Killing Britney (14 page)

thirty-two

The
fact that this was her father hadn’t sunk in yet. She understood it intellectually. She recognized his blue slacks and the black tie with the textured black stripes. She recognized his large hands, though the way they cradled the shotgun—one hand on the barrel, thumb looped around the trigger, the other clenched tightly around the base of the shoulder rest—was grotesque, unnatural, hard for her to fully comprehend at the moment.

Britney shrieked.

She shrieked and shrieked. She couldn’t stop.

It felt like someone had grabbed her by the neck and was squeezing with all his might, holding her head in place so that no matter how much she wanted to turn away, she had to look.

Right now, all she was able to register was the gore. The shelf behind his desk that contained his old law school books, slick with blood. The metal balance-weighted sculpture, that airplane he liked to spin while he thought over his cases, tipped off the stand now, wrapped in deep crimson ribbons of what could only be brains. The shards of bone glued to his framed diploma.

Most of all she saw his head, or what was left of it, larger than life, his right eye dangling from a shattered socket, his skull sheared in half, leaking thick globular blood, his jaw hanging slack from one hinge.

Detective Russell was holding her, an arm around her shoulders, a hand softly to her head. Britney sank into her embrace. That felt nice. A relief, just for a moment, from holding herself up. Her shrieks slowly evolved into sobs.

“Don’t look, Britney. Just don’t look. Come on. Let’s go into the other room. Here … let’s … yeah … this way.”

The detective led her, almost carried her, out of the den. They wove through the hallway past the downstairs bathroom. Britney let herself be directed.

“Sit now. Yes. It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t okay, and hearing the detective say those words, Britney felt another surge of emotion well up in her. She buried her head. She ached with emptiness.

The detective was brushing the hair out of her face, rubbing her back. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Everything moved so slowly. Each breath she took lasted an eternity. And every time she felt like she was returning from the ocean in which she was drowning, a riptide reared up and dragged her back into the deep.

“We need to find someplace for you to go.”

Britney couldn’t respond.

“Somewhere safe. I need you to think, Britney. Where could you go?”

It was all she could do to listen.

“You could come to my house. I’ve got an extra bedroom. It’s small. There’s only a futon, but it’s okay. What do you think of that, Britney?”

Britney shook her head no. Thinking was good. Thinking helped plug up the emotions and push them back.

“Are you sure? It would be like we were having a slumber party. How’s that sound?”

“I want to stay—” It was a struggle to speak. Her voice broke as she got to the end of her sentence, and the final word was overrun by more tears. “—here.”

“I don’t think you should do that.”

Britney had no answer. Where she went, what she did, even who she was, none of this seemed important at the moment.

“What do you say, Britney? Will you stay at my place for a while—until we find somewhere safe for you to go?”

“I guess,” said Britney with a noncommittal shrug. She couldn’t think of anything better.

“I promise it’ll be fine,” said the detective after a few more minutes of holding her while she cried. When she finally stood up, she said, “I need to work now. I need to deal with … the other room.”

The idea of being alone was horrifying. “Don’t go.”

“I’ll be right here, just ten feet away, okay? When the other officers get here, maybe we can find someone to sit with you. Can you be strong for twenty minutes or so?”

Britney nodded, and the detective walked away, leaving her alone. Britney gazed out the window. The weather seemed to be mocking her—six straight days of sunshine and rising temperatures. Today it was almost fifty. Beautiful weather. The kind of weather that made you feel like you were waking up from a deep hibernation and reentering a world that you thought had died for good. It made her angry. How could the world decide to be so sunny when her house had suddenly become so dark?

She gradually realized that her cell was chiming. The screen said “unknown caller.” She answered it anyway.

“Britney!” It was Bobby Plumley. He was out of breath.

“What do you want?”

“I need to see you.”

“I don’t have time for—”

“Don’t hang up, don’t hang up! I need to see you as soon as humanly possible.”

“Why?”

“Where are you? Are you at home?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s no good. You have to leave. You can’t stay there.”

He sounded almost as hysterical as she felt.

“You know what? I’m glad you called. I’ve got that police officer right here. You’re going to be arrested, Bobby.”

“I—you’ve really got to get out of there. It’s really dangerous. I’m serious, Britney. I know what’s been going on. I’ve figured it out. I know who’s been killing everybody.”

