Still Here

by Amy Stuart

  “Clare O’Callaghan,” he says. “Look at this! Missing since December from some farm town way east of here. You went for a jog and just vanished into thin air? Crazy. There were search parties, a husband who seemed wracked by it all. Jason O’Callaghan. Look at this. You were in the news for a while there. The really local news, at least.” He swipes at more photographs. “Then there’s a blank spot over the winter and spring. I’m guessing you were lying low? That was smart. And then you show up a few months ago in some mountain town where another woman has gone missing. But wait! In that story, you’re Clare O’Dey? And now you’re Clare O’Kearney?” He turns the phone again to swipe through more photographs. “The O name thing is cute, I’ve got to say. Kind of like a calling card, right? But, Clare O… can I call you that? Clare O? You’ve definitely left a bit of a crumb trail in your travels.”

  It takes everything in Clare not to lunge for his phone and smash it to the floor. As if detecting her instinct, Austin holds his phone high, a smirk across his face. Your gun, Clare thinks. You could pull your gun. Fire a bullet into his forehead. The rage she feels at his crooked smile is enough to compel her to do so, to end this. But she can’t. Instead she inhales deeply and holds her breath until her heartbeat steadies. Then she lays her hands flat on the cool stone of the kitchen island and looks Austin squarely in the eyes.

  “What do you want?” she asks.

  “Yours is a good story,” he says. “I could tell it for you.”

  Clare must change her tack. She summons the tears that have been threatening to spill over. She allows her eyes to fill and her cheeks to streak. Austin looks stricken. He darts across the kitchen to collect a box of tissues for her. Clare smiles at him through the tears. She sees the look in his eyes. Though the tears are easy enough to come by, though Clare’s fear feels real, it still seems too easy.

  “I really need you to back off on this,” she says, her voice cracked.

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Can I tell you another time?” Clare whispers. “How about I promise to tell you another time.”

  “Okay,” he says. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s fine.” Clare reaches out and allows her hand to linger on his arm. “I get it. You’re just doing your job. And I promise you I’ll give you the whole story, Austin. I just need a little more time.”

  Austin nods, solemn. It irks Clare that she must use her charms to gain the upper hand, that Austin’s weakness is so predictable. Still, she needs him on her side. She cannot risk the details of her life emerging now. Her phone burns in her pocket. The video. Clare knows that Somers is the only person she dares trust with it. She will text her as soon as she can and ask Somers to meet her in the hotel lobby tomorrow morning. But right now, Clare will stay here with Austin until he finishes his wine, steering the conversation as far away from herself as she can.

  FRIDAY

  Clare lies flat on the bed, no memory of the dream that woke her. She’s in her hotel room. It’s Friday morning. She lifts her phone from where it charges on the bedside table. 7:52 a.m. She arrived back here around midnight, setting her gun in the drawer, then peeling her clothes off to tumble into the bed. Her mouth is dry, her head screams. In the bathroom Clare chugs three glasses of water and leans forward to meet her own stare in the mirror. You’re just tired, she mouths to her reflection. She turns on the shower and jumps in.

  Back in the room, wrapped in a towel, Clare checks her phone again. There is a text from Somers.

  I’m in the lobby. Where are you?

  Quickly Clare dresses and brushes her teeth. Her stomach is pulled tight with hunger. The hotel hallway is empty but for an abandoned cleaning cart at the far end. Clare stares at her reflection again in the tinted mirrors of the elevator. In the lobby she finds Somers seated at a cluster of lounge chairs. She stands as Clare nears.

  “Sorry,” Clare says. “My alarm didn’t go off.”

  “You don’t look that hot,” Somers says. “Where’d you go last night?”

  “Nowhere. I’m just tired.”

  “Okay. So what’s up? Why the late-night texts?”

  “Something’s come up,” Clare says. “At least, I think it’s something. It’s a video file. It won’t open on my phone. I figured we can use your laptop. Is there somewhere more private we can go?”

  “Give me a second,” Somers says, all-business.

