by Andrea Bartz
“That’s right.” She stared at me, then leaned forward. “A young woman went missing in the Boston area. Virginia Hurst. Did you know anything about that?”
I angled my head. “That sounds familiar. It was all over the news, and obviously it’s scary when a young woman goes missing in your area. But I haven’t thought about it in…gosh, almost ten years.”
My pulse was louder now, an ocean, miniature hearts beating in my neck and feet and fingertips.
Her gaze softened. “I’m so sorry to tell you this, and of course we’ll have to investigate the claims. But Mikki told us that this young woman died in a drowning accident at Ms. Walsh’s home that night.”
I took a step back, brought my hand to my heart. This was good—now the panic could seep out as shock. “No. No way.”
“We’ve contacted the original detectives on the case. They’re pulling the files. It’s not—we’re not sure about it yet, but it seems to fit. I wanted you to know before we release any information. If it checks out, obviously we’ll be informing the family.”
The family—Celia Hurst, the Tennessee-bound mom, broken with grief and dropping blackmail letters in the post. Would Ratliff mention the blackmail? Did she still not know about it? Surely the sender wouldn’t mention it: her extortion, her grand payouts.
“I can’t believe this. A drowning accident?” My thumb found my lips. “That was…senior year. Eleanor had a little apartment on Mass Ave. How did somebody drown?”
“At her family home,” Herrera broke in. “In Beverly.”
My eyebrows shot up. “In Beverly? Where we just were?” They have a pool, I almost spit out, then stopped myself. “Did she say what happened?” Lying to cops—this was a battle with my instincts, with everything I’d picked up as I’d moved through the world. Eyes down, voice calm, be respectful, tell the truth. Hands where we can see ’em.
“We’ll know more soon. It seems there was an accidental drowning and then Mr. Corrigan helped dispose of the body.”
Cameron? This time the astonishment on my face was real. The lie buzzed in my mind like the Operation game, burrrrhhh: Nine years ago, Gary and Karen had sent us on our way, Karen’s head bowed, Gary’s chin lifted, and taken care of the body themselves. Why lie? What had Cameron told them? More important, why was Mikki protecting me? Suddenly tears coated my eyes and I let the big feeling, relief and horror and guilt and panic, shoot out in ugly sobs.
Herrera took a step back, but Ratliff placed her fingers on my forearm. “This must be difficult to hear. We know you three were very close,” she said. “Now we’re asking you, informally—is there anything you want to tell us?”
I kept crying in lieu of answering. A nurse pushed a new mom in a wheelchair past. I glanced down in time to see the newborn huddled against her chest, its cheek a flash of shiny pink.
Finally I shook my head. “Thanks for telling me.”
“All right.” Ratliff planted her hands on her hips. “We’ll be in touch about having you come in for formal statements. You can go back to your sister now.” A soft smile. “She needs you.”
* * *
—
The second I stepped into Katie’s hospital room and pressed the door closed behind me, I began to shake, huge full-body tremors as if my body temp were plummeting.
“What is it?” Katie called, trying to sit up again.
I crossed to her bed and perched on the edge. Took her hand again, pressed it between both palms. In a whisper: “Mikki told them about Jinny.”
“No. Oh my God. No. I can’t lose y—”
I shushed her. “She didn’t mention me. Or Gary and Karen. She’s taking the entire fall.” I swallowed hard, felt my hands still quivering around Katie’s. “Except Cameron. She brought him into it. I don’t know why.”
She leaned forward and murmured, “But won’t he tell the truth?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. We all loved Gary and Karen. Maybe they had a pact—protect the Walshes above all else.” I dabbed my sleeve against my tears. “They’ve been through enough—and they’re about to have their dead daughter’s name raked through the mud. They protected us. Why send them to jail now?”
“But what about Cameron?”
“It’s his choice.”
She thought about it. “Won’t they know from the blackmail payouts?”
