CHAPTER 29
I offer to work in Lisa’s bedroom while Nancy continues in the living room. She agrees, although she bites the inside of her mouth before consenting, as if she’s unsure I can be trusted. But then she hands me two boxes.
“Don’t worry about trying to sort stuff,” she says, pointing me down the hallway. “Her family will do that. We just need to empty the place.”
Finally out of her sight, I linger in the hall, looking into each of the three rooms located there.
The first one is a guest room, sparsely furnished and immaculately clean. I step inside and roam its circumference, my index finger running along the dresser, the bed, the nightstand. There’s no trace of Sam, even though I can picture her smoking by the open window, just like she’s probably doing in my apartment at this very moment.
I move back to the hall, pausing at the bathroom. This room I refuse to enter. Doing so would feel like invading a crypt. Besides, I have a good enough view from the hall. From sink to tub to toilet, the bathroom is a sea of light blue, smudged in spots by traces of the aluminum powder used to dust for prints. I stare at the tub, unnerved.
Lisa died right there.
I think of her lying in that tub, surrounded by cloudy pink water. I then think of Sam standing in the doorway just like I’m doing. Watching. Making sure the job is complete.
When I can’t look at that tub a second longer, I head to Lisa’s bedroom, trying hard to shake off the chill that’s suddenly come over me. The bedroom is all cream and pink. Cream carpet, pink curtains, rose-colored comforter over the bed. A treadmill stands in the corner, covered with dust and draped with clothes.
I wonder if Lisa ever spent one of our phone conversations in here, doling out advice while walking on the treadmill, or maybe sprawled across the bed. The memory of her phone voice returns.
You can’t change what’s happened, Quincy. The only thing you can control is how you deal with it.
I go to Lisa’s dresser, the top of which is littered with hair accessories, plastic bins overflowing with makeup, and an old-school jewelry box. When I lift its lid, a porcelain ballerina in a tiny tulle skirt pops up and begins to spin.
On the other side of the dresser are several snapshots stuck into plastic frames meant to resemble wood. There’s Lisa at the beach with Nancy, both of them squinting into the sun. Lisa with whom I can only assume are her parents, standing before a Christmas tree. Lisa at the Grand Canyon, at a bar with neon behind her and a hand on her shoulder bearing a red ring, at a birthday party with cake smeared on her face.
I empty the dresser one drawer at a time, grabbing bunches of Lisa’s bras, socks, and granny panties. I remove the clothes quickly, trying to ignore the guilt-inducing fact that I’m snooping. It feels like a violation of sorts. As if I’ve broken into her home and started to ransack the place.
It’s the same thing when I go to the closet and begin clearing it of dresses, pantsuits and sad floral skirts that went out of style years ago. But then I find what I was hoping for. There’s a gray lockbox in a back corner of the closet, partially obscured by a hamper. It’s small, boasting a single drawer. I notice a tiny keyhole in that lone drawer, similar to the one located in my secret drawer at home. And just like on my drawer, the keyhole is circled by a pattern of scratch marks made when the lock was picked.
Now I know for certain that Sam was here. Those scratch marks were her handiwork. They had to be.
My hand drifts to the necklace that holds the key to my drawer. I still wear it, despite being so far from home. It gives me a sense of normalcy when, in truth, everything about my life has been upended by Sam.
I give the drawer a tug and it slides open. Three neatly stacked file folders sit inside it.
The top one is blue and unlabeled. Opening it, I see a scrapbook of sorts. Page after photocopied page of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, stories printed off the Internet. All of them are about the sorority house massacre. Some of the articles have sentences underlined in blue pen. Question marks and sad faces crowd the margins.
The other two folders are red and white. One is about Sam. The other concerns me. I know that even without opening them. The math is simple: Three Final Girls, three folders.
Sam’s folder is the red one. Inside are articles about The Nightlight Inn, including the one from Time magazine that traumatized me as a child. Lisa made notes in those, too. Words, phrases, and whole sentences have been scribbled in the margins.
