by Leah Konen
I grabbed my phone, trying Ellie one more time, desperate to know.
After five rings, she answered. “Can you stop calling me? Put me on whatever Do Not Call list and leave me alone.”
“Ellie,” I said. “It’s me.”
A quick, sharp breath.
“This is you? Jesus Christ, I didn’t know. Are you okay?”
I swallowed, my lips trembling as I struggled to ask the question. “Did you tell him?” I asked, the words tumbling forth. “Did you tell Davis where I was?”
The line went quiet, taut between us. A tightrope.
“Ellie, tell me. Please.”
“What do you want me to say?” she asked.
“You promised,” I said, my voice pleading. “You promised you wouldn’t.”
“He’s my brother,” she said.
“Ellie.”
“He’s my brother, I had to.”
Without another word, I hung up the phone.
Davis was here, he had found me, and I didn’t have another second to spare.
It was time to go.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I pried up the floorboard, a splinter digging sharp beneath my skin, then stared at my things—my life, all that made me who I was, in a handful of items. Easy to travel with, at least.
I checked everything twice, then packed it all into my tote, the same one I’d taken up here, back in September, and set it next to my suitcase, already filled to the brim with my clothes.
My mother’s missing scarf tugged at me—I hated to leave here without it—but there was nothing to do about it now.
“What do you think, baby?” I asked Dusty, trying to force some levity into my voice so as not to freak him out too much. “Want to go on another adventure?”
I checked the time on my phone. It was just past noon. Vera was probably still wrapping everything up with the guys at the funeral parlor. If I left now, she wouldn’t even see me go. I had two missed calls, spaced five minutes apart, from a local 845 number. Part of me wanted to answer, just to see who it was, but another part feared it was Davis, having gotten my new number somehow, calling me from a local bar—or a pay phone, even, if any of those still existed.
I was too scared to take the chance, so I ignored the calls, slipped my phone in my pocket, and took my suitcase and Dusty’s crate out to the car. I turned the car on to warm up and popped the trunk, tossing the suitcase in, then put the crate in the back seat.
Back inside, I walked through the cottage again. I was nervous, my anxiety kicking up, and I felt the need to check burners, make sure I hadn’t left anything important in a drawer. Nostalgia hit, sharp and bitter, deep in my gut.
I was leaving again, just when this place had begun to feel like home.
My phone rang, buzzing in my pocket. The same number. Hands shaking, imagining Davis on the other end of the line, I hit Ignore. I closed my laptop and put it in its case, then unpacked the tote, ran through all the items again, and repacked them. My pulse raced as I did a final once-over. Then I leashed up Dusty and shrugged into my coat.
Outside, I locked the door twice, then tucked the keys into my purse and headed to the car, exhaust spilling from the muffler like a plume of smoke. I shut the trunk and eased Dusty into his crate. He whined, pure anxiety. Me too, I thought. Me too.
“Going somewhere?”
I startled, banging my head against the frame of the car. Rubbing it, I inched out, turned.
“You’re not leaving town, are you?” McKnight asked.
Dusty began to bark, the sound of a man’s voice setting him off. He pawed at his crate furiously.
“Only for a couple of days.”
“Where?”
“To see a friend . . . in Brooklyn,” I said, spitballing.
He crossed his arms. “I called you three times.”
“I didn’t recognize the number,” I said. “I thought it might have been my ex.”
“I’d hoped to catch you at the memorial, but you left before I got the chance.”
I could only shrug.
McKnight tilted his head to the side, like Dusty did, as if trying to read me. “I was hoping you could come down to the station. Any way you could push your trip back?”
“I really don’t think I can.” I swallowed thickly, a lump already forming in my throat.
He squinted. “We really need to talk to you today.”
“So I have to come?” I asked. “I have to drop everything for this? Are you going to arrest me or something if I don’t?”
Again, McKnight cocked his head to the side. “Is there a reason I should arrest you, Miss King?”
Fuck.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I think it’ll be better for both of us if you follow me down to the station. Fleeing to Brooklyn wouldn’t look very good for you right about now.”
Rage swam through me, through my belly, through my bones, and I wished I could charge, knock him over, get in the car, and floor it as I reversed, but he stood stock-still, stoic, daring me to challenge him.
“Let me just get Dusty all settled,” I said weakly.
McKnight crossed his arms. “I’ll wait.”
I grabbed Dusty’s crate and my tote, then returned to the cottage, dropping the tote on the coffee table and letting Dusty out. He ran around happily, as if being offered some sort of reprieve. I looked out the window to where McKnight still stood, waiting, like a statue. Quickly, I opened the junk drawer, grabbed a roll of duct tape, knelt beside the doggie door.
This had to be routine, I told myself as I ripped off swaths of tape, made an X so Dusty couldn’t get out again. I hadn’t killed John, and I had no reason—no motive—to want to. With Sam Alby in the picture, there was no way I was a legitimate suspect. I would go with McKnight, do his damn interview, then come back, grab Dusty, and get the hell out of here. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. Vera would see me going, but I would make her understand. Maybe we could even reconnect, once I was safe somewhere. Maybe we could still be family—she and I—only, a long-distance family now.
