I Told You This Would Happen Page 3

  “Thanks to Footloose.” And Becca.

  “Maybe.” Graham sounds stiff and awkward, like he always does when Footloose comes up. Like I’m a layer of ice covering a frozen pond, and he’s not confident enough to put his full weight on it, certain there are still weak spots that will crack if he presses too hard. Plus, he’s one of the few people under the age of sixty with a newspaper subscription, so sometimes he just sounds that way, no matter the subject.

  I’m about to suggest we head to one of the nearby chain restaurants for an early dinner when the cover of the newspaper catches my eye: SECOND HIT-AND-RUN DEATH IN APRIL! My mouth opens and closes wordlessly as I read it again. And again. I’d seen something online about an elderly man killed in a hit-and-run accident a couple of weeks ago and brushed it off. Two deaths might be a coincidence. But considering vehicular homicide was Becca’s go-to stress reliever, it might be more.

  “Carrie?” Graham touches my arm.

  I jerk away and shake my head. “S-sorry,” I say, when he looks hurt. “I, um…I have a headache.”

  “Do you want to go home?”

  I can’t pull my eyes away from the headline. I know Becca is dead. Footloose sent me a picture. Plus, I know she’s dead because she doesn’t have the self-control to remain missing for five months. She lives for the spotlight. She has to be dead.

  “You have today’s paper, right?” I nod at the trash can. “That one?” I’m desperate to snag it and scour the article for details but can’t stop the paranoid feeling that Graham will think it’s weird, the way you fear casually mentioning your crush’s name in conversation will convince everyone you’re obsessed with him.

  “You’re still here,” Greaves says over my shoulder.

  I jolt and whirl around. The detective eats his popcorn and watches me like I’m the main attraction.

  “What about the movie?” I demand, my voice sharper than intended, like he’s caught me midcrime.

  “It didn’t get better.” His gaze travels to the newspaper and lingers for a moment. Absolutely no one knows about Becca’s deadly hobby, and while there are plenty of people who would have described her as unlikeable and manipulative and vain and wretched, she’s never once been accused of murder. At least, not openly accused. But still, I can’t help but feel that this headline and Greaves are two points of a triangle, Becca’s the third, and I’m the unfortunate thing that connects them all.

  Graham laughs uncomfortably. “You can’t trust the critics, right?”

  Greaves picks up the paper, studying the front page as though he couldn’t see it from where he was standing. “We’ve got a wayward driver out there.”

  “And yet here you are,” I reply. “At the movies.”

  Graham gives a start. “Carrie.”

  But Greaves just laughs and holds up a hand, his fingertips shiny with butter, reminding me of the night Becca had come to my home after I’d found Footloose lying in wait in my closet. She’d had movie popcorn in her hand, butter making her lips shine.

  “No, no,” Greaves says. “That’s fair. I’d better get to work. There’s always someone out there to find.”

  “Lots of someones,” I correct. “We have one of the highest missing persons rates in the country.”

  For the first time today, Greaves looks like I’ve hit a nerve. “That’s what they say.”

  “Don’t let us stop you.”

  He folds the top of his popcorn bag, neat and methodical, and tucks the newspaper under his arm. Then he meets my eye and nods. “Never,” he promises, before walking away.

  “Carrie,” Graham mutters under his breath, “you shouldn’t goad him.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You were.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t I? He didn’t notice a serial killer in our town—one who nearly killed me—and he hasn’t found my sister or, like, a dozen other people. If he’s not at work, he shouldn’t be rubbing it in my face.”

  “He wasn’t—”

  “You know what?” I interrupt. “My headache’s getting worse. I need some time to myself.”

  Graham nods reluctantly. He’s got a book on his nightstand about loving someone coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, and I skimmed it one day and saw that he’d underlined a passage that said, “Sufferers need time and space, and only they can decide when they’re ready for you.” He’d underlined “only they” twice.

