by Nic Joseph
She settled into a groove, hair flowing over the seat, streaks of not-dried hair dye leaving little black smudges on the headrest that were dark in the middle and lighter as they branched out.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Now
“Brick wants us to come in,” Gayla said into the phone as I pushed it against my ear the next morning. I’d been sprawled on my back, staring at the ceiling since I’d arrived home about an hour after we found Emily Lindsey’s body in the woods.
“Okay, I’ll meet you there.”
I walked into the station about twenty minutes later, and I saw a few people look up at me before quickly looking away.
Word had gotten around.
I saw someone standing near my desk, and I frowned when I saw that it was Mary. She nodded hi to both of us and then turned to Gayla, who was already sitting at her own desk. Gayla and I locked eyes, and I could tell she hadn’t gotten any rest either.
“Can I speak with you?” Mary asked Gayla, who nodded and stood. They turned and walked away, heading into one of the offices that lined the walls.
“Detective Paul, in here,” I heard a voice say, and I looked up to see Brick standing in his office. I walked over to him.
“Where did Gayla go?” I asked. “You’re splitting us up now?”
He narrowed his eyes as we sat down. “You guys aren’t ten years old, and I think this conversation would be better suited as a one-on-one.”
“What conversation?” I asked. “You need us to tell you the details about what happened, right? Why do I get the feeling that this is a test to see if we’re going to give you the same story?”
He didn’t say anything for a few moments. I felt angry, caged, and attacked. I knew what Mary was talking to Gayla about. It wasn’t about the case.
It was about me.
Brick shifted in his chair. “Look, I’m just going to put this plainly,” he said. “The woman you have been investigating for the past three days has just been found, sliced open from head to toe, and she’s been out there for as long as you have been working this case. This isn’t just a small mistake.”
“I didn’t say it was—” I started.
“The only thing you need to be saying is what the hell is going on, and start figuring out how the hell that woman could be in two places at one time,” he said angrily. “Especially if, in one of those places, she’s dead.”
• • •
Mary was waiting for me when I walked back out to my desk.
Brick had grilled me for about an hour, asking for every detail of the case and my mental state. “I need you to be honest here about these blackouts,” he had said. “No more beating around the bush.”
“I haven’t had any,” I had said. “Nothing like that.”
Mary was standing with her arms crossed against her chest, her back pressed against one of the large columns in the middle of the station. I couldn’t read her expression, but I was sure she could read mine.
I wasn’t angry at her, not really. But a part of me wanted her to think that I was. Childishly, I held up a hand as if to say hello and continued to walk past her without stopping.
“Seriously?” she asked, spinning toward me as I moved by her.
“Oh, hey. What’s up?” I said, and she rolled her eyes. “Sorry, I figured you got everything you needed from Gayla.” I walked over to my desk and sat down.
Gayla was at her own desk, not even pretending to work. She stared at us openly, not saying a word.
“Steve, you know why Brick wanted to talk to you alone,” Mary said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know exactly why he did. Doesn’t help.”
Mary walked closer to my desk and bent down in front of me. “Can we go talk?”
I nodded and stood, following her into one of the interrogation rooms. Gayla stared at us the whole time until I closed the door behind us.
Mary sat down, but I stayed standing in a corner of the room.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re like Brick, and you think that crazy-ass Steve is responsible for all this.”
“No, I don’t think that,” she said. “That would be ridiculous, given that Gayla was with you the whole time, and she was fooled, too.”
“Okay, then what are we doing here?” I asked, frustrated. “Why aren’t Gayla and I out there, searching for the two people who are pretending to be other people and who are most likely responsible for Emily Lindsey’s death?”
“You really don’t know?” she said.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “What’s the problem?”
“I wasn’t sure if he was going to tell you, but I guess he didn’t. Steve, we know that what happened with Emily Lindsey wasn’t your fault. That’s not why you’re here.”
I frowned. “Okay, then, why am I here?”
“What did Brick say?”
“He just kept asking me if there was anything else I wanted to tell him, any problems I’d been having recently. I guess he wanted to know if I had any more blackouts, and I told him, like I’ve told everybody, that I haven’t.”
“He wanted you to tell him about this,” Mary said abruptly, reaching into her pocket and pulling something out. She placed it on the table in front of me and moved her hand back. When she did, I felt my stomach flip over and then sink, deep into the pit of my abdomen.
It was a tin of Altoids.
My tin, to be more exact.
I blinked a few times.
“Okay,” I said. “Um, mints? He wanted me to tell him about what? Some mints?”
“We ran them,” she said, staring at me. “Not a mint in sight. Seventeen pills, all lorazepam, often used for treatment of anxiety disorders. Quick-acting pills that slow the central nervous system.”
