Beautiful Dead 03. Summer Read online

  Phoenix kept me from fal ing. He held me close and I clung to him until my head began to clear. He picked me up and carried me into the house, up the stairs to the bedroom where he laid nie on the bed.

  'You're going to be OK,' he promised, bending over me so that his lips were against my cheek. 'Hunter relented.'

  I could see him in the lamplight and raised my hand to touch his smooth, cold skin. 'I'm sorry,' I whispered.

  Phoenix sat on the edge of the bed. ' For what?' He took my hand away from his cheek and kissed my fingers.

  'For angering Hunter. For messing things up.'

  ' Hey, Hunter upsets real easy. You didn't mean to do it.'

  'Don't be nice to me! Tel me I'm an idiot for pushing his buttons.'

  He smiled warily. 'You're an idiot, but you're my idiot.'

  'You make me want to cry.' I lay with my head on the pil ow, my face turned away. 'I thought I'd be so happy here, with you again!'

  'Don't cry,' he pleaded, lying down beside me. 'You're here. I'm

  here.'

  Where have you been, Phoenix? Why did you stay away? I know, 35

  don't tel me - Hunter is the one who makes the decisions. You don't get to choose.'

  Phoenix tilted my head towards him. 'That's the deal,' he agreed. We have to accept it.'

  'It doesn't stop me wishing that it could be the way it was before,' I whispered. With his body next to mine, his clear eyes looking at me, taking in every detail of my face, his fingers brushing my lips while I talked, I felt so close, like we'd never been apart. 'Remember how we did things back then, with no one to stand in our way?'

  'I remember every second we spent together. It's stored up here.' He tapped his forehead then pressed the centre of his temples. 'You know what I wish?'

  'What? That we had longer?' Two months of Beautiful Dead reunions was al we had left. Eight and a half weeks.

  That I could put it in a bottle and keep it. I don't want a moment of it to slip away, not ever. I want your voice with me wherever I am, your eyes looking at me the way they do right now, arm in arm, side by side.'

  You never told me this before.'

  'I never put it into words,' he whispered. ' But you already knew.'

  I nodded. 'Let the heart speak - that's what you once told me. But hearing the words is good too.'

  Phoenix's smile grew warmer, got right behind his eyes and made them sparkle in the soft light. I felt myself melt as I leaned my head back and he kissed me.

  'Darina, I want you to meet Dean.' Hunter introduced the new guy over the kitchen table, cal ing Phoenix and me down from the bedroom soon after Summer and Dean came back to the house. ' Dean, Darina is the only person from the far side who gets to know about the Beautiful Dead.

  We trust her with our secret.'

  Was he mocking me, or was he genuine when he used the 'trust' word? I glanced at him but couldn't tel , so I switched my attention to the newcomer - a heavy-set guy with a shaved head, whose open-necked shirt showed his death mark: the dark-blue angel-wing tattoo in the angle between his neck and his col ar bone. 36

  'Dean is an ex-cop,' Hunter went on. 'A hundred punks and dopeheads wanted him dead.'

  'How did it actual y happen?' And why was he here? I knew you only got to be Beautiful Dead if there was a mystery that needed clearing up. You had to deserve to come back.

  'Car crash,' Dean told me. 'Severed the top of my spinal cord. Drunk driver.'

  I shuddered, wondering whether or not Hunter would want me to work for Dean on the far side and exactly where he was on the list - before or after Phoenix, Donna and Iceman? Al I knew for sure was that Summer was next.

  'The culprit was never traced,' Hunter said. 'Dean had been fol owing the car out by Amos Peak, ready to pul him over. The driver refused to cooperate.'

  'Which is the last thing I remember.' Dean spoke like a cop like he'd seen every bad thing a person can do and then some.

  I don't know why but I felt that helping him might be harder than

  working for the others. Maybe it was the generation gap, or my particular problem with authority figures.

  'Except that Dean radioed in the car registration plate before the crash,' Hunter added. 'Which means the details should've been on record, but evidently someone in the office got careless.'

