“IT MUST HAVE BEEN done this morning,” says Doris. “In town. You know how people are always writing things on car windows, like clean me and stuff like that. Some jerk was walking by and drew it in the dirt.”
“But I would have seen it,” I protest. A chill still echoes up and down my spine.
“Maybe, maybe not,” she says. “Look.” She steps to the side, pulling me by the arm until the light from the sun is directed into a glare against the glass. Sure enough, the eye disappears. “See?” she says. “You just didn’t notice it because you were distracted, and we were talking the whole way out here. It’s just some random thing.”
“It still freaks me out,” I say. “What if someone knows what we’re doing, and they’re trying to get us to stop?”
“You’ve been watching too many horror movies, Mac,” she says.
I can’t relax. I spin around, staring at the fields and trees around us.
“Mac!” she says, clamping onto my arm with a reassuring hand. “There’s nobody here! Look around.” I follow her fingertip as she draws an arc around the surrounding fields, but all I see is a million opportunities to hide.
Before I realize what she’s doing, she’s brushed the eyeball off the car with the back of her hand.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “I didn’t even get to take a picture yet!”
She rolls her eyes. “Just forget about it. It’s creepy, I’ll give you that, but it doesn’t mean anything. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
As we drive away, I glance at the rearview mirror repeatedly, waiting for a figure to rise from the hay and stare after us. It isn’t until we turn onto the main road and the farm is far behind us that I finally relax.
“What are we going to do about the watch?” Doris asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It’s probably worth taking to the police.”
Doris nods. “I think we should go there right away. I don’t want to end up in trouble for hanging on to evidence. That’s just what I need right before I escape to Cornell.”
This time, the receptionist recognizes me right away, and we’re soon back in Parnatsky’s office.
“Where did you find this?” asks Parnatsky. She’s leaning forward in her chair, her hands clamped to the edge of her desk, staring at Connor’s watch as if she’s afraid to touch it, as if she’s afraid it will bite her.
“It was in the mud outside the Abernathy house,” says Doris.
The chief narrows her eyes. “What were you kids doing out there?”
“Looking around,” says Doris. “It’s not a crime site anymore. We’re welcome to go there, aren’t we?”
“It’s still private property,” says Parnatsky.
Doris raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Whoever owns that land has been out of the picture for years. You know that.”
“You’re missing the point,” says Parnatsky. “Or more likely, you’re avoiding the point.” She looks directly at me. “You’re searching for something, aren’t you? You’ve been looking for something ever since you found that note.”
I nod, keeping her gaze. “What am I supposed to do? Just pretend that nothing happened?”
“I’m sorry,” interjects Doris, “but I’m a little confused. Shouldn’t you be thanking us for bringing you a valuable clue in the investigation you screwed up?”
I shoot her a dirty look, but Doris’s eyes are focused on Parnatsky.
Parnatsky leans back into her chair and stares up at the ceiling. She sighs. “Guys, I get why this is so important to you. I really, really do. Connor was one of your best friends, and you want to find out what happened to him, but I have to tell you, none of this makes any difference.”
“You’re only saying that because you didn’t find it,” says Doris. I recognize her temper bubbling up, the way it did when we were kids, and I silently will her to stop. I don’t think we’re going to get into trouble, but I don’t want to piss the woman off more than we already have.
Parnatsky grits her teeth together and sucks air slowly into her lungs before lightly clapping her hands onto the desk and standing up. She stares down at us, and I realize for the first time how tall she really is. Every time I’ve been around her, I’ve been on the other side of a desk or table, or she’s been behind the wheel of a car.
“I’m going to say this one more time,” she says, through clenched teeth. “We have done as much as we can. The feds did as much as they could. I appreciate that you both want to do something, and I am glad that you felt that your best option was to bring these things to me as you found them, but like I said to you already, Mac, none of this tells us anything about what happened to Connor, or to the rest of the victims, that we didn’t already know.”
“Oh, come on!” yells Doris, and I close my eyes, realizing that she’s past the point of being reasoned with. “You’re just saying all this bullshit because you know that you blew it!”
“Doris,” I hiss, “shut up!”
But Doris isn’t anywhere close to shutting up. Shutting up just isn’t her style.
“Eventually things will have to get back to normal, right? Even if they don’t, I’ll be gone, so I’m not really sure why I care, but chances are people will forget and move on. So if that’s your excellent policing strategy—hoping that people will forget what you screwed up—by all means, go ahead and sit on your ass. But when other people who actually care about this case go out and do the heavy lifting for you, the least you could do is pretend to be interested in what they find!”
