The Sixes (31 page)

And then, as she said the words, the truth seemed to charge into her brain, like someone flinging open a door and bursting into a room. The
same
. The two sets of notes were exactly the same. Every single detail given to Hutch had been repeated to her—
an entire year later
. Glenda’s words from the other day echoed in her head: “A liar’s story is often just a little too pat.”

Phoebe now knew what Hutch had discovered through the notes. Wesley had made up the story. Because, she thought, without understanding the reason, Wesley was the killer.

She forced a smile, but she could feel how lopsided it was on her face. Can he tell? she wondered as terror mounted inside her. Can he tell I just figured it out?

“Well,” she said feebly, “if nothing occurs to you, I’d better scoot and let you close up.” She looked down, hoping he couldn’t see her fear, and tucked the notes back into her purse. She saw that her fingers were trembling.

“Where’re you headed?” he asked. When she forced herself to look back up at him, she saw that he’d slapped a smile on his own face, but it was ugly and mean.

“I thought I’d just stay in with a book tonight,” she said. Fear had turned her voice into only a whisper. “Well, good night.”

“You really think I’m going to let you leave now?”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“You know why I’m saying that, right?” he said. “I just saw you figure it out in your head. Or kind of, right?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

She started to turn around and aimed for the door, but he took a giant step with her and blocked her way.

“Don’t make me fly into a rage, okay?” he said. His voice was different now, surly and low. “That’s what Gramps did.”

“I won’t make you mad,” she whispered. “I promise.”

“That Gramps,” he said, shaking his head back and forth as if someone had turned up the speed on him. “He thought he was so damn smart. Didn’t that irritate the hell out of you?”

Humor him, she told herself. Until you can figure out what to do. “Did—did Hutch call you about the notes?”

“Well, I told
you
he called me—so I could make it seem like I’d shared the stuff about Blair. But he’s too much of a busybody to just call.” Wesley snickered. “He dropped by here last Saturday afternoon. I was outside the lawn care barn, and he pulled up in his truck. Took me a second to recognize him. Said he was sorry about not taking my case seriously before, and he was finally trying to follow up with me. He showed me the notes he’d taken, and then he whips out the notes from
you
. And all of a sudden he starts to go all Lenny Briscoe on me. He asks in this mocking way if I don’t find it funny that every detail is the same. And then he says that when someone’s telling the truth, they tend to forget certain details or recall them a bit differently. But liars often repeat it word for word because they’ve rehearsed it. The whole time he’s not accusing me, just insinuating in this sly way, like he’s the hotshot cop and I’m just some idiot.

“Then he tells me he’s used the computer to check me out at school, and he’s figured out that I was in a bunch of classes with Lily Mack.”

“A bunch?” Phoebe recalled that Wesley had told her he was in
one
.

“I took three classes with that bitch. I was freaking in
love
with Lily. We were in a class together last fall, and we started sharing notes and having coffee together, that sort of thing. We had a connection, you know. But then she totally messes it up—she starts dating that flaming asshole, Trevor. I tried to make her see what a jerk he was, but she just didn’t get it. So I made sure he was out of the picture and bided my time.”

Even in her panic, Phoebe could see the pieces beginning to fit in her own mind.

“But before you killed Trevor, you decided to throw yourself into the river—so that his drowning would seem like part of a pattern?”

“Why not, right? I mean, there’d already been one drowning, and I’d read about these other cases on the Internet.”

“How did you kill him?”

“It was so easy, it was kind of sick. I knew he hung out downtown, and one night at Cat Tails after I’d bided my time for a few months, I stood near him at the bar and put GHB in his drink. And then, after a while, I asked him if he wanted some weed. He was the kind of guy who called me Fathead behind my back, but he wouldn’t turn down
that
kind of offer—plus he was pretty out of it by then. I told him to meet me in the parking lot by the river so no one would see us, and then I drove him up the road.”

“Across from the Big Red Barn?”

“Yup. It was a piece of cake to just push him in.”

“But then his body was never found.”

“Yeah, I know. Can you believe that freaking luck? But it worked out in the end. Everybody thought he just took off. Which made him look like an even bigger asshole.”

“But Lily still didn’t want to date you.”

