“Do you want to see it, Kimberly?” I demand. “The disposal they tried to stick Lindsay down? It’s all clogged up. With her blood and bones. But I’ll show it to you, if you want.”
Kimberly lets out a little moan. The firemen are staring down at me like I’m some kind of sick freak. I guess they’re right. I am a sick freak. I don’t feel bad at all about what I’m doing to Kimberly. Not even a tiny bit.
“You want to know what they did to Lindsay, Kim? Do you want to know?” She shakes her head some more, but I go on anyway. “First, someone strangled her—so hard and for so long, the capillaries around her eyes burst. She was probably gasping for air, but whoever had hold of her didn’t care, and didn’t let go. So she died. But that wasn’t enough. Because then they chopped her up. Chopped her up and put the different parts of her body down the disposal….”
“No.” Kimberly is sobbing now. “No, that isn’t true!”
“It is so true. You know it’s true. And you know what else, Kimberly? You’re next. They’re coming after you next.”
The tear-filled eyes widen. “No! You’re just saying that to scare me!”
“First Lindsay. Then Manuel. Then you.”
“No!” Kimberly jerks away from me—but unfortunately ends up in front of Cheryl Haebig, who has risen to her feet and is standing there, eyes blazing, glaring at Kimberly.
Only Kimberly doesn’t seem to notice the glare. She cries, “Oh, thank God,” when she sees Cheryl. “Cheryl, tell her—tell this bitch I don’t know anything.”
But Cheryl just shakes her head.
“You told her Lindsay and Coach A were involved?” she snaps. “Why would you do that? Why? You know it wasn’t true.”
Kimberly, seeing she’s not going to get any support from Cheryl, backs away from her, still shaking her head. “You…you don’t understand,” she hiccups.
“Oh, I understand, all right,” Cheryl says. For every step she takes forward, Kimberly takes another step back, until Kimberly’s back is up against Magda’s desk, where she freezes, looking fearfully up into Cheryl’s face. “I understand you were always jealous of Lindsay. I understand you always wanted to be as well liked and popular as Lindsay. But it was never going to happen. Because you’re such a fucking—”
Only Cheryl doesn’t get to finish. Because Kimberly has collapsed against the cashier’s desk, sliding slowly down it until she’s on the floor, a puddle in New York College white and gold.
“No,” she sobs. “No, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t kill her!”
“But you know who did,” I step forward to say. “Don’t you, Kimberly?”
She’s shaking her head. “I don’t! I swear I don’t! I just—I know what Lindsay did.”
Cheryl and I exchange puzzled glances.
“What did Lindsay do, Kimberly?” I ask.
Kimberly, her knees curled up to her chest, murmurs softly, “She stole his stash.”
“She what?”
“She stole his stash! God, what are you, dense?” Kimberly glares up at us through her tears. “She stole his entire stash, about a gram of coke. She was mad at him, ’cause he was so stingy with it. Like, she’d blow him and he’d just give her a line or two. Plus he was seeing other girls, too, on the side. It was pissing her off.”
Cheryl takes what seems like an involuntary step backward when she hears this. “You’re lying,” she says to Kimberly.
“Wait,” I say, confused. “Whose stash? Doug Winer’s? Are you talking about Doug Winer?”
“Yes.” Kimberly nods miserably. “She didn’t think he’d miss it. Or if he did, he’d think one of his frat brothers took it. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Cheryl!” Kimberly is glaring at her fellow squad member. “Lindsay wasn’t a fucking saint, you know. No matter what you and the other girls want to think. God, I don’t know why you guys could never see her for what she was…a coke whore. Who got what she fucking deserved!”
Kimberly’s sobbing has risen to hyperventilation level. She’s clutching her arms to her stomach as if she were suffering from appendicitis, her knees to her chest, her forehead to her knees.
But while Cheryl has backed off, looking horrified, I’m still not about to let Kimberly off the hook.
“But Doug did miss the coke,” I say. “He missed it, and he came looking for it, didn’t he?”
Kimberly nods again.
“That was why Lindsay needed to get into the caf. To give him his coke back. Because she hid it in here, didn’t she? Because she didn’t think it would be safe to leave in her room, where Ann might find it.” Nod. “So she got the key from Manuel, let herself in here, smuggled Doug into the building somehow, and…Then what? If she gave it back…why’d he kill her?”
“How should I know?” Kimberly lifts her head slowly, as if it were very heavy. “All I know is that Lindsay ended up getting what she deserved after all.”
“You…” Cheryl is glaring down at the other girl, her chest rising and falling rapidly with emotion, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “You…you…bitch!”
Which is when Cheryl draws her arm back to slap Kimberly, who cowers—
But Cheryl’s hand is seized before she can bring it down across Kimberly’s face.
“That,” Detective Canavan, who has come up behind us, says calmly, “is enough of that, ladies.”
25
Now there’s a storm front coming over me
High winds, choppy sea
Don’t know how long I can stay afloat
A chocoholic in a sinking boat.
“Sinking”
Written by Heather Wells
“So there you go,” I say to Pete, as we sit at the sticky table in the back of the Stoned Crow after work. “There’s your motive, plain as day.”
A glance at the security guard’s face reveals that he’s at least as confused as Magda. “What?” they both say at the same time.
“That’s why he killed her,” I explain patiently. “Lindsay was going around, shooting her mouth off to her friends about his drug dealing. He had to silence her, or risk getting caught eventually.”