“Then he tells me he’s used the computer to check me out at school, and he’s figured out that I was in a bunch of classes with Lily Mack.”
“A bunch?” Phoebe recalled that Wesley had told her he was in one.
“I took three classes with that bitch. I was freaking in love with Lily. We were in a class together last fall, and we started sharing notes and having coffee together, that sort of thing. We had a connection, you know. But then she totally messes it up—she starts dating that flaming asshole, Trevor. I tried to make her see what a jerk he was, but she just didn’t get it. So I made sure he was out of the picture and bided my time.”
Even in her panic, Phoebe could see the pieces beginning to fit in her own mind.
“But before you killed Trevor, you decided to throw yourself into the river—so that his drowning would seem like part of a pattern?”
“Why not, right? I mean, there’d already been one drowning, and I’d read about these other cases on the Internet.”
“How did you kill him?”
“It was so easy, it was kind of sick. I knew he hung out downtown, and one night at Cat Tails after I’d bided my time for a few months, I stood near him at the bar and put GHB in his drink. And then, after a while, I asked him if he wanted some weed. He was the kind of guy who called me Fathead behind my back, but he wouldn’t turn down that kind of offer—plus he was pretty out of it by then. I told him to meet me in the parking lot by the river so no one would see us, and then I drove him up the road.”
“Across from the Big Red Barn?”
“Yup. It was a piece of cake to just push him in.”
“But then his body was never found.”
“Yeah, I know. Can you believe that freaking luck? But it worked out in the end. Everybody thought he just took off. Which made him look like an even bigger asshole.”
“But Lily still didn’t want to date you.”
“At first she was just too upset to do anything. I figured I’d just wait till she came back after the summer. But then we get together one day, and I finally tell her how I feel, and she says she never wants to be anything other than my fucking friend.”
He twisted his mouth as he said the word friend, as if it filled him with disgust. Phoebe could barely look at him, but she knew she had to, had to keep him talking and calm.
“And then you killed Lily, too—because she didn’t love you?”
“No,” he snapped. “The problem was, she started to figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“That I killed Trevor,” he said, even fiercer now. “What the fuck else do you think?”
“Okay, I got it,” Phoebe said. She commanded herself to breathe slowly, to fight her fear.
“I was still keeping tabs on her sometimes. I thought she might finally see what I could offer her, you know. I was watching her that night she went down to Cat Tails. I parked my car and went inside a few minutes later, like it was just a coincidence. I grabbed a beer and was hanging out near her, but trying not to crowd her. And then these guys came in who knew Trevor, who were around the night he disappeared, I guess, and she got upset once she started talking to them. She asked them about that night and if he gave any reason for wanting to just bail. And then out of the blue one of them looks over at me and goes, ‘You talked to him a little bit that night, didn’t you, Hines? Did he say anything to you?’
“Well, I guess that freaked her out. She finished her beer real quick and left. I drove up the street looking for her and convinced her to hop in my car so we could just talk. Of course, she wanted to know why I’d never told her about talking to Trevor, and I said it was because I hadn’t wanted to upset her about what he’d confessed. I said he’d told me he didn’t want to hurt her but he didn’t love her and he just wanted to make a break for it.”
Wesley was growing more and more agitated as he spoke, twisting his neck as if the shirt were choking him.
“I could see that she was becoming suspicious, that she knew a guy like Trevor wouldn’t be confiding shit to me. I figured that she might go to the cops and they’d check my car and find that asshole’s DNA in it or something. You know what’s funny? There was a minute when I thought she was going to just bolt from the car and there was nothing I could do. But she was trying to figure out the truth—be the little investigator like you—and she kept talking to me. I had some coffee in a thermos, and I offered it to her while we were talking. I dropped the drug in the coffee and gave her a drink. She was totally passed out by the time I dumped her in the river.”
Phoebe felt sick, seeing the image in her mind. At least Lily hadn’t had to fight for her life in the dark, muddy water.
“And Hutch?” Phoebe asked. “He had to die, too?”
Wesley shook his head hard.
“I didn’t know what to do about Gramps,” he said. “After he left here, I was crazy. I knew he was going to probably go to the cops, and I needed to act fast. That stuff you told me about that stupid girl group was a total godsend. I planted all the stuff at the diner with you about Blair, and then I figured how I could set them up. And then I went to pay Gramps a visit. I wasn’t sure I was going to kill him, but he didn’t give me a choice.”
He shook his head again.
“You want to do the right thing,” he said. “But people just don’t let you. Like Lily. She just wouldn’t give me a chance.”
He stared right at Phoebe. “And like you,” he said.
“Bu—”
“You wouldn’t back off. You kept snooping around. I tried to scare you by killing the lights in the science building that night. But even when they caught the girls, you wouldn’t let it go.”
He glanced off, as if in dismay. Now! Phoebe screamed to herself. She spun around and bolted toward the door. She’d only gone two steps before Wesley grabbed her fiercely by the hair and yanked her back. She yelped in pain.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Wesley yelled. He was still behind her, and he coiled her hair roughly in his fist.
“Wesley, don’t do this, please,” she said. “You—you have a chance to stop it all now.”
“And get caught?” He snickered. “Why would I want to do that?”
“They’ll find out. I—I’ve told people. The man I’m seeing knows.”
“I doubt it. I know who you’ve been seeing—the guy on your phone. Ten fucking minutes ago you thought he was the killer.”
She started to struggle, trying to free herself from his grasp, but he yanked her hair even tighter. Then he drew his other hand back and punched her hard in the face. Her head snapped back. He let go of her hair, and she went crashing to the ground, landing on her broken elbow. It felt like someone had just lit a fire to her arm.
And then he had her by the hair again and was dragging her across the dusty floorboards.
“You’re going to have to excuse me,” Wesley said, panting. “But it’s going to seem weird if I don’t meet these people tonight. I’ll have to deal with you later.”
Finally he dropped her. She saw that she was against the wooden barrier that surrounded the pit. Was he going to tie her up and come back afterward? she wondered desperately. If he tied her up, she might have a chance to free herself.