I look to Alice, whose grin drops, then lifts fast. “I need to do a lap,” she says, recovering and nodding vigorously. “It’s great exercise. You go, I’ll be right over there.”
“Two minutes,” I say to Alice, but she’s already gone, shuffling backward in her Mary Jane sneakers, nearly running into a randomly placed football tackle dummy.
“Can we go to my car?” Paula says, gazing at the parking lot half a mile away.
“I don’t know. That feels kind of cruel. I haven’t been a good friend to Alice in a long time. I probably shouldn’t disappear. You know how it is with friends,” I add in a leading way. Part of me hopes that Paula will talk about the best friend she mentioned at the trailhead.
“Then I’ll make it quick,” she says, ignoring my beggy vibe. “I got some information on deep background that has not yet been corroborated, but I thought you should know.”
I look at Alice and give her a small wave. She waves back with gusto. “Oh?”
“Apparently there’s a whole subset of Prey extremists who take the hunting-humans-instead-of-animals thing to a whole new level, like it’s some grand, virtual payback. Sometimes not so virtual.”
“I don’t mean to be impolite, but if you’re saying Donald Jessup was acting out Prey in the woods, the cops figured that out a year ago. Based on the fact that he was chasing me. In fatigues,” I say.
“I know Donald Jessup liked to hunt. He also liked talking off the Twitter feeds. And that’s something he and Ana Alvarez, a veterinary student passionate about animal rights, with a history of … let’s call them unusual interests, had in common. The police hacked Donald and Ana’s direct messages. Ana arranged to meet Donald in the woods to play Prey and wound up dead.”
“Are you going to say all that on the news?” I ask.
“I can’t tell that story, because it looks like I’m blaming the victim. Besides, I don’t have independent corroboration.”
Alice swings close as she completes her first lap. I lower my voice. “How will you get it?”
“We need a source in the police department. That’s where you come in,” she says.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Alice, trying to read our lips and stumbling. I start toward her, but she leaps into the air, hands stretched to the sky. “I’m okay!” she yells.
I turn to laugh, and am surprised to find Paula’s eyes boring into me.
“You’re friendly with the son of Detective MacDougall, yes?” she says, eerily focused.
“You want me to ask Kellan to ask his dad if it’s true that Ana Alvarez was playing a kinky game with Donald Jessup?”
“Like I said, that isn’t the story we’re going to run with. I see it as background information, a piece of the puzzle. We just need to know if it’s true to decide whether or not to include that piece. Detective MacDougall was on the case initially, and rumor has it he’s dissatisfied with the way things are being conducted this time around, with all new players. He’s a perfect source: knowledgeable, respected, and with a motive to talk. You might even consider asking him directly; I understand he’s quite an admirer of yours.”
I gasp. “I’m not in a position to do that!” I catch myself and lower my voice. “I can’t.”
“It’s your call, of course. I really just wanted you to have the information anyway. Because you deserve to know.” Paula turns to Alice and waves. “I’m leaving now. Nice to meet you, Alice.” From an inside pocket, she pulls a glossy headshot postcard and a pen, and scribbles across the corner. When Alice runs up, she hands it to her. As Paula walks away, Alice stares at the picture. I stare at the real thing, her pale heels slipping from the backs of her shoes, a move at once sexy and kind of icky.
“This is so incredibly cool,” Alice says, holding the edges of Paula’s headshot as though she might smudge the image. “What did she want?”
“Just checking in. We’re friends. I guess.” I walk slowly, putting distance between us and Paula.
“This is about the big police exposé, isn’t it? Mom says it’s awkward, because they both live in this tiny little town and Detective MacDougall is so not having it, he might even lose his job, and, my gosh, Paula Papademetriou is a major journalist! She wins all kinds of awards, and she’s gorgeous, and she’s powerful, and maybe if the local police and these guys in the state government did something wrong that put Donald Jessup out on the street, they should pay.”
I charge ahead, pointing my keys at the car. “The woods. Not the street. He was in the woods.”
Alice runs to keep up. “Call me Pollyanna. I guess I want something good to come. Maybe that makes me na?ve. Or annoying. I think the laws ought to be toughened or something, so that nothing like this ever happens again. Paula is doing what … oh, never mind.”
I look at her over the car roof. “You think Paula is doing what Jesus would do.”
“I do!”
I slip behind the wheel and close my eyes. Alice jumps in and throws her arms around me, squeezing hard.