“Most people just walk. But not Journey. He always looks like he’s pushing a giant, invisible boulder uphill with his shoulder.”
Baldwin shakes his head but proceeds to write down my description. “Tilted shoulder, pushing boulder.”
For the first time in a long time I need someone to get it … to get me.
I lean across the table, hands cupping the air in front of me. “It’s just, every day I watch this guy move through the world, and even though he’s all cool and everybody loves him, he looks exactly like how I feel. Life’s a huge strain, but everyone everywhere tries to hide it. Not him, though. He plows forward, jamming that invisible boulder out of his way. It’s like he’s saying: Force it. Make it happen.”
Baldwin’s face lights up. “Ah. You’re saying he has a chip on his shoulder?”
It’s actually the exact opposite of that, but as I open my mouth to refute him, a squawk comes from his radio.
“Sorry, I have to take this. I’ll be right back.” He pulls the brick-shaped device off of his belt and heads for the door. “On my way.”
The door stutters shut behind him and I’m once again wrapped in the disapproving silence of the room, only now I’m steeped in thoughts of Journey Michaels and the things I saw versus the things I didn’t see.
3
The hardest thing to teach new crime-scene techs is not to cover the body. But dignity can destroy evidence.
—VICTOR FLEMMING
I go back through it again.
It was just about midnight. The moon hung low and large in the sky, like a giant Olympic gold medal. Its glow felt like praise. As predicted, I had acquired all three of my targeted DNA samples.
Miss Peters’s mailbox sat out by the curb on top of a short post. I opened it and shoved the bag of evidence inside. She didn’t want to know which sample came from whom. Only I would have that information. She called it a blind study.
As I was leaving, her front door blew open.
“Miss Peters?”
I edged up the walk. Even though she lived in an average neighborhood only a few miles from mine, the late hour gave the area a graveyard hush. As I approached her porch, a faint shadow in the shape of a cross bobbed low against the baseboard, sending terror through me like a drop of ink in water. Even once I realized it was just the moon shining through the slats of Miss P’s trellis the panic was overwhelming.
Then the smell hit me.
That smell triggered a memory so vivid and deep that it dropped me to my knees. It was a strong, raw scent, like shoving your face into a vat of pennies mixed with freshly ground hamburger.
It was the smell of blood.
Lots of blood.
And there she was, lying on her back inside the doorway. She floated on a huge sea of red.
I might have screamed. I don’t know. White noise filled my ears and my vision slid to gray. I crawled to her side, ignoring the wash of blood. I was there, but nowhere. I was breathing, but holding my breath.
“Oh, Miss Peters…”
A motion light in the front yard blinked on, shattering the dark. Someone was watching me from the shadows. Once he triggered the light, he ran. But I saw him clearly, and when I realized who it was, my insides filled with lead and sank all the way to my knees.
*
The interrogation room door bursts open, introducing a whoosh of fresh air.
“Oh my god, Erin.”
Rachel drops her purse and coat and rushes to me. Her arms circle my neck. She was my mother’s best friend and the one who found her lifeless body. She scooped me up that day and ever since, she has stood between me and any harm that might come, large or small. I know she would literally throw herself in front of a train for me. Without her, who knows where I would have ended up?
“I’m sorry you had to get out of bed for this.” Even though I feel bad, I’m grateful to have Rachel’s warmth enveloping me. Now that she’s here I don’t have to pretend to be so strong.
“Shhhh. I’m fine. Just worried about you.” Rachel brushes the hair off my face and runs her hands over my back and my arms as though she has to feel for herself that I’m really in one piece.
Hovering near the door is Detective Sydney Rankle, Rachel’s best friend. At the station she acts more formal, but when she’s at our house she calls herself Aunt Sydney.
“I’ll take it from here,” Sydney says to Baldwin. “But come get me when they bring him in.”
Rachel takes my face between her hands. “Sydney says you know the boy who did this?”
I open my mouth to speak but Sydney beats me to it.
“Alleged. We can’t say he did it. Not yet.”
“But you know him, right? He goes to your school?”
I nod.
“That settles it. We’re changing schools,” she says.
“No.” It comes out frantic. “I can’t change.”
“You don’t know what’s at work here,” Rachel says.