look away, knowing that, in a matter of hours, he’ll be gone. All I can see is the blood congealed there.
“Don’t approve of the word choice,” Mr. Jay says with a wink. “But it is all very cool.”
“I’ll say,” Lucas agrees. “Take this necklace here—”
“What’s that?” Avery asks, leaning in and tapping the phone screen. The video stops, and she enlarges the image, zooming in on Mr. Jay’s hand—he’s holding his phone and a handwritten note. His thumb’s covering part of it, but the rest is visible.
Need to see you. Meet me outside at
“Shit,” I say, leaning closer as she holds the picture wide. “Who’s that from?”
“The killer, obviously,” she says, and I’m almost relieved that she sounds annoyed at me, if only because it sounds like normal Avery. Not terrified-of-a-killer Avery but Caulder’s-up-to-his-usual-bullshit Avery.
“So, whoever wrote that note,” I say, “they lured him outside. They meant to kill him. It wasn’t an accident.”
“Who writes like this?” Avery says, trying to zoom in closer. “I think— Shit!” Her finger slips, and the screen suddenly changes. Video after video pops up, and she’s frantically swiping to get back to the original when she pauses.
“Shit!” she says. “Shit, what is this?”
I see flashes of the Hilton we stayed at for the competition. Slivers of debates themselves. And then…
She’s hit the party that the debate competition threw the night before the meet was over.
“Here, give me the phone,” I say. “I’ll look. That’s just the party.”
But she’s paused her swiping and is gripping the phone. She lets it play, holding up a hand at me.