Killing Britney Page 16

  The detective’s cheeks puckered in on themselves as she took a long drag on her cigarette, and then she said, “Tell me about New Hampshire, Adam.”

  It was hopeless. He felt trapped. He wished she would stop saying his name after every sentence.

  “I was having a hard time.”

  Outside, the city streamed past, the coffee shops and boutiques and used bookstores and ramshackle wooden houses where the college students lived. The weather had turned. People were everywhere, strolling around like they’d just woken up from a hundred-year sleep to discover, to their amazement, that the world was still beautiful. Adam imagined what it would be like never to be able to walk like that again. He suddenly wanted to feel the wind on his face.

  “Can I roll down the window?” he asked.

  “No.”

  The detective lit another cigarette.

  “You had some trouble with guns in New Hampshire too, didn’t you?”

  “It was in my car!” he pleaded. “I was going to go hunting after school! God! I didn’t do anything wrong.” He picked at the chipped chrome around the handle of the car door.

  The police radio growled, and Detective Russell answered it.

  “Tara?”

  “You’ve got me; what’s the news?”

  “We’ve got test results on your 187. His hands are clean.”

  “What’s that mean?” Adam asked once she hung up.

  She looked him dead in the eye and said, “That means Britney’s dad didn’t pull the trigger. There was no residue on his hands.”

  The street widened into four lanes, and the houses started to become interspersed with thick clusters of trees. They passed a wooden sign that said something Park, but it went by so fast that Adam couldn’t read it. With the snowbanks dwindling, everything looked slightly different. He couldn’t remember if this was the same place.

  When they veered into the parking lot, he felt another shudder of dread. Up ahead of them was Britney’s yellow VW Bug. And parked right next to it was Bobby’s red pickup.

  thirty-six

  Adam’s fear for his own safety had vanished as soon as he’d seen Bobby’s truck next to Britney’s car. He was too worried about her, worried for her life, to think of himself.

  He and the detective splashed through the icy puddles in the parking lot toward the vehicles. No one was there, but soggy footprints in the slush and gravel pointed into the winding pathways of the park.

  “This way,” shouted Adam.

  They raced through the trees, brushing roughly past wet shrubs, kicking and stomping through the tangle of saplings that the melting snow had revealed.

  When they got to the bench, they wheeled and stopped. The waterlogged footprints they were following led directly onto the lake. Fifty feet out or so, they stopped at a partially submerged brick-red ice-fishing shack, which had begun to tip through the ice toward one corner.

  “Wait,” said the detective, “we have to find another way. It’s not safe.”

  But Adam was already charging ahead. As he jumped onto the ice, he heard a loud popping sound below him, then a series of creaks and full-bellied groans from the ice adjusting to his weight.

  Despite her best judgment, Detective Russell followed him.

  Striding with great leaps, slipping and sliding, each step holding the possibility of breaking through, they rushed to the ice-fishing shack.

  There was shouting coming from inside. A male voice. Bobby Plumley. “Help me,” he screamed. “Somebody, help me!”

  Where was Britney? Why wasn’t she shouting too?

  Adam got there first and he tried to pull the door open, but it was locked from the inside. From the way the door twisted, he could see that the lock was flimsy, nothing more than a hook through a metal loop.

  “Where’s Britney?” Adam yelled. “Open the door, Bobby.”

  “I can’t reach it. I’m stuck,” came the voice from inside.

  “Bobby, let me in!” Adam pulled with all his might. With every yank, the shack rattled. Bobby was making a whole lot of noise, but he wasn’t opening up.

  Detective Russell pulled her baton out of her belt, and with great precision she wedged it under the lock and twisted, snapping the metal in two.

  The door flew open.

  The hole in the ice was huge. As the water had warmed, the area where the fishermen had drilled to drop their lines into had spread. Now it was almost as wide as the shack itself.

