I hear Jordan’s voice from a distance as I smooth Mr. Masters’s silver hair back off his forehead. “We didn’t get a chance to call you. How did you know to come?”
“Mr. Masters called me fifteen minutes ago and said I needed to come. He said he thought you were in danger at Mason Park, and then he hung up.” Another officer comes up, pulling Vega’s attention away.
Out of nowhere, one of the chess games I played with Daddy comes to mind. I’d thought I had him, and then he turned everything around on me in a completely unexpected move.
Always make your smartest possible move, and keep the endgame in sight.
Mr. Masters must’ve called the police just after he called me. Did he know Stacia was here then? Did he know how dangerous she is? He and Daddy are the smartest men I’ve ever known and somehow they’d both been cornered, trapped. We’re running out of options in an increasingly deadly game, and now I have to face it without either of them.
Jordan kneels beside me. He keeps trying to close Mr. Masters’s coat over the wound, but with the position of his body, it refuses to stay closed. I’m deeply grateful for the numbness that seems to be protecting me from feeling anything right now, because one of us has to function.
I smooth my hand over Mr. Masters’s face, closing his eyes before I climb up on my trembling legs. Chief Vega looks over at me and tells the person he has on the phone to hold on.
I turn and look him straight in the eye. “I w-want to help you. Tell me what you need to know.”
33
“WHY DID YOU COME HERE TONIGHT?” Chief Vega asks once he has me wrapped in a paramedic blanket and seated on the front of his car.
“M-Mr. Masters asked us to meet him here,” I answer, trying to ignore the worried way Jordan is watching me from his seat in the back of the ambulance. The paramedic keeps trying to clean the blood off his hands—Mr. Masters’s blood.
An intense wave of dizziness hits me, and I tilt on the car hood. Chief Vega reaches out to steady me, but I place my hands on the hood beside me and do it myself.
“Did he tell you why he wanted you to meet him?”
“Not exactly,” I answer, my throat feeling and sounding raw. “He said he had information about my dad’s case.”
I hesitate before continuing with a biting edge. “I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with that.”
Chief Vega acts as though I didn’t add the last part as he asks a few more questions about whether Stacia saw us and if Masters gave us any reason to think Stacia was involved.
“You said you saw two figures in the clearing before you heard the gunshot.” He squints down at his paper before looking at me again. “What were they doing?”
“I heard her yelling, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.” I think back on the image of the two figures fighting in the clearing. “They were struggling. Maybe fighting over the gun, I don’t know.”
Then I hear the gunshot again in my head and I flinch.
Chief Vega puts down his notebook. “Let’s take a break. I’ll get the rest of the answers at the station. Okay?”
“Okay.” I’m grateful. I need a minute to process this before talking more about the end of Mr. Masters’s life. It’s too much.
The chief puts his hand out like he’s going to pat me on the shoulder, but when I shrink back, he only returns it to his side. Without another word, he turns away and starts organizing the many officers who’ve gathered in the clearing.
Under Vega’s command, the police swarm through Mason Park like honeybees in a field of wildflowers. They’ve taken so many pictures that I’ve lost count, and I watch them move Mr. Masters’s body into a black bag. It’s exactly like the one they put Valynne Kemp in. I haven’t cried. I’ve barely blinked. Even though I can’t see Mr. Masters anymore, I can’t take my eyes off the lumpy contours of the bag. It feels wrong to stick someone who was vibrantly alive only a couple of hours ago into a black sack. It feels like he has already been discarded. Even though I know he doesn’t care anymore, it makes me feel claustrophobic just looking at him.
Jordan comes to sit beside me on the car hood, but he doesn’t speak. I tuck my feet beneath me because I can’t stop thinking about walking over and unzipping his bag. Seeing him one more time. Letting this man, who has been there for me through everything, have access to the air that he can no longer breathe.
Eventually, I stop trembling, but my jaw won’t seem to unclench. The paramedics—who have now declared us to officially be in shock—keep bringing me wool blankets and draping them over my shoulders, but I feel so overheated that I keep pushing them off.