by Andrea Bartz
“We know you were at the precinct until quite late last night,” Ratliff said. “But time is of the essence, so now that you’ve had a little time to process, we hoped to go over everything again.”
“Of course.” They followed me into the living room and hovered as I moved the pillow and duvet from the sofa to the hallway. I felt their eyes on me, watching, judging.
“Didn’t realize you had guests,” Herrera remarked.
“Just my sister. She stayed here last night.” It was a little odd she hadn’t checked in, come to think of it—earlier, she’d been very interested in my trip to Daniel’s. “Can I get you two anything?”
“No thanks.” Ratliff pulled a notebook from a pocket and opened it with a flick. “So as you know, we were just in the process of closing the investigation. Based on the email you and your friends had gotten.”
I nodded. “It looked like Eleanor had left town. Moved to Mexico. But now it seems pretty clear someone staged that to, to throw us off their trail or whatever. Whoever sent those texts and emails from her account is the obvious smoking gun, no?”
Ratliff’s face revealed nothing. Her eyes could be catlike, intelligent but expressionless. “We’ve determined those texts and emails were sent from Ms. Walsh’s phone,” she said. “From the vicinity of her apartment.”
I frowned. “You’re sure they were from her brand-new phone? Not the stolen one? ’Cause if someone just logged into her iCloud from the old one…”
“The new one. Purchased the week before.”
“Okay.” I watched Cosmo amble into the room and sit, his tail swishing. “Well, if it was the vicinity of her apartment, it was also the vicinity of the Herd. They’re within a few blocks of each other.”
“That’s correct. Unfortunately, we’ve only narrowed it down to a cell tower’s range. Location services were turned off.”
Herrera leaned forward. “You’re sure you haven’t seen her new phone anywhere?”
“What, just lying around? No. Obviously the killer took it with him.” I opened my palms. “So either he stuck around the neighborhood the next morning, or he made it look like he did. Even I know how to use VPNs.”
Ratliff made a note. “Backing up, can you tell us exactly what you were doing the evening of Monday, December sixteenth?”
I felt a prickle of fear. “I was here. Getting everything ready for the announcement. Sometimes I have trouble focusing at the Herd, so I went home midday.”
“Directly home?” she said.
“Yes. I had lunch here.” I swallowed. “I was in all night.”
“And the front desk could confirm that? I saw they have CCTV.”
“I think so. Actually, wait.” I shook my head. “If I was coming from the subway, I’d take the side entrance. Gets me inside faster when it’s super cold. But they’d have footage of me leaving the next morning.”
They had me repeat some things I’d already shared: How I knew Eleanor, my role at the Herd, how Eleanor had seemed these last few months, what I thought about Daniel. The last one was the hardest: How does anyone feel when their spectacular best friend partners with someone who is…fine? He was fine, inoffensive and sweet, appropriately head-over-heels for Eleanor (I’d thought), and good in all the checklist ways a best friend watches closely: He respected her independence, wasn’t intimidated by her success, made a passable effort to be chummy with her friends, check, check, check. He wasn’t as incredible as Eleanor, but then again, who was? He had an unglamorous yet stable job as a hospital administrator and vague interests in running and nice foodie restaurants and CrossFit. Right now he was on my Nice list for calling me instead of the detectives upon finding that blackmail note. Today’s one-on-one conversation was the longest Daniel and I had ever had, I realized. Hopefully he hadn’t mentioned it to the cops.
“He always seemed like a great guy,” I wrapped up. “Eleanor was really ready to meet someone—she even set a deadline and said she was going to manifest a partner by whatever date. And then they seemed happy together. Our gang is kind of a…girls’ club, we don’t often bring our partners around when we’re together, but he’s, you know. Good people.”
Ratliff glanced down at her notepad. “Okay. Let’s talk about anyone you think might have had a problem with Ms. Walsh, a grudge against her.”
