Dangerous Girls

  Elise pulls her hand away. “I don’t think my boyfriend would like that.”

  Juan clutches his chest, mimicking heartbreak. “You have a boyfriend?”

  “Lots of them.” Elise grins.

  There’s a piercing whistle from down the street. We both look over: Chelsea and the guys are waving to us from outside a beach store—inflatable rafts and pool toys hanging from outside the window. Lamar has a bright duck-shaped inner tube around his waist, over his clothes, and Tate and Max are dueling with neon blow-up swords.

  Elise laughs. “Could they get any more phallic?”

  “Just wait until they start with the wrestling,” I agree. “We done here?”

  “Yup.” She turns back to Juan. “Thanks for the bracelet.” She turns to go, but he catches her arm.

  “Wait, wait,” he insists. “Where you going? We get drinks, tonight.”

  “No thanks.” Elise pulls free.

  “I meet you, at the bar,” Juan insists.

  Elise’s smile drops. “I said no.” She turns to me. “Creeper,” she says, and rolls her eyes without dropping her voice.

  Juan’s expression darkens. “So that’s how it is, you play me. You think this is all a joke? That Juan is your dupe?”

  Elise and I exchange a look and start to walk away, fast.

  “Fucking Americans!” His voice echoes after us as we quickly slip into the crowds. “You all whores!”

  The minute we’re away from the stall, I turn to Elise, pissed. “Why did you have to do that?”

  “What?”

  “Flirt with him. You can’t go around talking to strange guys, it’s not safe.”

  “Relax.” Elise looks unconcerned. “Anyway, it was worth it. Look!” She shows off the bracelet.

  “Still . . .” I turn around and feel a sudden shiver of panic. Juan is behind us in the crowd, twenty feet away, but closing fast. “Elise,” I hiss. “He’s following us.”

  She doesn’t turn. “Ignore him. He’s just some weirdo, what can he do?”

  I’m not so nonchalant. I walk faster, dragging her along with me until we reach the rest of the group, waiting outside the store. “Hey.” Tate slings an arm around my shoulder. “Where’d you guys go?”

  “Nowhere.” I glance back again, but there’s no sign of Juan. I exhale a slow breath.

  “You okay?” Tate frowns.

  “Sure.” I force a grin. “It’s nothing.”

  • • •

  We head back across the street to the beach house, toting groceries and new toys between us. Elise dances on ahead, telling the others the story of how she got her new bracelet.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Tate checks again as we reach the house. AK unlocks the front door, and the others head inside, their chatter loud and carefree.

  “What? Oh, yeah, fine.” I look behind me one last time, and freeze.

  Juan is standing across the street, watching us.

  “Anna!” Elise barrels back outside and grabs my hand. “Where did you leave your iPod? We need some tunes for this party!”

  “Um, on the dresser, I think.”

  When I turn back, Juan is gone. Maybe he was never there to begin with. I shiver and follow the rest of them into the house. The door slams shut behind us.

  THE TRIAL

  “Officer Carlsson, you were a member of Judge Dekker’s investigative team on the murder, were you not?”

  My lawyer leafs through a couple of the papers on his table, and then strolls closer to the witness stand. Carlsson is young, in his twenties, maybe, with cropped blond hair and an earnest expression. In a police precinct full of suspicious scowls and icy glares, he was a rare friend to me: the one to check if I needed water, or a bathroom break, or to simply speak to me like a decent human being instead of screaming at me for hours, the way Dekker did. Now, on the stand, he sends me a sympathetic smile before he answers.

  “Yes. I was assigned to the case the morning after the body was found.”

  “So you worked alongside the prosecutor, evaluating evidence and assessing leads, from the very start?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you were present during Miss Chevalier’s questioning when she told you about this incident with . . . I’m sorry, I don’t have a surname for him. The incident with the man known as Juan?”

  He clicks his pointer, and Juan’s photo goes up on the display screen overhead. It’s a mugshot, sullen and dark-eyed, and there’s a faint hiss of breath as the courtroom inhales. He looks dangerous.

