That people were asleep in their beds as it happened, and that one or more of them might have heard her noise, stirred, gotten up to investigate, never occurred to me. There’d be a 9-1-1 call. A witness account. A search party. Efforts made to find who was hurt. Goldilocks wouldn’t have waited on the rock for me.
“There’s stuff I’ve never told. I should have said it earlier. I—I didn’t want to think about it,” Viv whispered, knitting her fingers in the dirty, torn hem of her skirt. “I wasn’t allowed to leave the house the day after. I tried to guilt my dad into bringing me to Izzie’s by playing dead on the porch swing. I fell asleep. There were all these neighbors on our lawn when I woke up. Mrs. Holloway, Mr. and Mrs. Yu, Mr. Swinton, a couple more. They talked about two nights before the girl was found.”
I shook my head impatiently. “We already know. You tried to eavesdrop and they caught you and left.”
“If you couldn’t eavesdrop, how do you know when they were talking about?” Harry asked. I dropped the empty bottle I’d been clutching and it rolled away from my feet.
Viv’s fingers froze in the tatter of hem. “Because I lied.” She took a beleaguered breath. “They didn’t see me. I heard most of it. Confusing. Like, they couldn’t agree on details. Mr. Swinton said it was two in the morning but the Yus thought more like midnight when—when—”
“When what, Vivian?” I jumped at the stern grown-up voice that came out of Graham.
“When they heard it. Mr. Yu said first there were squealing tires.” Each word was shot from her mouth, over enunciated, like she learned to do in speech therapy for when she was nervous. “Mrs. Yu told him to take his hearing aid out and go back to sleep. Not to wake Lorin. Mr. Swinton said it wasn’t squealing tires but a crash, like kids knocking over recycling bins on the curb. He heard a girl’s voice. Mrs. Holloway only heard the animal.”
“The animal,” I murmured.
Viv kept going. “She said it was closer to three when the animal started moaning.”
“Moaning.” My voice shook.
“It moaned for a long time. Mr. Swinton thought it was a girl and that she was drunk and crying for no reason.”
“For no reason,” Harry whispered, rubbing at his eyes.
“Because girls just go around crying in the middle of the night all the time,” I said, hands fisted.
“Did anyone go outside to see?” Harry asked.
Viv shook her head and said into her hands that now covered her face, “Mrs. Holloway turned on music to block it out and Mr. Swinton went back to sleep. This isn’t the worst part.”
Harry made a choking noise of disbelief.
“The Yus found a shoe in their front yard the next morning. A white sneaker. They threw it away.” Goldilocks’s shoe with its wilted sole flashed in my memory. Its mate had been missing. “And Mr. Kirkpatrick told them about the blood on the sidewalk. Grumbled about how it must have been roadkill and how there was too much wildlife in the hills. He called the cops. Told them they needed to get animal control on it.”
There was a knob in my throat keeping me from breathing.
“He told the police the placement of the blood was weird for roadkill. It started in the shoulder and then just disappeared after a few feet on the sidewalk. Did the animal drag itself and then just fly away?”
“When?” I asked.
“He called them after he sprayed it down with water.”
“The day before we found her,” I said. “Denton got called out for her body and the day before a neighbor told the cops there was blood on the sidewalk. Yet they still tried saying she was killed in another town.”
“Kirkpatrick told the cops about the blood. What about the other neighbors? What about the Yus and the shoe? The noises and all that?” Harry asked.
“No.” Delayed, Viv shook her head. “Even after they knew about the blood on the sidewalk and the shoe, none of them told.”
Graham pointed at Viv. “Not you either.”
“My dad was there.” Her eyes dilated. “He didn’t tell. How could I? I was a little girl.”
Graham’s chin tilted high as he regarded her disapprovingly. “Twelve-year-olds can speak. Act. I slipped a photo to the newspaper. I did what I thought was right. Izzie went to the tunnel by herself. You knew how to dial a phone, right? You could have taken your bike to the police station. Walked.”
“My dad knew,” she said again, pleadingly. “I thought he’d get in trouble for not telling.”
Graham’s head descended to the table where he sat, and his voice came muffled and weary. “Someone got away with murder, first hitting the girl with a car, then strangling her. Why would there be consequences for not volunteering information?”
“It’s easy to be logical now. But not everybody thinks like a scientist at twelve.” She stared at the blood splatter on her hem. “I’m not the only one who made a mistake. You left the paw prints. Izzie got stabbed at the tunnel.”
“You’re right,” I whispered. “Everyone but Harry kept secrets about Goldilocks.”
“We were kids, you know,” Viv went on. “Scared. Mixed up. What about the grown-ups? They ignored a girl crying for help or crying because she was dying. They threw and washed away evidence. They could have saved her.”
There was stunned silence. The dark night through the glass slider beckoned me. I wanted to wade into the night, become a predator as invisible as the wind slipping through our neighbors’ flower beds. Through their keyholes. Invade their houses. Our neighbors, people who baked special Halloween treats for the block’s kids, were horrible. Selfish. The kind of indifference that pulls a pillow over its head to sleep through cries for help. I looked to the idol’s face up on her perch. Her smile was bitter. I yearned to grab all the blood we had left over in the fridge. I’d hit the entire length of Driftwood Street—all forty or fifty houses. I’d paint them red.
“This is why the cops let it go,” I said. Understanding fired in my brain like a limb coming awake after falling asleep. “The blood was in the road. They knew about it. A body was found. She had a bruise, from here to here.” I ran a finger from my neck to the waistline of my jeans. “Even without knowing about the loud bang or the animal moaning or the girl crying, it sounds like a car hit her first. Connect the dots. It was someone who lived on our street. Had to be. Driftwood doesn’t get through traffic, and after Conner’s house there’s his dad’s last development that’s just sitting there, no one living there yet.” I swallowed. “Someone who lives here did it. Hit her with their car. Strangled her.”
“Maybe Denton didn’t want to look for who killed her because he was afraid it was someone he knew,” Harry said.
I was up and pacing. “We’ve got to do something.”
“We are,” Graham said. “We will.” A dangerous flicker in his eyes.
“Come sit,” Viv said, patting the sofa beside her.
I pulled the end of my ponytail. “Can’t. I just . . . I can’t.”
“We’ll think bigger,” Graham said. “Spare no one.”
I stopped short and held his stare. “Yes. Promise.”
“I swear it.”
“Me too,” Viv said.
“They’ll deserve it,” Harry said, meeting my gaze.