As Alecia made her way to the window, the instinct grew stronger, such that she looked back at Gabe, still focused on the television, on Bea Arthur, throwing some barb at Estelle Getty, and the laugh track tripped and Gabe laughed, his wide hand slapping at his legs, his head tilted back, then forward and Alecia fought the urge to take Gabe and flee out the back door. But something flashed in the window and she almost turned to Gabe, almost told him to go to his room because her stomach pulled, a suction right down the center of her body, until she felt lit up from the inside with danger.
At the window, she lifted the curtain. The front walk was covered with people, bright lights, and news vans, their satellites and wires and antennas glinting in what looked, under the whitest spotlights, like daylight. People milling about with cameramen, some talking into square-lensed cameras, some jockeying for a better angle, some just standing stupidly, waiting for something, anything, to happen.
Alecia shut the curtain, sagged against the window, and before she had time to think, reconsider, she flung open the door.
“Get the hell away from my house. You are scaring my son!” she yelled into the chaos, and it was hardly the truth. In fact, her freaking out would scare her son more, considering her son didn’t even know they were there. They rushed to her door, microphones in her face, shouting into her face, and Alecia panicked and slammed the door. They knocked, a louder sound still, and Gabe found his way to the hallway, his eyes wide at the lights through the window, and asked, “Mommy, what’s that?” his finger pointing.
“I have no goddamn clue, Gabe. Go to your room.”
Gabe, understanding only that he was now being punished, started to cry. Alecia, her heart in her throat, turned her phone over to call the police and saw that it was already ringing, but she hadn’t heard it over the whoosh in her ears.
She clicked “accept” without looking at the caller ID, and before she could even say hello, a voice on the other end said, “Hello? Alecia, are you there?”
She nodded and croaked out a yes. Libby Locking.
“Alecia, have you heard? Have the police talked to you?”
Alecia shook her head again, her eyes on Gabe, who was starting to flap his hands and cry, louder and louder, his head ticking to one side, his ear banging off his shoulder (he had, in the past, done that so hard his ear bled). This is what Alecia was thinking about when Libby continued, “Alecia, listen to me. They found Lucia. She’s dead.”
Alecia felt the vague dawning that something bad was happening, but couldn’t work through it all in time before Libby said the next thing.
“I heard they’ve arrested Nate.”
“When?”
“When did it happen? I don’t know. They’re saying she died on Wednesday. Which is weird; where has she been all this time?”
“Wednesday?” Alecia’s lips felt dry. Cracked. Yesterday. “How do they know it was Wednesday?”
“Her body temperature, is what the paper said. They can tell that I guess. Don’t you watch CSI?” She paused, the question rhetorical, and Alecia said nothing, her mind blurry and cottony. Then Libby said, “They’re saying Nate killed her. Everyone is saying that.”
“It wasn’t Nate,” Alecia said, automatically, calculating. “It wasn’t Nate.” Her heart, free-falling with relief. “He was with me. Yesterday. All day.”
One day: a doctor appointment, lunch, a tentative thawing, dinner and a glass of wine. For one day, her anger had melted off, like butter in the sun.
“With you?” Libby’s voice pitched up, a soft cluck on her tongue.
Alecia wondered what would have happened if they hadn’t been together. Would she have believed it wasn’t him?
CHAPTER 39
Bridget, Thursday, May 14, 2015
Call me, now.
The phone rang only a minute after Bridget texted Tripp, like he was waiting for it.
“Lucia’s dead. I’m at the mill.” Bridget’s teeth clattered together, a ringing in her ears. “Can you come get me?”
“Yes, of course. Are Harper and Mackey there?”
“Yes. Ambulances and cops are everywhere. I found her, Tripp.”
“Why did you go there? Alone?”
“I just did, it’s fine. Just come.”
In her hand, the point of the heart broke the skin, the tip tinged with Bridget’s blood. That’s how tightly she’d been holding it.
?????
Later, after questioning, statements, and interviews, Bridget’s head pounded, her hands shaky, and she needed food.
She and Tripp sat at the diner behind the police station, The 543, the same one they’d sat at not even a full week ago with the same waitress, her thick fingers smoothing down her apron front, Ashlee William’s cousin. She watched them with her eyebrows raised, her wide neck wobbling as she talked about them to the cook. He leaned out, looked over the grill at them, and shook his head.
“Nate did not do this thing, Tripp. They asked me in there about Nate’s activities, his comings and goings. Did they ask you?”
Tripp nodded slowly, stirring a fistful of sugar packets into his coffee. “They did. He walked in the woods all the time, Bridge. I had to tell them that.”
“It looks bad.” Their waitress brought over a plate of rheumy eggs. The plate clattered as she tossed it down in front of Bridget. “This is something else. Something worse than Nate. The school, this town. I found that ring. And something about that video.”
“It’s gone now.” Tripp snapped his fingers like he just thought of it. “I looked it up as soon as you called me. He took it down.” He fished his phone out of his pocket. “Glad we saved it, right?”
Bridget took it like it was a poisoned thing, a sharp-toothed poisonous snake, pincered between her fingers, and clicked play on the video. She skipped to the end, watched until the hand, dark against the pale backdrop of Lucia’s breast, the ethereal wooooooooooooooooowooooooooooooooo. Until her brain itched. Something. Something.
“Tripp. The voice in the back, the woooooowooooo that sounds like it’s a ghost sound? They’re not saying woooowooooo.”
She couldn’t be sure. She had to be sure.
She stood, motioned in a circle with her hand, and threw a ten-dollar bill on the table. It would be a small tip. Deservedly so.
Tripp rose, following her, confused, his hands pawing at his wallet to beat her to the bill. She was out the door and in the parking lot, trying to catch her breath, her mind skipping on all the pieces that were right there. So close she could touch. Tripp trotted behind her.
“Bridge, wait up, where are we going?”
“My house.” She spun around, her purse clutched between her fingers. “I think I figured it out.”
?????
“Here, here.” Bridget flipped through the journal, the other notebooks strewn around her dining room in her frantic haste. She found it then and shoved it toward Tripp.
“Look. There. See?”
She said, I’ll tell your mama, I know just who you are! You said, Then who are we? Did you really think she was lying? She called you out so fast, Taylor Lawson, she said, and then she looked at me, like she’d never seen me before. Lulu something, she said. You nearly died laughing.
“Taylor called her Lulu. The voice on the recording. It’s saying Luuuuuuuuuuuluuuuuuu not wooooooooowoooooooo.” Bridget felt breathless, jittery. “Do you see it?”