Page 14

After Woody went back inside, I picked myself up and, somehow, made it back to the Pilot.

For a while, I sat there, my chest aching, my scalp throbbing. Drive, I told myself. But I didn’t. I sat there with my eyes closed, breathing short, shallow breaths, my whole face hot. When I opened my eyes again, I gave myself a once over. A muddy boot print showed on my jacket and, where it had hung open, on my hoodie. Another patch of mud was drying on my cheek from when I’d tried to roll away from Woody. More mud on the back of my neck. A few pieces of straw-like grass in my hair. Red eyes. Well, pink really. I gave myself a few experimental pokes. I drew deep breaths. I didn’t think I had any broken ribs.

Part of me wanted to drive back to Hemlock House. Part of me wanted to take a hot bath and stay there until either: a) I dissolved, or b) Bobby came home and took care of me. (This was what Millie not-so-endearingly referred to as my “sadness baths”.) Part of me wanted to cry and feel sorry for myself and maybe—maybe!—see if I could talk Bobby into shooting Woody Vance.

But that was only part of me.

Another part of me was red hot. And that part of me kept seeing the photo of Foster at the Bay Bridge Suites, kissing Channelle outside her motel room.

I drove to the Gull’s Nest.

When I reached the RV park, it looked different from the last visit. Awnings had been rolled up and put away. Hammocks had been taken down. Tarps covered lawn furniture and grills. The wind raked my hair and pulled on my jacket; the tarps billowed like parachutes, and the tie-downs snapped and thrummed. In the tiny, sad marina, the boats were battened down, bobbing anxiously in the water. Everywhere I looked, the park was hunkered down, waiting. It felt strangely apocalyptic. I wished I had a flame-thrower.

I stopped at a spigot outside the park office and washed my face. The water was freezing, and it had a faintly metallic odor. I decided to consider it bracing ; that seemed like something Will Gower would say. I felt better once I’d washed off the mud and picked the grass out of my hair. I gave the park office a quick glance. Police tape warned me off, and a chain held the front door shut. I could see where the jamb had splintered when someone had forced it—just like at the Bay Bridge Suites. When I glanced in through the windows, the interior was dark, but I could make out the signs of a frenzied search: a drawer stood on end; papers made a ski trail across the floor; a lamp lay on the floor next to its shade, and it gave me the sensation that somebody had ripped its head off. I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass. Hair spikily wet, face washed out, collar damp. I looked like a million bucks that had gone through the laundry backward.

(I wasn’t sure backward made sense, but I liked it so much I kept it and decided I’d use it for Will Gower one day.)

A quick glance showed me that the office’s other doors—the garage door, and the back door—were also locked. I briefly considered trying my lock-picking skills, but then I decided against it. That wasn’t why I’d come here, and if I did want to commit some light breaking-and-entering, I’d come back later, after everyone was asleep. I couldn’t remember who, but I remembered someone telling me this place was like a fishbowl, and as I swept a gaze around me, at all the huddled RVs and campers, I couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes.

When I got to September’s pull-behind, a bag of trash lay next to the concrete pad, eviscerated and spilling its guts on the ground—empty bottles of Buffalo Trace and New Amsterdam, disposable vape pods, those little plastic tubs that dispensaries sold joints in, plus more depressing stuff like the flattened cardboard shells of takeout chicken wings. Raccoons, I wondered as I stepped around the garbage, or deputies?

Muddy footprints tracked across the concrete pad and up onto the camper’s single step. I followed them to the door. The piece of paper that had said COLLSON was gone now, along with whatever had been beneath it—what I suspected had been the eviction notice. Torn scraps of paper were still stuck to the fiberglass under the remaining tape. I listened, but this time, there wasn’t the muffled noise of a television. No Price is Right . The wind picked up, and wood creaked, and a few fat drops of water fell from heavy branches. It went right down the back of my jacket, and I shivered.

I knocked.

The sound rang out hollowly and then died away. It sounded like a long way off that I could hear the water lapping in the marina.