“At first she was just too upset to do anything. I figured I’d just wait till she came back after the summer. But then we get together one day, and I finally tell her how I feel, and she says she never wants to be anything other than my fucking friend.”

He twisted his mouth as he said the word
friend
, as if it filled him with disgust. Phoebe could barely look at him, but she knew she had to, had to keep him talking and calm.

“And then you killed Lily, too—because she didn’t love you?”

“No,” he snapped. “The problem was, she started to figure it out.”

“Figure what out?”

“That I killed Trevor,” he said, even fiercer now. “What the fuck else do you think?”

“Okay, I got it,” Phoebe said. She commanded herself to breathe slowly, to fight her fear.

“I was still keeping tabs on her sometimes. I thought she might finally see what I could offer her, you know. I was watching her that night she went down to Cat Tails. I parked my car and went inside a few minutes later, like it was just a coincidence. I grabbed a beer and was hanging out near her, but trying not to crowd her. And then these guys came in who knew Trevor, who were around the night he disappeared, I guess, and she got upset once she started talking to them. She asked them about that night and if he gave any reason for wanting to just bail. And then out of the blue one of them looks over at me and goes, ‘You talked to him a little bit that night, didn’t you, Hines? Did he say anything to you?’

“Well, I guess that freaked her out. She finished her beer real quick and left. I drove up the street looking for her and convinced her to hop in my car so we could just talk. Of course, she wanted to know why I’d never told her about talking to Trevor, and I said it was because I hadn’t wanted to upset her about what he’d confessed. I said he’d told me he didn’t want to hurt her but he didn’t love her and he just wanted to make a break for it.”

Wesley was growing more and more agitated as he spoke, twisting his neck as if the shirt were choking him.

“I could see that she was becoming suspicious, that she knew a guy like Trevor wouldn’t be confiding shit to me. I figured that she might go to the cops and they’d check my car and find that asshole’s DNA in it or something. You know what’s funny? There was a minute when I thought she was going to just bolt from the car and there was nothing I could do. But she was trying to figure out the truth—be the little investigator like you—and she kept talking to me. I had some coffee in a thermos, and I offered it to her while we were talking. I dropped the drug in the coffee and gave her a drink. She was totally passed out by the time I dumped her in the river.”

Phoebe felt sick, seeing the image in her mind. At least Lily hadn’t had to fight for her life in the dark, muddy water.

“And Hutch?” Phoebe asked. “He had to die, too?”

Wesley shook his head hard.

“I didn’t know what to do about Gramps,” he said. “After he left here, I was
crazy
. I knew he was going to probably go to the cops, and I needed to act fast. That stuff you told me about that stupid girl group was a total godsend. I planted all the stuff at the diner with you about Blair, and then I figured how I could set them up. And then I went to pay Gramps a visit. I wasn’t sure I was going to kill him, but he didn’t give me a choice.”

He shook his head again.

“You want to do the right thing,” he said. “But people just don’t let you. Like Lily. She just wouldn’t give me a chance.”

He stared right at Phoebe. “And like you,” he said.

“Bu—”

“You wouldn’t back off. You kept snooping around. I tried to scare you by killing the lights in the science building that night. But even when they caught the girls, you wouldn’t let it go.”

He glanced off, as if in dismay.
Now!
Phoebe screamed to herself. She spun around and bolted toward the door. She’d only gone two steps before Wesley grabbed her fiercely by the hair and yanked her back. She yelped in pain.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Wesley yelled. He was still behind her, and he coiled her hair roughly in his fist.

“Wesley, don’t do this, please,” she said. “You—you have a chance to stop it all now.”

“And get caught?” He snickered. “Why would I want to do that?”

“They’ll find out. I—I’ve told people. The man I’m seeing knows.”

“I doubt it. I know who you’ve been seeing—the guy on your phone. Ten fucking minutes ago you thought
he
was the killer.”

She started to struggle, trying to free herself from his grasp, but he yanked her hair even tighter. Then he drew his other hand back and punched her hard in the face. Her head snapped back. He let go of her hair, and she went crashing to the ground, landing on her broken elbow. It felt like someone had just lit a fire to her arm.

And then he had her by the hair again and was dragging her across the dusty floorboards.

