Todd Strasser - Kill You Last

The man nodded, then turned and called loudly inside.

The door was opened by a heavy young woman with long black hair who led us inside to a small den where Pedro was sitting on the floor, playing with blocks. Mercedes was sitting on a couch next to an old woman with white hair. When she saw me, her eyes widened with surprise.

“Es tu amiga?” the heavy woman asked. 6

Mercedes nodded.

“We need to talk with you, Mercedes,” I said, and put my hand on Whit’s arm. “This is my friend. He’s a reporter, and he’s trying to figure out who killed those girls. I trust him. I promise he won’t tell anyone we saw you. We really need your help. We’re not sure Janet is the real killer.”

Mercedes stared at her son and didn’t reply.

“Janet could go to jail for a murder she didn’t commit,” Whit said. “That would be a terrible thing. Not just for Janet, but for those of us who believe she’s innocent.”

Mercedes’s eyes were locked on Pedro. He was wearing a blue sweater my mom had knitted for him the winter before.

“Mercedes, we believe you pretended to disappear because you’re afraid for yourself and Pedro,” I said. “Something is scaring you. If Janet really were the killer, you’d have no reason to hide.”

Mercedes blinked. Was she fighting back tears?

“You heard about Gabriel?” Whit asked.

She nodded and a tear rolled down her cheek.

“So you have good reason to be frightened,” Whit said.

Except for the sounds of Pedro’s blocks knocking against one another, the room went quiet. Even Pedro looked up curiously, as if wondering why the talking had stopped.

Then I thought of something. “Mercedes, there’s one other thing I hope you can tell me. It’s something I really need to know, because I won’t be able to sleep tonight if you don’t.”

She visibly stiffened, then bent down and gathered Pedro in her arms.

“It wasn’t my dad, was it?” I asked. “I mean, I know he did bad things, but please tell me he didn’t kill those girls.”

Stroking Pedro’s head, Mercedes looked up at me with watery eyes. She shook her head and blinked. Tears ran down both of her cheeks. “No, not your father.”

I almost missed it. I was so eager to know that he was innocent that I almost didn’t get what she was saying. Feeling my jaw muscles tighten, I locked eyes with her and said, “Not… mi padre…”

Mercedes covered her eyes with her hand and turned away. My heart began to thud in my chest, and I suddenly found it hard to breathe. The sides of my head felt like they were in a vice. I looked at my watch. It was a little after one thirty p.m. “We have to go,” I said to Whit. “Right now!”

“You know how to get to Playland?” I asked in the car.

“I think so, why?”

“Just go, as fast as you can.”

“Why?”

I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t say it out loud. It was only a hunch…maybe a strong hunch, but still not the kind of thing I could share with anyone else. I could have been wrong. I hoped I was wrong. But there was only one way to know. “Please,” I begged. “Just go. Just get us there.”

It probably took less than fifteen minutes to get there, but it felt like forever. Playland is an old amusement park with a small Ferris wheel, a wooden roller coaster, and carnival booths where you can try to win a big stuffed animal. On that cool, late October afternoon, the parking lot was nearly empty. We dashed toward the entrance. Of course, like everyone else, we had to pay. Inside the gates, I ran to a target shooting booth where a guy wearing a gray hoodie sat reading a car magazine.

“Do you know where a girl named Ashley Walsh works?” I asked.

He scrunched up his face as if trying to place the name.

“She’s tall and thin with dark hair and a red streak,” I said urgently.

“Oh yeah.” The guy pointed down a row of booths. “She works the octopus.”

I sprinted to the octopus, where a short, stocky girl with blonde hair and a stud in her nose was sitting on the fence, looking bored. She glanced up curiously as I rushed toward her with Whit lumbering behind.

“Does Ashley Walsh work here?” I asked, breathing hard.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Where is she?”

“Why do you want to know?” the girl asked suspiciously.

The answer burst out of me. “For God’s sake, her life’s in danger! Where is she?”

“Are you-”

“I’m serious! ” I yelled.

I’m not sure which of us was more surprised by my outburst, but the girl straightened up. “She said she was going to go meet someone. She took a break.”

“Where?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“How long ago?”

“Maybe ten minutes?”

“Where did she go?” I asked.

The girl pointed at a fence separating the amusement park from some woods. “There’s a hole,” she said, “where people go to smoke.”

I ran toward the fence and found the gap in the chain link. On the other side were woods and a lake. I squeezed through and turned to watch Whit crouch down and try to follow.

“Come on!” I urged.

“I’m trying,” he said. “Whoever made this hole wasn’t thinking of people my size…Darn it!”

The back of his shirt was caught, and he couldn’t reach behind to free himself. I had to go back and press against him, reaching around to free the material.

I could feel him breathing hard from running. For a moment our eyes met. Then I unhooked the shirt and turned quickly into the woods. The ground under the trees was thick with brush and thorny brambles, but we came to a trail that circled the lake.

“Where are we going?” Whit panted.

“Look for a cave or an opening in the rocks,” I said. “Anyplace where someone could hide a body.”

“You think the killer’s got Ashley?”

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t we call for help?”

“There isn’t time…”

“We’re talking about a killer, Shel-”

I heard a sickening crack and turned just in time to see Whit collapse to the ground in a heap.

Behind him stod my mother clutching a long black metal flashlight. She was facing me, looking right at me, but her eyes had that strange blankness I sometimes saw at home, completely devoid of recognition.

“Mom,” I said, my heart racing so fast I felt light-headed.

No reaction. I couldn’t tell if she’d even heard me. Whit lay still on the ground between us.

“Mom, where’s Ashley?”

Still no response.

“Is she alive, Mom? Tell me you didn’t kill her.”

Still clutching the flashlight, she stepped over Whit’s body toward me, her eyes as empty as a dead fish’s.

“Mom? Mom, it’s me.” I couldn’t help thinking how weird it was to hear myself say that. It was stupid. She had to know it was me. The day before, we’d laughed and washed the car and cooked together. “I know why you killed those girls. They were the ones Dad fooled around with, and you felt like they’d ruined everything. You just wanted everything to be nice and perfect for us.”

Mom took another step. I didn’t know where she was in her mind, but I hoped I could bring her back if I kept talking. “Somehow, you figured out which girls Dad was fooling around with. My guess is you got hold of his password and read his e-mails, right? Part of the information every girl gave in her file was her e-mail and-”

“If it hadn’t been for them…” Mom said in a flat voice.

She’d heard me. I was starting to get through. “But it wasn’t them, it was Dad,” I said.

“He couldn’t help himself.” Her eyes were still dull and her steps almost zombielike.

“You can’t really believe that,” I said.