Killing Britney (7 page)

thirteen

Mr.
Johnson was in consultation with a client. Closed into his office, behind a thick oak door. Melissa tried to explain to his assistant, Tamara, that this was an emergency—as if it wasn’t already obvious from the rivulets of black tears running down Britney’s cheeks. She stood there, hunched over Tamara’s desk, which, for someone whose sole job was to keep the office organized and make sure that anything Mr. Johnson needed was easy to find, was a disaster. Folders and documents binder-clipped together were piled everywhere, stained with coffee rings and dark splotches of soy sauce; the folders even spilled onto the floor.

“I don’t know,” Tamara kept saying. “I’m not supposed to disturb him when he’s with a client.”

“It’s an emergency!” said Melissa again. She was doing most of the talking. It was all Britney could do to sit silently, trying to hold herself together, on the antique couch, a deep royal blue with wooden scrollwork on the arms that her mother had purchased when she worked at the office.

Suddenly Britney ran to the desk and, knocking over a mug of pens and spilling Tamara’s bottle of water, she yanked the phone away and shouted into it. “Dad? I need to talk to you! Tamara won’t let us in!”

Then she very calmly placed the phone back in its cradle and returned to her perch on the couch. Acting like there had been no scene at all, as if she were just hanging out here, not even upset, Britney crossed her legs and waited. To make her point even more obvious, she casually picked up one of the old
Newsweeks
that lay on the art deco coffee table and began to leaf through it.

“He won’t come out,” said Tamara as she tried to clean the water off the documents strewn around her desk. Picking them up in big bundles, she flicked the water into her trash can. Britney hoped that some of them were important; it would serve Tamara right if they got ruined.

It took Britney’s father a few minutes, but sure enough, the door to his office slipped open a crack and he came out, shutting it quickly behind him to protect his client’s privacy. Britney was overjoyed to see him. He had that familiar hangdog droop to his shoulders—a defeated shuffle to his gait that had arrived soon after Britney’s mother died and never left. When he looked at her with those tender, pained eyes, she felt so safe that her whole body quivered.

Tamara shot Melissa a dirty look, but she didn’t say anything. She acted like she’d known Mr. Johnson would come talk to the girls all along. Anyway, she was too busy shutting down the spider solitaire game on her computer to cause any more trouble.

“Tamara,” said Mr. Johnson, “would it be okay if—” He glanced at the girls with a look that said to her, I’m sorry to get in your way, but if you could just give us a moment or two alone?

“Sure. Okay,” Tamara said. “I want a muffin anyway.” Then, putting on the sickliest saccharine voice Britney’d ever heard, she said, “Can I get you anything?”

He just shook his head wearily.

Britney was so overcome that she just sat there with her head in her lap while Melissa explained about the CD and the scene in the car. Throughout the conversation, Mr. Johnson rubbed Britney’s back with the palm of one hand. He listened gravely, seriously considering every word Melissa said.

“Oh, Brit, I’m so sorry,” he said once Melissa had finished. “You must have felt like the world was ending.”

Britney nodded.

“Do you have the CD?” he asked.

Melissa handed it over, and he frowned, studying it carefully.

“I think we need to tell Detective Russell about this.” He glanced at Britney and, seeing how torn up she was, said, “It’s okay. I’ll do it. I suspect it’s just a prank—probably those hockey guys. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen them in court over idiotic behavior like this.” He took Britney’s hand between his two palms. “I’ll see what I can do, though, okay, sweetie? Detective Russell and I will get this sorted out. In the meantime, do you still have those bath salts from The Body Shop that Grandma Johnson sent you for Christmas?”

Britney shrugged. It was as much of a response as she could muster.

“When your mother was especially rattled about things, she used to take a long bath to calm herself down. Maybe you should try it. Those salts are supposed to be therapeutic. They’ve got aromatherapy in them or something. Or you could—here, I’ll give you some cash. Pamper yourself. Whatever you think might relax you.”

“I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you roll up a giant-size joint and get baked out of your skull? It always helps me forget all the bullshit.”

The three of them—Britney, her father, and Melissa—all looked toward this new voice. There, leaning against the inner-office doorjamb, stood a gaunt, rangy guy in his early twenties. He was wearing a tattered black leather jacket over a Megadeth T-shirt. Looped through his dirty blue jeans was a thick black belt; the buckle was huge and brass: a screaming eagle flying out of an American flag. His curly red hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks.

Before anyone could say anything, the guy raised his hands as though to calm them down. “Joke. It’s a joke,” he said.

“Karl?” The look on Melissa’s face was one of abject shock. “Karl, what—why—don’t tell me you got arrested again!”

Smiling wryly, Karl said, “Ed here’s helping me hook up a job.”