  “I’m sorry,” my lawyer adds to the judge, sounding anything but. “It’s the only photo we have on record for the man.”

  Judge von Koppel doesn’t look impressed. She waves a hand, as if to say, “continue.”

  “Officer Carlsson?”

  Carlsson nods. “Yes. Miss Chevalier told us about meeting Juan at the market, and how he followed them back to the house. She said he was angry when Miss Warren rejected him.”

  “An angry man, following the victim home . . .” My lawyer pauses for effect. “And you didn’t think this warranted any follow-up?”

  “Yes, I did.” Carlsson looks from us over to where Dekker is sitting behind the prosecution table. “I believed we should have named him a prime suspect in the investigation.”

  “Because of his threatening behavior?”

  “Yes, but there was more,” he adds. “There were several break-ins in the area in the weeks leading up to the murder. Juan matched a description of a man seen fleeing one of those robberies.”

  I look hopefully to the judge again, but she’s scribbling notes, her expression unreadable.

  “So you believed him to be a criminal, known for robbing the houses along the beach. Houses like Mr. Kundra’s.” My lawyer pauses again. “Did you try to track him down?”

  “Yes. I canvassed his known associates and asked around the neighborhood, but he had disappeared.” Carlsson shrugged. “It looked like he’d left the island.”

  “He fled. So you stopped looking for him?”

  “No,” Carlsson gave Dekker another glare. “I filed a request for more resources, to liaise with police departments on neighboring islands, and have a team go through surveillance video from the harbor and ports.”

  “But this request was denied.”

  “Yes. I was told it would be a waste of time.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” My lawyer is grandstanding, but I don’t mind, not when he’s doing it for my benefit. “Here you had a suspect linked to other break-ins—like the one that accompanied Miss Warren’s murder—and you were told not to pursue him?”

  “Dekker said it was irrelevant.” Carlsson looks back to me with regret in his expression. “He’d decided that the break-in was staged, that someone from the group had killed her and just smashed the doors afterward. He ordered me to drop the Juan investigation and focus on Miss Chevalier and Mr. Dempsey. I tried to go over his head,” he added, speaking directly at Judge von Koppel. “I thought he was making a mistake. I still do. But they all just shut me down. He was fixated.”

  Fixated.

  My lawyer leaves the word hanging in the courtroom for a moment, and I have to keep myself from smiling. Carlsson was transferred to a precinct on the other side of the island two weeks after they charged me, Dekker and his team did everything to try to keep him away from the trial, but we got him here, and just having him up on the stand feels like a victory—for once, someone not talking about my mood swings, and jealousy, and obvious guilt.

  “Let’s talk about that crime scene.” My lawyer clicks his pointer again, and the image goes up on the screen of Elise’s trashed room. He clicks on, to a close-up of the balcony doors and the constellation of shattered glass spread on the floor. “The prosecution has presented experts who testified that the window was broken after the attack, from the inside. Did you agree?”

  “It’s possible,” Carlsson says reluctantly. “There was glass out on the balcony, too, which w
ould fit with it being broken from the inside. But there was glass everywhere,” he adds. “People in and out of the room for hours. These photos weren’t taken until after the paramedics left. There’s no way of knowing how much the scene was contaminated.”

  “Yet you believe it was a genuine break-in?” My lawyer continues. “But Judge Dekker has told this court nothing was stolen, aside from the victim’s necklace.”

  “That’s right,” Carlsson answers. “But that doesn’t mean the attacker didn’t intend to rob the house. He could have been disturbed by Miss Warren, and fled after killing her.”

  “Like I said, there were others before the murder, and it would fit with the pattern, and this Juan guy.”

  “So let me ask you, Officer Carlsson, having examined all the evidence—the same evidence that Detective Dekker was party to—what do you think really happened that night?”

  Carlsson looks at us. “It’s simple. The guy breaks in, finds Elise there, and then attacks her—out of panic, or anger. The ripped clothing indicated it was a sexual attack. She turned him down before, so this guy Juan would have a motive to hurt her like that. It just makes sense—more sense than one of her friends suddenly turning on her, anyway.”

