Wickedpedia Page 14

  Cole squeezed his fists. He had come seeking answers. A confession. He wanted Josh to tell him he’d killed Winnie and Scott and Drick. He wanted to know why.

  He wanted to know none of it was his fault.

  And if he couldn’t get any of that, he wanted Josh to hurt. Cole wanted to break his spirit. But looking at him now, Cole knew that wasn’t possible. There was nothing left to break in Josh that wasn’t already broken. Cole turned to go.

  “Water?” The word rasped from Josh’s mouth.

  Josh was still, his eyes closed. But he was awake. He sensed a presence. But he didn’t sense it was Cole’s.

  “Thirsty.”

  A bowl of water sat on the side table. A small sponge floated inside it.

  “Please?”

  Cole wanted to walk out. Let Josh suffer. Let his lips chap and run red. Let his throat scorch and burn. He’d done worse to Winnie.

  Instead Cole picked up the sponge and dabbed it against Josh’s mouth. The clear liquid trickled inside, and down his face. He blotted and swallowed.

  “Thank you.”

  Cole put the sponge down and stepped back.

  “You don’t have to go. You could stay.”

  Cole looked at the mush before him, trying to fish out the features of the kid he’d once called his friend, before girls and grades, growing up and growing jealousy had drifted between them.

  “Don’t wanna be alone.”

  Next to the bed was a chair. On it rested an issue of Teen Vogue. Its cover featured Taylor Swift in a top hat. Cole set it aside, sat down, and waited.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything,” Josh said. “Nobody knows what to say to me,” Josh said. “Doesn’t stop them from trying, though.”

  The longer Cole looked at Josh, the less like a root vegetable he appeared. There was something human there. Maybe not very human. But just human enough.

  “I keep thinking about Winnie.” He stopped and gulped. “It was sick. Her hair tied around her neck. And Cole standing there. That freak. I didn’t even think. I screamed and ran at him and we went through the window. Now here I am. And she’s gone.” He hocked back snot. “I’m lucky to be alive. That’s what people say when they can’t think of anything else. So stupid. I wasn’t lucky to see my girlfriend disfigured. I’ll never forget it no matter how hard I try. It’s not fair. If she had to die, I should have died, too. And Cole. Cole most of all.” A new fact pinballed through Cole’s head, breaking down everything that he’d wanted so desperately to believe.

  When Josh found Cole in Winnie’s room, he’d expected to find her alive.

  Josh hadn’t killed her.

  Cole pushed to his feet, his head gorged with new questions.

  “Where are you going?” asked Josh.

  Out. Away. Anywhere but here.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you. Don’t go.”

  Cole turned to escape but stumbled into the chair, knocking the magazine off the side table. It flapped to the floor. He picked it up, the habit of a neatnik.

  “Stay a little while longer, okay?” Josh begged plaintively, a little boy whose father had to leave for work. “You didn’t even tell me the results of my quiz.”

  A voice in the corridor.

  Cole risked a peek outside. The police officer had returned with his cup of coffee, but was busy blocking another would-be visitor.

  “Sorry, miss. If you’re not on the list, you don’t see Josh.”

  “I just want a minute to ask him a few questions, officer.” The cop’s heft blocked Cole’s vision of the girl, but he knew her by her rhythm. “It’s for a story I’m writing. I’m a member of the press!” Lila fussed, trying to squirt by the cop. “The public has a right to know!” Cole felt Josh stir behind him.

  “Who is that out there?”

  Cole slipped out and took off in the opposite direction from Lila and the cop, but not before she spotted him. “Why is it okay for the guy who almost died with Josh to see him but I can’t?”

  The cop whirled. But Cole was already speeding around the corner, all the way through the ward until he’d arrived back at the nurses’ station. “Did you and Delia have a good visit?” asked the nurse. Cole was out the door without answering, zipping into a stairwell as he heard Lila skid up to the reception area, too far behind to catch up now. He took the stairs two at a time, running from Josh, from Lila, from the cop, from a question he couldn’t shake.

  If Josh hadn’t killed Winnie, who had?

  Cole’s mother was still waiting in the lobby. Together they piled into the car and his father drove off. His mother turned around from the front seat and glared. “Is that what you had to run upstairs for, keeping us waiting?”

  Cole looked in his hand. He didn’t remember rolling up the magazine in Josh’s room and taking it with him. He relaxed his grip and Teen Vogue splayed out on his lap.

  His mother wrinkled her nose. “Since when do you read that?”

  “I don’t,” Cole breathed, his eyes fixed on the name of the addressee listed on the mailing label. But he now knew someone who did.

  Andrea Henderson.

  Cole first noticed the green ribbons when his father turned into their subdivision. He’d been too busy looking behind the trees for potential assassins, not at them. One green ribbon was tied in a bow around each tree trunk. “What’s with those?” Cole wondered if they were meant to honor a fallen soldier, but thought the appropriate color was yellow, or maybe black, not green.

  His mother looked at his father, then out the window. They knew this was coming, but knowing didn’t make telling him any easier. “They’re for Winnie.”

  Tree after tree was dressed for her death.