“Mikki didn’t mention that either. If Daniel doesn’t tell them about the one letter he saw, then…I don’t think anyone will know.” I swallowed. “I mean, if Jinny finally gets justice, I think that’ll be the end of it. I don’t see why her mother would keep blackmailing us.”
She gazed at me for a moment, then looked away.
“Katie?”
“Uh-huh?”
My voice was so quiet it wafted like candle smoke: “You can’t tell anyone about Jinny.”
She stared out the window, at the naked branch bowing in the wind. Finally she turned to me. “Who’s Jinny?”
CHAPTER 28
Katie
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 6 P.M.
The press had a field day, of course, but Hana handled it all with aplomb; it was the week between Christmas and New Year’s, that dark week when no one’s paying much attention to the news anyway, so it all blew over surprisingly quickly. The Herd was set to reopen January 21, after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, with Stephanie (finally back from Goa) as acting CEO and a search underway for a new leadership team. And the Fort Greene construction and Titan acquisition were soldiering on, on delayed schedules; Hana mentioned that a conference room in the Fort Greene Herd would be named after Eleanor, which, ’kay.
After rehearsing her speech with Mom and me, Hana told Stephanie she’d stay through February to help with the reopening, and then she’d drop the Herd as a client—but she’d remain a member, she kept saying, and she was happy to help them find new representation. Stephanie, Hana reported afterward, said supportive things and seemed unsurprised.
Stephanie also let me know that my application would be processed in time for the Herd’s reopening. I laughed when I saw the email—in all the drama, I’d almost forgotten that my membership was still pending. I thanked her but said I wouldn’t be joining. There were other coworking spaces, other networking opportunities, other places where passionate women and marginalized genders could come together, and if there weren’t, maybe someday we’d make one.
Hana got Mom an Airbnb in her building, and I think all three of us were surprised by how well it went; Hana and I felt lazy and heartsick and Mom filled the caretaker role, heating up canned soup and picking up supplies at a bodega, a word she never tired of saying aloud, in her Midwestern accent, bo-day-gah. I realized that, in all the years since we’d grown up, Hana and Mom had really only seen each other in Kalamazoo, in the high-stakes crucible of holiday dinners and the awful period when Mom was starting treatment. Mom still criticized Hana (Don’t you ever clean inside here? she’d hollered once, her head stuck inside Hana’s microwave, and for a split second Hana’s face revealed a desire to turn the appliance on), but my sister seemed much more eager to laugh, change the subject, and move on these days. As if she no longer needed Mom’s elusive approval. Here, with our own quarters to which to retreat, we all seemed okay.
Some nights I dreamed of the moment I lost consciousness just inside Mikki’s bedroom door. I couldn’t remember it, but in the dream I sensed a swirling Jacuzzi of searing pain and confusion, and then the light changing from blue-gray to yellow-white. From there, the dream always skated off somewhere that only made sense in REM logic: me naked in Chris’s bedroom and the ambulance making all that noise and light, or me wearing a snowsuit and playing with school-age Hana in the woods beyond our home in Kalamazoo, or me showing up for my interview at the Herd, my very first day, realizing at the last second that I was supposed to wear heels, only I’d forgotten and pulled on boots.
Other nights, I had stress dreams about officers in SWAT gear busting into Hana’s apartment, slipping handcuffs around her wrists and ushering her out into the night. I’d kept mum about the Jinny stuff, now pinned entirely on Eleanor, Mikki, and Cameron—but someone would crack, Cameron would talk while he awaited trial as a cooperating witness, right? Hana’s arrest felt nightmarishly inevitable. But she didn’t mention it or seem especially worried. Finally I asked her point-blank, and she insisted she was safe.
“But I hope they find Jinny,” she said seriously, smoothing my hair. “This has been hanging over me for so long and now that it’s over, I realize what an idiot I was for not dealing with it sooner.”
“Are you going to tell them about Gary and Karen?” I asked.
She held my gaze, then looked askance. “You don’t understand how important they are to me. And to Mikki. And to Cameron.”
