The Next Killing. Rebecca Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ that we’re saying we wanted her to die,” Elizabeth interjected. “Just that since no one found her up there I think we can all agree that it’s good she died.”

      “Right,” Tiffany said. She smiled at Nicole. “Believe me, if you’d known her you’d know what we’re talking about. Ding dong the witch is dead.”

      The other girls burst out laughing and Nicole pushed her own plate of half-eaten pizza back and joined in.

      The sun beat down on Lauren, she could smell her skin burning. The cobblestone street was melting under her feet. She ran toward the stone spires of an old church.

      She pushed against its heavy wooden doors and plunged into the cool interior. The church was empty except for one figure sitting in the shadows near the altar. Her shoes clicked quietly against the stone floor. She slipped into a pew and bowed her head. She heard the sound of soft footsteps moving toward her and she started to shake.

      “What have you done to Amanda?” a voice whispered.

      She looked up and saw Michael standing before her, his laughing eyes somber. Water poured down his body, his blond hair brown with wet and plastered to his skull, the liquid forming a dark stain around him on the stone floor.

      “Where is Amanda?” he repeated. She reached out her hand to touch him and his body burst into flames. “You killed me!” he shrieked.

      Lauren woke with a scream. It was dark but she could feel something under her. Cotton sheets. She was in bed in Augustine House dressed in running clothes. Light shone through the blinds, but the clock glowed seven. It was moonlight. She sat up, breathing hard. She’d meant to lie down for ten minutes when she came back from her run, not sleep for three hours.

      She got up, a familiar soreness in her calves as she padded down the hall to the small kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. Images from the dream replayed themselves over and over again and she pressed a hand against her forehead, kneading at the tension.

      The kettle’s shrieking startled her. She poured boiling water over a bag and carried the steeping mug out to the front room.

      It was stupid, like feeding a fire or scratching an itch, but she couldn’t help opening the bottom drawer of her desk and pulling out the photo album. She justified it as a desire to see Michael whole and well and not as he’d appeared in her dream.

      There was a photo of Michael leaning against the door-frame in her flat in London. He wore jeans and a sardonic expression, his arms folded against his bare chest, one bare foot sliding against another. His GQ pose, she’d called it. His blond hair hung in his eyes, those blue eyes staring at her so intensely.

      She ran a hand lightly over the photo and felt a deep ache that started in the base of her stomach and dipped down, between her legs. She’d wanted him then, she wanted him now. From the moment they’d met she’d felt the most basic physical attraction for him, a feverish longing that blocked any warning signals, that overcame any hesitation.

      It helped that she was alone and lonely, on her own in a foreign country and still struggling to get comfortable with crowded streets. It helped that he was her first.

      Amanda handled things differently. Tougher than Lauren, more confident with the opposite sex, aware too early of her physical attributes, even if she’d had no real idea of how to use them. She was strong to the point of brashness, where Lauren was shy, startled easily, didn’t like making eye contact.

      Michael called her soft and made it sound endearing, but he’d misunderstood her. It wasn’t softness. Naiveté, certainly, but not softness. Had he ever really loved her or was it just what she represented?

      Closing the album she slipped it back in the bottom drawer of the desk and slammed it shut. She should get rid of the thing, but she couldn’t. So she kept it tucked away instead, hidden in a drawer along with a small stack of white letters all addressed by the same hand.

      Her head hurt. She got some ibuprofen and swallowed it with the now-tepid tea. Being here wasn’t good for her. The past came knocking here. In the city school the exhaustion of the daily commute, the constant need for vigilance in the school itself, had kept it at bay. Here, where she didn’t have to worry about safety, surrounded by schoolgirls and the quiet of the woods, her past flooded back and she couldn’t seem to stop it.

      She would work here just long enough to pay off her debts and then she would start again somewhere else. There had to be somewhere to go where she could forget the past and no one could find her and remind her.

      Chapter Eight

      The same newbie investigator who’d botched the photographs managed redemption by coming up with a definite make on the sneaker print.

      “Heelys,” Mark Coleman said, slapping a photocopy of a black sneaker on the counter. “A perfect size seven.”

      “What the hell is a heelie?” Oz looked confused.

      “I thought you had kids, Oz,” Stephanie said. “They’re the sneakers with a wheel in the back.”

      They’d called the crime scene unit to check on progress and raced straight over to the sheriff’s office, which was more like a complex of offices, which included the crime lab.

      “So it’s some kind of roller skate?” Oz said, squinting at the picture.

      “A tennis shoe combined with a roller skate,” Mark Coleman said, “the best of both worlds. Your print is from The Atomic. Model 7145.”

      He pulled a Sharpie from his pocket and scrawled this on the back of the copy. “They’re not just for kids, you know. I’ve got a pair.”

      Stephanie hid a smile and stepped in front of Oz to block the look on his face from Coleman’s view. “This is great. Thanks so much.”

      She slipped her sunglasses back on once they were outside. The weather had finally turned. It was a perfect fall day, high sun and blue sky, breezy enough for a light sweater, but not so crisp that they couldn’t sit outside at the Java Joint for five minutes soaking up the sun.

      “What kind of sorry excuse for a man buys a sneaker with a wheel in it?” Oz said, tapping the picture with his take-out cup. “That’s just wrong.”

      “You’ve got latte on your mustache, He-Man,” Stephanie said, handing him a napkin.

      He took it, shaking his head at her. Mustache cleaned and manhood restored, he tapped the photocopy again. “At least doofus got us a make. Now we’ve just got to find the owner of these shoes.”

      “It’s a guy’s shoe. Didn’t that girl, Heather what’s-her-name—didn’t she mention some boy?”

      “Yeah, Brad or Rick something?” Oz reached inside the breast pocket of his blazer for his notebook. With her sunglasses on, the buffalo-check plaid was less objectionable. Stephanie wondered for the umpteenth time if Oz’s wife, a seemingly pleasant woman who did all his shopping, was color-blind or just passive-aggressive.

      Brad or Rick turned out to be Beau Steuben. “No wonder I didn’t remember,” Oz said as she punched the third number into her cell phone. “What the fuck kind of name is Beau?”

      “Isn’t СКАЧАТЬ