  Would they be dressed for his come tomorrow morning? After all, it was the day Winnie’s killer had marked for Cole’s murder. He took shallow breaths, afraid he might hyperventilate right there in the car.

  “Why green?” Cole asked.

  “It’s the color for missing children. It’s the closest they could get.”

  Apparently the mourning industry had not yet assigned a color to “Murdered by Ex-Boyfriend.”

  A host of neighbors and students was assembled outside his front door. They carried signs congratulating his recovery. They cheered as Cole’s father pulled up the driveway. “Welcome home.”

  It would have been a fine sentiment had Cole been worthy of it. But he had done nothing to prevent Winnie’s death, and maybe only hastened it. And the more he pondered, the surer he was that her killer was still on the loose. The canyon of heroes was treatment misplaced, and he could have done without his mother snapping photos to augment his college applications and the microphone meal Spring Showers forced on him when he stepped out of the car. “How does it feel to have caught Winnie’s murderer? If you could say anything to Josh right now, what would it be?”

  Gavin dislodged himself from the crowd and nudged Spring to the side. “Given our hero’s knack for culinary arts I think he’d go with something along the lines of, ‘Let justice be served.’ ” The crowd applauded Gavin’s oration as he helped hustle Cole inside.

  The turnout dissipated as soon as the door closed behind him. Spring and her crew hung on for a few more hours, recording interviews with neighbors and passersby, every once in a while aiming a camera at the house, hoping to nab a glimpse of movement or a wave. Cole wished they’d just go away. “Want me to moon them?” Gavin asked. “Never mind, that’d have the opposite effect.” Finally Spring packed it in and took off, the light waning and Gavin’s patience along with it.

  “Of course the cops are going to wonder if you had a hand in Winnie’s death,” he droned after Cole told him about the interview and his encounter with Josh. “They’d be pretty bad at their job if they didn’t. You were on the scene. You discovered her body. She’d broken up with you. But they have a couple more reasons to believe Josh was to blame, and their names are Scott and Drick.”

  “It’s not just the cops,” Cole fretted. �
�It’s my Wikipedia page. Do you know I’m supposed to die today?”

  “Hey, me too,” said Gavin. “Brothers until the end.”

  Cole could’ve kicked himself.

  “It never occurred to you that someone would ever care about me enough to want me dead, did it.” Gavin hadn’t phrased it like a question.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so wrapped up in myself. I didn’t think.”

  “Yeah, you forget to do that every now and then,” Gavin chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. You were always tops on Josh’s hit list. Me, I was low-hanging fruit. He’d have gotten around to me eventually, whenever he decided he could be bothered. But in the meantime, I promise, I’d have raised many a glass to my dearly departed best friend.”

  “You may still have that opportunity,” warned Cole. “I think we’re wrong about Josh. I don’t think he killed anyone.”

  Cole told Gavin the story of his visit to Josh’s bedside.

  Gavin couldn’t believe they were back to this. “And you base this theory on what, your infallible intuition? The mind-meld you formed when you and Josh dove out Winnie’s window? A couple days ago you were convinced he was a psycho killer. A couple of head injuries and a single one-sided conversation later and you’ve come to Jesus?”

  “You didn’t hear him,” Cole said, his voice flat.

  But Gavin didn’t need to. “If he didn’t do it, who did? Who wanted all three of them dead? Can you think of a single person?”

  Cole could not. “But just because I can’t think of someone doesn’t mean there’s no one who fits the bill. I’m not Sherlock Holmes.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since ‘Let’s eat,’ and that was weeks ago. Let it go. It’s over. We could be having fun tonight, trying to get back to normal. The drama kids are throwing a huge party since the winter formal got canceled. You should come with me.”

  A bomb detonated in Cole. “Winnie’s dead! Josh can’t walk! There’s a killer on the loose and you want to go to some party?! What’s wrong with you?! Do you have a human bone in your body?!”

  Gavin went scarlet. “We played a prank, Cole. A prank of your own design. It got out of control. But we did not kill anyone. Josh made that happen. I know you’re weeping for Winnie on the inside, and I’m sorry about that.” Nothing about Gavin’s demeanor backed that up. “But it wasn’t your fault she chose a crazy boyfriend. It was hers.”

  Cole flared. “It wouldn’t be so easy for you to blame the victim if you’d ever —”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on. Let’s hear it. ‘If I ever,’ what? Got a girlfriend of my own?”

  Yes. “If you ever cared about someone.” Better.

  Gavin rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Look at all the death and destruction I’m missing out on, being so antisocial and unremarkable. ‘Gee, I could have a real future as a simpering imbecile … if only I got a girlfriend!’ If the alternative to turning into a mess like you is never going steady, sign me up for the single life.” He picked up his jacket. “And a friendless one. I don’t need this. I don’t need you.”

  Gavin left, maybe taking their friendship with him. Cole tried to put his advice to work. He tried to let it all go. But the police car parked down the street made that impossible. They were watching him. And waiting. Distracted, looking at the wrong person while someone else got away with three murders. Cole was no Sherlock, but he knew more than the police did. And that put it on him to figure out who was killing people and using the Wikipedia pages he’d written as cover. As if avenging Winnie and halting the ticking clock hanging over his head wasn’t already reason enough.

