Twisted (4 page)

The judge slammed his gavel hard and yelled something. The courtroom started to murmur and Beth Anne heard it again: “She’s just a little girl! She had nothing to do with anything!”

Kasey, the advocate assigned to her by the court, wiggled through the crowd and held her hand out. Someone pushed Beth Anne forward, her hand finding Kasey’s—but not soon enough. There was already a photo on the screen: the soles of two bare feet, blotched and purpling, peeking out from underneath a blood-speckled sheet. A little, yellow tented number was placed next to them, the words
Vic: Hayley Davison, 19; Exh 1
printed in black Sharpie across it.

Chelsea and Laney kicked open their car doors, but Bex wanted to stop them. She wanted to scream at them to get back inside, to start the car and go to Corolla Beach, but she couldn’t move. Everything fell into silent slow motion. The sand kicking up behind Chelsea’s flip-flops. Laney’s hair fanning out behind her as she beckoned for Bex.

Woodenly, Bex pushed the seat forward and slipped out of Laney’s door. She heard nothing as she stepped onto the sand, still warm from the sun. Laney and Chelsea had turned back by then, their mouths open, their faces tortured. Chelsea was yelling at Bex, pointing at the phone in her hand. Bex didn’t react, and Chelsea finally snatched it from her. Laney’s face was red, mascara running down her cheeks with the tears.

Bex stopped, the bare feet mere inches from her own.

They belonged to a woman—no, a teenager—lying facedown in the sand. Her hair was spread in a graceful blond halo, the edges disappearing into a clump of sea grass. Her head was turned, lips blue and slightly parted, eyes open as though she were staring down the beach. Her right arm was laid gently at her side, fingers curling over her palm. Her left arm was arched over her head, her fingers half-buried in the sand. Bex didn’t need to see them to know that the ring finger was missing, because that was his calling card.

The Wife Collector.

Her father.

Daddy’s home.

No
, Bex thought.

It couldn’t be. Her father had been gone—on the run—for ten years now. The murders had stopped.

But what if he’s started up again?
the tiny voice in the back of her head asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “No.” She didn’t realize that she had said it out loud until Laney turned to her. She was trembling.

“Darla,” Laney murmured, her index finger shaking as she tried to point. “It’s Darla.”

Bex didn’t know how long it took for the police to come. The three girls waited in Laney’s car, the silence deafening until Chelsea said, “I’ve never seen a dead body before.”

Neither had Bex, in person.

“Not a body,” Laney said, her voice a breathy whisper. “Darla.”

The police came in a flood of red and blue lights. No sirens, just lights that bled across the sand, lending the evening an even more morose and eerie feeling. When the police got out of their squad cars, it was like the clock started again—radios cackling, the steady hum of cars continuing to arrive, waves crashing in the near distance. Everything was happening.

“Bex!”

Bex snapped to the voice, and Trevor launched himself from the driver’s seat of his car, cutting through the sea grass toward her. One of the officers stepped in front of him.

“We’re going to need you to stay back, son.”

“But they’re my friends,” Trevor said, his hands falling listlessly at his sides. “And that’s my girlfriend.”

Bex should have felt something—an exhilarated zing, a delicious anxiety, even a pop of irrational fear. She had eaten lunch with Trevor exactly five times and shared an ice cream cone and her history notes—and now he was calling her his
girlfriend.
She had always wanted to have a boyfriend, to be normal, one of the gang. Now that it had happened, all she could feel was numb. The bees were buzzing in her head, pricking hot spots down her spine.

This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening…

One of the cops—his name badge read Officer Kelty—shuffled the three girls away from Trevor and into the shadow of his black GMC.

“We’re going to need to ask you ladies some questions.” He jutted his chin toward Laney and Chelsea. “You two hang back right here for a second. I’m going to talk to…” He raised his eyebrows but Bex didn’t say anything.

“Her name is Bex,” Chelsea put in. “Bex Andrews.”

That’s not right
, Bex thought.
That’s not my name…

As Officer Kelty gently steered her to a slightly more private area, she steeled herself, repeating that she was Bex Andrews and that what was happening now had nothing to do with her father. But still that little voice persisted.

“So, Bex, can you tell me why you and your friends were out here tonight?”

The temperature seemed to drop by ten degrees and a crisp wind sped across the dunes, picking up grains of sand and re-dispersing them. Bex zipped her hoodie up to her neck.

“Bonfire. We were going to have a bonfire.”

Kelty nodded, his eyes never leaving the tiny notepad he wrote in. “And how was it that you came upon the body?”

