Last to Die

TWENTY-FIVE

THE EVENSONG DINING HALL WAS STRANGELY HUSHED THIS MORNING, students and teachers talking in murmurs over the muted clink of chinaware. Dr. Welliver’s now vacant seat was flanked by Dr. Pasquantonio and Ms. Duplessis, who both scrupulously avoided glancing at the empty chair that their late colleague had occupied only days earlier. Is that what happens when you die? Claire wondered. Does everyone suddenly pretend you never existed?

“Is it okay if we sit here, Claire?”

She looked up to see Teddy and Will standing above her with their breakfast trays. This was new and different; now two people wanted to join her. “Whatever,” she said.

They sat at her table. On Will’s tray was a hearty portion of eggs and sausage. Teddy had only a sad little mound of potatoes and a single slice of dry toast. They couldn’t be more unlike, even down to their meal choices.

“Is there anything you’re not allergic to?” she asked Teddy, pointing to his breakfast.

“I’m not hungry today.”

“You’re never hungry.”

He pushed his glasses higher on his pale nose and pointed to the sausage on her plate. “That contains toxins, you know. Processed meat cooked at high temperatures has carcinogens from heterocyclic amines.”

“Yum. No wonder it tastes so good.” She popped the last chunk of sausage in her mouth, just to be contrary. When you’d been shot in the head, it gave you a different perspective on dangers as minor as carcinogens.

Will leaned in close and said softly: “There’s going to be a special meeting, right after breakfast.”

“What meeting?”

“The Jackals. They want you to come, too.”

She focused on Will’s pimply moon face, and a word suddenly sprang into her head: endomorph. She’d learned it from their health textbook, a term that was far kinder than what Briana called Will behind his back. Fatboy. Spotted pig. Claire and Will had that much in common; so did Teddy. They were the three misfits, the kids who were too weird or fat or nearsighted to ever be invited to the cool kids’ table. So they would make this table their own: the table for outcasts.

“Will you come?” asked Will.

“Why do they want me at their stupid meeting?”

“Because we need to put our heads together and talk about what happened to Dr. Welliver.”

“I’ve already told everyone what happened,” said Claire. “I told the police. I told Dr Isles. I told—”

“He means what really happened,” said Teddy.

She frowned at him. Teddy, the ectomorph, another word she’d learned from that health book. Ecto as in ectoplasm, pale and wispy as a ghost. “Are you saying I didn’t tell the truth?”

“That’s not at all what he meant,” said Will.

“That’s what it sounded like.”

“We’re just wondering—the Jackals are wondering—”

“Are you talking behind my back? You and the club?”

“We’re trying to understand how it happened.”

“Dr. Welliver jumped off the roof and she went splat on the ground. That’s not so hard to understand.”

“But why did she do it?” said Will.

“Half the time, I can’t even tell you why I do the things I do,” she said, and rose to her feet.

Will reached across the table and grabbed her hand, to stop her from leaving. “Does it make any sense to you, why she’d jump off the roof?”

She stared down at his hand, touching hers. “No,” she admitted.

“That’s why you should come,” he said urgently. “But you can’t talk about it. Julian says it’s only for the Jackals.”

She glanced across the dining hall at the table where glossy-haired Briana sat gossiping with the other cool kids. “Is she going to be there? Is this some kind of practical joke?”

“Claire, it’s me asking you,” said Will. “You know you can trust me.”

She looked at Will, and this time she didn’t focus on his pimples or his pale moon face, but his eyes. Those gentle brown eyes with long lashes. She’d never known Will to do or say anything unkind. He was goofy, sometimes annoying, but never hurtful. Unlike me. She thought of the times she’d pointedly ignored him or rolled her eyes at something he said, or laughed, along with everyone else, about the monster cannonballs he splashed up jumping into the lake. Somewhere, a farmer is missing his hog, the other girls had said, and Claire had not challenged that cruel comment. It shamed her now as she looked into Will’s eyes.

“Where are we meeting?” she asked.

“Bruno will show us the way.”

THE PATH THAT TOOK them up the hillside behind the school was steep and rocky, a direction that Claire had not yet explored on her midnight rambles. The route was so poorly marked that without Bruno Chinn to lead them, she might have gotten lost among the trees. Like Claire, Bruno was thirteen and yet another misfit, but a relentlessly cheerful one who seemed fated to always be the shortest kid in the group. He scampered like a mountain goat up a boulder and cast an impatient glance at his three lagging classmates.

“Does anyone want to race me to the top?” he offered.