I swallowed again. “Okay—”
“Before you think that we were snooping around, you dropped them in Gayla’s car the other day. She found them and went to steal a mint when she noticed that they weren’t mints at all.”
My throat was dry. “I have a prescription for them,” I said. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“No, there wouldn’t be,” she said. “But the drug is known to have a high level of dependency. I have at least half a dozen witnesses who claim that they saw you with the tin almost every day for the past year. And that you definitely had it with you on the day of the bank shooting.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
Don’t let her see you flinch.
Mary cleared her throat and straightened. “I’m saying that the Glenwood Bank shooting is being reopened because of concerns that you were under the influence of very strong benzodiazepines on the day that Patricia Michaels was shot and paralyzed,” she said. “I’m saying that you need to talk to me, Steve, because you could be in real trouble.”
“I pushed the gun out of the way,” I said. “He was going to kill her.”
“I know but—”
“I can’t believe this,” I said, standing up and yanking the door open before walking out of the room.
I bolted past Gayla, who stood up, knocking her chair back as I moved toward the door.
“Steve,” she started, but I drowned her out as I stepped out and let the door slam behind me.
• • •
I drove back to the Paxtons’ home, on the way missing four calls, two from Mary and two from Gayla. When I arrived, I walked up and knocked on the couple’s front door. It took a few moments, and then the door opened, and the couple stood there, expressions of concern on their faces.
“Is something wrong?” Jane asked. She looked at me meaningfully and lifted her cigarette up to her mouth. “How’s Emily?”
“Do you know what time it is?” her husband asked, turning to look at a clock in the hallway. “It’s not even seven thirty yet.”
“I’m sorry,”
I said, “but this is important. Can I come in?”
They both stepped back and waited for me to say something.
“Well,” Ed said, “what’s wrong?”
“I have some bad news,” I said. “I’m sorry to say that Emily was found very early this morning in the woods by Piper Lake. She’s been murdered.”
They both looked as if they’d been hit by a train. “What?” Ed croaked out. “But—”
“How—” Jane started, and she closed her eyes and shook her head hard. “But she was at the hospital, and you said she was okay!” she said.
“I don’t understand—” her husband started.
I knew this next part was going to be tough. “There are a lot of unanswered questions, I know,” I said. “But I need to ask you a few very important questions. I need to know more about the man and woman you saw next door on Sunday night.”
Jane wiped at her face and frowned, looking at her husband. “What do you mean the man and woman? You mean Emily and Dan?”
I cleared my throat. “Unfortunately, it’s come to our attention that the two people you saw were almost certainly not Emily and Dan Lindsey.”
“What are you talking about?” Ed asked. “Is this some kind of joke?” He stepped forward and put his arm around his wife. “If it is, it’s not a funny one, Detective.”
“No,” I said. “I wish it were.” I pulled the photos that we’d gotten from the hospital security camera out of my back pocket, along with Emily’s driver’s license. I showed them the license first. “This woman, this is Emily Lindsey, yes?”
Jane looked at it and nodded. “Yes, of course,” she said. “That’s her driver’s license. It says it right there.”
I put it back in my pocket. “I need you to think really hard about that night. Is there any chance that the people you saw were not Emily and Dan?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I know what I saw.”
I unfolded the paper with the picture of the man and woman who checked into the hospital and held it up in front of her. “Is there any chance that they were the man and woman you see in the picture?”
She squinted. “Yes, that’s him. That’s Dan…”
“No,” I said. “That’s the man you saw, but it’s not Dan Lindsey. You said you never met him before, right?”
“Well, no,” she said.
I raised the paper again. “And could this have been the woman?”
She swallowed and took a deep breath. For the first time since I arrived, I could see that she was giving it some actual thought. She took the picture from me and looked at it closely. “I don’t…I don’t think so,” she said softly, staring at it. “I mean, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. I guess…I guess there’s a chance it could have been. She was so far away. And there was so much blood on her face, I didn’t… Oh, I can’t believe it.”
“I need you to come with me, back to the house, so that we can recreate exactly what happened. It would be helpful if we go back to that night with new eyes and think about the possibility that the man and woman you saw were not Dan and Emily Lindsey. Can we do that now?”
The couple looked at each other, and they both nodded.
“Let me get our keys,” Jane said.
• • •
I walked with the couple into the Lindseys’ home. We moved straight through into the living room, and I walked back to open the patio door.
“Please, step outside,” I said. “I want you to walk up to the house the same way you did on Sunday.”
Jane nodded and stepped out, looking hesitantly at her husband. I knew she was worried that I would tell her husband about our conversation the previous night.
I walked over to the couch and stood near it. As she approached, I called out. “Is this where he was standing?”
“Over,” she said, gesturing with her hand.
“And where was Emily?”