  Bobby had fallen through. His flop of hair was partially wet; it hung down over his cheeks. He’d lost his glasses, and the spots on his nose where they normally rested looked waxy. His lips were blue. With one hand, he grasped onto the bench built into the far wall of the shack, and there was a dark division of color where his snowmobile suit was soaked through. His other hand held what looked like a bundled-up article of clothing, golden leather and deep red wool.

  He flopped the bundle up out of the water at Adam. It was Ricky Piekowski’s letter jacket. The one Britney never took off.

  “I’m so cold.” Bobby was shivering. His lower lip shook like it was surging with current. He was crying.

  “Adam, help me,” barked the detective. She had already scoped the shack out and was testing how tightly it was locked to the ice. On her directions, Adam braced his feet on the outer right edge of the door. She did the same on the left. They each took one of Bobby’s arms and, using the shack itself for leverage, they swung him up out of the water.

  “Where is she? What did you do with her?” Adam yelled.

  Bobby’s whole body shook and jittered.

  “I w-w-was trying to save her.” Stammering, he tried to make himself understood. “I was …”

  As what had happened began to sink in, Adam began to feel dizzy, weak. He let go of Bobby and sank to his knees.

  Bobby stared through bloodshot eyes at Adam.

  “This is all your fault! You saw she was happy and … I tried to tell her, but she wou-wouldn’t listen. She was upset. And … and … and …”

  Suddenly Adam was on top of Bobby. He had him by the collar of his snowmobile suit. He shook him violently. He was shrieking, “You killed her! You killed her! You bastard!” The tears streamed down his face.

  The detective was preoccupied by something on her hand. She studied her fingers, rubbed them together. She held her hand up to her face and smelled it. Pulling Adam off Bobby, she pointed to a spot nearby and said, “Stand there.” Then she turned to Bobby. “What happened?”

  “She took off running. I was scared. I remember what she was like right after her mother died. So I chased her and she ran faster and I almost caught her, but I slipped and fell on the ice and she ran into this shack and she sat on the bench. She was crying. We were both crying. She was writing something—here.”

  He dug in his pocket and pulled a crumpled, wet piece of loose-leaf paper out of it.

  “I have it here. I grabbed it from her.”

  The detective grabbed the paper and smoothed it over her knee. Studying it with the same scrupulous attention she’d been giving to her hand.

  “She wanted to kill herself. And I tried to hold her back. I tried to pull her out toward the shore, but she fought with me and the ice cracked under us and she lunged up and locked the door and then she jumped, feet first, into the water. I couldn’t hold on. I had her by the sleeve of her jacket, and it slipped off her in my hands. I saw her go under. She … I couldn’t stop her.”

  “She’s down there?” Adam shouted. “Then she might still be alive!” He darted for the hole in the ice, stripping off his jacket, ready to dive in and fish Britney out, but Detective Russell caught him by the waist and held him—kicking and screaming—back.

  “It’s too late,” she said. “You can’t save her.”

  He struggled against her, pried at her fingers and kicked at her shins, but her grip was tight and he couldn’t get loose of her. Eventually, he sank to his knees and buried his head in his hands.

  The detective
was reading and reading the note Bobby had given her.

  When Adam could speak again, he asked, “What’s it say?”

  She handed it over.

  The paper had been soaked through and become translucent, but the words scrawled on it had been written in ballpoint pen. They were still clearly legible:

  I’ve had enough. I’m through with all of you.

  It wasn’t signed.

  “This isn’t Britney’s handwriting,” he said “It’s not Bobby’s either, but it isn’t Britney’s.”

  “I saw her writing it! I pulled it right out of her hands!”

  “Yeah, just like you saw me kill all those people. You’re full of shit, Bobby.”

  Bobby lay limp on the ice, staring at the sky, as though out of sheer exhaustion. A wry smile cracked over his face.

  Adam handed the note back to the detective. “Detective, this isn’t her handwriting. I swear.” She took it without even looking. She was still focused on the ice-fishing shack.

