by Aimee Molloy
“What does it mean?” Colette asked, cradling Poppy to her chest.
“It’s too early to tell. All we can do at this point is watch her. Come back in three months.”
“Three months? Why so long? There’s nothing to do before that?”
“Not at this age. We just have to wait and see. Kids can outgrow this.”
Charlie appears on the sidewalk downstairs. He adjusts his earbuds and then breaks into a slow jog, steering the stroller toward the entrance to the park. He reacted to the news as she expected he would. Calmly.
“Okay, so we’ll bring her back in three months,” he said. “If he tells us then that we need to be worried, we’ll start worrying.”
A car comes careening down the street just as Charlie starts to cross, not waiting for the walk light. Colette holds her breath as he steps back onto the sidewalk, yelling something at the driver. When he jogs across and turns at the stone wall, she closes the curtain, places her coffee on the table, and kneels in front of the couch, feeling underneath for the envelope holding the flash drive.
She zips it into the inner pocket of her bag and lingers in the shower, the water extra cold, trying to clear her head and force herself awake; to purge the thoughts that have been plaguing her since yesterday. They found a body.
The information was scarce—a simple note from Mark Hoyt at the very top of the stack. Remains were discovered at approximately 5 p.m. yesterday. Sent to lab, identification to be confirmed by 1200 hours tomorrow. Will update asap.
She closes her eyes under the stream of cold water, reenvisioning the dream she had last night. Winnie was in a field, standing over Midas’s lifeless body. Colette walked closer, reaching to take Winnie’s arm, but when Winnie turned, Colette saw she’d been wrong. It wasn’t Winnie standing over Midas. It was Francie.
She turns off the shower and dresses quickly. When she arrives on the fourth floor of City Hall an hour later, Allison is not at her desk. Colette waits in the lobby for a few minutes before going to Teb’s door and peeking inside his empty office. Her footsteps are quiet on the carpet as she walks slowly toward his credenza, fishing inside the pocket of her bag for the flash drive. Just as she’s about to place it on the floor under a row of chairs, Allison stands up from behind Teb’s desk.
“Hi,” she says.
“Oh my god.” Colette tightens her grip on the flash drive. “You scared me to death.”
“I’m sorry,” says Allison, placing her palm on her abdomen. “Whoosh. That made me a little dizzy.”
“What are you doing?” Colette asks.
Allison sighs. “Listen, is there a chance anyone came and took something from the mayor’s desk while you were in here working?”
“Took something?” Colette clears her throat. “No, not that I remember.”
“Shoot.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing. I swore I put something in here for the mayor, but he can’t find it. He’s pissed at me.”
“I can help you look,” Colette says. “What is it?”
Allison waves her hand. “Don’t be silly. You have enough to worry about without having to fix a mess I made. But”—she frowns—“I have to ask you to wait outside. I’ve been told I can’t let anyone into his office if he’s not here. He probably doesn’t mean you, but I’m in enough trouble, so—”
“Of course,” Colette says. “I’m happy to wait outside.”
Colette follows Allison back into the lobby. Beyond the couches, in front of the large west windows with a view of City Hall Park, a young man is setting up a podium while another waits nearby, looking bored, holding a cardboard seal of the city. Colette takes a seat in one of the leather chairs and drops the flash drive into her bag just as Allison reappears, a large manila envelope in her hand.
“This arrived for you.”
Colette’s name is written in green block letters on the front of the envelope, followed by the address for City Hall. Who would send mail to her at the mayor’s office? Nobody’s even supposed to know she comes here.
“When?” Colette asks.
“Late yesterday.”
Colette takes the envelope and tucks it into her bag. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure. Hopefully you won’t have to wait long, but to be honest, it doesn’t look good.” Allison nods toward the two young men setting up the podium. “Something strange is going on here today.”
Allison returns to her desk and Colette settles into her seat, distracted by the envelope. Something tells her she shouldn’t open it now. Not here, not with people around.