  'That piece of data was wiped from the computer, or it never got recorded,' Dean said between gritted teeth. 'No driver was ever traced.'

  'So Dean gets to come back and set the record straight.' Hunter rounded up the discussion. 'Keep it in mind, Darina. And remember, he died doing his job.'

  I frowned. 'Summer is stil priority, though? I mean, how many days do we have - twenty, twenty-one?' Searching for her among the quiet figures in the room, I saw her standing by the doorway and went to join her. 'I drove to your house, did you know?'

  She took a deep breath. 'How was it?'

  'There were people there - Al yson and Frank Taylor, some others. A party.'

  'For my birthday?'

  'Yeah. They were cool, though. I can honestly say that no one cried 37

  while I was there.'

  'Mom?'

  'She held it together, even though she didn't expect to see me.' ' Dad?'

  'Cool. He's strong. I real y like your dad, Summer.'

  What else could I tel her? That they hadn't moved a single object in her room since she died, that her mom wasn't painting any more. I avoided the deep stuff because there was no comfort there.

  She probably delved into my mind and saw it anyway.

  'So now we need to focus on you, Summer.' This was Hunter speaking, and it was weird because he'd done one of his sudden shifts of tone from harsh to almost gentle. 'Tel Darina everything you remember about the DAY.' He said 'day' in upper-case letters so everyone knew what he meant. 'And Darina, please give it your ful attention.'

  Meaning, tear your mind away from Phoenix, forget about yourself and your own grief for a change. 'Why do you always think the worst of me? What did I do?' I wanted to protest, but a glance from Phoenix warned me off.

  'Let's walk,' Summer suggested.

  We had regular sleepovers when Summer was alive. Usual y I would take my guitar to her house. We would hole up in her room, maybe play a song she'd just written, she would change a few notes or words, while I designed an album cover on Photoshop or wrote sleeve notes. We'd dreamed of her making the big time since we were ten years old.

  So we were used to looking up at the night sky together, star-spotting and working out which was Orion, getting it al wrong and saying, 'Hey, there are a mil ion stars up there. Who needs a name?'

  Tonight as we walked we saw two shooting stars.

  'So I'l find your gunman,' I promised. We were up by Angel Rock, out of sight of the barn and house. 'If that's what you want me to do.'

  It was a long time before she reacted. 'Sometimes I wonder what difference it'l make to find out who did the shooting. Why not leave it at "Some crazy guy who ran away and who they never caught. End of story"?'

  But we both knew we couldn't leave it hanging in the air like this. 38

  And other times?'

  'Then I think it through and I know it makes al the difference in the world to the people I left behind.'

  'Your mom and dad?

  'My mom especial y. She needs closure.'

  We walked on a while before I asked Summer something that was bothering me. 'And you? Do you have any anger towards this guy?' The guy who sprang out of nowhere and started spraying bul ets around the mal . Scrawny Psycho Man with the peak of his white cap and a pair of shades hiding his face, not even aiming before he fired.

  'Anger?' she echoed with surprise.

  'Why not? He stole your life. Don't you picture al the stuff you could've done - the music especial y. Al just gone - wiped out. Don't you hate him for that?'

  No. I think of Mom and Dad and how their lives are on hold. That's it. That's why I'm here to get the truth so they can move on.'

&
nbsp; 'So I guess that's me,' I confessed with a sense of shame. 'I'm angry for you.'

  Summer stopped on the ridge to look at me, the wind in her hair, an infinity of stars above her head. 'Al my life I wanted to be more like you, Darina.'

  I stepped away and shook my head.

  'Yes. The way you always know what's right and what's wrong, no grey areas. Me - I look from al angles and end up without a point of view.'

  'We're different,' I agreed. 'But you're the one with the talent. We al envy you. Actual y no,' I said straight away. 'No way do we feel jealous.

  We al want you to be this big, big star, for the whole world to know

  you.

  'We're talking as if it might stil happen,' she pointed out, staring up at the sky.

  I took her hand and stood with her for a while. Then we walked arm in

  arm back to the house.

