The Good Stranger (A Kate Bradley Mystery)

by Dete Meserve

  “Count me in. I want this.”

  Andrew rubbed his hands together. “Great. But first, I need some clarity on the lead you were following—this person named Marie. I saw the report you shot at the payday-loans company. What else do you know about her?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. It’s a dead end.”

  He turned his tablet toward me. “Dead end or not, someone doesn’t want you to find her. They sent this video at four this morning.” He swiped the screen and pressed play. The video was shaky; then, when it came into focus, I realized it was footage of my apartment building in the early evening. Shot from across the street. A few seconds into the video, I walked into frame and up the steps. As I fumbled to get my keys out of my purse, a man’s voice intoned: “Stop looking for Marie.”

  A chill ran up my spine.

  “Holy hell,” Mark whispered.

  “I’ve got security looking into this,” Andrew said, stopping the video. “But they haven’t been able to trace where it came from.”

  “Maybe Marie might actually be who we’re looking for,” I said. “I mean, why else would someone go to all this trouble to scare me into not looking for her?”

  Andrew smiled. “I like that your first instinct is to see this as a possible clue. But I don’t like the guy’s tone. Or his persistence. José in security told me about the postcard that came here and to your apartment.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t like how this is rolling out. I’ve hired an off-duty police officer to drive you to and from the newsroom.”

  Mark looked at him in shock. “Don’t you think that’s overkill?”

  “We can’t take any chances,” Andrew said. “I want the entire team to be cautious. Let’s avoid nighttime coverage or investigations where you’re out on the streets by yourself, Kate.”

  I frowned. “Some of my best reporting has been done—”

  “I know I’m clipping your wings. But let’s be smart about this.”

  Anxiety braided in my chest. I felt like I was on a tightrope again, balancing so precariously that a fall simply felt . . . inevitable. I fantasized about going back, escaping to the comforts of LA. I thought about walking the beach in my bare feet, the foam of the waves lapping at my sand-crusted toes. Then I closed my eyes and imagined eating Korean barbecue tacos from the food truck parked on La Brea most Friday nights in summer and felt the tension—the knot in my stomach—slowly release. But alluring as the fantasy was, I knew instinctively going back wouldn’t solve everything. I could only go forward and face whatever danger and uncertainty lay ahead.

  One solution was simply to do what they were asking: stop looking for Marie. I was mulling over that option when Scott showed me a story some Wall Street types had posted on NYCMiracles.

  “You’ve got to see this,” he said, pointing to the post on his iPad. In the photo, four finance types dressed in custom-made shirts and dark Prada suits stood next to a man in a wheelchair. “These guys found gift cards on their windshields and donated them to Gary Harpe, a veteran who, in summer months, is always tooling around Wall Street in his wheelchair.”

  I shrugged. “People do that all the time. Give to the homeless.”

  “This is different. They’ve seen this vet every day. Handed him some change and then moved on, never giving him another thought. Yet finding a thin piece of plastic, a gift card, disrupted their routine. They started talking to him. One of them found out he’d been in the marines a few years ago. And then they hatched a plan and got him a position at their big-name firm. That’s why we have to find Marie. To understand what inspired this movement. This change.”

  I looked at him in surprise. I’d never worked with anyone who cared about a story as much as I did or so easily saw beyond the obvious to lock in on what was really important.

  As we headed out to record our stand-ups, relief seeped into my veins. Being back in the field in front of the camera, telling the story, was helping me regain my bearings. Making me less afraid.

  Scott’s part of the report had him perched high atop a turret in Belvedere Castle, a fantasy stone-facade structure in Central Park, where Chris captured a breathtaking wide-angle shot of a sea of purple and white balloons bobbing all around, with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop.

  “Everywhere you turn, something good is happening,” he said, opening the report. “Maybe it’s cheery balloons on your morning commute. Or perhaps you woke up to find your rent or your utilities have been taken care of. Your prescriptions or your cupcake order paid for by a stranger. You might have been one of the thousands to find a purple gift card on your windshield. Or you’ve had your meal paid for at the coffee shop or at your favorite bodega. Perhaps you’ve connected with a stranger over a free meal at a restaurant, or your child has made new friends because of a no-one-eats-alone free meal at school. Whatever it is, people throughout Manhattan are all experiencing the same feeling: joy.”

  “Balloons. Flowers. A few dollars,” I continued, standing by a construction site on Leonard Street where someone had left bouquets of purple flowers on a backhoe. “They’re simple. Ordinary. Most times we might even overlook them. But they take on a whole new meaning when we see them spread throughout our city day after day. And when they are given to us by an anonymous person or group. Yet we cannot even agree who might be behind it. Witnesses have described many people: a soldier in uniform, a teenage girl, a guy in a hoodie, a woman in a red scarf. Despite hundreds of surveillance cameras throughout the city, no one has been able to capture them on camera except for this one grainy photo of a woman who was spotted paying off strangers’ debts at a payday-loan company. We believe her name is Marie, but that’s all we know.”