Bex heard herself relating the story but her eyes were flitting over the police officer. He was young—twenty, twenty-five at best, and clean-shaven—and when he looked at her, he smiled, his eyes warm. He was nothing like the officers she had met before, the ones from her old life who took away her father. Those two stood out in her memory, hard and almost gray, with sinister smiles and gnarled, bony hands that reached for her to steal away everything that was important to her.

“I’m really sorry you had to see this,” Officer Kelty was saying. “But if you remember anything else, even if it doesn’t seem important, please call.”

He handed Bex his card and then beckoned for Chelsea. Bex stared at his embossed name, at the gold, foil police star right next to it on the card. She had lied to a police officer. She said she was Bex Andrews.

I am Bex Andrews
, she reminded herself.
I am.

Behind her, Bex could hear the snapping of the crime scene photographer’s camera. Each flash, each snap of the shutter sickened her more, and she felt the bitter salivation that starts before being sick. She pinched her eyes shut, trying to block out any memories.

“Bex!”

Her head snapped toward the voice. It was Trevor. Every other sound melted away, and all she could hear were his sneakers pounding the pavement as he came toward her. Was he going to accuse her now, call her a murderer, tell her it ran in her blood?

Sick. Twisted. A monster. A demon. The devil’s spawn.

When she was Beth Anne Reimer, she had pretended the words didn’t bother her because she could see the way they tore at her grandmother, pricking her skin and leaving tiny scars well after they’d gone.

“They’re just angry, Beth Anne,” Gran would tell her, her hand tightening around Beth Anne’s. “They are blinded by their grief. ‘Bless those who curse you.’ They know not what they say.”

But Beth Anne had seen the hatred in their eyes—so Bex steeled herself for the barrage from Trevor.

“Hold it, miss.” Another officer stepped out from behind one of the parked cars, his hand splayed out, stop-sign fashion.

“This is a crime scene. You’re going to have to come around this way, please.”

It was then that Bex noticed the yellow “Crime Scene” tape strung around the perimeter. She was inside the tape and Trevor was outside. The barrier seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere, a physical reminder that she could only move so far away from her old life. Normalcy would always be just beyond her reach.

Trevor’s eyes shot from Bex to the officer. “But she’s my friend. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

The officer cut his eyes to Bex, who nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“I can take you home.”

Bex looked over her shoulder. Chelsea was talking to Officer Kelty, and Laney was leaning up against her car, her arms wrapped around herself, eyes glossy and unfocused as tears slid down her cheeks.

“Thanks, Trevor, but I think I’m going to stay here and ride back with Laney and Chelsea. They were good friends of Darla’s.” Her voice rose at the end of the sentence. She was assuming since she didn’t know much about Darla’s relationship with either Chelsea or Laney, except for the fact that she sat between them in ethics.

“Yeah.” Trevor cleared his throat. “They were best friends. Um, I guess I’ll just talk to you later.”

He hugged her over the “Crime Scene” tape, and Bex was stunned. No yelling. No accusations. No god-awful names.

Because you’re Bex Andrews now
, the tiny voice inside chided.

Bex watched Trevor get back in his car and turn it around, his headlights casting a glow over the whole horrible scene. They also caught the edge of a car pulled off the road half a football field away. Someone was out there. Someone was watching. Bex started when she saw the glint of a tiny, red light in the blanket of blackness.

Like the red light on a video camera when it was recording.

• • •

The sunlight streamed over Bex and she rolled over, loving the soft warmth on her face. It took her a full minute to remember what had happened the previous night, and when she did, her blood ran cold and goose bumps shot up on her flesh.

“Bex!” Denise called from downstairs. “Wake up, sleepyhead! We’ve got pancakes!”

“And I didn’t cook them,” Michael joined in. “So they’re good!”

She kicked off the covers and trudged downstairs, the sweet scent of maple syrup meeting her halfway down.

“Hey, sweetheart. How was the bonfire?”

Suddenly the smell of syrup was overwhelming, the heat from the griddle suffocating. Bex shook her head, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. “It was awful,” she managed, surprised at the tears that started to fall. “Awful.”

“Oh, honey!” Denise gathered her up in a one-armed, one-spatula hug.

“Was it the boys? Did they do something?”

She could see Michael sitting rigid in his chair, his coffee mug in midair, knuckles white on the handle.

“No, no, nothing like that.” Bex sniffled. “It was—” She turned, pointing to the news on the muted TV. “It was that.”

