ARE THEY REALLY THAT DIFFERENT?
A couple of days later, I’m walking into work when I spot Sam in the parking lot. The girl who stabbed her own father. The woman who is now even higher on my list of suspects.
She’s loading a bag of groceries and a case of Coke Zero into the trunk of her car. It’s a silver Audi, as sleek and understated as she is. She’s wearing high-heeled sandals and a short-sleeved black dress that skims her thin figure. Would those slender arms be capable of plunging a knife into my mother so many times? Fighting her drunk dad would be one thing. Killing two people while their kid watched would be something else entirely.
She returns the cart to the corral, then leans against the metal railing, rummages in her purse, and comes up with a red-and-white pack of cigarettes. Unfiltered Marlboros. She taps one out, lights it, and draws the smoke in so hard her thin face becomes just plain gaunt.
This is my chance to talk with her, to see if I can shake loose the truth. With my apron tucked under my arm, I walk over to her before I can change my mind. “Mind if I bum a cigarette before I have to go to work?”
Her laugh has a lot of gravel in it. “You’re too young to be smoking.”
“I’m eighteen,” I lie.
“Uh-huh.” She looks me up and down. “Eighteen’s still too young. If everyone waited until they were twenty-one before they picked up a cigarette, no one would ever be a smoker. They hook you while you’re young and stupid and you think you’ll live forever. Trust me, I know.”
Despite her words, Sam hands me a cigarette and her lighter. It’s heavy and silver. I manage to light up without too much fumbling. I used to smoke a little back in middle school, back when I wanted to fit in with a certain crowd, even if it was the kind of crowd most kids didn’t want to join. The yeah-I-smoke, yeah-I-pierced-my-own-ears/nose/lip, yeah-my-friend-made-this-tattoo crowd.
Eventually I realized it was all a little stupid, and I stopped. I still have what’s supposed to be a ghost-bat on my biceps, although it actually doesn’t look much like either.
She sucks down another lungful and then sticks out her hand. “I’m Sam.”
“Olivia.” We shake hands lightly. I’m mostly pretending to smoke, not wanting to start coughing.
“You were at Terry’s funeral.” She looks at me more closely, and I try to maintain a neutral expression. Do those cool blue eyes belong to a killer? “So do I know your parents or something?”
I shake my head. “I just moved into Naomi Benson’s old house. The neighbor, Nora Murdoch, wasn’t feeling well that day. She asked me to drive her.”
“Naomi wasn’t much older than you when she was murdered. She had these high cheekbones.” Sam touches her own face as she keeps looking at me. “Kind of like yours.”
Just as I’m starting to panic, the answer comes to me like a gift. “Was she part Native American? Because I am.” I have no idea if that’s true. I change the subject both to distract Sam and to ask what I really want to know. “So who do you think killed them? I’ve heard all kinds of theories since I moved in. I’ve started reading up on the case, trying to figure out what happened.”
She blows a stream of smoke sideways. This close, I can see how carefully her face is made up, every square centimeter covered with a thin layer of foundation or eye shadow or blush.
“I wasn’t that close to them, at least not Naomi. Terry and I used to hang around together when we were younger, but I hadn’t talked to him in the months before it happened.”
Is she lying, or was the person I overheard at the funeral? Or is it all just a matter of how you see things, what you choose to remember?
“Didn’t you say something at the service about spending time with him at the river?”
“Yeah. In high school. But then I went to community college and got a job selling real estate, and Terry started working at the mill. Things change when you get older. You grow up. You grow apart.”
“Still, you must have some guesses about what happened to them.” I keep my eyes on the glowing ash of my cigarette, not wanting to look too eager.
Sam pauses for a moment, then says, “I kind of wonder if they should be looking at Jason.”
A thrill goes through me, but I squint as though I’m trying to remember. “Wasn’t that the guy who was Terry’s best friend?”
“Yeah. He was also more than a little in love with Naomi. Not to speak ill of the dead, but I don’t know what everyone saw in her.” Sam’s mouth twists. I saw her picture in the annual. Sam was just as striking back then, and far less brittle than she is now. Sure, my mom was pretty, but she also looked young and unfinished. Even when Sam was seventeen, she already looked like an adult, cool and self-contained. Her voice interrupts my thoughts. “Jason used to carry a knife everywhere.”
And he’s a trucker. Still, Duncan had a point when he argued against this idea. “But why would Jason do it? Kill his best friend?”
“Maybe they had some kind of fight over her. Maybe he killed Terry, and then he had to kill Naomi.”
“If he was in love with Naomi, why would he stab her so many times?”
“All it takes is once.” She exhales twin streams of smoke.
“What?” I’m not following, at least not consciously, but the back of my neck prickles.
“If you stabbed somebody once, it would already be too late. You couldn’t stop. You would just have to keep stabbing until it was done. Even if it took nineteen times.” Sam turns her icy blue eyes to me as she stubs out her cigarette on the metal rail. “Love, hate—are they really that different?”