Not Quite Dead Yet, page 9
Billy studied her. “Well, it might not…might not be a coincidence, Jet.”
She sat back up.
“Couldn’t this be related to your attack?”
Jet studied him back. “You think?”
“I mean, has this ever happened to you before?”
“No,” she agreed. “And I’ve never been murdered before either.”
“Exactly.” He stood up. “I think we need to take this to the police. Aren’t they looking for a reason someone might have wanted to kill you?”
“Over thirty grand?” Funny, Jet always thought she might be worth more than that. “You’re right,” she sniffed, getting to her feet, swiping Billy’s spare key from the table.
This was something. More than clicking up and down River Street on Google Maps. A possible lead.
She grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door, put it on, key in one pocket—where her other keys lived—letter and envelope in the other. Patted her jeans pocket to check she had her phone, remembered that checking was useless; her phone was with her killer.
She slipped her thick socks into her Birkenstock clogs.
“See you later,” Jet said, reaching for the door.
“Oh,” Billy replied, one arm already inside his fur-lined denim jacket. “I thought…no, yeah, that’s fine.”
Jet faltered in the open doorway. “Oh,” she said too. “I just thought you’d be busy, you know. I’m probably imposing enough, right? Don’t need to take up any more of your time.”
Billy’s jacket fell, his face too, catching it with the hook of his little finger. The jacket, that is, not his face. He’d already picked that up, a one-sided smile. “Yeah, no, you’re right. I’ve actually g-got a shift at the bar later anyway, so that’s…yeah, that’s fine. S-see you later.”
Later. The meaning different now, shortened to a few hours. Because that’s the only kind of later Jet had left.
“Yeah, see you later, Billy.”
Nine
“And when did this arrive?” Detective Ecker’s eyes scanned down the letter again, creasing by his thumbs.
“Came in the mail this morning.” Jet sat across the table from Detective Ecker and the chief, tucked into metal chairs that were too small for them. Jack Finney stood against the back wall of the interview room, a file in his hands, hugging it to his chest.
Ecker glanced at the digital clock hanging over Jet’s head. She turned to follow his eyes: 4:52 p.m. It had the seconds too, ticking up in angry red digits—red for danger, and blood, and mistakes.
“I didn’t open it until this afternoon,” she said, answering a question he hadn’t asked. “And I sat in re-re-re—the waiting room for over an hour, waiting for you to get here. You know I’m on a bit of a tight deadline, right?”
Ecker didn’t answer, even though Jet had asked him a question. He studied the letter again, moving his thumbs down, the top half of the page flopping over.
“The loan was taken out two months ago,” he said. “And the first repayment was supposed to be made last week.”
Jet shrugged. “Guess I’ve got bigger things to worry about than a bad credit score.” She rubbed the spot above her eye, the pain deepening under these bright overhead lights. They never heard of soft lighting? Lamps?
“And you don’t recognize this bank account number? The one the money was paid into?”
“Nope, that’s not mine.”
Ecker clicked his tongue. “OK,” he said, “we’ll look into it.”
“You think it’s related? To my murder?”
The detective folded the letter, slid it back inside the envelope. “We’re not ruling anything out at this point.”
More cop speak.
“Well, you’ve probably ruled some things out. I’m no detective, but it probably wasn’t aliens or Taylor Swift. She’s very busy.”
Chief Lou smiled, hiding it with his hand.
“Let us look into this.” Ecker banged the letter against the table and stood up, tiny metal chair screeching, making more noise than it should, to make up for its size.
“Wait.” Jet’s voice stopped him on his way to the door. “You said you were going up to River Street last night, to speak to the people who live there. You find anything?”
Ecker’s fingers stalled on the handle. “Spoke to the neighbors. No one remembers seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary that night. The house nearest the phone’s last known location, number 12, the elderly woman who lives there was already asleep at the time in question. We had some officers on a grid search this morning. Nothing’s turned up so far. I’ll let you know if it does.”
Jet nodded, but she didn’t entirely trust that he would.
“Oh, and you can tell the pricks at LightFi that they will be seizing that truck over my dead body.”
Crickets. Jet hadn’t even meant to do that one. Death was everywhere, linguistically speaking; she hadn’t really noticed until she was dying.
Ecker opened the door, and the chief followed him out, dipping his head toward Jet as he did, replacing his cap. The door closed behind them, and the clock shifted upward another minute. Counting up, but counting down really.
Jack came alive then, pushing off the wall and into one of the abandoned chairs, too small for him too. He put the file down on the table and stretched his fingers.
“We had a call into the station a couple of hours ago,” he said, holding her eyes. “Your mom, trying to file a missing persons report.”
Jet sighed, the air heavier on the way out. “I’m not missing.”
“I know,” Jack said gently. “It’s just her way, Jet.”
“I wish it wasn’t.”
“She said you left home this morning. She’s very worried about you…in your condition.”
“I’m fine.” Jet sniffed. “I’m staying with Billy.”
Jack nodded, left his chin up. “I assumed. I’ll let her know, when she calls back.”