Involuntarily, my eyes flicked onto my coat, with the blackmail note shoved deep in a pocket. Picturing it shot my chest with coldness, fresh as mint. Had someone from Jinny’s family gotten it in their head that Eleanor was responsible for Jinny’s death? But of course I couldn’t bring it up.
“The graffiti,” I said. “I mentioned it again last night. Someone broke into all the Herd sites, spray-painted profanities on the wall, and later stole her phone. I’m sure you have this somewhere.”
“We’re still looking into that,” Herrera said.
“Well, thank you.” I sighed and looked around the room. “Who else? She has internet trolls saying terrible things to her all the time, of course. I think there are even dedicated message boards. But nothing lately, no stalkers or threats or anything.” Except the blackmail letter, which was a kind of threat, I supposed. “I’m also curious if the Titan acquisition will go through with Eleanor gone. I’m not really clear on who was supposed to benefit from it, other than Eleanor. I forget her lawyer’s name, but Aurelia—she’s sort of the number three, I know you talked to her—she should be able to connect you.”
“That’s very helpful. Thanks.”
“Anyone else?” Herrera prompted.
“The one thing is—” I faltered, fell silent.
“What is it?” He leaned forward.
I sighed. “I don’t even think it’s worth bringing up.”
“Sometimes the tiniest details or even intuitions turn out to be helpful,” Ratliff said.
“Okay. It’s probably nothing, but…her friend Ted, his name’s probably come up, right? Ted Corrigan.” I swallowed; suddenly my heart was thrashing around in my rib cage like a baby bird. “I just keep thinking about how much access he had to the Herd. More than any other man I can think of. He was Eleanor’s go-to handyman-slash-IT-guy, so he was in there maybe a few times a month. After hours.”
I scratched at my eyebrow. “He came in a few days before she went missing to reset the router. And I guess they now think that’s what kicked the new cameras offline. Which seems like a big coincidence, right?”
“Are you saying you think he shut down the cameras in anticipation of attacking her?” Herrera set a fist on his hip.
“No, that’s—now that you say it, that’s ridiculous. I know Ted; he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” I shrugged. “I was just thinking…I don’t know, he always seemed to carry a torch for her. And you know how in the news, you’re always hearing about these guys who go berserk after a woman romantically rejects them? I just…I wonder if she rebuffed him at some point.”
“Do you know for a fact that she rejected him?” Ratliff asked. “Was there an incident?”
“No, nothing like that. Forget I said anything.” Guilt whooshed up through me. Why had I sicced them on Ted?
“We’ll look into it,” Ratliff said. “Now I need you to do something difficult. Can you walk me through last night again, from the moment you went up onto the roof?”
I sighed, exhaustion and gloom filling me up from the inside, from my bones, but I squeezed my eyes shut and repeated it, frame by frame. When I got to the part about seeing the gash in her neck, Herrera jumped in.
“You saw a line cut along her neck?”
“Yeah, a line. At least, I think it was a line.” My brain cued it up, an image projected on a massive screen, and I felt a wild pitch of nausea and despair. “She keeps a knife in her office, you know.”
“We’re still looking for the murder weapon,” Herrera replied, and then he tapped near his Adam’s
apple. “See, it’s actually less of a slash and more of a stab. We’re still waiting for the coroner’s report, but on sight he thought it looked less like a knife or scissors and more like a scalpel.” He punched his fist toward his neck.
“A scalpel,” I repeated. “Why would anyone have…” I froze. I knew exactly one person who worked in a medical center—a bustling, sprawling spot with stockrooms around every bend. I’d sat on his couch and sipped his water this very morning.
“Something like a scalpel,” Ratliff explained. “And scalpels are easy to get your hands on—you can pick one up at the Rite Aid down the street, believe it or not. But for someone to have been carrying it…”
“That would mean it was premeditated. You think someone went there to murder Eleanor.” My voice had swooped into hollow amazement, like I should punctuate it with a whistle.
“We’re still—”
“Exploring all possibilities, I know, I know,” I finished.