For the next thirty minutes, Colette flips idly through old issues of the New Yorker. At last Colette hears people coming down the hall. Aaron enters the lobby with a woman. She’s wearing a dark gray suit, and Colette catches a glimpse of a holstered gun at her waist. There’s something familiar about her.
“See you later,” the woman says to Allison, and hearing her voice, it hits Colette. It’s the detective who interviewed Winnie. The one from the flash drive. She disappears into the elevator as Aaron approaches Colette, his cell phone in one hand and a thick folder in the other. Colette stands up, but he gestures for her to sit back down. “Not yet, sorry. Something’s come up. The mayor apologizes. Give us ten more minutes.”
“I can come back when it’s a better time.”
“No, I’m doing my best to get you in,” Aaron says, glancing over Colette’s shoulder at Joan Ramirez, the mayor’s press secretary, who is standing outside the mayor’s door. Aaron nods at Joan. “Ten more minutes.” He touches Colette’s shoulder and turns to go, but as he does, the folder drops from under his arm to the floor, scattering papers around her feet. She stoops to help collect them, reaching under her chair.
Her hand stops midair.
It’s a photo of Midas. Colette picks up the photo and examines it. He’s wearing a gray-striped onesie and is sucking on his fist. He appears to be lying on a white carpet.
“Colette?”
Aaron is holding out his palm. She stands and gives him the photo.
“Thanks,” he says, winking at her. He ushers Joan into the mayor’s office, and Colette sits back down, the room spinning around her. She rests her forehead in her hands, fighting the desire to lower her head between her knees, the way she was advised to do by a bus driver in the second grade, who’d noticed her turning green with car sickness in the seat behind him. Remains were discovered. That photograph. The detective. The press conference they’re setting up for.
Midas is dead.
What else could it be?
She hears Teb’s voice and looks up, seeing him walking toward her. She stands, keeping her bag close to her body.
“I have some bad news, Colette,” Teb says. His tone is serious. “There’s something here I need to deal with. I’m really sorry.”
“What is it?” she asks, but then Aaron is there, his cell phone ringing. He reaches into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
“Yep,” Aaron says into the phone. “Okay, good.” Aaron hangs up. “Commissioner Ghosh just arrived, sir. He’s on his way up.” Aaron glances at the podium in front of the windows and then back at Teb. “You might want to change ties. Something a little more solemn.”
Teb nods and turns to walk back toward his office. “Sorry, Colette,” Aaron says, guiding her toward the elevator, pressing the down button. “I know it must be frustrating when this happens, but sometimes things are beyond our control. Nature of the job.” The elevator doors open, and Elliott Falk of the New York Post bursts out. “I’ll have Allison call you to reschedule,” Aaron says. The elevator doors close between them, and when they open again, she runs outside, waving down the nearest taxi. She slams the door shut behind her.
“Where to?”
“Brooklyn,” she says, sliding across the hot, cracked leather. “Prospect Park West.”
She presses the power button on the television in front of her seat and the screen flickers, filling the cab with lou
d music, a jingle about buying a mattress. The cabdriver lays on his horn at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. A local morning program is on, in the midst of a cooking program. How to get kids to eat more greens. The driver turns up the radio, competing with the sound of the television. He’s listening to the all-news station.
She leans forward. “Did you hear anything about Midas, that baby that was taken?”
“The rich one?”
“Yes.”
“He’d dead,” the driver says. “An ex-boyfriend killed him, apparently.”
“No.” The word is choked. “Where did you hear that?”
“My wife. She told me that the other day.” He makes a face. “She’s obsessed with this story.”
Colette’s phone beeps. It’s Nell.
I NEED to see you. Meet me at 5? The Spot. I’m going to sneak out early, need to get Beatrice at 6.
I can’t. Colette types. Not today.
Three dots. Nell’s response is immediate. PLEASE. It’s important.
Colette places her phone on her lap and closes her eyes. Remember to breathe. She pictures the doula kneeling in front of her at the worst moments of her labor, repeating the phrase again and again. It all comes back to your breath.