  Cole pushed the stack of assignments and college applications off his desk onto the floor, and fired up his computer. His e-mail was chock-full of messages. The latest was a reminder of the underground party going on tonight. It was being held in the empty restaurant space next to Benito’s. Cole deleted the e-mail and quickly scanned the rest, finding nothing of note. He opened his browser and called up all the Wikipedia pages he and Gavin had made in a happier time, when a little revenge mischief wasn’t liable to get someone killed.

  Scott’s. Andrea’s. Drick’s. Winnie’s. Josh’s.

  He scoured them for something new. Something different. Something he may have missed every other time he pored over them. He found nothing. All of them showed a history of creation and editing using Cole’s handle. Scott’s and Drick’s were still exactly as he and Gavin had written them, and their Wiki deaths were metaphors for their real ones. The only change to Winnie’s was the added stub Cole had first noticed when he found her. Andrea’s and Josh’s were more or less on target, except for the fact that she’d survived and no one had actually tried to kill him.

  Then there was the entry Cole hadn’t written. The entry the killer had written for him. Cole wondered how his death would come to pass, if the killer got their way. He remembered the entry had concluded with something about him stewing in his own juices. Something cooking-related. He shivered. Whoever was imagining his termination had some boiling in mind. He typed his name into Wikipedia and hit SEARCH.

  Did you mean: école redeker

  The page “Cole redeker” does not exist. You can ask for it to be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered.

  For search help, please visit Help:Searching.

  Cole rubbed his forehead, retyped his name and once more hit SEARCH, only to get the same results.

  His page was gone. Like it had never existed.

  Had he dreamed it? No. His memory of everything up until the moment he and Josh went out the window was sharp. Winnie’s computer had been on. Her Wikipedia page was on the monitor. He’d clicked on a link to his name, and that had brought up his page. Cole toggled to Winnie’s page. There at the bottom of the page was the footnote.

  He clicked his name and his browser immediately returned with a meadow vista as seen through a cracked window.

  The link was broken; his page was gone. Taken down and erased.

  Cole grabbed the bag he’d taken home with him from the hospital and pulled out a folder. Detective Simms had given him copies of crime scene photos taken in Winnie’s bedroom (minus her body). “When you have a chance, give them a look,” Simms had said. Cole sorted through the photos and quickly found what he was looking for.

  Then he called the police station and asked for Simms.

  “You told me to look at the crime scene photos and tell you if anything strikes me. Well something strikes me.”

  “Yeah?” asked Simms wearily. “What’s that?”

  “Winnie’s computer is off. When Josh found me and we fought, it was on.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive,” Cole said. “The browser was open.”

  “Open to what?”

  “You don’t know?” Cole’s heart thumped.

  “We’ve had trouble with the computer,” said Simms. “IT is on it, but it seems as though it was tampered with. I’m not sure we’ll ever know what was on it, or at least not anytime soon. What was the browser open to, Cole?”

  Cole thought hard in the two seconds he gave himself to answer. Be specific with Simms now and the patrol car at the end of the street might be picking him up and delivering him to lockup in minutes. “Wikipedia,” Cole blurted before he knew what he was doing.

  “Which page?”

  “The main page.” That would have to suffice. “I guess she was doing some research. Sorry to bother you.” He hung up.

  Three important facts slid into place.

  Someone had come into Winnie’s room between the time he and Josh hit the ground and the police arrived.

  That person had the expertise to obliterate the evidence on Winnie’s computer that a prediction of her own death was featured on her screen, as well as the browser history that would show Cole had clicked on his own. Whoever it was had taken a big risk to keep thos
e pages from hitting the wider public.

  That person had gotten in and gotten out very fast. Simms told him during the questioning that the police and EMTs had arrived at Winnie’s house mere minutes after the fall.

  That someone — Cole was sure it was the killer — had to have been nearby, watching, keeping an eye on the house maybe from the moment Cole arrived, and then Josh. That person knew exactly how much time was needed to get the job done.

  Chetley could have done it.

  He knew computers. He was creepy. And he’d overheard Cole’s conversation with Winnie. He knew she wanted to see him.

  But Cole kept coming back to why? Why would Chetley want all those people dead? And why pin it all on Cole? Because he was a garden-variety psycho?

  It was too easy, like a trick SAT question. The obvious answer was not the answer.

  So what if Chetley figured out Cole might be stopping by Winnie’s that night? She could have told anyone what her plans were.

  Then Cole remembered something else.

  She had.

  Josh told Cole himself when he thought he was talking to Andrea. The memory played out in his head like a re-run. I keep thinking about Winnie, Josh had said. We were going to work it out. The way she said we would. I went to see her like you told me to and she just …

  Andrea had been in touch with Josh that day. She advised him to take another shot with Winnie, to look for her that night, exactly when Cole would be there.

  Cole’s shoulders were hitched high to his ears. His pulse shot up and down with the force of a piston. He was getting closer. But he needed more.