..
Dray threw the sheriff's note across the counter to her left. It slid to the very edge, almost toppling over to the floor.
After a bowl of steamy pasta and a good movie, Dray fell into a dreamless nap. Unfortunately, her brain break didn't last long and she awoke with her gut twisted into a wretched knot. Whatever relief she had talked herself into flew off in the wind.
Sheriff Heron seemed awfully nice, despite the occasional weird gesture and Wells' fanciful theories about him, but she couldn't ditch the icky feeling suddenly taking home in her body.
Dray tried washing dishes to move on with her afternoon as normal, but the tension wouldn't shake. After almost finishing the chore, she threw in the towel and ended up back on the couch, collapsing and groaning into the cushions. She had the entire weekend to dwell on the session and needed to direct her focus to something else. She flipped to her back and looked at the ceiling.
She could find Wells.
With a few monotonous moments staring up at the popcorn ceiling, Dray concluded that after she found Wells, she would look into removing the dated texture up top. Rolling like a sack of potatoes off the couch—though expertly landing on her feet—Dray left in a haste for Posies with hope to find her new friend under a shady oak tree in the corner of the patio.
Her pace maintained some speed until the setting sun beat down on her forehead. With her steps relaxed to a casual stroll, Dray's mind wandered between all the useless searches on the internet for crimes in Hero. Her research on the matter stayed light, partly because of her procrastination skills and partly because the lack of information. Just like the first time she searched after meeting Wells, no single article came up holding any weight. Stories of teen pranks and incidents of light vandalism and graffiti filled the search pages, but absolutely no dangerous crime and no missing persons.
Rounding through the front gate of Posies, Dray brushed her out of control hair behind her ears—the breeze constantly kept it moving—and came to a stop in front of the familiar table.
"Where have you been?" she asked the man sitting in the shaded seat.
Wells propped his feet up and again worked on something in his notebook. "I had to lay low for a few days."
"Lay low?" Dray sat down across from him and wrinkled her nose. They hadn't even started yet.
"My article."
She pursed her lips together and tried to combat the doubt creeping up in her mind.
"They assumed it was me." Wells finally looked at her through his eyelashes. "They usually do, but I know a thing or two about the internet. They couldn't track me, but they'd find another way if needed."
Air left Dray's chest in a noisy huff. The paranoia in his words left a bitter taste in her mouth. "This is all a bit crazy," she admitted. "I just don't know. I mean, I know something is weird, but..." Her eyes looked everywhere, but him.
Wells' feet dropped to the ground in a loud smack and he leaned forward. His notebook fell flat on the table and revealed words scribbled in skinny scrawl. Another glare graced his face as he stared at her.
Dray wiggled in her seat.
With a sudden scrap of his chair, Wells stood up. "You up for a walk?" He didn't wait for her answer and instead left the patio in long strides, his notebook gripped securely at his side.
Dray waited a moment. Thoughts sped through her mind, but she couldn't catch them, so she stood up and followed. Best not to think about it at that point, but she did grasp the bag at her hip for the small bottle of pepper spray she always brought with her. She had never used it before and wasn't quite sure she knew how, but Dray listened to enough of her favorite murderino podcast to figure it out. For this town, she'd have to figure it out.
By the time Dray stepped around a group of noisy high schoolers—who she guessed were skipping class because they were way too excited for a Thursday morning—Wells almost stepped out of sight. It seemed impossible for Dray to catch up without running and she battled her want to take off in a sprint. His strides had to be double hers, at least.
Sticking out in the crowd didn't sound like a good idea, so she stayed behind making sure to keep an eye on him. After all, he would have waited for her if it wasn't a problem. That's what she was telling herself, anyway.
Dray tripped on a chunk of sidewalk that had jutted up over time and shuffled her steps, falling behind even more. An inkling popped in her mind that spending time with Wells meant a lot of stealth. The necessity of it, on the other hand, flew up in the air.
The breeze grew stronger as the lake came into view. The path stretched just a few feet parallel to the water; rocky sand separating the two. Dray watched Wells slow when the grass meshed with sand.
The residents of Hero crowded the shops, leaving only a mother and baby sitting in the sand. With less eyes to pry, she picked up the pace and attempted closing the gap to Wells before she arrived at her street. He walked a lot farther ahead than she had thought.
Upon reaching her corner, she grinned and turned to look down the block towards her house.
