Page 39 of Confessions of the Dead

Of course not, because that’s how these things worked. She’d seen enough horror movies to know the garbage disposal didn’t work when it was supposed to, then someone would stick their hand down the drain, and it would roar to life. Chew them up. She wasn’t an idiot.

That particular realization made her feel good, made her feel strong. Real or not, she wasn’t going to let this scare her. She was going to deal with it. And when her mom came home, she’d tellher how she handled it. Handled it like a grown-up, not some spooked kid.

Riley switched off the garbage disposal, then reached under the cabinet and unplugged it for good measure. Then, with her flashlight above the drain, she took her spoon from her cereal bowl and stabbed it down into the hole. Wiggled it around, beat it against the sides. When it caught on the blades, she yanked it out and shoved the handle down in there—if something was down inside, she’d either kill it or run it off, send it scurrying down the pipe to wherever all the gunk in the sink went. It could find someone else’s sink to call home.

“Screw you!” she yelled, and that felt good, too.

Felt good to let it out, so she yelled again.

When she finally stopped, she was out of breath.

She dropped the spoon on the counter, leaned over the sink, and listened.

Silence.

That brought a grin.

Her mom couldn’t have handled that any better. Her abuela or Patty Norhouse, either.

A minute passed with nothing.

Riley switched off the flashlight and was ready to go and tackle the internet problem when she saw it.

Something was swimming in her cereal bowl.

29

Matt

MATT SHOVED THROUGH THEdoor of the sheriff’s station with Eisa Heaton under his left arm and tugged Josh Tatum by the handcuffs on his right. All three froze as they stepped inside.

The small space was packed with people.

The chairs under the front windows were full; other people were standing. Voices shouted to be heard over each other. Ed McDougal was holding a package of frozen peas over his right eye as he argued with his neighbor, Ben Molton, jabbing his finger into the man’s chest. Stacy and Tracy Bergman, identical twin sisters married to twin brothers, both clutched pairs of screaming infants in their arms as they shouted at each other, red-faced. Conner Evans had one arm snaked up through the flimsy plastic door of the snack vending machine and was beating on the side with his other hard enough to rock it on its feet.

When the crowd spotted Matt, the voices went quiet for a quick moment, then they all started shouting at once, coming at him. Across the room, he spotted Sally standing behind herdesk, phone pressed to her ear. She raised an empty palm in some kind of surrender and shook her head in disbelief before turning back to her desktop and scribbling feverishly in her call log.

“I’ll be with you all in a second!” Matt shouted over the voices. “I need everybody to be patient!”

That only made things worse. The yelling grew louder. Everyone was on their feet, angrily shoving toward him.

“I’ve been waitin’ the better part of an hour!”

“Someone stole my car!”

“This asshole killed my dog!” Ed McDougal yelled.

Ben Molton shook a bloody arm at Matt. “His damn dog tried to take my arm off!”

“Enough!” Matt shouted over all of them. “I’m not helping anyone unless they’ve got their butt planted firmly in a seat and their mouth shut. You want to act like a toddler, take it outside. This isn’t the place for it!”

Matt didn’t mean for the words to come out as harsh as they did. His voice barely sounded like his own. For a quick second, he was reminded of his father, the angry drunken shouts that came before the hitting started. And when he snapped from that reverie, he realized he’d squeezed his eyes shut against a fist that hadn’t found him in more than twenty years—his father had driven into a tree on his way home from the Black Moose Tavern—no seat belt, died on impact.

The room had gone quiet again, all eyes still on him.

“Where’s Ellie?” McDougal barked before someone else could speak. “Why isn’t she here?”

Matt shook off the memory and looked over at Sally; her back was turned, and she was shouting into her phone. He turned back to the older man and lowered his voice. “Take a seat, Ed. I’ll be with you right after I deal with this.” He lifted Josh’s cuffed hands. Ed McDougal seemed to notice Josh Tatum and Eisa Heaton forthe first time. His eyes fixed on the blood droplets on the side of Eisa’s face, then glared at Josh.

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