  The whole of the state police were stil looking for Summer's kil er. It was a high-profile shooting, part of the cluster of deaths that launched El erton into national prominence and kept it there for months on end.

  You need to dig deep,' Hunter instructed before I left Foxton that night. 'And this time you real y don't come back until you have something new to tel us understand?'

  'Got it.' My short answer came through gritted teeth. I held Phoenix's hand more tightly.

  'Wait for us to come to you,' the overlord insisted. 'And be careful not to attract attention.'

  'Got it,' I said again.

  'So go.' Hunter turned his back and it was Phoenix who led me out of the house in silence.

  'How are you doing?' he asked, halfway up the hil .

  I shook my head. 'This is cruel. Why can't I come to see you?'

  'Because.' His shrug conveyed the helplessness we shared. 'Hunter tightened up on the rules,' he explained. 'He doesn't want anyone fol owing you out to Foxton - Logan or any of your buddies. You know what happens if someone from the far side finds out we're here.'

  'You leave and never come back.' It was a death sentence al over

  again. None of the Beautiful Dead ever got another chance to unravel the mysteries surrounding them. No one got justice or peace of mind.

  'So that's the risk.' Phoenix stopped as we reached the ridge where Summer and I had star-gazed earlier. 'No one's saying you got careless, Darina. Hunter's looking at the laws of probability, is al .'

  'The more I drive out here, the greater the risk that someone fol ows me?' This discussion, which pushed me kicking and screaming back into the grey world, was making me miserable. 'Maybe Hunter should trust me more,' I pointed out. 'I'm getting pretty good at covering my tracks.'

  'I know, baby.' With his arms around my waist, Phoenix pul ed me close. *I know, I know.'

  'Tel me you'l stil be here when I come back,' I sighed. 'I'l be here.'

  'Tel me you stil love me.'

  This time he didn't speak. He put it al into a long, lingering kiss that told me everything I needed to know.

  The next day, Sunday, I steered clear of Laura and Jim and took my 40

  laptop with me to a quiet coffee bar on the edge of town. I sat by the window, looking out on roofs and sidewalks stil wet from snow melt.

  'Black coffee,' I told the waitress as I logged on and typed El erton kil ings into the search engine. I wasn't feeling good. Maybe the coffee would help with the headache left over from the day before and the shaky, hopeless feeling of being cut off from Phoenix until I came up with some good new information on Summer.

  I already knew there was a whole website devoted to recent events in

  town. It listed the deaths - Jonas Jonson, Arizona Taylor, Summer

  Madison and Phoenix Rohr, with pictures of each of the victims, together with short biographies and quotes from friends and families. The entire thing was a rubber-necker fest for people who got their kicks from

  sudden, untimely deaths - those onlookers who pick over details until

  they feel they're somehow part of the story and write stuff on the site like Summer, I luv a so much and We'11 miss a 4ever. This was so not my thing. In fact, I felt queasy just accessing the site.

  But where else did I start with solving the mystery of Summer's kil ing? I had to trawl through the tributes, the newspaper articles, police activity, autopsy report, even the reviews of her music and the links with her angelvoice website, looking for anything that jumped out.

  The waitress brought coffee and looked over my shoulder at the screen. Are you reading about that poor kid, Summer Madison?' she asked. 'Did you hear her "Red Sky" track?'

  I nodded.

  And the one about being in love with someone who doesn't know you're into them, and how that feels. What's the name of that one?'

  "'Invisible." I didn't welcome the conversation - it was happening even though I'd turned my screen away and kept my shoulders hunched over my coffee.

  'Yeah, "Invisible". So cool.' Waitress-girl was stil hanging around and hoping for a reaction from me. 'Actual y, I know Summer's family.

  My mom was their housekeeper. She says there was music and guitars 41

  everywhere. She doesn't go there now that Mrs Madison isn't doing so wel . Mom says she doesn't like people poking around Summer's old stuff.'

  I looked up over my shoulder. 'I'm pretty busy,' I told her.

