The Girl I Used to Be

  “How did you know my uncle?”

  “I didn’t. I just moved in next door to Nora Murdoch. She asked me to drive her because she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I know that house. It’s cute. That’s where my uncle’s girlfriend grew up.” She pulls a red sleeveless shirt over the black tank top she’s wearing.

  Medford’s small enough that everyone knows everything, I guess. Except who killed my parents. I realize I should say something.

  “I’m, uh, sorry for your loss.”

  Her brows draw together for a second. “What? Oh, my uncle? I only remember him and his girlfriend a little bit.” So much for her suffering, the way Duncan said. “My family spent years not talking about Uncle Terry because most of them secretly thought he was a killer.” She takes off the shirt and puts it in her shopping basket. “My mom used to wonder if the cops were monitoring our mail or phone calls. Sometimes she even thought Terry did it.”

  “So was her brother, like, abusive to his girlfriend?” I hold my breath. I don’t want to know, but I need to.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.” Her bangs fall back into their perfect straight line above her eyes. “Maybe my mom just figured you can never really know what someone is capable of.”

  “So now who does she think did it?”

  “I think she’s hoping it was a stranger. Some drifter who was just passing through, left my uncle’s car in Portland and kept on going. Maybe went on to the next town or the next state and found some more people to kill.”

  “Why is she hoping that?”

  “If it was someone here who did it, it would probably be a person she knew. Maybe even a friend.”

  A lot of people in this town probably feel the same. Maybe they think what happened was long ago, that it’s time to forget and move on. Especially if the truth is going to add more pain, rip open the old wound and make it even deeper.

  “I heard that guy Jason used to have a crush on Naomi,” I say.

  Her eyes open wider. “Who told you that?”

  “Someone was talking at the funeral.”

  Lauren thinks about this. “He’s kind of a weird dude. Everything about him is loud—how he talks, those Hawaiian shirts. And he always thinks there’s some conspiracy or something. He used to be married to Heather, who was Naomi’s best friend. My mom says it’s not easy being married to a trucker, because they’re gone all the time.” She shrugs. “Still, even if he had a crush on Naomi, why would he kill her, too?”

  I don’t have a good answer for that.

  We’re at the registers now. Lauren falls in behind me. “So you’re living on your own?” she asks, eyeing my cart.

  “Yeah. I’m saving for college, and the cost of living is cheaper here.”

  “I’m going to U of O, but it’s impossible to find a job in Eugene over the summer, so I had to come home. You know what they say: Home’s the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

  My total comes to $22.35. When we go outside, it’s so hot it doesn’t feel quite real.

  “Want to go to Grocery Outlet?” Lauren points at the store across the parking lot.

  “I’ve never been in one,” I say, then wonder if there are any in Seattle, my supposed hometown. I’ve heard the food at Grocery Outlet is really cheap. When you work at Freddy’s, there’s an unspoken rule you will never be caught by a customer, even in your off-hours, in Safeway, Albertsons, or another competitor. But while I’m still anonymous, I’m free to shop where I want.

  “It’s, like, the cheapest store in the world.” She laughs. “My dad calls it the Island of Misfit Food.”

  As we go up and down the aisles, Lauren’s dad’s comment starts to make sense. I see crackers that look like Wheat Thins but with Spanish labels. Flavors and colors of Gatorade I’ve never seen before. The cheese selection in the cold case is kind of random, but there’s some good stuff here, like Brie, aged Cheddar, and goat cheese, all going for about half of what Fred Meyer charges.

  Grocery Outlet also seems to be where food flops go to die, and we take turns pointing them out. Pork Helper instead of Hamburger Helper. Canned egg salad. Shelf-stable salmon pie. It’s like an alternate reality. As if aliens made a grocery store to fool us, only they didn’t get the details right. The thought makes me stop in my tracks.

  Lauren bumps into me. “Olivia?”