Will halted, his face flushed bright pink, his T-shirt plastered to his doughy torso. “I’m dying here, Bruno. Can’t we rest?”

Bruno waved them forward, a grinning little Napoleon leading his charge up the hill. “Don’t be such a lazybones. You need to get in shape like me!”

“Do you want to kill Bruno?” muttered Claire. “Or should I?”

Will wiped the sweat from his face. “Just give me a minute. I’ll be okay,” he gasped. He certainly didn’t look okay as he plodded ahead, panting and wheezing, his enormous shoes slipping and sliding on moss.

“Where are we going?” Claire called out.

Bruno halted and turned to his three classmates. “Before we go any farther, you all have to promise.”

“Promise what?” said Teddy.

“That you won’t reveal this location. It’s our place, and the last thing we want is that grumpy old Mr. Roman telling us it’s off limits.”

Claire snorted. “You think he doesn’t already know?”

“Just promise. Raise your right hands.”

With a sigh, Claire raised her hand. So did Will and Teddy. “We promise,” they said simultaneously.

“All right, then.” Bruno turned and pushed aside a clump of bushes. “Welcome to the Jackals’ Den.”

Claire was the first to step into the clearing. Seeing stone steps, slippery with moss, she realized this was no natural opening in the trees, but something man-made. Something very old. She mounted the steps to a circular terrace built of weathered granite, and entered a ring of thirteen giant boulders, where her classmates Lester Grimmett and Arthur Toombs now sat. Nearby, in the shadow of trees, was a stone cottage, its roof green with moss, the shutters closed, its secrets locked away.

Teddy moved to the center of the ring and slowly turned to survey the thirteen boulders. “What is this place?” he asked in wonder.

“I tried to look it up in the school library,” said Arthur. “I think Mr. Magnus built this when he built the castle, but I can’t find a reference to it anywhere.”

“How did you find this place?”

“We didn’t. Jack Jackman did, years ago. He claimed it for the Jackals, and it’s been ours ever since. The stone house there, it was all falling down when Jackson first saw it. He and the first Jackals fixed it up, put on the roof and shutters. When it gets cold, we meet in there.”

“Who’d put a house way up here in the middle of the woods?”

“It’s kind of strange, isn’t it? Like these thirteen boulders. Why thirteen?” Arthur’s voice dropped. “Maybe Mr. Magnus had a cult or something.”

Claire looked down at where clumps of grass had pushed through the cracks between the stones. In time saplings and eventually trees would do their part to camouflage this foundation, to lift and separate and shatter the granite. Already the years had wrought their damage. But on this summer morning, with the haze hanging in the distance, it seemed to her that this place was timeless, that it had always been this way.

“I think this is way older than the castle,” she said. “I think it’s been here a really long time.”

She walked to the edge of the terrace. Through a gap in the trees, she looked down into the valley. There was the Evensong School with its many chimneys and turrets, and beyond it the dark waters of the lake. From here, she thought, I can see the whole world. Two canoes being paddled across the lake, sketching wakes on the water. Students on horseback, moving dots on the pin scratch of a trail. Standing here, with the wind in her face, she felt all-seeing and omnipotent. Queen of the universe.

The sound of a barking dog told her that Julian was approaching. She turned to see him stride up the steps to the stone terrace, Bear at his heels as always. “You all made it,” he said, and looked at Claire. “You took the pledge?”

“We promised not to talk about this place, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “It’s not like you’re some secret order. Why do we have to meet up here?”

“So we can feel free to say exactly what we think. No one else can hear us. And what’s said here, stays here.” Julian looked around at the circle of students, now seven of them in all. A fine collection they were, thought Claire. Bruno, the cheerful little mountain goat. Arthur, who tapped everything five times before he used it. Lester, whose nightmares sometimes ended in screams that woke everyone in the dorm. Claire was the only girl in the group, and even among these oddballs she felt conspicuous.

“Something strange is happening,” Julian said. “They’re not telling us the truth about Dr. Welliver.”

“What do you mean, the truth?” asked Teddy.

“I’m not convinced she killed herself.”

“I saw her do it,” Claire said.

“That may not be what actually happened.”

Claire bristled. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“I saw Maura bag up Dr. Welliver’s sugar bowl and send it to the crime lab. And the night after she came back from watching the autopsy, she had a long meeting with some of the teachers. They’re worried, Claire. I think they’re even scared.”

“What’s this got to do with the three of us?” asked Will. “Why did you ask us to be here?”

