I Killed Jason Hargrove

Chapter 15: I Know What You Know

"Are you high?"

Jordan was looking at me as if I told him I found his father dancing naked in the hallway to Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal".

Vera looked somewhere between crying and squealing with joy.

Alyssa's fingers were getting dangerously close to the scissors on my desk as she fixed me with a blank stare.

Julia collapsed into a chair, face stricken, and she stared out into oblivion.

In other words, the room looked like we had just watched the season 2 finale of "Sherlock".

Jordan turned to Vera and said again, "I think he's high."

"I'm not high."

"Yeah? Well what you just said is completely crazy!"

"I know how crazy it sounds."

"You're saying that my brother had some random model of him lying around in a heater and used that to fake his death and then let all of us think that we killed him while he ran free doing god knows what?"

I thought about it for a moment, then said, "Yes."

Jordan shook his head and stepped back, running a hand down his face.

This time, Alyssa spoke up. "How do we know that you're not just saying all of this to get away with being Secret Keeper?"

Do they still not believe me?

Although, compared to the story, I guess that's warranted...

"Because it actually happened."

"No," Julia said. "This is way too crazy to be-"

"Exactly," I said. "It's the craziest thing ever. So why would I tell you guys this story if I was trying to cover myself up? Shouldn't I make it more believable?"

There was a silence as everyone thought over my words. Finally, Julia spoke, "So if what you're saying is true-"

"It is."

"-then who did we bury? What was that thing from the heater? Why did they even put it in a heater in the first place?"

"To forge a proper time of death," I answered. "The police calculate the time of death using the body temperature of the corpse and the temperature of the area around them. So, keeping the fake body in a heater at a temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit imitates life. The moment they took the fake body out of the machine and placed it onto the ground was an imitation of the moment that Jason had "accidentally" fallen off the bridge. So for the police, they believe that Jason really did die recently."

Jordan turned and gave me a suspicious look. "How did you know all of that?"

I shrugged. "Took Forensics in 9th grade, remember?"

"Okay," Julia said, slowly. "But what even was the fake body that they took out of the machine? Was it just some doll or something that looked like Jason?"

Jordan shook his head. "No. It had to be a real person or the police officers and doctors would've noticed."

"Plus, he bled," I added.

"So it was another body," Julia summed up.

I nodded.

"But whose? We don't know anyone who looks like Jason?"

"It wasn't just 'looks like'. It was identical. They were the same person."

"So either he cloned himself, or he has an identical twin," Jordan said. "And I don't think Jason's smart enough to clone himself."