“You’re going to have to excuse me,” Wesley said, panting. “But it’s going to seem weird if I don’t meet these people tonight. I’ll have to deal with you later.”

Finally he dropped her. She saw that she was against the wooden barrier that surrounded the pit. Was he going to tie her up and come back afterward? she wondered desperately. If he tied her up, she might have a chance to free herself.

But then he was hoisting her up, his thick arms under hers.

“No, Wesley, please,” she pleaded. “Please, no.”

She kicked at the barrier with both feet, but it was useless.

With one easy movement he raised her even higher. And then she was sailing through the air.

31

B
EFORE SHE COULD
even form a thought, the back of her body slammed into something hard. She heard a
thwack
sound as her shoulder blade made contact with the surface, and the wind rushed out of her. Then she was falling again, bounced from the first thing she’d struck. She hit the bottom of the pit seconds later, facedown, with her broken elbow driving into the ground. Pain blistered and then exploded through every inch of her.

She tried but couldn’t even grab a breath. It felt as if a giant snake had circled her torso and begun to squeeze. But she was alive. Above her she knew Wesley must be watching, hoping she was dead.

After a minute she heard him move. There was a fast, scuffing sound of footsteps, gradually receding toward the front of the building. He’s going now, she realized. Somehow she would try to escape. She opened her eyes just a little and peered through the dimness at the wall. Somewhere there must be toeholds that she could use to climb out.

And then all at once every light went out above her. She was lying in the pitch-black. No, no, please not this, Phoebe thought. It was as if she was in that dark space from years ago. But this time no one would ever come to rescue her.

Get a grip, she told herself.

Two minutes later, she detected the muffled sound of a car moving by. And then it was silent. Wesley would be doing everything in his power to get back as soon as he could. She knew she needed to hurry, to get the hell out
now
.

She commanded her brain to move her legs, but nothing happened. What if they’re broken or paralyzed? she thought, terrified. But after a few tries she realized she could shift them. It was only her elbow that seemed truly damaged. The pain was searing now, like someone burning a hole through the bone with a blowtorch.

With her right hand, Phoebe tried to push her body up. When she’d managed to lift her torso a foot off the ground, she drew her right knee up under her abdomen for leverage. From there she slowly rolled over and pulled herself up into a sitting position. Then she struggled all the way up. As she reached a standing position, her right hand touched something oddly shaped and wooden in front of her. She had obviously landed by one of the gears to the right of the giant paddle wheel. She realized for the first time that she must have bounced off the paddle wheel on the way down. Though she’d smacked her back on it, the wheel had at least broken her fall, maybe saving her life.

Through the dark she inched forward, to the wall. She could feel her panic returning, something old and familiar, and she told herself to just breathe. With her good hand she began to search for any kind of exit or toehold or ladder, slowly moving around the perimeter of the pit. There
had
to be something like that, she thought; people must have once climbed in and out. But after a search all the way around, she’d found nothing.

Think
, she told herself. What had Wesley said upstairs? Water turned the paddle wheel, which then turned the gears, which then turned the grist stones. But there was something else, something she remembered from her conversation with him in the diner.
The sluice gate
. It’s where they let the water in.

She dropped to her knees and began to circumvent the pit again, but this time feeling lower along the wall, searching with her right hand for the old sluice gate. There would have to be two, she realized, one right behind the paddle wheel and another on the side directly opposite. But she was disoriented now, and wasn’t sure where she was anymore.

Finally her hand felt something—a metal plate in the wall. She ran her hand roughly over it. On either side were two metal handles, clearly for raising the gate. She gave a tug to one of the handles with her right hand. Nothing happened. It might be welded in place, she realized, or stuck from years of disuse. She forced herself up into a standing position and tried again. This time it budged. She felt a surge of relief.

Hobbling to the other side of the gate, Phoebe tugged on the opposite handle. There. The gate inched up a bit more. Suddenly her feet were cold and she knew that water had begun to seep in—not gushing but steady, a slow-moving stream. Then she thought, What if the pit fills with water before I have a chance to fully lift the sluice gate?

Quickly she moved from side to side, hoisting the gate up an inch at a time on each side. The water was around her ankles now, icy cold. But finally the gate was raised enough to let a body through.

