White Rabbit(66)
“You mean…” I try to get my head around this. “You mean the knife we found in your hand when we got to the lake house tonight? The one that killed him?”
“Yes, obviously,” April snaps in a harsh stage whisper, her eyes shooting to the door of the station, making certain we remain unobserved. “I told him I was gonna cut his balls off, and I made sure he believed me. Lia was the only one who saw me do it, though. She’s the only one who knows. And I was afraid that if I sold her out—”
“—she’d sell you out right back,” I conclude wearily. I feel like a dog tied to a stake, running in furious circles and never getting anywhere.
Sniffing, she adds, “And I really thought it was Arlo.”
“You could’ve told us.”
“You kept saying we had to go to the cops.” She thrusts her hand at me. “I knew you didn’t want to believe I was innocent, so the last thing I was about to do was tell you how I’d pulled that knife on Fox. I needed you to take me seriously.”
We all eye each other for an unfriendly moment, and then my shoulders sag. Once again, she’s got a point—the same rage that flows through my veins flows through hers, and I know exactly how far beyond reason it can push you. While crushed in the grip of my anger, I’ve raved, destroyed things, hurt people; if I’d heard the whole story, after finding her the way we did tonight, I might never have let her buy my assistance.
“Well, what’s done is done,” I finally remark, still unable to keep the acid out of my voice. “It’s too late to go to the cops and change your story now.”
“You know,” she begins quietly, staring off into the swirling fog that turns Battery Park into a depthless, gray sea on the other side of the lot. “I’m not sure I even would. I think I’m kinda starting to realize that Fox was never who I thought he was. He cheated on me, screwed his best friend’s girlfriend, sold drugs to kids … if Lia did kill him, I wouldn’t blame her. And as long as I don’t take the fall for it, maybe I don’t even care, either.” April faces me again, her gaze level and cold. “Maybe Fox deserved it.”
21
Sebastian doesn’t speak a word as we cross the pavement and get into the Jeep; he doesn’t speak as he turns the engine over, as he starts for the exit, or even as April waves good-bye, disappearing into the fog and shadows that thicken behind us as we drive away, the desolation of afterhours Burlington almost sinister in its totality.
Finally, however, the tension that fills the cab—heavy and unbreathable as wet cement—becomes too much for him to bear. “She didn’t do it.”
“Sebastian—”
“I’m telling you, Rufus: Lia. Didn’t. Do it.” We stop at a red light, and he turns to face me, his expression apprehensive but earnest. “I know stuff is … complicated for us when it comes to her—and I know that’s my fault—but seriously. This isn’t just me refusing to admit she’s got flaws and stuff. She does. But I know her, Rufe; I’ve known her for a long time, and she’s just not capable of something like this.”
“We still need to talk to her,” I answer him carefully. I’ve spent weeks resenting Lia, embittered by what I believed was Sebastian’s happiness with her; but now that I have him back again—now that I know the truth of how he feels about me—I no longer experience a reflexive surge of ugly jealousy when her name comes up. For his sake, I even want to believe his assessment of her character … but I’m just not sure I can. “We need to hear what she has to say.”
“What can she say?” he counters. “Fox was selling pills to her kid brother! Anybody in her position would’ve gone apeshit on his ass—so what? Lia’s got a temper, but she’s not Hayden. I guarantee you she ripped Fox a new asshole, put his secrets on blast, dropped the mic, and then walked out the door; that’s her style. She’s not a killer.”
“According to Peyton, she was the last one to leave the house,” I remind him, although I don’t feel very good about it. “And we only have her word for what happened when she and Arlo went back there.”
“Are you serious?” He screws up his eyebrows in irritation. The light turns green while he’s staring at me, and when I gesture to it, he hits the gas pedal angrily. “You really think she stabbed Fox, staged the crime scene, and then just waltzed out and hopped on Arlo’s bike? Or maybe when he went back to settle things with Fox, she ran in first and beat him to it.”
“I don’t think anything yet,” I say as calmly as I can, trying not to become frustrated by the sarcasm in his tone. “I’m just observing the facts.”
“Yeah, well, there are a lot of ‘facts’ that you’re not observing. Like, how about the fact that Fox was banging Peyton, and that Race found out about it and tried to kick the guy’s ass in half—and we still haven’t done anything to rule him out. Maybe we should be going over to his place right now. Lia and Arlo passed him on the road; maybe he turned around after that and went back to the cottage before they did!”
“Maybe.” I swear I don’t want to argue with him, but he’s making it extremely difficult not to. “But Peyton was behind him, remember? She’d have seen him if he doubled back, but she confirmed what Race said about the two of them driving straight to the Atwoods’ house after the party broke up.”