“Because,” said Julian, turning to look at Will, “you three are somehow at the center of this. I heard Maura talking on the phone with Detective Rizzoli, and your names all came up. Ward. Clock. Yablonski.” He looked from Will to Teddy to Claire. “What do you three have in common?”

Claire looked at her two companions and shrugged. “We’re weird?”

Bruno let out one of his annoying giggles. “Like that wasn’t the obvious answer.”

“There’s also their files,” said Arthur.

“What about our files?” asked Claire.

“The day Dr. Welliver died, I was her one o’clock appointment. When I walked into her office, I saw she had three files open on her desk, like she’d been reading them. Your file, Claire. And Will’s and Teddy’s.”

Julian said, “That night, after she killed herself, those three files were still on her desk. Something about you three caught her attention.”

Claire looked around at the expectant faces. “You already know why. It’s because of our families.” She turned to Will. “Tell them how your parents died.”

Will looked down at his feet, those enormous feet in their enormous sneakers. “They said it was just an accident. A plane crash. But I found out later …”

“It wasn’t an accident,” said Julian.

Will shook his head. “It was a bomb.”

“Teddy,” said Claire. “Tell them what you told me. About your family.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Teddy whispered.

She looked at the other students. “They were murdered, like Will’s parents. Like mine. That’s what you all wanted to hear, isn’t it? That’s what we have in common.”

“Tell them the rest of it, Claire,” said Julian. “What happened to your foster families.”

Everyone’s eyes turned back to Claire.

She said, “You know what happened. Why are you doing this? Because it’s fun to screw around with the weird kids’ heads?”

“I’m just trying to understand what’s happening here. To you, and to the school.” Julian looked at the other Jackals. “We talk about being investigators someday, and how we’ll make a difference in the world. We spend all our time learning about blood types and blowflies, but it’s all just theoretical. Now we have a real investigation going on around us, right here. And these three are at the center of it.”

“Why don’t you just ask Dr. Isles?” said Will.

“She says she can’t talk about it.” He added on a faintly resentful note, “Not to me, anyway.”

“So you’re going to run your own investigation? A bunch of kids?” Claire laughed.

“Why can’t we?” Julian moved toward her, so close she had to look up to meet his eyes. “Don’t you wonder about it, Claire? You, too, Will and Teddy? Who wants you dead? Why do they want it so badly that they’d twice try to kill you?”

“It’s like that creepy movie Final Destination,” Bruno said, far too cheerfully. “About those kids who are supposed to die in a plane crash, but they escape. And Death keeps coming after them.”

“This is not a movie, Bruno,” said Julian. “We’re not talking about the supernatural. Real people are doing this, and for a reason. We need to figure out why.”

Claire gave a dismissive laugh. “Listen to you! You think you can figure out what the police can’t? You’re just a bunch of kids with your microscopes and chemistry sets. So tell me, Julian, how are you going to fit all this amazing police work in between classes?”

“I’m going to start by asking you. You’re the one this is happening to, Claire. You must have some idea what connects the three of you.”

She looked at Will and Teddy. The endomorph and the ectomorph. “Well, we sure aren’t related, ’cause we don’t look anything like each other.”

“And we were all living in different places,” said Will. “My mom and dad were killed in Maryland.”

“Mine were killed in London,” said Claire. Where I almost died, too.

“Teddy?” asked Julian.

“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“This could be important,” said Julian. “Don’t you want answers? Don’t you want to know why they died?”

“I know why they died! Because we were on a boat. On my dad’s stupid boat in the middle of nowhere. If we hadn’t been on it, if we’d just stayed home …”

“Tell them, Teddy,” Claire prompted gently. “Tell them what happened on the boat.”

For a long time Teddy didn’t say a thing. He stood with head drooping as he stared down at the stones. When at last he did speak, it was so quietly they could barely hear him.

“There were people with guns,” he whispered. “I heard screaming. My mother. And my sisters. And I couldn’t help them. All I could do was …” He shook his head. “I hate the water. I never want to be in a boat again.”

Claire went to Teddy and wrapped her arms around him. Felt his heart fluttering like a bird’s against his frail chest. “It’s not your fault,” she murmured. “You couldn’t save them.”

“I lived. And they didn’t.”

“Don’t blame yourself. Blame the people who did it. Or the shitty world. Or even your dad, for taking you on that boat. But never blame yourself, Teddy.”

He jerked out of her arms and backed away from the circle. “This is stupid. I don’t want to play this game.”

“It’s not a game,” said Julian.

“To you it is!” Teddy shot back. “You and your stupid club. Don’t you get it? For us, this is real life. It’s our lives.”