  “Thank you, that will be all. No further questions.”

  AFTER

  They keep us in a holding pattern for a week, waiting on the island for some kind of news. Every day, one or more of us get called back in for questioning, this time with our parents and lawyers in tow. The news cameras and reporters are still laying siege to the hotel, so there’s nowhere else we can go; we just sit around the suite, watching TV, calling up room service and waiting for this all to be done.

  AK barely speaks. Melanie cries all the time. Max spends most of the day curled up in his room with the blinds drawn, woozy on anti-anxiety meds.

  We all just want to go home.

  “What did they ask you this time?” Lamar lifts his head from his laptop as I enter the suite. Dad and Ellingham are off talking legal stuff with the other parents in the makeshift conference room; it’s just us kids in here.

  I shrug, peeling off my cardigan. “The same. Just, what happened, where were we.”

  I shoot a look to Tate, over by the TV. He gives me a questioning look, and I nod. We’re okay.

  “I don’t get it.” Chelsea is curled in a ball on the sofa beside him. “Why do they keep going over the same stuff? Shouldn’t there be security footage, or witnesses?”

  I don’t reply. Slowly I cross to the kitchen unit in the corner and run the cold faucet over my wrists, closing my eyes against everything but the feeling of the water, icy against my palms. The interrogation room is tiny, and they never set the cold air high enough. After two hours in there with Ellingham and Dekker, my clothes stick, damp and sweaty, to my skin.

  “Whoever it was, they planned it.” AK’s voice comes, and I turn in surprise. He’s standing by the windows, staring out at the ocean with the same blank expression he’s been wearing since we found Elise. “The front door has cameras. They knew not to come in that way, or they’d have been on the tape.”

  “So, what, they cased the place?” Lamar asks.

  Chelsea scoots closer to him, hugging him close. “That means they would have been watching us. All week. Waiting.” She shivers.

  “Maybe.” AK pauses. “Or maybe they knew all along.”

  “What are you saying?” Tate speaks up for the first time.

  AK turns to face us. “I don’t know. All I do know is I spent three hours in that police precinct yesterday, answering questions about you two. How long you’ve been together. What you do. How Elise fit in with you guys. That’s all he wanted to know.”

  “Because he’s crazy,” I say quickly.

  “Is he?” AK shoots back. “They’re the ones who know what they’re doing. They looked at the crime scene, and did an autopsy on the body, and all that stuff. Wouldn’t they be out looking for the murderer—if they thought he was out there?”

  “What’s going on?” Melanie’s voice comes from the doorway. She’s wrapped in a hotel robe, her dark hair hanging limply on either side of her face. She looks back and forth between us. “Did they find something?”

  “No, sweetie.” Chelsea shakes her head. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing you guys want to think about,” AK mutters.

  “How are you feeling?” I interrupt, asking Melanie. She shrugs, and trudges over to the couch, barely lifting her feet.

  “School already started,” she says, sitting down across from the others. “When do you think they’ll let us go back?”

  “Soon, I hope.” I give her an encouraging smile. “Even calculus is better than this.”

  Melanie doesn’t meet my eyes. Instead she reaches for the remote, and clicks through to one of the cable news channels. The familiar sight of our hotel fills the screen, the glossy-haired reporter filming live out from the street below.

  “Mel,” I say quickly. “Don’t. You know they told us not to watch.”

  “I want to see,” she insists, turning the volume up.

  “. . . and with police yet to make any arrests, pressure is mounting on investigating prosecutor Klaus Dekker.” The reporter is blond and wide-eyed, clutching her microphone. She looks like a coed, dressed up in a preppy blouse, as if she was off doing body shots before the studio called her up for duty.

  “What’s the mood there on the island, Katie?” the man in the studio asks.

  “I’ve been talking to locals, and other tourists, and everyone is still in a state of shock.” Katie manages a concerned frown. “Although this is a destination known for its nightlife, photos of the teens’ drinking and wild partying have given everyone pause for thought, making some question just what kind of behavior the victim and her friends were engaged in.”

