Dead Girls Don't Lie Page 13

  I pick up the next negative and put it on the projector. It’s more close-ups. One picture looks like a guy’s chest, but his face isn’t in the picture. The wound on this one is bigger, big enough that I can tell it’s a number crudely cut into his chest—20.

  I step back, shocked, thinking about Evan’s lumpy tattoo. I pick up the first negative again and put it in the projector. All the wounds are shaped like numbers.

  One of them is 18.

  I hear someone outside. I put the negatives back in the box and slam the cupboard shut, but it’s too late. He’s already seen me.

  Chapter 16

  “Jaycee, what are you doing here?” It isn’t Skyler, it’s Evan.

  “Waiting for Skyler.” I try to force my voice to stay casual, but my heart is racing.

  “Well, he’s in deep. He was supposed to be doing the hay today. Not hanging out with you.” Evan’s accusing tone makes me feel even guiltier.

  “He didn’t tell me that. He said he would meet me at the church and—”

  Evan’s blue eyes snap with anger, all the fake tenderness I saw in them before is gone. “He’s not supposed to be out here anymore either. This is my space. The computer’s mine.”

  I wonder if that means the pictures in the cupboard are Evan’s too.

  His voice softens, and he sighs. “You’d better let me take you home. If Dad catches you here things will be worse for Skyler.”

  “Okay,” I say reluctantly. I glance over at the picture Rachel made, still sitting on the printer. When Evan turns his back to go out the door I grab it, fold it in half and tuck it inside my shirt, underneath the scarf I’m wearing.

  I follow Evan outside. Compared with the false light of the darkroom, the sun feels too bright. I blink and stumble forward. Evan puts his hand on my waist to steady me, then he leans into my ear. “My bike is behind the big barn, go around back and meet me there. I’ll tell Dad I have to go somewhere.”

  I sneak around the back of the Cross property, feeling like a criminal, wondering where Skyler is and what it means to be “in deep” with his dad. Then I see him, kneeling on the side of the barn, one hand cradled against his body. He looks hurt.

  “Skyler,” I whisper. He looks up, afraid at the sound of my voice. “Are you okay?” I go closer and kneel down next to him, watching for his dad.

  “I told you to stay in the darkroom,” he says without any emotion.

  I lean closer to him. “Are you hurt?”

  “I cut my hand cleaning up the mess he made.” He indicates a beer bottle that must have been broken against the shed. There are trails of brown liquid in the dust on the side of the barn.

  “Let me see.” I gently pull his hand away from his chest. There’s a piece of glass embedded in his palm, and it’s streaked with blood. His white shirt is stained with blood too.

  He looks down, like it’s the first time he’s noticed the glass and pulls it out without flinching.

  I suck in a breath. I’ve seen a lot of blood today, but this is real and not in black and white, and it’s Skyler’s blood, which makes it more awful. “That looks … pretty bad.” It’s still bleeding. I unwind the scarf around my neck. It’s silk, a present from my mom, but I wrap it around Skyler’s hand and tie it tight, knowing it will be ruined.

  He looks up, like he’s surprised that I’m being nice to him. “Thanks.”

  “Do you want to get out of here? We could go to my house, hang out until your dad cools off.” I know I’ll be in deep too if I bring Skyler home, but somehow I can’t compare my dad’s anger with what I’ve seen of Skyler’s.

  He shakes his head. “I’m okay.” He forces a smile that fades as a shadow falls over both of us. Skyler jumps to his feet, but it’s only Evan again.

  “Jaycee, c’mon. You need to leave.” Evan’s voice has an urgency to it that I can’t ignore, so I stand up too.

  Skyler gives him a dark look and then turns back to me. “I don’t want you to go anywhere with him.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Skyler,” Evan says. “Either I take her home or we sit around and wait for Dad to find out she was here.”

  “No. I’m taking her home.” When Skyler stands in front of Evan it’s painfully obvious how much smaller he is than his brother.

  “Dad will—” Evan starts.

  “Maybe I should—” I say.