I knocked again.

Nothing.

I started to get a larcenous itch. Or maybe not larcenous, since I wasn’t going to steal anything, but definitely felonious. The lock on that camper door wasn’t anything. I wouldn’t even need my picks. I could just pop it out of the frame—

From inside came the sound of glass rolling, and then a clink-thunk as it fell and hit the floor. Someone moaned.

The image of Foster came back to me, kissing Channelle at the Bay Bridge Suites. And Foster’s cold eyes. And the way Foster had forced that pill between September’s lips. The hair on my arms did its best impersonation of a hedgehog.

Run, a sensible voice in my head said. Call Bobby. Put on a bulletproof vest.

But this was Keme’s mom.

When I tried the handle, it turned, and the door opened easily. The sound of the hinges was almost nothing—lost under another rush of wind that batted at my wet hair and rippled the pines around us. When it faded, the soft sound of breathing came out of the camper’s darkened interior. All I could make out was the layout: the sofa where Foster had been lounging on my last visit, the kitchenette, the slide-out dinette where September and I had sat.

And then my eyes fixed on a shadowy bulk that I didn’t remember. After several long seconds, I realized I was staring at a pair of feet sticking out from the dinette slide-out.

I stepped up into the camper. It rocked slightly, squeaking on its aging suspension. The noise seemed enormous, swallowing up the sound of those small breaths. The far end of the camper seemed even darker, if possible. I could barely make out the weird octagonal bunks in the bedroom; next to them, the door to the tiny bathroom was ajar. The faint, acrid bite of vomit hung in the air.

September lay on the slide-out’s bench, her head under the table. She was still breathing, but she didn’t seem to know I was there. My eyes went to the darkness behind the bathroom door. I couldn’t see anything, but I had that same sense of eyes again. A fishbowl, I thought. The world’s tiniest fishbowl. I wanted to laugh, and I bit my lip so I wouldn’t.

“September,” I whispered. And then, a bit more loudly, “September. Can you hear me? It’s Dash, Keme’s friend.”

Something in her next moan sounded like acknowledgment.

“I’m going to help you sit up,” I told her. “You’re sick.”

She didn’t object, so I got hold of her arm and tugged. She was dressed in some sort of billowy, ruffled blouse and velvety trousers, with about a million necklaces that clicked and clattered as I tried to maneuver her. The whole ensemble looked like something Janet Joplin would have put together. Wait, was it Janet Joplin or Janis Joplin? And I thought maybe she wore glasses, so September lost a few points there.

Something in the camper popped.

I cut my eyes back to the darkened opening of the bathroom.

Nothing but darkness.

My heart didn’t care. My heart was galloping at about a million miles an hour.

“Up,” I whispered, and the fraying edge of my patience was clear even to me. “Sit up. September, you’ve got to sit up!”

She wasn’t exactly a rag doll, but she wasn’t doing much to help, either. She groaned. A lot. And her weight on the bench’s cushion meant that when I pulled too hard, she threatened to come sliding off the bench, cushion and all. Finally, though, I got her upright. Her eyes were open, and even in the dimly lit interior, I thought her face looked puffy from crying. She looked at me, but she didn’t seem to see me.

“September, did you take something?” I asked.

She stared out at me from behind glassy eyes. Her breath was so high in her body that it sounded like it was in her mouth.

“What did you take?” I asked. “September, I need you to talk to me.”

“You’re Keme’s friend,” she said, the words slurred.

“That’s right. We’re going to get you some help. You’re going to be okay.”

As I dug my phone out of my pocket, she said, “Keme’s such a good boy.”

“Uh huh,” I said. I placed a call to Bobby, but it rang until it went to voicemail.

What now? I could call 911. But would it be better to load her into the Pilot and drive her to the hospital myself? I mean, she was breathing, and she was conscious (kind of).

“I need to—” September’s voice dissolved into breathy confusion. “Help.” She struggled again. “Foster.”

“What about Foster? What did Foster do?”

