The Darkest Corners (15 page)

“Walk-in?” The voice comes from the sinks, where a redheaded girl in her twenties is shampooing a man's head. It takes a moment before I realize she's talking to me.

“Um. No. I had a question.”

“Okay. One sec.” She rinses the man and rubs him dry with a towel. After he settles into a chair in front of the mirror, the stylist meets me at the front counter.

“Do you know of a landscaping company named Faber & Sons?” I ask. “They used to be next door.”

The stylist props her elbows on the counter. “As long as I've been here, it's been the deli.”

She hasn't heard the name Joe Faber either. I thank her and head outside; a sigh leaves my chest. There's music blasting from the STI's propped-open front door.

A sign in the window says
THURSDAY NIGHTS: LIVE JAZZ!
There're voices at the curb outside the bar. A guy and a girl come around the side of the building; he leans over and lights her cigarette with his. They talk before he goes back inside, leaving her in full view.

Emily Raymes, who was worried about Ariel during the bonfire the other night. She takes a pull from her cigarette and leans her back against the brick wall of the building. She doesn't see me at the other end of the strip. Smoke streams out of her nose as she checks her phone and pockets it before heading back around the side of the bar, disappearing behind a Dumpster.

I walk Callie's bike past the front of the bar; a bulky man inside the doorway has his back to me. I follow Emily's path around the side of the building, past the Dumpster. There's a back door propped open with a cinder block.

I poke my head in—no bouncer back here. Just the smell of bathroom and a dimly lit hallway. I slip inside.

It's just dark enough inside the bar to mask the dirty linoleum floor and seventies-style wood paneling on the walls. Toward the front, an older man with a microphone is trying to bully people into signing up for karaoke. One TV screen over the bar displays the Quick Draw numbers while another is turned to a baseball game.

Everyone in here is either male or over forty, or both—except for Emily, who's standing in a corner with the guy from outside and another guy. When they break away from her and head for the pool table, I realize they're much older than I thought they were. Early thirties, at least.

As Emily lifts her drink to her lips, I make my way to her. When she sees me, her droopy eyes snap open. “Hey. How'd you get in here?”

“Back door.”
Same as you.

“Oh.” Emily nibbles on the lip of her plastic cup. “I have a fake. If you keep to yourself and don't get sloppy, Tom's cool, though.”

She eyes the broad-shouldered man hanging by the doorway. He abandons his post and slips behind the bar, wiping the area under the beer tap with a rag. He's bald, except for a thick reddish-blond beard. He must be the owner-bouncer-bartender.

Emily grips her cup with both hands; they're trembling.

“You okay?” I ask.

She meets my eyes. “Yeah, I guess. Better than Ari.”

Emily sips her drink and smacks her lips. “Were you there this morning?”

The funeral. It already feels like it happened ages ago, as if I'd been in Fayette weeks and not days. “Yeah.”

“I really wanted to say something.” Emily wipes the inside corner of her eye and checks the tip of her pinky for eyeliner debris. “I mean, I was her best friend.”

The pastor gave Ariel's eulogy—two brief paragraphs written by Mrs. Kouchinsky, who was sobbing too hard to read it.

“She was just
good,
you know?” Emily takes a swig from her drink. “You couldn't get her to say anything bad about anybody. Even people who really screwed her over.”

“Like Callie?” I try to sound casual, and not like I'm prying. But there might be more to Callie and Ari's fight than Callie's telling me—and it might be important.

Emily crushes a piece of ice between her back teeth, her gaze skating over me. “Yeah. What Callie did was mad sketch. But she's too good for everyone except Sabrina now that she's going to college, so…”

I feel an invisible tug pulling me toward Emily. I know exactly how it feels—how Callie is capable of making you feel like you're unnecessary. Something she's eager to leave behind.

At the other end of the bar, a man sings something unintelligible into a microphone. Lyrics scroll across the screen next to him.
I've got friends in low places.

“Callie seems pretty friendly with Nick,” I'm surprised to hear myself say. What I really want to ask is why Callie is so sure Nick didn't kill Ari. If Callie's keeping something from me, now is the chance to find out.

“They're not close,” Emily says. “No one's really close with him. I told Ari he was shady, but I think that made her more into him. She was so naïve, you know? She wanted to be tough, but it just wasn't her.”

I eye the bartender, who's filling a beer from the tap. He's watching us, his massive eyebrows knitted together. I put my hands in my pockets and angle myself away from him.

“What do you mean, ‘shady'? Are you talking about the stuff with his dad?” I ask Emily quickly, because I don't know how long I have before Tom kicks me out of here.

