“You went up to the roof?” I ask.
“There was no other way,” she says. “We heard them break through the front door . . .” As she points back toward my apartment I hear someone pounding on my front door. I jump at the sound.
“It’s just someone at my door,” I say. “It’s probably Enda or Hector . . .” Or Simon, I’m thinking.
Lillian doesn’t seem willing to move, though. She’s frozen in time, reliving that horrible night. I can’t leave her out here, though.
“Come inside, Lillian. I think I understand what happened. You can continue your story inside—”
“You have to remember,” she says, fixing me with a keen stare and pointing up. “That’s the only way out.”
“I get it. That’s good to know. Now, come back inside. It’s freezing and damp in this stairwell.”
“It’s the laundry,” she tells me. “The vats are in the basement. The steam rises through the house. Can’t you smell it?”
I do smell something—a whiff of mildew and bleach—as I guide her back inside. I steer her down the hallway and into the living room. “Coming!” I call to the pounding at the door.
Lillian starts to shake as we pass the door. She must picture mobsters wielding shotguns right outside. I try to sit her down on the couch, but she wants to go back to the chair by my desk. I settle her in the high wingback chair, facing the river, and tuck my grandmother’s old afghan over her chest. She closes her eyes and falls asleep almost instantly. Then I go to the door and look at the security camera.
It’s not Enda or Hector or Simon; it’s two wet and bedraggled women, a middle-aged one in a sodden and muddy trench coat and wide-brimmed hat, and a younger one in a soaked sweatshirt. A mother and daughter, perhaps, seeking refuge from the storm. Or some kind of ruse to get me to open the door and then invade my home.
“Hi,” I say over the intercom, “do you have the right apartment?”
The woman looks up, her face furious—and somehow familiar. “This poor girl is in danger and it’s all your fault, Joan, so let us in.”
It’s the imperious tone of voice that does it. Melissa Osgood. She’s the last person I should be letting in, but then the girl with her looks up and there’s something about her . . . I recall feeling dizzy, someone putting a note in my pocket . . . I unbolt the locks and open the door.
“You,” I say to the big-eyed, dark-haired girl. “You’re the server from the party who told me you had a story.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Melissa
“I ALSO GAVE you my phone number,” AJ tells Joan. “But you never called.”
The look on Joan’s face—shamed and embarrassed—would be gratifying if we weren’t soaking wet and still standing in the drafty hallway.
“Can we discuss this inside and out of view of the cameras?” I point up at the camera in the hallway and Joan’s expression changes from shame to suspicion. I don’t blame her. If the situation were reversed I wouldn’t let her in. But then AJ says through chattering teeth, “Please. We had to run through the rain and we’re cold and wet.”
Joan relents and lets us in. “I’ll get some towels,” she says, disappearing down the hallway. AJ sits on a couch shivering. I go right into Joan’s kitchen—I know where it is and I don’t care if it looks bossy—and put on water for tea. I feel like I’ll never be warm again.
When AJ saw the car coming up the drive, she grabbed her backpack and we ran out the back door of the house. She knew a footpath that took us down to the station without crossing the road. When we got there, though, AJ was afraid to wait on the platform in case someone was watching for us. We crouched behind the tall grass and cattails on the river’s edge in the rain with God-knows-what crawling in the mud for half an hour waiting for the next southbound train. Then when we finally got on the train the heat wasn’t working. I thought we’d both end up with pneumonia. And it would be all my fault. I must have led Shanahan’s men to this poor girl. I didn’t even know where to take her. To a friend? But who? Who could I trust? I couldn’t imagine showing up at any of the Brearley moms’ doorsteps looking like a drowned rat with an undocumented alien. When I suggested we go to the police, AJ refused.
“They’ll call ICE before I get two words out. That’s how it is these days.”
The only place I could think of was taking her home with me to the Refuge—but not to my apartment, where there could be someone waiting for us, but to Joan’s so we’d have a witness.
