She told me

Chapter 16

"Yeah dude, what's up?" Cory sounded like he'd just woken up and he probably had considering it was 2 am.

"I need to talk to you" I said, pulling on my jeans, "can you meet me on the main road?"

There was a pause, "like right now?"

"Yes, Cory now, this is important".

"Someone better be dying" I hear him mutter before the call gets cut.

All the lights are off downstairs which means my mom's fast asleep, but I still don't want to risk leaving through the front door, so I push open my bedroom window and carefully drop the few feet to the ground, hoping I don't break anything.

Luckily, I don't. I pull my black jacket closer to me as I jog down the road. Cory doesn't look like he's very happy to see me and I don't blame him. "Sorry about this" I say, "it's about the murders".

Cory narrows his eyes at me, "and you thought the best place to talk about a serial killer is on an empty street where he could be watching us right now and could easily kill us".

I blinked, "uh well, there's two of us and you know, one of him, if it is a him."

Cory sighs, "what did you want to talk about?"

I take a deep breath, "so Peyton and Maya's sister, Valerie, was anyone arrested for her death?"

"The guy who supplied the drugs obviously, Kevin".

"What can you tell me about him?"

"Weird, kind of a loner, only hung out with Mia most of the time" he looked up, "he was a lot like you actually".

"Except for the supplying drugs part"

"I mean I don't know you that well".

"Funny, what else?"

"What else do you want to know?"

"Were you at the trial?"

"Yeah, practically the whole town was".

"There were four witnesses right, do you know who they were?"

Cory bit his lip, "there was Miss Martin, Karen Hills, me and..."

"Wait you were a witness?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Who was the fourth person?"

He looks at the ground, "um me, Karen, Martin and uh..."

I swallow, "Was it Travis?"

He looks up, "yeah it was actually, how did you know?"

"Lucky guess"

"Dude, seriously, you did not just make me walk here in the middle of the night to ask me a question you could've asked me over the phone".

I hesitate, "okay, I just have one last question for you, just be honest alright?"

"Okayyy"

"Why were you at the high school that day?"

"I told you I was looking for you and my car".

"And how did you know the police were coming?"

"I saw them on the way here".

"You couldn't have passed them on foot".

He was a silent for a minute then he thrust his hands into his jacket pocket, "I called the cops".

Of all the things I expected him to say or do, that wasn't it.

"Why?"

He shifted nervously, "I knew Travis was there and I knew he'd have drugs on him, I just..." he paused, "he was hitting on Maya, and he'd been meeting up with her and I just I got mad, you know, he was my friend, and he didn't even wait a week before trying to date my girlfriend."