“His dad?” Emily's nose crinkles as she squints at me, confused.

“Callie told me he threw Nick out.”

“Oh.” Emily lowers her voice. “You mean what happened with his little brother.”

Her breath smells like sour mix and smoke. Her eyes are red.

“So messed up.” Emily twirls the rhinestone stud in her nose. “No one knows what really happened, but Nick has a little half brother. His stepmom left to go, like, to the store, and when she came back, there were ambulances outside the house. Supposedly, Nick got mad that the kid came into his room, and Nick pushed him into the wall. His head hit a corner and he got a brain injury and had to live at this rehab place for a while.”

My stomach turns. I don't want to think about a little boy's skull cracking against a wall.

“So messed up,” Emily says again, staring off into the distance. Then suddenly she's back, shaking her head.

“I mean, it's totally different from
killing
someone,” she says, her voice low. “But now everyone's saying he peaced out. Why would he leave if he didn't do anything wrong?”

Emily has obviously never seen
The Fugitive
—something I'd point out, maybe, if I weren't trying to answer the same question about my sister.

Emily looks at something over my shoulder, and then down at her drink, as if it were suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. I turn to see Tom wiping down the bar table behind us, stacking abandoned drinks on top of each other.

“So, what are you doing here, anyway?” she asks, not rudely, when the bartender moves to the next table.

“I'm trying to find someone who used to work next door,” I say. “His name is Joe Faber.”

“Huh. Don't know him.” Emily twirls her nose ring again. “You should try Facebook. Do you have a Facebook page?”

Only to occasionally do some light stalking of my old Fayette friends. “I don't use it much,” I say.

“I'll totally add you when I get home,” Emily slurs. I doubt she'll even remember this conversation when she gets home.

“I've gotta get back to the boys. Happy hour's over soon.” She gives me a one-armed hug and stumbles off to a bunch of guys hanging around the pool table. A large body steps in front of me as I head for the door. Tom the bartender.

“Sorry,” I mutter. “I'm leaving.”

“I hear you asking about Joe Faber?” he says. His voice is a scary baritone, but his face is nonthreatening. Maybe it's the leprechaun beard. I nod.

“What in God's name is a girl like you doing looking for Joey Faber?” Tom asks.

“I need to find someone who used to work for him.” I wrap my arms around my midsection. “His name's Danny.”

“Joe left town a while back.” Tom frowns.

It could be the lack of sleep, or maybe this place is making me lose my mind, but I feel like I might crack right here. Tom stares at me, balancing the tower of empty cups in the crook of his arm.

I press the heels of my hands under my eyes. Blink hard.
Pull yourself together.
“I'm just trying to find my sister—she dated a guy who worked for Joe.”

Tom's expression softens. He shifts the cup tower to his other arm and throws his rag over his shoulder. “Joe's ex-wife, Melissa, is still around. But even if she knows where he's at, I doubt she'd tell you.”

It's something, though. I let myself feel a sliver of hope for the first time today. “Do you know where she lives?”

“Red house off Main Street, across from the church that burned down back in 2001. Don't say I didn't warn you, though.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

Tom surprises me by extending a hand. My fingers get lost in his beefy palm; it's wet from the rag.

“You know,” he says, his eyes probing mine, “you look familiar.”

I shrug, suddenly desperate to get out of here. “Guess I have one of those faces.”

I'm not about to tell him that I'm a Lowell. He's been so nice to me, and I don't want to ruin that.

It's dusk by the time I get back to the Greenwoods'. The porch light is on, and Maggie's left the door unlocked for me. I tread quietly; the kitchen is dark, and there's murmuring coming from the family room. Maggie and Rick. I head upstairs.

Callie's door is closed. My legs are tingling from all the biking, and all I want to do is lie down. I'll tell her about Joe Faber's ex-wife in the morning.

When I wake up again, it's still dark out. I roll onto my elbow and grab my cell phone from the nightstand. It's a quarter to one.

The guest room window is open; outside, the porch creaks. Someone's outside.

Probably a cat,
I tell myself, swallowing the lump rising in my throat. I get up and creep toward the window. Someone in a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up slinks down the driveway. By the light of the porch I can see blond tendrils of hair beneath the hood.

Callie.

I tap on the window screen. The warbling sound overhead makes Callie pause. I do it again.

She looks up at the window, like a rat trapped in a cage. I wave. She ducks behind Maggie's van, and a few seconds later, my phone vibrates once. A text, from a number with a Fayette area code. Maggie must have given Callie my number.

Just go back to bed,
it reads.