In the back of the folder are two newspaper clippings, both of them missing dates.
HEMLOCK CREEK, Pa. — Authorities are continuing to investigate the deaths of two campers found stabbed to death last month. Police discovered the bodies of Tommy Curran, 24, and Suzy Pavkovic, 23, inside a tent in a heavily wooded area two miles outside of town. Both victims had been stabbed multiple times. Although there were signs of a struggle at their campsite, authorities say nothing appeared to be taken from the scene, leading them to conclude robbery was not a factor in their deaths.
The grisly crime has left many in this quiet town on edge. It comes barely a year after the body of a 20-year-old woman was found along Valley Road, a little-traveled access road used by employees of Blackthorn Psychiatric Hospital. The woman, whom authorities could never identify, was strangled to death. Police think she was killed elsewhere and later dumped in the woods.
Police say the two crimes are unrelated.
HAZLETON, Pa. — A man was found stabbed to death yesterday inside the home he shared with his wife and stepdaughter. Responding to emergency calls, Hazleton police found Earl Potash, 46, dead in the kitchen of his Maple Street duplex, the victim of multiple stab wounds to the chest and stomach. Authorities have ruled the incident a homicide. The investigation is continuing.
I press a hand to my forehead. My skin is hot to the touch. That’s because of the reference to Blackthorn in the first article. The name always makes me break into a nervous sweat. Although I can’t remember how, I know I’ve heard about those murders in the woods. They took place a year or so before Pine Cottage, in the very same forest. Why Lisa kept a news clipping in a folder devoted to Sam is beyond my comprehension.
A second read doesn’t make things any clearer, so I tuck the clippings back into the folder and put it away. Now it’s time for the white folder.
My folder.
The first thing I see upon opening it is a single sheet of paper. My name is on it. So is my phone number. Now it starts to make more sense. Now I know how Sam got my phone number to call me the night she was arrested.
Next are articles about Pine Cottage, fastened together with a pink paperclip. I flip the stack over without looking at it, fearing I’ll see another picture of Him. Beneath the articles is a letter.
The letter.
The bad one that made even Coop nervous.
YOU SHOULDN’T BE ALIVE.
YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED IN THAT CABIN.
IT WAS YOUR DESTINY TO BE SACRIFICED.
YOU NEED TO BE BUTCHERED.
Shock blasts through me. I start to gasp, but stop myself, afraid Nancy will be able to hear it. Instead, I stare at the letter, not blinking, those out-of-place zeroes like several sets of eyes staring back.
A single question stabs into my thoughts. The obvious one.
How the fuck did Lisa get a copy?
Another, more pressing question follows.
Why did she have it?
Behind the letter, also paperclipped, is the transcript of a police interview. At the top is my name and a date. One week after Pine Cottage. Neatly typed below that are the names of two people I haven’t thought of in years—Detective Cole and Detective Freemont.
Nancy’s voice rings out from the end of the hall, on the move, getting closer.
“Quincy?”
I shut the folder with a snap. I lift the back of my shirt, press the folder flat against my spine and shove it down the seat of my pants far enough so that it won’t flop out when I walk. I then tuck in my blouse, hoping Nancy won’t notice how it was untucked when I arrived.
The other two folders are dropped back into the filing cabinet. The drawer is shoved shut just as Nancy sweeps into the room. She eyes the boxes first, then me, rising from my crouch in front of Lisa’s closet.
“Your time’s about up,” she says.
She’s back to looking at the boxes. Both are only partially filled. One of them has a pair of Lisa’s jeans flopped over the side.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get more done,” I say. “Packing up Lisa’s stuff is harder than I thought it would be. It means she’s really gone.”
We each carry a box to the living room, me letting Nancy lead the way. When we say our goodbyes at the door, I worry she’ll attempt a hug. I stiffen at the prospect of her bony arms sliding over the folder jutting at my back. But apparently she’s like Coop when it comes to hugs. She doesn’t even shake my hand. She simply purses her lips, the wrinkles around them bunching.
“Take care of yourself, hon,” she says.