Every Last Fear(6)

A dog barks in the background. It sounds terrified.

CALLER

You need to get someone here right away.

OPERATOR

Slow down, sir. You say there’s a body of a girl? Is she breathing?

CALLER

No, her head, there’s so much blood … dear god …

INSERT – LOCAL NEWS FOOTAGE

ANCHOR

There’s been a big break tonight in the murder of Charlotte Rose. The Adair teenager was last seen at a house party and found bludgeoned to death at Stone Creek. Our sources say there’s been an arrest tonight, the victim’s boyfriend, Daniel Pine.…

INT. STUDIO

SUPERIMPOSED:

“Louise Lester, Institute for Wrongful Convictions”

LESTER

At first, I was skeptical, I mean, the Institute gets thousands of requests for help from prisoners claiming to be innocent. And this one came from the inmate’s twelve-year-old sister. But then we examined the trial record.

Lester shakes her head in disgust.

The prosecution’s theory was that Danny and Charlotte were at a house party and Charlotte told him she was pregnant and they had a fight. Danny then got really drunk and sometime after the party the two of them got into it again, and he pushed her and she fell, suffering a fatal head trauma. Danny then panicked and moved her body to the creek in a wheelbarrow, and smashed her skull in with a large rock, a big bloody mess. But there was no blood on his clothes, no DNA, no physical evidence of any kind. Not one trace. Does that sound like the work of a staggering drunk teenager? And then we found out that the prosecutor had withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense.…





CHAPTER 4


MATT PINE

The cinder-block room in the prison smelled of bleach. Matt studied Agent Keller, who sat quietly across from him. She was a woman of few words. But she exuded a confidence that was comforting. Even in a maximum-security prison amid murderers, rapists, and the worst society had to offer—with the faint howls of those damned souls just outside the door—she was calm and composed.

“Taking a while,” Matt said, just to break the silence. They’d been in the room a good half hour.

Keller nodded.

“I haven’t seen him since we were kids,” Matt continued, nervous talking. He’d never visited Danny in prison. Dad always said that Danny wanted it that way. His brother refused to let his siblings see him locked up like an animal.

So Danny was frozen in time in Matt’s mind. The archetype of a small-town football star. Danny was no Tom Brady, but in Adair, Nebraska—where Friday-night lights were second only to the enclaves of Texas—his brother had been a big deal.

“How old were you when he went away?” Keller asked, as if fighting a disdain for small talk.

“Fourteen.”

Another nod. “Were you close? I mean, before…”

“Yeah,” Matt lied. When they were small, they used to play together for hours, building forts, climbing trees, playing LEGOs, but when Danny made it to high school and became a local celebrity, Matt was no longer part of his universe. Plus, the relationship between his father and Danny sucked out all the air from the room. His father just didn’t see Matt.

Then beautiful Charlotte was murdered. Last seen at a high school house party, she’d been bludgeoned to death somewhere unknown, her body dumped by the creek near their house. Police found blood in a wheelbarrow hidden in the overgrown shrubs along the path that crossed the Pines’ property. No one ever understood why Charlotte’s body had been moved. Or why her skull had been crushed with a huge rock postmortem. They’d been sure of only one thing: the perpetrator was her boyfriend, Danny Pine.

From that point on, nothing was the same. It was Year Zero for the Pines. There was before Charlotte, and after. Now Matt had a new Year Zero.

“So you haven’t seen him since…” Keller didn’t finish the sentence.

“My parents kept us away from the trial. We’ve talked on the phone, but yeah.”

The last time Matt had seen Danny free was the night Charlotte was killed. That night had otherwise been momentous for Matt. Jessica Wheeler had asked him to sneak out to meet her. It was before he’d had a phone, and she’d slipped him a note in ninth-grade science class, the culmination of weeks of flirting. Jessica had folded the note in a square and tied it with a red string, like a miniature package. Matt remembered pulling at the bow, his heart fluttering as he read the note.

MEET ME AT THE KNOLL AT 3 A.M. TONIGHT?

YES OR NO

CIRCLE ONE



The Knoll was a famous make-out spot at the top of a secluded hill near the creek. A place for stargazing and bad decisions. He of course circled yes. And he’d been shocked that she was actually there: holding a flashlight, wearing her pj’s and slippers. On their backs in the cold grass, they stared at the stars dotting the ink-black sky, the clouds blowing past the moon.

“This reminds me of the stargazing scene from A Walk to Remember,” Matt said. “You ever see that movie?”

She shook her head.

“It’s old and not very good. Not many Nicholas Sparks adaptations are. But the scene was solid.”

“Have you always loved movies so much? I mean, like, you always compare things to stuff in movies.”

Matt smiled. “Sorry. It drives my family crazy.”