The first thing I notice is how bad my head hurts. Blood trickles down the side of my face from a nasty wound behind my ear. The next thing I notice is how bright the sun is. So bright it hurts. I look away, but it still feels like the light is a knife slipping through the cut on my head to attack the inside of my skull. The pain is so intense it’s making me nauseous. I remember now being hit in the head. Twice. By Greg? No, it had to have been a third person. Someone I didn’t know was here. Maybe Amy didn’t know, either. I’m glad she got away. How much time before help arrives?
Any movement causes the light in my head to slice deeper into my brain. I try to be still, but the ground seems to be doing a slow spin, making me dizzy and disoriented.
Someone is talking. Maybe focusing on them will help reduce the pain. I make out two voices. And now I see two figures. They’re not talking so much as arguing. I know I blacked out, but it must not have been for long. Everything’s a blur, and trying to cut through it to see the two figures only makes my pain and nausea worse. I close my eyes and try just to listen.
Slowly, the words become clear. “You didn’t have to hit him like that.” The first voice is male.
“If you’d done what you were supposed to, I wouldn’t have had to hit him.”
“What if he’s dead?”
“I hope he is. That was the plan, wasn’t it? What were you doing giving him the shovel?”
A sudden stab of pain in my head almost makes me cry out. I bite my lip to stop from groaning.
“I was improvising. I figured he could fill up the hole himself.”
“You gave him a weapon! You were supposed to just shoot him.”
“That was your plan.” The first voice again. It’s Greg. “It’s my dad’s gun. He’ll notice it’s been fired. I thought we could try…something else.”
“You agreed to it.” The second voice is female. But who? Who else could be involved in this?
“I never actually said—”
“By being here, by calling him and setting this up, you agreed to it. You killed Alycia, you can kill him!”
“But Alycia was an accident.”
“You hit her with a bag full of books.”
“I didn’t mean to. This…killing Alden… This is murder.”
Razor-edged fingers crawl down my spine.
“We’ve been through all this. You have to.”
“Damn it, I’m not going to do it.”
“Don’t you curse at me. You know I hate that.”
Silence.
Then Greg’s voice responds. “I’m sorry, Amy.”
He didn’t have to say her name for me to realize who the mystery girl is. My gut churns as I finally piece it together, my mind and my heart doing battle because as much as I don’t want to believe it, there’s no denying I was as wrong about Amy as a person can be.
“You know I don’t like it when you curse.”
“Yes, I know. I said I was sorry.”
Another silence.
Amy didn’t run away to get help. She stayed, probably hid on the field side of the dugout wall while I was fighting Greg. And when I got close to the gun, she came out and hit me with the shovel.
This whole thing was a setup. The so-called argument on the way to school that got me to talk to her, Greg treating her badly at his locker. Her telling me how Greg had changed. Her shock when I told her Greg was a murderer. Amy acting on the phone like Greg was hurting her. All of it fake, an act. I’d been trying to save her, but Amy had already known what her boyfriend had done and has been helping him cover it up.
Some investigator I am.
I try not to move. I just listen.
Amy’s voice comes back. “Do you really think even with the evidence destroyed, he won’t say anything?”
“No one would believe him,” Greg argues. “A lot of people think he got weird after what happened to his parents.”
“It only takes a few.”
“If we threatened him—”
“Threatened him. Really? You mean like you tried to do?”
“Threaten to tell the people he’s been spying on. Threaten to tell Rick what Alden wrote about him. If it’s true, Rick won’t want people to know. He’ll beat the shit out of Alden.”
“Language!”
“All right. Beat the crap out of him. But you and I are the ones who know what he wrote. We could threaten to tell all of them.”
Another part of the lie. Rick Kellerman didn’t notice me following him. Amy only knew because Greg had read it in my notebook and told her about it. She’d been toying with me.
“Rick’s a big macho wrestler, but he likes fashion,” Amy says. “Big deal. Besides, you don’t have the notebook anymore, you burned it. You had to. Alden could just deny he’d had a notebook.”
Greg mumbles something I can’t make out, but it sounds like he’s still not down with the whole Kill Alden plan. Come on, Greg. Come on. Stand up to her. I don’t want to die. Please. Then comes another pause. Longer this time. I consider opening my eyes to see what’s happening.
Finally, Amy starts talking again. “I wouldn’t have gone on to church camp if I didn’t think you could handle this. You should have gotten rid of that backpack right away, or at least as soon as you read the notebook.”
