The Body Finder

command, just for dramatic effect. “Do you think…would you mind…taking me? So I don’t have to go alone…?” Her voice trailed off, and she waited for his answer.

She nailed it perfectly, from form to execution. And even with the high degree of difficulty, she had to give herself a perfect 10 for her performance. Jay would have seen right through it, but Grady was clueless.

“When do you want to go?” he asked.

“Can you be here in an hour?”

She probably could have told him to be there in two minutes, and he would have been there in one.

When Violet hung up, she was surprised that she didn’t feel even the slightest hint of guilt over her deceit, and she wondered if she would have felt differently if it had been Jay she’d lied to.

The next part of her plan was a little trickier. She had to convince her parents to let her go.

Her dad was still at work, but her mom was in her studio. Violet wandered across the lawn to the small shed that had been converted into an art studio, and when she pushed the door open she was assaulted by the familiar linen-y scent of canvas and the more vaporous fumes of paint thinner.

Her mom smiled in greeting as she was cleaning brushes in an old Mason jar filled with the caustic cleaners. “What’s up, Vi?”

Violet hesitated, and her first real pang of guilt battered at her conscience. But there was no turning back now, she decided, and she forged ahead anyway. “Grady Spencer called and asked if I could go to the cemetery with him.”

Her mom’s eyebrows rose at the unusual request, and she stopped stirring the brushes, wiping her hands on her paint-smeared smock. She seemed concerned, and Violet knew why. This wasn’t something Violet would normally ask.

Violet plunged into her rehearsed explanation. “I guess he was friends with the girl that was killed, the one from Bonney Lake. He wants to take flowers to her grave but he doesn’t want to go alone.” She could scarcely believe she’d said that without flinching. “I didn’t think it would be a big deal, especially since he’ll be with me, so I told him I would.” She forced herself to appear as relaxed as she could manage at the moment, while her heart hammered nervously against her rib cage. “It’s okay, isn’t it?”

Maggie Ambrose studied her daughter thoughtfully. “Are you sure, Violet?”

Violet nodded and held her breath as she looked at her mom warily, watching for any signs of what she might be thinking. For a moment, she thought she saw a fleeting look of skepticism, and she wondered if maybe she’d laid it on a little too thick.

Finally, though, her mom went back to cleaning her brushes and shrugged. “I suppose it’s fine. As long as you two stay together.” She gave Violet a look that said she was serious. “I mean it, Violet Marie…stay together. And be careful.”

“We will, Mom. Thanks.” She ran up and gave her mom a quick kiss on the cheek, surprising them both a little. Violet hadn’t done that in ages, and she couldn’t help thinking that the impulsive action was brought on by her own burning sense of shame at having flat-out lied to her mother. Maybe the affectionate gesture made her feel a little less remorse for what she was about to do.

But even with the heft of her conscience weighing on her, Violet practically skipped away from the converted shed and waited impatiently in the house for Grady to arrive.

CHAPTER 13

VIOLET SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT OF GRADY’S souped-up, five-year-old Nissan Sentra. It was a strange car to have “pimped out,” although she kept that thought to herself since Grady was so obviously proud of it, puffing up as he pointed out the new spinners and the iridescent-purple paint job he’d put over the stock champagne silver it had worn from the factory. The engine was ridiculously loud, another thing Grady was enormously pleased by.

But for Violet, the noisy ride couldn’t ease the tension she felt now that she was actually following through with her plan. She couldn’t believe she’d pulled it off. But it came with a price.

She could feel the muscles in the back of her neck bunching up the closer they got to the small downtown cemetery where Brooke Johnson had been buried. Grady must have mistaken her anxiety for grief-over the loss of her invented friendship with Brooke-because he’d stopped bothering her with his constant stream of small talk once they rounded the bend on the winding riverside road.

But for once, Violet had the opportunity to do something useful with her ability, and she refused to shirk that obligation.

The heavy, black, wrought-iron fencing came into view as Grady made the final left-hand turn toward the cemetery.

Violet was surprised when they reached the entrance and she hadn’t yet felt, or rather sensed, anything from within the gated walls. She worried that maybe she’d been wrong about all of this. That maybe this was similar to what happened with the animals she’d discovered in the woods, when their individual echoes seemed to vanish into a nearly imperceptible static noise once she’d reburied them in her own personal graveyard.

And if it was just static, maybe she wouldn’t be able to distinguish Brooke Johnson’s echo from the rest.

Grady pulled the car into a small lot and turned off the deafening engine.

When she stepped out of the car, Violet was immediately immersed in an electric crackling. It was all around her, only slightly different from the staticky hum she’d become accustomed to in her own improvised graveyard…but definitely there nonetheless. The tension in her neck was back, and she braced herself for a sensory onslaught.

Grady couldn’t hear a thing.

He rounded the car and walked quietly beside her as they began to wander, little by little, through the rows of headstones and grave markers. Small American flags sprang up from the ground in several spots, and Violet was careful not to disturb any of the homemade memorials that filled the cemetery with vibrance and color, taking on a life of their own.

“Do you know where she’s buried?” he asked, his voice acquiring a somber quality, echoing the solemn atmosphere of the cemetery that stretched out before them.

She didn’t know. For some reason, Violet hadn’t even considered that it might be a problem finding the girl’s grave; she’d just assumed that she would know where it was…that she would somehow sense Brooke’s location among the others buried here. She shook her head in answer to his question.

“That’s okay,” Grady said, taking it in stride, and suddenly Violet felt like she was with her old friend again. She’d missed him. “We’ll just walk around until we find it,” he reassured her.

Violet supposed he was right; it shouldn’t be too hard. It was a small cemetery, taking up less than a few square blocks. But when she looked out at the sea of headstones, many covered with flowers and balloons, she was amazed by how many grave sites seemed to fit into the relatively small space.

Violet soon realized that the white noise wasn’t just static after all. As she concentrated, trying to find her way toward Brooke Johnson, she could feel fluctuations in the energy of it. She took a deep breath, trying to relax herself enough so that she could work on separating one energy from another.

There were definitely echoes of the murdered here.

She heard a shrill explosion of fireworks somewhere very nearby, and she flinched, turning nearly full circle to see where it had come from. The crisp crackling sounds were familiar, reminding her of hot July days and summertime picnics.