Pretending to worship her shit.

Each one and all

Can’t wait for her fall

Just wishing she’d take a big hit.

But life as a rule

Is exceedingly cruel

To the queens of phony glory.

They all fall down

And break the crown

And that be the end of their story.

The ones they look down on

The ones that they frown on

Are only too happy to say, Fool

We knew all the time

That this was your prime

Bitch, you peaked in high school.

Gray had been so pleased with herself. She loved making people uncomfortable when she believed they deserved it. No one had been able to make eye contact with Christina. They all knew the poem was about her. Christina’s face had turned to stone.

“You know they think she’s that dead girl that fell out of that car New Year’s Eve,” Aaron said. “The zombie.”

Brittany frowned at him. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. Emily, you said you read about it on TeenCities.”

Emily nodded. “In Sonya Porter’s blog. It was all about how there’s this serial killer out there killing young women and doing terrible things to them.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s Gray,” Christina said.

“You know,” Jessie said, “the way they described that dead girl on the news, it kind of sounded like Gray. God, how weird would that be—to know someone who was murdered by some sick psycho?”

She seemed almost excited at the prospect.

“If it is Gray, the killer got her after she left the Rock and Bowl,” Brittany said. “And she left the Rock and Bowl because of us.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s our fault,” Christina argued. “It’s not our fault there’s some maniac running around killing people. All I wanted was to pay her back for what she did to me. I didn’t wish for her to be kidnapped and tortured by some sicko! God, Britt, is that what you think?”

“No!” Brittany said. “But if that’s what happened to her, I’m going to feel guilty, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to feel terrible,” Christina said, “but I’m not going to feel responsible. I didn’t kill her.”

Emily chewed at a fingernail, looking worried. “What do you think the cops will ask us?”

“What did they ask you, Britt?” Christina asked.

She squirmed on her chair. “They just wanted to know where Gray went. Had I heard from her. Did she leave with anyone. That’s all.”

“You told them she got mad and left,” Christina said, leaning closer, lowering her voice. “Did you tell them why she flipped out?”

“No.”

“They didn’t ask?”

“No.”

She leaned a little closer and swept a big curtain of gorgeous blond waves back over her shoulder. “You didn’t tell them what she said to me, did you?”

“No!” Brittany whispered. “Why would I do that? I wouldn’t do that.”

“You were the only one who heard her say it,” Christina whispered back. “And it’s a lie, anyway, but you know how mean people can be.”

She said it with a straight face, as if she had never been mean to anybody, her big brown eyes blinking with innocence.

“You won’t say anything, will you?”

Brittany shook her head. “No.”

Like the police would give a rip about the petty sniping of teenage girls.

Christina reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze. “You’re such a good friend, Britt.”

Gray probably didn’t think so, Brittany thought.

“You know,” Aaron said, “Hatcher left right after Gray did that night. He’s the one the cops should be talking to.”

•   •   •

“I WANT TO smack this little prick upside the head.”

“That would be wrong,” Tippen said with a bored sigh. “Satisfying, but wrong.”

They stood in the room adjacent to the one the kids sat in, watching them, listening to their discussion via closed-circuit TV. Kids had no expectation of privacy in school. They were literally spied on all day long, in classrooms, in the halls, in the cafeteria, in this conference room waiting to be interviewed by the police.

Kovac studied one kid and then the next, taking in their body language, their facial expressions. Brittany Lawler looked the least happy of the group. She wanted to get up and leave. She squirmed in her seat, leaning away from the girl next to her—Christina Warner.

Christina leaned toward her with a look of concern, put a hand on her shoulder, and murmured something the microphone didn’t pick up. Reassurance. Comfort. Something like that.

Christina was clearly the leader of the pack. Pretty, stylish, aware of her sexuality, bossy. The others looked to her. She was well aware of her position and her power.

It wasn’t hard to imagine there would be tensions between her and a girl like Penny Gray, the perennial outsider. They were opposites, light and dark, manipulative and reactive. Because of the relationship between their parents, they were essentially being pitted against each other for the favor of Julia Gray. Julia Gray, who seemed to have nothing but disapproval and disappointment for her only child. Kovac could easily imagine her saying, Why can’t you be more like Christina?

He turned to Tippen. “Let’s do this. The two stooges first,” he said, pointing to Aaron Fogelman’s wingmen. “Then those two girls. We’ll make the Fogelman kid wait a while after his pals, see if we can’t drum up a little more paranoia in that one. Then we’ll take the Warner girl, then Brittany Lawler again. We’ll leave her ’til last. Let the others wonder why.”

“Dr. Warner is already getting impatient,” Tippen said.

“Good. Let him stew.”

The parents had been assembled by Principal Rodgers in his office, Michael Warner among them. They would be allowed to sit in on the interviews with their individual children. At least none of them had brought an attorney along.

Thankful for small blessings, Kovac took one of the Fogelman kid’s buddies and Tippen took the other. Neither had much of anything to say. They claimed not to really know Penelope Gray. They claimed to be playing skee ball in the arcade when the argument between Gray and Christina Warner went down. The parents were predictably defensive, doing what parents do: getting between trouble and their kids.

The interviews with the two girls, Emily Peters and Jessica Cook, went much the same.

Kovac took the Cook girl, whose mother was big and square and looked like she might fight for the WWE when she wasn’t masquerading as a bank vice president in a sweater and pearls. Momma Bear sat with her meaty arms crossed over her chest and a sour look on her face. The girl had that slightly pinched quality to her expression that spelled a potential for belligerence.

Kovac sat down at the table across from them and began the verbal dance.

“So, Jessica, did you see Gray that night at the Rock and Bowl?”

She rolled her eyes. “You know I did. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“Let’s cut to the chase, then. What went down between Gray and Christina?”

“Gray got pissed off and called Christina a”—she glanced at her mother—“bad name, and she left.”

“Did anybody follow her out?”

“Yeah. Kyle Hatcher.”

“Anybody else?”

She huffed a sigh. “I really wasn’t watching. I don’t like Gray. I don’t care what she does.”

“She’s missing,” Kovac said bluntly. “She might be dead.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said with just enough whine to set his teeth on edge. “I didn’t see anything!”

Momma Bear reared her ugly head. “What does any of this have to do with my daughter? Jessica isn’t responsible for what that Gray girl does. Apparently, no one is.”

“We’re just trying to put together a complete picture here, Mrs. Cook. Any detail, no matter how insignificant it may seem, could be helpful to the investigation.” He turned his attention back to the girl.

She tipped her head to one side, bored, scratching idly at the arm of her chair with a shiny red fingernail. “I didn’t see anything.”