She pointed to the couch. “Right there. He was leaning over her at first and jumped up when I walked up.”
“Where did he go?” I asked.
She frowned, staring at the room.
“This is very important,” I said. “I need you to really think about it. The moment you walked up to the glass, what did you say, and what did he do right after that?”
She stood at the glass. “I don’t know,” she said, frowning. “I think I said his name. I said ‘Dan?’ and he turned and looked at me.”
“You asked if it was him?”
“I mean, sort of,” she said. “I told him who I was and asked what was wrong with Emily.”
“So you said his name, and then what? Then he moved?”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “He was right next to her there, and then when we started talking, he moved here.”
She pointed to a spot right in front of her, on the other side of the patio.
I nodded. “So he started there, and then he realized you didn’t know him, and he walked over to you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “What does that mean?”
“I think he was blocking her,” I said. “How well could you see her after that?”
“Not that well, I guess,” she said. “I don’t know. It’s all kind of fuzzy. I was so freaked out. I can’t believe I missed it.”
“You’re not the only one,” I said.
I thanked them for their time and headed back to my car. As I sat down, I pulled out my phone and called Gayla.
“Steve,” she said shakily, and I knew something had happened.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Brick wants to know where you went. I’m still at the station. He said that given the recent events, the tests, Mary’s report…”
“What?” I said.
“He’s taking you off the Lindsey case. I’m really sorry, Steve. I think he’s blowing this out of proportion, and I tried to explain that to him. But he’s made up his mind.”
My fingers were starting to hurt from gripping the wheel so hard. I let go and, in a fit of rage, banged both hands against the steering wheel.
“So he thinks what?” I asked, feeling the anger rise up and trying to push it down. In the back of my mind, I knew she was on my side, and yet I still felt attacked. “He thinks I was so high and out of my mind on drugs that I was responsible for Pat getting shot? Deep down, he thinks I’m the one who’s responsible for the Emily Lindsey mix-up, right?”
“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing,” she said quietly. “This needs to blow over, and I know it sucks, but maybe you should just take a little time.”
I opened my mouth to fire something back, but I stopped myself. The decision had been made, and she was just trying to help me catch up to it.
“I told him it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “And that if he’s going after you, he has to go after me, too.”
“Look, Gayla, I need you to help me,” I said. “This case is really important to me. I can’t tell you why. But I can’t give up on it, not now.”
“Steve…”
“Please,” I said. “I need your help. And if I have another episode—if anything like that happens at all—I’ll tell you immediately and stop. Right away. I promise.”
She didn’t respond, and I knew she was thinking about it.
“Please,” I said again. “I just need to know what was on Emily’s computer. Can you do it?”
I heard her sigh, long and deep, and then she whispered into the phone, “Fine. What do you need?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gayla met me at my apartment a few hours later. When I opened the door, she was staring at me with an expression that seemed both worried and annoyed, but she was holding a file folder in her hands.
“I owe you one,” I said, taking it from her.
It had taken her three hours to access the files on Emily’s computer. “Lo
ok, I’m going to continue the search for Dan Lindsey, because that’s Brick’s primary concern,” she said. “Let me know if you find anything, and, Steve?”
“Yeah?” I asked, looking up from the folder.
“If you have another blackout or episode or whatever it is you want to call it, and you don’t tell me about it, that’s it. I mean it.” She said this firmly, but I could see the softness in her eyes.
I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell you, I promise.”
She nodded and left.
I sat down and splayed the papers out on my coffee table. Emily’s desktop had been filled with articles and pictures for Carmen Street Confessions. Gayla had printed out the contents of a folder called Notes. I flipped through the Word documents; one was a transcript with an unidentified client of the Kempton Food Pantry. Near the end, the interviewee began to describe, in vivid detail, some of the things he or she’d seen in the basement of the food pantry. I cringed and kept moving.
I flipped through another document, and then another, and I cursed as each one seemed to be about a story that had already appeared on her blog. Some were controversial—like the Kempton Food Pantry—and others were not, but there was nothing that shed any light on where Emily had been that weekend or what may have happened to her.
The fourth item I got to, however, made me pause.
It wasn’t a transcript but instead a scanned image of a dark-blue flyer. There wasn’t that much text on it, but it was designed well—it had obviously been created by a professional. The flyer was for an organization called Friends of Frank, and at the bottom, there was a phone number listed in tiny print. I tried to remember if I’d seen anything on Emily’s blog about the organization, but it didn’t ring any bells.
Reaching over to grab my cell phone, I dialed the number on the flyer.
I frowned when it didn’t ring, but a second later, a woman’s robotic voice filled the line.
“The number you have reached is out of service. Please hang up and try again.”
I sighed and hung up the phone, scrolling back through my recent calls to make sure I’d dialed it correctly.