  I don’t answer. Whoever killed my parents must have tried to tell a story with what they left behind. Maybe they hid my dad’s body so he would be blamed. And then left his car at the airport so it looked like he took off. But that story was a lie. The cops were too focused on my dad to ask why he had bothered to wipe his prints off his own truck. There must be other ways the killer slipped up, made a mistake, screwed up the details.

  Maybe I can figure out where they went wrong.

  CHAPTER 21

  THAT GIRL DOESN’T EXIST

  I’m nearing the end of my first day at Freddy’s when I hear something falling on the black rubber mat behind me. A lot of somethings. When I turn, half the pyramid of Granny Smiths I had just stacked is gone. Duncan stands next to it, red-faced. He puts down his basket and skateboard and starts picking up the scattered apples.

  My heart speeds up. Abandoning my produce cart, I stalk over.

  He looks up. “Sorry. I guess I made an apple-lanche.”

  Even though his pun is pretty good, I ignore it. I ignore his strong jaw, muscled arms, and beautiful eyes. My heart is reacting one way, but my head has to be in charge. “What are you doing here?”

  “Buying groceries.” Still on his knees, he begins gathering apples.

  “I’m sure your mom can take care of that for you, since she works here.” With the toe of one of my Vans, I kick an apple toward him.

  The flush deepens. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.” His voice is urgent and low. “And about why you might have said it. I want to help you.”

  I look around. There’s no one near us. “You want to help me?”

  “Yeah. I do.” He cradles a half dozen apples.

  “Then leave me alone!”

  Duncan’s unfazed. “That’s why you moved down here, isn’t it? To figure out who did it?” He gets to his feet and starts fitting the apples into empty spaces, one by one.

  It’s clear I don’t have any other choice but to talk to him. Or at least give him a talking-to. I huff a sigh. “Do you know where the employees park their cars?” When he nods, I say, “I’m off in fifteen minutes. Meet me back there.”

  Pushing my produce cart through the black rubber swinging doors that lead to the prep room, I spend the last few minutes of my day grinding my teeth as I cut and wrap watermelon chunks. When I go out to the parking lot, Duncan’s doing kickflips next to my car. He’s still not wearing a helmet, so he must think he’s got this trick down. As I watch, he steps on the board wrong and almost takes a header. For some reason, his near miss makes me even madder.

  “Get in.” I unlock his door and then mine.

  It’s like crawling into an oven. But I don’t need anyone to overhear what I’ve got to say. “This is my life.” I shake my finger in his face. “And I don’t need you to go messing it up by spreading crazy rumors.”

  “You’re right. It is your life. I wasn’t thinking it through, and I’m really sorry. After I left, I realized it’s about more than just Carly and Lauren, isn’t it? Because they aren’t the only ones who’d want to know that you’ve come back to Medford. Whoever killed your parents would probably be very interested in finding out what you remember.” He takes my right hand. I’m so surprised I don’t pull it back. He runs his thumb across my scar, and even in the heat, a shiver dances across my skin.

  I pull my hand back. Push my feelings away. “So who else knows that Ariel had a scar?” I tried dabbing foundation on my palm this morning, but it lasted only a few minutes under the prep sink.

  “Maybe my parents?” He shrugs. “But they might not remember the spe
cifics. Maybe just me, since I’m the one who got in so much trouble for daring you.”

  “There’s something you need to understand. My name is Olivia Reinhart now. Ariel Benson—that girl doesn’t exist anymore. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t matter. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve justice, or that her parents don’t deserve justice. And I’m the only one who can give it to her.”

  “Okay.” Duncan nods. “I hear you. But you can’t do it all by yourself. You’re going to need someone to help you find out what really happened.”

  My guard goes right back up. “This isn’t any of your business.”

  “Maybe you don’t think it is, but you should still let me help. Because if you’re the only one asking questions, people are going to notice and start asking questions themselves. But me—they’ll just think I’m curious. They won’t worry that I have an ulterior motive. And who else knows this town better than someone who’s lived here their whole life?”

  No matter how much I want to do this by myself, Duncan’s words make a lot of sense.

