Everywhere to Hide

by Siri Mitchell

  His was blank.

  Clearly, he didn’t have a problem making things up. He could have listed a fake month and taken advantage of the free coffee.

  Why hadn’t he?

  And he’d never redeemed any of the points he’d earned as a regular customer either, though he’d amassed fifteen free drinks.

  Why not?

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want them; otherwise, he wouldn’t have signed up for the card. It was that he didn’t care about them. Somehow points weren’t the reason he’d signed up.

  But if he wasn’t using the account to accumulate points, then what was he using it for?

  That was the question.

  And I couldn’t figure out an answer.

  As my shift ended, I glanced at the mobile-order area. Saw two orders waiting to be claimed. I walked over and turned them around so I could read the labels. A soy mocha with one pump. No whip. For Joe. Order placed twenty minutes before. I left it there.

  The other order was a bag. Some sort of bakery item for Kate.

  A woman approached. “Is that mine?”

  “Kate?”

  “That’s me.”

  I handed it to her.

  That left just the cup. A mocha. For Joe.

  Again.

  Chapter 14

  As I walked out of the coffee shop, I called Detective Baroni.

  I couldn’t stop myself from glancing up the street, from looking for someone, anyone, who was acting suspicious.

  I shrank back against the building where a tree had thrown its shadow up against the wall. There were too many men wearing dark suits. Entirely too many. But they couldn’t all be Joe’s killer. Probably none of them were Joe’s killer.

  That’s what I told myself.

  The detective answered. I explained who I was.

  “Sure. Right. You left a message for me. Something about work? I was just getting ready to call you. Can you be more specific?”

  “I told you before that Joe came in every day for a coffee around 1:30?”

  “Right. And?”

  “He placed an order today.”

  There was a long pause. “Come again?”

  “And he placed one yesterday too. The same order he placed the day of the shooting.”

  “Coffee addiction is real.” He sighed. “Tell me what you know.”

  “So Joe placed a mobile order every day and—”

  The detective interrupted. “Every day? Or just weekdays?”

  “Weekdays.”

  “Okay. Important information. We still don’t know who this guy is; we just know his name is Joe. But if he’s only ordering on weekdays at one thirty—”

  “One twenty. He placed the order every day at one twenty.”

  “Then chances are he works around here somewhere. And you say he’s still placing orders? Even though he’s dead?”

  It sounded weird. I knew it did, but that’s exactly what I was saying. “For the past two days. Soy mocha. One pump. No whip.”

  “Is there a way to do that? Can you pre-place orders? Maybe he just has a standing order and—”

  I was already talking over him, cutting him off. “You place an order and the system gives you an approximate pickup time. You can’t select a date or a time.”

  “So maybe someone’s using Joe’s card. Which is possible. We never found his wallet.”

  “If they’re using his card, then why hasn’t the order changed? And how would they access his account?”

  “Soy mocha, no whip isn’t a big seller?”

  “It’s not even a small seller.”

  “Okay. So let’s just game this out. The killer takes Joe’s wallet and by some odd coincidence orders the exact same thing Joe likes.”

  I was shaking my head even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “I would buy that if he was ordering in-store using Joe’s card, but it’s a mobile order.”

  “Ah. From his phone. So maybe the killer stole his phone too.”

  “Along with his access code?” This was the environment where I thrived. I could out–devil’s advocate just about anyone. Except my ex. Turns out he actually was the devil.

  “Maybe Joe didn’t use a security PIN. Is Joe locked in to always ordering that drink?”

  “You can order whatever you want. But the program always suggests what you’ve previously ordered.”

  “Right!” The detective’s voice was triumphant. “So our killer-thief could be ordering.”

  “Except that if he is, he hasn’t come by to pick up the drinks.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’ve had to dump them the past two days.”

  He sighed. “So someone is ordering drinks they’re not bothering to pick up using Joe’s mobile account.”

  That’s what it seemed like.

  “Are you sure the orders come from him? How can you tell?”

  “The label always prints out the name, the account number, and the drink.”

  There was a pause before the detective spoke again. “If he was ordering from his phone, does that mean there’s a record of his phone number somewhere?”

  I could have told him Joe’s phone number, but I didn’t want to get him in trouble for obtaining evidence illegally. His case shouldn’t have to suffer for my curiosity. “The manager could probably tell you.”

  “Right. I’ll give her a call. So we know the orders come from Joe’s account. Do they have to come from a phone?”

  “Or a computer.”

  “So it doesn’t have to have anything to do with a card in his wallet.” He paused for a moment and then continued. “But the person doing the ordering would have to have his phone or his computer.”

  “Or just access to his account.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You wouldn’t have to have Joe’s actual phone. You could order from your phone. Or I could order from my computer. All you’d need is Joe’s username and password.”

  “Right. Okay. So we’ve got someone ordering coffee on Joe’s behalf.”

  “Someone who doesn’t know that he’s dead.” That seemed like a salient point to me.