Like hell I will. Is Callie really stupid enough to sneak out for a quickie with Ryan while she's already in deep doo-doo with Maggie? If she gets caught, Rick and Maggie could punish her by sending me home. I text her back.

I'm coming down.

The thin slice of moon gives enough light for me to find my sneakers. I pluck my sweatshirt off the rocking chair where I left it yesterday, realizing as I do that it's been folded. I give it a sniff. Washed too. I think of what Maggie said about me the other night—about trying to convince Callie that we did the wrong thing—and I wonder if she's being this good to me only out of pity.

Thoughts like that will get me nowhere, though. I yank everything on and open the guest room door as if it were made of glass.

I pause to see if I woke them up, but the only sound from behind Maggie and Rick's door is the hum of the air conditioner. I pull my sleeves over my hands and slip downstairs.

Callie is in the driver's seat of the van. She unlocks the passenger door and glares at me. “I don't have time for this. My dad's gonna be up in a few hours.”

I hold in a snort. “Ryan needs more than a few minutes?”

Callie's lips part. “You have no idea what you're talking about.”

Her fingers climb over the part in her hair. They're shaking.

“Callie. What's going on?”

“Nick,” she says. “He's at a motel off Interstate 95. He texted me asking for help.”

Emily said that Callie isn't close to Nick. Then what the hell is she doing dropping everything and running to him in the middle of the night? “Help?”

“Just money and food and stuff,” Callie says. “Until they figure out who really did this and he can come home.”

In other words, aiding a potential suspect in a murder investigation. “This is a terrible idea. What if your mom finds out?”

“I'm not getting out of this van.” Callie grips the steering wheel. Her knuckles are white.

I make a big show of buckling my seat belt. “Let's go, then.”

“Tessa—”

“No.”
I'm shocked at how forceful I sound. “You're not going to some seedy motel to meet some guy alone. No matter how much you think you can trust him, you just don't know.”

I'm sure Callie is going to fight me, but she shuts her mouth and starts the engine. She's silent until we get onto the highway service road and she pulls into a gas station.

Callie parks and turns to me. “You coming?”

I undo my seatbelt and follow her into the convenience store, wondering what we're doing. Inside, Callie takes eighty dollars out of the ATM and disappears down one of the aisles. I hang by the news rack, glancing at yesterday's paper. The front-page story is about some senior Taliban guy being captured.

Callie meets me by the counter, setting down a bag of Cheetos, a liter of orange soda, beef jerky, and a chocolate protein bar. I want to ask her what the plan is, aside from the only obvious one I can detect, which is to give Nick diarrhea. But Callie will kill me if I say anything in front of the cashier. She just has that look on her face.

When we're settled in the van, Callie enters an address into her phone's GPS. A woman's voice tells us to merge onto the highway. Callie stares straight ahead.

I stare out the window. “Why are you so sure he didn't kill her?”

“Nick just isn't smart enough,” Callie says, in a way that makes me think she's given this more thought than I realized. “Staging a crime scene to look like one of the Monster murders? Nick thought Vladimir Putin was a
Twilight
character.”

There's almost a fondness in Callie's voice. I have to wonder if the lovable-moron thing is an act and Nick has his friends fooled.

The GPS tells us to stay on I-95 for ten miles.

We arrive at the Doyle Motor Inn, which is next to a Denny's and an adult store called Playtime Boutique. Nick is in room 112, below a stairwell and next to an ice machine with an
O
ut of Order sign.

Callie knocks on the door. I stand behind her, playing with the zipper on my sweatshirt, imagining Maggie or Rick waking up to find both of us gone.

There's the sound of footsteps, then a pause. A chain rattling. Nick opens the door, his expression darkening when he sees me. “You brought someone?”

“Hi,” I say. “I'm Tessa.”

“It's fine,” Callie says. “Just let us in.”

Nick steps aside and locks the door behind us. The room smells like cigarettes. A muted sitcom is on the TV. Nick turns it off. “Did anyone follow you?”

“Who would follow me at one in the morning?” Callie shoots back.

Nick's eyes are on me, and I turn to look at the door, just to assure myself we have a clear path out if this little meeting goes south.

Callie dumps the convenience store haul onto one of the twin beds, and Nick goes straight for the beef jerky, tearing the package open with his teeth. Callie sits, runs her hand over the bedspread, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

“Maybe we should call Ryan,” she says. “See if he can talk to his uncle—”

“The hell you think I'm doing here, Callie?” Nick sounds scared shitless. “They don't wanna talk anymore. They want to throw my ass in jail.”

Nick tosses the jerky bag aside. Wipes his hands down his face. “Cops asked for a DNA sample. I panicked.”