When I come into the living room I see that AJ has changed into dry sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Joan is sitting next to her on the couch, her face arranged in an expression of concern. When she looks up, though, her expression changes to one of mistrust.
“I still don’t understand how you knew where I live.”
“Listen,” I say, sitting on the opposite couch. “We don’t have time for all that. The important thing is that I found AJ—”
“You’re AJ?” Joan exclaims. “I’ve been looking for you!”
AJ rolls her eyes, just like Emily does when I’ve missed something obvious. I have to admit it gives me a little satisfaction to see Joan be the recipient of her disdain. “Like I said, I gave you my phone number.”
“Which you apparently ignored,” I add. “I found AJ, but someone followed me to her. Someone’s trying to keep her from telling her story, which if you listened to in the first place—” I stop, hearing myself. “I suppose I can’t really judge, seeing as I didn’t listen to your story about Cass. Let’s both of us be better listeners and let AJ tell her story.”
Joan looks from me to AJ and then, for some reason, toward the window. Then she nods. “Okay,” she says. “I’m listening.”
AJ tells Joan what happened at the Hi-Line. It’s hard to hear again, but not as hard as it was hearing it the first time. Maybe when I’ve heard it a hundred times it will cease breaking my heart, but then I think of Whit and my heart breaks all over again. When she gets to the part where the man at the club offers to back her up, she asks if she got his name.
“No,” AJ says, “but I saw him again—”
“It must have been Greg Firestein,” I say, taking out my phone to look again for a picture of him, but I get distracted—and defensive—as Joan asks me a few questions.
“Did you know about this at the time?”
“No,” I say. “Cass was staying in the city because I’d kicked him out, and obviously he didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“Did you notice any unusual expenditures at the time?” Joan has the steno pad on her knee and pen poised to write.
“Not at the time,” I say defensively. “Cass handled the finances . . . which I know sounds old-fashioned . . .” What it sounds like now is stupid. “But I discovered yesterday that he started giving large sums to Pat Shanahan’s campaign after that night and supporting him at the Globe.”
“The Globe was the first paper to support Shanahan’s run for governor,” Joan says.
“And most of the New York papers followed—even little Manahatta ran a positive feature on Shanahan last year,” I say.
“I thought that was odd at the time,” Joan says, “but then I heard that Sylvia was good friends with Pat Shanahan’s wife.”
“Sylvia’s friends with everybody,” I say. And then, recalling Sylvia’s text to me the night of the gala and then Wally looking down at her phone, “I bet she tipped off Wally the night of my gala that the story was coming out.”
Joan nods, “I remember she was on the phone a lot that night.”
“Wally was glued to my side from that moment on. I thought she was being a friend—”
“But maybe she was keeping an eye on you?”
I nod, feeling the sting of it. “I think so. I imagine Pat Shanahan wanted to make sure that Cass wouldn’t try to bring him down with him by talking about what happened at the Hi-Line. It would destroy Pat if it came out that he had taken campaign contributions to suppress a criminal investigation and t
hreatened to deport a DACA immigrant while he was at it. Wally recommended a PR guy named Firestein, whom Cass hired to help with the optics of the accusations. He and Wally came to our house the night Cass died—” I falter, recalling Wally plying me with Champagne and Greg groping me in the bedroom.
Joan leans forward, concern on her face. “What happened?”
I hesitate. Joan’s a reporter—a good reporter, I’m beginning to see—and she’s using just the tactic Cass would use to urge on a source. But then I meet her eyes and see the genuine concern there. Besides, what do I have to lose?
“I think Firestein slipped something in my drink to knock me out,” I tell her, “and then he groped me while taking me upstairs. I’m guessing Cass must have said he was going to come clean about that night and Firestein killed him. All he’d have to do is slip something into Cass’s scotch—he was guzzling it at that point—and carry him out to the pool.”
“And the suicide note?” Joan asks.
