Friends Like These(89)
Under no circumstances could Alice end up inside Evan’s house. Apparently they had a picture of me in their kitchen— a framed newspaper clipping of the dead neighbor girl. That’s what Evan had said to me that night on the roof: “I’ve been looking at your fucking picture at the dinner table for the past ten years. Your face was fatter then. But don’t tell me that’s not you.”
I hadn’t recognized him at all until he said that. But his mom had apparently been obsessed with the murders, seeing as how one of the girls had lived right behind them, and she was also a true crime aficionado. She kept the framed clipping on the wall as a reminder to cherish life, she said. (Creepy, if you ask me. Evan thought so, too.) The worst part was that I knew the picture Evan was talking about, with my hair back in a headband and my face extra puffy. Still, it was one of the few where if you looked hard enough, you could almost see this me already, waiting in the wings.
Alice completely freaked when I brought up the subject of going back to campus instead of continuing on to Hudson. She started screaming at me. She even tried to leave me behind at the Vanderbilt Mansion, running toward the car with the keys. Though that was after I’d slapped her— just hard enough to get her to come to her senses. But apparently Alice was going to Hudson no matter what I said. No matter what I did. Except, of course, for the thing I did eventually do: make it so that Alice couldn’t go anywhere ever again.
She was light, but she was strong— I’d forgotten that— and it got ugly. I had to chase Alice down. I think she even made some calls at one point, hoping to get rescued. After it was over, what choice did I have but to leave the car someplace where suicide would be presumed? The Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge was an obvious choice— people jumped from there all the time. Honestly, though, I was surprised as anyone that they never found Alice’s body. Her parents were incensed, blamed gross incompetence. But with the powerful current and all the commercial barge traffic on the massive Hudson River, the police never seemed that surprised. Bodies weren’t always that easy to find, apparently. Of course, maybe they would have found her if they’d started searching twenty-miles downriver instead of wasting all that time up by the bridge, a place Alice never was to begin with.
But the most awful of all was Derrick. That was the worst, because he really did love me, for me. And yet in the end even he didn’t give me a choice. The way his empty eyes stared at me after, so accusingly— just like Jane’s. I couldn’t bear it. It hardly counts as a thing you’ve done when a person leaves you with no alternative.
And, really, what kind of friend does that: leaves you with no good way out?
ONE YEAR LATER
DETECTIVE JULIA SCUTT
I don’t have to be doing this, going through everything again. But it will be my last chance. Jane’s case files are on their way to long-term off-site storage, where the files of all the closed cases go.
And so I’ve looked through the bagged evidence one last time— the bloody clothing and the dried remains of Jane’s favorite lip gloss and that rusted tent stake. I’ve felt the weight of each object in my hands. I read through all of the old witness statements again, too, and looked over the ME’s report in detail for the first and last time. It wasn’t easy, but I owe at least that much to Jane. To bear witness to her loss. To allow myself to fully feel it finally, after all this time. It turns out, there is a certain solace in sadness. Solace, and maybe freedom.
It’s unfortunate that Bethany didn’t have to sit in front of a jury and spectators and be called to account for Jane’s murder at a trial. So the whole world would know the monster she really is. But Bethany wouldn’t have felt bad anyway. She might have even enjoyed the attention. And with my parents gone, it would have only been me there to genuinely care. I knew about the plea deal in advance, of course. The prosecutor is a good guy. I’ve known him for a long time. And so I trusted him when he counseled against risking a trial, given how good an actress Bethany is. A jury can get easily swayed by a defendant’s outward appeal. And Maeve is outwardly appealing, that’s for sure. It’s her insides— Bethany’s— that have always been rotten to the core.
In the end, Bethany pleaded guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence for the four homicides— Jane, Evan, Alice, and Derrick. Thirty years with the possibility of parole. I can live with that for now. Because she’s not going anywhere. I’ll be at each and every parole hearing to make sure.
Stephanie, Jonathan, and Keith pleaded out, too, after telling us where we could find Crystal, in a remote forested area twenty minutes from the Farm, sheltered carefully at least under some trees. Keith pleaded out from his hospital bed. Even now I’ve heard he still has some lingering physical damage, but no permanent brain injury. And I’m guessing, on the upside, the lengthy hospital stay also helped him get clean. Felony improper disposal of a body was the charge in the end related to Crystal’s overdose and the hiding of her body, pleaded down to a misdemeanor, no jail time. Word is, though, that Stephanie has left her firm, and that Jonathan’s defense team wasn’t funded by his parents— so there have been other consequences. There were no charges against anyone other than Maeve for Evan Paretsky’s death. The others weren’t actually legally obligated to call for help, believe it or not. Morally? That’s another story. They’ll have to figure out a way to live with that for the rest of their lives.