Pages and pages of notes, all over my desk, pinned up on the wall. I take a sip of wine and arch my back, roll my neck. My head aching, my eyelids heavy.
The answer has to be here. There has to be something. Just keep shaking trees and something will come loose. Keep connecting different dots and you’ll find it.
You’re getting closer.
Just keep telling myself that.
I’m getting closer …
Getting closer …
Closer …
Let me out
Bam-bam-bam
Let me out
Bam-bam-bam
I can’t see can’t breathe
Darkness, then penetrating light from above, a shadow blocking it
A face coming into focus, backlit by blinding yellow
A boy, long hair, a hand
Don’t touch me, please don’t touch
Get away, please don’t hurt me
I wanna go home
My head snaps upward, my hands shooting out across the desk, sweeping off papers, knocking the wineglass to the floor with a hollow clink. I take a long breath and shake out the cobwebs.
The boy. The long hair. The hand reaching for me into the darkness.
And the face. This time, I saw his face.
A face I’ve seen before.
The boy in my nightmare is Aiden Willis.
75
NOAH WALKER PULLS his Harley up to the curb outside Jenna Murphy’s apartment. The streets are still slick from the heavy downpour last night. His sandals squish in the grass on his way up to the door.
He raps on the door and waits, adjusting the satchel over his shoulder.
When the door opens, he sees the face of a ghost.
Jenna’s hair is matted and unkempt, her face drawn and pale, her eyes deep-set and dark. A black Yankees T-shirt and men’s boxers are all she’s wearing.
She squints in the sunlight, doesn’t make eye contact with Noah. “You sure about Aiden?” she says as she turns back into her apartment.
“Good morning to you, too.” He wishes he’d brought coffee. She looks like she could use some.
The main room of the apartment looks more like an office than residential quarters. Papers everywhere—on the desk perched in the corner, covering the floor, lining the walls. Newspaper clippings, copies of police files scribbled over with notes in Magic Marker, Post-its haphazardly stuck everywhere. Organized in columns for the various victims, Annie Church and Dede Paris, Brittany Halsted, Sally Pfiester, Melanie and Zach, Bonnie Stamos—and Chief Langdon James, her uncle.
“You sure about Aiden?” she asks again, pacing the room, disappearing into her bedroom and coming out again.
“Am I sure Aiden’s not a killer? Yes, I’m sure. Why?”
She shakes her head absently, still pacing. “I’ve been having these … nightmares. Ever since I came here.”
“What kind of nightmares?”
She throws up her hands. “Like I’m trapped. Enclosed. Pleading to get out. And there’s someone above me, a boy, reaching down for me, going to hurt me. And I’m begging, Please, let me go, don’t hurt me, that kind of thing.”
That explains the sleep deprivation he’s noticed since he met her. She must have had a doozy of a nightmare last night, because it looks like she didn’t sleep much at all.
“Last night, Aiden showed up in the dream.”
“Aiden was the boy?” Noah nods. “That’s because you have Aiden on the brain, Murphy. You think there’s some meaning to your dream? Like, you’re assuming the role of one of the victims? Or you’re … seeing the future or something?”
“How the hell should I know?” She’s still pacing; then she stops and puts her hands on the wall. “Sorry. I don’t know. I … there’s probably no meaning to it. I don’t know. It’s just …”
It’s just making you crazy, he thinks.
She turns and looks at Noah, sizes him up, narrows her eyes.
“What?” he asks.
“The BB gun shooting at the school,” she says. “Back when you were a kid.”
“Oh, come on, Murphy.”
“I’m shaking trees,” she says.
“You’re what?”
“Tell me.” She walks toward him, then stops short, her hands on her hips. She could practically fall over. “Someone did it with you. A second shooter. And then set you up to take the fall. And you let him get away with it. Some kind of … code with you. Never rat out your friends or something.”
Noah looks down, pinches the bridge of his nose. All these years, all the investigation that took place back when it happened—everyone was sure it was Noah and Noah alone. Nobody ever questioned that. Any evidence to the contrary was swept aside, and the unanimous conclusion was that Noah shot all those kids on the playground, all by his lonesome self.
Not until sixteen, almost seventeen years later, when Detective Jenna Murphy from Manhattan came along and patched together a couple of interviews and some dry reports and reached a different conclusion.
“If you’re right,” he says, “and I live by the code that you don’t rat out your friends, why would I rat them out now?”
She works her jaw, her deep-set eyes burrowing into him.