The Herd

by Andrea Bartz

  The hairs along my biceps and back were standing tall, buzzing beneath my sweater. “And you didn’t…have a discussion or tell her you felt uncomfortable?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s fucked up,” Cameron contributed.

  Mikki was gazing out the window, her expression inscrutable, so I fumbled on: “Did she ever do anything else like that to you?”

  “She was pretty bratty when she was little,” Cameron offered. “Pissed a lot of people off. Would just break your toy or smash your sand castle for no reason.”

  “Jesus, maybe don’t speak ill of the dead, Cameron.” Mikki tucked her feet beneath her.

  I pointed with my can. “Her parents said she was just really bored. And that it got better after she skipped grades.”

  “Yeah, maybe. She fell in with the cool crowd in high school,” Cameron said.

  “And stopped smashing sand castles?” Mikki finished.

  “And started dating you,” I added. “The first time.” He winced a little and I noticed it, pressed at it like a crack in a pane, some small and childish part of me perhaps eager to volley back the hurt: “Why did you and Eleanor break up? The first time?”

  He flicked his eyes toward Mikki, then ran his fingers over his jaw. “Oh, you know. I remembered what freshman year of college was like. I thought she should be free to explore.”

  Liar. Covering his mouth, avoiding our eyes—he hadn’t magnanimously set Eleanor free, and I knew it. Of course she’d told us about her ex, how she’d waited until her last week at home to tell him it was over.

  And then they’d given it another go our last year at Harvard; as Eleanor told it, it just happened while she was home for the summer. But she had seemed increasingly frustrated with Cameron that time around: rolling her eyes when they were together, complaining about him when they were apart. From what we could tell, raw animal attraction had brought them together again, but practicality—her big plans for Gleam, excitement from early investors, her shiny new life in New York City in stark contrast to Cameron’s life in Beverly—had pushed them apart for good.

  “Can we talk about something else?” Mikki pulled her hands inside her sleeves.

  “Right. Sorry.” I shook my head. “That was…a weird thing to bring up.”

  We gulped at our drinks for a few seconds. The moment grew almost unbearable.

  “It’s weird she married Daniel,” Mikki announced. Cameron and I reared back, and she shrugged. “I mean, I was never allowed to say it. But he’s weird. He always gave me the creeps.”

  I gawped at her. “Well you certainly haven’t mentioned that before.”

  “No, he’s just…” She shrugged. “He was so perfect. And boring. Aren’t boring people usually the ones who turn out to be psychopaths? I mean, I’ve seen a lot of Criminal Minds.” Cameron looked up from his phone sharply and we both stared at Mikki for a moment before she added, “The show.”

  I shook my head. Did Mikki really not see how generous Daniel had been in keeping the blackmail a secret? How he’d protected us out of his love for Eleanor? “He worshiped her. I don’t think he even wanted to open up their marriage, but he did it for her.”

  “And you buy that? You don’t think he resented her?” Mikki tucked her hair behind her ear. “I always thought it was weird she didn’t have any pictures of him in her office.”

  “No, she had that photo of them on vacation. And that same picture was the background on her phone.”

  “Was it? Huh.” Cameron looked around, then leaned askew to slip his own cell back into his pocket.

  The doorbell chimed, making all of us jump. Cameron rose and clomped down the hall.

  “It’s some girl,” he called, and then we heard dead bolts unlocking, the door opening with a swoosh.

  With my head cocked, I could just make her out: “Is Hana here?”

  “Katie?” I yelled, struggling to get out of the La-Z-Boy. I hurried down the hallway with Mikki right behind me.

  “Hana!” Her relief confused me; she pushed past Cameron and grabbed for me. “Oh my God. It must have been a coyote or something.”

  “What’s going on? Why aren’t you wearing a coat?”

  “I need to talk to you.” She lifted her brow and leaned forward. “Confidentially. Like, now.”

  “Wait, where’s Ted?” Mikki grabbed the front door Cameron was attempting to close and peered out. More snow was falling, thick, wet flakes.