Karl was Melissa’s brother. He’d been caught working at a crystal meth lab a couple of years ago—just a few months after Britney’s mother had died—and shipped off to prison in Waupun. The lab hadn’t been his operation. His job had been to drive the chemicals and formaldehyde in from the feed store out in North Bristol. With Mr. Johnson as his lawyer, he’d been sentenced to five years. The other guys all got twenty.

Britney had known Karl since they were kids. When she’d been a real small child, she’d seen him lingering around Melissa’s house whenever she came over to play. Then, as the girls got older, he was there less and less. At sixteen, he dropped out of high school, and this was such a blow to Melissa’s college professor parents that they kicked him out of the house. Before he’d been sent off to jail, Britney and Melissa used to hang around with him on State Street.

He winked at Britney. “Hey, cutie,” he said. “Nice letter jacket. I didn’t know you played on the hockey team.”

Melissa turned skeptically to Mr. Johnson. “You got him a job?”

“He starts tomorrow,” said Mr. Johnson.

“Doing what?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” There was a fatherly glow of pride in Mr. Johnson’s face.

“You know, that meat-packing factory,” Karl said.

“The Bavarian Brat Haus,” Mr. Johnson interjected.

“Yeah, that place.”

Melissa rolled her eyes.

Britney and Melissa had had many long talks about how sad she got when she thought about her brother’s troubled life. Her biggest fear in the world was that he’d never get his life together.

“Karl—” Mr. Johnson said sharply, nodding toward the inner office.

“I just wanted to see if everything was all right.”

“Well, it is.”

“So-or-ry,” Karl said, chuckling. “Britney, it’s always a pleasure.” He winked at her again. “And Melissa …” His voice trailed off. He shrugged as if he couldn’t think of anything worth saying to her and shut himself back in the office.

“Okay, kiddo,” Mr. Johnson said when they were alone again. “I don’t want you to worry about this stuff with that CD. I’m going to take care of it. I’ll never let anyone hurt you.” He stood up and coaxed her toward him. “Come on, now, give me a hug.”

There were his arms around her again, holding her so tight she almost believed, at least for a moment, that he could protect her from anything.

“Better?” he said.

She tried to smile. “A little bit,” she lied.

fourteen

That
night while Britney was taking her bath, Adam slipped out of the house through the garage door that opened off the corridor holding the washer and dryer. He squeezed between Britney’s car and the junk piled against the wall, past the riding lawn mower and the huge lidded garbage can, past the cardboard boxes piled high with Christmas decorations, past the snow-blower and the stacked sawhorses. As he made his way around Britney’s snowboard, he inadvertently kicked her father’s skis, sending them flopping down on the front wheel hub of her Bug. He hoped that he hadn’t damaged anything, but it was hard to tell in the darkness of the garage, and he couldn’t turn on the light because he didn’t want anyone to catch him out here.

Wrapping his duck-hunting jacket tight around him and adjusting the plaid scarf around his neck, he stepped out the door at the back of the garage and onto the hard-packed snow covering the backyard.

The wind hissed off the snowdrifts. It bit into his cheeks and prickled at his fingertips, but he was willing to put up with this at the moment. His need for a cigarette was that strong. Turning his back to the wind so he could create a cove to shield the flame, he lit up and breathed the smoke deep into his lungs.

Adam had started smoking during the tumultuous period last year when he had started doing most everything he now regretted.

He’d made a lot of mistakes during his final few months in New Hampshire: the failing grades, the recklessly driving through people’s backyards, which had garnered him a suspended license. He’d begun to hang out with rich kids guys like Fisher and Hal, smoking their pot and pretending they had something in common. He knew that they were allowed to mess up in ways that he wasn’t—their fathers had the pull to cover for them, and even if they failed every single one of their classes, they’d still get into the best Ivy League schools. He didn’t even like those guys. But he knew that by buddying up to them, he’d enrage his parents, and that had been his only goal at the time. He was so hurt by the fact that their marriage was falling apart that he felt he had to hurt them back in any way he could.

Being shipped to Madison had come almost as a relief. Nobody here knew how much trouble he’d gotten himself into back home.

Once the wind calmed down, the cold wasn’t so bad. Gazing back at the house, he smiled. A single window on the second floor was casting light out into the frigid air. Something about that one lonely light made him feel less lonely himself. This wasn’t so bad, living here with the Johnsons. Especially if it meant getting to know Britney’s friend Melissa better.

He knew the light must be coming from the bathroom where Britney was soaking in the tub. She’d been in a bad mood all night—not that he blamed her. From what Melissa had told him, that CD had been pretty freaky.

He stared up at the house for a while, feeling sentimental. The roof was tiered into multiple levels, and his eyes roamed over it, mapping the smooth flow of snow there.

On the roof of the garage, there was a large dark lump of something. Adam couldn’t tell what it was. It looked like a trash bag. He wondered how it had gotten up there.

Then he saw it move.

He froze and watched it closely.

It moved again.