Wells wasn't there.
Dray's shoulders dropped. "Seriously," she muttered and turned in a circle, searching for her strange new friend. Fortunately, she found him walking just a few blocks down to the right of the main road, opposite of her house. He stopped at a small home—and from what Dray could tell from the angle, it much resembled her own—and waited on the front steps.
She moseyed across the street and down the sidewalk, feeling no need to shorten his wait, and studied this side of the neighborhood. She'd actually never been over to explore, though now she realized it left nothing to the imagination. It looked quite similar, if not exact, to her side of the street. It reminded her of a book she had read as a child. During one part of the story, the characters found themselves in a suburban neighborhood, though with much less foliage, where all the kids simultaneously bounced balls in their drive ways.
Dray was glad there were no kids in sight.
Once she caught up, Wells unlocked the door and stepped aside, gesturing for her to go first. She smiled. At least the manners weren't completely gone.
Through the door, Dray immediately noticed the smell of burning wood and lemon. Her eyes darted to the wood burning fireplace centered on the far wall. She frowned. Her house didn't have a fireplace.
Wells kept his place clean with a mixture of old furniture that looked like hand-me-downs from grandparents, a mixture of patterns and styles. Even without a fireplace, the mood screamed cozy.
The layout reflected her own with the kitchen off to the left, but open to the living area. The bedrooms landed at the back of the house.
Wells hadn't waited for her to scope out the space, not that it surprised her at this point, and went straight to the bedrooms. Dray trailed after him, sneaking a glance at the first room with an unmade bed, and entered the room on the left. As her head turned back around, she halted in her tracks. Her lips parted and she gripped her hands behind her back.
A massive bulletin board on wheels, like one that could swivel around to a whiteboard, filled the back wall in its entirety. Shiny metal tacks pinned pictures, notes, newspaper clippings, and scratchy line drawings to the board with different colored strings connecting them in a mess of tangles.
Wells stood in front of it and faced her with a placid demeanor that contrasted his tightly crossed arms. His weight shifted back and forth from heel to toe.
Millions of thoughts hopped and skipped over one another in Dray's mind. She pulled her hair over to one shoulder. "I guess," she slowly met his gaze, "we might as well get started." Her eyes were saucers, as they had been since she entered the room, but she couldn't ignore the itch to dive in and figure out the messy masterpiece. She could still be watchful of Wells, but why not have some fun along the way?
She brushed her hand over her bag again.
Wells nodded and a rare smile brightened his face; something Dray didn't expect to see often. He wasted no time jumping into his creation, walking to the left side of the board. At the top corner was a picture of a dark-haired couple. "My parents," he tapped on the photo, "were never found and the case went cold. The only clue I have is the bones." He pointed to a familiar picture pinned slightly over the first one.
A clap resounded through the room and Wells turned over his shoulder to face Dray with his hands clasped by his chin. "Since my parents went missing, there have been four other major deaths in Hero that were covered up."
Glancing at Wells out of the corner of her eye, Dray stepped forward to get a closer look. The board stood taller than her and was almost entirely covered. Some of the papers had yellowed with curled edges and with nearly every picture was a handwritten note tacked underneath. Dray had to squint to see the ones towards the top. Each string was pinned and strung tight between connections. She could only assume the different colors meant different things, or that he ran out of string.
A nagging feeling swirled in her gut. A lot of information filled the board, but he had no progress to show for it.
The picture of his parents had all three colors of string attached to it. "Thirteen years ago," she read the caption pinned below, dragging her fingers across the faded letters.
Wells' eyes darted to the words, but he kept along. "This is the old Mayor." He flicked another photo and turned to Dray. "Five years ago, he was found in his home. He was alone and supposedly there was no sign of foul play. It was declared a gas leak by the police."
He moved to the center of the board. "Three years ago, a school teacher that held the hearts of pretty much every student was found dead in the river. The story is that she'd gone on a hike and slipped into the river, hit her head, and eventually drowned." He pushed his hair back and flicked the photo of a woman in running gear. "She was also a seasoned triathlete."
The next picture showed a man surrounded by a group of men in uniform. Dray touched the photo and glanced over her shoulder. "Was he police?"
Wells set a hand on her shoulder and gently moved her to the side, taking her place. "Not quite. He was apart of the Neighborhood Watch in the town over. Report said he got caught in the middle of a shoot out and took one straight to the heart. That was last year."
