Wicked Games: Book Two of The Psychopath Series

Chapter 9

"This is bad!" Preston freaked out in front of the windows watching the crime scene investigator dust the pool for prints. "This is really, really bad! We're going to jail." He had one problem that kept his name at the forefront of Evening PD's entire mind. Speeding. "I can't go to prison! I don't know how to make license plates." He tugged at a clump of his coily fro.

"Stop bitching!" Faith demanded sitting on the couch. She leaned close to Isabeth. "I'm this close to slapping him." She whispered demonstrating a sliver between her pointing finger and thumb.

Isabeth jabbed Faith's arm, "Chill." Faith pressed her lips together, narrowing her eyes at Preston. He was unraveling and she despised it. "Press, calm down." Isabeth insisted. "It's going to be okay." Preston frantically shook his head pulling out his inhaler turning his back to the window. The canister shook in his trembling hand. He held his tightening chest then inhaled a puff of medicine.

"Fine!" Dalton yelled. "Fine!" He gripped the top of the tartan armchair. "Fiona's dead, there's nothing fine about this!"

Isabeth shifted, sandwiched between Alex and Faith on the couch. She could feel herself falling between the cushions. She swiped her tongue over the groves of her teeth perfectly straight after two gruesome years of braces at the age of nine. She wasn't fond of being hollered at but Dalton was sad, which always prompted him to revert to lashing out instead of shedding a tear. So, she bit her tongue held back the verbal lashing that would leave him icing psychological wounds.

"She's not talking about Fiona." Alex jumped in. "The fine is referring to the perception of our criminality." He caressed Isabeth's knee.

"Was I talking to you?" Dalton asked. He rolled his sapphire eyes at Malachi's stern gaze emanating from the kitchen while his ear was glued to the smartphone. "You may have attached yourself to Isa but you are not her."

Alex opened his mouth. "Don't" Isabeth whispered to him. Dalton was looking for a fight. It was always better for him to use his fist instead of actually crying.

"Don't mute him, Isa!" Dalton ordered. "Let him talk. Let him say what he has to say? But before you rant Alex, answer this real quick. Why is it that ever since we met you our friends have been dropping like flies?"

"Don't convict Alex." Harper stood up from the floor wiping tears from her coral eyes.

Dalton tsked falling back in the chair unable to hold himself up any longer.

Isabeth squeezed her eyes together as Deputies Tom and Shawn carefully hoisted Fiona's limp body out the placid pool. It was the pool they floated in when the beach became too crowded with wannabes. The pool they dipped their legs in as they went over their travel plans for the three weeks their parents would allow them to voyage the world without a chaperone. The pool that Fiona dubbed her Happy Place was the pool that led her to her final resting place. Isabeth's eyes stayed glued shut, unwilling to open. She drowned out the bickering between Alex and Dalton, ignored the insensitivity of Faith and Harper's sobbing.

Isabeth needed one good thing that would make her eyes open. She yearned to find something about this entire situation that would allow her to face the horror lurking ahead, one thing that would let her know things could be worse. This wasn't the first time she'd seen a body; that was it! She had seen worse, felt worse. She went back to the horrid memory. Isabeth went over the memory Brittany inflicted upon her in the woods after she snapped her left radial bone falling in the backwoods. Brittany. That was what made this moment less grimy. No flies. No maggots. The stench of rotten flesh didn't sour the air. Isabeth blinked the image away.

Malachi finished the phone call he'd been on ever since Isabeth dialed 911 on her yellow Tory Burch cased iPhone. He cashed in the favor he earned from interning at Faulkner, Benedict & Ernst. Malachi entered the living room looking down at his Jordan's avoiding the crime scene tape blocking off the backyard where they had a Hawaiian luau two years ago to kick-off their last year at the Academy. Malachi refused to see Fiona unlike herself, not the talkative lively girl he dated after breaking up with Faith.

"Mr. Faulkner is sending someone," Malachi informed sliding his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts leaning against the bar. His skin tingled as his right hand slid across the fabric. The joints of his fingers throbbed. He looked at all their faces. No one had a black eye or a bruised face. There were no holes or dents in the wall from what he could see. So, what or who did he hit. He didn't have the answer to that question but he knew who he wanted to throttle right now. "Let's try to keep our cool." He looked to Dalton, raised his thick black eyebrows.

Dalton waved him off paying more attention to Tom and Shawn carrying the black body bag to the gurney. Black. Dalton's face burned red. Black was the color Fiona least liked. He couldn't remember any time Fiona wore the color. Neon yellow was her favorite color. The hue embodied her: energetic, spontaneous and loud. He balled his fist, dug it in the arm of the chair. She shouldn't be in a black bag, he thought. She shouldn't be in a bag at all, he loured at Alex.

Alex dropped his head in his hands. His nerves were wrecked and his heart raced like a horse at the Kentucky Derby. His foot started tapping like a pogo stick. Isabeth looked at him. "Are you okay?" She mouthed still cradling Harper.

Alex smirked apprehensively displaying the dimple in his left cheek. "Copacetic." He mouthed back. He traced his finger along his skin that stung underneath the sleeve of his old dark blue Dawson Prep hoodie. Three long, jagged scratch marks were etched in his forearm. He didn't remember crossing paths with a tabby, Siamese, or feral. He would have remembered that on account of his allergies to all things feline.

"Murders don't happen in Evening, Agent Anderson." Sheriff Edmonds declared walking through the wide-open patio door, with his thumbs hinged around an eagle engraved oval buckle. He was a beanstalk of a man with a Colonel Sander's mustache and Donald Trump hair that keep everyone asking, did it really grow that way?

"I guess Ms. Hamilton just tied her own ankles dumbbells." Anderson quipped. His eyes widen as he entered the living room. When Sheriff Edmonds told him the brats were in a pool house he envisioned a one-room abode for storage and showering off chloride, not a full-fledged home that could house an entire family of six.

"These are some of the best kids in this town." Sheriff Edmonds alleged looking at The Trillion scattered about in the living room. "This is the making of a suicide."

"Then, you won't mind if I ask them some questions? Just to make sure." Anderson asked with his Texas drawl matching the co-eds. The Dawson Prep scholars were easy to pick out from their Prep school, studying abroad cohorts; they were the only ones that lacked New England vernaculars.

Clayton Anderson turned to the kids, "Can I ask ya'll a couple of questions?" 

Should they answer Clayton Anderson's questions?