  “We should get off this ice,” she finally said. She carefully folded the note and put it in the pocket of her jacket.

  “Come on, Bobby, I’ll help you up.”

  She reached out and, taking Bobby by the wrists, pulled him to his feet. Then she turned his hands over and looked at his palms.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “Bobby, you know when you fire a gun, the residue gets all over your hands. I’m going to have to place you under arrest.”

  Bobby squirmed; he kicked at her shins and twisted violently, but he couldn’t break her grip. Finally he bit her, and as she reacted, he swung his elbow into her jaw.

  He was off, racing toward the shore. The ice underneath him was popping and cracking.

  The detective dashed after him and, struggling to his feet, Adam followed.

  The melting ice was almost impossible to run on. There were thin spots everywhere, hidden by the slushy layer on top, and twice Adam’s lunging foot fell through into the icy water. The detective and Bobby were having similar problems, but Bobby, with his head start, was gaining ground.

  Digging his toes into the soft surface, Adam pushed to catch Bobby—he’d reached the shore. He had an exposed root in his hand and was struggling to pull himself up onto the land with it. Adam dove. He grabbed Bobby’s boot, but Bobby twisted and kept climbing. The boot slid off into Adam’s hand with such force that it threw him sprawling backward.

  And Bobby was off again, on land now.

  Adam was right behind him. When Bobby swung around the wooden bench, Adam jumped right over it and almost nabbed him, but Bobby grabbed a trunk and spun himself quickly in a new direction.

  They chased through the trees.

  They’d lost the detective.

  Bobby kept weaving and dodging, gradually making his way toward the parking lot and his truck. When he hit the edge of the woods, he broke into a sprint.

  Adam was losing ground. There was no way he’d catch him now.

  Then, just as Bobby was about to reach his truck, the detective leapt out from behind Britney’s VW Bug and grabbed him. She twisted his arm behind his back, lifting him almost off the ground.

  “Bobby Plumley, I’m placing you under arrest,” she said, “for the murders of Britney and Edward Johnson.”

  thirty-seven

  THE MADISON CAPITAL TIMES

  FEBRUARY 20

  Early yesterday afternoon, a prime suspect in the recent string of grisly murders that have been tormenting the populace of Madison was taken into custody by the Madison Police Department. Robert Plumley, 18, of Madison, was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Mr. Edward Johnson and his daughter, Britney Johnson.

  Detective Tara Russell of the MPD has told the Capital Times that within the next few days Mr. Plumley is expected to be charged with two additional murders, those of Karl and Melissa Brown.

  In a statement delivered late this morning, she said, “We believe these deaths all to be connected. Mr. Plumley is a deranged individual. Under the delusion that he was protecting Ms. Johnson, he slaughtered her and everyone close to her. We can only be thankful that we apprehended him when we did, before he could cause any more mayhem.”

  When asked if these murders were related to the death of La Follette High School hockey star Ricky Piekowski, Detective Russell said, “We have evidence indicating that the late Karl Brown was responsible for [Mr. Piekowski’s] death. What we now think is that in his obsessive fixation on Britney Johnson, Plumley believed that she had been the true target of that murder, and this spurred on his paranoid fantasies and eventually led him to carry out the murders.”

  thirty-eight

  The clattering of wheels on iron, the constant clickety-click in his ears, the sway and bounce of the train as it made its way eastward, these things all made it difficult for Adam to doze off, despite the fact that his father had sprung for a sleeper compartment.

  He lay awake for a long time, his hands locked behind his head, watching the shadows change shape as the reflection of the lights from outside roamed across the pebbled ceiling.

  He was glad to be getting away.

  And even though he dreaded returning to New Hampshire, he dreaded what might have happened if he’d stayed in Madison more.

  On his last evening, he had worked up the courage to enter Britney’s bedroom and collect the things he’d left there on that horrible morning. His socks, curled up in balls underneath the sheet. The underwear that Detective Russell had taunted him with.

