“Oh God.” I shift in my seat. The blood is rushing from my head; I have to rest my head in my hands. Ellie Knepper gives my back an awkward pat.
“The tread marks from your boots,” Burke continues. “We found matching ones all over the barn.” He gives a final-sounding crack of his knuckle, like it’s the period at the end of his sentence. “It doesn’t match the story that you went up to the barn, stepped through the door, saw the blood, and turned around.”
He’s got me—there is literally no way to lie myself out of this without making it seem like I’m the one who made that blood smear.
“The other morning wasn’t your first time in the barn, was it, Kacey?” Burke says.
My mind goes blank. I can’t think about Jade, and how we agreed not to mention being in the barn. I can’t think about Ashley, and how pissed she’ll be that I snuck out and dragged Lauren along.
There’s literally no way out of this mess but to tell the truth and hope that Burke believes it.
“Okay,” I say. “We were there Friday night. Before Bailey went missing.”
Burke leans forward on his forearms. “Who’s we?”
I swallow. Tamp down the urge to look at Ashley. I only have one option if I’m going to keep any semblance of peace at home. I’ve already lost one of my best friends. I can’t lose my family too.
“Bailey, Jade, and I,” I say.
“Just the three of you?”
“Yes. It was just the three of us.”
“Okay. What were you three doing up there?” Maybe I’m imagining it, but he emphasizes the word three, as if to let me know he thinks my story is bullshit.
I have to force the words out: “We held a séance.”
Burke blinks at me. “A séance?”
Ellie leans in to him: “Like communicating with the dead.”
Annoyance flits across Burke’s face. “I know what a séance is.” Still, he’s staring at me like I’m making the whole thing up.
“It was Bailey’s idea,” I say. “I know—it was stupid. She wanted to try to summon the Red Woman. Jade and I aren’t into that stuff, but you’d have to know Bailey. If you don’t go along with her plans, she gets really—pissy.”
“Did Bailey get like that often?” Burke blinks at me. “Pissy? I’m just trying to get a better sense of what she’s like.”
Possessive. “She would get mad at me if I didn’t do stuff like sneak out with her and Jade. If I said no, she’d just show up at my house anyway.”
I can practically feel Ashley cringing behind me. Her obedient stepchild, leaving through her bedroom window to do God knows what.
Burke taps his forefinger to his chin. “But she didn’t just show up at your house the night of the party?”
I shake my head. “I told you. I didn’t want to go.”
“That’s not what Jade Becker says. She says you seemed upset on Sunday that Bailey never texted you about picking you up and bringing you to the party.”
Fucking Jade. All she did was tell the truth, but it feels like a knife in my back. Of course Jade would tell the truth—she’d do anything to get Bailey back safe.
Burke studies me. “You realize that contradicts your earlier story that you decided not to go to the party on your own, and went to bed?”
Don’t you fucking cry. “I didn’t really want to go to the party. So when Bailey didn’t text me, I was relieved, I guess.”
“And you’re sure she didn’t just show up at your house anyway? While you were sleeping.” Burke adds the last part as if it’s for my benefit. As if he doesn’t really buy that I was asleep.
Panic corners me. “My stepmom told you I was home all night.” I turn in my chair to face Ashley, who nods. But there’s something else in her expression.
Distrust.
“I don’t get why you’re doing this to me.” A tear leaks out of my eye when I look at Burke again. As I wipe it away, Ellie Knepper materializes over my shoulder with a box of tissues. “I don’t know anything. Shouldn’t you be talking to Cliff Grosso? Someone saw Bailey at his house just last week—people are saying his dad is lying for him about where he was Saturday night—”
“Cliff Grosso is not a person of interest at this time.” Burke cuts me off.
I clamp down my mouth before opening it again. “Why? Because he was dating the sheriff’s great-niece? Because his family owns half the businesses in town?”
Burke smiles. “I can assure you there’s no law enforcement conspiracy regarding the Grosso family. The investigation is simply taking us in a different direction.”
“In my direction.” My hand forms a fist under the table. “That’s total bullshit.”
“Kacey.” Ashley’s voice is like the crack of a whip.
Burke removes a photo from the folder in front of him and sets it on the table between us. It’s a grainy image, probably from a security camera. I recognize the gas station at the corner of Mills Pond Road and Sparrow Road.
Passing by is a blue Honda Civic. It’s too dark to see the driver’s face, but there’s a clear shot of the license plate. GRR. It’s the same license plate I looked for a thousand times in the BFH parking lot in a sea of blue Honda Civics while I waited for her after school.
It’s Bailey’s car. The time stamp in the corner reads 11:31 p.m.
I do the math in my head: Bailey left the party at a quarter after eleven. Prairie Circle and Kevin Sullivan’s house is about a ten-minute drive from our house.
“Notice this?” Burke taps Bailey’s right headlight. “Her blinker is on. Like she’s headed down Sparrow Hill.”
“You think she left the party to meet me?” I shake my head. “No. She could have been going to Sparrow Hill—back to the barn—”
“And why would she do that?” Burke watches me, expectant. I have no answers for him. Only pieces of information that grind to a paste in my brain. Had she been coming for me, and something stopped her?
Ashley pipes up. “How much longer will this take, Detective? I’d really like to get Kacey home. It’s been a long day for all of us.”
“Of course. Just one more thing for now.” Burke thumbs through another file folder filled with sheets of paper. “Can you verify your cell phone number for me?”
“Are those Bailey’s phone records?” I don’t mean to blurt it.
Burke’s eyebrows meet in the middle. “They are. She liked to text quite a bit. We haven’t gotten the content of those messages yet, since they were deleted, but it’s only a matter of time. The crime lab has ways of recovering them.”
Relief settles over my shoulders. Because those phone records will show that Bailey and I had no contact at all on Saturday. As I recite my number, I think, This is it. He’ll see I never called or texted her. He’ll see I couldn’t have gotten her to leave that party.
Burke repeats my number back to me, thumbing through the pages in the folder. “So if I’m not mistaken, the last time you texted Bailey before she went missing was Friday night.”
“Right.” I nod. “Like I said, we snuck out. She texted to tell me she and Jade were coming to pick me up.”