Chapter 32

“I figured you’d be back,” Xander said. “I just didn’t think it would be so soon.”

I peered over his shoulder, looking to see if anyone else was home.

“Are you alone?” I asked.

He nodded. “My daughter is playing at a friend’s house, and my brother is at divorce mediation with his soon-to-be ex-wife.”

“Can I come in? I’d like to continue the conversation we started yesterday.”

“Why? Has something changed?”

“I just have a few followup questions for you,” I said.

Xander stood there a moment and then shrugged. “Guess it would be all right.”

We walked to the living room, and I sat down.

“You want some water or a soda or something?” he asked.

“No, I”m good.”

“All right. I’ll be right back.”

The thought of Xander leaving the room without telling me why raised suspicion. He was at the top of my list of suspects. Still, getting him alone was a good thing. I hoped it would give me the opportunity to get him to say something he hadn’t before, an admission or maybe even a confession.

While I waited for him to return, I kept one hand in my lap and the other beneath my shirt, palming my gun in the event I needed to use it.

Xander returned to the living room with a soda in hand. He plopped down on a chair, cracked the can open, and began gulping it down until it was gone. He set the empty can on the side table and looked at me. “Well, let’s get to it. What are these followup questions of yours?”

“I”ve been thinking a lot about how you were treated when you were in high school,” I said.

“What about it?”

“I’m sure you wanted what every teenager wanted at that age … to be accepted. It’s too bad Jackson and his friends messed with you the way they did.”

“They didn’t all mess with me. Owen was nice. So was Cora … most of the time.”

“What do you mean by most of the time?” I asked.

“Not that it matters, but I had a crush on her for a while.”

“Did she know?”

“I think so. I said as much to her once.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me she wasn’t looking for a relationship, but then I started to notice the way she looked at Owen. It wasn’t the way a person looked at a friend. It was the way a person looked at someone they liked.”

“So she lied to you,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say she lied. I’d say she didn’t feel the same about me as I felt about her, and she let me down easy.”

Owen and Cora seemed different than the rest of the group. They hadn’t teased or taunted Xander like the others had. But if he had a crush on Cora, it made me wonder if jealousy had played a part in his feelings toward her.

“Do you remember some of the football players wearing gold chains back then?” I asked.

Xander tapped a finger on the arm of the chair, thinking. “Don’t think so. Why?”

“The football coach gave them to the star players, which would have included Owen, Aidan, and Jackson.”

“What about them?”

“I was looking at a piece of evidence today that had been collected at the crime scene. I don’t think the detectives knew what it was when they found it, but I believe it was a couple of links from one of the gold chains the boys were given.”

“Okayyy. Why tell me about it?”

I looked him in the eye. “I’m telling you because I think at least one of the boys was wearing the chain they’d been given on the day they died. Strange thing is, in the crime scene photos, the boys weren’t wearing them.”

“So …?”

I’d brought up the gold chains to gauge his reaction, which seemed apathetic. Maybe he was telling me the truth. Maybe Owen had been wearing the necklace on the day he died, and when he was assaulted, it had fallen off or broken. Maybe my theory was just that—a theory.

“I’d like to know more about your home life back then,” I said. “Would you say it was normal?”

“I’d say it was decent. My dad did the best he could.”

“I heard you may have been held back in school.”

“Yeah, it’s true. I was held back for two years. It was embarrassing, trying to fit in, knowing the rumors being spread about me. Everyone thought I was stupid. I wasn’t stupid. It just took me longer to learn things than it did for other people.”

I was pleased with our conversation so far.

He was opening up, responding to my questions without any pushback.

“Back when I was in school, when there was a student who seemed different than everyone else, we didn’t understand it like we do today,” I said.

“You’re around my age, aren’t you?”

“I’m older than you are. I turned forty-seven this year.”

Xander slapped a hand to his knee and said, “Whoa, you don’t look a day over forty.”