I’m serious, Nell writes. I have to talk to you.
Fine. I’ll be there.
“Excuse me,” the driver says, fifteen minutes later. “We’re here.”
Charlie is in the kitchen making a sandwich when she enters the apartment.
“You’re back already?”
She drops her bag by the door, mutes his music and then turns on the television, flipping through the stations.
“What are you doing?”
“The mayor is holding a press conference. I think it’s about Midas—” When she gets to a cable news program, she sees Teb standing at the podium, holding up his hand to silence the reporters. “The remains were discovered in the woods about four hundred feet from Winnie Ross’s home, on her property in upstate New York. Because the body had been badly burned, we elicited the help of the FBI to identify the remains.”
“No.” Charlie comes to stand beside Colette and he takes her hand. “They found Mid—”
“Shhhhhh.”
“We received confirmation this afternoon that the remains belong to Hector Quimby, a longtime employee of the Ross family.” Teb consults the notes in front of him. “For the past thirty years, Mr. Quimby has worked as the groundskeeper at the Ross property, as well as maintaining the family’s home in Brooklyn, from which Midas was taken on the night of July 4.” A photo flashes on the screen. The man is in his late sixties, with gray hair, a gray mustache, and cottony blue eyes. “We do not yet know if there’s a connection between Mr. Quimby’s death and the abduction of Midas Ross, but we are proceeding with the investigation assuming there is.”
“How was the body discovered?” someone calls from the crowd of reporters.
“Investigators with the FBI and NYPD were led to Mr. Quimby’s body”—Teb coughs—“excuse me. They were led to Mr. Quimby’s body by cadaver dogs sniffing for the scent of Midas Ross.”
Colette unwinds her fingers from Charlie’s. “I need a second.” She walks to the kitchen, picks up her bag, and locks the door behind her in the bathroom. She sits on the toilet and removes the manila envelope, tearing it open. There’s no sign of who sent it. No letter. No signature. Just a single sheet of paper.
It’s a mug shot.
He’s a teenager in the photo. There are no lines around his eyes, no gray in the goatee. He stares into the camera, a defiant expression on his face. The nameplate he holds in front of his chest is lettered with his date of birth and place of arrest. But not what he was charged with. Not even his name.
But of course it’s him. Token.
Francie sucks in her stomach, aware of a guy approaching, but he strolls past her, taking a seat at the far end of the bar. She checks the time again: 3:32 p.m. He’s thirty-two minutes late. Maybe he lied. Maybe he’s not coming.
“Another white zinfandel?”
She tugs at the fabric of her low-cut neckline in the wake of the bartender’s gaze. “I guess so,” she says, glancing down at the text her mother-in-law, Barbara, sent a few minutes ago, with an attached photo of Will lying on a blanket in the park. We’re doing great. Hope the photo shoot is going well. Good luck!
Her hand is unsteady as she gives a ten to the bartender, thinking again about the argument she and Lowell had this morning, after he came out of the bedroom to find Francie sitting on the couch, feeding Will a bottle, trying to hold back tears.
“What is it this time?” he asked her.
“What is what?”
“You look upset.”
“I’m not.”
“Francie—”
“It’s nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.” She can’t tell Lowell what’s bothering her—how she called Mark Hoyt yesterday to inform him she’d found photographs of the guy who approached Winnie at the Jolly Llama.
“I’m disappointed I had to do this work myself,” she said to Hoyt, impressed with the authority in her voice. “But so be it. I will e-mail them to you now, unless, for security purposes, you’d prefer to send an officer over to pick them up personally?”
“Francie, listen to me,” Hoyt had said. “You need to back off.”
“Back off? Are you—”
“You heard me, Mrs. Givens. Back off. Find something to do. Take that kid to the swings. Or maybe go see your doctor. Make sure everything is okay. Let us do our job.”
“Go see my—” A laugh escaped her. “Do you have any idea what a shitty job you’re doing here? Are you even aware there is a newborn baby counting on you to bring him back to his mother? Go see my doctor? Are you kidding me? I don’t need another man—”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Givens.”
