Killing Britney Read online

  Adam was already jumping into his jeans. He raced toward the door, but Britney’s father caught him by the arm.

  “Don’t think your parents aren’t going to hear about this, Adam,” he said. “I might just have to ship you home.”

  Adam writhed and cringed. He seemed terribly afraid of this idea. “Please, don’t do that,” he said. “Please, please … they’ll kill me. There’s no way…. I can’t go back there.”

  “Well, we’re going to discuss it. After the funeral. All three of us are going to have a long talk and figure out what to do about this.” He released Adam’s elbow and Adam flew down the stairs.

  Then he was back to Britney.

  “Sorry won’t cut it, Brit.”

  “Dad—”

  “Don’t Dad me.” He was still in his bathrobe, a thick maroon terry cloth gown that Britney had bought him for his birthday last year.

  “Dad—”

  “You really—you think you can get away with anything, don’t you? Well, I’ll tell you right now, you can’t. Not in this house. I see more than you think I do.”

  His face was beet red. Britney stared at him, afraid of what he might say next.

  “And I don’t like it,” he finally said.

  She wanted to tell him that he had no right to judge her, that her body belonged to her, not to him, that given the circumstances, what she and Adam had done the night before was more mature and less selfish and more beautiful than drowning their sorrow in a whiskey bottle like he had. She wanted to tell him so many things, but she couldn’t, not like this.

  “Just let me get dressed, Dad, okay?” she screamed. “Then you can yell at me all you want.”

  He took a deep breath, holding it so long that Britney thought he might explode. He exhaled with an unbelievable force and something softened in him.

  “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll be downstairs in my office. Waiting.”

  Before shutting the door, he gave her a long, pitying look. Or was it a tender look? It could have gone either way.

  Taking deep breaths herself, Britney tried to calm down. She knew that beneath his anger, her father meant well. The murders and terror were having an effect on him, just like they were on her—just like they were on everybody. After she dressed, she’d go down and talk to him and try to make sure he knew how contrite she was.

  She hoped it wouldn’t take long. She didn’t want to miss Melissa’s funeral, which was supposed to start in barely an hour. Her hope had been to go with Adam, or with her father, or both of them, so she’d have some support during what she knew would be an emotionally wrenching experience.

  Now that would be too uncomfortable. She called Erin and explained how anxious she was.

  “Why don’t you call Troy?” said Erin. “I’m sure he’d be willing to go with you.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s crazy what’s going on. I’m scared out of my wits and I don’t even know these people. I can only imagine what you must be feeling.”

  When she spoke to Troy, he said, “Listen, you know what, I’ll do even better than that. I’ll get all the guys together. Anybody who wants to get to you will have to go through us first.”

  Reminding him that she really just needed moral support to get through the funeral, she made a plan for him to pick her up; she’d wait in front of her house.

  Then she went downstairs to have that dreaded talk with her dad.

  thirty-one

  There weren’t enough Jewish people living in Madison for them to have a cemetery of their own, so the memorial service for Melissa and Karl was held at the Mendota Funeral Home, housed inside the Mendota cemetery, which kept a rabbi on staff.

  Detective Tara Russell stood in the shadows near the back door of the richly wooded room and watched the congregants closely. The service was small and sparsely attended, mostly by friends of David and Margie Brown, Melissa’s parents. Tara was sure that the killer would show up to witness the pain he’d caused. That was why she was there.

  The Browns had waited until they were in their mid-thirties to have children; their friends were middle-aged, couples mostly, the men in ill-fitting, worn suits, the women in heavy dark skirts, big brooches pinned to their blouses. They didn’t look like the killing sort—more the NPR-listening, Indian-food-eating sort. University types.

  Karl didn’t seem to have any friends. Detective Russell figured that most of the people he’d wasted his life with weren’t the type to notice he was gone.

  For a long time, she feared that none of Melissa’s friends would show up either. Britney was nowhere to be found. Bobby and Adam both arrived late. They came in separately, within minutes of each other. Picking yarmulkes out of the little wicker basket by the entrance, they gave each other suspicious looks and found seats in pews on opposite sides of the room.

  She’d spent the morning reading through the blog Bobby had sent her. Now that she knew what she was dealing with, she was surer than ever of her instincts about Adam. She’d even faxed the Manchester, New Hampshire, police force and asked for any records they had on him, but they told her they probably wouldn’t be able to get back to her for several days. Their budget had been cut and they were understaffed. In the meantime, she hoped to find out all she could.

  When Britney did arrive, the service was almost over. She brought an escort with her: a group of six guys from the hockey team. They hadn’t dressed for the occasion. Instead of the appropriate mourning clothes, they were garbed in sweat clothes and cross-trainers, backward baseball caps.

  Tara noticed that Britney was especially nervous. Every few minutes, she glanced around like she thought someone was out to get her. She and her entourage sat in the back row, and throughout the service, she hardly moved. She was so still that she looked like a wax statue of herself.

