True Blue (4 page)

Detective Bowen continued. “The search for Stephanie was well under way by that point. The senior campers had been organized into search squads, searching other trails, under Casey’s direction. A counselor from another cabin had been assigned to look after the kids in your cabin, to free you and Casey up for the search. When you walked into the clearing where the sleep-out had taken place, Casey had just returned from another search of the Willow Trail. You went up to her and said, ‘So, you’ve finally killed her, eh?’ Casey’s reply to that was, ‘And I stuffed her body in a hollow tree.’”

I could hear my parents gasp. I couldn’t look at them, so I stared back at the detective.

“It was a joke,” I insisted. “We were tired and fed up with Stephanie. And we were friends—we could say stuff like that to each other. It was a dumb joke!”

“A joke?” Detective Bowen rose to her feet and leaned over the table, staring down at me. “Then how do you explain the fact that Stephanie’s body was found two days later, stuffed into a hollow tree? And how do you explain the fact that this hollow tree was located not twenty feet from the Willow Trail, the same trail Casey had supposedly searched, over and over again?”

“Detective, are you making an accusation?” Mr. Grey asked.

“I think Jessica knows more than she is letting on,” Detective Bowen answered. “You can’t protect her,” she added, turning to me. “You can’t rescue her. If she killed that little girl, she is going to prison. And you have to help us. As a human being, you have no choice. We have a dead child on our hands. Now, how is it possible that Casey searched that trail over and over and missed looking in that hollow tree?”

“We thought we were looking for a living kid who was hiding, not a dead kid stuffed into a tree!” I yelled. “We thought she was alive!”

The lawyer put a stop to the questions and got us all out of the room, through the hallway, then out the front door and back into the bright sunlight.

“You have nothing to worry about,” he said to me. “Talk to the police again, if you want to, but you don’t have to. I didn’t like the tone of that detective,” he said to my father, just before confirming their regular Wednesday morning eighteen holes at Piney Lakes Golf Club. Then he got into his car and drove away. My father got into his car. I looked around for my mother, but she was already walking away down the street. We all went in our separate directions.

I could have caught up with Mom and gone home with her, but I certainly didn’t want to do that. I couldn’t go to Casey’s. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Then I remembered that the fair was on. I wasn’t in a fair-going mood, but at least it was something to do. I unlocked my bike and headed over to the fairgrounds.

The Galloway Fall Fair was always set up in Lion’s Park, an open space next to the cemetery, just in case one of the fairgoers should keel over from the excitement. It wasn’t much of a fair, but Galloway’s not much of a town.

I handed over a few bucks at the entrance gate, found a place for my bike, and started walking around.

Casey and I had always gone to the fair together, ever since we were small and fairs were a big deal. It was always the same—two steps and you’ve seen it all. Three or four kiddie rides, the same number of bigger rides, a few games of chance, booths of junk food. The prizes hardly changed from year to year. Even the baked goods and vegetables in the agricultural building looked the same.

I walked around, not really looking at anything. Several times I thought I saw Casey—once by the fishpond operated by the Lady Lions and another time by the snow-cone trailer. But of course it wasn’t her.

I kept hearing her name, though.

“They arrested that Casey White.”

“Charged her with murder.”

“Kids today. There’s something wrong with them. I mean, we used to get away with murder, but we never
killed
anybody.”

“Other children have disappeared not far from Galloway, you know. I’m not saying I have proof she was involved, but they say these people don’t stop at one.”

Stephanie Glass’s murder was the biggest event Galloway had experienced since the building of the new gas station two years before. Maybe it was my imagination, but people seemed to clutch the hands of their children a little bit tighter and were a little quicker to panic when their child slipped out of sight for a moment.

I stood by the kiddie boat ride, watching the little kids go round and round, trailing their little fingers in the water.

August 23

Day 2

“You’re not canoeing with the rest of the group this morning,” Casey tells Stephanie.

The other campers are bug-walking ahead to breakfast, while Casey and I hang back to deal with Stephanie.