Her adrenaline surged.

“Who?”

“I need you to meet me at the Sanctuary. Will you come? Please? Okay?”

She thought for a moment. She didn’t trust him.

“I guess so, sure,” she said finally.

“As soon as you can. It’s humongously important.”

She had to go. She had to find out what Bobby knew. She was scared of him, but not as scared as she was of the uncertainty and torture that was overwhelming her. Her body wouldn’t stop shaking; it was as though all her cells had decided to riot and they were slam dancing chaotically against one another.

She could hear the detective rummaging around behind the closed door of her father’s den. She didn’t want to knock on the door; she didn’t want to think about what she was doing. The detective would try to persuade her to stay where she was—especially if she knew that Britney was going to meet Bobby Plumley.

Tiptoeing into the kitchen, she found a large knife and, wrapping it in paper towels so it wouldn’t cut her, she placed it inside Ricky’s letter jacket. Better safe than sorry, she thought. Bobby was dangerous.

Then she stealthily slipped out the back door and ran to her car, glancing behind her side to side in all directions the whole time, hoping to get away before the detective noticed and before the other cops arrived.

She just missed them. As she drove down Pine Crest toward Washington Avenue, the police cars whizzed past in the opposite direction, their sirens wailing. She could only hope that none of the cops recognized her.

thirty-three

AS
forensics trooped back and forth from their van to the den where Ed Johnson’s body was, Tara snooped around.

She went through Ed Johnson’s bedroom first. It was fastidiously clean, almost barren. A bed, a dresser on which rested a dish overflowing with quarters, all lined up as though ready to be slid into rolls, a tie rack, and a single straight-back chair. Nothing on the walls. Nothing was out of place.

The only thing that she found odd at all was that the photo of his wife, Jan, in her wedding dress had been tipped face-down. But even this had been done in a conscientious manner. It was carefully lined up so that the edges of the frame were in parallel lines with the edges of the dresser.

If he’d been suicidal, he’d still had the wits to keep everything in his bedroom in order.

What troubled her was that there wasn’t a note. It made her wonder if he’d done this in a rush of irrational feeling.

When she was done in Ed Johnson’s room, she noticed that Britney’s door was slightly ajar, so she stepped inside to have a look.

The closet was a real teenage mess. So many clothes and whatever else—old notebooks, paperback books, a see-through umbrella with balloons painted onto it, a tattered stuffed frog, all kinds of stuff—that it was like a solid, waist-high wall. The boudoir was overflowing with baubles, silver bracelets, necklaces, hair-care products. Photos cut from magazines and newspapers of hunky movie stars and singers were taped to the large round mirror.

The bed was a knot of sheets and blankets, a patchwork quilt braided through the stream of other coverings. Just visible underneath this were the tongue of a tube sock, the strap of a bra.

Tara began to notice other things that she’d overlooked at first.

The boys’ New Balance running shoes, much too big for Britney’s small feet, one sticking out from under the bed, the other off in the corner as though it had been thrown there.

On the floor was a crumpled pair of blue-and-white-striped boxer shorts.

“Are you looking for something specific?”

It was Adam Saft, home from the police station. He leaned against the doorway, watching her with a mixture of anger, fear, and curiosity on his face.

“How’d you get in here? This is a crime scene!”

“I don’t know,” he said. “The door was open.”

She didn’t push it. He was a prime suspect, and now that she had him in her sights, she didn’t want to let him go. Holding up the boxers, she asked him, “Do you know who these belong to?”

“Uh …” He blushed.

“They’re yours, aren’t they?”

“Can I plead the fifth?” He let out a little smirk, as though he was proud of himself, but it quickly faded.

“First Melissa, now Britney—you’re a real ladies’ man, Adam. And you don’t seem all that upset about what’s happened downstairs.”

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “Nobody will tell me.”

“It looks like Mr. Johnson has killed himself.”

She probed his face for a reaction. He blanched and tensed up, his eyes moving off to someplace far away, and she couldn’t read his expression.

“You don’t have any idea why, do you?”

“Not exactly.”

“What’s that mean?”

He hemmed and hawed like he was deliberating with himself about how much information it was safe to reveal.

Tara leaned back onto her shoulders on the bed. “Come sit next to me.” She patted the spot next to her invitingly.

Reluctantly, he did as she asked. He wouldn’t look at her.