  “Yes, we’ve been seeing the photos from the students’ social networking profiles . . .”

  “That’s right. And the latest photo, of the victim’s friends Anna Chevalier and Tate Dempsey, has further fueled speculation.” It flashes up onscreen. “Taken just hours after Elise’s death, it appears to show them laughing and joking on their hotel balcony, seemingly unconcerned by her brutal death—”

  Tate snatches the remote from Melanie and shuts it off. “Enough. You heard our parents, it’s all just bullshit, for the ratings.”

  “You would say that,” AK mutters again.

  Tate whirls around. “Have you got a problem with me?” he demands.

  “Tate.” I go to intercept him. “It’s been a long day, okay? We’re all just tired, and—”

  “No, I’m serious.” He pushes past me, marching up to AK. “Spit it out. If there’s something you want to say, just say it.”

  AK stares back at him. “Fine.” His voice is heavy. “Why didn’t you come diving with us?”

  Tate stares. “You know why. We were hungover; we just wanted to chill.”

  “No, you said you were going, you couldn’t wait,” AK argues. “Then Elise says she’s staying home, and you change your mind.”

  “Tate?” I ask. “What’s he talking about?”

  “It’s nothing.” Tate glares. “He’s talking out of his ass.”

  “We both decided to stay,” I tell AK, putting myself between them. “It wasn’t anything. We just wanted some time to ourselves.”

  “Is that why you didn’t check on her?” AK demands. “You were too busy off on your own? Making out, while she was bleeding to death?”

  “We texted!” I protest. “We all did. And if you were so worried, why didn’t you check on her, before you left?”

  “It was early.” AK looks away.

  “It was like, ten in the morning,” I correct him. “Remember, she didn’t come out for breakfast. And you went and knocked on her door,” I add, turning to Mel.

  Her face trembles. “You think I don’t know that? You think I wouldn’t go back if I could, and break the door down, or do something?”

&nbsp
; “Hey.” Chelsea reaches to comfort her. “Knock it off, all of you. This won’t change anything. Nobody’s to blame.”

  “You keep saying that!” AK explodes. “But you don’t know it’s true. None of us do. We weren’t there.”

  “But we were, is that what you’re saying?” Tate steps up, getting in his face. I can see the tension radiating from him, his whole body coiled to strike.

  “Will everyone just calm down?” I beg. “We’ve got to stick together.”

  “Why?” AK shoots back. “Because you’re worried what we might say, if it’ll make you look bad?”

  “Because it’s the truth!”

  My voice echoes, plaintive, but it’s like a dividing line just got drawn down the middle of the room. Me and Tate on one side, AK on the other. Melanie, Lamar, and Chelsea stranded between us, not saying a word.

  “You really think we had something to do with it?” I ask AK, my voice breaking. “That we would hurt her, that we . . .” I catch my breath.

  “I don’t know,” AK finally replies, his voice hollow. “I don’t know what the fuck to think anymore.”

  “Thanks a lot, buddy.” Tate’s voice is laced with sarcasm.

  “He doesn’t mean it,” I say, but Tate just turns and walks out, the door slamming behind him like a gunshot through the suite.

  Silence.

  “Go after him,” I urge AK. “Apologize. You can smooth this over. We’re all messed up, we’re not thinking straight—”

  “I am.” AK looks at me. “I’m probably the only one seeing things clearly.”

  I shiver. His eyes seem to burn straight through me, harsher than I’ve ever seen before. AK is the playboy, the joker, the one who suggests we drive out to Alston at two a.m. to find some legendary food cart. He doesn’t get mad; he never holds a grudge. But right now, he’s staring at me like a stranger.

  “AK—,” I start, but before I can say another thing, the door opens, and my dad comes bursting in, a couple more parents behind him.

  “It’s okay, sweetie.” He crosses the room, pulling me into a hug. “This’ll all be straightened out.”

  “What’s going on?” My reply is muffled against his sweater. He’s holding me so tight, I can feel him shake. I feel a sudden chill, blood turning to ice in my veins. “Dad?” I try to push him away. “Dad, what’s happening?”