  Then we showed our only solid clue: the photograph of Marie. We hoped someone who recognized her would come forward. But, dressed in a red scarf and sunglasses, almost anyone could have been beneath that disguise.

  “I met the Marie you’re looking for.” The woman’s voice was hoarse on the phone later that night.

  “Why do you think it’s her?” I asked, balancing my phone on my shoulder as I packed my bag to go home for the night.

  “Well, those glasses, for one. They kind of stand out. For two, she was wearing the same Hermès scarf as in the photo, but around her neck instead.”

  “Hermès scarf? How do you know?”

  “I used to work at Neiman Marcus. Recognized it right away. It’s vintage, from the nineties.”

  “Still, many people might own that scarf.”

  She cleared her throat. “True. But something happened on the flight that made it hard to forget her.”

  “Flight?”

  “I’m a flight attendant for American Airlines. A few weeks ago, we were boarding a plane from Dallas heading to New York City. This woman, Marie, got on—she was flying first class and was one of the first to board. She flagged me down and told me she’d found a letter on her chair—2A—and asked if I knew who put it there. I said no. But she was persistent and asked the other flight attendant too. She said the letter was on her seat when she arrived. But we told her that was impossible because the cleaning crew had just finished working on the cabin, and there’s no way they would have left any papers on a first-class seat. Then she started crying.”

  “Why?”

  “We couldn’t figure it out. I offered to take the letter and find its owner. I figured it had hate speech or something else offensive. Maybe a swastika or something. But she wouldn’t let go of it. She pressed it to her chest like it was something valuable.”

  “What did it say?”

  She drew in a deep breath. “My coworker and I didn’t know what to do because she was so upset. That’s when I looked up her name on the passenger manifest. Marie something. I don’t remember her last name. I asked her what we could do to help, and she didn’t answer.”

  “She never told you what it was?”

  “Eventually she did. A big storm was heading our way, and every plane was grounded, so we had to
ask all the passengers to get off the plane. Right before she got off, she showed me the letter.”

  “What did it say?”

  “‘And we know all things work together for good.’ Romans 8:28.”

  My thoughts raced as I researched Romans 8:28. Although I found thousands of interpretations of it online, the one thing most everyone agreed about the passage was this: It didn’t say all things were good. It said they all worked together for good—even the bad and even the disappointing.

  I had no idea why this passage had had such an effect on Marie that day, but I had the feeling that it was an essential part of understanding who she was and why she was doing all this.

  I wondered if she was trying to make it become true.

  I felt safe, and a little pampered, as I was shuttled from the newsroom that night by Gavin, a taut off-duty police officer in his early forties who looked like he could windmill-kick his way through all of Manhattan. Still, I worried that I’d put myself in more danger by sharing another photo of Marie on national TV.

  As we left the safety of the car and Gavin escorted me to my apartment door, I was troubled by a sense of dread. My eye fell on every person on the street, looking for signs that they were paying too-close attention to me. I was relieved by the ones preoccupied with their phones or immersed in conversations. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me from the shadows. From a distance.

  Inside, the apartment building was in chaos. Ram Board was taped to the hallway floors, and every surface seemed to be covered in a fine layer of yellow dust. A metallic chemical smell like formaldehyde or paint thinner permeated the air. Upstairs, the neighbors were playing rhumba music, and it sounded like they were rolling bowling balls across the floor.

  I tried saying good night to Gavin, but the sound of the grinder—or was that a saw?—in the apartment down the hall drowned out my voice. Then, just as Gavin was about to leave, Cora stumbled out of her apartment in tears. My first thought was that she was reeling from all the noise and the smells, but her face was unusually pale, and she looked like she’d been crying.

  I followed her back out the front door, with Gavin trailing right behind me. “Kate, you really shouldn’t—” he started.

  “Is everything okay?” I called to her. I wondered if whoever had been watching me had somehow spooked her.

  She turned around, her lips trembling. “My daughter, Anna, is very sick. She’s the one in Ukraine I told you about.”

  “Sorry. What are the doctors saying?”

  “I need to go to her. But I don’t have a way to do that.”

  She turned and started to walk away.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  She kept walking. “To work.”

  “Let us drive you.”

  She turned around, and the change in her face was immediate—a look of utter disbelief. “Why would you do that?”

  “Would you?” I whispered to Gavin.

  I could tell he was reluctant—I’m sure it wasn’t part of ANC security protocol. But when he saw Cora’s expression, even this guy, who looked like the street-fighting inspiration for Mortal Kombat, joined in.

  Inside the car, Cora’s spirits seemed to lift a little. With puffy eyes, she told me that all the doctors had fled her family’s village in Ukraine and that the nearest one was many miles away. She talked about the friend who had offered to loan her $200 toward the thousands she needed for the plane fare but then had to withdraw the offer when she landed in the ER with a broken ankle. And then she divulged that all her savings weren’t enough to buy a plane ticket and that she “didn’t believe much” in credit cards, so she didn’t have one.

  As we dropped her off, I noticed a change in her. A lightness in her eyes—in her whole body—I hadn’t seen before. Had this little thing Gavin and I had done for her—this simple car ride—had this effect on her?