  “No!” Skyler faces Evan, gripping his fingers so tightly that blood seeps through the scarf. “You stay away from her.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  I turn around, expecting to see Skyler’s dad, but this time it’s Eric.

  “Skyler, what did you do this time?” Eric reaches for Skyler, but he shrinks away. “Let me see.” Eric’s voice is commanding but still gentle. He takes Skyler’s hand and pulls it toward him. Then he unwinds the scarf and uses it to wipe away the blood. “I don’t think you need stitches.” He rewraps Skyler’s hand and steps back, looking at me, like this is the first time he’s noticed me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Allow me to introduce Skyler’s girlfriend, Jaycee, the lawyer’s daughter,” Evan says. “Skyler left the field to be with her, and Dad’s home.”

  Eric swears under his breath, looks at Skyler, and shakes his head. He turns back to me. “I’m sorry, Jaycee, but you need to leave. This isn’t a good time.”

  Evan rolls his eyes. “I offered to take her home, but—”

  “She’s not going anywhere with you.” Skyler stands between me and Evan.

  “Calm down.” Eric pulls his keys out of his pocket and hands them to Skyler. “Take my truck. Take Jaycee home, and then go finish the field. I’ll handle Dad.”

  “But—” Evan starts to say.

  “I said I’d take care of it,” Eric says, giving Evan a dark look.

  “Whatever,” Evan says. “Your funeral. See you later, Jaycee.”

  I’m not sure what to do, but I follow Skyler to his brother’s truck. He isn’t even watching for his dad, but I am, and I don’t see him.

  Skyler lets out a long breath once we’re in Eric’s truck. He starts it up and peels out backward. “I’m sorry about that. Could you let me know if there’s anything else I could possibly do to screw this up?”

  I force myself to smile, not sure how to take everything I just saw. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I got you in trouble. Sorry I made you come here.”

  He takes in a breath like he’s trying to calm down. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t think Dad would be home this soon.”

  “What’s going to happen when you get home?”

  “Guess that depends on whether I go home. Eric’s got a full tank of gas.” He looks at me. “What do you think, Jaycee? You want to get away from here, run away with me?” I’m stunned into silence, but he laughs and the tension fades. “Relax, I’m kidding.”

  I’m glad to see the hardness leave his eyes so I joke back. “It’s not a terrible idea. I mean, I’m probably going to be in trouble when I get home too. I just think maybe we should, I don’t know, graduate from high school first.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Details.”

  I grab his hand. “Look, I was serious about you coming to my house, at least until your dad cools off.”

  “No. Thanks. I need to finish my work. By the time I get home Dad’ll be cooled down and sobered up.”

  “What if he isn’t?” I ask seriously.

  “Then I’ll be outside your window at midnight. Pack a suitcase.” He winks at me, but his eyes still look sad. I wonder if there’s something more serious going on between him and his dad than what he’s telling me. When he kisses me good-bye, he acts like he doesn’t want to let me leave.

  By some miracle, Dad isn’t home yet. I change my clothes, leaving Rachel’s picture in my bottom drawer. I’ll have to look at it later.

  The Sunday paper is where Dad left it on the kitchen table. A picture of Rachel is splashed across the front again. This time, she’s wearing a low-cut white tank top, a pair of cutoff shorts
, and no shoes. It looks like a recent picture, and deliberately sexy. Next to her is a smaller picture of a grizzled Mexican man in an orange jumpsuit and shackles.

  Arrest Made in Murder Case

  LAKE RIDGE—Police arrested Jose Ortiz, 65, in connection with the shooting death of Rachel Sanchez after a gun alleged to have been used in the crime was found in his room at the Lake Ridge Motel. Sanchez was found in her bedroom, dead of a gunshot wound, Saturday, June 16. Ortiz has a long arrest record, including drug trafficking, running a prostitution ring, and assault charges. Police say he has ties to a Mexican gang prominent—

  “Where have you been?” Dad comes in and shuts the door behind him. “Why weren’t you at church?” His tone is even, but there’s something behind it. I know I’m busted.

