The Last Day of Emily Lindsey Read online

  Lill was playing basketball at the southern end of the long room, but she hadn’t made a single basket, so focused was she on what was going on across the room.

  When Jack had first told the others about his plan, they’d been at lunch, and Brat had been chewing, which had been a bad idea.

  “You want me to do what?” she’d asked, bits of corn and potato going everywhere.

  “There’s an air duct that goes from the girl’s bathroom to the supply room behind the auditorium. You’re going to have to climb through it in twenty-five seconds.”

  Brat had looked around the table, waiting for someone else to weigh in, but everyone else was staring at Jack as if he were crazy.

  “Before I get to how,” she said, “why in the world would I need to do that?”

  “It’s a long story, but for now, you just have to trust me. I need you to practice.”

  “How?”

  “On the jungle gym. That’s a lot easier, wider, and much better lit than what you’ll be doing in the air duct. So you should be able to get across the jungle gym in twenty seconds.”

  “It’ll take me that long just to get up the steps and across the bridge,” she said. “No way. Why do I have to do this anyway? Why can’t somebody else? Why do I get the hard stuff?”

  “What, like sneaking into Mother Beth’s office?” Gumball asked.

  “Yeah, or almost getting caught drawing her office?” Perry asked, and everyone looked over at him in surprise. “What? It’s true,” he said sheepishly.

  Jack smiled. “You’re right, Perry. Everyone is contributing a lot. But yes, Brat, this is one of the most important jobs. I’m giving it to you because I know you can handle it.”

  Brat tilted her head to the side and seemed to consider it, at least for the moment. But the flattery wasn’t enough to quell her concerns. “But what if I can’t do it? Or what if I can do the jungle gym but can’t do the air duct? Who knows what’s up there?”

  She was pouting, and when Brat pouted, her voice got loud. The rest of the group shushed her, looking around nervously to make sure that none of the mothers were in earshot.

  “We’ll figure that out,” Jack said. “But first things first. The jungle gym. Tomorrow, when we go down for gym, will you at least try it? I know you can do it. It’s just going to take some practice.”

  Now, as they all sat around the gymnasium, their coordinated movements were barely noticeable.

  Gumball was on the jungle gym, not just because it made sense that the twins would be there together but because she was tasked with watching for Jack’s signal.

  Jack still held his warrior in his hands, but he was gazing up at the second hand on the big clock. Gumball pretended to swing casually from the monkey bars, but she watched him closely. His right hand was wrapped around the top of the warrior, and she paid special attention to his fingers. As the second hand wound around, Jack extended all three fingers.

  “Three,” Gumball said to her sister.

  Brat turned back to the jungle gym and took a deep breath.

  With the second hand, Jack tucked in one finger, leaving just two.

  “Two,” Gumball said.

  Brat balled her fingers at her side.

  Jack pulled another finger so there was only one left.

  “One,” Gumball said, a little louder than she should, but there was no one around to hear her. “Go!” she said.

  With that, Brat took off.

  To anyone else watching, she was just a kid having fun, playing on the new jungle gym. But to the four kids watching her intently from different parts of the loud gymnasium, it was maybe one of the most important parts of their plan. Lill stopped in the middle of the basketball court, oblivious to the game going around her. Jack and Perry had both paused, their art projects in their hands. Gumball had dropped down from the monkey bars, and she watched as her sister tore through the jungle gym.

  Brat reached the other side and stopped, turning to face them, her mouth open as she gasped for air. She spread her arms. All of the kids looked up at the clock, and then they turned to look at Jack, who’d been drawing his eyes back and forth between Brat and the clock.

  His expression didn’t change, but he shook his head. Then he looked directly at Gumball and mouthed a number.

  Thirty-seven.

  Brat saw it, too, and she kicked her foot against the jungle gym, causing one of the mothers to look over.

  “Are you okay?” Mother Bella asked.

  Brat nodded. “Yeah, sorry,” she said, walking back over to her sister.

  Thirty-seven seconds was way too much. She held a glance with Jack for a moment and then turned to Gumball.

  “I told you guys, I can’t do this,” she said. “Maybe you should try it.”

  “There’s a reason Jack wants you to do it,” Gumball said. “I think you just have to keep trying.” She looked up, because Jack was walking over to them.

  Brat shrugged her shoulders as he approached. “See, I told you,” she said.

  “You can do this.” Jack motioned toward the start of the gym with his head. “Ready? Hope you’re not tired yet. We have a long way to go to get down to twenty.”

  Brat rolled her eyes. But without a word of complaint, she took her position at the bottom of the ladder as Jack walked away and joined Perry again. He looked up at the clock.

  Brat turned to her sister and waited for her countdown.

  It was going to be a long afternoon.

  • • •

  The twins sat across from Jack two periods later in art class. They were all working on their warrior projects.

  Brat held her doll in her hands. “Are you going to tell me what the whole plan with the jungle gym is? The air duct in the girl’s bathroom that you talked about? Are you gonna explain?” she whispered as she glued a piece of metal on her warrior’s jacket.

