“At least he’s as mad about this as we are,” said Marci.
“I’m trying to hear,” I said, but stopped speaking abruptly when another officer walked briskly around the corner, headed straight for us. I looked up, rehearsing my story one last time, but he walked right past us toward Officer Davis’s door. His face was grim, his teeth clenched.
“That’s not good,” said Marci.
The newcomer opened the door, and we caught the second half of Officer Glassman’s muffled argument: “… even talking about this! How is it even an issue? So you don’t believe in bigfoot, fine, neither do I, but then it was a bear, or the biggest wolf you’ve ever seen—the coroner’s report is going to back up everything I’ve said, no matter what you think I was doing with that g—”
“Quiet!” said Officer Davis. I could just barely see him through the door, and he looked furious. I wanted Glassman to keep talking, to say more about the monster he’d seen, but Davis turned to the man who’d opened the door and snapped at him: “I said no interruptions.”
“Unless there was another dead kid,” said the cop at the door. Every head in the waiting room swiveled toward him in unison, and the entire police station seemed to be suddenly on edge, listening. “Now we have.”
“No,” said Davis.
The cop in the doorway shook his head. “A local boy named Corey Diamond just got hit by a truck, in his own bedroom. Dead on impact.”
“Holy mother,” whispered Marci.
“In his bedroom.…” Officer Davis spluttered, trying to find words. “That’s … Dammit. Is it an accident or another murder?”
“That’s the thing,” said the cop. “We don’t know.” He swallowed, like he was nervous. “There wasn’t anybody in it—the truck was completely empty when it hit.”
18
“I think someone’s reading my mind,” I whispered.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Marci.
I looked around the police station, as if expecting to see a clawed, hairy monster peeking out from around a corner. “It’s the only explanation.”
The entire police station was buzzing with noise, cops and civilians and even suspects in their interrogation rooms, shouting and whispering and arguing and praying. What was going on? Who was behind it? Why were they doing it? Even Boy Dog was barking, little yips and growls of agitation. I felt a pain in my hands and looked down, realizing that I was gripping the armrests so tightly that the skin of my knuckles, chapped from wind and sun, was splitting open across the bones. Someone was reading my mind.
“We need to get out of here,” said Marci again, grabbing my arm.
I felt a sudden burst of anger—how dare she touch my arm!—and pulled away, feeling furious and terrified and guilty all at once. I shouldn’t react like that; Marci was my girlfriend, I loved her, of course she could touch my arm. Then I remembered it wasn’t even her fingers that had touched me but Brooke’s, and I felt another surge of anger, followed just as quickly by another surge of guilt. I shouldn’t feel like this. I couldn’t allow myself to feel like this.
I needed to burn something.
“Close that door!” shouted Officer Davis. “Let’s keep some semblance of propriety in this station!” The cop with the message stepped into Davis’s office and closed the door behind him, and the noise from the waiting room only got louder.
Marci stood up and grabbed my hand with Brooke’s fingers, trying to pull me out of my seat. I clenched my teeth and gripped the armrests tighter, willing my skin to split open, relishing the sharp, tearing pain of it. “John,” she whispered, and I closed my eyes and tightened the muscles in my neck, flexing them so hard my head began to shake. Get out of my head, I thought, get out of my head! I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. Whoever you are, I thought, I’m going to find you and tear you apart with my bare hands. Do you hear me? I’m coming for you!
Marci tugged on me again and I stood, feeling nauseated at the sudden change in position. Or the anger. Or the helplessness. How could we fight this thing? Whoever it was had pinned us as Withered hunters the moment we’d stepped into town, had been reading our minds and taunting us with body after body, death after death. What other explanation could there be? The people we met, the people I wanted to hurt, were killed in exactly the way I wanted to kill them. And now our only suspect was gone—
I stopped at the front desk. “What happened to the body?” I asked.
The cop at the desk looked up with a frown, both annoyed by my question and confused by it. “What?”
“Corey Diamond’s body,” I said, “what happened to it? Is it still there?”
“You can’t see the body—”
“But can you?” I asked. “Can anybody? Does the body still exist?”
“The hell are you talking about?” asked the cop. “We’re not going to hide the body, no matter how many pieces it’s in. What are you trying to say about us?”