Of course she could never tell this to Lowell, who just stood there, looking at her like she was crazy, his back against the counter, his arms crossed at his chest. “I’m starting to worry about you, Francie.”
She feels sick now, thinking about what she said to him after that, how she accused him of being cold and unsympathetic as he got dressed, turning away from his kiss as he made his way out the door to pick up his mother from the airport (Lowell had, apparently, called Barbara and asked her to come from Tennessee for a few days, telling her Francie was overwhelmed and could use some help with the baby, without even discussing it with her first). Francie hates it when they fight. They hardly ever argued before, but now, since the baby, she’s annoyed by everything he does. She knows she needs to apologize to him and smooth things over, especially with Barbara staying with them, sleeping on the sofa in the living room, in earshot of every word they exchange. She reaches for her phone, but then she feels a pair of hands around her waist.
She turns, her phone frozen in her hand, stunned by how handsome he is up close: his icy blue eyes; his strong, square jaw; his dark hair under the bright red baseball cap. Before she can even say hello, he lifts her from the stool and draws her close, kissing her in a way she hasn’t been kissed in a very long time, helping her forget all about Lowell.
He pulls back. “You are the woman I’m supposed to meet, correct?”
“Yes. Hello.” Francie regrets the nervous crack in her voice.
He drops onto the stool beside her and signals to the bartender, ordering a beer and a shot of whiskey for himself, not offering to replenish her drink. “Sorry I’m late. Something came up.” He downs the shot in one easy swallow and follows it with a sip of beer. She reaches for her glass of wine, glancing at him. She was right. He’s in his thirties, the same age Archie Andersen would now be. He takes another drink, and she sees the way his hand grips the glass, the pull of his T-shirt at his biceps. He’s much bigger than she remembers from when she watched him at the Jolly Llama. “I like your style,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
She raises her eyebrows. “My dress, you mean?”
His gaze travels over her breasts to her neck, and then to her eyes, framed under the false eyelashes she applied an hour earlier in the bathroom of a nearby Starbucks.
“Well, yeah. That too. But I mean that you didn’t waste any time. So many girls wanna e-mail for days before meeting.”
Francie’s proud of how quickly she was able to devise this scheme, all thanks to Nell. Yesterday, after contacting Mark Hoyt had dead-ended, she e-mailed Nell at work.
I know it’s a long shot, but I found some photos of that guy Winnie was talking to at the Jolly Llama, Francie wrote. Any chance we can use these to find out something about this guy?
It took Nell seven minutes to respond. This is all I can find. I put his photo into a face recognition app. He seems nice.
Francie opened the link, and there he was: his photos and accompanying profile at a website called Sex Buddies, a dating site, of sorts. He revealed very little about himself—his height, his weight, and his preference for big-breasted women, but not his name (unless his name was really Doktor Danger).
What are you going to do with this? Nell wrote.
Nothing, Francie replied. Keep it on hand, just in case.
In reality, she spent the next hour applying makeup, taking selfies, trying to look as suggestive as possible, and generating her own dating profile at Sex Buddies. Three e-mails from the fake Gmail account she’d created was all it took to arrange this meeting. Reading through the things people had written on the site left her feeling depressed, and then utterly grateful for Lowell, for the life they have, the beautiful family they’ve created.
The guy leans toward her. “You smell amazing,” he says.
“Thank you. But first, I don’t even know your name.”
“My name? What do you want my name to be?”
“What do I want it to be?”
“Yeah.” She can smell tobacco on his breath. “Why don’t you choose my name?”
Francie pretends to mull it over for a moment. “I want your name to be Archie.”
He laughs. “Like the guy in the cartoon?” She laughs too, trying to mask her disappointment. It can’t be him. Unless he’s some sort of Oscar-winning actor, he wouldn’t have responded so cavalierly if she’d correctly guessed his name. “Archie. I like it.”
