Blood on My Hands

CHAPTER 2

Saturday 11:53 P.M.

I COME OUT of the woods, then dash across Seaver Street and into the Glen. The houses here are big old Tudors with spires, white stucco walls, and leaded windows. My heart is banging in my chest, from both running and fear. Slowing to a jog and weaving away from the bright spots under the streetlights, I know I have to find a place to stop and think. Finally, in a side yard, I see a child’s playhouse. It’s the size of a small shed, with a miniature porch, windows, and a door.
After tiptoeing across the lawn, I gently step onto the little porch and carefully, slowly, pull open the door, hoping it won’t squeak. I’m praying that the people who own this property don’t have a dog that will start barking. It’s dark inside, but with the door open I can make out a small yellow plastic table and two red plastic child-size chairs. I let the door close and find myself in blackness. Can’t see my hands in front of my face. But it’s oddly reassuring. If I can’t see myself, then no one can see me, either. I sit on one of the chairs, press my face into my hands, and take steady breaths, trying to calm down.
But my heart’s still drumming and I still cannot believe what just happened. Katherine murdered?
And now what? I’ve never run away like that before. I never did anything wrong that would have required running. Why did I run? Why didn’t I stay and try to explain? Because they’d see me beside Katherine’s body with that bloody knife in my hand and Dakota saying, Do you believe it? Of all the people?
Of course they’d believe it. After all, two years ago my older brother, Sebastian, made national news by bludgeoning our father nearly to death with a two-by-four, leaving him brain damaged and mute and paralyzed from the neck down. What’s so hard to believe? Like brother, like sister, right?
Into the inky stillness inside the playhouse comes the distant sound of sirens. Dread chills my veins. The police are coming. I can picture what’s happening. Based on the phone calls from kids at the kegger, a code 11-41 has been issued. The boxy red-and-white ambulance is pulling out of its bay at the new town center.
The sirens grow louder and closer. The police will be the first to arrive, and they’ll hurry across the baseball field and into the woods with flashlights. The kids will show them Katherine’s body behind the dugout and tell them what they saw … Callie Carson kneeling beside the body with a knife in her hand …
But the officers have a more urgent matter. One will check Katherine’s vital signs while the other scrambles back to the patrol car for the medical kit. Maybe, having seen the body, they already know it’s too late—only when a kid’s life is involved, it’s never too late. They have to try no matter what. Maybe she’s still clinging to life. Maybe they can manage a miracle.
The officer with the medical kit returns. He and his partner make a valiant but vain attempt to revive Katherine. Moments later the ambulance crew arrives. The EMTs hurry in and take over. Now one of the officers gets on his radio to report the grim news. Looks like a code 187 (homicide).
They will tell the kids to step back but stay close. After all, there may be a homicidal maniac on the loose. By now the detectives have arrived and surveyed the murder scene. While one looks for clues, the other takes the names and addresses of witnesses to be interviewed first thing tomorrow morning, while memories are still fresh. Based on the initial information, a BOLO will be issued before long: “Be on the lookout for Callie Carson, age seventeen, four foot ten, roughly a hundred pounds, dressed in jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt.”
And here I am, maybe a quarter of a mile away, quivering in the dark with no idea of what to do.
About a year ago, Katherine Remington-Day, the most popular girl in the grade, started to be nice to me, inviting me to sit at her table at lunch and do things with her and her friends after school. The Remingtons were the town’s earliest residents. Katherine’s ancestors had first come to Soundview in the early 1800s. In the town hall was a row of portraits of the mayors going back to the 1820s, and close to half a dozen had the last name Remington.
Katherine was a dynamo, maybe three inches taller than me, with a light brown pageboy haircut and mad-crazy amounts of energy. No one else was on more committees or involved in more school activities, even though she did avoid any position that required an election. When she made it clear that she wanted to be friends, I figured I was just a charity case to her. Sometimes, in a dark moment, I even wondered if she was using me to prove just how powerful and popular she was. Powerful enough that she could have the loser Callie Carson as a friend and still be the center of the social swirl.
But the reason didn’t matter. I was desperate for distraction, for friends in school, for a little fun. My family had been irreparably fractured. I’d quit the cross-country team just when it looked like we had a chance to win the statewide championship. My boyfriend, Slade, was working long hours, sometimes on jobs out of town, and my best friend, Jeanie, had moved back to England. And out of nowhere, there was Katherine, offering me a lifeline. I had to believe that anyone in my situation would have leaped to take it.