Now he could make out the contours. Someone was crouching up there. He could make out the head under a dark black stocking cap. There was the torso. Whoever it was up there was staring into the bathroom window, spying on Britney while she took her bath.

As stealthily as he could, he reached down and picked up a clump of snow, which he mashed into a snowball.

One. Two. Three.

He threw the snowball with all his might, but he missed. When the snowball splattered on the garage roof, the guy turned to see where it had come from. He spied Adam and bolted over the other side.

Adam chased around to the front of the house. Just as he got there, he saw a chubby figure in a black snowmobile suit fall into the snow and then scramble to his feet and break into a run.

Adam ran after him. Well, he sort of ran. The snow was so deep that it was impossible to move with any real speed.

The figure made it to the road and broke into a sprint toward the Montgomerys’ driveway, sticking to the plowed pavement, where it was easier to run. He had a pretty good lead by the time Adam broke through the drifts.

Speeding after him, Adam almost cornered him under the basketball hoop, but with a dart, the guy shifted directions, sending Adam slipping to his knees, then took off again back toward the main street.

The two of them trudged down the middle of the road. Adam was lighter and more athletic. He gradually gained ground on the guy until finally, just as they reached the corner where the cul-de-sac hooked up with Maple Run Road, he tackled him.

They wrestled for a minute, Adam struggling to pin the guy to the ground, the guy twisting and kicking to get away. When Adam got the guy on his back, he raised his fist to punch him in the jaw. Then he looked at the guy’s face finally, and he was shocked to discover it was Bobby Plumley.

“Bobby? You freak. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. What’s the matter with
you?”
Bobby responded.

“You perv. What the hell do you think you were doing up there?”

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“I saw you.”

“I don’t care what you saw. It’s not what you think.” Bobby looked scared.

“Oh?” Adam sat back into the snow. He knew that if Bobby tried to run again, he’d catch him. “You were spying on Britney. You were fucking peeping on her in the bathroom. Did you catch her naked? Jesus. Maybe she was right about you after all.”

“You don’t understand.”

“What? What don’t I understand? You know? You’re lucky I didn’t go grab one of Mr. Johnson’s guns and shoot you with it.”

Bobby stood up and dusted off his snowmobile suit. He rubbed his back where Adam had barreled into him. “Okay, look,” he said, sitting down on the snowdrift next to Adam. “Maybe I did see Britney naked just now, but that’s not why I’m out here tonight. I can get porn off the internet if I want to see naked girls, okay?”

Adam listened skeptically. “Then why are you here?”

“Remember all the stuff Melissa and I told you about the other night? What we didn’t say was that Britney is bonkers. She and I used to talk, okay? We used to be really, really close.”

“That doesn’t—”

Bobby rolled on. “Did you know that her mother was a schizophrenic? No? I didn’t think so. Did you know she thinks that her mother’s death wasn’t an accident? I don’t think you knew that either. And I bet you didn’t know that she thinks she was responsible for her mother’s death.”

“I don’t—”

“But she does. She thinks someone was after her, that whoever killed her mother had actually been trying to get to her. You didn’t know that. You don’t know anything. But I do, so why don’t you leave me alone?”

Something about Bobby’s story sounded fishy to Adam. It was all so
complicated.
Wasn’t the simplest answer usually the right one? Didn’t it just make a whole lot more sense if Bobby, who Adam knew was in love with Britney, was stalking her?

“You know what, Bobby? None of that has anything to do with you sitting on the roof of the garage and peeking in the bathroom window. Come on. Tell me the truth. Or do you want me to get Britney and you can tell her?”

The look of horror that spread across Bobby’s face was proof enough to Adam that he was right.

“No. Don’t do that. Please, please don’t do that.”

“Oh, don’t beg, Bobby. It makes you look even more pathetic than you already are.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“Yeah, well, that’s before I caught you peeping through the window at my real friend, Britney.” Hearing himself say this, he was shocked and surprised, but he knew it was true: Britney
was
his real friend.

“I wasn’t peeping!”

“Yeah, right.”

Bobby curled his arms over his knees and crossed them in front of his face. He stared coldly out into the distance. “You don’t get it at all,” he said icily. “I don’t want her to get hurt. I’m trying to protect her.”

The way Bobby said this, with such gravity, such conviction, almost convinced Adam that he believed it.

“You’re protecting her from what?”

Bobby’s bottom lip curled into a frown. He seemed to be struggling with some dark urge inside himself. “From herself,” he said. “Just forget it, okay? There’s no way you’d understand.”

Adam had had enough of this. He stood up. The wind was picking up again, and he shoved his hands into the inner pockets of his coat to keep his fingers warm.

“Go home, Bobby,” he said.

Without looking back, he began to walk toward the house.

“Wait,” Bobby called after him. “You’re not going to tell her, are you?”

Adam ignored him and kept walking. He wasn’t sure if he’d tell Britney or not, but he figured it was best to keep Bobby scared. For a while at least.