Page 120 of This is Why We Lied

“I was talking to Chuck,” Will said. “He was sweaty and pale, but I didn’t think anything about it other than maybe he was feeling guilty. I walked back up the trail. I got about twenty feet above him. I turned around and he was in the water. I got rid of the gun and my electronics because I knew I would have to go in.”

Faith hated his calm and reasonable tone.

He continued, “The current took both of us downstream. I went after him. We almost went over a waterfall, but somehow, I managed to pull us both back. I couldn’t leave his body down there, so I started carrying him toward the lodge.”

“That’s when I showed up,” Kevin said. “I came looking for Will. Obviously, I carried the body farther than he did.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“I was actually in the water.”

Faith was not up for bro jokes. She tried to focus her mind back on the case instead of the fact that she was standing dripping wet in the forest losing her shit because she’d thought that her partner was dead.

She looked down at the body. Bryce Weller’s lips were dark blue. His eyes were like glass marbles. The current had pulled at his clothes. His shirt was open. His belt had come loose. More importantly, another person was dead. They could be searching for a killer with two motives instead of just one. Or Chuck could’ve murdered Mercy, then killed himself.

She asked Will, “What did Chuck say when you talked to him?”

Will said, “He used incel terminology. He was guarded. He acted like he wasn’t into Mercy when he clearly was. I was liking him for the murder by the time we finished talking. He was hyper-focused on Dave. Openly jealous that Mercy wouldn’t get rid of him. He kept rubbing his back. I wondered if she’d gotten some punches in.”

Kevin said, “We can roll him over to check in a minute. I need to catch my breath.”

Will told Faith, “Chuck described his altercation with Mercy before dinner in a weird way. He said, ‘She screamed at me like I had raped her’. And I could tell he really regretted putting the word rape out there.”

“Was that why he was sweating?” Faith asked. “He was nervous?”

“I don’t think so. That would be some kind of flop sweat. It was dripping down his skull. His hair was plastered to his head. Looking back, I think he wasn’t feeling well. He burped like his stomach was coming out of his mouth.”

“Suicide?” she asked.

“If he drowned himself, he did it fast. No struggling. No splashing. It took me about a minute to get up that hill. By the time I turned around, his body had already floated out to the middle of the creek.”

Faith looked at Chuck’s face. She had attended more autopsies than she’d ever wanted to. She had never seen a corpse with lips that blue. “Was he eating something before he went in?”

“He was drinking water from a jug,” Will said. “It was half-full when we started. He drank the rest while we were talking. What are you thinking?”

“Alejandro said that Chuck has a peanut allergy. Maybe someone slipped some peanut powder into his water.”

“No,” Sara said.

They all turned around. Sara was on the opposite side of the creek.

She said, “It wasn’t peanuts. He was poisoned.”

16

Sara wasn’t happy with Will’s guilty expression when he stared at her across the creek. The look was the same one he gave Amanda when she was about to rip him a new one.

Sara was not his boss.

“I’ll bite,” Faith said. “How can you tell he was poisoned?”

Sara would deal with Will later. Chuck hadn’t been her favorite person, but he was still dead and he deserved some respect. “Anaphylaxis is a sudden, severe allergic reaction that causes the immune system to release chemicals that put your body into shock. It’s not a quick death. We’re talking fifteen to twenty minutes. Chuck would’ve exhibited chest discomfort and tightness, coughing, dizziness, flushing or redness in his face, skin rash, nausea or vomiting and most importantly, breathing issues. Will, did you notice that Chuck was having any of these symptoms?”

Will shook his head. “His breathing was fine. All that I noticed was that he was sweaty and pale.”

“Look at how blue his fingernails and lips are.” Sara pointed to the body. “That’s caused by cyanosis, which is a lack of oxygen in the blood, which in this case indicates chemical poisoning. Chuck was drinking water before he died, so we can assume that’s the source. The substance would have to be colorless, odorless, and tasteless. People with severe allergies know very quickly if the allergy has been triggered. Chuck didn’t call for help. He didn’t thrash around. He wasn’t gasping for air or clawing at his neck for breath. I need to study the scene where he went into the water, but my theory is that he lost consciousness and rolled into the creek.”