Read Online The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas - Free Book Online

Kristal Davis’s body that matched a pair of Stokes’s jeans. An eyewitness placed Kristal in the Stokeses’ trailer the day she disappeared, and when the police questioned Stokes, he said he hadn’t seen Kristal in weeks, before changing his story and saying they’d done drugs together that morning.
    It was me and Callie who put the final nail into his coffin, though. We testified via a closed-circuit TV feed on the second to last day of Wyatt Stokes’s trial. We described what happened that morning at the pool and identified Stokes as the man who threatened Lori. We swore that it was the same man sneaking into the Greenwoods’ yard the night Lori was murdered.
    The jury deliberated for a day and found him guilty of all four murders.
    Then the rest of the world forgot about Fayette, Pennsylvania, and all its dead girls.
    I can’t sleep or bring myself to pack for my flight tomorrow morning, so I lie in the darkness with my music, replaying in my head my entire conversation with Marie Durels, until Ariel’s face blurs with Lori’s.
    Several songs later, I lower the volume on my iPod, sensing someone else in the room. From my spot under the bed, I can see the door cracked open. I dig my nails into my thighs. Next to my ear, bare feet pad across the carpet. The toenails are painted turquoise. I let out a sigh of relief.
    “Tessa?” Callie whispers.
    I flatten my body and wiggle out from under the bed. Callie’s brow creases.
    “Were you sleeping under there?” She looks better than she did earlier. The color has returned to her face, and she’s showered. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a bun.
    “I…What are you doing here?” I get up and sit on the bed, as if she were the one acting bizarrely. The clock on the wall says it’s almost one.
    “We need to talk,” she whispers. She sits at the end of the bed. Delicately tucks her feet underneath her. She looks around the room, almost like she’s in a stranger’s house and not her own.
    “About what?” I ask. I know exactly what she’s here to talk about. But I need to hear her say it. We weren’t supposed to discuss the trial while it was going on, so our mothers kept us apart. By the time it was over, there was some sort of seismic shift in our friendship. On the rare days when Callie felt like having me over to play, Maggie was always within earshot, hovering as if we’d disappear the moment she turned her back.
    Even if I’d had the nerve to ask Callie if she’d really seen the face of the person in her yard that night, I never would have gotten her alone to do it.
    “About what Ryan said in the car.” Callie squeezes her eyes shut. Collects herself and exhales. “It could still be a coincidence.”
    “Maybe,” I say quietly.
    The clock on the wall ticks, filling the space between us. Callie hugs her knees to her chest. “I looked up his appeal….A lot of people really believe he didn’t do it.”
    “I know.” I’ve known since I was old enough to search for the answers. As soon as I could use the Internet on my own, I knew that there were people who believed Wyatt Stokes wasn’t the Ohio River Monster.
    Callie casts her eyes down, picks at a chip in the polish on her big toe. “He could get a new trial this time. If there’s a link between Ari and the other girls…he could
get out.
”
    Wyatt Stokes, out of prison. Wyatt Stokes, who knows our names.
    “My parents can’t afford to move again,” Callie says. “I’m going to Stroudsburg, but they can’t leave Fayette, and my dad’s job.”
    “Callie,” I say, her name feeling unfamiliar on my lips. “What did you really see that night?”
    A tear snakes down her cheek. “I didn’t lie.”
    “I never said you did.”
    We just sort of stare at each other for a bit.
    “Did you really see his face?” I finally ask.
    I expect her to get angry. Storm out on me. Instead, her voice goes soft, and she says, “I don’t know anymore.”
    The silence in the room is loaded;