Free The Third Twin by Cj Omololu Page B

anything to say at first. Ava said she’d gone out with Casey only a couple of times. She didn’t say anything about meeting his family. “Right,” I finally manage, hoping that the sadness on my face mirrors hers. “It’s just awful.”
    “Did you come with anyone, dear?” she asks.
    “No,” I say quickly. “I’m here by myself.”
    “Then you have to come up and sit with us,” she says, and before I can reply, she takes my arm in hers and leads me through the main doors and up the aisle to a pew in the front that still has some space in it. “Settle in here,” she says, guiding me to a spot next to a woman in her twenties. “I’m going to go help in the lobby, but I’ll be right back.”
    “Thanks,” I say, feeling trapped. If I get up now, everyone’s going to notice. I look around the church at all the people crammed into pews and lining every wall, in some places two people deep. There are people my age and people who look like friends of his parents. As I turn back toward the front, I’m startled to realize that the coffin is set on a pedestal only a few yards from where I’m sitting. Shiny dark wood draped with flowers, it has another picture of Casey on a smaller easel perched on top. Thank God the coffin is closed—but if he got his throat cut, it probably had to be.
    “Just tragic, isn’t it?” the woman next to me asks, dabbing her nose with a tissue.
    “It is,” I agree, nodding slowly. I wonder if Alicia knows her too.
    “He was just the best,” she says, shaking her head sadly. “And I can’t believe he’s gone.”
    She slides toward me a couple of inches. “You know,” she says quietly, looking around to see if anyone else is listening, “they’re saying it wasn’t random.”
    Now I look up at her. Her eyes are dry, but her face is still red and a little blotchy. “What do you mean?” I look around too. “Like he was targeted?”
    She nods slowly, sitting back against the pew. “Nothingwas taken. His wallet was in his pocket when they found him. But I can’t imagine why anyone would target him.” She sniffs. “Casey was an angel. An absolute angel. I can’t imagine who would want him dead.”
    I can’t exactly contradict her out loud, so I just smile weakly and hope I look like I agree.
    “At least he didn’t suffer,” she says, blotting at her eyes.
    I think of the pool of blood by the driver-side door. It must have taken a while for him to die. “How do you know that?” I move closer so nobody can hear. “I thought he was … you know.” I can’t bring myself to say the words out loud, so I make a small slashing gesture at my throat.
    “That’s just what the police told the media,” she says knowingly. She puts one hand on the back of my neck in the little divot where my skull meets my vertebrae, her touch so light, it makes the hairs on my head stand up. “Whoever killed him knew what they were doing. They plunged a knife into this soft spot right here. Cut his spinal cord clean in half. He died almost instantly.”
    My mind forms a picture from her graphic description, which is worse than what I imagined just a few seconds ago.
    “The cops have been spending a ton of time at the house,” she says. Her eyes dart to a couple of men in dark gray suits that are standing on the left-hand side of the church. “And I think those guys are plainclothes officers. I’ve been watching
CSI
from the beginning—Vegas, not Miami—and the killer almost always shows up at the funeral.”
    I remember the cop car in the parking lot. “Why wouldanyone want to kill Casey?” I ask. I can actually think of a couple of reasons, but I wisely keep them to myself.
    “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” she responds.
    My mind is reeling when the organ music kicks into high gear, and we all rise to our feet as the family starts walking slowly down the aisle to their seats.

    The hearse is still in front of the church as I pull out onto the street. I