  Somers proceeds to the front desk and flips open her badge to the clerk. Clare slumps in the chair and tracks the business travelers who come and go, their wheeled carry-ons clicking along the marble floor. Despite the coolness of the lobby, Clare’s back and neck are coated with sweat. Somers returns, waving a key, and directs Clare to follow her down a hallway at the rear of the lobby. She unlocks a small boardroom and hits the lights. Clare and Somers fan out to opposite sides of the conference table. Somers unpacks her laptop.

  “While I love a good mystery,” Somers says, “can we cut to it?”

  Clare digs her phone from her pocket and unlocks it to access her email. “I’m going to email you the file,” she says. “It’s large. I received it yesterday from an encrypted email address. No sender name.”

  “Okay,” Somers drawls, hitting at the keys of her laptop. “What is it?”

  “Like I said, I couldn’t open the file on my phone. But I think it depicts Jack Westman’s murder.”

  Somers gapes at Clare. “Someone emailed this to you?”

  “Yes,” Clare says. “Last night.”

  “How do you know that’s what it is?” Somers asks. “If you haven’t watched it.”

  “I don’t know. The file name implies it. I might be wrong. But I have a hunch.”

  Somers’s baffled stare is broken only by the ding of an arrived email.

  “Okay.” Somers taps at her laptop again. “I’ve got it. Let me try to open it.”

  They roll their office chairs closer until their elbows touch. Somers allows the first few seconds of the video to play. The camera circles the table. Clare recognizes Roland’s, the booth. The shot stops on Colleen Westman. Somers hits the pause button.

  “Jesus.” Somers slaps the table. “You were right.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Okay, listen. This is what we do. We watch it once through. Once. Then we share what we saw. What we noticed. Then we watch it again and hash it out.”

  “Why?” Clare asks.

  “Because we both know what we’re going to see next. A guy comes in and shoots another guy. We don’t know who took this video, or who’s seen it, or what else is in it. I’ve seen the case file and I know for a fact that the cops haven’t declared a video as evidence. If any of them have seen this, they buried it. So we watch, and we see what we notice. Fresh eyes. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Clare says.

  “It’s not going to be pretty,” Somers says. “You up for it?”

  “Just play it.”

  Somers aligns the mouse to restart the video. Clare feels like she might vomit. The video window opens on the screen. At the bottom, Clare notes the running time at just under two minutes.

  “Ready?” Somers says.

  She presses play.

  Again, Colleen Westman. The video is shot from the same vantage where Clare sat yesterday at Roland’s. The booth. To Colleen’s left is Jack Westman, to her right, Zoe. Charlotte must be filming, Clare thinks. Desserts sit untouched in front of them. Among the three of them, only Colleen is smiling.

  “How old are we today, Mom?” the filming voice says. Yes. Charlotte’s voice.

  “Oh, forty-five,” Colleen says with a dismissive wave. “Not a day older, I swear.”

  Charlotte laughs. “Then I won’t ask how old you were when you had me,” she says.

  It unsettles Clare to see Zoe Westman animated like this. Alive, talking. How many people have told Clare that she looks like Zoe? And as the camera zooms close, Clare sees it too. It is remarkable, she thinks, their hair and pale skin tone, but even something in the
mannerisms. The smile. You remind me of someone, Malcolm had said to her at the end of their first case. Clare leans closer to the screen.

  The camera shifts to take in the room. Clare spots Kavita standing at the hostess table, tapping at a touch screen. And though there is a crowd, Clare can clearly see Roland behind the bar. He is deep in conversation with a patron, laughing, a bar towel draped over his shoulder. The camera circles back to Colleen. Then Clare hears it.

  “Whoa there, friend. Can we help you?”

  This is Jack Westman’s voice. The camera is still trained on the three at the table. Jack, Zoe, Colleen. Then there is a yelp and the camera jerks to the shooter. He comes into fuzzy view before the first shot is fired. Another. Then another. “What did you do?” someone yells. Zoe is screaming, and the camera waves about, focused on nothing. There is a brief flash of Jack Westman slumped against his wife, his temple marked with a red circle that looks dabbed on with paint. Finally the focus settles on the ceiling. Charlotte must have dropped the camera. “What did you do?” A woman screams again. “What did you do?” Then: “Get him!” From there the sounds are mixed together, too many voices at once. The video ends.

