Chapter Fifty-Five

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

RILEY STARES AT Diana's phone under the bed, her heart pounding.

She suddenly understands why Evan doesn't want to speak to Diana's ghost. Because Diana must know who killed her, and now Riley does too.

She quietly pushes the bed a little bit further from the wall to get a better look. It's Diana's phone, no question. Evan must have sent that text. He killed Diana, and he thinks he'll never be found out. But why? She doesn't want to touch it. She leaves it where it is.

Her hands are shaking as she calls 911 on her cell.

‘What is your emergency?'

For a moment she can't think. How does she describe this situation?

‘My name is Riley Mead. I'm at Seventeen Beecher Street, Fairhill. The Carr residence. I'm in the house with a murderer.' She keeps her voice as low as possible, afraid that Evan will hear. What if he does? Will he kill her too, and get rid of the phone? She says in a rush, ‘Evan Carr killed Diana Brewer. I found her phone in his room, under his bed. Send police, quickly!'

‘Please don't hang up, ma'am, keep the line open.'

To her horror, she hears steps padding up the stairs. He's heard her. She hides her phone under his pillow, ending the call first so he won't hear the woman's voice on the other end. She hears him stop outside his parents' bedroom door.

‘Riley?'

A few quick steps and he's standing over her. She's feigning sleep, lying on her stomach, her face buried in the pillow.

‘Riley? Are you awake? I thought I heard something. What are you doing in my room?' His voice is strained.

She pretends to wake. She rolls over, blinking. ‘What?'

‘What are you doing in my room?'

He must sense her fear, she thinks, because he knows. His face changes, as if he's someone else, someone unrecognizable.

‘ What have you done? '

‘What do you mean? I haven't done anything,' she says, trying to smile at him, but wholly unnerved by the stranger staring back at her. It's not the Evan she knows, it's someone else. ‘I couldn't sleep in your parents' bed, so I came in here. I hope that's okay.'

He stares at her, indecisive. He sees her hand, under the pillow. ‘What do you have under the pillow?'

‘Nothing.'

He rips the pillow off the bed, sees her phone. ‘Did you call someone?'

She can't hide her fear now, her voice trembling as she answers. ‘No, why? What's wrong, Evan? You're acting weird. You're scaring me.'

He picks up her phone and looks at it. It's locked. ‘Open it,' he says.

She unlocks the phone with dread and he sees her last call. Then he looks at her as if he wants to kill her. It's as if time has stopped. Then they both hear it at once, the police sirens coming down the street, getting louder, closer. The rage in his eyes as he realizes it's too late, that there's no way out.

Ellen knows the truth, now. Everyone knows that Evan Carr has been arrested for the murder of Diana Brewer. They have evidence; he had her cell phone in his bedroom. No one knows why he did it, but they seem pretty sure he did. Her former fiancé is not a murderer after all. And she'd almost believed he was.

Nonetheless, all of this has shattered her view of the world. Her former sunny outlook, her optimism, her belief in the inherent goodness of people – that's all gone. Maybe it will come back some day, but she doubts it. She knows now that she was na?ve, perhaps even wilfully blind. If she's really honest with herself, there were times when she caught Brad noticing young girls when they were out together, standing in line at the movie theatre, or having an ice cream cone at the park. A glance here and there – which she ignored.

She hasn't been to see him. Instead, she went to Graham Kelly's house. She'd heard that it was Kelly who'd gone to the police, who'd told them something that led to Brad's short-lived arrest. She wanted to hear what it was from Kelly's own lips.

She knocked on his door, which was opened by his rigid, unsmiling wife. ‘Can I talk to Mr Kelly for a minute?' she asked. She wondered what was going on behind Mrs Kelly's eyes.

Graham Kelly had come into the living room and his wife had marched out, neither acknowledging the other. He looked as bad as Ellen felt. She was angry at him too. He'd withheld the truth, and he should pay the price. Maybe his wife felt the same way, and that's why she was so angry.

Ellen sat down abruptly on the edge of an armchair, braced herself, and said, ‘I want you to tell me everything. All of it.'

He nodded in defeat. ‘Okay.'

He told her what Diana said had happened in the locker room. He told her the rest of it – how Diana told him that Brad Turner had crept into her unlocked house at night, how he'd made her strip off her clothes so that he could look at her. How he'd intimidated her, telling her that no one would ever believe her because there was no evidence.

Ellen felt the bile rising up her throat. It was all so ugly, so unbelievable. Yet she believed it.

Kelly was weeping then. ‘She said he was a monster,' he said, ‘and I didn't believe her, not then. And then when I learned he had no alibi, I thought maybe he'd killed her. I couldn't live with that on my conscience anymore.'

‘How could you live with it on your conscience at all?' she asked coldly.

‘Brad was blackmailing me,' he said bluntly.

She felt a chill come over her; she hadn't thought it could get any worse, yet here they were.

‘I might as well tell you,' Kelly said. ‘I've already told my wife. Brad knew about an affair I'd had, and he threatened to tell my wife about it if I told anyone what Diana said he'd done to her.' He added ruefully, ‘You might have noticed my wife isn't speaking to me.'

Ellen left the house, sickened by what she'd learned. An innocent man wouldn't have resorted to blackmail.

Now, she hopes Brad goes to jail for what he did, although she doesn't know how they will ever prove it. She never wants to see him, or that little bungalow, again. She decides she'll leave Fairhill and make a new life somewhere else, she doesn't care where. She can't live here any more.

I linger in a corner of the interview room, watching Evan. It's just the two of us, although he's not aware of me. He doesn't believe in ghosts.

I think about that awful moment, when Evan realized that Riley knew, and that she'd called the police. I'd watched in horror – the same chilling transformation had come over Evan when he killed me. Like he was someone else, someone completely different.

I remember Evan – the great pretender – at my funeral. How touched I was by his reading. The nerve of him, when he's the one who put me here.

The desire for revenge, though – the desire to haunt my killer – is fading. Evan will pay the price for my death. He will suffer for what he's done.