  He must see my hesitation. “I never forgot you. Is it so wrong for me to want to help an old friend?”

  “Okay, you want to help?” I turn the ignition. “Then let’s get started.”

  CHAPTER 22

  MORE VICTIMS

  “So do you remember anything about that day?” Duncan asks as I drive us back to my house.

  “If you had asked me last week, I would have said I didn’t remember anything.” I sigh. “Not about what happened that day or anything before it. I didn’t even really remember my parents. But ever since I came back to Medford, I’ve been having these little flashes.”

  “Of what?” Duncan looks half-curious, half-horrified.

  “Once it was of being in a snowy forest. I think that must have been when we had just started looking for the Christmas tree. And I can remember my mom reading to me. I even remembered where she hid a box of keepsakes.” Did I do the same thing, tuck away my memories, even from myself? “And after the memorial, I dreamed about seeing a bloody knife lying on the floor of a car.” My scalp prickles just thinking about it.

  “Oh my God.” Duncan turns in his seat to me, his gray eyes wide. He echoes my thoughts. “Maybe everything that happened that day is still all there, inside your head.”

  “If it is, I wish I could figure out how to get it out. I don’t want to just wait around for a dream or some random phrase to make me remember. I want to know now.”

  Duncan doesn’t respond, just takes his phone out of his pocket. He starts tapping on it. The car is quiet for the remaining few minutes it takes me to drive home. What am I doing, spilling my deepest secrets to a stranger who isn’t really even paying attention?

  “Hypnosis,” he says as I pull into my driveway.

  “What?” I turn off the car.

  “Maybe hypnosis could help.” He hands over his phone.

  He’s pulled up an old news story from 1976. In Chowchilla, California, twenty-six children and their bus driver were kidnapped and locked in a moving van that had been buried in a gravel quarry. After they managed to escape, a hypnotist put the bus driver under, and he remembered the license plate number of one kidnapper’s car.

  But when I think of hypnotists, I think of country fairs or weight-loss ads. Not crime solving. I hand his phone back. “But that was a fresh memory. Mine’s nearly fourteen years old. And I was only three when it happened.”

  Duncan looks hurt. “It might be worth a try.”

  When we go inside, I point at the couch. “Wait here. I’m going to get something.” I walk down the hall and come back with my mom’s cigar box. I hand it to him.

  “What is this?” he asks before he opens it.

  “It belonged to my mom. It’s got all her keepsakes. She used to hide it under the floorboards of her closet.”

  His eyebrows go up. “You mean—here? In this house?”

  “Yeah. It’s been here all along. I think I was the only one who knew about it, besides my mom. My grandma didn’t know.”

  When he flips back the lid, right on top is the Halloween photo, the one I took from the bulletin board at the service. I had put it in the box along with my dad’s program, never thinking anyone else would look at these things.

  He picks it up. “Hey, I remember seeing this picture at the memorial. You have a copy, too, huh?”

  “Um, I took it.”

  He jerks his head back. “What?”

  “I don’t have any photos of just my dad or even of my family. I think my grandma threw away any photo with my dad in it after my mom’s body was found. And she never talked about him.”

  His eyebrows pull together. “But—that was someone’s photo.”

  Guilt pinches me. I ignore it. “Yeah, it was. But whoever put it up probably has lots of photos of my dad. I’ve got nothing.”

  Duncan doesn’t say anything more, though the way he twists his mouth, he doesn’t have to.

  I set the photo and the program aside and show him the begging note. “Have you ever seen that handwriting before?”

  He purses his lips. “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t think it’s Jason’s, unless it really changed.” I unearth the old valentine and watch Duncan smile as he reads the childish insults. “But I do wonder about Jason. Look at this invitation to his wedding to Heather.” I pull it out. “Why would my mom crumple it up unless she still had feelings for him?”

  “Wait.” He holds up a hand. “So you’re thinking Jason might have killed your parents?”

  “The cops told me that the first person they would have looked at would have been a lover. And I’m pretty sure there was something between them at some point.”