Dray wrapped her arms around her body. A chill engulfed her body upon noticing the set of photos and notes in front of her. "The sheriff's brother." She stared at his face until her eyes were too tired to focus. "Declared a suicide by hanging," she read off a news article while avoiding the actual story.
"Each and every case had some sort of combination of the same people involved. I tried to sort it out by the strings, but it's more of a mess than anything. I mean, we didn't even talk about the petty stuff." He ran his fingers through his hair and walked away from the board. He started pacing. "Either way, something is weird. The towns are small around here, so overlap is expected, but there are even patterns with the witnesses."
He rattled off a few more reasons that made no sense to Dray and must have had something to do with the rest of the notes and articles on the board. Once he finished, he stood still with round eyes and waited.
The information settled in Dray's mind like rocks falling down a hill. It sounded like a plot to a story; however, the amount of information made it hard to remember the details. She sighed. "Do you have any proof?"
Wells clenched his fists and his scowl came to light. "Proof? Are you kidding?" He motioned to the board. "Do you know how long I've been working on this?" The distance between them shortened and he looked down to meet her eyes.
She instantly felt bad and took a step back. She didn't want to discredit him. "I get that, but what about something," she held up her hands, swirling them around, "physical? Like the bones? What about the bones?"
His expression fell slack with his shoulders and he rubbed his forehead. "I couldn't reach them. The dirt from the trail was too soft to climb down. I would have wound up in the water, probably in the current, so I tried to use a rake to lift them up." His head lolled back. "They fell in the river, washed away."
That hit her in the stomach, but she couldn't let up or let the subject change. "I'm not a crime expert, but without those, isn't this all, you know, circumstantial?"
One scoff and the anger returned. "And? Everything in this town is circumstantial. That's why they get away with it. They make everything easy to go either way."
Dray nodded—whether she agreed or just wanted to appease him, she wasn't sure—and swung her arms by her sides. Looking around the room, she spotted a small chair in the corner and walked over to it. She fell into the squishy seat and made herself comfortable.
Feeling Wells' eyes trained on her, she took her long hair that was tangled in a low pony spilling down her back and flipped it over her shoulder. "So," she said after a while, "where do we go from here?"
Perhaps a lack of spontaneity in her life or the wish to always become something more led her to feel much more at ease in this situation than she should.
Wells pushed off the wall and the shadow of a smile returned. "We lay low and investigate."
"Is that even possible?" She raised her eyebrows.
He sauntered back over the the crime board. "It takes a bit of time, but yes. You need to make it work, otherwise, they'll catch you."
Dray took a deep breath with a subtle shake of her head. Her eyes drifted out the small window and onto the trees in his backyard. Doubt crept up in her thoughts, but she pushed it back as usual. "Let's get started then." She bit her tongue. She almost couldn't believe those words came out of her mouth so easily. Almost.
"Nope, not tonight."
Dray flung her hands in the air and she whipped her head back to Wells. "What?"
A dry chuckle filled the room. "Lay low, remember? Besides, I hear you have a photoshoot in a few days and according to your website, it looks like you haven't done one in a few years."
She groaned and rubbed her temple with one hand. "Not in quite a while." She narrowed her eyes at him, but was greeted with a bit of playfulness. That was new and unexpected, but relaxing. Getting teased happened to be a sneaky comfort for her—it occurred enough in her family growing up to give her a sense of home.
Dray hopped up to stand and smiled. "Care to walk me home then?"
Wells extended his arm—an invitation for Dray to go first—and put his hand on her lower back as she passed, guiding her through the house.
She held back chills that threatened to explore in a very different way than Wells had caused before. That happened quicker than she expected, though it had been awhile since she spent this much time with such an attractive person.
Outside, Dray lengthened her strides. Her mind ran in every direction possible.
The walk back to her house was quiet and—aside from Dray diving into her naivety—nice. In a town of strange occurrences and uncertainties, she became thankful for a friend, even if he exuded a bit of strangeness himself.
When they met her front steps, Wells muttered a goodbye, stating he will see her soon. Dray managed a wave, but he didn't notice, having already taken off. She shook her head and went inside, ready to make a whole lot of food and momentarily forget about the possible hell she just welcomed herself into.
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[EDITED OCTOBER 9, 2021]
Don't forget to comment all my grammar mistakes (tenses kill me).
Thank you for reading.