“They had access to Cass’s computer and his Twitter account. They’d have been able to go through his laptop, too, checking to make sure there wasn’t anything incriminating Shanahan on it.”
“That’s what they were looking for in my files,” Joan says.
“What?” I ask, trying not to look guilty. Does Joan know that someone has been hacking her computer?
She looks from me to AJ and then toward her desk as if she can’t meet our eyes. “I was attacked,” she says. “The night of the publication party someone followed me home and into my apartment. They—he—grabbed me from behind and forced me into my apartment. He had his hand over my mouth . . .” She makes a sound like she’s choking and puts a hand on her throat. “I thought he was going to kill me. He pushed me down on the floor and covered my mouth with a cloth soaked in chloroform, but I struggled and . . . then he slammed my head into the floor. That’s all I remember. I must have blacked out. When I came to it was morning; I could tell my stuff had been gone through, but everything seemed to be there. Only later I noticed one of my computer files was missing.”
“Were you . . .” AJ begins, looking embarrassed. I must, too, because I know what happened to that file, but AJ’s embarrassment is for a different reason. “Could you tell if . . .”
“I’d been raped?” Joan finishes for her. “I don’t think so. But the truth is I don’t know what he did . . .” Her voice breaks. “I’m not . . . the same. My vision is blurry and there are holes in my memory. It feels like there are pieces of me missing.”
I’m about to ask if she’s been to a doctor, but AJ speaks first.
“It’s my fault,” she says, her chin crumpling. “I followed you home after the party. I wanted to talk to you, tell you what happened, but when I got out of the taxi I saw someone go into your building after you. It was that man—the same one who was at the police station with the DA. He’d been at the Manahatta party, too, which is why I was afraid to talk to you there. When I saw him going into your apartment I thought you must know him and that meant you were all in this together. And then when I turned around to go, there was this woman standing in the middle of the sidewalk right behind me. She said, ‘You’re a long way from home, Alejandra, maybe you should go back there.’”
“She knew your name?” Joan asks.
“Yeah, that was the scary part, that and how polite and formal the words were, but the way she said them was like she was telling me that I’d better go away and keep my mouth shut forever if I didn’t want to wind up dead or something. So I just left. I took the train back to my apartment, packed a bag, and went up to the camp. I knew some migrant workers who camped out there during the growing seasons. If I’d thought that man was going to hurt you I’d have gone to the police even if it meant getting deported.”
“It’s okay,” Joan says, squeezing AJ’s arm. “You didn’t know. But that woman . . . can you tell me what she looked like?”
Before AJ can answer, the intercom buzzer rings. We all jump at the sound.
Joan looks uncertain but goes to the door. I follow her. When she pushes the button I see Hector standing in the lobby with a man whose back is to the camera. “There’s a Mr. Simon Wallace for you, Ms. Lurie. Shall I send him up?”
I see Joan’s shoulders relax. “Yes,” she tells Hector, then turning to me: “Simon will know what to do.”
“Who’s Simon?” AJ asks, getting off the loveseat and coming over to the door. “Are you sure we can trust him?”
“Of course,” both Joan and I say at the same time.
This would be the one thing Joan and I can agree on. Despite his harshness to me the last time I saw him I know that he is a crusader for the truth. He will love publishing AJ’s story and exposing one last shameful episode of Cass’s life. Since AJ told me her story and I listened to the recording, I haven’t questioned for a moment that she is telling the truth. And if Cass was the kind of man who would threaten a helpless girl to suppress her and tell his own son on his hospital bed to stay quiet, then he is the man who would bully and harass all those women. He is the man that Joan wrote about. I don’t know when he became that man. Perhaps he always was and I just didn’t want to see it. Perhaps he was never the man I imagined him to be. And as painful as it is to realize that I was married to a mirage, at least I can stop mourning for that man and begin reckoning with who I am for having believed his lies. Maybe I can help Whit and Emily face that truth, too, without it ruining them. The first step is being here with Joan and AJ.
