Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(83)

“Did you go for a walk?”

“No. I just went out.”

“You should get out more, Brady. You should go explore. Go for a hike, if you’re somewhere that’s possible. I always used to like hiking.”

I’m not like him, not a loner who goes off on adventures. I like stories where I’m part of a team, where I’m important not because I can run fast or fight well, but because I’m smart and clever and can solve a problem when someone else can’t. I wonder if he would understand that. “Yeah,” I say, because I don’t want to disagree with him. “I guess. I could take the dog.”

“Do you have a dog now?”

“Boot,” I say. “He’s a rottweiler.”

“He know any tricks?”

“He can fetch and lie down and roll over,” I say. “I’m teaching him to shake hands.”

“Is he a good hunting dog?”

“I don’t know.”

“You like to go hunting?”

There’s something about the way he says that . . . I don’t know. It feels ugly. So I hurry past it, the way you’re supposed to hurry past a graveyard at night. “No, I just—I got lost, and Lanny and—” I stop myself, because I almost used Javier’s name. “Lanny got Boot to help find me.” I wasn’t lost, not really. After watching that video, I’d been so angry and hurt that I just wanted to leave. But I hadn’t gotten far before I realized I didn’t have anywhere to go. Dumb. I should have kept going. “So I guess he can hunt. He’s a good dog, and he’s smart, too.”

“I like dogs,” Dad says. “Not cats. I always think of dogs as boys, and cats as girls. Don’t you?”

I don’t know what to say to that. It sounds weird, like he wants to go somewhere with that, and I don’t want to follow. It doesn’t feel right. I shift position, and hangers clink above me. The smell of cedar is tickling my nose. “I called because I need to ask you something,” I say. I’ve only just now realized that I’m going to do this, really do it. I feel sick, but I make myself do it anyway. “You know how they said Mom, uh, helped you kill those ladies?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did she?”

“Kiddo, I’m sorry. I just—son, I believe you’re old enough to know the truth. You’ve been lied to most of your life about me, didn’t I tell you that? But what’s worse is that it’s your mother who’s been doing the lying. She’s no innocent, believe me. I felt like you should start to know what really happened when you were little.”

The way he says it makes me feel stupid for being upset about what I saw. Like I should be better than that. Stronger. “Okay,” I say. “Well, I watched the video, you know that.”

“And you made sure they didn’t know you have this phone, right?”

“Just like you said,” I told him.

“And your sister saw the video, too?”

“Yeah.” I wish I hadn’t done that. I hate seeing her cry, and I hate seeing her not cry when she should want to. But I needed her to know what I did: that Mom couldn’t be who she said she was.

“Nobody knows you’re talking to me?”

“No.” I take in a breath and let it out. “Is it true? That you killed that girl later, the one you were carrying?”

“You mean the one your mom helped me carry?” His correction is a little sharp, and then he softens immediately. “Sorry, Brady. It’s just that I’ve been spit on and lied about for so many years. And your mother got away with everything.”

“Did you do it, though?”

“Did I what?”

I swallow. My mouth is dry. I don’t want to ask this. But I do want to, and I make myself. “Did you kill them? All those ladies?”

He doesn’t answer, for long enough that I’m listening to the wind through the phone speaker and his quiet, even breathing on the other end. Finally, he says, “There are things you just won’t understand. It isn’t what you think.”

“It’s a simple question.” I sound suddenly pretty adult now, I think. “Did you kill them, or not?”

“I did kill one girl, but that was an accident. We were going to hold her for ransom, that’s all. We needed money for you and your sister, and her family was rich. It was an accident.”

“But all the other ones . . .”

“There were no other ones. The other stuff they say about me, the other girls—that’s all made up. Faked—I’ll send you links to articles about it, how the scientists in the police lab switched my DNA for the real killer’s. That’s why I had to get out of jail. I need to prove my innocence. Nobody would listen to me while I was behind bars.”

The real killer. My heart speeds up, because this sounds right. It makes sense. My dad can’t be a killer, not really. TV shows, they always have people who were accused but didn’t really do the crime, and the real killer gets found in the end. So why can’t that be true now? Why can’t Dad be innocent? Didn’t that make more sense, that he and Mom did something stupid to help us, and then the police decided he was guilty for everything else? And Mom lied to us so she could stay with us and take care of us?