Silence, also heavier than it was before.
“Will you get in trouble?” Jet said, head jerking toward the door. “Because I asked for you to be in here too?”
“Don’t remember you asking.” Jack smiled. “More like demanding.”
Jet smirked. “Sorry. It’s just, I don’t know them. I don’t trust them.” She played with her hands, slotted them together. “And they don’t know me either. I know they don’t really care, beyond closing a case. But I do know you, and I know you’ll tell me anything I need to know. It’s next-door-neighbor code.”
Another smile.
“So…is there anything I need to know?” Jet prompted. “Anything turn up from processing the crime scene?”
The metal chair creaked as Jack shifted his weight. “Well, I should probably wait for Detective Ecker to—”
“—Please, Mr. Finney.” Jet leaned forward, catching his flailing eyes. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
He sighed, checking over his shoulder, watching the door for a few seconds, time ticking away. The clock was silent, but Jet could hear it all the same.
“OK,” Jack said quickly, rubbing his nose with one hand, sliding the file over with the other. “We did find something interesting.”
“Interesting?”
Jack opened the file, flicking through pages and photographs, those yellow numbered markers from the scene. Jet tried to catch all the words, failed because they moved too fast, upside down.
“Here.” Jack stopped at a large photograph, slid it out and held it up.
A gloved hand at the top of the frame, two fingers pinching a clear baggie in front of a white surface, sealed at the top. And inside the plastic baggie was a hair. Jet squinted, leaned closer. The hair looked red, straight, about five inches long.
Jack handed the photo over and Jet studied it closer.
“That hair was found at the scene. More specifically, it was found where you were lying, after the attack. And this hair was on the wooden floor, underneath the main pool of blood. The hair was there first, and you bled over it; the techs can tell things like that.”
Jet lowered the photo, looked back at him. She thought she knew what that meant, but she wanted him to say it.
Jack nodded. “Which means it wasn’t left there by any of the first responders or police officers, or Billy finding you, when the scene was contaminated. This hair was under the blood. It was left there either before, or during…”
He didn’t finish his sentence, didn’t need to.
“So it was left by the killer?” Jet asked, eyes returning to the photo, running her finger along the zoomed-in strand of hair. Did Jet even know any redheads? Sophia’s hair was dark brown, but sometimes looked a little red under the right lighting.
Jet swallowed. “DNA?” But she already knew. Knew that movies and TV lied about that stuff, fast-tracked it. Knew that it could take weeks to get any results back from the lab. Jet didn’t have weeks, and she wasn’t in a movie.
Jack shook his head. “No need,” he said quietly. “It’s not human.”
Jet narrowed her eyes.
“It’s synthetic,” he said. “Plastic.”
Jet looked back at the hair. “You mean a wig?”
“I mean a wig.” Jack reached forward, took the photograph from her, replaced it in the file, another look over his shoulder. “You know anyone who was wearing a red wig at the Halloween Fair?” But he’d asked it like he already knew the answer, like this wasn’t really a question at all. Which was why Detective Ecker hadn’t needed to ask it.
Jet exhaled. “JJ,” she said, her hands finding each other again, gripping on.
Jack pressed his lips together, closed the file.
JJ couldn’t have done this, right? He’d hardly raised his voice the whole time Jet had been with him; in fact, maybe yelling would have showed that he cared more. But JJ was missing. JJ sent her a Sorry text after the time of the attack. JJ was wearing a red wig with straight hair on Halloween, on the night Jet was killed.
Jet could see it in Mr. Finney’s eyes, could count them one by one.
Three strikes against JJ.
Ten
The inside of the truck smelled like salt and grease, stronger somehow, the colder the fries got. Maybe Jet hadn’t needed four whole boxes—large, of course—as well as a double cheeseburger. But she hadn’t eaten fries in years, to save her kidneys, and what had been the damn point?
She finished off the last three fries from her second pack, eating with spite more than anything else—because she could now, so she would. They weren’t as good as she remembered, and now her tongue stung from the salt.
It was coming up again. The location.
Jet lightened the pressure in her right foot and the truck slowed to a crawl.
River Street.
Right here, where the road met North Street, continuing straight on ahead, where her headlights couldn’t reach.
It had been three nights now, since her phone was brought here by her killer, turned off in this exact spot.
What did this place mean to them? Where were they going?
If JJ was the prime suspect, then how did this tie into the police’s theory? JJ had never mentioned knowing anyone on this street either, so why would he have come here after killing her? And—scratch that—why would he have killed her in the first place? They used to make each other laugh…a lot. Although, now Jet thought about it, maybe the laughter had been mostly one-sided. His. At work, catching stolen moments in the gym staff room, before they realized there were cameras in there. They’d been good together, but good hadn’t been good enough for Jet. You had to aim for something better than good, something bigger, and Jet had her whole life in front of her…back then, at least. She’d done it nicely, even quit her job at the gym so it wouldn’t be awkward for either of them. That wasn’t a reason to kill somebody, right?
