Chapter 22
Briggs
This is it. It’s over. I knew it was coming, and I can deal with it. I’ve dealt with a lot worse. Going to jail will be nothing compared to the hell I’ve been living in with my father.
“Did you play it?” Parker asks me.
“Play what?”
“Didn’t you see the link?”
I check my phone, scrolling down to the end of the text. “I didn’t see it.” I click on the link, and it takes me to a black screen with a play button.
Ella’s next to me, looking at my phone. “Let’s all listen to it together.”
We walk over to the bar, standing across from Finn and Parker. I set my phone on the bar and press play.
“Police,” a man says. “How can I help you?”
“I’d like to report a crime.” The voice sounds like a guy, but someone young, maybe even younger than me.
“Is this happening right now?” the man asks.
“No. It happened back in January. I was afraid to come forward. I didn’t want them to find out and do something to me.”
“Tell me what you saw, and who was involved.”
The guy with the young-sounding voice describes what happened that night.
He says he went out there to be alone and think, and that he’d done it before and always goes to the same spot, up on the hill that overlooks the curve in the road.
He said that night he heard a loud noise and looked down to see what happened.
From there, he describes what he saw — Ella and I going to help the guy, and Parker and Finn wanting to hurry up and leave.
He doesn’t mention names. He just describes us by how we look, like ‘the skinny guy’ for Finn and ‘the muscular guy’ for me. He refers to Ella as ‘the girl’.
“Would you be able to identify these people?” the man at the police station asks.
“Yes. Finn Kingsley was driving the Range Rover. Parker Sterling was in the front passenger seat. He was the one agreeing with Finn that they should leave and go to a party.”
“What about the other two?”
“Briggs Chadwick. He was the one helping the girl with the victim. They’re the ones who moved him to the side of the road.”
“And the girl?”
“I don’t want her getting in trouble.”
“Sir, this isn’t about getting people in trouble. It’s about finding out who’s responsible for a man’s death.”
“It wasn’t her. She was in the back seat. She wasn’t driving. And she tried to help. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay with him.”
“I understand that, but do you have her name?”
“Ella Quinn,” he says. “But she’s innocent. She didn’t do anything. You’ll see it on the video. I’m sending it right now.”
“You have a video of what happened?”
“Yes, but the sound isn’t great. That’s why I told you what I heard them saying.”
“And what is your name, sir?”
“I want to remain anonymous.”
“We may need you to testify if that video you’re sending isn’t enough to make an arrest.”
“I’m not ready to reveal myself yet.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
“No. Not now. The video has been sent to your tip line.”
“We’ll look it over. Call us back if you have anything else to tell us.”
The recording ends.
After hearing it, I’m relieved, but also confused.
Whoever recorded that almost made me sound innocent.
He said I was the one who said we should leave the scene, but only because I wanted to call for help.
The cops will ask why I didn’t just use my cell phone, but I could lie and say I didn’t know I had cell reception out there.
Whoever this was also protected Ella. He did everything possible to convince the man on the phone that Ella shouldn’t be punished.
“Who the fuck was that?” Finn says. “It sounded like a kid.”
“It’s definitely not a teacher,” Parker says. “Who do we know at school that sounds like that?”
None of us answers.
“Why was he sticking up for you two?” Finn glares at Ella and me. “You’re just as guilty as us.”
“I don’t know.” I look at Ella. “You got any ideas?”
“No,” she says, but I think she might be lying. I know Ella well enough by now to know when she’s not being truthful.
“When do you think he did this?” Parker asks.
“Probably just now,” I say.
“So the cops are on their way over here.”
“I’m guessing they’ll take some time to look at the video before they show up.”
Parker shoves Finn. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Shit yeah.” Finn darts around the bar and runs to the door, Parker right behind him.
“You can’t run from them!” I yell after them. “They’ll find you!”
“Just let them go,” Ella says. “They won’t listen to us.”
“Fucking idiots.”
Ella turns to me. “What should we do?”
“I say we go back to your house and talk to that lady.”
“Susan?”
“Yeah. She’s the one handling the case. Maybe we can get to her before she sees the video and give her our side of the story.”
“She may have already left.”
“Let’s go find out.”
We go out to the truck and drive back to Ella’s house. As expected, Susan is gone. She probably got the call from the police station telling her there was new evidence in the case.
“Now what?” Ella asks, breathing fast. “What do we do?”
“We wait.” I take her hand. “Come sit down.” I bring her to the couch.