  “I thought he came back here. But I need to—” Katie’s eyes did something desperate, an ocular ahem.

  “When did Ted leave?” Mikki pushed the door closed, then wrapped her arms around her chest.

  “I don’t know, ten minutes ago?” Katie jerked a thumb toward the columned main house. “Is he in there?”

  “I’ll check.” Cameron pulled his coat from a peg and scooped keys off a hook. “He can’t have gone far.”

  “Wait—we should—” Katie’s shoulders slumped as he pulled the door closed. She turned back to us. “I just learned something crazy. Cameron was there. His car was parked a block from the Herd on that Monday—the night Eleanor was killed.”

  “What?” Mikki took a step toward her. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s been trying to hide it. Which seems pretty freaking suspicious.” Her teeth began to chatter. “And there’s something else. I think he was posting in the Antiherd. That hate group? He put up an old photo of her and wrote some other…awful things.”

  Headlights crashed through the nearest window, blinding us. We all turned, squinting, in time to see Cameron’s SUV tearing out of the driveway, wriggling in the snow through a wild three-point turn. It gunned down the street, kicking up a rooster tail of snow and slush, then whipped around a corner as its back wheels spun out of control. And then Cameron disappeared from sight.

  CHAPTER 22

  Katie

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 5:58 P.M.

  Mikki spoke first: “Did he just make a run for it?”

  “Maybe he’s looking for Ted?” Hana said, and then she looked around as if she, too, was shocked by how stupid it sounded.

  “Why did he leave, what happened before I got here?” They looked back at me with doll eyes. I flung out my hands. “Something had to make him take off in a blizzard.”

  “He was looking at his phone right before you rang the doorbell,” Hana said, scrunching her mouth. “But I didn’t see what was on it.”

  “We should call Ratliff. Right?” I listened hard, expecting someone to confirm, and then realized—no, I was waiting for Hana to jump in, to handle things. Like she had the night of the Herd event. “I’ll do it.” My voice was clear and steady. I was proud of myself for exactly 0.3 seconds. “Fuck, I didn’t bring my phone.”

  “I’ve got it,” Hana said, hurrying back into the living room. We heard her voice, high and official-sounding, from what I assumed was the living room: “It’s Hana Bradley—sorry to bother you so close to the holidays. We’re in Beverly with Eleanor’s parents, and her childhood friend here, we think he might have had something to do with her death….”

  They spoke for a few minutes and then Hana plopped onto the couch. “She’s gonna contact the local precinct,” she said. “She’ll keep us posted.”

  “Are they gonna put out an APB?” I demanded. Using the cop-show term gave me a little thrill. “Because he’s looking shady as shit.”

  “I don’t think so. She said she can’t immediately put a red flag on someone, quote, ‘driving away in their own car.’ ”

  “Well, great. We all saw how concerned they were about Eleanor, quote, ‘leaving of her own accord.’ ” I crossed my arms and Mikki snorted.

  Hana stared into the distance for a second, then sprung up and marched down the hall. Mikki and I followed and found Hana in Cameron’s bedroom rifling ar
ound under the mattress, running her fingers against the box spring and then crouching to look under the bed.

  “Uh, what the fuck are you doing?” Mikki asked.

  “Looking for Eleanor’s phone.”

  “What?” Mikki took a few stumbling steps back.

  Hana sat back on her haunches. “Her phone went missing a few weeks ago. The same morning that graffiti appeared. They think whoever stole it had something to do with the spray-painting.”

  “Why?” Mikki’s eyes narrowed.

  “Because the same message was spray-painted on the walls in the San Francisco Herd and the Fort Greene worksite. Eleanor had photos of all three on her phone, and someone sent those photos to The Gaze. She didn’t want news getting out ahead of the Titan acquisition, so I made the whole thing go away.”

  “The same message was at the other sites? And you kept that out of the news?” I stretched my eyebrows up and my mouth down, impressed. “Even I didn’t know you’re that good of a publicist.”