It wasn’t going to be easy. She would be fighting the stream—and with only one arm to paddle with. But she had no choice. Wesley would return and kill her.

Phoebe snagged a breath and plunged through the opening. Within seconds she was totally underwater, and the cold force hit her with a wallop. Water rushed up her nose. She struggled futilely to raise her head above the surface. Swim, she commanded herself. She kicked hard and scooped the water desperately with her right arm. Finally her boots scraped against something, and she realized they were dragging against the ground. With her lungs ready to burst, she shoved her head above water. She could see now. She was in the stream just to the right of the building, and above her the sky twinkled with stars. A sob of relief broke in her throat.

She crouched in the water, still gasping for breath, and peered through the darkness. She had begun to shiver. The security light on the end of the building illuminated the edge of the parking lot. Phoebe could see the outline of a single car in the lot—it was hers. Wesley’s car was definitely gone.

But there was no point in trying to reach her own car. She didn’t have her purse with her car key in it, and even if she did, she knew it would be risky to cross the lot—Wesley might come back at any moment. She turned and searched the area behind her with her eyes. There was an embankment on this side of the stream that reached up to an area of ragged shrubbery. Phoebe staggered out of the stream, her wet clothes sucking at her body, and struggled up the embankment. Each step jarred her elbow, making her moan in pain.

As she reached the top, she realized that the small town of Springville was behind her, opposite the direction she was moving, but there were two houses ahead, each just off the road. One was dark, except for a bulb burning on the front porch, but lights were on throughout the other one. Phoebe stumbled toward it. She was shivering forcefully now, and her heart was beating hard from the effort of climbing. Water ran into her eyes. She reached up to wipe it from her face and smelled that it was actually blood.

As she neared the house, Phoebe could hear a TV going inside, and through the window she saw an older couple plopped on the couch, faces aimed at the TV and their expressions listless. She dragged herself up the steps of the porch and knocked hard on the door. You have to seem sane, she told herself. Or they will never let you in. Through the window she saw the shapes of both people rise from the couch and move toward the door, hesitant and uncertain.

“Who is it?” the man called without opening the door.

“I’m a teacher at Lyle College,” Phoebe yelled through the door. “And someone tried to kill me. I need your help.”

There was no reply, though behind the door she could hear the couple squabbling. Finally the door opened a crack, with the chain still in place. All she could see were two spiky white eyebrows.

“We’ll call nine-one-one,” a man’s voice said. “Just wait on the porch there.”

The road was just ten yards behind her, and Phoebe heard a car shoot by. When Wesley returned and saw the water in the pit, the first place he would look for Phoebe would be along the road.

“Please,” Phoebe begged. “I’m afraid he’ll find me out here. Can you let me in?”

She heard the woman tell the man no, but the man argued, and finally there was the sound of the chain bouncing against the doorframe. The door swung open, and the man ushered her inside. Phoebe stumbled into the hallway. The woman gasped in shock, and Phoebe sank slowly to the floor. She could see in the light that her left sleeve was soaked in blood.

The man commanded the woman to call 911 and then grab a blanket. He stooped to the floor, scanning Phoebe’s body with his eyes.

“Your husband do this to you?” the man asked solemnly.

For a brief moment Phoebe felt like laughing. She was tempted to tell him, between chattering teeth, Yeah, we got into a domestic spat using a garden hose, but she knew she was lucky he’d let her in and she shouldn’t rock the boat.

“No,” she said, “not my husband.”

A few minutes later the woman scurried back with the blanket and laid it over her. The shivering began to slowly subside. It took about fifteen minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Until then Phoebe lay in the hall, eyes closed, with the couple murmuring endlessly nearby. They never asked if she wanted to move to a chair or couch. As far as they know, Phoebe thought, I could be a lunatic. She kept wondering if Wesley had returned and would come banging on the door of the house, suspecting that’s where she had escaped to.

Only when she was in the ambulance did she feel safe. She let her mind go nearly blank, except to think about the pain.

There seemed to be tons of people waiting when they reached the hospital, though their faces were mostly a blur. Phoebe guessed it was the same hospital she’d been taken to before. After she was lifted from the ambulance, she found the eyes of one of the nurses who now moved along the side of the stretcher.

