“You’ve got a cushy life here. I assume the homeless thing is true, right?” He looks back at me. “You had to be pretty desperate to plan this whole farce. Unless... is your real family a bunch of immoral con artists, too?”
“No. I was homeless.” I have no intention of telling him I’m gay. If he really is killing people for fun, he doesn’t need another reason to hate me.
“Which means you ran away. Or were kicked out.” He points at me with a thin finger. “Gay. Which explains you and Miles hanging out all the time. Is he your boyfriend?”
No. He might hurt Miles. Especially now that he knows we’ve been investigating his family. Our conclusion may have been wrong, butwith a little more research we might have figured it out. I shake my head. “He’s one of Nate’s friends. I’m trying to look as much like him as I can.”
Easton stares at me like he’s trying to figure out if I’m lying. Then maybe he realizes there’s more important things to think about, because he looks back at JT.
“Well, listen,” he says. “You’ve been playing your game for a few weeks—”
“This isn’t a game.”
He frowns. “It isn’t? Are you sure about that? Because I’m pretty sure I’m winning.”
Eastonhasbeen playing a game. And I might have only just learned that I’ve been a part of it, but he’s right. I’m losing. He walks over to the bench, where JT’s vape dropped after Easton hit him.
Tears stream down my face and I wipe them away. “You’re sick. What’s your plan when people find his body?”
Easton bends over and uses his own shirt to wipe the vape off, then, still holding it in his T-shirt-wrapped hand, puts it back into JT’s hand, closing his fingers around it. Then he reaches into JT’s pockets and takes the orange inhaler, tucking it into the back pocket of his own jeans.
“JT used to go up there to get stoned, Officer,” he says in a sad voice.
He puts his hands under JT’s body and pushes it toward the cliff.
“Stop!” I yell.
He ignores me and pushes again, JT’s limbs flopping over the side.“We went to see him, but he was smoking, and I didn’t want my little brother around that. So we left and went to get ice cream.”
The ice cream shop where our phones are. And where he paid with a card. Even if there aren’t security cameras at the ice cream stand, he has a paper trail. Contingencies for his contingencies.
“I guess he lost his balance and fell.” He pushes again and the rest of JT slides over the side and out of sight. Easton looks down after the body.
“What about the rock you bludgeoned him with? Your fingerprints are all over it and so is his blood.” His blood is also soaking into the ground as we speak.
“And now it’s submerged in the bay.” He points down the cliff. “And looks like rain.” The thunder rumbles again like it’s agreeing with him. “So even if it stopped somewhere on the ground down there and they want to dust every rock for prints, the prints theydofind will be garbage. The rain will wash away or dilute most of the blood up here. And our cell phones will never even ping off that tower over there.” He points in the distance, where, against the thunderclouds, a red light flashes atop a metal tower. He plannedallof this.
Easton takes a few steps toward me.
“Honestly, I’m not worried. I learned a lot when I killed Nate—primarily, how dumb cops are. Murderers are found because they make mistakes.Idon’t make mistakes.”
Criminals are also found because their own hubris convinces them they don’t mess up. I’m sure there have been plenty of murderers whose only slipup was thinking they didn’t make mistakes.
“I had a plan for Nate,” Easton continues. “I thought out every possible angle. But I was a kid back then, and I didn’t take into consideration that even smart adults are more stupid than I was. Did you know the local cops didn’t even contact the FBI and ask for help? They didn’t get involved until a friend of Dad’s put him in contact with Grant.”
My face burns with embarrassment. I don’t know how I missed any of this. He fooled me.
“Once the FBI was involved, they got the resources to search the bay but found nothing.”
There it is. If I can direct the police to Nate’s body, I can come clean and tell them what I’ve been doing, and that Easton was the murderer.
“What did you do with it?”
Easton smiles and shakes his head. “Nice try. No, we aren’t going to worry about Nate’s body anymore because Nate’s here!” He brushes my shoulders off. “Alive and well and on the road to recovery. For now. See, I’m going to let you keep up this charade because I feel like we’re all in too deep now. You can stay and pretend to be Nate. But you’re not going to be talking with Miles anymore. No more investigation. No stupid fucking podcast. And when you do finally leave, I want you to leave a note explaining you weren’t Nate.”
I nod. “I was going to do that anyway.”
“Sure you were. What, after finding out who really killed my brother? Or were you hoping that finding his killer would help Mommy and Daddy not be mad at you for manipulating them?”