  She leaned forward onto all fours and stared under the bed. “Thing is, her new phone, the one she got to replace the stolen one—they said the texts and emails we got on Tuesday came from it, and that it was used to send that I’m-in-Mexico email a few days later.”

  We nodded.

  “And tonight, I said something to Cameron about how Eleanor’s lock screen was a photo of her and her husband. Which was true for ninety-nine percent of the last year—I wasn’t thinking about her new phone. But when she got it a couple weeks ago, she made it one of the new Gleam backgrounds.”

  I glanced at Mikki to see if this was making more sense to her. Had Hana lost her mind? “Yeah, so?”

  “So I said something about the background photo with Daniel, and there was this split-second where Cameron was confused. Like, ‘No, that’s not right.’ ” She stood and fluffed the pillows, checked under the unmade duvet. “Which could mean he had her latest phone. It’s just a hunch. Could be nothing.”

  “We should slow down.” Mikki wrapped her arms around her waist. “Maybe he just didn’t know what picture she’d set as her background.”

  Near his dresser, Hana froze. “I don’t want to be right either. But him being in New York, showing up on Eleanor hate sites—it doesn’t look good.” She went back to thumbing through socks. “Help me, would you? It could be anywhere.”

  On leaden legs, I approached the closet and pushed aside the sliding door. It was a damn mess, a bachelor stereotype: shirts clinging to bent wire hangers, piles of jeans toppling on the top shelf, a casserole of clothes and shoes along the floor.

  “Why would he hide it here?” I asked, using one sneaker to nose through the jumble. “Why wouldn’t he just destroy it?”

  “No idea.” Hana was on her knees, her cheek near the floor as she peered beneath the bureau. “I just feel like there’s something here. Mikki…” She looked up. “He didn’t take you in here? You hooked up in the living room, right?”

  “Wait, what?” I turned so suddenly my elbow crashed into a bunch of empty hangers; they jangled as I tried to pat them into stillness.

  Mikki nodded miserably, still frozen by the door. “But Cameron would never…”

  I crossed to Hana and pressed a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve gotta stop. This is weird.” It wasn’t like Hana to be so oblivious, so unable to read the room. She stood and groped around in his bookshelf, not looking at me. “Hana.”

  She whipped around and her eyes were shiny with tears. “It…it has to be here…”

  I pulled her into me, one hand on her back and the other on her skull. She let out a hiccuppy gasp and hugged me back.

  “Jinny’s mom,” Mikki said quietly. She cleared her throat and said it louder: “Jinny’s mom.”

  Who’s Jinny? Hana pulled away, staring at the floor next to my feet.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Mikki said, her voice tiny and tense. “Celia Hurst. We have to tell the cops, they have to look into her, she—”

  “This isn’t about Jinny.” Hana turned to look at her. “It’s about Cameron. I know you don’t want it to be him, but it fits. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe Ted was helping him or something, but it wasn’t this random woman from Appalachia.”

  “What’s going on?” I looked back and forth between them, my pulse quickening.

  Hana stared at Mikki, her expression equal parts warning and terror. “Mikki, no.”

  Mikki gazed back, their eyes locked for what felt like hours, years, and then Mikki turned to me: “This is all our fault.”

  Hana’s knees buckled and she sank to the floor. A ripping sensation in my chest: What had she…could she…? I kneeled next to her. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. Just tell me what happened.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. My heart beat wildly, a scared creature in a jar. I wanted to hit Pause, stop before I learned whatever awful thing I couldn’t unhear. Snow drummed against the window; the lights flickered once, threatening to go out.

  Mikki tiptoed over and sat near us. “We knew this woman, Jinny,” she began, “and she used to sell us drugs. She went missing nine years ago, after she came up here with us. To Beverly. To the Walshes’.”

  And they told me, taking turns, words spilling out like wine. I pictured it as they spoke: Jinny’s flail on the slippery pool tiles, blood seeping into the chlorinated water. Gary—a developer, a boss, commanding by definition—calmly instructing them to pack their things and leave.

  They finished speaking and the silence hovered like low-hanging clouds. Finally, I shook my head. “And nobody tried to argue? No one called 911?”