I nodded and vowed to never ask about it again.
It seemed Mikki’s gamble had worked: She claimed that she had, rather improbably, committed involuntary manslaughter not once but twice, and that twice her buddy Cameron had made the whole thing go away. In lieu of Mikki’s mug shot, a beautiful headshot from the Herd’s website accompanied the story in newspapers, online, and on the nightly news. It was how she liked to think of herself looking: chin set, hair a wild blond mane, freckles blaring, sapphire eyes staring directly into the camera with a lioness’s intensity.
* * *
—
My literary agent, Erin, emailed when the news about Eleanor and Mikki broke and asked if we could talk sometime in the New Year. I’d figured out what I’d tell her and felt surprisingly Zen about the whole thing. Then Gary and Karen surprised me by emailing me their exclusive blessing to write Eleanor’s biography, or perhaps to write their story (We don’t know how these things work but a woman from Hachette keeps leaving voicemails), as long as they had final approval. Which meant, I presumed, no mention of Jinny or Mikki or maybe even Cameron.
Then, on New Year’s Eve, my phone rang. I don’t normally pick up calls from unknown numbers, but this was a local landline, and curiosity got the better of me.
A recording clunked on: “This call will be monitored and recorded. You have a collect call from…Mikki Danziger.” Hearing her voice made me jump. “…an inmate at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. If you would like to accept this collect call, please press one.”
I was a human whirlwind, somehow whipping out a digital recorder, accepting the call, and putting her on speakerphone all in one scrambling swoop.
“Mikki?”
A rush of static. “Katie? Is that you?”
“Oh my God. Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you. Thanks for picking up.”
I sat there, staring at the phone. Was this real? “The blisters on my fingers and ears from the frostbite are finally healing—thanks for asking.”
“I’m sorry. I am. For everything.”
“Are you?”
“I am.” Her voice trembled. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. And how awful I feel. I’m not a bad person, Katie, and I want to make it up to you and Hana and, and everyone. That’s why…that’s why I’m here.” The emphasis was subtle, too subtle for the recording to catch, but I heard it: I’m locked up alone, without Hana, without the Walshes, without the guilty people I could’ve implicated. I’m taking the fall.
“I don’t know what to say, Mikki.” Thank you wasn’t right. Something crested and plunged in me, this unbearable sadness.
“I wish I could say more. But—but I won’t. And I’m sorry. And I have a question.”
“What’s that?”
Sine waves of static as she breathed in and out. “There’s another woman here, she was a sex worker who shot and killed her pimp—and a journalist is talking to her about her life story, she’s gonna do, like, an as-told-to memoir. With both their names on it.”
I frowned. “Okay.”
“And I’ve had all these requests from journalists, which I’m ignoring. But I thought maybe you’d want us to do one together. Since you’re the only one I’d trust with it. And I know you still want to write a book.”
In Cold Blood popped into my head—my very own true-crime thriller. Only I was a character, I was the one with a blow to the skull at the climax. Before I could stop it, my brain started spitting out lines of description, the way I’d describe the scene as I awoke on the fire escape, shaking like a jackhammer. The instant flow was at once intriguing and sickening.
“I don’t know, Mikki. That’s a—that’s a crazy thing to ask.”
“I couldn’t make any money from it, obviously. But just think about it, okay?” she said. “Talk to your agent. It’d be…cathartic for me. And good for you. It’s the least I could do.”
“It really is,” I replied, but the snap was out of my voice. An automated voice told me to load more time onto the call, and I hung up, blinking into my cold, dark room.
* * *
—
That evening, I arrived at Hana’s a little after six, carrying a cake I’d made from a mix and nearly dropping it as I squatted to scratch Cosmo’s ears. Hana had replaced the usual bell on his collar with a little disco ball, and I told him he looked very festive.