“I can’t just sit here. I’m freaking out!”
“Ella.” I turn to her. “You heard the guy on the phone. He was trying to protect you. He told the cops you’re innocent. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“Just because he told them that doesn’t mean I won’t get charged with anything. The cops will see the video. They’ll see that I left, and if the audio’s bad and they can’t hear me, they could assume I was okay with us leaving the guy there. They could even think it was my idea.”
“They’re not going to think that.”
“They will if Finn and Parker tell them that’s what happened. Those guys hate me. You know they’ll try to put this on me and make it sound like I’m the one who convinced them to leave the guy on the road.”
“I’ll tell the cops they’re lying.”
“So it’s us against them. Who are the cops going to believe?”
“We need to figure out who made that call. If we can find him, we can try to convince him to come forward and testify so we have another person on our side.”
“I think I might know who it is.” Ella gets up and paces back and forth. “I’m not sure, but I swear it sounded just like him.”
“Yeah? So who do you think it is?”
“Calvin.”
“The tech geek?”
“Yes. I’d have to listen to it again, but I’m telling you, it sounded just like him.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Because you never talk to him. You don’t know his voice.” She sits next to me. “Play it again.”
I bring it up on my phone. Even hearing it a second time, I still don’t think it sounds like Calvin.
“I think it’s someone else,” I say.
“No, it’s definitely him.” She gets up. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“To Calvin’s house.” She grabs her keys from the counter and heads to the door.
“Ella, wait!” I hurry to catch up to her as she goes outside. “It’s not Calvin. And if it was, he wouldn’t admit it.”
“Think about it.” She locks the door behind me and heads to the truck. “Calvin’s a tech genius and his dad owns companies overseas. He’d know how to send messages from a short code and make it so we can’t find out where it’s coming from.”
“He told you where it’s coming from,” I say as we get in the truck. “You asked him to find out.”
“Which is the perfect cover,” she says, taking off down the road. “By playing along and pretending he was helping me, I’d never suspect he was the one sending the texts.”
“I still don’t think it’s him.”
“Think about the stuff he made you do. Giving to charity. Standing up for someone. Having lunch with someone you’d normally pick on. He was trying to teach you to be nice to people so you’d stop picking on him and his friends.”
“I could see Ms. Higgins doing that too.”
“But it wasn’t her. She was on a date that night, and the person on that recording is a guy.”
“It could’ve been another teacher.”
“Not with a voice like that. Briggs, I’m telling you, it’s Calvin.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.
You, Finn, and Parker have tortured Calvin and all the other tech guys for years.
That’s why they hide in the computer lab.
It’s their safe place. The one room where they can be themselves and not have to worry about you punching them if they look at you the wrong way. ”
“I never punched them.”
“You’ve threatened to, and so have Finn and Parker.”
“That still doesn’t prove Calvin was the one doing this.”
“Guess we’re about to find out.” Ella pulls up to the gate and punches in the code.
“How do you know the code?” I ask as the gate opens.
“Calvin gave it to me when I gave him a ride home.” She glances at me. “Hey, why did you help him that day he fell in the hall?”
“I thought he was hurt. He tripped and fell flat on his face.”
“But you’d usually just walk by, not help him.”
“When he didn’t get up, I thought he’d knocked himself unconscious. I was going to get someone to help, but then I saw him move. I think he was afraid I was going to do something if he got up, so he stayed on the floor, hoping I’d leave.”
We’re standing at the front door now, and I’m noticing how similar Calvin’s house looks to mine. It’s a cold, industrial design with lots of black metal. Even the door is metal — plain, black metal with no glass cutouts for light.
“Aren’t you going to ring the bell?” I ask Ella.
She leans in toward the house. “You hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“The yelling. It sounds like they’re fighting.”
“Who?”
“Calvin and some guy. Maybe his dad?”
“It’s probably a brother. Does he have a brother?”
“No, and he said his dad isn’t home much. He travels for work.”
A loud thud startles Ella, and she steps back. “You had to have heard that.”
I did, and it was eerily familiar, like the sound of . . .
“Shit.” I try the door and find it’s unlocked.
“What are you doing?” Ella asks, following me inside. “You can’t just—”
“What did I tell you?” a man yells.
The voice is coming from down the hall.
“I’m sorry,” I hear Calvin whimper.
I hear that familiar thud again, the sound of a body hitting a wall.
“When will you learn?” the man yells.