  “Not right away,” Jack said. “I promise, I will tell you when the time is right. For now, I just need you to focus on decreasing your time.”

  “But I want to know,” Brat said, frowning, her forehead scrunching, her fists balling up. “You should just tell me now. Maybe it will help me,” she said.

  “No, it has to work this way,” Jack said, gluing a piece of stiff straw to his warrior’s head. He glued it slowly and made sure that the hair stood straight up.

  “That looks terrible,” Brat said as she began braiding a long piece of her doll’s hair. “Look, Jack, I know you think that there’s some better time to tell me, but I think it could help. I’m going to keep trying, but I’m not sure we’re going to get down to twenty seconds. When are you going to tell me what I’m doing this for?”

  “Soon,” Jack said, gluing another piece of straw down. His warrior was taller than the girls’. It stood at about three feet tall, and it was incredibly thin. Nothing about the creation signaled a warrior, but the mothers tried hard to foster a spirit of encouragement.

  “That’s great,” one of the mothers said as she walked by.

  Brat rolled her eyes. “No offense, Jack, but that is not great.” She held up her own doll. “Now this, this has warrior written all over it. She’s fearless.”

  Jack smiled but didn’t say anything—he just continued to glue on pieces of hair.

  “Okay, everyone, time to pack up,” Mother Bella said, and the students all stood, grabbing their dolls.

  “I hope you’re right,” Brat said. “We’re all trying to stick to your plan, but I don’t see how it’s all coming together.”

  “You will,” he said with a soft smile. As he stood, he grabbed his warrior. He hadn’t planned on showing her yet, but it seemed that they needed some kind of reassurance.

  He held the warrior in both hands as the other children watched him.

  Then he flipped it over.

  The stiff hair sto
od straight up, and he held the warrior by the feet. If he bent over, just slightly, the hair would touch the floor.

  Lill was the first to figure it out, and she gasped.

  Jack smiled. “I want you all to know that we can do this,” he said.

  At the same time, Lill breathed out, “The broom.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Now

  Gayla’s phone call woke me up at two in the morning.

  I was in the middle of the nightmare, my finger trailing along the symbol in my dark cell, the smell of rot stinging my nostrils. As I stared past the bars, a woman’s face appeared, and it took me a moment to recognize that it was Emily, her eyes hollow and her skin covered with thick, caking blood.

  I gasped as my cell phone vibrated near my head, pulling me out of the dream. I picked it up and saw that it was Gayla. Like most times when the phone rings at 2:00 a.m., I knew immediately that something was wrong.

  “Hello?”

  “Someone found the car.”

  I sat up in bed, blinking in the dark room, my heart rate speeding up, one hand clenching the sheets. I winced at the pain in my freshly bandaged arms. My brain struggled to put together the words that she was saying, to understand what it meant.

  “Emily’s car?” I asked. “Where was it?”

  “About eight miles away from where she was picked up,” Gayla said. “I just got the call.”

  “Eight miles?” I said. “You don’t think she walked that far, do you?”

  “We don’t know, but there’s no blood in the car, so wherever she got it had to be somewhere in between there and where Cruise found her. That narrows it down. At least we have someplace to search.”

  “Did they find anything in the car?”

  “Her laptop,” she said. “There were some weird stains all over the driver’s seat, but we’re not sure what they are yet.”

  “Stains?” I asked. “You sure it’s not blood?”

  “Don’t think so. The team said they’re too dark. Could be old, but we’ll find out what they are.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “They’re going to continue the search in the morning when it’s a bit brighter outside. Just wanted you to know. The car seemed clean enough, but it did have some sort of weird smell.”

  “What kind of smell?”

  “According to the officer who first got to the car, it smelled like garbage. Like something rotting.”

  I swallowed, a weird sensation rushing over my body, and I thought back to the nightmares.

  “Is that how he described it?” I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral. “Like garbage?”

  “Yeah, he said it smelled like garbage or rotting eggs or something.”

  I froze, sitting there on the bed, the phone still pressed against my ear, and I tried to figure out what it was that was bothering me about what she’d just said.

  It wasn’t just that it made me think about the nightmares.

  It reminded me of the smell upstairs in the Lindseys’ home.

  “You going out there?” I asked Gayla.

  “No, I’ll wait until morning. Derrick is on his way, and he said he’d call to let us know if they find anything else. He asked me to give Dan Lindsey a call, so I’ll do that. Right now, it’s just a missing car, but I think he’d appreciate knowing that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me know if you hear anything else.”

  We hung up, and I sat there a little while longer. But I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep. Something wasn’t right, and I needed to go back to the Lindseys’ house to figure out what it was that was bothering me so much.

  I got dressed quickly and left my apartment. I stopped by the station and grabbed a pair of keys to the Lindsey house before heading there. As I drove, I tried to picture Emily in her hospital bed. How would she react when her husband told her that they’d found her car? Could she even hear him, and would his words register?