“Why didn't you just give it to them?” I ask. “It would rule you out.”

Nick looks up at me, like,
Who the hell are you?

“Why didn't you?” Callie says sharply, drawing his attention back to her.

Nick cracks his knuckles. “Because she came over to my house that morning, and we had sex.”

Air leaves Callie's nostrils in a low hiss. “God. You idiot. Why didn't you just tell the cops that?”

“No shit. I did,” Nick snaps. “But Ari's dumbass sister told them Ari was with
her
all day. Their dad didn't want Ari seeing me anymore, and Katie thought he'd kick her ass for covering for Ari.”

Nick launches himself to his feet and begins to pace. He stops, suddenly, and points at Callie. “Who do you think the cops believe? I wasn't about to hand over my DNA so they could say I raped Ari or something. Not after what happened with my computer.”

“Your computer?” Callie swipes at the air in front of her face. A fly whizzes past us and smacks into the window. It doubles back and
thwack, thwack.

“They asked me to turn it over, so I did,” Nick says. “That's when they found Ari's listing on Connect. They asked how I found it, kept saying I must have been real pissed to find out that my girlfriend was making five hundred bucks a week screwing other guys.”

Nick walks over to the desk against the wall. Picks up a phone book and smashes it against the window, leaving a yellowish smudge where the fly was. The bang makes me jump. Nick stares at me, blinks, like he still can't figure out why I'm here. Shakes his head.

“I knew what Ari was doing,” he says, to neither Callie nor me in particular. “She showed me the site months ago.”

“She showed
you
?” I ask. “While you were
dating
?”

“First off,” Nick says, “we were on and off. And I wasn't about to tell her what to do. She was making five times what she would babysitting, for an hour's work.”

The way he says
work
makes my stomach turn, as if Ari had been behind the fryer at a McDonald's and not in some guy's car off I-95.

“Last fall, she submitted her picture to this modeling website,” Nick says. “Except she found out it wasn't a modeling site. If she wanted to get paid, she had to Skype with guys and, you know, do stuff on camera. She did it for a little while—she'd do anything if you paid a little bit of attention to her or called her pretty.”

Sadness worms its way in. My gaze flicks to Callie; her eyes are on the bedspread. Ari hooked up with a guy she knew Callie liked. She lost her best friend over attention from a guy. Then one took her away forever.

Nick takes a swig of the soda. “Ari loved the money, but she hated the men. They were creeps. She started talking to this other girl on the site, who met guys off Craigslist before they shut down the adult section. This chick said the money was way better if you actually met the guys in person. And the guys weren't behind a screen, so they didn't feel like they could say or do anything. The girl told her about Connect and helped set her up. Ari would come to my house and use the computer to update her page, so her dad wouldn't catch her,” Nick continues. “But the police lab saw how many times the site was in my browser history, and the next thing I know, the cops are holding me in a room for five hours, trying to get me to say
I
was the one checking her page. Like I was stalking her and planning to kill her the whole time.”

Nick stops pacing. Collapses into the desk chair. “If they had her phone, they'd see all the pervs that messaged her on that site. But her killer took it. Along with the bracelet I gave her.”

My heartbeat quickens. “Bracelet?”

Nick turns away from us. He wipes at something on his face. “It was just some shitty beaded thing. I'd found it in my mom's stuff, but Ari loved it, so I told her she could have it.”

“How do you know the killer took it?” I ask. “Did the cops tell you she was robbed?”

“I guess.” Nick rubs his eyes. “I mean, they asked what she usually had on her, and when I described her phone and bracelet, they said they didn't find any of that stuff.”

I glance over at Callie. She's looking at me, lips drawn.

“The Monster robbed the other girls too,” I say.

Nick's gaze snaps to me. “Who the hell is the Monster?”

“Wyatt Stokes, the serial killer,” I say. “Murdered four women around Fayette ten years ago. How do you not know about him?”

“I only moved here four years ago,” Nick says. “What does that have to do with Ari?”

Callie looks at me, her face clearly saying that she's thinking what I'm thinking: if Nick is lying, he deserves an Oscar for his performance.

“Ari's murder is similar,” Callie says carefully.

“So why are they up
my
ass?” Nick demands. “If it's a serial killer, shouldn't they be out looking for him?”

Callie and I are quiet. She's the one who finally speaks. “You're hiding,” she says. “After the stuff with your computer, it doesn't look good for you.”

“You gotta believe that it wasn't me,” Nicks says. “Besides, if I did it, why would I leave her off I-95 where someone would see her? My house is on four acres of land. I could have buried her under the barn.”