  “Look, you’re talking about Jason. That guy’s just a blowhard. Not a killer.”

  “Then what about Sam? It’s clear she was in love with my dad. You saw how she cried over him at the funeral. Maybe those were really tears of guilt.”

  “Sam?” Duncan makes a face. “She’s as thin as a straw. I mean, she seems pretty tightly wound, but I can’t see her hurting someone.”

  “In Portland, the detective told me it could have been a woman, if she was motivated by some strong emotion, like hatred or even panic.”

  Duncan shakes his head. “Hey, look, I’ve known Jason and Sam since I was a kid. And they’re not killers. Do you really think one of them snapped fourteen years ago and then just went back to being normal?”

  Why did I ever say yes to him? He may be cute, but he’s so nice that he can’t believe other people could be not so nice. “Then what do you think happened?”

  “I think your mom and dad must have crossed paths with a serial killer. Some crazy guy in the woods.”

  “Serial killer implies a series of murders. If it was a serial killer, then why weren’t there more victims?”

  “Maybe there were.” Duncan picks up his backpack. “Last night I was trying to figure out what happened. It turns out there are websites that keep track of unsolved murders. You can sort them by year or geographic area. So look at this.” He hands me a printout showing a girl with long dark hair parted down the middle. “This is Angie Paginini. She lived in Grants Pass.” Grants Pass is about a half hour away. “A year after your parents died, she left her high school play rehearsal, but she never made it home. Two days later, her body was found in a park—a wooded park. She had been stabbed to death. She even looks like your mom.”

  I regard the photo critically. Maybe. Or maybe they only look alike because they’re both girls from the same time period with the same hair color. All I say is, “But it wasn’t just my mom who died. It was both my parents.”

  “That’s happened before, too.” He slips another piece of paper into my hands. “Six months before your parents died, another couple in their twenties was killed in Northern California. Shot to death in their sleeping bags. Right on the beach. No sexual assault, no robbery, no known motive, and no suspects. Just like your parents.?
??

  Medford’s only thirty minutes from the California border. But it’s a much longer drive to the coast. And—“That was a gun, though. Not a knife.”

  “Nobody knows how your dad was killed,” Duncan points out. “And I was reading that serial killers will sometimes just use whatever’s available.”

  “It’s hard to believe that my parents were killed by some random stranger. I mean, why would a serial killer murder them and then let me live? But if it was someone my family knew, they might have felt a connection to me.”

  “Serial killers don’t murder every single person they come across.” Duncan’s eyes look stormy. “They pick their targets. Maybe your parents fit and you didn’t.”

  Or maybe Duncan just doesn’t want to believe it could be someone he knows.

  I think of foster homes where I lived in fear but smiled for the caseworker. Or where the house was a pigsty unless a visit was scheduled. If I’ve learned anything in the past ten years, it’s that a lot of people have one face in public and another in private.

  CHAPTER 23

  BEST FRIENDS

  I bounce from foot to foot as I wait for Duncan in the Medford Public Library reference room. Our plan was to start by researching what happened back then, but now I’ve got something even more interesting to tell him.

  “You’re not the only one who can Google,” I say in a low voice as soon as he walks in.

  “What do you mean?” He looks wary. He’s keeping his voice quiet, too, even though we’re the only ones in the room.

  We’re standing so close together that I can feel the heat of his body, but I don’t let myself think about that. Instead, I say, “Did you know there’s one job that the FBI thinks is so linked to serial killers that they’ve created a whole task force for it?” Still buzzing with what I read online last night, I don’t wait for him to answer. “Long-haul truckers.” Just like Jason.

  “Truckers?”

  “The FBI thinks that serial killers who work as long-haul truckers have killed more than five hundred hitchhikers, hookers, and people whose cars have broken down. They say it’s the perfect cover for a serial killer. Truckers work by themselves, and they’re always on the move. They can pick up a victim in one state, kill them in another, and dump their body in a third.”