“And then they saddled you with me,” I said.
Mills smiled thinly. “And nothing ever made sense again.” He pointed at the closed interrogation room, where Brielle was waiting in hopeless terror. “She would have made sense: angry sister wreaks horrible vengeance. The narrative works. You know what they found when they picked her up? That cop with the mustache, right there by the desk, he told me the whole story. She kept saying ‘How did you read my journal? How did you read my journal?’ So they found the journal, and there was the whole plan: she hated Glassman and she wanted to kill him. She even laid out the poisoning thing, all right there in ink on paper. And yet the chief’s assistant canceled the meal, and the family spent the entire afternoon and evening at the church cleanup with dozens of witnesses. She has the perfect motive but the perfect alibi.” He sighed. “And not a speck of curry powder in the kitchen. We have a tiny town with five murders in under a week, and none of them make sense, and the best suspects end up as victims, and nothing makes sense. I’m literally starting to wonder if there’s a gas leak in town, because everyone’s crazy.”
“No, I’m not,” said Brooke’s body. She looked mostly asleep.
“Everybody move,” said a voice, and we looked up at the crowd of cops and detectives and secretaries, which were no longer milling or arguing, but moving in a single direction. Mills and I stood up.
“What’s going on?” asked Mills.
“Town meeting,” said the cop with the mustache. “Davis wants to talk to everyone again, tell ’em to stop taking matters into their own hands and let us work.”
I pointed at the interrogation room. “What about Brielle?”
“Released to her home,” said the cop. “Too much evidence in her favor.”
I watched him turn and walk out the door, then looked back at Brooke. “You awake?”
“Huh?” she looked up.
I took one of her cuffed hands, both to help her to her feet and to help her feel at ease for my next question. “Who are you?”
“The one and only,” she smiled. “Original flavor.”
“Welcome back,” I said, pulling her up. I was relieved to have Brooke again, but couldn’t help but feel a pang of loss that she wasn’t Marci. Would Marci ever come back? Or had I finally lost her for good? The thought made me feel awful, like I’d just killed a puppy. It was Brooke’s body, and it should be Brooke in charge of it. I was a horrible person for even thinking about anything else, let alone wishing for it. I kept my voice even and changed the subject. “Do you remember Agent Mills?”
Brooke looked at him, pursing her lips. “Iowa?”
“One license plate,” said Mills. “Come on, I’ll drive us to the meeting.”
“Take off her cuffs first,” I said. “No more demon, no more cuffs.”
Mills stared at us a moment, then sighed and pulled out his little silver key. “Just three days, you said. Just give us three days.” He pulled the cuffs away and slipped them in his pocket. “Now I’m screwing with crime scenes and untying a demon.”
“I’m not a demon,” said Brooke, rubbing her wrists. She stopped suddenly, cocking her head to the side. “Was I Nobody again?”
“You’re always yourself,” I said calmly, leading her to the door. “Deep inside, you’re always you.”
22
With the church burned down the meeting was held in the local school, which had a large gym for basketball games but no efficient way to cool it in the summer. Brooke and Mills and I pitched in pulling out bleachers and setting up chairs as the townspeople slowly heard the news and started trickling in. None of them were happy, and many of them were terrified. A lot of the people I’d seen with families last time were now here alone, having left their kids and spouses at home. No one wanted to be outside. Ingrid had to drag Beth practically kicking and screaming. Almost a full hour after we arrived the meeting began, and Officer Davis stood in the center of the basketball court to speak.
“Thank you all for coming to another meeting,” he said. “I assume most of you have heard the news about the latest deaths, but I wanted to make sure you heard it from me, as an official, credible source. No gossip and no backbiting. At approximately 10:30 this morning the Glassman family, Sara and her brother Luke, were found dead in Sara’s home. They appear to have died sometime last night. Some form of poison appears to be involved, but I want to stress that it is too early for me to speculate on exactly what happened, or how, or why. I urge you to show the same restraint.”