Beneath Devil's Bridge(40)

“What about Johnny Forbes? Was he also at the Moose for breakfast?” Luke asks.

She lifts her eyes to her right and appears to be thinking hard. “No. Tripp said he took Johnny home earlier. That’s right. He basically dropped Johnny at his front door. The guy was pretty much passed out.”

“Recognize any of these?” Luke spreads out the glossy photographs of the items found along the river.

Beth’s jaw tightens as she studies the prints on the table. She flicks another glance at me. I see Luke notice.

“That’s mine.” She points at the image of the slim, pale-blue address book. “Did Leena have this? I . . . I’ve been looking for it.”

“You sure it’s yours?” Luke says.

“Hundred percent. It’s my book, that’s my writing. Those are my friends’ phone numbers.”

“How do you think Leena got it?” Luke asks.

“I . . . I don’t know. She’s been to my house. She came with a group of girls about two or three weeks ago. And Leena’s locker is near mine. I . . . really don’t know.” She looks stricken.

“Why would she take it?” Luke asks.

“I don’t know! Maybe because she knows I have all the cool guys’ phone numbers in there? She did weird things like that. Can I have it back?”

“It’s evidence right now. Do you recognize anything else in these photos?” Luke says.

She scans them again, more carefully, shakes her head.

“What about this locket?” Luke asks.

My pulse quickens. Beth glances at me again. She shakes her head. “No,” she says softly.

And I wonder how it is that Beth doesn’t appear to recognize a locket that looks just like the one Maddy—her best friend—used to wear more often than not. Until it apparently went missing.

Luke says, “Can you tell us when you first heard the rumor that Leena was probably floating in the Wuyakan River?”

“I heard it in the cafeteria. Everyone was talking about it. I don’t know who started it.”

Beth leaves. A few moments later Clay enters with Darren Jankowski.

“I know Tripp Galloway is next on the list,” says Clay, “but Tripp went home sick about an hour ago. Dusty Peters isn’t at school today, either. She bounces between living with her alcoholic mother and the local group home, and every now and then she hits trouble at home and doesn’t attend school for a few days.”

Luke and I exchange a glance as Clay leaves and Darren takes a seat in front of us at the table. He looks beat. In need of a shower. Possibly hungover.

His story is exactly the same. He also ended up at the Moose for breakfast. No, he doesn’t know who started the rumor. No, he can’t recall who actually told him.

“Everyone was talking about it.”

Darren doesn’t recognize any of the belongings in the photos. But the topic of photographs makes him look up. “Liam Parks was taking photos at the bonfire,” he says. “Maybe he got a picture of Leena and the guy on the log.”

“Liam is the unofficial school photographer,” I explain to Luke. “He’s on the yearbook team. He does work in the school darkroom and uses the school cameras.”

Luke makes a note and dismisses Darren.

Liam is next on the list. He’s skinny and pale with deep-set, dark eyes. I’ve heard Maddy refer to him as “the geek.” Liam’s recollection of the bonfire is identical to the others’. I jot in my notes: Did the kids coordinate stories?

Liam says he doesn’t recognize any of the items found on the riverbank.

“Did you shoot photos at the bonfire, Liam?” Luke asks. “Of the crowd?”

His eyes flicker. He nods.

“Can we see them?”

He looks at his hands in his lap.

“Liam?”

“I . . . I lost the camera, and the film inside. I . . .” He raises pained eyes. “I got wasted, and I woke up in a tent, and the camera was gone. It was a school camera. I’d signed it out, and it had been stolen.”

“Are you sure?” I say.

Liam shoots a look at me. I’m thinking of the print I found in Maddy’s drawer. I can see distress in Liam’s eyes.

“It’s gone. I’m sure. I asked everyone. No one saw anything, or knows anything. It never showed up in lost and found, either.”

“What about the film?” Luke asks. “Had you removed any rolls? Developed anything at all?”

A redness creeps up his neck and into his face. His mouth is tight. He shakes his head.

“So who might have stolen your camera? Why?” Luke asks, leaning forward.

“It’s . . . a valuable piece of equipment. I suppose that’s why.”

“So you never developed any prints of that night?”

The redness deepens and rises high into his cheeks. He shakes his head.

“Did you—just maybe—shoot images that someone didn’t want seen, and that’s why the camera was taken?”

“I just shot the usual party stuff. I dunno. I suppose maybe someone didn’t want to be seen drunk or making out . . . or whatever . . . but I didn’t get threatened or anything.”

Liam claims to know nothing about how the rumor started, either.

Seema Patel, whose parents run the Indian restaurant downtown, enters the room after Liam leaves. She’s stunningly pretty. Petite. Delicate. Graceful. She moves like the dancer she is. Although her family shares a cultural background with the Rais, Seema is everything that Leena was not. Seema is able to fit into the mold.