“Oh,” I say, as if that’s news to me. “Why do you think he did it? You have any theories on that? Is he just plain evil?”
“Hard to say, since the bodies were never found. No official cause of death signed off by a medical examiner. No way to determine if they were sexually assaulted. But my thought is that, yes, it was sexual. He had a bad home life with his wifey, she was probably withholding sex, so he got it elsewhere. And then when wifey found out about it, he killed her too.”
He’s wrong about that. About the rape. Dad told me that.
I know my father isn’t the most trustworthy of sources, buthe never actually lied to me. And when I was fourteen, Gran gave me the letters. Three of them, all written from prison and addressed to Gabby. My grandmother waited years to let me read them. I don’t have them anymore—I tore them to shreds in sheer disgust almost the second I finished reading them—but it doesn’t matter. The contents are practically etched on my brain.
It was in the second letter, I think, when he insisted that he hadn’t raped those women. He never said why he’d killed them, only that they’d been important to him, but he’d been clear about that fact. I have no reason not to believe him, but it’s not like it matters. Hemurderedthem. That’s bad enough.
One thing he didn’t do in the second letter? Or the first and third, for that matter? He didn’t profess his innocence.
And yet, even now, there’s always this tiny flicker of hope in the back of my mind that my father wasn’t guilty of those crimes. That he confessed to spare someone else. I read a book like that once. But who would he care about protecting enough to throw away his life? No one. Even when I was seven, whenever we went to town he would grumble under his breath about anyone and everyone—running stop signs at intersections, taking too long in the checkout line at the hardware store. He wasn’t a fan of most people. “All I care about is my girls,” he used to say, exhaling in relief whenever we finished our errands in town and were on our way back to the cabin.
And he killed one of us. I know that for a fact. I saw it with my own eyes.
Still, that hope never truly goes away. A fool’s hope, I guess.
“Maybe he’s just psychotic,” I suggest.
“Nah. He was evaluated. They determined he was perfectly sane.”
When the guy finally slides out of the Jeep, I catch a look at the rest of him. He’s tall and lean, wearing a Nirvana T-shirt—pretty faded, probably authentic—and scuffed Converse sneakers.
It’s only when he walks past me that I realize where he’s headed. Alarm bells go off. “What are you doing?”
He points to the door. The screen door my mother always used to harp on me for banging too loud is now hanging off its hinges, but the pale peach wooden door with the crescent window on top seems solidly closed. “Going in. You coming?”
My heart’s in my throat. “Isn’t that trespassing?”
“So? No one around to care.”
I gulp hard. I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. After all, in there, on that floor…that’s where my mother…
Nope. My feet won’t move in that direction, even if I wanted them to. “I don’t think so.”
“You sure? You don’t want to see where the wife was offed? There’s still a bloodstain on the floor in the bedroom.”
My gut clenches. I feel all the color draining from my face, and the edges of my vision go blurry. “Sorry. No. I’ve got to go.”
I turn to leave, but he calls, “Wait.”
Stopping, I realize I’m clenching my jaw so tightly, my teeth are in danger of breaking. I take a deep breath and swing back toward him.
He half-smiles. “I’m Zed.”
Okay. This is just an innocent introduction. I can deal with that. “Zed? Is that your actual name?”
“Nah. Nickname. Real name’s Logan Zellman.”
“I’m Ryan.”
“No shit.” He rolls his eyes at me, but it’s done with humor. “Crockett High is so monotonous that we know if there’s a newsquirrelin the trees. A whole-ass human? Of course everyone knows who you are.” He laughs to himself.
“Fair enough. It’s, uh, nice to meet you,” I say, although I’m not sure I mean it. There’s nothing nice about any of this. The guy’s clamoring to show me abloodstain. My mom’s dried blood caked into the hardwood.
I might throw up.
“You ever go onFree the Sparrows?” Zed asks.