“Ms. Bradley, is there anything else you think we should know?”
I thought about it. “Maybe someone was bitter about not getting in? The Herd gets way more applicants than they have spots for. And women were really rabid about it, there were online forums about trying to get in and stuff. Maybe you’ll find something there.” I clicked my tongue. “Eleanor pissed a lot of people off. Just by being fabulous, by being an ally and a champion. And she was so calm about it, so brave. Took it all in stride. Never asked for…for support.” My voice cracked and I inhaled sharply.
“There are counselors available if you’d like to speak to someone,” Ratliff said. She was starting to gather her things. “Thanks again for your time. We’ll see ourselves out.” But still, I rose and ushered them to the door. I pointed them back in the direction of the elevators and wished them happy holidays. When I looked back, the snow outside had thickened.
My phone had more missed calls and texts than I could fathom. Mikki’s fought its way to the top: “CALL ME NOW.”
“Someone leaked the news about Eleanor to the press,” she said, her voice pinched with fury. “Eleanor’s parents hadn’t even had a chance to tell their friends yet.”
She directed me toward the Gaze article (“EXCLUSIVE”) that’d broken the news an hour ago, written by a reporter whose byline I didn’t recognize; it had very little information, the cause and time of death missing, but it did have the date and location of the discovery of her body. A whole wave of other articles had come out rehashing the same sparse details, and a showy obituary was on the homepage of The New York Times. I fought down a groundswell of nausea as Mikki’s righteous anger chopped itself up into profanities.
“Okay. Okay. I’ll call my contact at The Gaze,” I said soothingly. “I’ll figure out who did this. It could just be a crooked cop, someone trading secrets for cash.” I flopped back on the couch and glanced out the window, where a curtain of snow had smeared away the outside. Would every Christmas from here on out be haunted by visions of this one—Mikki’s disembodied sobs, Katie sniffling on the bed next to me, Eleanor’s boots poking out from behind the lounge chair, toes up like they belonged to someone admiring the night sky?
Katie was calling.
“Did you see the alert?”
The urgency in her voice poked at me—so unlike the milky sadness I’d just settled into.
“About Eleanor? I’m trying to figure out who leaked it.”
A beat. “I was talking about our flight. They just canceled it.”
“Shit.”
“What should we do?”
“Call the airline. Both of us.”
For seventy-five minutes I paced my apartment, intermittently tidying up and then crashing onto seats to stare out the window. I hated the hold music for a while, then got into it, nodding along involuntarily, and then circled back to hating it again. When I finally reached someone, the news wasn’t good.
“So we’re missing Christmas,” Katie wheezed into the phone.
“I mean, Christmas is occurring regardless,” I replied. “But I feel bad we’re not going to see Mom.”
“Me too. Plus I wanted to get away and curl up in my own bed and block everything out for a while. And now we can’t.”
There was something fluttering in me, mothlike: I was relieved. Not having to interact with Mom, to deal with her bright, fake laughter and needling criticism, not having to sit around a tree and sip cocoa and listen to old hymns while Eleanor’s unsolved death hung over us—there was something appealing about it, a bottle uncorked.
“I’m disappointed too,” I said, “but what can we do? At least we’re stuck here together.”
“I guess.” Katie’s misery was contagious. “Well, I’ll call Mom and let her know. She’s probably been watching the flight and already knows.”
That stung, deep in my torso. “Tell her I’ll call her tomorrow. And that we’ll talk on Christmas, obviously.”
“Tell her yourself,” she snapped—then three beeps, and she was gone. Outside, the snow churned and throbbed against the window, like something trapped in a glass cage and trying to get out.
Suddenly I realized what I was forgetting, the to-do that had been flickering in the back of my brain all day. It blared inside me, cranked up my pulse. On shaking legs, I walked over to the coat closet and pulled out the blackmail note, popping out the crease and swiveling my wrists to smooth it. I read it over one more time, although by now I could recite it by heart. The same page had been showing up in my own mailbox for a full year now.
