Killing Britney Read online

  sixteen

  “Have you made up your mind yet?” asked Adam.

  Britney was watching TV—or trying to watch. She’d been conscious of him staring at her for a while, and no matter how hard she tried to ignore him, she couldn’t—he was worse than a fly buzzing around her head.

  “About what?”

  “Our truce.”

  In everything that had happened since then, she’d almost forgotten all about this truce of his. She glanced at him skeptically to let him know she was hearing him, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, it’s been like four days. How long does it take for you to make up your mind?”

  He looked like he hadn’t washed his hair in three days. It hung in limp, spooky spikes toward his eyes, making him look a vampire.

  “I don’t know, Adam. I’ve been really freaked out, you know?”

  “So you haven’t even thought about it.”

  He nodded in an I-told-you-so way, as though he’d proved something to himself about her.

  She turned back to the TV. It was Sunday night. Alias was on. Her favorite show. But she couldn’t concentrate.

  “Look,” he said. “I know I can be a dick, okay?”

  He scooted to the edge of the chair he was sitting in and playfully boxed at the air around her head.

  “Don’t you dare touch me,” she said.

  “I’m just messing around.”

  He had the most mischievous grin she’d ever seen. She hated to admit this, but it was charming. It was harder to remain annoyed with him when he grinned like that. She wished he’d stop.

  “If you’re trying to get on my good side because you’ve got a crush on Melissa, it’s not going to work,” she said.

  “Who said I’ve got a crush on Melissa?”

  She threw a pillow at him. “See, that’s why you’re so frustrating,” she said. “Can’t you give a straight answer to anything?”

  There was that smile again. “Maybe I’ve got a crush on you.”

  “God help me.”

  “You’re blushing,” he said.

  She touched her face and scowled at him. Then she went back to watching her TV show. There was some sort of chase going on in Siberia, but she’d missed so much of the story by now that she had no idea why.

  “What do you want to know? I’ll give you a straight answer.”

  “Do you have a crush on Melissa?”

  “Ask me a different question. Anything but that.”

  “What did you do to get shipped out here?” Britney asked.

  He tapped his lower lip in an exaggerated show of how hard he was thinking. “My parents just thought it would be better for me to be away for a while.”

  “But I know you did something. My dad told me you’d gotten in some sort of trouble.”

  “It was just stupid stuff. Smoking pot and things like that.”

  “See, you’re lying,” she said.

  “Okay, you want to know the truth?” His whole demeanor had changed. He usually flayed himself out in a lazy way, arms and legs everywhere, but now he seemed to shrink, to pull inward. “I got kicked out of school.”

  “For something bad?”

  He nodded gravely. He seemed to be actually telling the truth. It sent a chill down her spine.

  Then that grin popped back onto his face. “I’m crazy loco,” he said in a gurgling, mock-scary voice. He crossed his eyes and puffed out his cheeks. “And I’m coming for you next. What will it be? The tickle attack or the nudgie?” He rolled the tips of his fingers together as though he were scheming nefariously.

  Britney tried to remain unamused, but she couldn’t stop the grin from breaking across her face.

  She laughed. They both laughed.

  “God,” she said, squeezing the tears away. “That’s the first time I think I’ve laughed since Ricky died.”

  “So, truce?” Adam said, holding his hand out for her to shake.

  “No,” she said, and snapped back to attention over the TV. Maybe she was going to forgive him—in fact, she was sure of it—but it seemed only fair to tease him a little since that’s what she knew he would do in her shoes.

  “Fine,” said Adam, “but I’m going to operate as if you said yes. I already have been, actually. You’re not going to believe me, but the other night I protected you from an intruder.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I caught someone spying on you. Right out back there.”

  “Who? When?” She felt like someone had just wrestled a plastic bag over her head.

  “On Friday. While you were taking that bath.”

  “But who was it?”

  She was sweating suddenly. If there was one place she thought she was safe, it was here at home.

  “I shouldn’t tell you. You’re going to say, ‘I told you so.’”

  “It was Bobby, wasn’t it? Bobby Plumley was spying on me!”

  “Don’t worry about it, though. I chased him away and told him I’d kick his ass if I ever caught him over here again.”

  Bobby Plumley! That freak of nature.

  For all she knew, he might be watching her right this second. She had to get out of here. She had to go somewhere where she could think. There was only one place. The Sanctuary. She hadn’t been there in months—not since she first started dating Ricky—but she was sure it would still have the calming power it always used to have over her. There was something special about that patch of earth, like someone or something protected it.

  As she ran out the door, she could hear Adam shouting after her, “Hey, where are you going? I didn’t mean to … Don’t be … Jesus, I’ve pissed you off again, haven’t I?”

  She didn’t have time for his noise right now, though. If she didn’t get out of the house right this instant, she was sure she would pass out.

  seventeen

  There she was.

  He’d parked down the hill around a bend in the road, and it took him a few minutes to make his way back, but now he’d found her.

  As Britney wandered up the path that led to the lake, trudging through the snow, he’d kept to the woods. She couldn’t see him, but he could see her. His view was blocked a bit by the trees from this vantage, but he didn’t want to get much closer.