“I didn’t think I had time after we dumped Alycia’s body, so I hid it in the best place I could. I figured I’d get rid of it later. How the hell should I have known this dweeb was stalking me, for Christ’s sake?”
“Do not use the Lord’s name in vain!” She sounds like she’s freaking out. “How many times do I have to tell you—?”
“Oh, come on, Amy!”
“You know how I hate that!”
Greg says nothing.
“You know what you have to do,” she says.
“I think he’s dead already,” Greg grumbles.
“He’s not. I can see him breathing. Kill him and we’ll dump his body in Powell Lake like we did Alycia’s. No one will ever find them.”
Apparently, neither of them saw the news this morning.
I hear Greg take a shaky breath. “Alycia’s death was an accident.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I didn’t mean to kill her.”
“Try telling the police that when they arrest you.”
“This is different. I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Amy snaps, her voice rising as she continues. “You should have been sorry about cheating on me with that girl. Because none of this would have happened if you hadn’t done that!”
“I told you I was sorry. I wanted to stop. But she had those pictures…”
“I wanted to be your first,” Amy says, her voice suddenly quiet. “And you mine. When the time was right. When we knew for sure we were the right one for each other.”
“I made a mistake,” Greg says.
The steel returns to her voice. “And now it’s time to remedy it.”
“I…can’t…”
Amy loses it. “Do I have to do everything for you?” She takes several deep breaths, maybe to get herself under control. “Do I have to remind you where you would be if not for me? In jail, that’s where. Your solution after you hit her was to run away. What would you have done if she hadn’t called me before she called you?”
My God. How deep did Amy’s involvement go?
“I told you, I didn’t know she’d done that,” Greg murmurs.
My investigative mind kicks into overdrive: There had been no other phone number on the burner. Just Greg’s. She must have called Amy on her regular phone.
She left a trail.
“Of course you didn’t. She acted all innocent, claimed she hadn’t know about us, when all along she just wanted me to see you two together. Prove what she told me on the phone—that you were tired of waiting for me and found someone better.”
The anger I hear in Amy’s voice is something I never thought I’d hear from her. “Girls like her don’t understand why waiting is important. But I thought you understood, Greg.”
“It wasn’t like that—”
Amy talks right through him. “Then you make it worse by killing her. If I hadn’t shown up when I did, you would have eventually wimped out and told the police. You needed me to show you a way out of this. I did that.”
Greg didn’t lose Amy’s necklace. She lost it. She got here after Greg killed Alycia, and the clasp broke, and the necklace fell off while she was helping him move Alycia Beaumont’s body. By the time she realized it was gone, she didn’t know when she had lost it, or where, and didn’t have time to look since she was already late getting to church camp. Maybe she told Greg to look, but if he did, it wasn’t until after Charlie and I had searched the park and found it. Meanwhile, Amy spent the weekend at camp acting like nothing had happened. The cut on her head really was from walking into a tree branch while she was there, I guess.
“All you had to do was get rid of the evidence,” Amy is saying. “But you couldn’t even do that right. I can’t believe you didn’t delete everything off that phone! How could you be so stupid? Or maybe you really wanted to keep those pictures. Do you know how awful it was for me, seeing them for the first time when Alden showed them to me?”
All the pieces fall together in my mind; I know what really happened, and I see how wrong I was, how easily Amy played me.
Yet while listening to Milton High School’s perfect couple fall apart like this, I can’t help but feel like there’s something I’m missing. Something I can’t put my finger on. Maybe I’m only imagining it. The way my head is spinning, it’s amazing I’m able to think at all.
“Take the gun, Greg.”
“Amy, I…I can’t…”
Is it something I heard? It feels like something I should know. Something I would know if my head didn’t hurt so much.
“You started this. You finish it.”
I have to do something. Move, if I can, though I’m not even sure I can get up. I open my eyes and, through the blur, see Greg, now with the gun in his hand, turning slowly toward me.
It keeps tugging at me. Something I heard on the news report this morning.
“I don’t want to kill anybody, Amy,” Greg says, sounding like a six-year-old who doesn’t want to drink his milk.
Something Amy said while she was pretending to be scared when Greg was holding the gun on her.
Amy snaps back at him. “You should have thought of that before you killed that girl!”
That’s it!
Greg brings the gun up.
“Did you strangle her, Greg?” I blurt out.
Greg stops, holding the gun straight out. They both stare at me with their mouths open in surprise.
“He’s awake,” Amy says. “He’s been faking it, listening to us all this time. Shoot him!”