  “Didn’t Taylor—”

  “Before you answer that question, I should probably tell you that Mrs. O’Dell said she saw you leave church in Skyler’s truck.” His eyebrows hood his eyes with disappointment. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  The article I just read, with the picture of Rachel, and everything else today boils up inside of me. Dad’s accusations hit me hard. I shove the newspaper at him. “What about this, Dad? When were you going to tell me about this?”

  He looks at the picture of Rachel on the front and then calmly sets the paper down on the table. “We were talking about you. Now isn’t the right time to—”

  “It’s never the right time!” I yell back at him. He looks stunned, so I push forward. “She was my best friend, and you won’t even tell me anything about what happened to her. I have to find out about it by listening to the gossip at church.”

  He folds his arms. “Okay then. Let’s talk about Rachel. A year ago the two of you were very much alike, good girls who got good grades, did what your parents asked you to do, stayed out of trouble. And then little by little Rachel changed. She started sneaking around with boys her mother didn’t approve of. She changed the way she dressed and how she acted; she went to parties where there were drugs and alcohol. Maybe she got addicted, maybe she needed money to get high, maybe she just sank so low that she didn’t care enough to get out the trap she had laid for herself. One year ago she was just like you, and now she’s dead.”

  He stops to let that sink in. I blink, too shocked to speak.

  “Now let’s talk about you. You get some creepy text message from God knows who, you leave church and sneak off to Skyler’s house after you promised not to be alone with him.” He pounds his hand on the table and I jump. “Can you understand why I might be upset? Can you understand why I might be afraid?”

  I take in everything he’s saying and slump into a chair, all the anger drained out of me and sucked into the hole in my chest. I feel very small and very ashamed. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  He sinks into the chair next to me. “I saw a lot of bad things when I was a lawyer, Jaycee. A lot of kids, younger than you even, who got into bad situations in the name of a little fun, in the name of a little freedom, situations they couldn’t get themselves out of. Situations like the one Rachel found herself in. I thought we were safe here, but …” He breathes in. “Don’t you get that I’m worried? Don’t you get that I only want to keep you safe?” He cups my chin in his hand. “I don’t want to lose you the way Araceli lost Rachel.”

  He turns away, and for a second I see something like tears in his eyes. I wait while he composes himself. “So no more sneaking around with Skyler and no more secret text messages.”

  I can only nod.

  He puts his firm face back on. “You’re grounded. You’ll spend tomorrow working at the office with me. You will have no contact with Skyler or any of your other friends at all this week, do you understand?”

  I nod again, but I’m thinking about how shattered Skyler looked when I got out of the truck. I’m not sure I should stay away from him for a whole week.

  Later that night, after I’m sure Dad is asleep, I pull the sheet of pictures Rachel left me into my bed and study it with a flash-light, under the covers the way I used to sneak read when I was a little kid.

  The first picture was taken at the end of ninth grade. Rachel and I are standing together in the middle school gym after our graduation dance. She’s in a strapless red dress that makes her look like a Latina model. I’m wearing a pink frilly dress that someone from the church loaned me. It makes me look like I’m ten. We have our arms linked and both of us are smiling. It hurts my heart to see us together like that, so happy.

  The next picture is something from the Catholic church, a baptism or something. She’s standing next to Eduardo, a young mother holding a baby, and a group of people I don’t recognize.

  There’s one more of the two of us from last summer. We’re sitting on the sweetheart log at the edge of the park, where kids have carved and crossed out initials for so many years that they blur into each other. I used to imagine that Evan would carve my name next to his on that log; now I wonder if Skyler will.

  The next pictures look like Rachel took them herself, maybe with her cell phone. They document how she changed. Her nose gets pierced and her hair gets bleached, her eyebrows are plucked thin and her makeup gets darker, but that isn’t what I notice the most. It’s that she doesn’t smile anymore. Her face is pained, and then hard, and finally, hopeless. Only the last one is different. Rachel is wearing a white dress and the sun is shining behind her hair like a halo. She has her eyes closed like she was laughing. She looks like an angel. I’m not sure why she put that picture last. Maybe she wanted me to know wherever she is now, she’s okay.

