“Clearly,” I whispered to Olivia. I didn’t think his mother called him Will. Officer William Koenig shot a look at us and rested a hand on his gun. I guess it was habit, but it looked like he was considering shooting us for whispering. Olivia disappeared into her seat and a few of the other girls giggled.
“It’s an excellent career path and one of the few that doesn’t require college yet,” he pressed on. “Are—uh—any of you considering going into law enforcement?”
It was the uh that did him in. If he hadn’t hesitated, I think the class might have behaved.
A hand whipped up. Elizabeth, one of the hordes of Mercy Falls High students still wearing black since Jack’s death, asked, “Is it true that Jack Culpeper’s body was stolen from the morgue?”
The class erupted in whispers at her audacity, and Officer Koenig looked as if he really did have due cause to shoot her. But all he said was, “I’m not really authorized to talk about the details of any ongoing investigations.”
“It’s an investigation?” a male voice called out from near the front.
Elizabeth interrupted, “My mom heard it from a dispatcher. Is it true? Why would someone steal a body?”
Theories flew in quick succession.
“It’s got to be a cover-up. For a suicide.”
“To smuggle drugs!”
“Medical experimentation!”
Some guy said, “I heard Jack’s dad has a stuffed polar bear in his house. Maybe the Culpepers stuffed Jack, too.” Someone took a swat at the guy who made the last comment; it was still taboo to say anything bad about Jack or his family.
Officer Koenig looked aghast at Mrs. Ruminski, who stood in the open door of the classroom. She regarded him solemnly and then turned to the class. “Quiet down!”
We quieted down.
She turned back to Officer Koenig. “So was his body sto- len?” she asked.
He said again, “I’m not really authorized to discuss the details of any ongoing investigations.” But this time, he sounded more helpless, like there might be a question mark at the end of his sentence.
“Officer Koenig,” Mrs. Ruminski said. “Jack was well loved in this community.”
Which was a patent lie. But being dead had done wonders for his reputation. I guess everyone else could forget the way he’d lose his temper in the middle of the hall or even during class. And just what those tempers looked like. But I hadn’t. MercyFalls was all about rumors, and the rumor on Jack was that he got his short fuse from his dad. I didn’t know about that. It seemed like you ought to pick the sort of person you would be, no matter what your parents were like.
“We are still in mourning,” Mrs. Ruminski added, gesturing to the sea of black in the classroom. “This is not about an investigation. This is about giving closure to a close-knit community.”
Olivia mouthed at me: “Oh. My. God.” I shook my head. Amazing.
Officer Koenig crossed his arms over his chest; it made him look petulant, like a little kid being forced to do something. “It’s true. We’re looking into it. I understand the loss of someone so young”—this from someone who looked maybe twenty—“has a huge impact on the community, but I ask that everyone respect the privacy of the family and the confidentiality of the investigation process.”
He was getting back on firm footing here.
Elizabeth waved her hand again. “Do you think the wolves are dangerous? Do you get lots of calls about them? My mom said you got lots of calls about them.”
Officer Koenig looked at Mrs. Ruminski, but he should have figured out by now that she wanted to know just as much as Elizabeth did. “I don’t think the wolves are a threat to the populace, no. I—and the rest of the department—feel this was an isolated incident.”
Elizabeth said, “But she got attacked, too.”
Oh, lovely. I couldn’t see Elizabeth pointing, but I knew she was, because everyone’s faces turned toward me. I bit the inside of my lip. Not because the attention bothered me, but because every time someone remembered I was dragged from my tire swing, they remembered it could happen to anyone. And I wondered how many someones it would take before they decided to go after the wolves.
To go after my wolf.
I knew this was the real reason why I couldn’t forgive Jack for dying. In between that and his checkered history at the school, it felt hypocritical to go into public mourning along with the rest of the school. It didn’t feel right to ignore it, either, though; I wished I knew what I was supposed to be feeling.
“That was a long time ago,” I told Officer Koenig, and he looked relieved as I added, “Years. And it might have been dogs.”
So I was lying. Who was going to contradict me?
“Exactly,” Officer Koenig said emphatically. “Exactly. There’s no point vilifying wild animals for a random incident. And there’s no point creating panic when it’s not warranted. Panic leads to carelessness, and carelessness creates accidents.”
My thoughts precisely. I felt a vague kinship with humorless Officer Koenig as he steered the conversation back to careers in law enforcement. After class was over, the other students started talking about Jack again, but Olivia and I escaped to our lockers.
I felt a tug on my hair and turned to see Rachel standing behind me, looking mournfully at both of us. “Babes, I have to rain check on vacation planning this afternoon. Step-freak has demanded a family bonding trip to Duluth. If she wants me to love her, she’s going to have to buy me some new shoes. Can we get together tomorrow or something?”
I had barely nodded before Rachel flashed both of us a big smile and surged off through the hall.
“Want to hang out at my place instead?” I asked Olivia. It still felt weird to ask. In middle school, she and Rachel and I had hung out every day, a wordless ongoing agreement. Somehow it had sort of changed after Rachel got her first boyfriend, leaving Olivia and me behind, the geek and the disinterested, and fracturing our easy friendship.
“Sure,” Olivia said, grabbing her stuff to follow me down the hall. She pinched my elbow. “Look.” She pointed to Isabel, Jack’s younger sister, a classmate of ours with more than her fair share of the Culpeper good looks, complete with a cherubic head of blonde curls. She drove a white SUV and had one of those handbag Chihuahuas that she dressed to match her outfits. I always wondered when she would notice that she lived in Mercy Falls, Minnesota, where people just didn’t do that kind of thing.