I appreciated the compliment.

“What I was trying to say before is that when I was in school, we didn’t speak about personality disorders the way we do today,” I said. “If we had, maybe the kids we went to school with would have been a lot more understanding of each other.”

“Maybe. What are you getting at?”

“You may not want to admit it, even now, but I bet you were angry about the way you were treated in school.”

He blinked at me, a wry grin forming on his lips as he said, “Angry enough to kill? It’s why you’re here again so soon, isn’t it? Are you looking for a confession? Do you think I killed them?”

“I”m not sure.”

“Be straight with me. I can take it.”

He said he could take it, but I wasn’t sure he could.

“All right,” I said. “Out of everyone I’ve looked at and talked to during my investigation, no one had a bigger motive to commit the murders than you did.”

Xander shook his head. “You have balls, I”ll give you that. You come into my house, and you admit I’m the one you think committed the murders.”

“I said you have motive. I didn’t say you did it.”

“You don’t have to say it. You want it to be me. I can tell by the way you’re talking to me. What if I didmurder my classmates? What if you”re right? Do you feel safe now, alone in the house with me?”

The conversation was going in a direction I hadn’t expected. I didn”t know what to make of it. Was he teasing me in some way by not admitting to the murders outright?

“Are you offering to tell me the truth?” I asked.

Xander smiled and burst out laughing. “I had you going for a minute, didn’t I? Of course I didn”t do it. I was just riling you up.”

“It’s not a joking matter.”

“I know it isn’t. Can you blame me? Between yesterday and today, our conversations have been so heavy, I felt the need to lighten things up, even for a few minutes. I hope you catch the guy you’re after, I mean it. Those guys didn’t always show me kindness when we were in school, but they didn’t deserve to die.”

In some ways, it felt like we were playing a game, much like the game he’d played with Aubree. Speaking of …

“What made you decide to play the word game with Aubree?” I asked. “You must have known there was a chance she’d discover your identity.”

“I felt guilty about the calls. I knew it wasn’t right not to tell them who I was when we were talking. When Aubree pushed me to give her my name, I thought it might be time to come clean. I knew there would be consequences.”

“Consequences, yes. But I can’t imagine you thought it would lead to what happened in the park. You didn’t tell the police who assaulted you in the park that day. I still don’t understand why.”

“Those guys were just trying to stand up for their girls by making me pay for how I’d made them feel. I didn’t know they were as scared as they were. In the park that night, Aubree told me how it made her feel. She was crying. I’ll never forget it. I guess I thought I deserved what they did to me, so I kept quiet.”

“You attended the funerals of everyone who died at the cabin, and I heard you were emotional. Why?”

“Same reason as everyone else, I guess. Funerals bring it out in people.”

He had a plausible answer for every question I’d thrown at him so far.

But did I believe his answers?

I didn’t know.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d been joking with me minutes before. Jokes often had some basis in truth and were driven by honest emotion.

How much truth were in his?

As I sat there, deep in thought, he stood and said, “After Owen heard about what happened to me in the park, he wrote me a note. It wasn’t long, just a few lines. I think it’s with some of the other things I kept from back then. Want to see it?”

“Sure.”

He walked down the hall, whistling. A minute later, I heard what sounded like someone shuffling through drawers.

Once again, my nerves were getting the better of me.

He’d said he’d go find the note, but he could have been doing anything.

And then the whistling stopped.

And the house went quiet.

Too quiet.

“Xander, you all right back there?” I asked.

There was no response, which had me creating various scenarios in my head, none of which were good.

“Xander, did you hear me?” I asked. “Want some help finding the note?”

Seconds went by, and then I heard movement.

I gripped my gun, prepared for anything when he came around the corner. But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when he came into view.

I raised my gun, aiming it at him. “Don’t move, and don’t come any closer. Put your hands up, Xander.”

He shook his head and said, “You don’t understand. It’s not what you think.”