  Knowing where she was and what she was doing was enough. All he needed for his purposes. Surprise was his best friend. Stay hidden. Stay stealthy. As long as he kept his ski mask on, no one would be able to recognize him.

  She sat down on a park bench and gazed out toward the lake. What was she looking for? All that was out there at this time of year were ice-fishing shacks.

  And she wasn’t dressed for the weather. No hat. No scarf. No gloves. Her only protection from the elements was the letter jacket she always wore nowadays. He was bundled up in a snowmobile suit, and he still felt the chill. How could she stand it?

  Watch a while longer, he told himself. See what she does.

  He heard an engine purring behind him, the crunch of ice and snow under tires. If he peered, he could just make out the parking lot. The rear bumper of Britney’s yellow Bug. Darkness. Then a splotch of red rolled into view.

  Scampering back toward the parking lot, he hid behind a pine tree and peered into the clearing. What he saw was a red pickup truck. A Ford Ranger—similar to the one he himself owned, except his was cooler, decked out with designer hubs and a killer sound system. The truck must be at least ten years old; rust had spread across the wheel wells and formed little sores all over the hood. The person who hopped out of it was tall. His features were shrouded behind the deep fur-lined hood of his parka. He walked like he knew where he was going.

  He ran back to his post in the woods and saw that Britney was right where he’d left her. He crouched. He waited.

  A few moments later, he spotted the tall guy again. He got a better look this time—blue jeans, a black, thigh-length parka. Who was this guy, and what was he doing here?

  More important, how strong was thi
s guy? It was hard to tell from the parka he was wearing. Strong enough to put up a fight?

  The paths through Menominee Park wound around and cut across one another; only one led directly toward the clearing by the lake. The guy was walking down one of the smaller ones. He’d found a long broken tree limb and was using it as a walking stick. The guy turned at the fork and walked right past him, so close that he curled up and pressed himself into a bush, shutting his eyes tight, as though this would help shield him. He stayed this way for a minute or two.

  Then the guy started moving toward Britney She had her back to him, and he was walking quietly. When he was just a few feet behind her, he stopped. He gazed out at the lake. She still didn’t see him.

  Tense, on his feet now, he was ready to pounce.

  Suddenly the two of them—Britney and the guy—were talking. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from their body language, they seemed to be exchanging friendly words. Or maybe not. Britney half turned on the bench while she spoke. She seemed guarded, her head and shoulders angled away from the guy—could she tell there was someone else watching them? And the guy kept fiddling with his stick, as though contemplating the correct moment to turn it into a weapon.

  They were arguing. Then the guy broke into a rueful laugh.

  Get the guy first, then deal with Britney. If he acted fast, the guy would never know what hit him.

  He jumped from his hiding place and ran through the snow, stumbling over hidden roots and shrubs. He leapt, threw a diving fist at the guy, but he missed and landed sprawling in the snow.

  Then the guy was on top of him—swinging hard. Blows hit his stomach, his arms, his face. The guy yanked off his mask. He was exposed.

  He could hear the guy swearing at him, calling him crazy. Britney was shouting at both of them, hysterical. “Stop!” she said. “Stop it. Karl, get out of here!”

  By the time he was back on his feet, the guy had run off.

  Britney was still there, though, standing a few feet away, her arms crossed. She was staring at him.

  “Bobby!” she said, the rage in her voice barely under control.

  “Where’d he go?” Bobby asked, looking around in a frenzy.

  “How am I supposed to know?” Her eyes were burning. She was full of spite.

  Bobby brushed the snow off his snowmobile suit. In the distance, he could hear the truck starting up and peeling away.

  “Well, are you all right?”

  He reached out to touch her on the elbow, but she pulled violently back.

  “Don’t touch me! I swear to God, Bobby, I’m going to have you arrested!” she said.

  Holding his hands up in surrender, he said, “That guy was going to attack you. I could feel it.”

  Britney said nothing in response. What looked like a mixture of rage and fear and disgust swirled around on her face. Her gaze lingered on Bobby for a second longer, then she shuddered—or was she just shivering from the cold? She picked something—he couldn’t tell what it was—out of the snow at her feet and turned her back on him.

  He shouted after her. “Wait! Aren’t you even going to say thank you?”

  Alone again, he tried to remember if he knew anybody named Karl. There was only one person he could think of. Melissa’s dirtbag brother. He’d always known that guy was trouble.

  eighteen

  Britney sipped her peppermint tea. Her toes bounced rapidly inside her thermal-lined snow boots. She was clicking her jaw back and forth, back and forth. She had fished an Entertainment Weekly out of the magazine rack that Fresh Grounds provided for its customers, but she gave up on it quickly. She couldn’t concentrate.

  She was still shaken up. As though to gauge the changing state of her emotions, she held her hand up in front of her and tried to control the shaking. She couldn’t.

  It was almost nine-thirty, and Detective Russell still hadn’t arrived.

  Nine thirty-five. Fresh Grounds was going to close at ten.

