Finally, unable to look for one more second, I turned them over, face down on my bed.
No matter—I could still see her, the image of her pain, the horrible suffering she must have endured burned on the back of my retinas for all eternity…
I went back to searching for the shoes. I found the photograph near the bottom of the stack. A muddy pair of sneakers tossed in the back of Chrissy’s closet. A perfect match in the field. As I stared at the print and shoe side by side, I couldn’t shake off Chrissy’s altered version of events…
If she really went out to the field and saw the body, then ran back home in a rush … then the print and shoes meant nothing. They only supported her claim that she was there and that she’d tossed them aside in a hurry, like she told me.
If she were the killer, wouldn’t she have disposed of the shoes in the days following the murder? They weren’t discovered until after her confession. Between the time of the murder and the confession, she’d made no effort to get rid of them … besides tossing them in her closet.
But she had been barely a teenager. Maybe she just didn’t think it through. Or perhaps, she had plans of confessing all along, and that’s why she didn’t hide them.
I allowed myself to consider Chrissy’s story … the new one she had given tonight.
The medical examiner had determined that Jenny wasn’t killed in the field. She’d been dead before she got there.
I scanned through the brief typed report made by the medical examiner, Dr. Samantha Green.
There were thirteen stab wounds. Minor burns on her face and hands. Evidence of strangulation. She technically died of shock, blood loss, and then organ failure.
I shivered, closing my eyes. Fighting off the flashing images of that eye, of the deep, violent wounds on her back and belly.
I turned over one of the photos and examined her hands. There were some defensive wounds.
Which means she tried to fight off her killer…
Whose face did Jenny see on that cold dark night? Was it Chrissy’s? Or someone else’s…?
I didn’t realize I was crying until I saw the drops of water on the photo. Quickly, I used my thick black quilt to wipe it away.
Lying back on the bed, I swiped at my face. I was emotional, not to mention exhausted.
The clock on my nightstand read 3:33am.
The half-eaten pizza was still on the bed. Groaning, I set the plate on the nightstand, then pushed it as far away from me as possible.
The park near Jenny’s home was less than a mile away. Maybe she was coming this way to see Chrissy again—but why? Why did she suddenly need to come back to the girl? And who stopped her along the way?
Someone who possibly wanted to frame Chrissy. Someone who also had a reason to hate Jenny. There was only one person who came to mind: John Bishop.
But John Bishop was supposedly cleared from the get-go—he was at football camp when the murder occurred.
Chrissy said she didn’t force Jenny to go with her; that it was a friendly ride … but if that were true, why did a witness say otherwise?
As far as I knew, the witness at the school had never been mentioned in the news or online. The claim itself had been exaggerated into: “Students at the school saw Chrissy force Jenny into her truck.”
But that wasn’t true. As I flipped over the next page, I found only one witness’s statement in regard to the day Jenny left the school.
It wasn’t another teenager from Austin middle, but a third grader at Austin Elementary, in the adjacent playground, who had seen the incident between the two girls.
A student who’d stayed behind after school, waiting for her mother to pick her up … she’d seen the incident and told the police she was scared. I gasped as I read the witness’s name: Adrianna Montgomery.
Carefully, I stacked the fragile photos and papers and slid them back inside their folder.
It was late and my eyes were heavy with sleep. I’ll go through this more in the morning, I decided, closing my eyes and letting this new revelation about Adrianna sink in. We had been friends then, the best of friends … why didn’t she tell me about it?
I tucked the folder under my mattress again and crawled beneath the covers. For the first time in a long time, I imagined my parents in this room.
And the room above me … the place where I used to lay my head. There’s a possible killer up there now, I thought with a shiver.
I turned out my lamp, but I couldn’t close my eyes. Above me, I stared at the swirling popcorn patterns on the ceiling, imagining Chrissy in my old bed.
My bedroom door was locked tight. But still … the thought of her being so close, in my house, in my room … made my stomach twist with unease.
If she did kill Jenny, then there’s an evil person lying above me.
She might be lying.
But did I really believe that? No, I decided. There’s a reason this case has always bothered me … and I need to know who Chrissy was protecting if I want the truth.
Chapter Eighteen
I woke up shivering, bladder full, and my head throbbing from crying myself to sleep. As I opened my eyes, the first things I noticed were the shadows on my bedroom walls.
It’s not morning. It can’t be.
Groaning, I glanced over at the alarm clock. 5am. I’d been asleep for a little over an hour…
That’s when I heard it, the dull metallic bang from below. I jerked up in bed, panting. What was that?
There was another bang, followed by a series of rattling noises.
The sounds are coming from the basement.
My body was frozen in fear, but I forced myself to make it move. Breathlessly, I tossed the quilt aside, and slipped out of bed. Tiptoeing to