Just the act of talking makes my head pound, but I push through it. “Did you strangle Alycia Beaumont, Greg?”
“What? No!”
I manage to lift my arm enough to point at Amy. “She said you did.”
“She…what?”
“Will you just kill him already?” Amy snarls.
“She said it right after I got here,” I spit out through gritted teeth. “Did you strangle her, Greg?”
“No. I just hit her with my backpack.”
“Stop listening to him! Pull the trigger!” Amy’s voice has taken on an additional edge.
“But she was strangled,” I tell Greg, struggling to my knees. “It was on the news this morning. Her body was found in Powell Lake last night.”
Amy’s head snaps toward me in surprise. Greg says, “They found her?”
“He’s lying,” Amy barks.
I plow forward, fighting nausea, my attention focused on Greg as best I can. “Yes, she’d had a head wound. But the news reported there were marks on her neck that looked like…signs of strangulation. The police think it’s possible that’s what killed her. Not the head wound.”
Greg’s hand holding the gun drops to his side. “But I didn’t strangle her,” he says.
“They said it’s ‘possible,’” Amy retorts. “But they don’t know. There could be other reasons for marks on her neck. Or maybe you grabbed her neck first, then hit her with the backpack.”
“I thought you said I was lying,” I tell Amy. Her head snaps back at me, anger blazing in her eyes.
“I didn’t grab her neck. I’m sure of it,” Greg says. “We were arguing, getting louder, and next thing I knew I was swinging my books over my head at her, and she hit the wall. I dropped the backpack, and she fell.”
“He’s just trying to confuse you—”
“I didn’t strangle her,” Greg says, more emphatic now.
“How did she know, Greg?” I say.
For the first time since I came to, Amy looks flustered. “I…saw it on the news this morning. Just like you did.”
“No, that’s not true,” I say. “You were talking about dumping me in Powell Lake, just like you did with Alycia. You said no one would ever find us. You didn’t know her body had already been found.”
Another first: Amy struggling for a comeback.
“How did you know Alycia was strangled?” I ask.
“Yes, Amy,” Greg says, turning toward her. “How did you know?”
Amy says nothing, her back ramrod straight.
“Because she’s the one who strangled her,” I say to Greg. “She got here soon after you ran off. Because, like she said, Alycia didn’t just call you, Greg. She called her. Timed their meeting so Amy would find you together. Alycia thought she could manipulate you. But she hadn’t counted on you getting violent.”
The world spins a bit, and I wince, but continue. “What Amy finds instead is Alycia on the ground, bleeding. Maybe awake but hurt. Maybe unconscious, but definitely still breathing. It’s easy to figure out what happened; did you leave your backpack, which, of course, she recognized? Is that what caused you to come back?”
“Yes,” Greg says, after several seconds. “But I also thought I might have been wrong about her being dead. I thought if she wasn’t, I could help her. Call an ambulance. Or maybe it wasn’t even as bad as I thought. But when I got back…” He looks at Amy.
“Amy was there,” I say. “Telling you she found Alycia like this. Telling you you killed her. But don’t worry, she said. She loved you so much, she’d help you get rid of the body. Because she would do anything for you. Is that what she told you, Greg? And you believed her? She was really doing it for herself. Because she’s the one who killed her. She took advantage of the situation and strangled Alycia until she really was dead.”
It’s taken just about all the energy I have left to get all that out, and I roll onto my side. By the look on Amy’s face, if I didn’t get all of it right, I got most of it. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but if it’s bad, I’m not sure I have the strength to stop it.
Greg has turned back to Amy, the gun still down by his side. “Why did you do it?” he asks her, his voice dull and distant.
“Greg…”
“Why did you do it, Amy?”
To her credit, Amy doesn’t flinch. At first it even looks like she might try to keep up the act and deny everything.
But then her expression changes, her eyes turning dark as her usually sweet face hardens into something cold. “You and I had everything,” she hisses, “and you threw it away because you couldn’t wait? Sex was more important to you than what we had? When she called, she was especially sure to tell me about the pictures. Because she felt so awful about it, she said, and thought I should know. She didn’t feel awful. She did it to dig at me, to gloat. That’s the kind of girl you’d gotten yourself involved with.”
When Greg doesn’t respond, her tone and expression changes again, to something between pleading and trying to sound reasonable. “I did it for you, Greg. For both of us. So that no one would ever have to know. Everyone looks up to us. We have to set an example.”
