Page 60 of Wild Frost

She held the door for us as we stepped into the foyer. She called up the stairs, "Casey! You've got visitors."

The muffled sound of pop music spilled out of a room on the second floor and drifted down the hallway.

Mrs. Monroe frowned. "I'm not sure she heard me. I'll go get her."

She climbed the steps and disappeared down the hallway. She knocked on the door a few times, then cracked it open and told Casey she had visitors.

A few moments later, the two returned. Casey's curious eyes surveyed us. She hesitated at the top of the steps.

"These two deputies would like to talk to you," her mother said.

Casey jogged down the steps with caution in her eyes and greeted us in the foyer. She was a typical teen girl with a fresh face, sparkling blue eyes, and long, chocolate hair that hung past her shoulders. Wholesome and innocent, she looked like she could sell face cream or be on the cover of a teen magazine.

I made introductions and told her we had a few questions about Ivy.

Her mother gave us space to talk in private and disappeared into the living room. She fumbled around in the kitchen, but I'm sure she was listening.

"Sorry about your friend," I said.

Casey nodded.

"Was she in any kind of trouble?”

"What do you mean by trouble?"

"Did she have any problems with anybody? An ex-boyfriend, a jealous rival at school? High school can be cutthroat at times."

"You think somebody from high school mowed her down with automatic gunfire because… why?" she said in a skeptical voice.

I shrugged. "We’re just looking for something. Anything that might explain why five people were brutally murdered."

Casey frowned. "I don't know. She was my best friend, you know." She hung her head and stared at the marble tile on the floor. She didn't cry or get weepy. More introspective. "I guess we all have to die sometime, right?"

"That's one way to look at it. But your friend was taken way too young."

"Tell me about it." She paused for a long moment. "She didn't deserve that.”

"None of them did.”

Casey hesitated another moment. "Look, I really don't want to talk about this right now."

"I understand. It's a difficult time. But the more information we have, the better. The longer this case goes unsolved, the harder it will be to solve. You want to see justice for your friend, don't you?"

She scoffed. "Is there such a thing as justice? What does that even mean? Nothing's going to bring Ivy back. You can talk about serving justice all you want, but it really doesn't change anything.”

"If we take bad people off the street, maybe we save somebody else's life.”

Casey looked around to see if her mother was nearby.

Sounds from the kitchen still filtered into the foyer.

Casey walked past us to the door and pulled it open. For a second, I thought she was gonna kick us out. Then she stepped onto the porch.

JD and I stared at her for a moment.

Casey gave us a nod to step outside, looking at us like we were fools for standing still.

In a tank top and shorts, she didn’t seem bothered by the cold at first.