Todd Strasser - Kill You Last

A little while later, Dad went outside to make a statement for the news crews, and I went upstairs to see if Whit was online. I felt like talking to him, thanking him, really, for being one of the only people who’d resisted the temptation to rush to judgment about my father.

When I saw that he wasn’t online, I thought about calling him, but, remembering that afternoon at the reservoir, I hesitated. I still had the feeling that part of the reason he’d wanted to meet had less to do with Dad than it did with me. Why else would he have been so encouraging about Sarah Lawrence?

That’s where my thoughts were when the call came…from Whit.

I felt a smile on my lips and realized I was glad to hear from him. “Hi!”

“Good news, huh?”

“Yes…I guess, it’s just that…”

“It was Janet, or maybe I should say Jane. And Mercedes is still missing,” he said, finishing the sentence for me.

“It’s more than that. I’m still not sure she did it.”

“But…they’ve got evidence. The mud and the rope.”

“It’s just a feeling. You remember how earlier today we were both a little doubtful?”

“Shelby, listen, I was probably wrong about the seriously sick or seriously angry thing. They’ve got the evidence, and the motive definitely could have been that she killed those girls because they were threatening to go to the police about the scam and she knew she’d get sent back to jail. And that could explain Mercedes’s disappearance as well.”

I felt a queasy sensation in my stomach. Please not Mercedes. “I know that just having a feeling means nothing. Especially when Janet was hiding a criminal past, but it’s just such a huge leap from Internet scams to murder.”

“But-” he began.

“I have no experience with murderers, so how could I possibly know what I’m talking about, right?”

“Well, more or less, yes.”

“What if they are wrong, Whit?”

He was quiet for a moment. “You realize what you’re saying.

If you take the focus off Janet, it goes back on your father.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Maybe not in your mind, but in everyone else’s.”

“Including yours?”

He paused again, then said, “No. I’m still one of those old-fashioned people who believe that you’re innocent until proven guilty. But we both know that’s not the way a lot of people in the media world think.”

“Well, you’re the only one I’m telling this to,” I said.

“That’s smart. And don’t worry, I won’t make it the subject of my next story.”

I’d forgotten to say that I was speaking off the record. “Thank you, Whit.”

“So I’m just curious,” he said. “Since you still have this feeling that Janet might be innocent, do you plan to do something about it, or leave it alone?”

“I need to think some more.”

“So…there’s a chance you may decide to do something, even if you don’t know what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Whit paused again. Rarely has silence sounded more like disapproval. “Do me a favor? Before you do anything, promise you’ll talk to me?”

“I promise.”

I didn’t know what to expect the next day at school. A few people smiled, as if to show that they were happy for me. Others turned and whispered to their friends, just as they had during the first few days of this nightmare. But most didn’t react one way or the other, almost as if the story had never existed in the first place.

I was on my way to gym when Ashley Walsh came through the crowd in the hall and blocked my path. “I… have to talk to you,” she said with a quaver in her voice as she tilted her head toward the girls’ room. “In private.”

I felt a shiver of unease. What could she possibly want to say? But then I recalled that the last time we’d spoken, I’d had the feeling I’d asked the wrong questions.

Inside the girls’ room we primped at the mirror until the bell rang and the other girls cleared out for their classes. If there was one class I knew I could be a little late for, it was gym. As soon as the last girl left, I glanced at Ashley and was shocked to see tears in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I owe you an apology.” She sniffed.

“Why?”

“The reason Tara gives you such a hard time? It’s because of me.”

It’s so strange when you have absolutely no idea what someone is talking about. All I could do was ask “Why?” again.

Her lower lip quivered, and mascara-streaked tears left dark trails down her cheeks. “Because… he used me.”

I felt my insides go into deep freeze.

“I mean, he… he took advantage of me,” Ashley said, just to be clear.

I felt a shudder, followed by the most profound feelings of sadness and regret. “Oh God.” I put my arms around my old friend while she sobbed and trembled. “You shouldn’t be apologizing to me. I should be apologizing to you. I’m so sorry, Ashley. I’m so ashamed. I know what my father’s done, but I still can’t believe it.”

She looked up at me with surprised red eyes. “You know?”

“Not about you until just now, but two days ago, I found out… you’re not the only one. I don’t know how many there were. It’s so horrible. I’m so embarrassed to have a father like that.” Now I felt my own tears well up and spill out of my eyes. It was bad enough to know he’d done something to girls I didn’t know, but to find out he’d done it to someone right here at school-someone I’d been friends with and grown up with-was too much.

Ashley rubbed some tears from her face. “So you understand about the e-mails?”

I took a step back. E-mails? She couldn’t mean… “Not the ones from vengeance at gmail?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How do you know about them?” I blurted out.

Ashley averted her eyes and stared down at the floor. “I… sent them.”

Whatever sympathy I’d been feeling for her instantly vanished. “Are you serious?”

She looked up, a mixture of shame and pleading in her expression. “You understand, don’t you?”

“How can you expect me to understand?” I asked incredulously, feeling the blender of my emotions go into reverse, from sympathy to fury.

Ashley stared at me with her red, blotchy eyes. “But you just said-”

I cut her short. “How am I supposed to understand someone who threatens to kill me?”

Her eyes widened, and she frowned sharply. “I never…”

“How can you say that?” I asked. “You said I was the last one you’d kill.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I took out my BlackBerry, scrolled to the e-mail, and showed it to her. “You didn’t send this?”

Ashley squinted. “No way.”

“It’s from vengeance@gmail. com,” I said.

She was still staring at the e-mail. “I swear I never sent this.”

“You’re saying someone else got into your Gmail account and sent it?” I asked doubtfully.

Ashley was still studying the e-mail. “Do you still have the others? The ones I did send?”

“Yes.”

“Could you show me one?”

It made no sense, but I scrolled to one of the other e-mails, wondering what fantastic explanation she could come up with. But instead of giving me any kind of explanation, she asked me to go back to the e-mail that threatened murder.

“They’re from different accounts,” she said. “Look at the address. All of mine are from vengeance one three seven seven three two eight eight. The one threatening to kill you is from vengeance one three seven seven two three eight eight. Someone reversed the three and the two.”

Now it was my turn to flip back and forth from e-mail to e-mail.