Excerpt of The Foxglove Killings by Tara Kelly

Alex saw it first.

We were cutting through Neahkahnie Park, the morning sun
warm on our backs. I was telling him we should take his
grandpa’s El Camino SS and drive down the coast to
California for the summer.

“He left that car to you,” I said. “You know he did.” I
reached over to muss his light brown hair. It always
stood straight up afterward, as if he’d been
electrocuted.

“We can’t, Nova. I—” He stopped walking, his eyes
widening at the playground.

Clumps of fur blew across the grass, like the cotton
blooms did in July. I didn’t think it was real at first.
Some kid’s stuffed animal, maybe.

But the stench was unmistakable. I’d practically been
raised in my grandpa’s diner. I knew the smell of meat
past its prime. Raw. Metallic. Even a little sweet.

A deer’s carcass was a twisted heap in the playground,
its legs jutting out like winter branches. Bits of flesh,
ranging in color from pink to dark red, were strewn
across the wood chips. The head of the deer sat on the
middle bucket swing. A misty film covered its eyes, and
its mouth was open, as if it were gasping for air.

My stomach muscles began to knot.

I saw a dog get hit by a semi once. The scene replayed in
my mind for months. The thud of the impact, the way he’d
yelped. The last second of that dog’s life seemed to echo
forever.

This was worse. Someone planned this. Put it on display,
like it was entertainment.

“What the hell…” Alex said, his voice barely above a
whisper.

“Don’t look.”

Alex had been on an animal-saving crusade since birth.
He’d tried to bring a rabbit back to life the day I met
him.

In fifth grade he’d called the police on his neighbor for
yelling at her cat.

This wasn’t something he could handle. Especially not
now.

“There’s nothing you can do,” I said, the words slipping
out automatically.

“I know. I’m not nine anymore.” He glanced down at his
busted Vans. Years of skateboarding had turned them from
black to gray.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, you did.” He held my gaze this time. His eyes
looked almost yellow in dull light. Usually they were
green.

I knew whatever came out of my mouth wouldn’t be the
right thing to say. He’d been so weird since his grandpa
died last month. Happy one minute. Pissed off the next.
Sometimes he didn’t talk at all.

I slowly moved toward the deer, wishing I could ignore
its vacant eyes, the drone of the flies pecking at its
belly. My gramps used to clean up crime scenes back in
the day. He swore by downing a few dozen peppermint Tic
Tacs, claiming it obliterated his sense of smell. He was
also a chain smoker…

A handful of mints wouldn’t take this image out of my
head. Nothing would.

“We should call someone,” Alex said behind me.

Neither of us had a cell phone. He couldn’t afford one,
and my mom thought they caused brain cancer.

I held my breath, trying not to gag. If I wanted to be a
detective one day, this was the crazy shit I’d be dealing
with. Too bad I’d inherited my mom’s weak stomach.
Something bright purple sat on top of the deer’s limp
tongue. Darker spots peppered the inside, like a rash.

As I leaned closer, I realized it was a wilted foxglove.
Or deadmen’s bells, as Mom called them. They were bell-
shaped flowers that grew all over coastal Oregon. When I
was little, she told me not to eat them or I’d end up
like Sleeping Beauty. I used to think they belonged to
the fairies. The evil ones, anyway.

A chill swept across my skin, the kind that came from
inside.

Laughter echoed from the hiking trail that led out of the
woods. Matt Delgado and Jenika Shaw emerged from the
shadows of the trees, shoving each other playfully. I
could already smell Jenika’s cheap off-brand cigarettes.

They were probably on their way to the first day of
summer school. Jenika and Matt cut so much school they
always had to make up a class or two.
“You think they did this?” I asked Alex.

“I don’t know…”

Emerald Cove bragged about its low crime rate, but that
could be said for the entire Oregon coast, since it was
363 miles of boondocks. My gramps said this area was
cursed, a magnet for psychos and other things that went
bump in the night.

Jenika, Matt, and their friends wreaked their share of
havoc around here. They were all about destroying
property and beating up the “cakes,” what us locals
called the rich kids who lived and partied here every
summer. But animal mutilation didn’t seem like their
style. Most of their destruction had some message about
“sticking it to the man.” They grew up together in the
Pacific View trailer park—same as Alex and his sister.
But unlike Alex, they thought the world owed them an
apology for it.

“What’s up?” Matt called out. His cowboy hat hid his dark
eyes, but his wide smile was unmistakable. The silver
rings around his bottom lip made it appear to glow.

“Let’s get out of here,” I told Alex, not in the mood for
Jenika’s shit. I was already late for my morning shift at
the diner—we could call the cops from there.

Alex kept his gaze on the deer’s head, like he was in a
trance.