  Clare and Somers shift back in their chairs.

  “Less gory than I was expecting,” Somers says. “Anything in particular you noticed?”

  “That was Zoe in the video. So Charlotte must have been filming. One of the witnesses I spoke to, Kavita Spence, the hostess—you can see her in the video. She had conflicting memories with Roland about what door the guy used. I don’t know why she’d lie.”

  “She probably isn’t lying,” Somers says. “Not intentionally, anyway. Memory is garbage. It’s the worst possible witness. Especially with something like this. Your mind will play tricks on you. She can’t describe his face properly even though she probably looked right at the guy. She thinks he came in one way when he actually came in another. Her brain inserts that element so she can process what she witnessed.”

  “Can you zoom in on the shooter and take a screenshot?” Clare asks.

  Somers toggles the video to land on the frame that best depicts the shooter. Though it is grainy, it is clear that the shooter is wearing eyeglasses, the hood of a jacket pulled tight to conceal the color of his hair. But his face is visible enough. If you knew him, you’d recognize him.

  “He probably wore glasses to mess with facial recognition,” Somers says. “This guy knew what he was doing. Do you recognize him?”

  “No,” Clare says.

  “He’s probably a hired gun. I’ll get copies of this image printed at the front desk. Anything else?”

  “One thing,” Clare says. “Jack. Did you notice something about him?”

  “He seemed pretty calm,” Somers says. “But I guess he didn’t know what was coming. He’s just out for dinner with his family.”

  “I know,” Clare says. “But… hmm. Can we replay it?”

  This time Clare edges over to the laptop and cues the video up herself. They watch the first minute again. Then again.

  “What do you see?” Clare asks Somers.

  “He seems distracted?” Somers guesses. “But also kind of out of it. Drunk, maybe.”

  “Yes,” Clare says. “He does.”

  “He keeps looking at the door.”

  Clare clicks at the video to zero in on the section with Jack clearly in the frame. It seems plain: His smile is put on, and he is looking to the restaurant’s entrance. As if waiting. Next to him, Zoe and Colleen laugh and lean into each other, hamming for the camera. Clare presses pause. In the frozen frame you can see Jack clearly. His eyes are glassy. His coloring is off. He looks ashen.

  “I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to see,” Somers says. “He’s thin. Doesn’t look all that great. Kind of sickly. But the guy was old.”

  “No.” Clare touches the screen. “Look. Look at his expression.”

  “I’m not sure,” Somers says. “But he seems scared.”

  In the paused image Jack has edged away from his wife in the booth. He is waiting, watching.

  “Actually, it’s pretty clear,” Somers says. “I see it. He knew.”

  “Yes,” Clare says. “He knew it was coming.”

  The road hugs the cliffside over the ocean, then curls and climbs. Clare checks the dashboard clock. The drive to the prison is thirty minutes from these final outskirts of Lune Bay. Clare pulls her rental car over at the top of the switchback and steps out to a brisk wind. The sky is gray. Black cliffs rise from the frothy sea and stretch for miles northward.

  It takes Clare’s breath away, the beauty of it. This craggy end of the earth. From here, she will drive inland to see Donovan Hughes again. An hour ago she left Somers in the hotel conference room to work at decoding the video file and its source. Clare found her rental car in the depths of the hotel parking lot and started out of Lune Bay, stopping only at a drive-thru to satiate her aching hunger. Now she walks to the stone guardrail and peers over. It’s a precipitous drop to the ocean below.

  Clare returns to the car and sits on its hood, eyes still out to the water. In the hotel parking lot, Clare found herself scanning the backseat of the car and even the trunk before getting in. She feels antsy, paranoid. And then the fear makes her angry. It is easy enough to keep going, to focus on the case, when she is with Somers, when Somers is reassuring her. But alone, Clare can’t help looking over her shoulder.

