“And the last we can account for Penny Gray is leaving the Holiday station between nine thirty and ten,” Liska said. “She doesn’t show up again until she falls out of the trunk of a car on New Year’s Eve. That’s a big chunk of time to account for. We need to know what Michael Warner, Christina Warner, and Julia Gray were doing all that time.”

“I’ve already spoken to Dr. Warner a few times,” Elwood said. “I can reach out to him again on the excuse of tying up loose ends.”

“We need to feel him out on the general issue of whether or not Penny Gray may have suffered abuse without him playing the patient confidentiality card. Maybe we can ask him if he thought she might have had someone else she would confide in.”

“You’d think the girl would have confided in somebody,” Elwood said. “A girlfriend, a counselor.”

“I don’t think she trusted anyone,” Liska said. “Kyle knew her. He said she didn’t have friends like most girls have friends. She pretended with one group of acquaintances that she had friends elsewhere, and vice versa.”

“She internalized everything,” Sonya concluded, looking at the pages of poetry Elwood had taped to the wall. “I get that. Her poetry was her outlet. That’s how creative people are. We bottle the feelings up inside until the feelings turn into words or images that have to come out onto a page or a canvas or a—”

“Tattoo,” Elwood said.

The two of them exchanged a look.

“If you put out raw emotion, people can reject you directly, personally,” Sonya said. “If you form that emotion into something else, then the thing you create can be rejected, but at least it’s once removed from you.”

“Everyone in this girl’s life found her to be an irritation, a problem, something they didn’t want to be bothered to deal with,” Liska said. “But something happened that night. She pushed somebody’s button one time too many.”

“Or Dr. Warner bought her silence with that car he gave her for her birthday,” Elwood pointed out. “Or she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Sam is working the wrong place / wrong time angle. We get to take a harder look at the people she knew. The last people we know who interacted with her were the kids at the Rock and Bowl. She said something to Christina Warner that made the Warner girl angry enough to lunge at her. I want to know what it was.”

“The Warner girl said Penny Gray attacked her,” Elwood said.

“She lied. Kyle was there. He saw it go down. I want to know why.” She looked at her watch. “PSI is having an assembly today for Penny Gray’s classmates and any other students who feel the need to attend. It might be our only chance to talk to any of these kids without a parent or attorney looking over their shoulders.”

She pointed a finger at Sonya. “You didn’t hear me say that.”

“Say what?”

“I’m not looking for anything to use in court. I’m looking for loose threads to pull to unravel the story these kids have woven together. Somebody knows exactly what went down. We have to find a way to make one kid want to tell us.”

“What about me?” Sonya asked. “Can I come?”

“Absolutely,” Liska said. “You’re known to these kids through social media. I want them to feel like they can contact you somehow if they have something to say but don’t want to say it to us. Can we make that work?”

“I’m in if the school will have me.”

Nikki smiled a nasty smile, thinking how happy Principal Rodgers would be to have Sonya Porter with her tattoos and multiple facial piercings address his students.

“Oh, they’ll have you,” she said. “I will take great joy in making that happen.”

38

“I can’t believe they’re making us go to this,” Jessie Cook said as they walked down the hall toward the assembly theater, Jessie shoulder to shoulder on Christina’s left, Brittany on Christina’s right. “Like any of us are traumatized because of Gray.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Please.”

Brittany said nothing. She hadn’t wanted to come to school at all. Ironically, her mother had made her come because of the assembly. She thought it was important for Brittany to be at school among her friends instead of home alone, brooding, and for them all to listen to the counselors and talk about what had happened and how they should try to deal with their emotions.

“Are you traumatized, XT?” Jessie asked Christina. They shared a knowing look, like it was the funniest joke in the world that they didn’t have any human feelings toward a girl they had known for years, a girl who had been killed and dumped in the road like a sack of garbage.

“How about you, Britt?” Jessie asked, leaning forward and looking at her past Christina. “Are you traumatized? You and Gray were such good friends.”

Brittany wanted to call her a bitch and tell her to go to hell, but none of those words came out of her mouth. The best she could manage was to say, “Yeah, Jessie, I happen to think being murdered by a serial killer is a traumatic event no matter who it happens to.”

“Britt’s right,” Christina said. “What happened to Gray is terrible. If you don’t think that’s terrible, Jessie, what kind of fucked-up person are you?”

Jessie frowned. “Well, I mean, of course it’s terrible, but it’s not like it happened to one of us.”

Brittany rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh.

Aaron opened the door to the theater and held it for them like he was a gentleman or something. They all went in and were herded down the stairs by a teacher to the lower third of the auditorium. A group of adults had gathered on the stage. Principal Rodgers looked fussy and unhappy as he discussed something with a petite woman with short-cropped blond hair—Kyle’s mom, who had come to school a few times for the antidrug program. With her was the big, burly detective who had come to Brittany’s room that first night anyone had realized Gray was missing. A younger woman with a sleek dark bob and tattoos peeking out of her sweater stood to one side of the big detective—Sonya Porter.

Emily leaned ahead in her seat on the far side of Jessie, looking down the row at all of them, and said, “That’s Sonya Porter from TeenCities.”

Behind them, Aaron leaned forward and put his hands on Christina’s shoulders and whispered something in her ear. Christina laughed.

Brittany squeezed herself to the far side of her seat, away from them, wanting to slink out and disappear. Christina leaned toward her, all loving concern, and put a hand on her knee. “Are you all right, Britt?”

“I’m fine,” Brittany said, avoiding eye contact. “I’ve got a headache, that’s all.”

“Do you want something for it?” Christina whispered as Principal Rodgers took the podium and the room began to quiet. “Aaron can get you something.”

“No, thanks,” she said, thinking there was no drug to help what was bothering her.

Principal Rodgers started droning on in his self-important, condescending way, telling them all what a tragedy had befallen their school and how their school would be here for them in their time of need. He didn’t have a clue what went on in his school. He didn’t have any idea who his students were. How much help could he possibly be? He had hated Gray, was always angry with her for the way she dressed, for the way she did her hair. Brittany had once seen him stop Gray in the hall and make her take out all but two of her earrings and give them to him right there.

Kyle’s mom took the podium next. Brittany had never actually met her, but she had seen her at school a couple of times and had been fascinated with the idea that she was a homicide detective. Kyle didn’t like to talk about it. To him, his mom was just his mom, who happened to be a cop, who happened to investigate murders.