  She felt bad for the girl. To have survived the loss of her mother only to watch all her friends die away—it was hard to fathom how much strength it must take to endure this. If she could get through the coming months, and the bleakness she would feel as she tried to come to grips with everything that had just happened in her life, she might turn out okay, but the interim would be rough.

  Thinking it might help Britney feel more secure, Tara walked a few paces up the aisle and waved at her. She wanted to say, “I’m here and you’re safe,” but the service was in progress, and this was impossible. She hoped that just seeing her would be enough for Britney.

  As the service progressed, Tara tried to put the pieces she had together. The pace of the killings was accelerating, and she knew she had to crack the case soon if she wanted to avert any further horror. Karl had been involved. She was sure of that. At this very moment, the guys from the lab were going over his red Ford pickup, and she was sure they’d find something linking it to Ricky Piekowski’s death. But why had Karl been killed? And how had he gotten that gun? He must have been working with someone—either Ed Johnson or Adam Saft—but which one, and what had gone wrong to spur whoever it was to kill him? If there was only some way for her to get into the Johnson house and see what she could find. The reception was held at the Brown residence, and as soon as she had the opportunity, Tara pulled Britney away from her cohort of hockey jocks.

  “I just wanted to see how you’re holding up,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” Britney said. She looked uncomfortable. She kept looking over at her bodyguards as though they were some sort of magical bubble outside of which she couldn’t breathe. Detective Russell noticed that today Britney wasn’t wearing the engagement ring Ricky had given her.

  They were standing near the small circular table in the corner of the living room, which had been laid out with a spread of veggies and dip, bagels and lox, and oversized chocolate chip cookies. The whole house was markedly cleaner than it had been when she had spoken with Melissa; the piles of books and papers had been stashed away somewhere. A steady stream of guests made their way past the table, piling food onto the tiny p
lastic plates that had been provided for them. They all talked about the same thing: how frightening it was to think that whoever had done this was still at large and would probably strike again.

  “Hey, where’s your dad? I figured I’d see him here,” she asked.

  Britney shot her a look—a darting, fleeting look of paranoia.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He was running late. He told me to leave without him.”

  The defensiveness and fear in her voice was icy thick. It made Tara wonder if Britney had lost faith in her ability to crack the case.

  “I know you don’t think I’m doing enough,” she said, putting her arm around Britney’s shoulders and walking her away toward the stairs, where, she thought, they might be able to carve out some privacy, “but these things take time. I’ve got some leads now, and if they pan out—”

  “Hey, yo, Britney—” One of the hockey players, a beefy guy with long slicked-back blond hair had noticed the two of them talking. “If you can’t see me, I can’t see you.”

  Sighing, Britney said, “It’s okay. She’s a cop.”

  The guy smirked.

  “This is Troy,” Britney said. Then, as though this clarified something important, “He’s giving me moral support.”

  “And his friends?”

  “Them too.”

  Tara made a motion as though she were tipping a cap at Troy, dismissing him. She walked Britney away from the crowd, and the two of them sat partway up the staircase. From here, they could speak in semi-privacy.

  They could also see the whole room through the wooden banister rods, and as Tara told Britney the few things she could about the case, she surveyed the activity below them.

  The hockey players were gorging themselves, taking three or four plates apiece from the table and piling them high with food. The detective worried that they might start a food fight, throw smoked salmon at the walls just to see if it would stick, or pull any of a myriad of other stupid pranks.

  Bobby sulked against the wall near the front door, as though he were sullenly guarding it. His eyes took in everything, but he was paying special attention to Britney and Adam, glancing back and forth between them.

  Adam was extremely nervous. He tried to hide it, to blend in with the other mourners, but he couldn’t sit still. He incessantly slicked his hands through the part in his hair and wandered across the room every few minutes, in a way that seemed meant to be inconspicuous, to check on Britney’s whereabouts.

  The blog Bobby had sent her had mentioned that Adam despised Britney; this was as good a place to start as any. “So, listen, I thought you might be able to tell me a little about Adam. What’s your relationship like with him?” she asked Britney.

  “Why?” There was that snappish fearful tone again. The girl was incredibly defensive today.

  “Well, I’m curious. He seems like an okay kid. But I don’t know much about him. You see him every day. What can you tell me? I mean, I know his parents are splitting up, but how does that affect his moods? Is he angry a lot around the house?”

  Britney waffled back and forth on this one. She talked about how annoying Adam could be, and then in the next breath, she said he was charming, “a gentleman,” “the kind of guy that you have a hard time believing exists.”

  Tara took notes as she listened.

  “Do you know if he knew Karl Brown at all?”

  “I don’t kn—”

  A sudden commotion from the other side of the room stopped their conversation short. The hockey players were pushing through the adults and forming in a loose circle.

  It was hard to see who they had in the center of the ring, but Tara had a good guess: Bobby and Adam. The rancor she’d sensed earlier between them had been palpable and she couldn’t imagine them lasting long in the same room together without a confrontation.

  This was confirmed by Adam’s voice, singing out bitterly, “I don’t need to listen to this stuff from you, Bobby, you perv!”