We’re all still standing at the door like a bunch of eager college students waiting for their dates. The door buzzer rings, automatically switching the camera to the hall view. I sense AJ tense next to me.
“That’s him,” she whispers. A statement, not a question.
“Him?” I ask as Joan unbolts the first lock.
“The man who was at the police station with Mr. Shanahan,” she says. “The one who followed Joan into her apartment that night. That’s the man who attacked her.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Joan
“SIMON?” I ASK incredulously, turning to AJ, sure I must have misunderstood. “Simon’s the man who followed me to my apartment? Are you sure?”
“Yes. I recognized him because he was the man who was with Mr. Shanahan that night at the police station and then I saw him at the Manahatta party.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I tell her. “Why would Simon be with Shanahan? And why would he have offered to be a witness against Cass and then backed out?”
“Because he wanted to come to Cass’s rescue,” Melissa interjects, her face caught in the throes of a dawning realization, “to gain Cass’s undying gratitude and approval. As far back as college, that’s all he ever wanted. If he saw an opportunity to get Cass in trouble and then step in to help him, he’d do it to gain his approval.”
“But then why run the story about him?” I ask.
“Maybe Cass wasn’t grateful enough . . .” Another flash of realization crosses Melissa’s face. “The club membership . . .” she begins, but the doorbell cuts her off.
I turn back to the screen. Simon is looking at the camera. “Joan?” he says, his voice muted by the steel door. I had unconsciously turned off the intercom when AJ identified him. “Are you all right?” His voice is all warm concern, a worry furrow creasing his brow, the way he’d look when I brought him updates on the Osgood story. I’m not sure we have enough yet, he’d say, keep digging.
He’d also said that a grudge was the best motivator. And then what had Sylvia said . . . something about not getting into the Hi-Line . . .
“What about the club membership—” I begin, but AJ interrupts me.
“I don’t care about any club or why he did what he did. That’s the same man who lied to me and then followed you into your apartment. If you’re going to let him in I want to get out of here. Is there a back door?”
“Yes,” Melissa says. “We can go down the back stairs.” She grabs her coat and hat from t
he hook by the door and puts it on while I wonder how she knows about the back stairs. “I think we should tell Hector that there’s an intruder in the building, though.” She reaches past me and pushes the doorman buzzer, which automatically switches the camera view to the lobby. There’s Hector opening the door for a woman with a long black coat and a black rain hat tilted low over her face. Melissa gasps.
“That’s my coat!”
AJ and I turn to look at her. She is, indeed, wearing a coat and hat identical to the woman in the lobby.
“That’s weird—” I begin.
“It’s Wally,” Melissa says. “She took my extra Burberry to sell but she must have kept it for herself. But why—” Melissa’s voice stops abruptly as the woman on the camera takes out a gun and aims it at Hector. And shoots. The sound is a muted pop from five stories below us, but it reverberates in my chest. Melissa shrieks and grabs my arm.
“Joan!” Simon calls from the other side of the door. “Are you okay? I think I heard a gunshot! I’m calling the police.” He takes out his phone and begins tapping at the screen.
“Go! Take the back stairs,” I whisper to AJ and Melissa. But as I speak I see the woman in the lobby walk toward the stairwell. “Damn, she’s coming up the stairs.”
“There’s a skylight that goes up to the roof,” Melissa says. “We can get out there and block her way and call the police—”
“You go,” I say. “I’ll keep Simon here. Maybe . . .” I want to say that maybe it’s all a mistake, that Simon can’t be here to kill me. But I realize how pathetic that sounds. I turn to Melissa and see understanding in her face. She knows what it’s like to lose faith in a man you trusted. “Just go,” I say, “keep her safe.” I cut my eyes to AJ.
She nods and leads AJ down the hall to the back stairs as if she knows the place. I switch the camera back to the hall view. Simon is talking to someone on the phone. I turn on the intercom to hear.
The Stranger Behind You Page 27