  She nodded quickly. 'Sorry. I didn't mean to-'

  'You didn't. It's cool.' I waited for her to get back behind her counter then refined my search to find newspaper articles written at the time of Summer's kil ing. There were dozens and systematical y I began to read the reports, trying to keep my own feelings at bay and not to relive the nightmare moments.

  Friday, April thirtieth, four-thirty p.m. Lone gunman, random attack. Shot twice - once in the leg, once in the chest. The seventeen-year-old victim died instantly. Some facts were set in stone.

  I went on to interviews with witnesses - mal employees, friends of the victim, including the comments I gave to a reporter while I was stil traumatized: 'This is not happening. It can't be true.' The reporter states that I said the same short phrase over and over: 'It can't be true.' Even though the ambulance had arrived and the paramedics had taken Summer away in a body bag, and the place was swarming with cops.

  Then I got into the police statements. There was the point twenty-four hours after the shooting when their investigation had thrown up a couple of unspecified leads. They were planning to interview everyone present in the mal at the time of the shooting, then a couple of days down the line they were spreading the net, appealing for any information about the missing gunman, asking the public to report anyone behaving suspiciously on the day of the shooting. Then, later stil , they got into searches of abandoned cars and buildings, and as a last resort they went to Al yson Taylor's news station and recorded an appeal from Jon Madison, begging the kil er to give himself up and give the family closure. Eventual y, when that failed, they started to look out of state at copycat kil ings.

  I slowed down with the mouse action to read this part thoroughly. The

  local newspaper stuck with the crime long after it vanished from the 42

  nationals. On June sixth they reported a shooting in Venice, Florida. The same thing the guy walked into a mal in late afternoon, wearing a black sweatshirt and white basebal cap. He didn't aim before he fired. This

  time he hit three targets. Two people died, the third had serious chest

  injuries. And again the gunman got away. The Venice cops believed he'd parked his car close to the car-park barrier, straight out on to an intersection with five exits. He probably chose the coast road north to the Texas Panhandle, the fastest highway he could find.

  I read the report twice. The white cap grabbed my attention. I got a flashback of April thirtieth - Summer exiting the music shop, waving at me and starting to walk across the plaza, a wide-open target. The face of

  the gunman beneath the white peak - thin and wearing aviator shades. Why those ugly shades? I wondered at the time, in th
e seconds before he pul ed out his gun.

  Now I sat and asked myself if the same crazy guy had driven south and chosen another mal . Had he driven from town to town until he found one with an easy escape route? Did he plan things this careful y, with chil ing attention to detail?

  'More coffee?' The waitress was back, snooping at my screen.

  'No - thanks.' I clicked the Back key repeatedly. El erton kil ings came up. I was back where I'd started. This time I chose a new route and clicked on El erton a town 's History of Violence.

  A journalist had written a special feature for a weekend magazine and it was reprinted here. He seemed to think there was something in the fact that a smal town in the American Midwest had played host to more than the average number of kil ers. He claimed that the crime statistics put

  El erton in the same league as some of the major cities. You can't sleep

  safe in your beds' was his message to residents. And as a matter of fact, he told us, this curse went way back, to the start of the last century and beyond.

  I read that I lived in a town that grew up around cattle - we were on

  the route the drovers used as they headed south from Montana into Texas, 43

  and these drovers were a lawless bunch, stealing steers from other herds, shooting each other in the back for the sake of a few dol ars per head. The whole thing didn't settle down until the cattle drives dried up and El erton got itself a train station on the main route west through the Rockies. Then haulage companies invested and El erton grew respectable, on the whole.

  Come the end of the nineteenth century, we had three churches and five schools. We stil had cattle, but they were mainly fenced in. The ranchers' wives came into El erton to shop along a main street sel ing hats, gloves, lace for their col ars and hand-made boots.

  End of history lesson, but not quite. The journalist soon got back to the gory part of our past for example, the ancient, unsolved mystery of a rape and homicide out at Foxton Ridge. My finger twitched on the mouse button as I read on.