“I might have been able to save her.”
“Oh, please, stop telling yourself that. You just wanted to get your backpack, maybe see if she had the phone on her, which fortunately she did, or we’d have really been in trouble. I saw your face; you were relieved she was dead.”
“You’re wrong. I was sorry I hit her. I would’ve—”
“So sorry you went along with my plan to cover it up?”
Greg starts to object. But then he stops and turns away from her. Amy hesitates, then moves toward him, placing her hand tentatively on his back. “Greg, we can still get out of this.” She points at me. “If he’s dead, nobody will know.”
I find the energy to get back to my knees. “You haven’t killed anybody yet, Greg.” My pounding heart competes with the throbbing in my head. “You didn’t mean to kill Alycia, and you didn’t.” I try pointing at Amy, but this time it feels like I’m trying to control a wet noodle. “She killed her.”
“You think that’s going to make a difference to the police?” Amy counters. “Kill him. We’ll figure out some other way to get rid of his body. We’ll find someplace to bury him, like we just did with the evidence. Then we’ll never talk about it again. We’ll go back to normal, and no one will ever know.”
“Normal,” Greg mutters. Amy moves in behind him, wrapping both arms around his waist, her hands hanging tantalizingly close to the front of his jeans, below his belt buckle. “If you really want to, I’d even be willing to…you know.”
“Jesus!” Greg explodes, pushing her away and turning. “Don’t do that. What makes you think we can ever be normal again? I’m not going to shoot him, Amy. I’m not.” He tosses the gun on the ground.
Bad move. Amy jumps and picks it up. Then she points it at me. “If you’re not going to do it,” she barks, “then I will!”
“Amy…”
“You’re not going to stop me, Greg.”
My knees give out and I flop onto the ground, unable to even try to crawl away. I’m not as scared about the prospect of dying as I thought I’d be. It just means I’m going to get to see my parents very soon.
I just wish I could have said goodbye to Charlie. To Uncle Bill.
“Amy…”
“I’m doing this for both of us.”
I close my eyes.
“Amy, I didn’t…”
I hear a click and my insides shrivel, followed a second later by another click, then more, one right after the other.
Amy’s shouting, almost hysterical now. “You didn’t load it? You didn’t put the bullets in the gun?”
“I couldn’t. I’m sorry. I told you. I’m not a killer.”
“You idiot. You—”
I open my eyes, expecting to see Amy rushing toward me, ready to strangle me. But what I see is Amy collapsing on the ground, crying as if it’s the end of her world. Which, in a way, I guess it is.
I see Greg standing over her; he’s not trying to comfort her. He’s just staring, his face a combination of disgust and terrible pain.
And then, all at once, Miller’s Park is filled with the sounds of police sirens, police lights flashing, the voice of Chief Walker shouting, “Over here, over here!”
I try to stand, getting almost all the way up before I start to fall again, my dizzying head about to explode.
And somehow, miraculously, Charlie is there to catch me, her strong arms cradling me gently to the ground. “I’m here, Alden,” she murmurs into my ear. “I’m here.”
A police officer takes the never-loaded gun out of Amy’s hand and another officer helps her to her feet as she continues to cry inconsolably. It sounds like she will never stop. Another officer has her hands on Greg’s arms, leading him away as Greg hangs his head.
“Just hang in there,” I hear Charlie say. Then she says, “What’s with the shovel?”
“The evidence,” I manage, my mouth feeling heavy and mushy. “They made me throw it in a hole and burn it, then bury the embers.”
“Aw, man. All that work…”
“It’s okay,” I mumble, fumbling in my pants pocket.
“What? What is it?”
I manage to pull out the cell phone and hand it to Charlie. “There are pictures on here.”
“Pictures?” she asks.
“You’ll see. More evidence.”
“You didn’t burn it?”
“I switched it with the phone you bought.”
“The burner phone?”
“Yeah. I know I was supposed to get rid of it after I called the police, but I never did. Greg checked to make sure I hadn’t switched notebooks, but he never thought to check the phone I threw.”
I can sense Charlie smiling. “That’s my Alden,” she says. “Always thinking.”
She gives me a soft kiss on the cheek.
From somewhere in the distance, Chief Walker shouts, “Paramedics! Over here!”
Followed by Uncle Bill crying, “Alden, Alden!”
A good investigator knows when to call it a day.
The paramedics carry me into an ambulance. But for the few brief seconds before they get here, there is no other place I’d rather be than in Charlie’s arms.