With practiced hands, I ripped it in two and rolled the first into a tight cigarette. I crossed the kitchen and turned the stove on, four even clicks and then the boorrsshh of a blue flame.
As I had with three blackmail notes before it, identical but for the deadline at the top and the name on the envelopes they arrived in, I burned its halves one after the other. The ashes swirled like snow before coming to rest on the steel below.
CHAPTER 17
Katie
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 5:15 P.M.
I was grateful for the flight cancellation, in a way; for the ninety minutes I was dealing with it, groaning and texting and falsely thinking each intermittent “please stay on the line” was a human about to help, I didn’t have to think about what my agent, Erin, had told me earlier in the afternoon. Because I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t face it, the sixty-foot tsunami about to come crashing down all over me. Mentally I stuck it on my to-do list: Solve problem, save my own ass.
I called Mom, who picked up this time. I told her about Eleanor, my voice fracturing into sobs as I tried to answer her questions, and she kept repeating, “My poor baby, my poor baby.” Then I told her about our canceled flight, and she was as composed and soothing and deeply, deeply sad as I imagined she would be. She clearly already knew about the cancellation but feigned surprise, a long three-note moan between “awww” and “ohhhh.”
We were wrapping up when Hana called again.
“So I just got off the phone with Eleanor’s parents,” she said. “You’ve met them, right?”
“Yeah, once or twice.”
“Well, I called to help them write their statement for the media now that some jackass leaked the news about Eleanor.” A puff of shame went through me. “And I kinda can’t believe this, but they invited us up to their house for Christmas. They have nonrefundable Amtrak tickets for Monday—for Eleanor and Daniel, but I guess he’s spending it with his family now. And when I said our flight was canceled, they insisted we come up.”
“They want us to take their dead daughter’s tickets?” I said. “That’s the most morbid thing I’ve ever heard.”
Hana let out a little oof, like I’d wounded her.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to…but don’t you think it’s weird?”
“I mean, I can see them not wanting to be alone in that big house on
Christmas Day. They’re really warm people. They were always so nice to Mikki and me. And I guess Ted and Cameron’s parents kinda sucked, so they were like surrogate parents to them too.” She cleared her throat.
“Wouldn’t we be…imposing? Don’t they want to grieve privately right now?”
“I said the same thing. Asked over and over. They really want us to come, Katie. Mikki, too, assuming she can’t get to Asheville. They’re calling her now.”
We would go, obviously. This felt like a freebie: a perfect chance to see Cameron in the flesh, maybe even scour his and the Walshes’ home for a photo album with navy herringbone glue on each page. And, though Hana still had no idea I’d been talking to Ted, it wouldn’t be hard to sneak off and see him. But I knew she had to feel it was her call, so I said, “I don’t know, Hana. Maybe we should use the next couple of days to process instead of tiptoeing around and being polite guests, you know?”
She sighed. “I just want to feel like I’m…in a home, not my sad, sterile little apartment.” I hesitated and she added, “You’ll love them.”
“Even forty-eight hours after they found out their daughter’s been murdered?”
“Okay, they won’t be at their cheeriest. But we can keep ’em company, maybe even help out around the house for a few days. They don’t have other kids.”
“You’re sure it’s a good idea.”
“I have no idea if it’s a good idea, Katie.” There was a tremor in her voice and it sliced through me. “But I know I want to go.”
I swallowed. “What time is our train?”
* * *
—
Penn Station was miserable any day of the year, a Dante-esque cacophony of burnt coffee and pee smells and bad signage. On this particular Monday morning, it was worse than ever, since, with all flights grounded, trains were one of the only means for escaping the city. The masses were crabby and high-strung, unsure if they’d make it home in time. The scene reminded me of rallies in Michigan, where I endured jeers and boos on my break from nursing my sick mother. This hellhole was almost satisfying in its terribleness: an external match for my emotional interior, which in turn resembled Munch’s painting The Scream.