“Which is why you’re the ones who have to figure it out, the three of you,” said Julian. “You need to put your heads together. Find out what you have in common. Your families, your parents, where you went to school. It’s about finding that one link, that person who ties you together.”

“Person?” Will asked quietly. “You mean, the killer.”

Julian nodded. “It all gets down to that. There’s someone who’s passed through your lives, or your parents’ lives. Someone who might be searching for you right now.”

Claire looked at Will and remembered what he’d said to her: I feel like I’ve met you. She had no memory of him. She had no recollection of a lot of things, but that was because she’d been shot in the head. A lot of things could be blamed on that bullet, from her mediocre grades to her insomnia to her freakishly bad temper.

And now the old headache was back. She blamed the bullet for that, too.

She went to a boulder and sat down to massage her scalp, fingers worrying at the old defect in her skull. It was a permanent reminder of everything that she’d lost. At her feet, a skinny sapling had grown between the stones. Even granite can’t stop the inevitable, she thought. Someday the tree will break through, cracking and lifting that rock. Even if I snip this sapling, another will pop up.

The way killers do.

CLAIRE OPENED HER CLOSET and reached up for the battered cardboard box on the shelf. She had not taken it out since she’d arrived at Evensong, and could scarcely remember what was in it. Two years ago, she and Barbara Buckley had packed it with a few mementos from her parents’ London apartment. Since then, the box had traveled with her, from London to Ithaca and now here, but not once had she looked inside. She’d been afraid to see their faces again, afraid it would make her remember all that she had lost. She sat down on her bed and set the box beside her. Took a moment to brace herself before she lifted the cardboard flaps.

A porcelain unicorn lay on top. Izzy, she thought. I remember its name. It belonged to her mother, a silly little trinket that Isabel Ward had picked up in a flea market somewhere; she’d called it her good-luck charm. The luck ran out, Mom. For all of us.

Gingerly, Claire set the unicorn on her nightstand and reached into the box for the next items. A velvet drawstring bag with her mother’s jewelry. Her parents’ passports. A silk scarf that smelled faintly of perfume, something bright and lemony. Finally, at the bottom, two photo albums.

She took out the albums and set them on her lap. It was obvious which one was the most recent; it still had a few empty pages at the end. This volume she opened first, and she saw her own face smiling up from the first page of photographs. She was wearing a fluffy yellow dress and holding a balloon in front of the Disney World entrance. She didn’t remember the dress, nor did she remember going to Disney World. How old was she in this photo, three? Four? She was no good at judging kids’ ages. Had this photo not existed, she would not have known she’d ever set foot in the Magic Kingdom.

Another memory I’ve lost, she thought. She wanted to tear that page from the album, rip that lying photograph to pieces. If she didn’t remember it, then it might as well never have happened. This album was a book of lies, some other girl’s childhood, some other girl’s memories.

“Can I come in, Claire?” said Will, peeking through her open doorway. He seemed afraid to step in, and he hung back in the hall, his head ducked as though she might throw something at him.

“I don’t care,” she said. She meant it as an invitation, but when he backed away, she called out: “Hey, where are you going? Don’t you want to come in and check out my room?”

Only then did he enter, but he hesitated just inside the door and looked around nervously at the bookshelves, the desks, the dressers. He avoided looking at any of the beds, as if one of them might leap up and bite him.

“My roommates are packing for Quebec,” he said. “It sucks, that we can’t go with them tomorrow.”

“Like I’d want to be stuck on a bus for hours and hours? I’d rather stay here,” she said, even though that wasn’t really true; it did suck, being left behind. She turned a page in the album and saw another photo of herself, this time dressed in a cowboy hat, sitting on a depressed-looking pony.

“Is that you?” He laughed. “You’re really cute.”

Annoyed, she slapped the album shut. “I’m just doing research, like Julian asked us to.”

“I’m doing research, too.” He reached into his pocket and unfolded a sheet of paper. “I’m working on a time line of our lives. All the things that’ve happened to you and me and Teddy, and how they might relate. I’m trying to see if anything intersects between us. I still need to get Teddy’s exact dates, but I’ve got yours here. You want to check them?”

She took the sheet of paper and focused on the two event markers that represented her personal tragedies. The first was the date she and her parents were shot in London, an event so hazy in her memory that it might have happened to another girl, not her. But the second event was still fresh enough to make her stomach churn with guilt. She had stubbornly avoided thinking about it these past few weeks, but seeing that date on Will’s time line brought it back in a sickening rush of memories. How blithely she had slipped out of the Buckleys’ house that night. How tired and worried Bob and Barbara had looked when they’d fetched her in their car. They died because of me. Because I was a thoughtless jerk.