“Foster,” she said. In the storm light filtering in through the windows, past the old aluminum mini-blinds and the vinyl clings of happy ghosts and goblins, her face still held that Disney princess beauty. And then she gripped the table and, to my total and one-hundred-percent surprise, dragged herself clear of the slide-out.

“No, wait—” I said.

“Foster,” she mumbled. She took one wobbly step. She threw out a hand and caught the three-quarters-sized fridge. One of her knees buckled, but she stayed upright and took another step. It was pure willpower, I realized, and for a moment, I saw, and I understood. The boy who refused to give up. The boy who hadn’t let anything stop him. Ever.

And then she folded.

I caught her before she hit the floor, and we did a staggering two-person dip until I could lay her down.

“September?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

She was still breathing, and her eyes were half open, and she even made a sleepy sound of awareness.

The idea flashed into my head.

Sometimes, I decided, I wasn’t a very good person. A very good person would have called 911 right then.

But she was breathing. And she seemed like she was okay, albeit knocked out.

I spent another ten seconds trying to decide if I really was a good person.

And then I turned on the flashlight on my phone and started to search. There were two things that were still missing: the murder weapon (although if the killer was smart, they would have thrown it into the bay by now), and Channelle’s necklace.

It was a quick and easy search. The camper had a lot of nooks and crannies for storage—trying to maximize the use of every inch of available space—but, since JT had moved September’s belongings into storage, there wasn’t anything in them. I went as quickly as I could, checking September every few seconds, making sure she was still awake and breathing.

And then, in the tiny bathroom, I popped off the cover of the exhaust fan, and cash came tumbling down.

My phone buzzed with a call from Bobby as I gathered up the bills.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Where are you?”

“September’s camper.” I filled him in and said, “I think Foster tried to kill her. Remember how I told you about that super weird thing with the pill the last time I was here?”

“Dash—”

“He obviously had something going with Channelle. Maybe she was giving him a cut. There’s got to be five hundred dollars here. I mean, the jackass didn’t have a job, so where did he get this much money?”

“Dash—”

“And then Channelle threatened to cut him off, or maybe he knew something about the murder and tried to blackmail her, and it all went wrong, so he ran her down with his car.”

(That last part was a little foggy since I wasn’t sure Foster had a car.)

“Dash!”

“What?”

“Foster didn’t poison her.”

“I know it’s only a theory until we can talk to September—”

“No, he didn’t poison her. Salk and Dahlberg picked him up a couple of hours ago. September was fine when they left. Foster’s been here ever since. He’s sitting in a cell right now, waiting for his lawyer.”

“Wait,” I said, trying to get my thoughts to settle.

“I’m sending an ambulance over there right now.”

I heard the words, but I said, “They arrested Foster?”

“He had Channelle’s necklace.” Something twisted in Bobby’s voice. “It was in a box on the table when Salk and Dahlberg interviewed them about the eviction. He was going to give it to September as a present.”

I opened my mouth to—what? Argue? But why did I want to argue? I’d had the same thought, hadn’t I? I’d seen the photo of Channelle and Foster. As soon as I’d seen September, I’d jumped to the conclusion that Foster had done this to her. And now that Bobby told me he’d been arrested, I could see how the other pieces fit: Foster was a mooch, using his boyish good looks to live off the women he met, like September or Channelle. Foster was our only eyewitness to the events of the night JT had been murdered, which meant he could have told us whatever he wanted, made up any story he wanted. Like Keme getting into a fight with JT. He would have known that Keme’s clothes were in JT’s garage, and he would have known which clothes were Keme’s so he could use them to frame him. He had Channelle’s necklace. I had known, the first time I’d met him, that there was something dangerous under the pretty surface—a darkness that rippled when he lost control.

So, why was my first, automatic reaction to tell Bobby that they had it all wrong?

I didn’t know, so I didn’t say anything.

After several seconds, Bobby said into my silence, “Try to keep her awake, Dash. The ambulance is on its way.”