Page 19 of Twelve
“I knew it,” Kelley’s mom bit out. “I knew that our little girl…” She drew in a ragged breath.
Now it was her husband’s turn to finish her sentence. “We knew that Kelley couldn’t and wouldn’t have killed herself. We told the police as much, but they’re used to parents being biased when it comes to their children.”
The subtext there told me that Dr. Isaac Peterson considered himself, above all, an objective and rational person. I filed that away for future reference, but paid more attention to the way that Lia tapped two fingers—middle and index—lightly against the side of my leg. The signal was subtle, but unmistakable.
She’d caught a lie.
We knew that Kelley couldn’t and wouldn’t have killed herself.Dr. Alice Peterson might have believed that, but her husband was the one who’d spoken those words, and he did not.
No matter what he’d told the police, no matter how objective and rational his tone, he’d doubted his daughter. He’d believed she’d jumped.
My mind went to the autopsy—not the photographs documenting the damage wreaked by impact, but the close-up shots of Kelley’s lower abdomen. Scars—small, deliberate half-moons—had stretched from one of Kelley’s hip bones to the next, too low to show unless she was naked.
“Were you aware that Kelley was a cutter?” I asked Kelley’s father. I knew the question wouldn’t be a welcome one, but I needed to get to know Kelley well enough to crawl into her head, and I needed any information, no matter how seemingly insignificant, that might give me insight into her killer’s.
“Kelley put a lot of pressure on herself.” Alice Peterson seemed to consider that a full and sufficient response to my question. “She was very driven.”
“A perfectionist,” her husband added, sitting ramrod straight.
“She was perfect.” Alice’s voice cracked. I glanced at Lia, but she gave no indication that Kelley’s mother was lying. Whether or not Alice Peterson had believed her daughter was flawless when she was alive, now that she was gone, she wasperfect.
Grief had a way of warping perceptions.
“Tell me about Kelley,” I suggested gently. That was all it took to open the floodgates, forbothDr. Petersons. How beautiful Kelley was. How smart. The fact that she’d applied early to an Ivy League university. The number of times she’d made homecoming court. How mercilessly she’d been able to dismantle her opponents in debate.
As the Petersons described their perfect daughter, I thought back again to Kelley’s scars.You didn’t cut your wrists, your legs, or even your stomach. You sliced below your panty line.
She’d literally hidden her pain, preserving the image.
If you had killed yourself?I thought, slipping into her mind.You wouldn’t have wanted a closed-casket funeral.She wouldn’t have wanted to mangle the body she left behind.
You wouldn’t have jumped.
“Did Kelley have any rivals?” I asked. “Was there anyone she’d had conflict with? Any issues socially?”
“Kelley was very social,” her father said immediately. “Everyone loved her.”
Another tap on my leg, another lie. Even in grief, Isaac Peterson knew quite well that his daughter hadnotbeen universally beloved.
“You can’t think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?” Lia pressed.
“Kelley didn’t always get along with other girls.” Alice pursed her lips. “They could be so jealous.”
That was a loaded statement if I’d ever heard one.
“And boys?” I asked.
“They all wanted to date her,” Isaac said immediately. He shook his head—in memory? In denial?
“I’m guessing she had to turn a lot of would-be Romeos down.” Lia gave no indication of how carefully she was studying their responses to that statement. “Was that hard for her?”
The answers came in tandem. “I think so.”
“Of course.”
Two taps from Lia. Neither one of them thought Kelley disliked turning people down.
“It wasn’t her fault,” Alice said suddenly, leaning toward us. “What happened with the Summers boy. He was obviously very ill.”
