Страница 7 из 54
I jerked upright after begi
Before I could figure out what any of them meant, he saw me looking at the page and pulled the notebook toward himself.
When the final bell rang, I stacked the stuff on my half of the table and slipped it into my bag. I turned to Wyatt, thinking that, since we were stuck together for the rest of the school year, it would be polite to at least say something.
“Have a good —”
Wrong.
“Not interested,” he said.
He swung his bag over his shoulder and walked away.
Mom picked me up from school, buzzing with questions about my first day. But I didn’t feel like talking. Even though it hadn’t been a total disaster — I’d made one friend, after all — Wyatt’s cold rejection stung me more than I wanted to admit.
He’s just a weirdo, I told myself, remembering Marnie’s warning. Why should I even care what he thought?
After dropping me off at the house, Mom had to go to a hair appointment at a Beverly Hills salon (Cinderella can’t walk around her new castle covered in cinders, after all). I ordered her not to come home blond and went up to my room to start on my homework.
As I sat cross-legged on my bed reading about chemical reagents, my eyelids grew heavy, and the sticky tendrils of a headache slithered around my brain, threatening to take hold. So I shut the textbook and leaned over to slide it back in my bag. As I did, I noticed that there were not one but two spiral notebooks inside.
The first was green, crisply new — mine.
The second notebook was red, its edges worn from use. Written on the front, in thick black marker, was: W. SHEPPARD, PLEASE CALL IF FOUND: 323-555-4334
I must have accidentally grabbed it at the end of class.
My first thought was, Wyatt must be freaking out.
My next thought was, Well, I obviously have to look inside.
I set the notebook on my bed, halfheartedly debating in my head. You shouldn’t, said one part of me. It’s Wyatt’s business. You should text him and tell him you have it.
What would the text say, though?
Hi, it’s Willa, the girl whose head you bit off when I tried to be nice to you in Chemistry. I know you already hate me, but you have to believe it was a TOTAL ACCIDENT that I ended up kidnapping your precious notebook.
Yeah, no.
And then my i
Wyatt’s handwriting was so tiny and precise that it looked like it had come out of a printer.
BRIANNA LOGAN, 20 Y.O., TAKEN MAY 17, FOUND MAY 21
FAITH FERNANDES, 19 Y.O., TAKEN JUNE 9, FOUND JUNE 13
LORELEI JULIANO, 21 Y.O., TAKEN OCT 31, FOUND NOV 5
TORI ROSEN, 18 Y.O., TAKEN MARCH 18, FOUND MARCH 22
This was the list of names I’d gotten a glimpse of in class.
I blinked at the perfectly formed letters, a chill spreading through my body.
March 22 — that was yesterday’s date.
These had to be the names of the murder victims.
The first two were written in black ink. The third and fourth were in different colored ink — different pens — because they’d happened after Wyatt started his research.
I pulled my new laptop onto the bed and typed in the first name: Bria
Next, I typed in Faith Fernandes. “HOLLYWOOD KILLER” STRIKES AGAIN — POLICE BELIEVE MOVIE MURDERS ARE RELATED —
With each new name, the headlines grew more ominous. After Lorelei’s murder, the tone of the writing was deadly serious.
LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT CALLS IN FBI FOR HELP WITH HOLLYWOOD KILLER — POLICE URGE ACTRESSES TO USE CAUTION —
I found an article from that morning’s Los Angeles Times that detailed the ways the four killings were similar: The victims had all gone missing days before being found. They were all young, beautiful up-and-coming actresses who lived alone. None of them were famous yet, but all had had bit parts in TV shows or movies. Each one had been found dead in an abandoned or empty house. The girls had all been poisoned, and then their bodies had been arranged in scenes set to mimic famous movies, just like Jonathan had said. The movies that “inspired” the killer were The Birds, Kiss of Death, Heathers, and Vertigo. I’d heard of The Birds and Heathers, and Jonathan had mentioned Kiss of Death last night, but I hadn’t heard of Vertigo before.
Apparently all of the girls had auditions scheduled for the days they disappeared — the problem was that none of their calendars contained any helpful leads, just references to the names of fake talent agencies the killer had made up, a different one for each girl. The police thought he must be using disposable cell phones.
The girls’ striking smiles shone from the pictures lined up alongside the article. As I looked at them, the temperature in my room seemed to drop twenty degrees. The reality of the murders hit home. The victims weren’t much older than me. Intellectually, I knew I wasn’t in danger, but still…. It was just so creepy.
I went back to Wyatt’s notebook. Its pages contained detailed descriptions of the way each girl was found — Bria
The dead girls wore full costumes, wigs, and makeup to look exactly like the characters from the films. The killer took exquisite care to get every detail perfect.
Wyatt’s notebook also contained the girls’ addresses, their heights and weights and clothing sizes, their meager acting credits, the dates and times of the anonymous tips advising the police where to find the bodies, and the names of the responding police officers. It was more information than you could ever get just by reading news articles online.
And yet Wyatt somehow knew all of it.
I sat back, my heart pounding and head throbbing. I shoved the notebook to the floor. I didn’t even want it in my room. It felt dirty. It belonged in a bonfire. A shredder. But I didn’t dare destroy it, so I put it in my backpack and zipped it closed. Then I shut the backpack in my closet.
The murders were obviously disturbing enough by themselves — but what kind of person would be so obsessed with them? Who would take such detailed notes on the deaths and let thoughts of them consume his every spare minute?
Oh, just my lab partner, that’s all.
A flash of light flickered in my peripheral vision. An empty ache grew in the pit of my stomach.
I could feel the walls closing in on me. I had to get out of the house.
My new neighborhood was made up of narrow roads that wound along the hillsides. The houses ranged from sleekly modern to old-Hollywood glam, from cottages to mansions. Some were perfectly kept up, like our house, and some were descending into rot and ruin, smothered by ivy and huge magenta-flowering bushes.