  “It’s strange. If you’re sharing an account with someone, why don’t they know that you’re dead? We don’t know much more about him than we did when you found him. Kind of waiting for someone to show up and claim him. He didn’t have any identification. His fingerprints weren’t in the system anywhere.”

  “Nobody’s reported a missing person?”

  “No. And we don’t have that many homicides in Arlington. Four last year. Four the year before. Mostly crimes of passion, domestic violence. Joe doesn’t fit.” He was silent for a moment. Then he spoke again. “Any chance you can come in? We can talk this through down at the station?”

  “I can’t. I’m on my way to my other job. I’ll have to refund a whole bunch of money that I don’t have if I don’t show up again. But I’ll be done at four.” A couple of my regular students were on vacation.

  “Remind me where this job is?”

  “Central Library.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “But—”

  He’d already hung up.

  I was jolted from my thoughts by a man who walked right into me.

  The notebook he was carrying took flight and the papers that were tucked inside began to flutter away, end over end, down the sidewalk.

  “Sorry. So sorry.” He stooped to gather them. His arm was in a sling.

  I bent to help him.

  “I’m sorry. Thank you. Stupid arm. You wouldn’t believe how many things you can’t do with your arm in a sling—”

  “It’s no problem.”

  “I think I’ve probably discovered every single one. Thank you. Would you be able to do me a favor?”

  “I, um—” I glanced around. The jolt had moved me away from the building, out of the shadow. I was feeling exposed. My mouth went dry.

  He tried again. “Are you headed to the metro?”

&nbs
p; “No.” The word came out as a croak.

  “I just wondered if—”

  “Sorry.” I handed him the papers I’d gathered and hurried toward a scooter.

  * * *

  As I arrived at the library for my coaching sessions, I received an email from Ms. Buckingham at the law firm. I stepped aside, over to the wall by the outside book drop, to read it.

  Ms. Garrison—

  Delighted to meet you yesterday. Would love to schedule a follow-up interview. Does 1:30 next Monday work for you?

  Yes! Yes, yes, and yes. I would make it work for me. I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, but if the job worked out and if I passed the bar—I didn’t want to tempt fate—then things were looking up.

  As I was putting my phone away, I saw there was a voicemail message waiting for me. I pushed Play and held it up to my ear.

  “Whitney, hi. This is Cade.”

  Of course it was Cade. I recognized his voice. He talked with the twangiest Southern twang I had ever heard, and he was the only person I knew who pronounced my name as if it were spelled H-witney. He’d worked on the Hill as Congressman Thorpe’s tech wiz while I was there. He’d been so genuinely, so constantly nice. And he’d warned me several times about my ex, or tried to, but I’d always found a reason to excuse his bad behavior. Life would have turned out so much better if I had been attracted to Cade the way I suspected he’d been attracted to me.

  He’d moved to Arlington before I had. He’d found a job at the FDIC. He’d also, in some roundabout way I never clearly understood, found me the apartment at Mrs. Harper’s. And now and then, he’d check in with me at the coffee shop.

  On the voicemail, there was the sound of traffic—of a horn honking—before he spoke again. The tone of his voice had dropped. “Can I meet you after your shift? Out behind the Blue Dog? About 1:45?” He blew out a deep breath. “I don’t want to drag you into this, but you mentioned something once to me when we were on the Hill. I think it might be really important. So, um . . . yeah. Won’t take long.” There was another long pause. “Oh, and hey: if I miss you, I’ll just come the day after. If we don’t see each other then, I’ll call you back. Probably better if you don’t call me. See you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow?

  When was this? When had he left the message?

  I checked the date stamp.

  He’d called me Sunday.

  The day before the shooting.

  Despite the heat of the sun, despite the general mugginess of the day, a skin-prickling chill swept over me as I realized who the victim in the alley had been.

  Chapter 15

  I called Detective Baroni and told him.

  “Cade Burdell? Spell it for me.”

  I spelled it for him.

  “So you’re saying the victim wasn’t Joe?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know who Joe is, I don’t know what he has to do with any of this, but the victim was Cade Burdell.”

  “How do you know that? How are you so sure?”

  “Because he left me a voicemail message.” My voice caught. I pressed my back to the building’s redbrick wall and slid down into a squat. Put my free hand to my forehead to keep passersby from seeing the tears that were leaking down my cheeks.

  “You knew him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he say? On the message?”

  “He wanted to meet me.”

  “When?”

  “When I got off work.” I swiped at a tear with the back of my hand.

  “At the coffee shop?”

  “Mm-hmm.” I was afraid if I tried to speak, I was going to lose it.

  “He wanted to meet you. At the coffee shop, after work. In the alley.”

  “Mmm.”

  “You were the person he was waiting for.”

