Hush, Hush

I held perfectly still, a tingle of fear creeping through me. My bed was made. My pajamas were in a heap on my pillow, just the way I’d left them this morning. My dresser drawers were shut, picture frames arranged neatly on top. The trunk at the foot of the bed was closed. The floors were clean. The window drapes hung in long, smooth panels, one on either side of the closed window.

“You said you saw the intruder,” said Detective Basso. He was staring down at me with hard eyes that didn’t miss a thing. Eyes that were expert at filtering lies.

I stepped inside the room, but it lacked the familiar touch of comfort and safety. There was an underlying note of violation and menace. I pointed across the room at the window, trying to hold my hand steady. “When I walked in, he jumped out the window.”

Detective Basso glanced out the window. “Long way to the ground,” he observed. He attempted to open the window. “Did you lock it after he left?”

“No. I ran downstairs and called 911.”

“Somebody locked it.” Detective Basso was still eyeing me with razor eyes, his mouth pressed in a tight line.

“Not sure anybody’d be able to get away after a jump like that,” Detective Holstijic said, joining his partner at the window. “They’d be lucky to get off with a broken leg.”

“Maybe he didn’t jump, maybe he climbed down the tree,” I said.

Detective Basso whipped his head around. “Well? Which is it? Did he climb or jump? He could have pushed past you and gone out the front door. That would be the logical option. That’s what I’d have done. I’m going to ask once more. Think real careful. Did you really see someone in your room tonight?”

He didn’t believe me. He thought I’d invented it. For a moment I was tempted to think similarly. What was wrong with me? Why was my reality convoluted? Why did the truth never match up? For the sake of my sanity, I told myself it wasn’t me. It was him. The guy in the ski mask. He was doing this. I didn’t know how, but he was to blame.

Detective Holstijic broke the tense silence by saying, “When will your parents be home?”

“I live with my mom. She had to make a quick trip to the office.”

“We need to ask you both a few questions,” he continued. He pointed for me to take a seat on my bed, but I shook my head numbly. “Have you recently broken up with a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“How about drugs? Have you had a problem, now or in the past?”

“No.”

“You mentioned that you live with your mom. How about Dad? Where’s he?”

“This was a mistake,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called.”

The two officers exchanged looks. Detective Holstijic shut his eyes and massaged the inner corners.

Detective Basso looked like he’d wasted enough time and was ready to blow it off.

“We’ve got things to do,” he said. “Are you going to be all right here alone until your mom gets back?”

I hardly heard him; I couldn’t pull my eyes off the window. How was he doing it? Fifteen minutes. He had fifteen minutes to find a way back inside and put the room in order before the police arrived. And with me downstairs the whole time. At the realization that we’d been alone in the house together, I shuddered.

Detective Holstijic extended his business card. “Could you have your mom call us when she gets in?”

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Detective Basso said. He was already halfway down the hall.

CHAPTER 15

YOU THINK ELLIOT MURDERED SOMEONE?”

“Shh! ” I hissed at Vee, glancing across the rows of lab tables to make sure no one had overheard.

“No offense, babe, but this is starting to get ridiculous. First he attacked me. Now he’s a killer. I’m sorry, but Elliot? A murderer? He’s, like, the nicest guy I’ve ever met. When was the last time he forgot to hold open a door for you? Oh, yeah, that’s right … never.”

Vee and I were in biology, and Vee was lying faceup on a table. We were running a lab on blood pressure, and Vee was supposed to be resting silently for five minutes. Normally I would have worked with Patch, but Coach had given us a free day, which meant we were free to choose our own partners.

Vee and I were at the back of the room; Patch was working with a jock named Thomas Rookery at the front of the room.

“He was questioned as a suspect in a murder investigation,” I whispered, feeling Coach’s eyes gravitate toward us. I scribbled a few notes on my lab sheet. Subject is calm and relaxed. Subject has refrained from speaking for three and a half minutes. “The police obviously thought he had motive and means.”

“Are you sure it’s the same Elliot?”

“How many Elliot Saunderses do you think there were at Kinghorn in February?”

Vee strummed her fingers on her stomach. “It just seems really, really hard to believe. And anyway, so what if he was questioned? The important thing is, he was released. They didn’t find him guilty.”

“Because police found a suicide note written by Halverson.”

“Who’s Halverson again?”

“Kjirsten Halverson,” I said impatiently. “The girl who supposedly hanged herself.”

“Maybe she did hang herself. I mean, what if one day she said, ‘Hey, life sucks,’ and strung herself to a tree? It has happened.”

“You don’t find it a little too coincidental that her apartment showed evidence of a break­in when they discovered the suicide note?”

“She lived in Portland. Break­ins happen.”

“I think someone placed the note. Someone who wanted Elliot off the hook.”