  He’d picked through the blankets piled sloppily next to the bed and, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, shook them out one at a time. As he flapped an old patchwork quilt, a small glint of metal had fallen to the floor, catching his eye.

  It was a ring. Britney’s diamond ring. He remembered her taking it off that night when they’d been together. She’d set it on the bedside table. It must have been knocked off and lost at some point during the night.

  As he lay in his bunk unable to sleep, he studied it again. It was modest but beautiful.

  What troubled him was that on the inner band, there was an engraving:

  For Jan with All My Love—Ed 4/10/1985

  Odd. It must have been Britney’s mother’s ring. She’d been lying about having received it from Ricky. Wishful thinking, figured Adam. She’d been so upset about her boyfriend’s death that she’d invented a fantasy, a way to claim him forever.

  Finally, when he managed to nod off, he had weird dreams.

  He dreamed of Britney. The sense of her. The feeling that she was here with him.

  He couldn’t see her, but in his dream, he smelled the vanilla and cinnamon of her perfume. He heard her voice—not the pitched sarcasm of her when she was angry, but the sugary purring way that she had sounded on that night they’d spent cuddled together on her bed.

  She was saying, “Should I do it?” and standing above a dark chasm—hundreds of thousands of miles deep.

  “No” he responded. “Stay with me. The moon is down there and we want to stay in the sun.”

  “But it’s dark here too,” she said. “The better idea is if you jump with me.”

  “I don’t want to, though.”

  He was sweating. He could see her clearly now.

  She flipped the blond hair out of her face and smiled with her eyes.

  His stomach spun over itself and he wanted to touch her.

  “Let’s do it tomorrow,” he said. “Why don’t you climb up here and curl up with me? Let’s hold each other just this one last time.”

  Her smile crept slowly down from her eyes, spread over her whole face, cockeyed, wry, mischievous.

  She moved so excruciatingly slowly. As if she were underwater. Her hair hung above her like it was alive. The color faded from it. It wasn’t blond anymore; now it was black.

  He opened his arms and embraced her.

  Her body was warm next to his, soft, luscious. It felt so real that he couldn’t believe he
was dreaming. She didn’t smell like perfume anymore; she smelled musty now.

  She whispered in his ear, “Do you like that?”

  “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, Britney,” he said.

  She spun over him, straddled him. Her face had turned hard. Her eyes were black. She was heavy on his chest. The pain he felt where her knee dug into his rib cage was real.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said.

  She was doing something with her hands behind her back. He couldn’t see what, but suddenly, he was full of fear.

  “Call me Jan.”

  “But you’re Britney!”

  “Haven’t you heard? Britney’s dead.”

  Her hands were above her head now. Something shimmered in them. It was too dark to tell what it was.

  He wanted the dream to end now. It wasn’t turning out the way he’d thought it would. He wanted to wake up, just for a moment, and start again at the point where the dream had turned ugly, to return it to sweetness and keep it there.

  Then, with a shudder, he realized he was awake. The dream had ended and Britney really was here, straddling him.

  It was too late.

  The knife was already sliding into his chest. Blood was oozing out onto his T-shirt, running down onto the sheets below him and soaking through the mattress.

  He was never going to wake up again.

  thirty-nine

  The sun was shining. The leaves on the trees rustled and swayed. The grass was a vibrant color of green. Cute boys in knee-length shorts were playing hacky sack. It was a beautiful day and Britney was free, far away in Ithaca, New York.

  She smiled. She’d dyed her hair jet black and straightened it, cutting the bangs. She was a whole new person.

  When she waved at the cutest of the cute boys, the one with the stringy shoulder-length hair, he nodded at her, his eyes twinkling. After the game broke up, he introduced himself. Nick. He was a freshman at Cornell.

  She told him her name was Jan.

  They talked for a while, then he invited her up to hang out in his dorm room, and she thought he was so cute she couldn’t say no.