The tote caught my eye. Could I risk it? I decided I couldn’t. I stole into the bedroom, pushed the bed aside, and loaded the items back into my hiding spot, hammering the board down tighter than ever.
Then I locked the door behind me, got in the car, and followed McKnight down the road.
* * *
• • •
The station was just as dead as it had been before, but the woman at the front desk seemed to recognize me as I walked in behind McKnight, breathing deep, as furious as I was scared. Every path seemed to lead to more skeletons, more dangers, when all I wanted was to finally feel safe. I pictured Dusty, alone in that cottage, while Davis lurked somewhere nearby, close enough to hurt us.
In the interview room, McKnight didn’t offer me coffee, only cued up the camera, took the seat opposite me, and leaned back. “Do you have anything additional to tell me, Miss King?”
“About what?” I asked, trying not to snap.
He rested his hands calmly against the cheap plastic table. “About anything. Ms. Abernathy. Mr. Nolan. The art studio.”
In a flash, a lightbulb went off, something that could possibly help him, something I’d forgotten to mention before because I’d been so defensive about my lies; something to show that I was on the right side of this. “The cabin,” I said. “I mean John’s art studio. Where he was found?”
McKnight’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes?”
“They never kept it locked. John told me himself they didn’t even use the key.”
His face fell—disappointment. “We know that, Miss King. Ms. Abernathy said as much in her initial interview. It’s very common in that area, with a hunter’s shack like that.”
Hunter’s shack. I’d never thought about it that w
ay, but I suppose at the end of the day, it was. Only, nothing had been hunted there. That is, nothing before John.
“Anything else, Miss King?”
“No,” I said. “That’s it.”
He sat still, stoic, waiting for me to say more. I didn’t know what he was getting at, and the room felt suddenly hot, but a dry heat, one that makes your pits sweat and your skin split. They probably turned the thermostat up just for situations like this, probably watched Law & Order and took notes. Ellie and I used to consume every dark detective drama we could get our hands on, laughing when the actors overdid it. Only, it wasn’t funny now. “Why am I here?” I asked finally.
McKnight sighed. “I was hoping, Miss King, that you’d be more forthcoming.” He reached beneath the table and pulled out a manila folder, then pushed it toward me. I could only imagine what was in it. Photos of John, dead, supine in his studio, six gaping stab wounds scattered across his torso. Acid rose in my chest, and I pressed my lips together; they were chapped, cracked. “Would you like to open the folder, Miss King?”
I held my breath, then whipped it open. At first, I felt relief—a stillness in my bones; my balance, restored—it wasn’t John.
Then my jaw dropped.
The photo in front of me showed a woman, stretched out on a bed, on her side, facing away from the camera, curves undulating like the tops of the East Catskills. Lacy underwear on top and bottom. Curly brown hair.
It wasn’t John; it was me.
In my bed, in my cottage. Spread out, printed, for all to see.
My mind flashed to college, the morning after the stupid video was taken. To waking up, puke rancid on my jeans, and my roommate, on Facebook: Holy shit, girl, you’ve got to see this.
Were the guys on the police squad the same as the guys in college? Probably.
Had every officer laughed in the break room about this? Had they called me a whore? Had they formulated this theory, that I’d killed John for not agreeing to leave Vera, over beers in a pub before going home to their sad, small little lives?
I pushed back my chair almost instinctively and shook my head.
“Didn’t think we’d find this, Miss King?”
I bit the flaking skin off my lip. “I don’t know how you got this or what this is, but—”
“It was on Mr. Nolan’s phone,” McKnight said. “Taken October thirty-first, two nights before your hike.”
I had to say the right thing, to not screw this up, too. “I don’t,” I managed, cursing myself for how flustered I’d gotten. “I mean, it wasn’t like that.”
“Like what, Miss King?”
A sour taste in the back of my mouth. I imagined old radiators, caked with dust and mold. Spores, seeping into my lungs like poison. “Like it looks.”
“So you don’t deny that Mr. Nolan was in your bedroom that night?”
“No . . . I just mean . . . nothing ever happened,” I said. “He had too much to drink. He stayed over. That’s all. I don’t know why he took that photo. I don’t know—”
“And you never thought fit to mention,” he went on, “that Mr. Nolan spent the night with you two nights before he was murdered?”
“He didn’t spend the night with me. It wasn’t like that. It was nothing.”
“Does Ms. Abernathy know about this little bit of nothing?”
My cheeks burned with shame. “No,” I said. “No, of course not. But—”
“But what, Miss King?”
“We didn’t do anything. We had too much to drink, and he passed out in my cottage, but he woke up fully clothed. That’s it. I had no idea he took this photo, or why he took it,” I said, as betrayal surged through me. “But it’s not my fault that he did.”
It was the truth, and I hoped McKnight could see it in my eyes. I couldn’t imagine John doing something like that, while I was sleeping, no less—without my consent. Was he no better than those guys in college? Had I mistaken him completely?