  There are other pictures, mixed in with the self-portraits. The first ones are graffiti from the old house. There’s only one other picture with Eduardo in it. It’s a close-up of the symbol on his back. If I didn’t know he had the tattoo, I wouldn’t even know it was him. I wonder what their relationship was like. During the last couple of months it seems like they were always together, not holding hands or kissing like most of the couples at the school, they were just together. I wonder if he was the one she was talking about that night. I wonder if he’s the one who sent her the text.

  There are numbers written in between the pictures, so small that I didn’t notice them before: 20, 22, 34, 44, 66, and finally, Evan’s jersey with the 18 and the words “making the cut.”

  I think about the bloody 18 I saw on the negative. Could it have been the beginning of Evan’s tattoo?

  I concentrate on each individual picture, trying to make sense of it. It meant something to Rachel, enough for her to go to the trouble of hiding that little chip in the cross. It frustrates me that there isn’t more, that she was so cryptic.

  I close my eyes, half thinking, half praying for some kind of guidance, except I’m not sure if God helps kids who defy their dads and leave church with boys.

  Something that Skyler said about the other picture sticks in my mind.

  I wanted you to see if there was something the police might have missed, something that you’d know because you knew her so well.

  That stops me. I look at the pictures again. If Rachel created this for me, if she was worried about someone else finding it, then there have to be things only I’ll recognize. I have to look at it that way, in the light of ten years of friendship.

  Chapter 17

  “You got it?” Dad says. I don’t, not really. I finally fell asleep last night after staring at Rachel’s pictures for hours. I stared at them until my eyes hurt, but I couldn’t figure anything out. My head is a jumble of everything that’s been going on. I can’t focus on the explanation Dad just gave me of his elaborate filing method.

  “Jaycee, did you hear me?”

  “Yeah, sure, Dad.” I turn my attention back to the piles of paperwork; they look overwhelming. “You know, you could just scan all this stuff in and save it on a computer.”

  “Never trusted keeping things on a computer,” Dad says. “Computers are machines; they crash and files get lost. I prefer to have every
thing where I can reach out and hold onto it if I need to.”

  I wonder if he feels that way about me too, because he settles down at his desk while I work at a little table to the side, within arm’s reach. I’m not sure why he spent so much time explaining everything when I could ask him a question any time I needed to.

  He makes phone calls while I file. Every few minutes I glance out the window, toward the school playground, thinking about the conversation I heard, the pictures from Skyler’s house, and the pictures Rachel left for me.

  Dad notices. “I know you’d rather be out enjoying the sunshine. I’m sorry I have to punish you.”

  I doubt that. I turn my attention to the filing. It’s mindless, and I kind of like creating order, sorting the piles into neat folders in Dad’s filing cabinet. Then I come across one that looks different than the other papers. The label at the top says CONFIDENTIAL. I stand up and set the pages in front of Dad. “Where does this go?”

  He looks down at the paper and then looks up at me sharply. “Did you read it?”

  “No.” I automatically feel guilty, even though I didn’t read it.

  “Did you see any names on the file?”

  “No.”

  His face relaxes. “I’ll take care of this one. I thought I’d taken all of those out. Any that are marked confidential please give to me immediately and don’t read what they say. They go in a different file.”

  “Okay.”

  He takes a ring of keys out of his desk, unlocks the bottom drawer of the file cabinet, and thumbs through the tabs. I know I shouldn’t watch him, but I do. I keep ruffling through the pile on the desk so it doesn’t look like I’m watching him, but I can see names on the files. I read the first few: Asher, Brown, Chandler, Cross.

  Cross?

  He shuts the drawer. “I appreciate you showing that to me without looking at it.” He goes back to his desk and puts the keys back in the drawer. I nod, but I’m burning up with curiosity about whatever that file says about Skyler’s family. How much does my dad know about his dad and what goes on there?