The plan was to ring in the New Year with a quiet night at Hana’s place; we were making spicy fish tacos for us and Mom. The recipe was one of our more successful endeavors from that sleepy period right after I’d moved back, which felt like years ago, now. Hana and I clattered around her kitchen, discussing food-prep logistics and sipping old-fashioneds I’d made.
Finally, I took a deep breath. “I have an announcement.”
“Oh?”
“I’m going to write Infopocalypse. I mean, if they’ll still let me.”
“Really.” Hana leaned against the kitchen island.
I nodded. “It’s what I committed to doing. And I’m going to make it part memoir and talk about how lonely and miserable I really was while I reported it, but how on social media I made it look like everything was great. The book’s going to be about fake-news culture as a whole—including in our personal lives. Curation, editing, thinking our actual realities, our selves, aren’t enough.”
“Wow.” Hana nodded slowly. “I love it. Why the change of heart?”
I shrugged. “I kept telling myself the reason I didn’t want to write it was that I didn’t have enough material, after all my interview subjects stonewalled me. But that’s not it—I was just ashamed. I cared so much what everyone thought and how, like, all these randos from high school who seemed vaguely impressed that I was writing a book were going to think I was a loser. So dumb.” Cosmo slinked by and I bowed to stroke his back. “I want to channel some Eleanor energy. She didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thought of her. But…but in my own, non-destructive way.” I hated the way Eleanor had trampled on Mikki and other women—much as I disliked peering at this side of her, I knew it was as real as the Eleanor I knew and the “Teleanor” she showed the world. But it wasn’t how I’d do things. I’d remember her magnificence, the power of her confidence and bubbling laughter and ability to make you feel inspired, capable, invincible…and I’d find my own way to give zero fucks. Without destroying those around me.
Hana smiled and made vague congratulations. I pulled a cutting board out from under the sink and pressed it on the counter. “There’s another thing.”
Hana’s face was in the fridge, lit up by its yellow bulb. “Oh yeah?”
“Remember how, right after I got home from the hospital, I had you share the time and transaction number of your last Bitcoin payment?”
She slid the vegetable drawer open and lifted a fat purple cabbage. “Yep?”
“I…I know a little bit about how cryptocurrency works. There’s, like, a massive ledger showing every transaction—anonymously, of cou
rse.” I’d dipped my toe into cryptocurrency reporting back at Rocket; I knew how to sift through the blockchain and triangulate a particular transaction. “And I figured something out.”
Hana closed the fridge door slowly and turned to me. She gripped the cabbage with both hands and frowned. Surely she’d also noticed today was the deadline of that final demand. Surely she, too, was wondering what’d happen at midnight.
“Hana, there were only two payers,” I said. She blinked and I repeated myself: “Two wallets—two accounts—transferred funds to the blackmailer. Not three. Ten thousand dollars near the end of every quarter.”
In her eyes, understanding caught on like kindling set aflame. She placed the vegetable on the counter.
“It was Mikki,” she said, “all along. She told me. She told me how deep into debt she’d fallen, how she’d do anything to keep up. Oh my God.” Her fingers found her temple. “She showed up in Eleanor’s office and told us she’d gotten a letter, too, but of course it was her. She said it had to be Jinny’s mom. Because of the Tennessee postmark, and because her mom supposedly had looked at Mikki on LinkedIn or something. We never doubted her.” What came out was a laugh, barking and strained.
“Yeah, apparently it’s really easy to find a service to print and mail stuff for you. Without leaving a trace.” No one else had thought to Google it. No one else had thought to question Mikki.
Hana shook her head. “Wow. So it’s really over.”
“It’s over.” I sighed. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes. But the offer expires with 2019.”
“Turns into a pumpkin at midnight—got it.” I pulled a knife from the block. “Do you think Eleanor was really going to leave? Run off to Mexico?”
She held the cabbage under the tap, then gave it a shake. “I think she just liked knowing she could. That she could drop everything and be out of here in a minute. And I think the blackmail had something to do with that. She realized this horrible accident from her past was going to keep following her.”