McKnight leaned forward and adjusted the printout, as if he wanted it to be perfectly straight. “I don’t know if you and John were sleeping together, and I don’t really care. Seems there was a lot of . . . activity . . . with people he wasn’t married to. What I care about is why you lied about seeing him fall. And this, to me, is a reason.”
Blood rushed in my ears.
“Whether you slept together or not, you obviously were more than just friends. Sometimes, when those feelings start, people want to, you know, be with each other. Sometimes they make plans to leave their wives. Disappear on a hike and have their girlfriend swear up and down that they fell off a cliff. Even toss their camera down toward the river to make it look like they fell, to make sure their wife never guesses . . .”
He was so wrong, and yet he was so right at the same time. So close. “You don’t understand,” I said. “That’s not what happened.”
He scratched at his chin. I could see, on the edge of his cheek, the tiniest of cuts, probably from shaving. I remembered what he’d said to me about marriage, and I wondered if his wife had kissed that cheek this morning, if he had kids and a dog to go home to after he spent the day skulking around a memorial service and harassing me—an American dream. I glanced at his hand. There wasn’t a ring. Maybe he was divorced, I thought, drank too much and smoked too much, like detectives did on TV, tried to numb himself to the overdoses and domestic violence disputes a mountain town would bring you. Maybe he was just as lonely as I was, could smell it on me.
“The truth is,” McKnight went on, “neither of you saw him fall, and yet you were so sure he had.”
“I already told you this. It was raining,” I said. “It happened so fast. I know I heard the scream, though. And then I saw his backpack and the water bottle, and I just thought . . .”
He held up a hand. “Yes, it sounds like you know this part well. But why would your mind ever go to a fall in the first place? Why land on that story, exactly? Especially before Officer Parker took you down to the riverbank and you all found the camera. There are other options. He could have gone off trail. He could have been calling for help.”
I gripped the edge of the table, as if I could stop my head from spinning if I pressed hard enough. “Then why would his stuff be right there on the edge?” I asked. “What was I supposed to think?”
McKnight grunted, adjusting in his seat. “Have you ever been to the cabin Mr. Nolan used as his studio, the one where we found him? People in town say that he used to bring women there.”
“No,” I said. And then, correcting, “Vera and John drove me by, but I never went inside.”
“Never?” he asked.
“I never went there,” I said, my voice stiff. “I swear.”
He leaned back, his stomach resting against the edge of the table, spilling over just slightly. “Here’s what I’m thinking, Miss King, and granted, it’s just a theory. I think maybe you and Mr. Nolan came up with a plan in tandem. Maybe you guys agreed he would disappear on this hike, and you’d run off together. Then he starts to get cold feet, he maybe feels bad about leaving his wife, he changes his mind—who knows, maybe he even reconnects with his old friend Rachel—and you don’t like that.”
“No,” I said.
He wasn’t as stupid as I’d pegged him—that scared me.
Could I tell him the truth?
Using my untraceable internet connection, I’d let myself google our situation the other morning and found a name for it: conspiracy to commit fraud. It didn’t even matter if it hadn’t worked. It was still illegal, still a crime. Besides . . .
“It’s not like that at all,” I said.
His eyebrows rose. “Then tell me what it is like. Because there’s a reason you lied about seeing him fall, and I will figure it out. Believe me.”
The secret rose in my throat like vomit. “I have nothing else to say to you.”
McKnight stared, waiting for me to change my mind.
Inside, I felt the hatch lift up, and my eyes sharpened as they met McKnight’s. “Do I need a lawyer?” I asked. “Are you going to charge me with anything?”
He smiled ever so slightly, as if he appreciated my gumption just the tiniest bit. Then he made a show of checking his notes before looking back up at me. “Not yet, no.”
“Then can I go?” I scooted my chair back.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “You already have one of these, but here it is again, just in case you do decide to tell us the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth.” I stood and grabbed my purse from the back of the plastic chair. I reached for the door, eager to get out of the claustrophobic room.
“Oh, and Miss King—”
I turned back.
“In case you were still thinking about it, don’t leave the area.”
I took a quick breath, my heart already racing.
No, I thought. No no no.
“That’s not a request, that’s an order. As long as the investigation is still in its early stages, we need you to stay right where you are.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Outside, I sucked air into my lungs, breathing deep as I tried to slow my pulse, puzzle a way out of this clusterfuck. I walked to the car, shut the door, and stared through the windshield, hazy. My hands hovered over the wheel, and I felt it, that need—in my gut—to run. It was all-encompassing, overwhelming, as much a part of me as my fingers and toes.
I had to get out of here, that much had been clear since the day I ran into Ellie. How different would things be now if I hadn’t gone to Schoolhouse when I had, if I hadn’t grabbed a seat at the bar the very same hour that Ellie had wandered into town for a beer? Would we have gone on that hike at all? We certainly wouldn’t have pulled the plan together so quickly. Vera and John would have had time to dot their i’s, cross their t’s. Make it foolproof. Christ, would John even be dead?
