I HAD LEARNED something in the past few weeks, something I didn’t realize was relevant until that moment, about Mallory Murphy. Hunter told me Jenny hated her. What is the most likely cause of the end of a childhood friendship between two teenage girls? It pained me to think with such bias, but it was probably a boy.
I sat in my car outside of the school, waiting for Mallory. I’d seen just enough pictures of her in my life to pick her out in a crowd. Eventually, she emerged from the building flanked by two lackeys. I got out of my car and met them at the edge of the parking lot.
“Hey, you’re Mallory, right?”
Mallory smirked as if I should know for sure who she was.
“I’m Jenny’s sister, Virginia.”
“I know.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure.” She dismissed her friends with some sort of flippant hand motion that was almost too stereotypical to stomach.
“Do you know if Jenny had a boyfriend?” I asked once we were alone.
“Why?”
“I just want to know. I’m her sister.”
“We already covered that. This is weird.” She looked around like she might need backup. “Is that all you wanted to ask?”
“I know you two were fighting.”
“How do you know that?” she said, asking me to prove it.
“Does it matter? Is it true or not?”
Mallory scoffed, not feeling any obligation to respect her elders. “I have to go.”
She turned, and I grabbed her arm, probably harder than I should have.
“Let go of me,” she said, and I released her immediately.
“Look.” I lowered my voice. “I don’t want to have to tell the police you know something. I don’t want to have to tell them you were fighting with Jenny over a guy.”
“We weren’t fighting over a guy,” she spat back at me. “We were fighting because she was being a bitch and then her psycho boyfriend attacked me.”
“What are you talking about? Who was her boyfriend, and what do you mean he attacked you?”
“Never mind, it was nothing.”
“What’s his name?”
“You can’t tell anyone I told you. You have to promise because that psycho will seriously kill me.”
“Oh my God, Mallory, did you tell anyone this? Jenny was literally murdered. Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“JP didn’t kill her.” She rolled her eyes at me like I was mentally challenged. “It was a pedophile. Everyone knows that.”
JP. I knew that name. Why did I know that name? Mark’s face flashed in front of me. I was sitting in the woods, and Mark was looking down at me. That was the name of the kid hiding in the woods, JP.
I turned away from Mallory and ran to my car.
“Where are you going?” she yelled after me, but I couldn’t look at her stupid, stupid face any longer.
I CALLED BRANDON, and he left the hospital to pick me up at my apartment. We were going to see JP, Jenny’s boyfriend, whose name hadn’t made the police file once. There was no question I would go with Brandon. His days of feigning resistance to being accompanied by a civilian on official police business were over. I mean, he wasn’t supposed to be investigating the case anyway. If anything, I was letting him accompany me on official civilian business.
“Are they all like this?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” I searched for what I meant. “So many different people who could have killed a thirteen-year-old girl.”
“I don’t know. I hope not, or I should just retire now. If I even still have a job.” Awkward. “So, you think JP might be involved?” he asked.
“What? I didn’t say that.”
“You said so many people. I wouldn’t call Gil so many people.”
I didn’t even realize what I was saying. In my mind, there were a lot more suspects. The things I now knew about Linda, my father, and myself, the thought of the rape being off the table. And Mark. Mark—Jenny’s teacher. Mark—the secret pedophile. The morality of keeping all of these thoughts to myself was tricky. Was I protecting my family, myself, or a murderer? If I told him everything I knew, would it help? Would it explain anything?
“I don’t know. What do you think?” I asked.
“You’re the one who’s met him.”
“He’s just a scrubby kid.” I thought about how JP had saved my ass with Mark. Throwing unfounded suspicion on him based on the word of that dimwit Mallory seemed like a shitty way to repay him. “It’s hard to give anyone more weight than Gil. That would be an insane coincidence.”
“I guess. The kid could have been jealous, though, if he found out she was talking to Gil. Jealousy is a good old-fashioned motive.”
“Well, now I think he might have done it,” I said, and smiled at Brandon.
“Your parents’ house.” He pointed as we turned onto Sanford Hill, as if I didn’t know.
“Would you like to stop and say hi?”
“Maybe if they were home. Awfully close, though.”
“Everything is close in this town.”
The road became densely packed with trees not much past the driveway to my old house. Brandon drove so slowly. He wasn’t used to roads like this with no streetlights and barely enough room for two cars.
My stomach dropped as we approached Mark’s house. I was practicing out of sight, out of mind, but now that his house was in front of me, he consumed my mind. I’d survived the past two Saturdays without a phone call. Did he notice? Did it upset him? Why did I care?
There is an instinct so human and uncontrollable where you want to be loved wholeheartedly by someone even if you don’t, or won’t, love them back, even if you know they are the worst thing on the planet for you. I can move on, but you can’t—that’s the rule. I was the strong person who didn’t care anymore, the one who was moving on. It was his role now to be paralyzed without my love.
I looked for Hunter’s car in the driveway, but only Mark’s Blazer was there. Of course I was happy she wasn’t there with Mark, but also, lately, the sight of her car, the thought of seeing her, brought an odd sense of comfort. She was my new drug. She was what I turned to late at night when I couldn’t be alone with my thoughts.
“Are you OK?” Brandon asked. Apparently I looked as uncomfortable on the outside as I felt on the inside.