  Britney was about ready to give up and head home, but just then the detective walked in. She was wearing her uniform, the standard blue-black, complete with gun and club and sagging, over-burdened belt.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said.

  She blew a big green bubble. Britney noticed that her lips were coated in a shiny layer of clear gloss. Then, spiting her gum into a piece of wrapper she’d kept for this purpose, she said, “So, what’s up? What happened, Britney? You sounded hysterical when you called me just now.”

  “I think I know who it was.”

  “Oh?” said the detective. “Well, tell me. Please.”

  “Yeah,” Britney said. She fingered the pin on Ricky’s letter jacket as she spoke. “I was having sort of a bad night, you know? Just thinking about Ricky a whole lot and feeling really down about everything. Adam was being really annoying, and it seemed like the only way to get any peace was to go off somewhere and think for a while.”

  The detective took notes in a thick leather-bound pad as Britney spoke. “Who’s Adam?” she asked.

  Britney explained everything. She told the detective who Adam was and how he had caught Bobby spying on her and how she’d gone off to the park to sit and be alone. “You know, that one off Shoreline Drive with all the hiking paths? What’s it called? Menominee Park, I think.” She told her about how Karl Brown, her friend Melissa’s brother, had happened to be there too, looking for the Indian mounds. “I didn’t even know there were Indian mounds in that park,” she told the detective. She explained how she and Karl had got to talking about random stuff. A friendly conversation—it had cheered her up just to talk about this and that as if everything were normal again. Then out of nowhere, Bobby had come charging up and tried to tackle the guy. “Unless,” she concluded, “he was going after me, which is what I think he was doing.”

  “Well …” The detective reviewed her notes. “We can’t be sure of anything until we have all the facts. But I’ll talk to Bobby. You’ll be happy to know I’ve already spoken with Digger about his conversation with Ricky—I didn’t find out much, though. He corroborated what you told me, but he didn’t add anything new.” She gazed contemplatively at Britney, then reached out to hold her hand.

  “You’re shaking,” she said.

  Britney’s voice caught in her throat as she tried to say, “Yeah.” She slid her hand across the table and let the detective hold it still.

  “It must be tough, going through all these emotions again. It must churn up all your feelings about your mother.”

  Britney couldn’t speak. She nodded.

  “You know, I worked on her case.”

  “Really?”

  “I didn’t do much. I was new to the force at the time. But yeah, I helped out a little bit.”

  “How come I didn’t meet you then?”

  “Oh, the stuff I was doing was really low level. I always thought it was sad, though, that they never found her body. Sad for you, I mean. It might have provided you with some closure.”

  The topic made Britney even more uncomfortable.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she asked.

  The detective thought for a second. “I figured I should get to know you better first. Like I said, I was really low level. I hardly did anything. Typed up a few reports.”

  Studying her notes again, the detective tapped her pen on the table.

  “Karl Brown. I feel like I’ve heard that name before.”

  “He’s Melissa’s brother,” Britney reminder her. “And he was arrested, I don’t know, a year and half ago or so in a crystal meth sting.”

  “That’s interesting,” the detective said, taking another note. “But I don’t work narcotics, so it wouldn’t be from that. No, you know what I think it is? I think there was a guy named Karl Brown who worked at the place you guys rented the rafts from.”

  Britney threw the detective a cockeyed look.

  “On that trip … with your mother.”

  “Maybe,” Britney said. “It’s
probably not that uncommon a name.”

  The thought of Karl being up there the day her mother had died sent a flash of terror and adrenaline suddenly rushing through Britney’s bloodstream. What if he had been involved in her mother’s death? What if he was coming after her now to finish the … No—she couldn’t bear to think about that. She reminded herself this didn’t have anything to do with her mother.

  “Are you going to arrest Bobby?” she asked.

  “I don’t know as I have enough evidence to do that yet.”

  “How about this: did you know that he wanted to date me once? I mean, he really laid it on thick. He asked me out probably fifty times and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I finally had to totally cut off all contact with him.”

  “Before that, you two were friends?”

  Britney shrugged. The idea of telling this woman her whole life story disturbed her, especially since she’d worked on her mother’s case. It was all just too close.

  “That’s not the point. The point is, who else could it be? He’s stalking me. And he has a red pickup truck—did you know that? He doesn’t drive it all the time because, technically, it belongs to the computer place he works for, but I’ve seen him riding around in it. Oh, and I found this on the ground while I was talking to him just now!” She handed over the shotgun shell casing she’d picked up. “I think it fell out of his pocket while he was wrestling with Karl.”

  “So, you think he’s the one behind everything.”

  Britney flinched, hearing those words. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Nothing’s obvious, but I’ll tell you what: I’m going to check it all out for you.”

  nineteen

  By the time Britney got home, she was a complete wreck. It all seemed so clear. Bobby was stalking her, and Detective Russell should stop him. That’s what the police were there for.

  Adam didn’t look like he’d moved since she left—he was still slouched on the couch, gazing at the TV, which was now showing a rerun of That 70s Show.