She thrust the time line back at Will. “Yeah. The dates are okay.”

He pointed to the photo albums. “Did you find anything?”

“Just pictures.”

“Can I see?”

She didn’t want to reveal any more embarrassing photos of herself, so she set aside the more recent album and opened her parents’ album instead. On the first page, she saw her father, Erskine, tall and handsome, wearing a suit and tie. “That’s my dad,” she said.

“That’s the Washington Monument behind him! I’ve been there. My dad took me to the Air and Space Museum when I was eight. It’s such a cool place.”

“Whoop-de-do.”

He looked at her. “Why do you do that, Claire?”

“Do what?”

“Put me down all the time?”

A denial reflexively bubbled to her lips; then she saw his face and realized what he’d said was true. She did put him down all the time. She sighed. “I don’t really mean to.”

“So it’s not because you think I deserve it? Like I’m disgusting or something?”

“No. It’s because I’m not thinking at all. It’s a stupid habit.”

He nodded. “I have stupid habits, too. Like how I’m always using the word like.”

“Just stop it, then.”

“Let’s agree we’ll both stop it. Okay?”

“Sure. Whatever.” She turned more pages in the album, saw more photos of her handsome dad posing in different settings. At a picnic with friends under the trees. Wearing a swimsuit on a beach with palm trees. She came to a photo of both her mom and dad, their arms entwined, standing in front of the Roman Colosseum.

“Look. That’s my mom,” she said softly, stroking a finger across the image. Suddenly the scent of the perfume on that scarf cut through the fog of lost memories, and she could smell her mother’s hair, feel her mother’s hands on her face.

“She looks like you,” said Will in wonder. “She’s really beautiful.”

They were both beautiful, thought Claire, gazing hungrily at her mother and father. They must have thought the whole world was at their feet when this picture was taken. They had striking good looks and a lifetime ahead of them. And they were living in Rome. Did they ever stop to think, did they ever imagine, how prematurely their future would end?

“This was taken nineteen years ago,” said Will, noting the date that Claire’s mom had written in the album.

“They were just married then. My dad worked at the embassy. He was a political secretary.”

“In Rome? Cool. Is that where you were born?”

“My birth certificate says I was born in Virginia. I guess my mom came home to have me.”

They turned more pages, saw more images of the same handsome couple smiling at a dinner, holding up champagne glasses at a cocktail party, waving from a motorboat. Living la dolce vita, her mother used to say. The sweet life. And that’s what Claire saw in these photos, a record of what seemed to be a never-ending string of good times with colleagues and friends. But that’s what photo albums were meant to show, the best moments in life. The moments you wanted to remember, not the ones you wanted to forget.

“Look. That’s gotta be you,” said Will.

It was a photo of Claire’s mother, smiling from her hospital bed as she cradled an infant. She saw the handwritten date and said, “Yeah, that’s the day I was born. My mom said it happened really fast. She said I was in a hurry to get out and she almost didn’t make it to the hospital in time.”

Will laughed. “You’re still in a hurry to get out.”

She turned the pages, past more boring baby photos. In a stroller. In a high chair. Clutching a bottle. None of this helped her remember anything because these were all taken before her memories had been laid down. It could just as well be another child’s album.

She reached the last page. In the final two photos, Claire did not appear. These featured yet another cocktail party, another set of smiling strangers holding wineglasses. That was the burden of the diplomat’s wife, her mom used to joke. Always smiling, always pouring. Claire was about to shut the album when Will’s hand suddenly closed over hers.

“Wait,” he said. “That picture.”

“What about it?”

He took the album from her and leaned in close to study one of the party photos. It showed Claire’s dad, cocktail glass in hand, caught in midlaugh with another man. The handwritten caption said, 4TH OF JULY. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, USA!

“This woman,” murmured Will. He pointed to a slim brunette standing to the right of Erskine Ward. She was wearing a low-cut green dress with a gold belt, and her gaze was fixed on Claire’s father. It was a look of unabashed admiration. “Do you know who she is?” Will asked.

“Should I?”

“Look at her. Try to remember if you’ve ever seen her.”

The harder she stared, the more familiar the woman seemed, but it was just a wisp of a memory, one she couldn’t be sure of. One that might not even exist, except through a trick of effort. “I don’t know,” she said. “Why?”

“Because I do know her.”

She frowned at him. “How could you? This is my family album.”

“And that,” he said, pointing to the woman in the photo, “is my mother.”