  “Do you still want to look at houses tomorrow?” he asks. “Or should we reschedule? I can call Misha—”

  “I still want to look,” I assure him, resisting the urge to wrinkle my nose at the mention of our wholly incompetent real estate agent, a friend of a friend of a coworker of Graham’s, which apparently means we can’t fire her. “But maybe we can go next week instead?”

  When Graham had broached the subject of us moving in together last month, I’d been surprised by how ready I was for the move. I bought my house three years ago, expecting to make wonderful, lasting memories. But then two serial killers made themselves comfortable in my home, and those dreams were dashed. With Becca and Footloose finally out of the picture, I’m ready to move on. Graham’s been dropping hints about proposing, and home ownership is a step in the right direction. Some people have skeletons in their closets, but mine are buried all over town, and after the madness of the last five months, the only thing I want now is a safe, quiet, boring life with Graham.

  “Okay,” he says. “Get some rest. Let me know if you need anything.”

  I wave and hurry away, squinting against the afternoon sunshine. It’s a beautiful day in April, the worst is behind me, and if not for that newspaper headline, I’d almost believe it.

  But I have too much terrible experience to chalk things up to coincidence, to dismiss strange happenings, to just ignore the warning signs. The alarm bells in the back of my brain aren’t panic; they’re instinct. And if someone’s truly running down people in Brampton, then that someone is Becca.

  And she’s back.

  * * *

  Okay, Becca’s not back. That’s ridiculous—I know. I’ve been home thirty minutes and have read both articles about the hit-and-run deaths on the Brampton Chronicle website half a dozen times. I tried searching online for more information, but perhaps because of our city’s rocketing crime rate, the deaths appear not to have warranted any other mentions.

  Plus, there’s one major difference between these deaths and the ones Becca committed: The bodies were left behind. After each of her hit-and-run murders, Becca would call me, normally in the middle of the night, to “move furniture”—i.e., meet her at a remote location where she’d be waiting with a body wrapped in her murder carpet. We’d lug it and two shovels to a random spot, dig a grave, and hide the evidence. Rinse and repeat. Thirteen times. The lack of bodies is precisely how she went unnoticed for a decade. And because she said she planted something on each body that tied the death directly to me, I’ve never had the courage to turn her in.

  According to the Chronicle, the first victim this time around was a man in his seventies named Darwin Harrow. The second, and most recent, victim was a woman in her twenties named Bindi Carmichael. I search online for Darwin but find no social media pages. Bindi has a Facebook account with three photos and a handful of brief posts, most accompanying pictures of either breakfast food or sunsets.

  The two news articles are sparse, the stories downplayed, likely trying not to stir up more fear in a town that learned six months ago it was home to a serial killer who had buried more than a dozen bodies in our local park. I make a list of the few details they provide: Darwin was crossing a quiet street when a car sped through a stop sign and hit him dead-on. It was early afternoon on a drizzly spring day when someone heard the thud and went outside to find a man’s crumpled body in the middle of the street. No one saw the car.

  Bindi was killed in the parking lot of the local mall after hours. She was found with a shopping bag containing a new pair of jeans, her body ten yards from her car. There were no skid marks to suggest the driver had attempted to stop, which indicates that whoever hit her fully intended to do so.

  The older man doesn’t exactly fit Becca’s typical victim profile. Approximately once a year her “feelings” would build, and she’d encounter someone who pissed her off enough that she decided to kill them. I don’t know what an elderly man might have done to get on her bad side, but Bindi is a different story. Becca had worked in the jewelry store at the mall since high school and killed at least two people in that same lot.

  My palms are sweaty, and the pen slips in my fingers, skidding across the page and digging a hole in the paper. If Becca were here, she’d mock me for being someone who even owns a notepad, but Becca was always able to find something about me worth ridiculing. Murder and getting under my skin were her best and only skills.

