The Follower by Kate Doughty (ebook reader with built in dictionary TXT) 📕

comment, though Rudy can’t help but notice lingering eyes on the paint-splattered room. If the follower really did this to Cecily . . . Rudy’d baited them. What had he done? Had he been the reason why . . . ?

Next to him, Amber is silent.

The turret room is small and unassuming. Officer Perry takes several close-up photographs of the desk containing Cecily’s makeup, capturing it from different angles, then snaps on latex gloves. “Can one of you identify the materials she used?”

Rudy nods and points out the makeup remover, lying on the floor where it had been knocked during the horror of last night. He can’t stop thinking about her face, how the skin had melted, how he’d been able to see the red, raw flesh beneath.

Carefully, Perry deposits them in a sealed evidence bag. “We’ll be running them for prints and chemical analyses,” she says. “We’ll be in contact with the supplier; if this is an error at the manufacturing level, you may want to look into a class action lawsuit.”

Yang turns to the Cole family. “Who had access to Cecily’s makeup products aside from you and your family? Is there any circumstance where someone else could have gotten hold of them?”

Mr. and Mrs. Cole look at each other. “Uh, the movers,” Mr. Cole begins. “And we also have a long-term crew that’s been working on the renovation, headed by Joseph LaRosa, our local handyman. And the kids had some friends over last night.”

“How large is this crew?”

“It varies, depending on the day.” Mr. Cole is pressing his lips together so tightly that they’ve gone white.

“And do they ever do work unsupervised by you? Not in the same room, perhaps? Would they have been able to sneak upstairs?”

There’s a long beat of silence. “It’s possible,” Mr. Cole finally answers. “It’s possible, yes.”

Sheriff Yang nods. Officer Perry makes another note on the pad. “Anything else?”

“It was in her go bag,” Amber speaks up. “She takes it with her everywhere.”

Their parents curse. She’s right. Rudy had forgotten about it—Cecily takes her small makeup go bag with her wherever she goes. If someone wanted to poison her, they wouldn’t have had to break into the house. They would have had a ton of chances . . .

“Everywhere?” the sheriff asks.

Amber lists out the locations they’d been to in the last few days: the hardware store, the pizza place, the bonfire, the coffee shops around town . . .

Perry nods and makes note of them all.

When Amber finally finishes, Yang continues. “Last time we were here, we came to warn you about local teenagers and squatters in the premises. Have you had any problems with them since?”

Rudy almost mentions the rabbit again, but decides better of it. He knows it wasn’t teenage squatters who did that.

“No,” Mrs. Cole says. “We haven’t. And we did install that security system . . .”

“Has it gone off?”

“No,” Mrs. Cole says, her voice soft.

After a few more questions about the limits of their alarm system, Yang turns to Rudy and Amber. “I’ll need the names of the friends you had over last night. We may have to question them.” Rudy watches Amber flush as she stammers about Jada and Bella. He doesn’t envy her. Last night had been about as awful a date as any he could imagine.

“And do you think they would have wanted to hurt Cecily?”

“No!” Amber says. “They love her. Everyone loves her.”

Yang’s gaze rests on Amber as if challenging her.

“They were horrified,” Rudy finally says, backing up his sister. “They . . . couldn’t have faked that.” He can still hear Bella screaming. “They’re our friends.”

Yang nods. “Of course. You understand, we have to follow up on every lead.” He takes one look around the turret room, shaking his head. It’s too sunny outside; the sky is too blue for everything that has happened. Officer Perry snaps various photographs of the crime scene.

“Is there anyone you can think of who would have wanted to do this to your daughter?” Yang finally asks.

The Coles look to their children.

Amber swallows. “We have this follower,” she says. “Under the user-name Alex_Grable. They’ve been posting threatening things on every photo of the house. At first, we just thought that it was someone being awful on the internet, but when we posted about Cecily being hurt . . . they said that it was them.”

Yang exchanges a look with his deputy. “He said that he did it?”

“Not . . . not exactly. He said, ‘I warned you,’” Rudy clarifies.

The officers exchange a look. Rudy can’t quite read it, but he thinks it means they don’t believe them.

“We deal with trolls all the time, and I know this is different,” Amber says. “I know that people . . . do these things . . . for clickbait or something, but we’re not. We would never hurt Cecily.”

Rudy decides to go for it. He tells the police everything that he and Amber had talked about: their suspicions that the follower could connect with the vandalism. He even talks about the rabbit, about his allergy attack—but he doesn’t mention the tape. Not yet. It’s on the tip of his tongue, but his mother just looks so . . . fragile. So ready to lose it.

Time and time again, he opens his mouth to tell his parents about the tape only to close it. What is he going to say? That he found something that might have belonged to Alex Grable, which might have something to do with Cecily? What would happen if the police find out that he he has it—would they not care? Or worse, would they think that he is withholding evidence? Could he get his whole family in trouble? Everything is already so bad, Rudy can’t bear the thought of making things worse by sharing another one of his insane theories. And then there’s one more reason he’s not telling anyone, one worse than the others: If he tells them, his mom and dad would know why they were drinking, would know why their reaction to Cecily’s disfigurement wasn’t as swift as it should have been, would know why