“Disappearing on us, especially the way you did yesterday after swim time, was very wrong. We thought you had drowned! We were about to call the police!”

“You would have looked pretty stupid, calling the police when I wasn’t drowned,” Stephanie says. “They don’t like it when you make false reports.”

“I’m glad you know that,” Casey tells her, her voice still patient and calm. “Do you know what it means to reinforce a message?”

Stephanie knows. “You tell a dog to sit, then you hit him until he does. Doesn’t work with my dog. I probably don’t hit him hard enough.”

Casey and I glance at each other over Stephanie’s head. Casey’s face isn’t so calm anymore.

“You should never hit anything,” Casey says. “To reinforce the message that you shouldn’t run away and hide, you’re going to sit out this morning’s canoe lesson. You can sit with the group and take part in the safety talk on shore, but you and I will sit on a bench and watch the others take the canoes out into the water.”

Stephanie doesn’t say anything.

“I know you think we’re being mean,” Casey says, “but while we are on the bench, maybe we can talk about your favorite things to do, and maybe we can do some of them at camp this week.”

Stephanie turns her head, looks up at Casey and says, “You don’t know anything.”

I can see Casey start to respond. I try to catch her eye so I can signal to her not to bother, but she opens her mouth and keeps talking, not even caring that I might have an opinion about whether or not she should speak.

I leave her to it and race the other kids up the hill to breakfast.

I don’t care about the race and I don’t care about breakfast. Breakfast is just a sign that another damned day is about to begin.

Midmorning comes and we all trot over to the beach. The lifeguard leads everyone through the safety talk then has kids pair up on logs to learn how to hold a paddle.

Casey and I are busy—some of the kids can’t tell their left hand from their right. We don’t notice that Stephanie has slipped away from the group, gone to the dock and untied all the canoes, pushing them out into the water. The breeze blows them to the weedy part of the cove. Casey and I have to swim out after them, hauling them back to the dock one-by-one and using up all of the group’s canoe time.

“I didn’t do anything!” Stephanie claims when I accuse her. “Did you see me? No. So I didn’t do it.”

But she laughs as she watches Casey and me pull leeches off our legs. She tosses her long curly hair when the other campers moan about their lost opportunity.

“No place is safe anymore,” I heard a woman nearby say as she waved back at her kid in one of the boats.

“Casey used to babysit for us,” another woman said. “Never again. I’m going to take my kids to a therapist, have them checked out.”

“Did she give any signs?”

“Do you think I would have left my kids with her if she had? Is that what you think?”

“I mean, now that you think back on it. Was there anything that seemed strange about her?”

“Not that you could put your finger on. She was a perfect babysitter. Always on time, always reliable, left the house tidy, the kids liked her. I never had to worry about her having boys over when we weren’t there. You know, there’s something strange about anyone
that
perfect. She must have been covering up for something. Drugs, most likely. Doesn’t it always come down to drugs?”

My mother would have jumped down her throat. I just walked away.

I wandered over toward the sheep display, but was stopped before I got there.

“Pretty awful about Casey.”

Amber Bradley was standing by my elbow. We weren’t friends but we weren’t enemies, either. I’d worked on a geography project with her in the sixth grade, an Incan model of some sort. She was part of the cool crowd.

“Yeah,” I replied. “She’s missing all the excitement.”

Making derogatory remarks about the fall fair is part of the Galloway youth tradition.

“It’s like those boys who shot up that school,” Amber continued.

“Which boys, which school? And how is this like that?”

“If that little kid had carried a gun, she’d still be alive.” This came from Nathan Ivory, a guy with a permanent smirk whose parents owned the stationary store in town. He was the kid Casey had body-slammed for killing her praying mantis. He and several others, all part of the gang Amber hung out with, had sauntered over to us.

The thought of horrid little Stephanie with a gun sent chills down my spine, but I didn’t say that. What I said instead was, “Stephanie was eight.”