  It made me think that maybe small things could make a big difference. An ordinary balloon had changed the city. A simple bouquet of flowers had brightened countless lives. Could it be that the biggest problems could be solved by the smallest gestures, person to person? If that was true, then could I find a simple and ordinary way to help Cora?

  As I exited the car, another thought struck me so hard I almost stumbled on the way up the steps. I knew what to do.

  I raced into my apartment and dug out a vinyl pouch adorned with goofy vegetable characters that I’d had since middle school. Inside I kept a stash of emergency cash, a little more than a thousand dollars, a habit my dad had instilled in me when we moved to earthquake-prone Southern California.

  I placed all of it into a paper envelope and hurried across the hall, careful not to be seen. As I slipped it under her door, a remarkable feeling came over me. Relief. Joy. Pure happiness that I’d rarely felt since I’d moved here.

  I returned to my apartment feeling surprisingly richer than I had been before. But as I went to close the window shade, my stomach clenched.

  Someone was standing on the sidewalk directly across the street. Looking up at my apartment.

  My breath caught high in my throat. From my slightly higher vantage point, their face was obscured by a dark-blue hoodie and the drooping branches of a sycamore tree. Whoever it was—man or woman—stood with their sneaker-clad feet together, their fingers gliding across the faint screen of their phone. Then they shoved the phone in their pocket and folded their arms across their chest, turning their body from side to side as though looking for someone.

  As if they sensed me at the window, they looked up at me. In the fading evening light, I had the feeling that our eyes met, even though I could not see them. I shivered.

  They hurried into the darkness.

  I braced my arm against the window frame, trying to catch my breath. But not even this chilling visitor could take away all the joy I felt about the envelope under Cora’s door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “You’re on Page Six of the New York Post,” Stephanie said when I reached my desk the next morning. “Well, your dad and his girlfriend are. I think this is you in the background.”

  Getting written up on Page Six wasn’t a goal of mine or my father’s. Page Six was celebrity journalism, usually reserved for reality-TV stars, squabbling politicians, pop-culture icons, and brand-name philanthropists. The stories focused on scandal, style, and gossip, so I was curious about what they were saying about my senator dad.

  She swiveled the laptop toward me and pointed to a photo of Julia and my father holding hands as they entered Lincoln Center. A woman with dark hair walked behind them. I could see why Stephanie thought it was me, but it wasn’t.

  The caption read: “Senator Hale Bradley, 62, attends opening night at The Met with Julia Pearson, ex-wife of New York governor Mark Abbott.”

  “Did you know she was the governor’s ex?” Stephanie said.

  I cleared my throat, surprised that Julia had been married to another high-ranking politician. And not just any ordinary one. A governor who was under scrutiny for possible money laundering. “My dad never told me her last name.”

  Looking at her photo, I wondered if my dad was just another rung on the political and social ladder for her. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, but this new information made me question her agenda. Yes, plenty of women married men seventeen years their senior, but none of those other men were my father. I was troubled by the possibility that she was simply using him but equally confused by the feeling that came over me. Protective.

  It’d always been the other way around. When I was little, he was the one protecting me, urging me to “make good choices” about friends and the people I spent time with. “Don’t let people use you,” he’d always said. Was Julia using him?

  Not that I had much time to mull that over. Because Mark suddenly appeared at my side.

  “Thousands of New Yorkers have reported getting anonymous texts this morning,” he said without much enthusiasm. “They say things like ‘We are all connecte
d’ or ‘Do something nice for someone today’ or ‘I believe in you.’ Either of you get one?”

  “Now they’re sending texts?” Stephanie said. “These guys are everywhere.”

  “Jocelyn on the tech team got one and is looking into it,” he said. “Looks like it came from one of the anonymous text services. Untraceable.”

  “Wow, I see it,” Stephanie said, staring at her phone. “Usually Twitter is the aggregator of venom, but not today. It’s blowing up about these texts. People can’t believe it.”

  Mark sighed. “Look, this story might be getting record views and tweets, but it’s forgettable. And I’ll tell you why.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, letting my impatience show. “People are inherently selfish and greedy.”

  “That, and we are living in an age of fear. Most Americans are living in the safest place at the safest time in human history, but the stories that grab our attention—the ones with staying power—are the ones that make us anxious and afraid: we’re on the edge of doom, the country is divided, our leaders can’t be trusted. That’s what people care about.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” I said. Anger flashed in his eyes. I had the feeling few reporters had dared to openly disagree with him. “Yes, there is trouble, chaos, and tension. But there are far more people doing small gestures and big things to make the world better.”

  He shrugged. “Think what you want. But what they’re doing is not going to change anything.”

  “It already is.”

  I want to tell you about something that happened on a road outside Dallas. I think it’s connected to the story you’re reporting. Sincerely, Gary Reyes.

  The email was one of the hundreds that had poured into the station since my report aired the day before. I’d skimmed past it the first time because a possible connection to the back roads outside of Dallas easily fit into “way out there” territory.

  But the email jogged something in my memory.