Twisted by Hannah Jayne(65)

“I’m really sorry, Denise. I won’t slip out without telling you. And about everything else lately…” But even as Bex finished her statement, she knew it was a lie. “I’m sorry.”

Denise stood up. “Hey, no problem. We never really set any ground rules. We’re new at this, you know.”

Bex forced a smile she didn’t really feel. “Me too.”

She really did like Michael and Denise. There probably weren’t cooler or nicer foster parents in the entire system but Bex’s father—her dad!—was back! Maybe, that same tiny voice cautioned her. Maybe… She thought of the psychologist, the eyewitness testimony. Serial killers are master manipulators…

“You should probably hop in the shower or you’re going to be late for school.”

As soon as Denise closed the door behind her, Bex flipped open her screen and went directly to the fan forum. GAMECREATOR was already online.

Bex clicked the private chat icon and GAMECREATOR accepted. She started typing, her fingers stopping after just two letters: H-I. Did she say “dad”? Did she call him by his screen name? His first name? Finally, she hit Enter and watched her piddly “Hi” fill the screen.

GAMECREATOR: Thanks for talking with me last night.

BETHANNER: I still can’t quite believe that was actually you.

GAMECREATOR: You don’t think it was your father? The one who ordered two waitresses to bring more powdered sugar that one time at the Black Bear Diner? Oh, man, was your granny mad at me when I brought you home. Said you kept her up nearly all night!

Bex grinned. She remembered that dinner. She had wanted pancakes for dinner and her father had indulged her, stopping first their waitress and then another to bring Beth Anne another white bowl mounded with powdered sugar. That second waitress had lingered after setting the bowl in front of her, had leaned one bony hip against the torn Naugahyde booth and talked to Beth Anne’s daddy in a slow drawl that didn’t sound like it came from North Carolina.

Because she was from Texas. She was Amanda Perkins. Three days later, her body was found mostly undressed in a ditch, what was left of her pink Black Bear Diner uniform streaked with reddish-brown blood and dirt. Bex remembered how the sodden uniform had looked, rolled up in a Ziploc bag and held aloft by a man in rubber gloves.

BETHANNER: I remember that night. I remember the waitress. Her name was Amanda Perkins. She was murdered 3 days later.

There was no response from GAMECREATOR.

BETHANNER: She talked to you. Did Schuster know her?

GAMECREATOR: Probably. Lots of cops ate at that place. It was kind of a hangout.

Bex couldn’t remember that, but her simmering anxiety was almost snuffed out.

BETHANNER: One of the other women—Amy Eickler, I think—we gave her a ride.

GAMECREATOR: I don’t remember that, but OK.

BETHANNER: She was murdered after.

GAMECREATOR: She was hitchhiking.

BETHANNER: Schuster could have picked her up.

GAMECREATOR: Yes.

Bex’s phone blared out Trevor’s favorite Death to Sea Monkeys song and she glanced down at it, seeing his grinning face on the home screen. She smiled to herself but sent the call to voice mail and grabbed her towel.

? ? ?

Chemistry was bad enough when she could concentrate, but on this day, it was excruciating. Bex had spent her day e-chatting with her father and her night tossing and turning, hearing him whisper to her, seeing him in the dark recesses of her mind. Was he right? Had Detective Schuster framed him? And if so, why? When she had asked her dad, he gave her this simple explanation:

Schuster is a psychopath. If he pinned the murders on me, then he’s also the hero who caught the big bad wolf. I go down and he moves up in his career, and really, he can keep doing what he’s doing. Killing them girls. He didn’t think anyone would ever figure him out. He’s like that. Narcissistic.

Narcissistic.

That’s what Schuster had called her father. That’s what “all psychopaths” were. But did her father know because he was one?

When morning came, Bex was cranky and jumpy at the breakfast table and in class, her mind constantly wandering, trying to figure out a way to help her father, trying to decide what to do about Detective Schuster. Turn him in? Set him up? Her father was stern—as stern as someone could be in writing—telling her to let him worry about Schuster. But Bex knew she had to help. She had helped incriminate her father away; now she could help to free him.

She told her dad that Schuster was in town, that he had been texting and calling her. Her father had called him a dangerous man and urged her to stay away. And in the last twenty-four hours, her phone had been mercifully silent, not a text or a call from the detective. It should have made Bex feel better, but instead she found herself studying everyone now, squinting at the barista who poured her coffee, sweeping her gaze at the team of gardeners huddled in front of the school. Now Bex wondered if Schuster was in every crowd, watching her, holding back, waiting.

Something hit her square in the lap and she glanced down, staring dumbly at the folded piece of notebook paper. Bex looked up and Trevor cocked an eyebrow, a hint of a smile on his lips. He jutted his chin toward the note and Bex looked up surreptitiously, watching Mr. Ponterra’s fat bottom jiggle while he wrote equations on the whiteboard, completely oblivious to the yawning class behind him. She snatched the note and smoothed it open on her lap.