  In her marriage, Clare developed a kind of sixth sense, a means to navigate Jason’s moods, his next steps. She could anticipate him. And here, alone at this lookout point, Clare feels it more distinctly than she has since those early weeks after she left. His presence. Jason, right behind her.

  Where are you? she thinks. Are you here?

  Clare unlocks her phone and inputs a number she’s known by heart for two decades. Before it can ring, Clare hangs up, gnawing at her lip. She should get in the car and go. Instead she phones the number again. After two rings, the line clicks.

  “Hello?” comes a familiar voice.

  The anguished jab in her chest takes Clare’s aback.

  “Hello?” the voice says again.

  “Grace?”

  There is a pause, an unnatural silence.

  “Grace?” Clare says again. “It’s me. It’s Clare.”

  “Clare,” Grace says. “I saw the blocked number. I hoped it was you. Where are you? What’s that noise?”

  “It’s the ocean,” Clare says. “I’m outside. Are you okay? It sounds like you’re crying.”

  “Clare,” Grace says again. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

  The phone is hot on Clare’s ear. She listens to Grace’s long breaths.

  “I’m so sorry,” Grace repeats. “About everything.”

  “Hey,” Clare says. “What are you talking about? Did something happen?”

  “He convinced me, you know? That you were the bad one. What can I say? I was grieving. I lost a lot in a short time, with Brian leaving, with you gone, and with a new baby, I wasn’t coping. And then I ran into you, and you seemed totally okay, and I just… I reacted.”

  The scene is still clear to Clare, encountering her dear friend Grace by chance in the city of her last case, Grace’s shock at seeing Clare over eight months after she’d disappeared. How many times since that day has Clare replayed their conversation, the bitterness Grace displayed? Of all the things that have broken Clare’s heart in the last few months, nothing did so more than the notion that, in her absence, Jason had managed to turn the few people Clare loves against her.

  “I’m sorry,” Grace says again.

  “It’s okay,” Clare says. “I’m sorry too. I am, honestly.”

  “I didn’t know if you’d see my message.”

  “What message?” Clare asks.

  “I emailed you. I didn’t know how else to reach you.”

  “I haven’t checked my old email address in months. Not since I left.”

  “So where are you?” Grace asks. “The ocea
n? What ocean?”

  Clare’s silence is answer enough. She thinks of the video Austin took, her arrest in the bar. How far might it have spread by now? Clare’s palms are sweating. Something hangs in the air. Something has happened. But she doesn’t understand what.

  “Grace,” Clare says, steady. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

  “A woman came around a few days ago. She was looking for you. She said you two were old friends.”

  Clare swallows, closing her eyes.

  “I didn’t know her,” Grace continues. “I told her I’d know any old friend of yours. She gave me this story about going to high school with us for a few months while her dad was posted at the army base. She said she remembered me too, that she was here taking a trip down memory lane, but honestly, you know we wouldn’t just forget someone who moved here for a few months. And kids from the army base were never posted to our school. Anyway, the whole things just seemed—”

  “What did she look like?” Clare asks.

  “Curly hair. She looked like you, actually.”

  Clare’s ears are ringing.

  “Did she give you her name?”

  “No. For the life of me, I don’t know why I didn’t ask her for it.”

  “What else?”

  “I’m glad you called,” Grace says, a desperate lilt in her voice. “I’m just glad to know that you’re still out there, that you’re okay. After I saw you—”

  “Did you tell Jason that you saw me?”

  Grace doesn’t answer.

  “Okay. I’ll take that as a yes. And this woman. Was she alone?”

  “Clare,” Grace says. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways I let you down, the things I didn’t see, or the things I did see and just let go because it was… because I didn’t know what to do. But there was something about this woman, it just didn’t sit right, and after she left I pulled out our high school yearbooks and looked at every page. I’m telling you, I scanned every single page of all four books and this woman was not there.” Grace’s voice cracks. “I just got this feeling. I’m so glad you called.”