Adventures in Funeral Crashing (Complete Novel)

Chapter 5: Investigating

CHAPTER 5: INVESTIGATING

The two other deaths had happened in the last couple of months, both girls, and all the dead girls had attended Laurel Community College. Hopefully I was safe, being still in high school, since the killer had not veered from his pattern...yet. I had watched way too many horror movies for free from work to seriously want to contemplate being stalked and killed by a serial killer.

The first was Olivia Reynolds, twenty. Olivia was found dead in her apartment by her mother, a needle still in her arm. She had been there for a few days before they found her.  The second was Melissa Kent, nineteen. A teacher found Melissa dead in a bathroom stall at Laurel Community College. The syringe had fallen to the floor. In theory, she had shot up just after a math test. She was found within two hours of taking that test. She had gotten an A. And, then there was Liz. A policeman found her in her car on a Sunday night in a nice suburban neighborhood. A stranger had called the police upon seeing a girl passed out over the steering wheel.  She wasn't passed out, though, Liz was dead.

Three girls were dead from an overdose of heroin in just over two months. Stupid kids, drug ring, or murder? And why had they all been girls? Wasn't heroin "in" for guys too?

I was leaning toward a verdict of murder or at the very least foul play, which is why I agreed to meet Ethan on Saturday morning. He was taking Friday off from school to spend it with his family. It turns out a lot of family flew in for Liz's wake. It had literally shocked the family into a reunion. Ethan had snuck out on Thursday night, in order to get to me since he thought I was a potential lead in his sister's unsolved murder, but he was stuck hanging out with family again on Friday. It sounded like he was looking forward to it now that the funeral was over. 

Friday flew by for me as I did my own research and counted the seconds to hanging out with Ethan. We planned to meet at a local coffee shop, Wired, bright and early at 9 am on Saturday. Wired had the best peanut butter banana milkshakes on the planet. They served those in addition to the ice-blended coffees and believe me when I say the words – heaven on earth when referring to them. Wired was also an after school hangout and high school and college bands played there on weekends, but nobody was going to be there at 9 am on Saturday morning. I briefly wondered if Ethan was afraid to be seen with me in public, but maybe he just wanted to get a jump on his sister's murder investigation, being that the murder would have happened a whopping six days earlier, as of Saturday, and that's eons in murder investigation time.

 I wanted to help Ethan find out what happened to his sister and not just because he was hot, but because Liz really seemed like the kind of girl who deserved to be remembered as the great girl she was and not a druggie. She had a dog named Paws for goodness sake, how cute is that? Plus, her killer (her alleged killer, I guess, since it was still only a theory) should come to justice! So, Ethan and I were meeting to go over the details, before going to the police. His family thought he was bereft with grief and in denial, and he didn't want the police to think the same. I was basically going to be his unbiased helper in going over the facts of his sister's and the other girls' deaths.

And, the sooner the police started investigating Liz's murder, the better. I mean, according to that A&E show, The First 48, that I watched as I was internet surfing obituaries and news articles, the case is already cold and only getting colder. Still, helping the police realize it was murder and not an overdose would be a great start. Maybe they could save someone else. 

If Liz and the other girls were murdered there had to be clues. Even the most calculating of killers, has to make mistakes. So, every spare moment I had on Friday and early into the hours of Saturday morning, I scoured the internet. I found news articles on the drug problem at Laurel Community College, as well as the obituaries of the three dead girls.