  He’d been waiting for me out there and I hadn’t even known. He’d died, practically at my feet, and I couldn’t even recognize him.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  No. I wasn’t. In a place filled with ladder-climbers and strivers, Cade had been uncommonly decent. I opened my mouth to answer, but a sob came out instead.

  “Ms. Garrison?”

  I bent myself double, resting my forehead against my knees.

  “Whitney? What’s going to happen now is that this whole investigation is going to accelerate. We know who he is.”

  Who he was. Cade was dead.

  “Can you do me a favor? Do you still have that voicemail message?”

  “Mm-hmm. Yeah.”

  “Can you play it for me? I really need to know what he said.”

  I pulled up the voicemail app, turned up the volume, put the phone on speaker, and pressed Play.

  He had me replay it once. And then, after he’d listened the second time, he let out his breath in a whoosh. “Okay. That gives me a lot more to work with. Don’t delete it. I’ll still plan to meet you at the library. You can give me a better sense, then, of what he was talking about.”

  He hung up before I could tell him the most important thing. The conversation Cade had referenced? I had no idea what he meant.

  * * *

  That afternoon, I was grateful for my students. I would have fallen apart if I’d been by myself. And my first one of the day required all my attention. I spent a large part of her session trying to talk her off a ledge.

  “But the more practice tests I take, the worse I get!”

  “When you feel confident in choosing your answer, are you sticking with it, Dani? That’s what we talked about last week.”

  “Yes!”

  “Because in that case, when you have that confidence, first instincts are usually right.” There was a fallacy that initial answers are always right. I worked hard with my students to help them gauge the confidence they felt when making their initial choice. That was the better indicator.

  “I stick with it until I start to think, ‘But that other answer sounds right too.’ And then I can’t decide. And then I end up choosing the wrong one.”

  “So we’ll focus more on test-taking strategies these last few weeks and less on the actual practice questions. It’s okay. This happens.”

  “But why does it have to happen to me? Why am I studying so hard? It used to be I didn’t know anything and I was a really good guesser.” She raised both of her hands and bobbed her head, tucking her hair behind both ears. “Now, it’s like I know more, but I guess worse!” Her voice was climbing.

  “So here’s the thing about this test: you’re giving it too much power.”

  “Yeah. Because if I fail it, I don’t get to go to school!”

  “You’ll get to go to school.”

  “But not my dream school!” She put her hands behind her neck and pulled her elbows together in front of her.

  “Listen to me.” I reached out across the table and offered her my hand.

  She lowered her arms and then took hold of it.

  When I spoke next, it was in an intentional whisper. Other library patrons were starting to turn in our direction. “This test doesn’t get to say what kind of person you are. It doesn’t get to tell you how kind you are. How intelligent you are. What a hard worker you are. You shouldn’t give this test the chance to rule your life. It’s not worth it.”

  “It is right now!”

  “You know what will happen in about twenty-four months from now?”

  “What?”

  “No one, and I mean absolutely no one, will care what you got on this test. No one will even ask.”

  The panic eventually subsided and the rest of our session was productive.

  There wasn’t much time to think about Cade. It was my last student of the day who turned out to be the most challenging. He sat down, arms crossed. “I’m not stupid.”

  “I know you’re not stupid, Henry.”

  He shoved his practice test at me. “This test says I am.”

  “Did you have enough time to finish all the questions?”

  “No.”

  “
Okay. So this test”—I put my hand on it—“this one right here says only one thing to me. It says that you don’t know how to pace yourself. That’s all it says. It doesn’t measure how smart you are, it just measures how well you take the test. That’s it. So you can do better if you give yourself the chance to finish it.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Right now, it’s not about being smart or not, it’s about spending less time on each question so you have more time at the end. More questions answered means more opportunities to gain points. So let’s work on that, shall we?”

  His mood lightened and toward the end of our session, I actually made him laugh. After he left, I gathered my things and then followed the path he’d taken through the tables to the stairs. But my legs felt as if they each weighed a hundred pounds. My backpack, as if it was filled with rocks.

  Cade was dead.

  He’d been out there in the alley, waiting for me, and now he was dead.

  A man who had been studying some student artwork that was displayed in the lobby approached me as I came off the bottom step. “Ms. Garrison? Hey. It’s Detective Baroni.”

  I took him into an empty meeting room.

  He pulled his notebook from his pocket and set it on the table in front of us as I sat down. Then he reached over and pulled out the chair next to mine. Sat down beside me.

  “I need to ask you about your friend Cade. How long had you known him?”

  “A year and a half. I met him up on the Hill. In Congressman Thorpe’s office.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “A couple weeks ago? He worked at the FDIC. He’d stop in once in a while to see me.”

  “So you’d kept up with him?”

  “I’d kept in touch with him.” But that wasn’t quite right. “He’d kept in touch with me. That’s the better way to put it.”

  “How closely?”

  “He moved to Arlington before I did. When he found out I was moving across the river, he found my apartment for me. It was a friend of a friend of a friend connection.”

  “Were you close?”