“
Authorities aren’t saying much about the body found last night off Corolla, except to say it is that of a young woman, probably in her late teens to early twenties. There has been no comment on whether this young woman has any connection to Erin Malone, found just over a week ago, and police won’t confirm if this latest victim’s death will also be classified as a homicide. What we do know is that the body was found by three Kill Devil Hills area teens who, we understand, are not suspects.”

The news anchor was in a little square at the corner of the screen while footage of the previous night rolled in front of Bex’s eyes. She saw the clumps of sea grass, the fluttering, yellow “Crime Scene” tape, Officer Kelty, and the assembled police units.

“Oh my God, Bex, were you and the girls the ones who found her?” Denise stepped back but kept her arms around Bex.

“Yeah.”

Michael pulled out a chair and gestured for her to sit. “Oh, honey. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you.” He reached out and squeezed her hand. “You must have been so scared. Why didn’t you call us to come get you? Or at least wake us up when you came in?”

Bex wagged her head mutely, but everything inside her wanted to spill, to finally confide the secrets she had been carrying ever since she could remember. She wanted to tell Michael and Denise that the dead girl wasn’t a woman but a teen like herself—a teen from her high school who her new friends knew. She wanted to tell them that she wasn’t scared of the body; she wasn’t scared about what had happened—she was scared about what it meant.

They continued to watch the news, Bex rapt but dismissing every word. She was sifting for a few in particular, the few that would confirm her wildest fear: a missing ring finger. The anchorwoman droned on, flashing back to cases in other years and in other states where teens had been found, adding a few details here and there: the body was unclothed, no confirmed method of death but rumors of asphyxiation and possible sexual assault.

Finally, the channel moved to a story about a platoon of local vets coming home, and Bex let out the breath she didn’t know she had been holding. There was no mention of a missing ring finger. It was the best she could hope for, she reasoned.

After breakfast, Bex went to her room and stretched out on her unmade bed, staring blankly at the ceiling and letting the hum of the bees in her head block out any rational thought. Denise and Michael took turns checking on her every hour or so. Stepping in and wringing her hands, Denise urged Bex to talk or eat. Michael popped his head in and cleared his throat, opening his mouth and shutting it again, then finally blurting out something innocuous like, “Can I get you anything?”

It hurt Bex to see them so worried about her. It was a strange, uncomfortable feeling and she had a hard time not remembering her grandmother, the way her hand tightened over Bex’s, the papery feel of Gran’s thin skin against her own fingers. She had only had her mother’s mother, Gran. Her father’s biological mother had left when her daddy was just six years old. After that, according to him, his dad had a series of wifely stand-ins. Flitty blonds and brunettes who burned toast, resented their new beau’s boy, and eventually ran off when the next fleet of truckers hit town.

Bex had met Pa Reimer once and had no question why he ran women off. He had all the charm of a taxidermied snake and was only half as warm. There weren’t any pictures of Grandma Reimer—not even one. Her daddy said that was because she didn’t stay around long enough for “the film to develop,” but Gran said he had burned them all. She had seen one though, and Grandma Reimer then—young, with a wide, openmouthed smile—looked like a teenager with crooked teeth and her blond hair in pigtails. She looked a little like the waitress from the Black Bear Diner. The one who had curled her phone number into Bex’s daddy’s palm. The one the media called Victim #4.

The image of Darla—a cute blond who, from her pictures, had the same easy smile and young-bride looks that her father seemed to favor—flashed in Bex’s mind again, and she felt the bile itching the back of her throat. She ran to the bathroom and retched, her palms burning against the cool porcelain. When nothing came up, she flopped back onto her bed, the sweat growing cold on her forehead.

Bex must have dozed off because when she opened her eyes, graying twilight had replaced the sun, chilly air ruffling the curtains on her open windows. A Post-it note was stuck to her lampshade:
M went to pick up a pizza. I’m out in the yard.—D

She plucked the note off the shade, stretched, wandered down the stairs, and pulled open the front door.

“Hey.” Denise called from the kitchen. She dropped her shoes at the back door and closed the distance between them. “You’re up.”

Bex started. “I was about to go looking for you.”

Denise wiped her brow, leaving a smudge of brown-black dirt on her cheek. “I was working out back. How do you feel about rock gardens? It’s become increasingly obvious that plants aren’t my thing. Everything is dead.”

Bex swallowed and Denise looked pained, springing forward. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Bex batted at the air. “No, it’s okay.” She went to close the door she was still holding open, then paused.

A tiny, gift-wrapped box sat on the doormat outside. She pointed. “What’s that?”

Denise came to look over her shoulder. “No idea. Pick it up.”

