Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

Knife… stabs. Many stabs, like a psychopath who’d found her walking alone in the night. Then the saw.

A cover story.

“A random, deranged killer. That’s who did it, Noah. No one will ever know it was me, especially after we dump the knife and saw as far as we can in that pond.”

Noah’s face, slack. Skin pale as he retched but didn’t throw up.

Good. Can’t leave any obvious DNA behind.

Washing off blood from skin, scrubbing blood and fingerprints off weapons in the nearby pond off the trail. Cleaning up everything as best as possible. Drag marks, evidence that might’ve fallen off their own bodies.

One last look at the bitch with the bloody white dress covering a now-anonymous torso, then the detached head. Food for the animals.

Throwing the bloody scarf in the pond, far enough from the shore yet near enough to still see it floating on the water under the moonlight.

A flash:

A sunny day, by the pool all alone, peaceful, lying out on a lounge chair, the trees winter-bare, the sun unseasonably warm. Phone ringing.

Noah, on the other end. “You know what day this is?”

“You always have to mention her anniversary, don’t you?”

“I never forget. I mention it every year.”

“That’s three years too many.” A sigh. “Elizabeth is out of our lives, and no one knows how it happened. I got away with it, so act like you don’t care, just like we talked about, and don’t blow it because you’re sorry. Do you want to see me in jail?”

“You always say that.”

“Well, do you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then get back to class. I love you, Noah. I’m the one who loves you most here. Just remember that.”

“I know.”

Hanging up, going back to the sun, reaching for a pair of Ray-Bans with a steady hand on the nearby table.

Seeing the blond pool guy smiling as he stood by the bushes, hands planted on his hips…

I simply backed out of Farah’s thoughts, and the ease of my exit should’ve worried me. She hadn’t even fainted this time, and I had a good guess why that was.

Because she’d known that when she arrived, her boyfriend would be coming out of the house she’d given him.

A few lights had gone on in the neighbor’s Colonial home, and as James stood in half-darkness on the concrete stairway leading to the window-paneled second floor, one hand in the pocket of his khaki pants and the other resting on the railing, I recognized him from Farah’s empathy reading…

… and from the Edgetts’ house.

“Hello, Pool Guy,” I whispered, already looking forward to this.

Farah held a hand to her head as she recovered and ran from me to James on the stairway.

“She’s here!” she yelled. “Can you feel her?”

“No, but we’re going inside so you don’t put on a show for the neighbors.”

He took her by the upper arm and pulled her the rest of the way up the steps, toward the open sliding-glass door on the balcony. And you know I totally followed.

He shut the door behind us, and in the lamplight, I was close enough to notice the fine blond hairs standing up on his arms.

Cold out tonight, wasn’t it?

Now that I got a good look at James the pool guy, he was less attractive than ever. He’d gone from coming off as the preppy baddie in a sleazy beach movie, to a Peeping Tom, to this—an obvious blackmailer, based on what I’d seen in Farah’s head.

Scumbag. Skank. As much of an accessory to murder as Noah had been.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around that part. The kid would have been only fourteen when Elizabeth died, and Farah had ruined him for life, just because he loved her the most in his family. I could just imagine what it might’ve been like to be adopted from another country, to probably not know the language and to have a glamorous older sister like Farah, who had probably been truly close to him… although I doubted it was as close as Farah wanted to get to Gavin.

I wished Noah had been old enough and strong enough to tell her to go to hell.

James had taken a seat on one of the sleek, skeletal metallic chairs that filled the upstairs sitting room. With the wide windows and the modern furniture, it felt like a glass coffin in here.

I took my usual comfort spot in a ceiling corner, not liking those windows one bit, even though no one could see me.

James was surveying Farah, looking her up and down as she stood and shivered in her coffee-stained white nightgown.

“You’re looking a little rough,” he said.

“I told you why. Elizabeth is after me.”

He laughed, and her face reddened.

“This isn’t funny, James. I saw Elizabeth in the pool house tonight, then in my car. She was sitting right in my backseat, and when I came up your driveway, she did something to me. I don’t know what it was, but it was cold and awful, just like in the pool house.”

“Maybe you actually got probed by an alien and you just don’t remember the trip to the UFO.”

Patronizing. I hated him already.

“Stop it,” Farah said. “She made my head hurt.”

“Poor little rich girl. Here.” He patted his lap. “Come and tell me all about it.”

“You’re a jerk.”

“Why’s that?” James crooked his finger at her, adding to his invitation. “I just want to make you forget about your bad dreams.”

Farah bunched her fists and pressed them to her temples. “You’re not listening! These aren’t dreams. She’s real, and she’s outside.”

As he laughed again, I wondered if it was worth listening to the rest of the conversation or if I should go ahead and make another empathy run into Farah. As usual, her fear had juiced me, and now that I’d discovered how Elizabeth had been killed, I was keen to learn more about what Gavin had done to protect Farah from her dad around four years ago, if I could judge by how many candles had been on Noah’s birthday cake.

I had my suspicions about what’d happened. But I needed confirmation.

I gave James and Farah a little more time, though, because I might get something interesting out of this.

He just kept laughing, and she kept getting more unhinged.

“Shut up!” she screamed at him. “Just shut. Up!”

“Farah,” he said, his humor disappearing. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“God, Gavin says you’re too observant, that you’re always hanging around the pool like you’re watching and listening to us, but you sure are deaf, dumb, and blind now.”

I doubted Gavin had any idea that James was so observant that he watched Wendy in her bedroom window. But what Farah had just said made another lightbulb go off in me.

Gavin thought James was observant, right? So that would explain why the pool guy had shown up in Gavin’s second dream, lingering by the pool while I had climbed out of it. He’d been a natural part of the surreal dreamscape, but obviously Gavin had no idea how important the guy really was in the scheme of things. Or did he actually have a deep-seated discomfort with James, even while he had no clue about what the pool guy really knew?

James propped one ankle over his knee, hanging his arm on the back of his chair. “If I bother Gavin so much, then why doesn’t he just fire me?”

“Because I won’t let him.” Farah had almost hissed at him. “But you know that just as well as you know that you like to personally clean our pool because it gives you an excuse to be around me. At least, that’s why you say you don’t send any of your employees to do the work there.”