Doris is on her feet now, glaring at Parnatsky from across the desk. I can tell that the cop wants to reach out and grab her by the neck, but instead she drops into the chair, and Doris is left standing there.
“Are you done?” Parnatsky asks, after a moment.
Doris’s face stays tight, but she seems to realize that she’s gone over the top, because she sits back down into the chair. The air is full of tension, and although I feel like I should say something to break up the uncomfortable silence, I draw a blank.
“Listen,” says Parnatsky, finally. “I know everyone thinks we blew this investigation, but the reality is, we are very open to every single clue. It’s just that we already knew Connor had figured out the killer’s identity. This evidence, just like Mac’s note, only proves something we already knew.”
“So you can’t do anything,” says Doris. It’s a statement, not a question.
“There isn’t much more to do,” says Parnatsky. “I’ll be straight with you both. Officially, the investigation is still open, but at this point we don’t have any reason to think that the killer is still in Camera Cove, or that he left behind any kind of clue that we didn’t already find.”
“There was nothing in the house?” I ask.
“There was lots in the house,” she says. “But he cleaned his tracks well enough to keep us from finding anything useful. No prints, no hairs, no fibers, nothing that led us anywhere but to dead ends.”
Doris’s chair scrapes abruptly back, and she stands, grabbing her bag from the floor beside her.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ve heard enough. I get the picture.”
She turns and leaves, the heavy wooden door swinging back with a low creak before it hits the wall.
I look at Parnatsky, who is rubbing at her temples. I want to apologize, but I don’t know what for. We’re all feeling the same thing. Helpless.
“I’d better follow her,” I say. She nods without looking up, and I move to the door.
“Mac,” says Parnatsky. I stop in my tracks and turn back to her. “Don’t think I don’t care.”
“I don’t think that,” I say.
“We’ve done everything we could,” she says. “If there were something to look into, I’d do it.”
“I know,” I say.
“You need to stop; let the past be the past. Digging around isn’t going to make anything better.”
“It’s not going to get better either way,” I say.
Doris is outside, sitting on the stone railing of the stairs. She looks remarkably calm, considering her blowup inside.
“They don’t know what they’re doing,” she says.
“She tried,” I say.
“I don’t know why I offered to help you,” she says. “It was a mistake. I can’t let myself get caught up in this. I’m sorry, Mac. I need to focus on the fall, on getting out of here.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her.
“You should leave it alone,” she says. “Seriously. I knew it was a bad idea to help you, but I thought…” she trails off.
“You thought what?” I ask.
“I thought I could convince you that this whole thing is a stupid idea,” she says. “People are talking, Mac.”
“Talking?”
“They’re saying you’re unhinged over Connor’s death. That you were—”
“What?” I ask, getting irritated.
“People are saying you were in love with him, and you’re starting to go a bit nuts.”
“In love with him?” I ask, my mind spinning. “Who is saying that?”
“Everyone,” she says. “Everyone thinks you were in love with Connor. To be honest, they thought you were in love with him before he even died. The way you hung off his every word, always staring at him like a heart-eyes emoji.”
For a moment, I’m speechless. Is this really what people think of me? “I didn’t—it isn’t true,” I say, finally.
“I know that, Mac,” she says, and her eyes are kind but pitying. “It’s just hard to be a gay kid in a small town. People say stuff. And…” she trails off.
“And what?” I ask.
“I didn’t want to tell you this, but people have started to notice things.”
“What kind of things?” I ask.
“I know you think you’ve kept it a big secret, but people are starting to suspect that you’re poking around into the murders.”
“How would anyone know that?” I ask, shocked.
“Come on, Mac,” she says. “All it takes is one person seeing you go in to Patricia Parnatsky, and another one to see you leaving George Smith’s house, and someone else to see you driving around near the trailer park. You know what this town is like. News travels. And now that you’re spending all this time obsessing over the murders, people are starting to talk again.”
I’m almost shaking. I take a step back from her, steadying myself against the stone railing of the stairs. “Who…who is saying shit like that?”
Doris reaches out and grabs my arm. I look at her, and her eyes are piercing and serious.
“Mac, just forget about them. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to tell you any of this. I know we aren’t super close, not like you were with Connor and Carrie, but you’re still my friend, and I hate to think of you ruining your future over this. Please, just move on. Get through the summer, get yourself to college, and forget that this stupid town ever existed.”
She lets go of my arm, then abruptly turns and walks down the steps. As she leaves, I realize that there isn’t much reason not to take her advice.
Maybe I should leave it alone. I’ve hit nothing but dead ends, and I’m forced to ask myself…
What is it that I’m really looking for?