All Unquiet Things (34 page)

“Do you remember anything else? Did they stay together, or did Adam leave on his own?”

“He got a phone call right as they were getting back into
their cars. He picked it up, listened, said, ‘I’ll call you back,’ and kicked everyone out of his car. Then he took off.”

“You don’t by any chance know who the call came from, do you? He didn’t mention it to any of his buddies?”

“No, but I remember thinking the ringtone was really weird for a guy like him. You know Adam, he’s all tough, but the ring was pretty girly, like from the eighties or something.”

“Like the kind of song a girlfriend would program into your phone to play when she calls?”

“I guess. I wouldn’t really know.”

“Sorry, man. I’ve got to run, but enjoy the ice cream.”

“Frozen yogurt.”

“Whatever.”

I readied myself for a confrontation when Adam opened his front door, but instead of getting up in my face he just eyed me warily, as if I were an unidentified species of insect.

“What do you want?” he demanded, gripping the door with one hand and the frame with the other.

“I have something that belongs to you.” From my backpack, I pulled the printout I’d made of the files on his Black-Berry.

“What the hell is this?” He grabbed it from me and his eyes widened. “Where did you get this?”

“You should really look into password-protecting that thing—it was stupidly easy to get all the information the police are going to need to convict your sorry ass. Keep it. I made copies.”

“Do you have a death wish? Do you know what I could do to you?”

“You could get some thugs to beat me up,” I said. “But you won’t.”

“If that’s what you think, you’re in for a big surprise.” He made a move in my direction, but I didn’t flinch. Honestly, I didn’t find him all that menacing. My knowledge made me feel invincible.

“We both know I can take you,” I said. “I think I proved that the other day at school.”

“You’re such a dumb shit,” he sneered. “I could’ve put you in the hospital.”

“Maybe you should just kill me, like you killed Carly. That would probably be smarter, because I can still talk with broken bones.”

“I didn’t kill Carly.”

“Very convincing. I guess I won’t tell the police about your falsified alibi, then. I mean, why stir everyone up if you say you’re innocent?” I was trying to stay calm, but seething anger is a difficult thing to suppress. I turned and started to walk away, but Adam reached out and grabbed the collar of my shirt.

“What makes you think I lied about my alibi?” he asked. There was barely any color in his face, and I could tell he was afraid.

“I just had a conversation with Freddie Kramer.” Adam stiffened. I continued, “You might remember him—he’s the guy whose ass you kicked right before Carly died. And he told me that you were done by eight, giving you plenty of time to get to the bridge, meet Carly, and then kill her. I know you had a phone call from her, and I know you left the overlook alone.”

Adam took a step backward. “No way. Look, man, I cared about Carly. I would never have hurt her.”

“That’s bullshit!” I shouted. “You weren’t even faithful to her. What about Lucy Miller?”

“That doesn’t prove that I didn’t care about her. Things with Carly were complicated, and Lucy, she was easy.”

“I’m sure she was. Probably still is, in fact.”

“Look, Lucy and I have known each other a long time. She was comfortable and undemanding. I didn’t mean for it to happen, it just did. I didn’t want to be with Lucy, I just didn’t know how to be with Carly. But I did care. I might not have treated her great all the time, but that doesn’t mean I killed her.”

“If you cared so much about her, why did you drag her down to your level, huh? What part of your sick, corrupt little world did you think was good for her?”

“Dude, calm down,” Adam said. “It was her choice to get involved with me. I didn’t force her to do anything.”

“You took advantage of her at a point in her life when she was looking for an escape,” I said. “You gave her drugs so you could get what you wanted out of her.”

“No, I loved her—”

“No,
I
loved her! I wanted what was best for Carly. All you wanted was someone to manipulate, someone to do whatever you wanted. That’s not love.”

Adam stopped protesting. All he said in response was, “I didn’t kill her,” so softly that I barely heard him.

“Tell it to the police,” I said. “I’m turning you in.”

“No, Neily, you cannot do that,” Adam begged. “Yes, I admit, I did have my guys beat Freddie up, but I swear I went to Cass’s immediately afterward. My alibi wasn’t a lie; I just
neglected to mention the deal because I knew that if the police had me on record as confessing to dealing and roughing up some punk, they’d put me in prison and bring down my entire operation. I would’ve been fucked.”

“I don’t fucking believe you.” In my mind, I could piece together how it all happened. According to guests at Lucy’s party, Carly and Adam had argued the night before she died. If Freddie was right and Carly called Adam around eight o’clock, she had probably arranged to meet him at the bridge. Carly was planning on exposing him—I was convinced that was what the digital recorder was for; why else would she have had it?—and Adam knew it.

He could count on his size and strength to overcome Carly if necessary. On his way to the bridge he noticed Enzo Ribelli’s car by the road. Adam knew Enzo well enough to figure out that he was parked near the creek for one reason: to get drunk. In that moment, it all fell into place. He must’ve lost it completely when he saw the tape recorder. The only thing that bothered me was the gun. I could believe that Adam would take it from Enzo’s glove compartment, but how could he know that Enzo had it on him? My head started to spin: Of course—
Carly
had brought the gun. Carly had her own key to Audrey and Enzo’s house—I had seen her use it once to drop something off when Audrey was at her grandparents’ house—and she knew where Audrey stashed the gun. If she wanted to protect herself, there was no better way than to bring along a firearm. My heart dropped deep into the pit of my stomach. She should’ve known he was big enough to turn it on her.