It was Jet’s fourth time driving the street tonight, and she still had no answers, no sign. Apart from that yellow sign over there. SLOW: Children, it said. Jet was going slow, but not because some sign told her to. So slow that the truck came to a stop, sighing, settling back on its wheels.
Jet sighed too.
Maybe she should get out of the truck, walk the street instead of driving it, swap the smell of congealing fries for the crisp night air. Maybe she’d see it from a different perspective, in a new light. She pulled off onto the grass alongside someone’s pristine white fence. Pulled the handbrake but didn’t turn off the engine, not yet. The clock on the dashboard was her only way to keep track of time, without a phone, without a watch. It read 10:55. Which meant that, in one minute, it would be the exact same time as well as the exact same spot. The time and place the killer was when they turned off her phone.
Jet pulled the key from the ignition, got out, locked the door. Then she turned, one hand resting on the truck, and she watched the street. The middle of the road, where the last blue blip of her phone had floated, its final stamp on the world. It had guided her here and now she was lost.
Nothing happened. She counted to sixty, and still nothing happened. Just the wind whistling in the burnt-orange trees. Well, what had she expected exactly?
Jet kept going, following River Street, leaving her truck behind. Head spinning as she looked at the houses on either side: that white one there, with the triangular porch and the red car outside, must have been the house Ecker mentioned, where the elderly woman lived. Asleep and useless to Jet.
Her shoes slapped the pavement, the only sound on this too-quiet street. No more streetlamps beyond this point, just the faint glow of the moon hovering over her.
Her killer must have known someone who lived down this way, right? Or why drive straight here after breaking Jet’s head open? Could she ask the police for a list of all the owners’ names, Mrs. Red Shutters and Mr. American Flag?
Not just a flag outside that house, though, a jack-o’-lantern too, carved into the face of a skull. The bottom looked a little soggy, but it wasn’t rotting yet. It shared its death stare with Jet, and she shared hers back.
At this rate, all the pumpkins would outlive Jet.
The houses petered out again, making way for the cemetery. Strange shapes skulking in the dark, crosses and headstones like wonky rows of teeth, an angel weeping over them all. Jet kept walking, didn’t want to think about it too hard. This wasn’t the only cemetery in town; she might not end up here. But Emily was buried here, and there was something in that, wasn’t there? Sisters, together again. Jet much older than her older sister ever got to be. And, look, there was a fresh corner of grass, a patch waiting to be filled. There you go: Jet had thought about it anyway. Would anyone leave flowers for her? Jet liked sunflowers best.
The cemetery ended and the houses came back. More shutters, more dormer windows, and Jet skulking below. She came to a crossroads, four ways to choose. River Street continued if she picked the road ahead; she’d only just reached the halfway point, but her legs felt a little unsteady. Tired, just tired. She was allowed to get tired; it didn’t mean anything else. And the back of her head throbbed, a wet kind of pain. Jet had left those painkillers behind at Billy’s, hadn’t realized she’d be out so long.
She picked the road that branched off to the left, back toward town. She’d come all this way, might as well loop around to go pick up her truck. Better than having to walk back past the cemetery again anyway.
The world darkened as she followed the road, the moon blocked out, trees pressing in on either side of her. The bridge waited up ahead in an orange glow, flickering in and out from a faulty streetlamp. Middle Covered Bridge, the one all the tourists stopped to take a photo of, because it was so Vermont. That was during the day; at night it looked like something from a horror movie, like you wouldn’t step inside unless the plot forced you to.
But no one was forcing Jet. She continued toward the wooden walkway that ran alongside the bridge, her steps echoing around the whole structure, reverberating in her aching head.
Jet stopped.
A rustle in the trees behind her, something moving, following.
She looked over her shoulder, couldn’t see anything.
Probably just a fox.
And that was when Jet realized: she wasn’t afraid. She should be afraid: it was night, it was dark, she was alone, walking, without her phone or any way to call for help. But she wasn’t afraid, or her heart hadn’t noticed those things, forgot to drum out any warning.
And her heart was right: what was the point being afraid anymore? The worst had already happened—the thing from your nightmares, the reason you didn’t go out alone in the dark or held your keys in your knuckles if you had to. Jet couldn’t get any more dead; it had already happened.
Was this what it felt like to be a man? Walking on this creepy dark bridge, not scared for a second that she wouldn’t make it out the other side, because it didn’t really make a difference whether she did or not. The night belonged to her now too.
A dead woman walking. And dead women had no use for fear.
* * *
—
Jet pushed the door open with her hip. “Want some fries, Billy? They’re cold.”
Billy stood three feet away, eyes wide and unblinking, phone in his hand.
“Where have you been?” he said, breathless, though he hadn’t moved.
Jet passed him the two leftover boxes of fries. He held them to his chest, almost dropping one.
“From that burger place on Route 4. Near the police station. Haven’t eaten fries in about four years and it was a bit of an anticlimax, if I’m being honest. Maybe I should have found a McDonald’s.”
“It’s late.” Billy put the boxes on the table, one pack overturning, fries cascading over the edge. “I was worried. Tried to call but you don’t have a phone. What were you doing?”