  When I pulled up in front of Dan and Emily’s home, I stopped my car on the street and sat there for a few moments. My throat felt dry, and I realized I hadn’t been back to the house since my first visit, when I ran out because of a couch.

  I got out of the car, walked quickly to the front door, and rang the doorbell. I knew Dan was likely still at the hospital with his wife, and after a few moments of silence, I unlocked the door with the key I’d taken from the station.

  The place looked almost exactly the same. The teams had taken a few items for evidence, but the blood-covered couch was still there. I averted my eyes as I walked farther into the living room, moved to the staircase, and began to ascend.

  The top of the stairs faced a small, second-floor window with sheer curtains in front of it. As I reached the top, I could see directly out of the Lindseys’ home and into a similar window in the home of their neighbors, the Paxtons. I frowned when I noticed that a light was on.

  And there was a figure standing in the small window.

  I crept closer to the window in the Lindseys’ home and finally put my face to the glass.

  It was a woman’s figure, and when I squinted, I could make out her features—it was Jane Paxton, the woman Gayla and I had spoken to our first night.

  I had an audience.

  She was standing in the window, and suddenly, she caught sight of me. I expected her to pull back since I’d caught her spying on me, but instead, she lifted one hand and waved before quickly turning and walking away.

  What the hell?

  I turned and walked down the stairs and out the front door. I walked over to the Paxtons’ house and knocked on the door.

  It took a few minutes, but it opened, and I stood face-to-face with Jane Paxton.

  “Mrs. Paxton, I’m sorry to bother you so late, but I saw that you were up.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, and I thought she was going to protest, but then her entire body swayed to one side, and a slow smile spread across her face.

  “No problem, Detective,” she said, and she was just too chipper, too focused and blurry at the same time.

  She was wasted.

  “Sorry to bother you and your husband—”

  “Oh, he’s not home,” she said quickly. “Believe me, if he was, do you thin—” She wavered and then smiled. “I saw you when you got here. Why are you here so late?”

  “I came back to check out a couple of things at the Lindsey home,” I said.

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Sometimes, inspiration hits you,” I said, and she smiled broadly. “What are you doing up so late, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  She shrugged.

  “Just wanted to check, since I saw that you were up. Is there anything else you remember about the night that you found Emily in her house? Anything that sticks out?”

  She blinked a few times. The alcohol seemed to be pouring off her skin. “Not really, Detective,” she said, slurring her words together. “I told you, I went over there to get the vegetable peeler that Emily borrowed, and the whole night spiraled after that. To tell you the truth, I wished I’d just left it, because then I wouldn’t be a part of this, you know? I mean, maybe I would have had to give an interview later or something, but all that blood—I wouldn’t have it burned in my mind.”

  Something about what she said bothered me, and I frowned.

  “Detective?” she said when I hadn’t said anything for a moment.

  “What did you say it was that Emily borrowed from you?”

  She bit her bottom lip, and even though her eyes were unfocused, I could see a flicker of worry in them.

  “Um, a vegetable peeler?”

  “Last time, you said it was a can opener.”

  She frowned and looked down at the floor. “Did I? I must have slipped and said the wrong th
ing,” she said. “It was a stressful night. Sorry, I meant vegetable peeler. That’s what she borrowed.”

  “Why did she borrow it?” I asked. “Does she not have one?”

  “Uh, I guess not,” Jane said. “Otherwise, why would she borrow it from me?”

  She looked so nervous, she was practically shivering where she stood. I knew that this was my best chance to get the truth from her.

  “You know, Jane, in an investigation like this, where it’s clear that someone has been hurt, you could get in a lot of trouble for making things up and not being completely honest with us. Are you sure that’s what she borrowed from you?”

  She sighed and shook her head.

  “I wish you’d just…” She took a deep breath. “I wish you’d just talked to me in private, rather than in front of my husband.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Because I couldn’t tell you the truth, not with him standing there.”

  “What’s the truth?”

  “That I went over there to borrow something, not the other way around. Ever since I started my twelve-step program, we got rid of all alcohol and alcohol-related utensils in the house. But he doesn’t know that I picked up drinking again, just a little. Not a lot, just a couple of glasses here and there. I keep the bottles hidden in my closet. So I bought a couple of screw-offs and had one of those that night, but then I had another bottle that I got from a work party that we didn’t use. It wasn’t a screw-off. So I went next door to ask Emily to borrow her corkscrew.”

  “How much did you have to drink that night?” I asked.

  “Just the one bottle.”

  I coughed. “An entire bottle?” I said. “And nobody noticed?”

  “It’s the cigarettes,” she said with a sly smile. “Works every time.” She took a deep breath. “This alcohol, it’s my demon, Detective,” she slurred. “I know you don’t believe me, but I really do know it, deep down. If I hadn’t gone over there, I wouldn’t have seen her like that, with all that blood on her face. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t really focus that well. I was so horrified about what was happening. And the woman who stood in that living room—I don’t know, she just wasn’t the Emily I know. Her face, covered in all that blood, she didn’t even look like herself. I’m never going to be able to get that picture out of my head.”