“Is this some kind of feel-better gift from you and Michael or something? Because I appreciate it but—”

Denise stepped around Bex and stooped, picking up the box herself. “No. Is that what we’re supposed to do?” She looked worried. “I read online that we’re supposed to create a place of openness and comfort for you, and possibly explain our feelings about death to create an open dialogue. Michael thought we should get you a kitten.”

“No.” Bex held up her hands. “I don’t need any of those things. At least not a gift or a kitten. And you guys have already made me feel comfortable.” She offered a small smile.

Michael drove up and parked in the driveway, appearing on the front walk with a pizza box raised over his head. He looked from Bex to Denise, slight confusion in his eyes.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing. There was just this”—Denise held up the box—“on the front porch. Oh…” She plucked out a tiny, white envelope that had been tucked under the bow. “It says ‘Bex.’”

Michael frowned. “Were we supposed—”

“No.” Denise tried to hand Bex the box, but she just stared at it, at the curlicues on the wrapping paper, the ends of the ribbon spilling over the box.

“Here.”

“I don’t… Who’s it from?” Bex wanted to know.

“There is a card,” Michael told her. “You should read it. But can we move this little shindig inside? Pizza is getting cold.”

Bex followed them into the kitchen, sliding her finger under the flap of the envelope. “There’s nothing inside.”

“No card?”

Bex shrugged, turning over the envelope as proof. “Nothing.”

“Open the box,” Michael urged.

Bex did as she was told, the wrapping paper uncovering a smooth, white jewelry box. She pulled open the top and her breath caught. Nestled on a cloud of cotton was a dainty silver necklace with a tiny open heart hanging from it.

“That’s beautiful!” Denise murmured. “Honey, don’t you think that’s beautiful?”

Michael looked up from the pizza slice that was halfway to his mouth. He nodded and offered some pizza-garbled approximation of the word “beautiful.”

“Put it on!” Denise clapped. “Here”—she turned Bex around—“I’ll do it for you. Oh! It’s so nice on you!”

Bex glanced at her reflection in the hall mirror, her fingers going to the silver heart charm. It had weight to it and hung perfectly, the silver standing out prettily against her new beachy sun-kissed skin.

“I wonder who gave it to me.”

Denise dropped a pile of napkins on the table and handed Bex three plates. “Didn’t you talk about a guy?”

Heat flushed Bex’s cheeks.

“He’s not, like, my boyfriend or anything really. He’s just a guy.”

She thought of the haunted look on Trevor’s face as he came running toward her. He was calling
her
name. Not Chelsea’s or Laney’s—hers. He’d called her his girlfriend. She blushed again. “We hardly know each other. Why would he leave me a necklace? We haven’t even gone on an actual date yet!”

Michael’s eyebrows went up. “We’re dating now?”

Denise gave him a playful slap on the arm. “She’s seventeen, Michael. She can date.”

He narrowed his eyes playfully but with a hint of seriousness. “We can talk about it.”

Bex could only stomach one slice of pizza before bounding up to her room and checking herself out in the mirror. The necklace really was pretty, hanging at the perfect height and somehow making her look more sophisticated, more polished. She grabbed her cell phone and flopped on her belly on her bed, dialing. She had never called Trevor before—she hadn’t called any boy before—and her stomach was a riotous mess. Her heart was pounding and her ears were hot; the single slice of pizza sat like a rock in the pit of stomach, and every muscle seemed to be vibrating.

She hit the Send button.

The phone rang, and Bex was sure she was going to vomit. By the third ring she thought her heart would bound out of her throat. She was starting to hang up when she heard Trevor’s voice.

“Bex?”

Her voice was trapped in her throat.

“Be-e-x?” Trevor strung out her name. “Did you just butt dial me?” His voice was jovial, and that calmed Bex down the smallest bit.

“Hey… No. Hi… Hi, Trevor. It’s me, Bex.”

He laughed and the heat raced from her ears, prickling all over her body.
Is he laughing at me?

“I kind of figured it was you by the caller ID. That’s why I said your name.”

She let out a long whoosh of air. “Oh, right. Yeah—that was dumb.”

“So, what’s up?”

Bex found the pendant and rubbed the little heart behind her fingers, loving the smooth feel of the polished silver. “I was just calling to thank you.”

There was a short pause, then Trevor’s puzzled voice. “For what?”

“The necklace! I got it. It’s really beautiful. But why didn’t you just ring the doorbell?”

“What? I didn’t give you a necklace.”

“The package you left on my doorstep. The silver necklace.”

She could hear Trevor shift on his end of the phone. “Bex, I didn’t leave you a package. I don’t even know where you live.”

The call dropped.