As if a dam had burst, my mind flooded with images and I could see instantly what had happened on the bridge: Carly
instigated the whole thing. She brought the gun, and she threatened him with exposure, and with her suspicions about Laura Brandt as well. As soon as Adam said something incriminating, she taunted him about the tape, telling him that he was finally going to get what he deserved and that she was going to get her life back. He couldn’t let her turn him in—he was only seventeen at the time, but he was no small-time dope dealer. It was quite possible that they’d try him as an adult. Even if they didn’t, his whole life would be ruined. He couldn’t let her do that to him. He moved to strike her, but she pulled the gun on him; he took advantage of her hesitation and got it away from her, shot her, wiped the gun clean, and threw it and the digital recorder into the river. When he was sure she was dead, he stole the necklace and planted it in the mud next to Enzo’s car before going to Cass’s house and making him agree to give him an alibi.

“You must’ve been really angry to shoot her four times,” I said quietly.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he snapped. He was a mess of rage, his whole body tense and shaking, like a big cat waiting to pounce, but I knew he wouldn’t touch me. There was fear in his face.

“Why did Cass lie for you?” I asked.

“He’s my friend,” Adam said, rubbing his eyes and forehead anxiously. “I didn’t want to get busted for the deal, so I asked him to say I was at his house all night. But I didn’t kill Carly, man, I swear on my life.”

“Yeah, well, unfortunately that’s not worth very much,” I said.

“What do you want from me?” he cried.

“A confession,” I told him. “Pick up the phone, call the police and tell them what you did, and believe me, I’ll be the least of your problems.”

“I’m not going to do that,” Adam said. “I’m innocent. What is it going to take for you to believe me?”

“The truth,” I said.

“I’ve told you the truth!”

“You didn’t go to Cass’s at all that night, did you? Carly called you. Freddie told me that.”

“Carly called me back, I admit it.”

“Called you
back?”

“Yeah. I’d called her a couple of times that day, but she never picked up.”

“Same with me,” I said, realizing something: “Carly was lying low. Handling things on her own, after all.”

“What for?”

I ignored him. “Why wasn’t your phone number on her cell phone’s call log?” I asked. This question had been bothering me. If I’d known they talked before she died, it never would’ve taken me this long to prove it was Adam who killed her.

“She called me from her home phone. All she said was that she’d left a box of my stuff on my porch and that I was never to speak to her again as long as I lived. I told her I’d call her back, but she’d hung up by then.”

“What happened after that? Who did you go see?” I went on. “Where did you go if not to the bridge?”

“I went for a drive.”

“Where?”

“San Francisco.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why?”

Adam sighed. “Just to clear my head. Lucy kept trying to get ahold of me and I needed some space to process.”

“Lucy?”

“Carly found out I was sleeping with Lucy at that last party. It was one of the things we argued about.”

“And she was upset.”

“Well, yeah, but not for the reason you’d think.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was mad at me because everybody knew but her,” Adam said. “But she wasn’t upset about losing me, because she said she was planning on breaking up with me anyway.”

“Why?” It was possible that it wasn’t really true. Carly could’ve just been trying to save face.

“She didn’t say. My guess was to get back together with you.”

“No way.”

“Even though she was with me, she never stopped missing you,” Adam said sharply. “She talked about you all the time, always compared me to you. I could tell that she would have gone back to you if she thought she deserved you, but she didn’t. I hated you, plain and simple, and I’ve never stopped.”

“Is that why you had that kid put those articles in my locker? Just to fuck with my head?” I asked.

“I wanted you to suffer,” he snarled. “Nobody ever asked how her death affected
me
. It was all you, getting special treatment and being babied by everybody. Like you were the only person it happened to.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

“She was cheating on me, too, you know,” he continued. “I practically caught her at Cass’s School’s Out for Summer party.”

“She wasn’t cheating. She was raped that night,” I told him.

“No,” he said hoarsely.

“Somebody dosed her drink, probably with some of that Special K you’ve been smuggling in from Tijuana. She wrote about it in her diary.” I paused to think. “What else did you argue about?” He said nothing. “Laura Brandt?”

“I had nothing to do with Laura’s disappearance. I still think she took off on her own.”

“But you did have the Bean run her off the road?”

“Just to put a scare in her. I didn’t think she’d have the nerve to pull what she was threatening.”

“But Carly thought you had her killed, didn’t she?”

“She did. But she was wrong.”

“Think back to Cass’s party,” I said. “Lucy said you found Carly alone in a bedroom later that night. Did you just stumble upon her accidentally?”

“I went looking for her, and when I got to the top of the stairs Cass came up to me, pointed to the bedroom right behind him, and said, ‘Your girlfriend’s passed out in there. You might want to wake her up and get her home.’”

“Cass?”

Adam nodded. “He’s always looking out for his friends.”

I barely heard him. I saw it all for what it really was. “No, he wasn’t. He was stalking Carly, writing her creepy letters. He raped her. And now he no longer has an alibi for her murder,” I said. “How could you not have known?”

“No,” Adam protested. “He’s my best friend. We protect each other. He did me a favor.”

“No, you did him one. He took advantage of
your
desperation for an alibi for the night he
shot
and
killed
your girlfriend. Did you ever think to ask him where he was that night? Or did you just accept his offer to perjure himself for you?”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Adam insisted. “Cass has always had my back.”

I took a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. “I don’t have time to list the countless ways in which you are responsible for what happened to Carly. Do yourself a big fucking favor and go to the police with the truth about your alibi.” I held out my hand. “Give me your gun.”

“What? Why?”

“Just give it to me!”

Reluctantly, he went inside, then came back and handed me the gun. It was heavier than I thought, and I had no idea what to do with it or what I planned to use it for. I stared at it blankly and shoved it into Adam’s hand. “Show me.”