To Catch a Killer(6)

4

The crime scene tape will separate you from everything but the emotional impact. You still have to be able to deal with that.





—VICTOR FLEMMING


I wake to the potent scent of orange.

There’s a pile of orange peels on my nightstand—Miss P’s orange. I’d savored it in the dark. It was sweet and salty, mixed with my tears.

I pick up one of the peels and pinch it under my nose, memorizing the scent and packing it away. I vow that for the rest of my life, every time I smell the scent of orange I will think of her and it will remind me of the bright orange safety goggles she wore when using ultraviolet light. It also brings to mind her sunshiny outlook on life.

By pairing the image of an orange with Miss P maybe one day I can forget my final image of her, lying still just inside her door, several officers standing guard.

What I won’t forget though are all her cute mannerisms, like the large pair of glasses she was always pushing up onto her nose, and how she kept her scrunched-up bun in place with strategically placed pencils. In the same way that Mr. Roberts isn’t just a principal, Miss Peters wasn’t just a teacher. Not to me, anyway.

I hear Rachel rattling around in the kitchen, but before I go join her I swipe the orange peels off my nightstand and drop them into a small potpourri basket. Then I wander down to the kitchen in search of some quiet comfort. I’m greeted by the smell of coffee and Rachel’s worried look. “Did you get any sleep last night?” she asks.

“A little. How about you?” I sit down at the table and take a fresh orange from the bowl. I press it to my nose, inhaling deeply even though the smell makes my heart hurt. I wonder if Rachel will ever mention Miss Peters to me again or if my favorite teacher will now join my mother on that list of things Rachel deems too dangerous for us to discuss.

She brings her coffee to the table. When she doesn’t say anything right away, I look up and find her staring at me.

She rubs the spot between her eyebrows with two fingers, as if trying to erase difficult thoughts. “Last night was—” She pauses, and then begins again. “Sydney doesn’t want us to talk too much about what happened because she might need to interview you again and she wants what you say to be fresh and not rehearsed. But she asked me something and I didn’t have an answer. Erin, what were you doing at your teacher’s house after midnight?”

I sit up slowly. I should have a Rachel-ready lie to roll off my tongue. She was asleep when I snuck out and I wasn’t planning on getting caught. I know I owe her the truth, but it’s been so long since we’ve been honest with each other, I don’t know what she can handle. I do know she can’t handle me wanting to delve into my past. She closed the door on that a long time ago. I’m supposed to just forget it and go on. As if.

I roll the orange back into the bowl and shutter my eyes to look extra exhausted.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I left here around midnight.” I’ve had insomnia for years and she knows this. “I just went for a little drive … to clear my head and get sleepy.”

“Alone?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“You weren’t with anyone? Not even Spam … or maybe a boy?”

I shake my head. Here we go—Rachel’s denial in action. How can she even think I could sneak out to be with some boy like a normal teenager? She’s seen the way people act when they hear my name. How the recognition lands in their eyes like cherries in a slot machine. The looks of pity that wash over me as they think, but never say, Oh, she’s the one. Rachel sees all of that but thinks I should just ignore it.

Miss Peters got it. She understood how the stigma of a notorious unsolved crime kept me from getting close to people—especially boys.

I bite into the skin of the orange, releasing even more of its rich scent.

When I finally do have a relationship, I want it to be honest. How can I tell someone everything about myself when I don’t even know the most basic facts? Miss P agreed that I deserved to know everything that was possible to know.

Rachel blows on her coffee before trying again. “Just be honest with me, Erin. This is no time for secrets.”

I widen my eyes and aim a searing look directly at her.

“I need words, not pop-eyes,” she says.

“I said I was alone.” Clearly, seeing Journey Michaels doesn’t count.

“Okay. Just checking.” The hand bringing coffee to her lips trembles. I sense she’s holding something back. Guess what, that makes two of us. Her gaze drifts around the kitchen as if she’s seeing it for the very first time. Then she stops and pins me with her own hard look. “Did you really leave a bloody towel in Miss Peters’s mailbox?”

Crap. I forgot they’d tell her about that, too.

“It’s not Miss Peters’s,” I say quickly. “The blood, I mean.”

“Whose is it? Sydney said there was a lot of it.” Rachel’s knuckles turn white against the coffee cup.

“It was just some random DNA that I picked up.” It’s partially true. “For extra credit.”

“Erin.” Her eyes stay locked onto mine in a gaze so direct I have no choice but to look away. “You honestly expect me to believe that you went through a stranger’s trash and touched a bloody towel?” Rachel frowns. “I know you. You wouldn’t touch it if it was your own blood.”