“So? Something must have happened. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Well …” He squirmed uncomfortably. “We got busted, big time. And he threatened to send me home.” He couldn’t hide the bitterness in his voice.

“Did that piss you off?”

She could tell he felt trapped. He was patting an anxious rhythm on his legs.

“Look, what do you want from me?”

“I’m just curious, Adam. Is there some reason you wouldn’t want to go home?”

Suddenly putting the implications together, he turned on her. “You think I killed him, don’t you?!”

“Did I say that?”

“No, but—”

“Then where’d you get that idea?”

He was looking around now. Sizing up an escape route, she thought.

Changing tactics, she asked, “How well did you know Karl Brown?”

“I didn’t know him at all!” Adam looked horrified; his voice had taken on a pleading tone. “He and Mr. Johnson were tight.”

Detective Russell frowned. “You never even met him once?”

“No!”

A soft rapping at the door interrupted them, and one of the guys from forensics stuck his head in. “We’ve found something on Ed Johnson’s computer that you might want to look at,” he said.

She told Adam to stay right where he was and stepped outside, shutting the door behind her.

thirty-four

To: Edward Johnson ([email protected])

From: Melissa Brown ([email protected])

Re: Britney

Dear Mr. Johnson,

Thanks for all the stuff you did for Karl during the past few years. We Browns—I mean my parents mostly—don’t really express ourselves very well, but we ail really appreciate how hard you worked for him and all the ways you tried to protect him. Without you, he’d probably still be in jail.

That’s not why I’m writing you, though. There are a few things that have been nagging at me.

First, did Karl ever meet Britney’s mother? I know she had her problems and mostly hid away when other people came around, but the few times I got to talk to her, she seemed very compassionate—like she had a sixth sense or something and could tell what you were thinking and feeling just by looking at you. I wonder what she would have thought of Karl. Do you know? Could you tell me?

Second—and I don’t know how much of this you already know, but I’m going to tell you anyway—I’m really worried about Britney.

Before she started dating Ricky and hanging out with that new crowd of hers, she used to tell me things. Did you know that she feels responsible for what happened to her mother? Not like guilty for still being alive responsible, either. She feels really responsible. Like it was all her fault. I don’t know what happened on that rafting trip, but she was convinced that if she hadn’t been there, her mother would still be alive.

I keep thinking back to the time she tried to kill herself after her mom died. She went out to this favorite spot of ours. We call it the Sanctuary because nobody really knows about it but us, and whenever we go there, it feels sort of holy. She ran a hose from the exhaust of her car into the driver’s side window and locked herself in. If Bobby Plumley hadn’t happened to show up, she probably wouldn’t be here today.

After that, Bobby and I took turns watching her, following her around like babysitters to make sure she didn’t do anything drastic.

And then she hooked up with Ricky and everything seemed to be getting better. She was happy finally.

She made me swear not to tell you any of this. She didn’t want you to feel more burdened than you already do. I feel like I have to, though.

I’m afraid she’s going to try it again.

Ricky’s dead. Karl’s dead. Everyone seems to be dying and Britney is acting weird again. She’s so fragile. And I know she thinks these deaths are all her fault—just like she did about her mother. Has she talked about any of this with you?

You probably think it’s weird that I’m writing all this in an e-mail, but like I said, I’m really worried about Britney. I didn’t want to wait until we had a time to meet to tell you about it.

There’s one more thing. I found some really disturbing things while I was cleaning out Karl’s room. Is there somewhere we can get together and talk that Britney wouldn’t see us so I can show them to you? The things I found really spooked me.

Melissa

“Does Britney know you found this?” asked Detective Russell.

The officer shook his head. “I haven’t even seen her.”

“She’s downstairs in the living room.”

“Um—no, she’s not.”

Detective Russell was alarmed. She silently cursed herself for letting Britney out of her sight. “She’s not?”

Shaking his head again, the officer said, “Sorry.” Then, moving on, he said, “Listen, there’s one more thing. We’ve heard back on the prints from the gun.”

“And?”

He checked his notes. “Three sets: Ed Johnson, Adam Saft, and a partial we couldn’t identify.”

“Thanks.” She nodded toward the closed door behind her. “I’ve got Adam Saft right here. I’ll keep an eye on him. I want you to search the house. We’ve got to find Britney before she does something to herself!”