December Park(53)

“Oh.” His voice was so small it was nearly nonexistent. I could have been talking to myself in the woods. “I didn’t know you have a brother.”

“I don’t anymore. He died in Iraq in ’91, during an invasion. In Desert Storm.”

“The war invasion?”

“Yes. He was . . .” My mind was suddenly filled with the image of Courtney Cole’s caved-in skull. “He was killed there. It was a roadside bomb, so it must have been . . . uh, it’s . . .” I cleared my throat. “We buried an empty coffin,” I finished, hoping that would explain it all.

Across from me, Adrian said nothing.

“I wrote about the day I fell into the bay and almost died. I wondered if maybe I was the one who was supposed to die in our family and not Charles. If I had died, maybe Charles wouldn’t have left home, wouldn’t have left my dad, and would have never gone to war.” My voice cracked. I felt like a helpless child.

Attempting to regain some control, I paused before continuing. “Anyway, it’s stupid but that’s what I wrote about. I don’t know why I wrote it but I did. And I didn’t want Naczalnik or anyone else reading it. It was for me to write and no one else to know.”

Adrian turned away from me and stared at the ground, which was covered in dead leaves, pine needles, and a latticework of moonlight issuing through the canopy of naked tree limbs overhead. “That’s a good secret. Did you ever tell anyone else?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry about Charles.”

“It’s okay.”

“Was he a good older brother?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ve always wanted a brother,” Adrian said.

I just nodded, chewing my lower lip. My face burned.

When something rustled among the underbrush several yards to our left, we both spun our heads in that direction in unison, collectively holding our breath. The rustling fell silent.

We waited, listening for the sound to repeat. Of course, it was probably some forest critter—a deer or a skunk or something—but it still set me on edge. Suddenly, it was Mischief Night all over again, and I was hiding in the trees from Nathan Keener and the rest of those delinquents, when from nowhere I thought I’d heard a rustling noise directly behind me. I’d been certain that someone was right there in the trees with me, and I still hadn’t forgotten that disquieting sense of violation.

“Probably just a big bird,” I said, hoping to convince myself more than anything.

Adrian stared at his feet. “I know your dad’s a cop. Please don’t tell him, okay?”

“Tell him about what?”

“About this.” He pulled one hand out of the pocket of his ski parka and extended it to me, his palm open. Something small and metallic glinted in the center of his palm.

I leaned over and peered at it. “What is it?”

“It’s a locket. Here. Open your hand.”

I reached out and opened one hand, and Adrian let the item fall into it. It was a locket, all right—a silver heart with a small loop at the top where presumably it had once been affixed to a chain. It was nearly weightless in my hand. I brought it up to my face and examined it more closely. “Does it open?”

“Yeah.”

I stuck my thumbnail between the two halves, and the heart-shaped locket unclasped. I was careful opening it, expecting to find a small photograph inside—my grandmother owned a similar locket, and she kept a tiny photo of me on one side, Charles on the other—but it was empty.

“I found it when I first moved to town.” Adrian pointed up the wooded embankment and in the approximate direction of Counterpoint Lane. “A car had crashed in the woods, and I watched the tow truck pull it out. When I looked down, it was right there in the ditch.”

“Okay,” I said, not sure why this was such a big deal to him.

“It’s hers,” he said.

“Whose?”

“The dead girl’s,” Adrian said. “Courtney Cole’s.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just know. Who else could it belong to?”

“Anyone could have lost it.”

Adrian stared at me. His respiration whistled through the stovepipe of his throat. “Yeah, but it’s hers. I didn’t think anything of it until you told me about what happened to her. Before I knew, I thought it was just another piece of . . . well, something someone had lost.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s hers.”

Adrian took the heart-shaped locket back from me. He turned it over and over in his small, white fingers. There were black crescents of dirt beneath his fingernails. “It’s hers. I discovered it right across the street from where her body was found. And here, look at the clasp,” he said, holding it out. “See? It’s broken.”

I saw that the little silver hoop had been broken in two. “So what?”

“So maybe it happened when someone pulled it off her.” His eyes were locked on mine. “Maybe it broke during a struggle.”

“I guess it’s possible,” I conceded.

“No.” There was a sharp finality to his voice. “It’s not just possible. It’s hers. I can feel it. I can tell.”

I returned my gaze to the shimmering locket pinched between Adrian’s thumb and forefinger. “Well, if you really think it’s hers, we should take it to the police. We can give it to my dad, if you want.”