“You can’t start them too young,” Nathan said, and then he pretended to hold a machine gun and shoot it at people. He always looked like he was auditioning for a play when he was around Amber.

“About those boys,” Amber continued, tossing her hair. “Everyone said they were so normal.”

“No one said that,” I replied.

“You couldn’t say Casey was normal.”

“What do you mean by that?” I demanded.

“Oh, come on, Jess. I know she’s your best friend, but even you have to admit she’s weird. All that talk about bugs. You can’t say good morning to her without hearing about some bug.”

“She’s going to be an entomologist,” I reminded them.

“I’m going to be a surgeon, but I don’t talk about body parts all the time,” Amber said.

I had to laugh at that one. Amber didn’t have the brains to pass the first-aid section of the babysitting course we took together in the eighth grade.

“I don’t know if Casey has ever been on a date,” one of them said. “That’s weird. It’s not like she’s ugly or anything.”

“It would fit,” Nathan said. “The papers said some of Stephanie’s clothing was missing. Casey must be some twisted sort of pervert.”

“What?” I exclaimed, my mouth dropping open.

“Is she a perve, Jess?” Amber asked. “Because, you know, if anyone would know, it would be you, since you’re so close and all.”

“Yeah, you’re sorta like best buddies,” added Nathan.

I opened and closed my mouth like a fish out of water then turned on my heels and walked away.

“When’s the last time you had a date, Jess?” one of the kids yelled after me. Their laughter followed me out of the park. So, I’m sure, did every pair of eyes at the fair.

That night, I woke up again at two a.m. I took my bike out and rode around the sleeping town. I stayed away from the police station. Instead, I rode over to Lion’s Park where the fair was halfway torn down.

Underneath the dinosaur bones of the partially dismantled Wild Mouse ride, I got off my bike. Because I missed my friend, and because I hated to be left all alone, I sat down and cried.

I ended up falling asleep under the Wild Mouse. I woke up covered in dew and shivering in the early morning air. I remembered that it was the first day of school.

My whole head felt thick.
I can’t do this without Casey,
I thought.

And I wasn’t going to.

I pedaled home through thick fog. I didn’t even bother to shower or change. I got Mom’s car keys off the kitchen counter, unlocked the trunk of her car, and started loading up my camping equipment. Then I went into my bedroom and shoved clothes into my duffel bag. Casey and I were the same size—she was a little taller, but not much.

As I tied the bag shut I heard waking-up noises from my parents’ bedrooms, so I hurried. I scribbled a note to Mom that I had her car, put the note on the kitchen table, and left the house.

Casey’s first court appearance was scheduled for that morning. I wasn’t able to rescue her from the police station, with all those cops around; maybe I could rescue her from the courthouse. If I could get there early enough to get a seat in the front of the courtroom, I’d grab Casey as soon as she was brought in. The element of surprise, that’s what we needed. We’d be out of that courtroom and on the road before anybody could react. We’d disappear, camp, get jobs, lead new lives. We might even slip across the border someplace where it wasn’t guarded too well. I wanted to get her as far away from Galloway as possible. And I didn’t want to be there anymore either.

I was still half asleep.

The parking lot behind the courthouse was empty when I pulled in. I chose a spot that would make it easy for us to get away, and faced the car toward the highway. I turned off the motor, stretched out as much as I could behind the steering wheel and closed my eyes, just for a moment.

When I opened them again, the parking lot was full.

I was disoriented; for a second I forgot why I was there. But I pulled myself together and headed toward the courthouse door.

I could hear the crowd from the parking lot, and I saw them as soon as I rounded the corner by the entrance. Some of them carried signs: An Eye for an Eye, Justice for Stephanie—with a drawing of a noose on it. There were variations, but they were all calling for my best friend’s blood.

The media was there, too. I counted television cameras from four different stations. They seemed to be interviewing people at random. Some of the people talking into the mikes had no connection to Casey or, as far as I knew, to Stephanie.

Amber Bradley was there, talking into a TV camera, groomed as if she was about to step on the runway.