Driver's Dead (8 page)

Kirsten stared at her best friend. Maria's eyes were still teary, but firm as stone. “Kirsten, like it or not, you are Suspect Number One.”

K
IRSTEN FELT HER WHOLE
body go slack.
Suspect Number One.
Great. She'd live the rest of her life unable to tell the truth. Feeling tormented by a murder she didn't commit.

The pounding of footsteps made her and Maria look toward the street. Virgil was approaching them, red-faced and out of breath.

“I lost her,” he said. “She can really fly.”

The three of them stood there, not knowing what to say next. Kirsten thought of telling Virgil what she'd just explained, but Maria was looking at her with a definite
No
in her eyes.

This was best kept a very
small
secret. For as long as possible.

Until Gwen blabbed it to
The New York Times.

Schoolmates were shuffling past them now, arms around each other's shoulders, sniffling, crying, speaking in hushed voices.

“Maybe we should go,” Maria suggested.

“Yeah.”
Virgil put an arm around Maria, and she put hers around Kirsten.

Together they walked toward the school.

The lobby felt like a funeral home. Students who had missed or avoided the park soon found out what had happened. A few ran out the door. Some were weeping. Others clearly wanted to go to the park and see what they'd missed.

A P.A. announcement instructed all students to go to homeroom. Then the classes would proceed to the auditorium for an assembly.

Kirsten and Maria were in different homerooms, but they managed to sit together in the auditorium. The place was practically silent. Like a movie theater immediately after a sad film has ended.

Only this was no movie.

“By now we all know about the tragic accident that took the life of Robert Maxson,” began the principal, Mr. Eliades.

Accident?
Kirsten suddenly whirled around to look for Gwen. Of course, she was nowhere to be seen.

Kirsten couldn't listen to the rest. Concentration was impossible. She caught a few words as they wafted by her:
precautions, risky behavior, buddy system… .

How to Prevent Future Occurrences. That was the topic of the speech. Did Mr. Eliades care that one of his students was dead? Would he have cared more if it were the class valedictorian, the star football player, instead of Scuzzball Rob?

A cry lodged in Kirsten's throat, and it came out sounding like a hiccup. Maria began rubbing her back.

“ … After dark, do not travel outside alone… .” Mr. Eliades droned on.

“He wasn't
alone,”
Kirsten whispered.

“Ssshhhh,” Maria urged.

Four hours later (well,
it felt
that long), the students were dismissed for the rest of the day.

Kirsten, Virgil, and Maria paused by the entrance. “Gwen wasn't there, was she?” Maria asked.

“No,” Kirsten said.

“Are you kidding?” Virgil snorted. “The way she was running, she's halfway to Montauk by now.”

“I hope she keeps running,” Maria grumbled, “right into the ocean.”

“I still can't believe she would do something like that,” Kirsten said.

“The girl is out of her mind, like I told you,” Maria replied. “Ever since Nguyen died. She kind of snapped.”

Virgil was nodding in agreement. “It's true.”

“That was when Mr. Good Taste over here stopped drooling over her,” Maria said, looking at Virgil.

“Thanks, Maria.” Virgil glowered at her.

“I mean, I don't know what he saw in her—”

“Maria, stop… .”

“Who knows? It could have been Virgil instead of Rob out there—”

“Maria!”
Virgil looked disgusted. He turned and stalked away.

Kirsten watched him for a moment. “You can be hard on him, you know—”

When she turned back, Maria was crying.

“Sorry,” Maria said. “I just got carried away. I mean, he was so in love with her. He couldn't see how she was using poor Nguyen. He couldn't see
anything!
You see how fast he left us when Gwen ran away?”

“You think he still likes her?”

“I don't know what I think anymore.”

Now it was Kirsten's turn to comfort Maria. “Don't worry. We're all upset by this. Give him a call, talk it over.”

“Yeah. Okay, Kirsten. See you.”

“Bye.”

As Maria headed toward her house, Kirsten walked toward Merrick Road. The police cars were still in the park, but the crowd had dwindled. Curious passersby outnumbered students now.