  I let out a slow breath and count backward from ten. The therapist said I needed to find a way to seek closure without finding a body, because if Becca is indeed another of Footloose’s victims, it could be years, if ever, before she’s found. I’d spent countless hours searching the city with no luck. I agree I need closure, but not for the reasons everyone believes. They think I need to accept the fact that she’s not coming back, when what I really need is a guarantee. Without a body, I’ll never be able to stop looking over my shoulder. These hit-and-run deaths are proof of that. And what’s worse? Becca’s alive and back to her old ways, mowing down innocent people when she gets the urge? Or that there’s someone new out there with the same violent tendencies?

  Chapter 4

  Life as Novelty Concept Manager at a small stationery design company is not as exciting as the title might lead you to believe. It comes with an interior office and a cheap metal nameplate for my desk, but the respect
of my peers has less to do with admiration for my accomplishments and more to do with the lingering fear that I had something to do with the death of our coworker Angelica, despite being cleared in the crime. I mean, Becca killed her, and I helped hide the body, but I had no idea it was going to happen. What’s not attributed to fear that they might be next on my hit list is resentment that my newfound notoriety has brought in a ton of new contracts.

  That Thursday, I’m working on my current project: a ruler in the shape of a foot, with bloody saw marks for the inches, painted toes at one end, and a jagged edge at the other. Ever since my name was leaked as Footloose’s last surviving victim, Weston Stationery has been inundated with design orders, which would be flattering if not for the fact that all the new orders feature some type of unpleasant foot fetish. It’s tacky but it pays well, and I’ll soon have a down payment to make, so I’m not turning away the work.

  I keep my door open so I don’t feel completely excluded from the office, but it does little to help me feel included. When I step out to refill my coffee that afternoon, the murmur of office gossip immediately ceases, making my short trip to the break room feel like a walk of shame. I let out a breath when I enter the small room, out of sight of suspicious eyes, and prepare to rinse out my cup, freezing when I spot the newspaper abandoned on the counter. It’s open to page 7, a single color photo on the otherwise black-and-white page. THIRD HIT-AND-RUN VICTIM DIES IN HOSPITAL.

  The coffee cup slips through my fingers and shatters on the floor, the remaining half inch of brown liquid spilling across the tiles. The cheap fluorescent lights reflect eerily on the surface of the puddle, turning it black and red, congealed blood in my bathroom, in a carpet, in my freezer.

  The fettuccini alfredo I’d had for lunch threatens to come back up, and I grip the counter, dragging in desperate breaths through my mouth. Blinking rapidly, I order myself to calm down. This has been happening since Christmas, since I’d glanced out the window of my car and seen a familiar blond head bobbing by on the street, high ponytail, bright-yellow puffer jacket. Becca. There was an intense stabbing pain in my chest, horror at her return, guilt at having the audacity to have just bought a new sweater for Graham, wrapped neatly in gold and green, something for which I’d paid extra at the mall. For living. Moving on.

  How could you? I heard her say, the words echoing in my skull like a death knell. How dare you?

  And then a car horn had honked angrily, and the blond woman turned her head and it wasn’t Becca, it wasn’t anybody special, and I’d hit the gas so hard I flooded the engine and the car stalled in the middle of the intersection.

  “Carrie?”

  I blink black spots out of my vision until my boss, Troy, comes into focus, hovering uncertainly at the entrance, half an egg salad sandwich in his hand.

  “You okay?”

  I get the impression it’s not the first—or second—time he’s asked.

  “Just fine.” The edges of the room sharpen, the blood on the floor becoming coffee once again. “I dropped my mug—that’s all.”

  I snag a piece of paper towel from the roll on the counter and crouch to blot at the mess, keeping my head ducked to hide my flaming cheeks.

  “What’s going on?”

  I hear murmuring outside the room, and then the question repeats, like a chain reaction. Like they’re all hovering out there, whispering about me, because no matter how many days and months I put between Angelica and Footloose and Becca, it’s just not enough.

  “Have you heard about this?” Troy taps his finger on the newspaper. He asks the question too loudly, like he’s trying to drown out the gossip.

  I stand and toss the paper towel in the compost. “Um, no.”

