Locust Lane(37)

She hung up and looked at Hannah, who was whispering something to herself. All Alice could think to say to her was that everything was going to be all right, but that seemed wildly optimistic at this point.

“He’s coming,” she tried instead.

Celia was in the station’s waiting room, which made sense. If Hannah was in trouble, Jack would be as well. She immediately hit Alice with two bombshells. Jack and Hannah and Christopher had been at the house on Locust. And then, before Alice could even register the depth of her shock at the first statement, Celia told her that the police were accusing Christopher of the killing. Alice understood the words when she heard them. They were simple enough. But she couldn’t make them real. Sweet, gentle Christopher Mahoun being accused of, well, you’d have to say murder, although putting it like that made it even more incredible.

Geoff arrived. She went to fill him in before he dealt with Hannah.

“They were with the girl who got murdered,” she said before he could speak. “Hannah and Jack and Christopher. They were hanging out at her place last night.”

The color drained from his face. She’d always thought that was a figure of speech, but there it was, happening right before her eyes.

“What does she say?”

“Nothing. To me, at least.”

“Jesus. Okay, I’d better…”

“Geoff, wait. They’ve arrested Christopher.”

“No fucking … hold on. Do you think they’re going to accuse Hannah?”

“I don’t think so. Celia says she and Jack left before it happened.”

“Okay, I’ll handle this,” he said as he walked away.

He went to his daughter, who’d been watching them from her chair. She rose and collapsed into his arms. Alice wanted to join them, but Geoff had just made it clear that he was taking it from here. And she had to see Michel. If Christopher really was being blamed for this, then he would be losing his mind. She wondered if he was in there right now with his son; if she should hang around and try to catch him as he left. But that would be insanely risky. Wherever he was, she’d have to meet him somewhere else.

And so she left. Without a word to anyone. She waited until she was free of the reporters before she called. She was sent straight to his voice mail. She left a message, letting him know that she was at the station, that Hannah and Jack were talking to the police, that she needed to know what was happening, that she was here for him, that she loved him.

She summoned an Uber, instructing the driver to meet her in front of Papillon. She half-ran there; it took less than two minutes. As she suspected, it was closed, a hastily scrawled sign taped to the door. There was only darkness inside.

At home, she got her keys and drove straight to Michel’s house. She couldn’t begin to imagine how alone he must feel now, how trapped and beleaguered. She still couldn’t process what was happening. Some girl had been murdered and Jack and Hannah knew enough about it to have the police drag them unceremoniously down to the station. And Christopher was being accused of the crime.

As she sped across town, a thought struck her. Celia had just said that Hannah and Jack only found out about the girl’s death this afternoon. They’d left the house on Locust before anything happened. But Hannah knew something was wrong last night, when Alice saw her in the kitchen. Could she have already known that Eden was dead? And if so, why hadn’t she said anything to Alice or Geoff or the cops? Jack had known something as well. Celia had said earlier he’d been upset when she saw him in the morning. They knew something, huddled all night in Hannah’s room. They knew something that they’d kept secret.

At Michel’s house, a few wan lights burned behind drawn curtains. He was in there, alone. She could feel it. There were vehicles parked outside. An Emerson PD patrol car, an SUV with a news station’s logo plastered on the door, a dinged-up sedan. A bored-looking man in a leather jacket and an overdressed woman wearing what appeared to be a blond hair-helmet stood beside the cruiser, speaking to the cop seated inside. If the press knew about Christopher, why weren’t they reporting it? He was still seventeen. Of course. A minor. Alice, a veteran of calculating age-based legality, knew that anonymity protected minors in the press. Not online, though. There, nothing was protected. The crowd on Smith Street would soon be metastasizing. If she was going to see Michel here, she needed to do it now.

She parked several houses down. His kitchen was at the rear of the house. It had a door. The backyard was small and she remembered a fence. She looked at Google Earth on her phone, summoning a bird’s-eye view of this little patch of the planet. It took her a minute to get the lay of the land, to plot her course to him.

She drove around the block, stopping in front of the house she reckoned backed onto his. People were home. Lights flickered. They’d be watching television, staring at phones or computers, desperate to find out more about this thing that had happened so close by; this horror they were soon to discover may have been perpetrated by their neighbor’s son. She walked as casually as you could down some stranger’s driveway on a weeknight with no plausible explanation for being there. At least she was shrouded by darkness, she thought, a split second before being illuminated by a blinding motion-activated security spotlight. She picked up the pace, sidling through a stand of shrubbery at the bottom of the driveway, then hurrying past a trampoline on the lawn. More lights flared and now she was in a prison-break movie. She reached a wood fence separating this yard from Michel’s. It was a few inches taller than she was, made of picketed slats. She looked around. For a brief, insane moment she thought about maybe using the trampoline. Then she spotted a wheelbarrow. She moved quickly, putting herself back in the bright light.