Page 58 of Poison Wood

“Yeah, well, you slept with that Jeremy guy,” Summer says to Kat.

“No, I didn’t,” Kat says. “I absolutely did not.”

Kat’s tone is so matter of fact it immediately triggers that instinctual switch inside me that tells me when I’m talking to a liar. It’s the switch I listened to when I broke the story in Kansas City. The multihomicide and the minister I ultimately exposed as the killer. It’s the instinct I ignored in Broken Bayou when I thought I could interview a killer on my own, my tunnel vision getting in the way. I’m not going to ignore it again. And then Kat gives me a gift. She scratches her jaw with her left hand and blinks rapidly. I’m always looking for clusters of microexpressions when someone is speaking to me.

Nonverbal communication is more important to me than anything that comes out of people’s mouths. Our bodies like the truth, and when our words don’t deliver it, they react accordingly. Just like the minister in Kansas City who told me over and over he didn’t do it and the whole time he was talking, he was nodding his head up and down, yes.

I’m starting to regret having this conversation here. It’s too loud and too crowded and the heat way too fucking high.

“Did you go to Lisbeth’s funeral?” Summer says.

I shake my head. I couldn’t do it. The only other funeral I’d been to was my mother’s, and there was no way I was going to sit and look at a coffin and smell the overly sweet cologne and watch everyone cry.

“You know she didn’t go,” Kat says. “We all got drunk together that day.”

“So how long will you be in town?” I say, diverting attention away from the topic of Lisbeth.

“Probably not too long,” Kat says. “We’re staying close by in case you want to meet up again.”

“The sooner we get out of here, the better,” Summer says under her breath.

Our server returns with three dessert plates and sets one in front of each of us. “Chantilly cake,” she says. “Compliments of the chef.”

Summer smiles. “I love Chantilly cake.”

I look down at my piece, and as I slice my fork through the whipped icing and berries, it hits a note folded on the plate.

Kat and Summer are talking to one another as I slide it beneath the table and open it. A phone number is on it, and after the number are three words:Follow the money.

Poison Wood Therapeutic Academy for Girls

Kisatchie National Forest

March 17, 2002

Meadow

Dear Diary,

So I think I committed a felony tonight. I’m just kidding. Kind of.

Me and the girls snuck out through the basement cellar doors tonight and we start running like we are prisoners who escaped jail. And we’re laughing and singing and then we see it. This beat up piece of shit pick-up truck. It’s just sitting there. And we all look at each other and I’m like, “Wonder if the keys are inside?”

The keys were inside!!! So we took it.

It was so fun. I swear to god we got it to a hundred once we found our way to the road. We drove to Piedmont in search of green beer for St. Patrick’s Daybut none of the St. Matthews boys were around so on our way back I’m driving and one of the girls covers my eyes with her hands and I start screaming and take my foot off the gas and she’s like, “I dare you to keep going” and so I keep going and she says, “faster” and I punch it and I can’t see anything and I’m screaming and they’re screaming and we’re all screaming and then one of them yells, “Look out!” and I’m like “I can’t look out!!!!!”

And then I hit something.

We heard it thump under the truck and I slammed on the brakes. Then it was weirdly quiet and all we could hear was the truck running and it was so dark. Like pitch black, horror-movie dark but I could see the red of the brake lights when I looked in the rearview mirror and exhaust coming out of the back of the truck. But I saw something else. Something in the road, a lump.

I got out and they were screaming at me to get back in the truck but I walked to the back and looked. It was a baby deer.

And you know what’s weird?

Killing something didn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it would.

Chapter Fourteen