  “Eleanor told us everything would be fine, and we believed her.” Mikki raised her eyebrows. “She’s very convincing.”

  “So you just returned to school like nothing had happened?”

  Hana shrugged. “It was horrible. We saw Jinny’s picture on the news and everything, and all the awful pleas from her mother for anyone with information to step forward. But somehow…everyone assumed she’d just run away. And we were all so busy getting ready for finals. I know that sounds…unthinkable, but it’s true.”

  Another long silence. Mikki flicked away a tear.

  “Did you feel guilty?” I asked.

  “Of course we did,” Hana snapped. “We felt terrible. But what could we do? Life goes on. Life got good. We got great jobs, Gleam took off…” She shook her head. “And for eight years, there was nothing. And then I got the first blackmail letter.” She finally finished, recounting what had really happened when she’d rushed to Daniel’s apartment on Saturday. How she’d taken Eleanor’s final blackmail letter home with her and watched it burn to ash, the December 31 deadline at the bottom blazing white and then crumbling into gray.

  I crossed my arms. “Isn’t there a paper trail? Connecting you to the blackmail?”

  Mikki shook her head. “We all got Bitcoin accounts. It was surprisingly easy.”

  “Jesus.” I rubbed my brow. “But now Eleanor is about to miss a payment.”

  Hana nodded. “I don’t know what’ll happen on the first, but it can’t be good.”

  Something clicked, one of life’s minor mysteries: This was why, after graduation, Hana had dropped everything and moved to L.A. Like Eleanor, like Dad, she’d tried to run.

  Mikki cleared her throat. “Cameron told me something. Right when—after we hooked up. You know how guys get. All vulnerable.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “He said he knew about Jinny. All these years. From Gary. I don’t know why or how, but he did.”

  “Jesus,” Hana said.

  “But I don’t think he’d tell me that if he was the one blackmailing us.” She wiped a tear, smearing it across her cheek. “I told him I didn’t want to talk about it. But he said that last year, he started sort of obsessing over Jinny’s mom. She’s still looking for her d
aughter, which is incredibly sad. And she’s not doing all that well, she’s struggled with addiction; maybe that made Cameron see her as a kindred spirit.”

  Hana’s eyes widened and Mikki looked at her. “He didn’t contact her or anything. I don’t even think he talked to Ted about it. But I guess at Christmas last year, Cameron cornered Eleanor and told her he thought she should come clean. For Jinny’s mom’s sake. And she was like, ‘Fuck no, and if you say a word to anyone, I’ll turn on you so fast. I’ll say you were entirely responsible for Jinny’s death, and people will believe me.’ ”

  “Eleanor said that? She threatened Cameron?” I shook my head, amazed.

  Hana rubbed her temples. “I believe it. She could be…ruthless. It’s part of her brand.”

  Mikki nodded. “And then this year, around Thanksgiving, apparently Eleanor told her family about the Herd buyout, and word got around to the Corrigans. And Cameron’s first thought—it sounds so noble, I don’t know if he’s full of shit, but this is what he told me—his first thought was, ‘If Eleanor’s about to become filthy rich, she has to set up a fund in Jinny’s name.’ Somehow help the family that’d fallen apart after we took her away.” When Mikki looked up tears varnished her eyes, but her voice remained steady. “That’s as far as he got when you came by.”

  “So you had no idea he was in New York the night Eleanor…went missing?” Killed, murdered, stabbed to death—words I couldn’t utter right now. She shook her head.

  Hana wound her hands together. “I saw him the next day.” Mikki and I uttered shocked, guttural noises. “The day after Eleanor disappeared, I mean. Wednesday. I went over to Eleanor’s apartment—I told myself it was just to look for clues, but I was looking for blackmail notes, anything that would tie us to Jinny. I hoped she’d been smart enough to destroy them, but I had to check.”

  I watched her cry, feeling my impression of her shifting like tectonic plates inside my skull. I’d flitted through the week with nothing but a passing, What’s Hana hiding? This—this was a Mr. Hyde side I never wanted to meet.