Chapter 17
She left Jamie at the door to his motel room and headed over to where Todd was standing, concerned, by the car. “You okay?” he said. “What are you doing out here?”
“What’s it look like?” She folded her arms across her chest, defensive, squinting in the harsh sun. “Talking to Jamie. We were considering grand theft auto but decided crime didn’t pay, so nothing in our conversation to interest you. That all right?”
“Sure, of course.” He shrugged, as open as she was closed. “I just—well, I guess I’m just surprised. And good call on saying no to crime. Waitressing definitely has better long-term prospects. Not much, but better.” She didn’t laugh and he glanced past her toward the motel.
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t looking to score.”
“I know.”
“How do you know? You don’t know me.”
“No, but I know Jamie’s not a dealer.”
He’d taken his aviators off and his eyes were light hazel, and in the dusty sunlight his hair was the kind of brown that really wanted to be blond, hovering indecisively in between.
Anna didn’t like how much she noticed about him.
He made her nervous in a different way to Pastor Keene. She didn’t like that either.
“Yeah well, anyway.” She drained the last of her water, now with an unpleasant tang of plastic where it had warmed. “I’ve got to get my sister from school.” She started to walk away, not bothering with a goodbye.
“You as well?” he called after her. “Another joy of being the adult sibling. Look, I’m headed to pick up Holly, so I can take you both home if you want. It’s too hot to walk.”
“I’m good.”
“Come on, you don’t even have a hat.”
She paused. He was right. Her forehead was holding heat like she was on the cusp of burning and her feet throbbed in her Converse with still a couple of miles to go before home.
Why make herself suffer? Taking a ride from him didn’t make them friends.
And she’d probably be late if she walked, and if Caroline told Mom, that would be another black mark against her.
She looked at the SUV. There was only one way she was doing this. “I’m getting in the back until we get to the school and the doors stay unlocked the whole time. You don’t know me and I don’t know you.”
“Sure. No problem.” If he was surprised or offended, he kept his reaction hidden, as if not wanting to sit up front was the most normal thing in the world.
She went to the rear passenger door and got in. “Thanks.” She added the last word begrudgingly, but if Todd noticed, he didn’t show it. How come he was always so pleasant?
She couldn’t lie, it was a blessed relief once they were moving and the cool air of the AC kicked in, and despite her wariness of him, she relaxed slightly into the seat.
“Jamie said someone injected him with heroin,” she said after a few moments of silence as they drove back through the deserted streets. “Made him this way.”
Todd kept his eyes on the road. “Yeah, I’ve heard Jamie Carlson’s clown story before.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“You know what movie he and Lila watched the night Lila was murdered? Terrifier. The creepy clown from that? Black mouth, black eyes, and white face? That’s exactly how he described the mask when he came to make a complaint.
If you don’t know it, google it. I have a whole lot of sympathy for Jamie and his life should be better than this, but it feels a little coincidental to me. ”
“How do you mean?” The cooling air around her feet was bliss and she felt calmer being able to see Todd’s every move from her place in the back.
“I mean maybe it was easier for Jamie on a subconscious level to make up this clown story rather than accept responsibility for getting himself addicted. Not only was the movie they watched that night the one with the same mask, but their choice of viewing almost got him arrested for murder. Pretty violent against women, that franchise,” Todd continued.
“And you know how that school of thinking is. Like how watching horror makes kids do bad stuff.”
“Is that your kind of thinking?”
“Jeez, no.” Todd laughed. Warm. “I love horror movies.”
She looked out of the window, mulling it. “Very pop psychology.”
“But I can see why they suspected him, as well as being the boyfriend. I remember what he was like. I was a year ahead of him at high school. He could have a temper. Full of that kind of homecoming-king, football-player testosterone.”
Anna knew all about how that could be. She pressed herself into the leather seat, making herself smaller.
“Always fighting with his father,” Todd added as he turned onto Main, the town creeping back to life. “He was an angry young man. Rebel without a cause. When Lila was found dead, the whole town was shocked—we didn’t ever have that kind of thing here—and he was easy to blame.”
“Fighting with your parents isn’t the same as murdering the girl you love.”
“Nope,” Todd agreed. “But plenty of men murder the women they love in a moment of rage.”
He had an answer for everything. “Whatever,” she said, disgruntled. “Jamie needs help.”
“No argument from me there, even if I don’t buy the clown-mask story.
He’d been off the rails for a while drinking after Lila died.
Drugs were the obvious next stop for him.
Easier to blame a mysterious figure for his addiction than himself.
His parents weren’t exactly understanding.
His old man—well, there’s no polite way of saying it—he’s a grade-A asshole, which his mom probably knows but toes the line anyway like a good wife.
They could straighten Jamie out, but first they’d have to admit there’s a problem. ”
“You know them?”
“You’ve seen enough of Harper’s Creek to know that not a lot of kids in this town grow up with rich parents. There were us Greenboughs and the Carlsons. We were thrown together a lot as kids. His dad and mine used to go on golf trips.”
“Your dad an asshole too?”
He laughed again even though she didn’t, glancing back at her. He laughed easily. His face was tanned but not too dark, a slight rose to his cheeks that made his skin honey brown rather than the leathered tan that was the norm for people who spend too long in the relentless heat.
“No. Or if he was, he’s now a retired asshole. That’s why the golf trips are a thing of the past.” He looked at her in the rearview mirror properly for the first time. “What’s all the interest in Jamie and the dead girls?”
“Curiosity. Self-preservation. If he’s right and there’s a killer on the loose who’s due to strike again, then it’s hardly crazy to want to know about it. Ask any woman. We live our lives under threat. Is that a problem for you, Deputy?” This time her tone wasn’t missed.
“Jeez, you really are determined not to like me. And I’m off duty, so Todd will do.” That laugh again. They rounded a corner and the school came into view, another tired building too big for the sum of kids who studied there these days.
“And I’m thinking of writing a piece on it. The fallout. How it affected the town.”
“You’re a writer?”
She didn’t answer that—she didn’t want to talk to him about the college degree that never was—but instead, as he pulled up outside the gates, she got out of the car, ready to take the front seat when the kids arrived.
The students started coming out, balls of energy in human flesh, their lives ahead of them, filled with confidence and belief that everything was always going to be okay.
Her chest tightened with all the forgotten things. “And no one ever wants to believe the bad shit can be done by people they know.”