  “Three people dead from one drunk driver.” He tsks disapprovingly.

  “They know it was a drunk driver?” I cling to the word drunk almost desperately, hoping he doesn’t notice.

  “Well, no. But what else could it be? Three different people running folks over in the same month? One person doing it on purpose? C’mon. This town already had a serial killer. It’s not going to have two. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. I even asked Detective Greaves about it.” He adds that last line with just a bit too much bravado.

  Slowly, I look at him, and the bravado dissipates. “When did you talk to Detective Greaves?”

  “Um, earlier today. He came by looking for you.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “You’d stepped out. I thought I emailed you.”

  Heart pounding, I turn my back and grab a broom to sweep up the shattered ceramic.

  “Watch your feet,” I mutter. From the corner of my eye, I see Laverne from Promotions in the doorway, gripping her water bottle like she’s here for the hydration, not as the office spy.

  “Hi, Carrie,” she says, when I return her stare.

  “Hey, Laverne. Careful in here. It’s dangerous.”

  She clutches the red string of beads that dangle from her glasses and fails to stifle a dramatic gasp. I sweep the broom over the toe of her shoe harder than necessary, catching a piece of broken ceramic handle, and she jumps back like she’s been burned.

  “Told ya.”

  “You, uh, you got this under control, Carrie?” Troy gestures to the small pile of mug pieces I’ve gathered.

  “All good, Troy.”

  “Cool, cool. Then I guess I’ll, uh, get back to work.”

  I shoot him a smile, and he backs out of the kitchen, shooing the interlopers away. Tossing the broken mug in the trash, I snatch up the paper and take it to my office, closing the door to read and panic in private. The third victim is an unnamed forty-year-old man, run down while jogging one evening. He was unconscious but still breathing when a dog walker found him and called an ambulance to the intersection of Laurel Street and Boone Road.

  That’s two blocks from my home.

  I do a double take and read the article again, this time more carefully, but it doesn’t include the date he was hit, saying only “a few nights before.” I wake up my computer and frantically search the accident online, but as with the others, there are no results other than the Brampton Chronicle website, which has no further details. This story is even more bare-bones than the first two, as though the police are really trying to downplay April’s third hit-and-run death. Maybe they, like Troy, think it’s a drunk driver mowing down innocent victims. And maybe they, like Troy, think there was only ever one serial killer in Brampton. What nobody but me knows is that there were two killers in town, and one of them enjoyed running people over when she got mad. One who’s supposed to be dead.

  The room spins, and again my stomach lurches, my lunch determined to make an escape. I put down the paper and will myself to calm, though the possibilities running through my mind make that impossible. Becca’s dead, I assure myself, over and over again. There are no such things as ghosts. She can’t be the one doing this. But the same murder method and the proximity to my home feel like too much to be mere coincidence. It feels like a copycat. Like a message.

  The implications are overwhelming, and I give up the fight and bend over, hurling my pasta into the trash can. I grip the edge of the desk, sweat beading on my forehead, eyes watering. You’re just sick, I tell myself. This is the physical manifestation of your fears and paranoia. There’s no copycat killer in Brampton. No one knew about Becca but you. You’re imagining things.

  My stomach twists again, calling me out on the lie, and I throw up the last vestiges of my lunch, gasping pitifully at the effort. When I’m sure the worst is over, I tie up the bag and lie on the floor, letting the coolness of the fake wood ease my nausea. I don’t know how long it is before there’s a soft knock on the door and Graham comes in, hurrying to kneel at my side.

  “Carrie,” he says, his voice a whisper, “are you okay? Troy called, and I was in the neighborhood on a sales call. He said you were sick.”

  “I’m fine,” I mumble.

  “Do you want me to drive you home?” When I nod, he nods, too. “Your place or mine? Troy said you can have the day off tomorrow to have space and time to recover.”

  I picture that stupid PTSD book on his nightstand, my boyfriend’s sweet, pure intentions. Sufferers need time and space, and only they can decide when they’re ready for you.