Kirsten veered into the park. She retraced her steps from the night before. When she reached the police cordon, she stopped. Beyond it, police officers eyed her warily as they sipped coffee and talked to each other.

Kirsten looked at the tire tracks that had gouged through the soil.

Tire tracks.

Cars weren't allowed in the park. Even if someone managed to drive in, the footpaths were narrow, winding, and rutted. The trees had grown so close it would be practically impossible to get from the street to the far side of the park.

But the tracks seemed to come from the pond. Where they began, the flattened trash basket lay forgotten. It was maybe ten feet from where she and Rob had been sitting. The tire tracks continued from there, went toward the bench, and continued a few more feet until they stopped inside the cordon.

Maybe Gwen drove close to the edge of the water and quietly sneaked up on Rob. He got up to run, but it was too late.

But the soil near the pond was soggy. The tires would have left impressions the whole way. Or gotten stuck.

And Rob would have seen it—or heard it.

Kirsten walked closer to the trash basket. It was more than flattened; it looked ripped apart, as if a bomb had exploded inside it.

Among the stuff strewn about, Kirsten recognized one item. A glossy sheet of paper, crumpled and charred, with the words, WIN THE CAR OF YOUR DREAMS! visible.

The flyer she'd thrown at Rob.

Kirsten's breath quickened. It was the last thing they had looked at together. She glanced at the cops. They were deep in conversation. Quietly she knelt down and picked up the flyer.

She read the words KIRSTEN'S CAR written across the top.

But her heart stopped when she looked underneath.

The car in the photo was gone.

I
T HAD TO BE
a trick.

Rob must have had several of these flyers. He was planning to show Kirsten different ones throughout the night. To confuse her. Tease her.

The flyer Kirsten had thrown at Rob had a photo of the Escort. Surely if she snooped around, she'd find it.

Kirsten kicked aside the scattered papers. She looked over the cordon, scanned the ground. She saw the cigarette pack Rob had dropped, but nothing else. Now some people in the crowd were staring at her. And some cops.

Kirsten felt weak again. Knotted. Shivery.

She turned from the crowd, trying to look as normal as possible, and headed home.

Shock. Grief. Betrayal. Fear. One feeling flooded over the other. The neighborhood seemed to be spinning. Kirsten reached her house in a daze.

When she opened the door, she was hit by the smell.

It was suffocating now, no longer a vague stuffiness. The smell was heavy, rotten, as if a dead animal were decomposing in some hidden corner.

Was this what it felt like to lose your mind? First you start seeing things, then hearing things, then smelling dead animals in your nice middle-class house… .

Next comes the lobotomy.

CALL EXTERMINATOR! Kirsten wrote on a sheet of paper by the kitchen phone.

The smell was making her dizzy. She went to one of the kitchen's casement windows and began cranking it open.

Bleeeeep!

Kirsten jumped at the sudden sound.

The phone. Calm down.

She lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

“Kirsten!” Her mom was practically yelling. “I just heard what happened. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“How did you get home?”

“Walked.”

“By yourself?”

“Mom,
you raised me in New York City, remember? I can walk home alone in Port Lincoln.”

I just can't stand this house, that's all. Plus I may soon be wanted for the killing of the boy who kept me out late and stole my keys, who was actually run over by an ex-girlfriend in a car that materialized out of thin air. Now excuse me while I look for a Ford Escort that fell out of a photo.

If she even began telling her parents any of this, forget it. Off to the psychiatric ward.

“Oh, Kirsten,” her mom said, “I'm so sorry. What an
awful
thing to happen. Did you know the boy?”

Kirsten bit her lip. “A … a little.”

“Sweetheart, you sound upset. Do you need me to come home?”

“I'll be all right. Maybe I'll go over to Maria's or something.”

“Just be careful.” Her mom sighed. “Now you see why your dad and I are so concerned when you stay out late. Don't be fooled. These days, just because it's a suburban neighborhood doesn't mean it's safe.”