“Yeah, JP’s house is up here around the corner.”
He steered the car around the bend like an elderly woman.
“That one,” I said.
IT TOOK FOUR knocks for someone to answer the door.
“Why hello,” Boomer said, showing no concern over our presence. His face was red and puffy, his thin hair pointed in different directions across the top of his head.
“Boomer, I don’t know if you know me, but—”
“You’re the Kennedy girl,” he cut me off. “People in this town got a lot to say about you. Should mind their own business, though, if you ask me.”
“I’m sure they do,” I said.
“Do you think you all could give me a ride to town?” he asked, making clear he couldn’t care less about why we were at his doorstep.
“Does JP live here?” Brandon asked.
“The kid? Yeah, he’s out back, I think.”
Brandon turned to go find JP.
“I’ll grab you before we head back to town,” I said. It was a long walk for an old drunk, even if he did it every day.
I shuffled my feet quickly to catch up with Brandon and match his stride. He was like a hunting dog who’d caught a scent, nose to the ground, charging forward.
I spotted JP as soon as we rounded the corner revealing the backyard. He was about thirty yards away near the tree line in the same raggedy camouflage jacket, which wasn’t doing its job since he was so clearly visible among the trees. His back was to us, and he appeared to be doing something with the thick tree trunk in front of him. Brandon slowed his pace, letting his footsteps become silent, and I followed his example.
As we got closer, I could make out what JP was doing with the tree. He was working a knife back and forth, trying to loosen it from the bark’s hold. It was a pretty big knife, but JP was being careful not to yank on it too hard and break the thing.
He heard us before we could say anything and whipped around in a defensive stance like any rational human being who is being snuck up on would. “What the fuck?” barked JP.
“JP, I’m Detective Colsen, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“OK,” he said. He looked at me for approval and I nodded to reassure him.
“Did you know Jenny Kennedy?” Brandon asked.
“Yeah.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“You asked a yes-or-no question. If you want more, ask an open-ended question.” He turned away from us and started pulling on the knife again.
“Listen,” Brandon said. “It’s completely your right to act like a punk, but I can tell you it won’t help. This is serious. A girl was murdered. A detective is at your house asking questions. I’m not someone you want to piss off.”
“Are you even a cop anymore? I saw the news. Let me see your badge.” JP crossed his arms and waited. Brandon scoffed, feigning that the request was ridiculous even though his badge was currently sitting in the desk of Sheriff Sharp.
“JP,” I said before things got any uglier, “we’re just trying to find out what happened. You told me yourself that Jenny was your friend. We’re just trying to find out if you were more than friends.”
His eyes narrowed, glaring at me. “Why?”
“Someone told me you were her boyfriend.”
“Let me guess, Mallory Murphy? I’m sure that little psycho had some really nice things to say about me.” JP thought Mallory was a psycho. Mallory thought JP was a psycho. Were we just wasting our time here, caught in the middle of some inane teenage drama?
“Look . . .” JP paused to look around like he was about to tell a secret someone would overhear. “Jenny was helping me with some of my classes and I was embarrassed, so we would meet in private and I guess someone saw us and thought it was more than that. Once Mallory hears a rumor about anyone else on the planet, she gets jealous. Everyone knows that, even me.”
Brandon took the information in and relaxed his shoulders almost in relief at the explanation. For me, a sharp pain dug into my stomach. I had heard about this kid’s tutor before, when it was a lie about me.
“When’s the last time you saw her?” Brandon asked.
“The Friday before, on the bus home from school.”
“Did Jenny ever mention a man named Gil?”
“I try not to associate myself with greasy perverts,” he said.
“What about Jenny? You think she would associate herself with him?” asked Brandon.
JP shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t really know her. The world’s a weird place, though.” He smiled, and Brandon reciprocated. Were they best bros now?
WE LEFT JP to his knife and headed back to the car. The whole interaction left me uneasy. JP’s performance gave me questions, and Brandon’s gave me concerns. I reached for the car door and remembered my promise.
“I’m gonna grab Boomer.”
“Really?” Brandon asked, annoying me further.
“Don’t be an asshole.”
He threw his hands up to surrender.
The front door was open a crack, and I pushed it the rest of the way. “Boomer, we’re heading to town if you want a ride.”
A hacking cough echoed from inside the bathroom. “One second, hon,” his voice came through the door.
With a minute to kill, I moseyed around—snooping was becoming my specialty. There were two bedrooms off the back of the living room. The one on the left was Boomer’s based on the extra-large cargo shorts and yellowed T-shirts all over the floor. The door to the second room was closed.
Out the window I could see JP still hard at work on getting the knife out, and Boomer was busy hacking away in the bathroom, so I opened the door. The room was bare, a twin mattress on the floor with a wool comforter on top, no sheets. A pile of T-shirts and underwear leaked out from the closet. The wooden slat door was closed as much as it could be with the clothes in the way.
I stepped over a few schoolbooks that weren’t being properly cared for and reached for the closet handle. As the door opened and the light snuck in, I saw what I hadn’t even remembered I was looking for. Something was not sitting well with me, and something had called me to that room. Underneath two hanging sweaters I could never see JP wearing was a stuffed-to-the-brim purple L.L.Bean backpack. Jenny’s backpack.