“Please call Glenda Johns,” Phoebe murmured, “at Lyle College.”

“H
EY THERE,” SOMEONE
said. Phoebe forced her eyes open and squinted toward the voice. It was Glenda’s.

“Hey,” Phoebe muttered back.

“How do you feel, Fee?”

“Like hell. What’s going on?”

“You remember that they operated on your elbow, right? It was shattered, and part of it was poking through your skin.”

“Right,” Phoebe said. She closed her eyes again, trying to wedge the memories free. She pictured herself being wheeled into the recovery room. A nurse comforting her. Then she remembered the water and plunging through it. And before that, being hurled into the pit.

“Wesley?” Phoebe whispered. “Did they catch him?”

“Yes, they nabbed him,” Glenda said. “Craig says they’re putting the pieces together.”

At the mention of the detective’s name, another memory shoved its way into Phoebe’s brain: Michelson and a colleague—someone other than Huang this time—floating above her while she was still in the ER.

“What about Blair—and Gwen?” Phoebe asked.

“We’ve heard through their lawyers that they’ll probably be released soon. I imagine the cops are waiting to be sure that Wesley is their guy.”

“Wait—and
Ginger
,” Phoebe said anxiously. “Has anyone been to my house?”

“Don’t worry, I arranged for your lovely cleaning woman to let me in, and the dog’s with us. Brandon hasn’t let her out of his sight.”

Phoebe tried to scooch herself up in bed without much success. Glenda located the button that automated the bed and raised the back.

“Don’t overdo it, okay?” Glenda said. “By the way, the doctor said they ended up putting a pin in your elbow. The healing time’s a bitch, but it should be as good as new eventually.”

“I’m just lucky that I struck the paddle wheel first,” Phoebe said. “That managed to break my fall. If I hadn’t, I’d probably have broken my neck when I hit the ground.”

“Do you feel up to telling me what happened?” Glenda asked.

Phoebe sketched out the basic details, and also filled in some blanks about Wesley. When she was finished. Glenda stroked her good arm.

“So is Wesley a serial killer, then?” Glenda asked. “Is that how you’d define him?”

“He probably didn’t wake up each day with an urge to commit a horrific murder. But when someone got in his way—like Trevor—he killed without any regrets. He’s a sociopath, I’m sure—a Scott Peterson type who on the outside looks and acts like the boy next door but inside is hollow and emotionless.”

“Did you ever have even a hint?”

“There was just one tiny moment. After I met him at the diner and he told me that Blair had actually been at Cat Tails the night he’d ended up in the river, something started nagging at me. But I could never put my finger on it. I think what bugged me deep down was how convenient it was for him to suddenly recall that Blair had been in the bar. He was starting to scramble a little, and I sensed it on some level.

“Of course, I could kick myself for missing the truth, but it’s easy for guys like him to fool you,” she added. A phrase Duncan had used surfaced in her mind. “They wear the mask of sanity. Like a few damn actors I’ve known.”

Phoebe closed her eyes again. She felt woozy suddenly, as if she had just stepped close to the edge of a precipice and looked down.

“Do you want to go back to sleep?” Glenda asked.

“No,” she said, opening her eyes again. “I feel like I’ve been sleeping for days, and I want to know what’s going on. Talk to me. Is your job safe?”

“Don’t know. The board isn’t asking for my head yet. They certainly can’t blame me for Wesley, but the Sixes are another story. They were formed during my tenure. As long as nothing else happens, I may be okay—which of course, will drive Stockton crazy because he seems to want me to fail.”

“I’m so relieved, G.”

“Oh, there’s one piece of interesting news that I wanted to share. After I saw you at the soccer game, I went back to my office, and Val Porter paid me a visit. She had something to confess.”

“Do tell.”

“She said that last spring she’d engaged in some lip locking with a student—a female. They both had been drinking. This fall the young woman ended up in one of Val’s classes, and she began to feel the tiniest bit of pressure from the girl. After you filled Tom in on the circles, he told Val about them, and she began to suspect that the girl was in the Sixes, and had targeted Val to be part of the girl’s fifth circle. Val swears she never altered the girl’s grade. But she was hysterical she might have jeopardized her job.”