“I know, Mom. Thanks. See you later.”

“Bye-bye.”

Silence again.

Where was Nat? Hateful as he was, at least he'd be another body in the house.

Ugh. Bad choice of words.

Kirsten began opening all the windows she could. The wind was raw with a hint of winter, but it swept away the musty air.

And it cleared the cobwebs from Kirsten's mind, which began working like crazy.

Maybe Rob did see Gwen. Maybe he saw her drive up in the car and waited for her. He assumed she'd stop. Then, at the last minute, she sped up and nailed him.

But why would she have stuck around the scene of the crime? And where did she put the car?

It was as if the car had just dropped from the sky.

Appeared out of nowhere.

Suddenly Kirsten bolted from the kitchen. She ran upstairs. Darting across her room, she yanked open her desk drawer.

The flyer was still there. On top of the letter to the Trangs.

She took the flyer out and stared at it.

The Escort was no longer in profile. It was angled toward her.

It had moved.

“Oh my God.”

Kirsten slapped the flyer on her desk.

Crazy.

She had put this flyer in the drawer. The car had been in profile. No one had switched it.

Losing my mind.

Rob's Escort had moved, too. Much farther. The last time Kirsten saw it, it had practically been facing front.

No. The
second-to-last
time.

The
last
time, it was gone.

And Rob had been run over.

“No!”

Kirsten's shout died without an echo. From her desktop, the Escort's grille looked like a leering face.

It was waiting.

Waiting to turn full circle.

And then what? Then it would run her over, too?

A laugh exploded from Kirsten. It sounded like a squeal, shrill and unexpected.

This was insane. Absolutely looney tunes. Cars did not jump out of photographs. It was impossible.

For God's sake, throw it out!

Kirsten reached for the flyer. Her eyes caught a glimpse of the letter in her drawer.

Mr. and Mrs. Trang.

She had forgotten about that. She was supposed to forward it.

Then it began.

The moaning.

It wasn't exactly a sound. Kirsten wasn't hearing it through her ears. It was vibrating in her bones, careening up her body to her brain, where it gathered force until she thought she would split in two.

“Ohhhhh …”

“Ohhhhh …”

Was this what happened before Rob was killed?

Kirsten had to throw the flyer out. Her fingers closed around it but it was like touching a hot coil.

“Yeeow!”

She put her throbbing fingers in her mouth. They were on fire.

Fire.

Paper caught fire. Paper could not be as hot as that.

But the flyer looked completely normal. Not even a wisp of smoke. And Kirsten felt her eyes drawn again to the letter in her still-open drawer.

Mr. and Mrs. Trang.

Forget the flyer.
Mail the letter. Mail it now.

The urge was pounding through her. She grabbed a red marker and completed what she'd written already, until it read: ADDRESSEE MOVED. PLEASE FORWARD.

And then she knew. Somehow she knew who was invading her. Forcing her attention away from the flyer. Making her mail this letter.

“Nguyen?” The word escaped her mouth in a parched whisper.

She looked at her closet.

And then, like the sudden end of a wrenching nightmare, the moaning stopped.

“N
GUYEN?”
S
HE REPEATED.

The letter shook in her hand as she stepped toward her closet. That was where the moaning had first come from. And the blood.

She reached toward the doorknob. Fear clamped her like a vise. Her fingers stopped inches away.

Balling her hand into a fist, she knocked.

“Nguyen? Uh, anybody there?”

She waited, then knocked again.

Slowly she wrapped her fingertips around the knob.

Knock-knock-knock-knock!

Kirsten jumped back from the door and screamed at the top of her lungs.

She fell to the floor and caught her breath.

It was the front door.

The knocking had come from downstairs. Calm down.

Knock-knock-knock-knock!

Kirsten ran to her window and looked outside. An unfamiliar bike was propped up against a maple tree out front.

She ran downstairs and through the house, then pulled open the front door.

“Doesn't your bell work?” Virgil was pressing the button repeatedly.