“Who would want Elliot off the hook?” Vee asked.

I gave her my best duh look.

Vee propped herself up with her good elbow. “So you’re saying Elliot hauled Kjirsten up a tree, tied a rope around her neck, pushed her off the limb, then did a breaking­and­entering job on her apartment and planted evidence pointing to a suicide.”

“Why not?”

Vee returned the duh look. “Because the cops already analyzed everything. If they’re ruling it a suicide, so am I.”

“How about this,” I said. “Just weeks after Elliot was released from questioning, he transferred schools.

Why would someone leave Kinghorn Prep to come to CHS?”

“You’ve got a point there.”

“I think he’s trying to escape his past. I think it became too uncomfortable attending school on the same campus where he killed Kjirsten. He has a guilty conscience.” I tapped my pencil against my lip. “I need to drive out to Kinghorn and ask questions. She just died two months ago; everyone will still be buzzing about it.”

“I don’t know, Nora. I’m getting bad vibes about initiating a spy operation at Kinghorn. I mean, are you going to ask about Elliot specifically? What if he finds out? What’s he going to think?”

I looked down at her. “He only has something to worry about if he’s guilty.”

“And then he’ll kill you to silence you.” Vee grinned like the Cheshire cat. I didn’t. “I want to find out who attacked me just as much as you do,” she continued on a more serious note, “but I swear on my life it wasn’t Elliot. I’ve replayed the memory, like, a hundred times. It’s not a match. Not even close. Trust me.”

“Okay, maybe Elliot didn’t attack you,” I said, trying to appease Vee but not about to clear Elliot’s name. “He still has a lot going against him. He was involved in a murder investigation, for one. And he’s almost too nice, for two. It’s creepy. And he’s friends with Jules, for three.”

Vee frowned. “Jules? What’s wrong with Jules?”

“Don’t you think it’s odd that every time we’re with them, Jules bails?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The night we went to Delphic, Jules left almost immediately to use the bathroom. Did he ever come back? After I left to buy cotton candy, did Elliot find him?”

“No, but I chalked it up to internal plumbing issues.”

“Then, last night, he mysteriously called in sick.” I scrubbed my pencil’s eraser down the length of my nose, thinking. “He seems to get sick a lot.”

“I think you’re overanalyzing this. Maybe … maybe he has IBS.”

“IBS?”

“Irritable bowel syndrome.”

I discarded Vee’s suggestion in favor of mentally stretching for an idea that floated just out of reach.

Kinghorn Prep was easily an hour away by car. If the school was as academically rigorous as Elliot claimed, how did Jules continually have time to make the drive to Coldwater to visit? I saw him nearly every morning on my way to school at Enzo’s Bistro with Elliot. Plus, he gave Elliot a ride home after school. It was almost like Elliot had Jules in the palm of his hand.

But that wasn’t all of it. I scrubbed the eraser more furiously against my nose. What was I missing?

“Why would Elliot kill Kjirsten?” I wondered out loud. “Maybe she saw him do something illegal, and he killed her to silence her.”

Vee let go of a sigh. “This is starting to drift into the land of This Makes Absolutely No Sense.”

“There’s something else. Something we’re not seeing.”

Vee looked at me like my logic was vacationing in outer space. “Personally, I think you’re seeing too much. This feels a lot like a witch hunt.”

And then all of a sudden I knew what I was missing. It had been nagging me all day, calling to me from the back of my mind, but I’d been too overwhelmed with everything else to pay attention. Detective Basso had asked me if anything was missing. It just now hit me that something was. I’d set the article about Elliot on top of my dresser last night. But this morning—I consulted my memory to be sure—it was gone. Definitely gone.

“Omigosh,” I said. “Elliot broke into my house last night. It was him! He stole the article.” Since the article was in plain sight, it was obvious Elliot had torn apart my room to terrorize me—possibly as punishment for finding the article in the first place.

“Whoa, what?” Vee said.

“What’s wrong?” asked Coach, coming to a stop beside me.

“Yeah, what’s wrong?” Vee chimed in. She pointed and laughed at me from behind Coach’s back.

“Um—the subject doesn’t appear to have a pulse,” I said, giving Vee’s wrist a hard pinch.

While Coach probed for Vee’s pulse, she made swooning motions and fanned herself. Coach flicked his eyes to mine, looking at me over the top of his glasses. “Right here, Nora. Beating loud and strong. Are you sure the subject refrained from activity, including talking, for the full five minutes? This pulse isn’t as slow as I would have expected.”

“The subject struggled with the no­talking step,” Vee interjected. “And the subject has a hard time relaxing on a rock­hard biology table. The subject would like to propose switching places so Nora can be the new subject.” Vee used her right hand to grab me and pull herself upright.