  And Bobby’s voice coming right back at him: “Why not? If it’s true! Why not? Unless you’re hiding something. Are you? Huh? What are you hiding?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Oh, I’m crazy now, huh? I’m the one who’s crazy! Why don’t you tell her what happened in New Hampshire?! Huh? Why don’t you tell her what you said about her to your friend Toby Richards?”

  “You don’t know anything about it, Bobby! You’re the one crawling around in the dark, spying on her all the time!”

  There was a surge of noise as Bobby took a swing at Adam.

  “You want to go? I’ll go with you,” said Adam.

  The hockey players began chanting, “Fight. Fight. Fight.”

  “Aren’t you going to stop them?” asked Britney, alarmed. She was holding her head in her hands as though somehow she could block the whole thing out.

  Tara slowly stood up and began to make her way toward the excitement. She wanted to let the boys go for a while in hopes that in the heat of passion, one of them would say something incriminating.

  “You think you can take me, you freaking perv?” Adam taunted.

  A snorting and spitting sound came from the circle, and there was a loud chorus of grunts from the hockey players.

  The other adults in the room were doing what they could. Melissa’s mother was pleading, “Bobby, please, whatever this is about, let it go. Remember what you’re here for. Don’t you think Melissa would be unhappy to see you fighting like this?” A few of the men tried to break through and manually restrain the boys, but the hockey players wouldn’t let them in.

  Once she saw the first fist rise above the crowd, Tara moved faster. She pulled a pair of handcuffs off her belt. Shouting, “Police officer—break it up, break it up,” she pushed through the throng and into the circle. She made sure that the first wrist she grabbed belonged to Adam.

  While she wrangled him to the ground, the hockey players tried to hold down Bobby. He fought and squirmed, and finally he kicked one of them in the shin, wriggling away somehow and slamming out of the house.

  Adam flailed and made it difficult for her to cuff him.

  “Come on,” he said. “Bobby started it! He’s the one you should be arresting.”

  “You scared?” she said, eliciting a round of laughter from the hockey guys.

  She called in some backup.

  She explained what was going to happen to him. “I’m not going to arrest you for assault—though I could—I’m arresting you for disorderly conduct. You know the drill already, don’t you, Adam? Who knows, if you behave yourself, they might let you go on your own recognizance.”

  She hoped that they’d hold him longer than that. If she could search the house while he was locked up and, with any luck, pick up enough evidence to book him for the larger crimes she suspected him of, that would be great.

  Once the officers showed up to take Adam away, Tara talked to Melissa’s parents for a while. They were in shock. The reception was ruined. Most of the guests were leaving. And some of their stuff had been destroyed in the scuffle, most notably the framed Matisse print that they’d received as a wedding gift from David Brown’s parents.

  Explaining the procedure for filing a complaint and calming them down as well as she could, Detective Russell left them to clean up the mess.

  She found Britney sitting on the stairs, right where she’d left her. Her head was in her hands. The hockey players were situated in a protective circle around her.

  “Why’d you arrest Adam?” Britney asked.

  The hockey players were as eager for Detective Russell’s answer as Britney.

  They all had the same question. “What’s up with him?” “Do you think he’s the one who’s been doing all this stuff?” “Is he the killer?”

  Everyone in the room was anxiously listening. She didn’t want to give anything away. “They’re both in trouble. Adam just happens to be the one I caught. I’ll deal with Bobby later. Listen, Britney, let me give you a ride home, what do you sa
y?” When Britney looked apprehensive, the detective nodded at the hockey players and said, “Come on, Britney, Who do you think you’re safer with, them or me?”

  thirty-two

  The fact that this was her father hadn’t sunk in yet. She understood it intellectually. She recognized his blue slacks and the black tie with the textured black stripes. She recognized his large hands, though the way they cradled the shotgun—one hand on the barrel, thumb looped around the trigger, the other clenched tightly around the base of the shoulder rest—was grotesque, unnatural, hard for her to fully comprehend at the moment.

  Britney shrieked.

  She shrieked and shrieked. She couldn’t stop.

  It felt like someone had grabbed her by the neck and was squeezing with all his might, holding her head in place so that no matter how much she wanted to turn away, she had to look.

  Right now, all she was able to register was the gore. The shelf behind his desk that contained his old law school books, slick with blood. The metal balance-weighted sculpture, that airplane he liked to spin while he thought over his cases, tipped off the stand now, wrapped in deep crimson ribbons of what could only be brains. The shards of bone glued to his framed diploma.

  Most of all she saw his head, or what was left of it, larger than life, his right eye dangling from a shattered socket, his skull sheared in half, leaking thick globular blood, his jaw hanging slack from one hinge.

  Detective Russell was holding her, an arm around her shoulders, a hand softly to her head. Britney sank into her embrace. That felt nice. A relief, just for a moment, from holding herself up. Her shrieks slowly evolved into sobs.

  “Don’t look, Britney. Just don’t look. Come on. Let’s go into the other room. Here … let’s … yeah … this way.”

  The detective led her, almost carried her, out of the den. They wove through the hallway past the downstairs bathroom. Britney let herself be directed.

  “Sit now. Yes. It’s okay.”