by Lisa Unger
“Hmm,” I said.
“But you didn’t come to talk about that.”
“No. This is the endgame,” I said. “Rhett Beckham is out of jail and back in town.”
He rubbed at the stubble on his jaw, sat heavily on a stool over by the counter. “Living with the brother.”
“I’m not interested in the brother,” I said.
Josh Beckham tried to help me. He was a kid like me that night. It was Didion, Rhett Beckham, and the fourth man that I needed. One down, two to go. Closure.
I reached into my pocket and felt for the key. It was smooth and cold beneath my fingertips.
“What about the fourth man?” I asked. “Any progress?”
Something—quicksilver—flashed across his face. Sadness. Fear.
“What is it?” I asked. He moved from the stool and sat across from me at the table. He folded up the file, Mariah’s bespectacled visage disappearing from view.
Seth had long claimed that there was someone waiting in the car that night. He saw the shadow of a figure. I never saw him. Boz wondered if maybe in his state of shock, Seth had been mistaken. But Seth was certain, and I believed him. We’d spent a lot of time talking about him, the fourth man. Who waits in the car? The boss? Maybe Whitey Malone himself, not wanting to get his hands dirty but not trusting his thugs not to run off with the money.
The police questioned Seth vigorously. Had he lured me from the house on purpose? Had someone asked him to do it? Paid him to do it? No, he swore. There was no evidence to the contrary. What did the fourth man look like? He was big. A bulky shadow, wider than the seat he was in. And he smoked. Seth saw the plumes drift up from the open window, the glowing orange tip. But that was it.
Seth and I always stayed in touch. I wouldn’t say we were friends, like Boz and I weren’t friends. We just shared the same obsession. It bonded us. It has only been the last few months that we’ve actively been working together, though.
“I want to show you something,” he said. “Something I’ve been working on. Kind of a fluke, really.”
He got up and spun around one of the case boards. He flipped on a lamp sitting atop one of the desks and shined it like a spotlight on the clutter that hung there. There were maybe half a dozen photographs pinned, ordered by date, starting about a year earlier, each captioned with a note in Seth’s tight, tidy handwriting, addresses, some news articles.
October 3, 2016, Riverside and Ninety-Sixth Street. A slim hooded figure stopped mugging in progress, injuring the perpetrator with a low kick that fractured his shin.
Hanging above these notes, a grainy image showed a man on the ground, gripping his leg, his face a mask of pain, a woman standing stunned, cell phone in hand. In the background, said slim, hooded figure strode away.
There were others.
East Village, November 12, 2016. A little boy pulled from the subway tracks where he’d fallen, apparently pushed by his mother’s boyfriend.
The hooded figure is caught mid-leap from the platform, the light from on the oncoming train a moon in the distance.
Harlem, December 1, 2016. A homeless man is saved from a group of marauding teens. Hooded figure delivers a blow to the bridge of the biggest boy’s nose with the heel of her hand. Boy tells cops: It was a girl!
Eyes everywhere. Sloppy. On those endless romps I take through the city, every now and then I come across a situation that demands involvement. There were other incidents, too; they just happened not to be caught on film.
“What’s all this?” I asked, leaning in closer to pretend to take a closer look.
Seth flipped over our case board, the one we’d been working on, compiling all the events related to my parents’ murder, beginning with the drug dealer robbery, our list of suspects, speculations about the fourth man—Whitey himself? Hired man? Dirty cop?—to the whereabouts of each of them. Seth had added a new element, a new story about Didion’s death. And that grainy image captured by the camera across the street.
“The vigilante thing—if you want to call it that,” said Seth. “It’s been kind of a pet project for me. I first noticed it last year—a Daily News crime beat reporter did a small piece about that thwarted mugging. Then things starting turning up on Twitter. It’s just interesting, you know? Some hooded girl, fighting crime in the city.”
I don’t feel fear. Not anymore. My heart doesn’t race at much. It takes quite a bit to get my adrenaline pumping. Seth, on the other hand, when he turned to face me, was sweating. He dug his hands deep into his pockets.
“It’s odd, you know. This girl, she stops bad things from happening. Which is cool. But here”—he tapped at the case board—“if this is her, and I think it is. She killed John Didion in cold blood. Or so it seems.”
“So?”
“It’s not like her,” he said. He sounded worried, disappointed, like a kid who wanted to believe in Santa Claus.
“You know her?” I asked. “What’s she like? Who is she really, inside?”
“I thought I did.”
I felt the color come up on my cheeks, turned away from his sad gaze. He rubbed a hand over his sizeable belly, then took off his glasses to squeeze at the bridge of his nose.
“Seth,” I said. “Have you made any progress on the fourth man?”
There was that look again. He held my eyes for a moment, like he was expecting me to say something. But I didn’t.
“Maybe,” he said finally. He turned the board around again. “But you’re not going to like it.”
My dad stood stone-faced in the corner, he nodded at me to look down. When I did, my hands were slick with blood.
I didn’t need Seth—or Mike, or anyone—to tell me that I’d crossed a line. It wasn’t an accident. Why was everyone so surprised? What did they think I was going to do after I finally caught up with the men who murdered my parents? Bring my case again to the police, beg them to reexamine evidence that wasn’t new? Even if they did finally see what Boz, Seth, and I believed to be true, would we seek justice via the courts and prison system? No. No. That’s never what I wanted. What is the difference between justice and revenge? Justice is a concept, one agreed upon by a civilized society. Revenge is wild and raw, it’s a balancing of the scales of the universe.
• • •
MY MOTHER WASN’T SUPPOSED TO be there that night. Her high school friend was getting married in Key West. She wanted to go, and she wanted Dad to go with her, their first long weekend away together in years. But he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—go with her. Because, as I saw it, he could never do any of the things that she wanted or needed him to do, even the little things. All he cared about was the job and disciplining me so that I didn’t grow up into a “spoiled, pampered princess.” Paul even said he’d stay the weekend so that they could go. But no.
“Go,” my dad told her. “Have fun. I can’t get away right now.”
“You can’t get away for a weekend?” I could tell she was upset, even though her demeanor was calm. She did this tapping thing with her foot.
“I have responsibilities, an open case.”
“The case of the missing yard tools?” A rare moment of sarcasm.
“Hey, people breaking and entering, stealing private property is not a joke.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go alone, then.”
Neither of us thought she would really go. But she bought her ticket. She offered to take me, too. But I made some excuse. My shrink always wondered about this, why I didn’t want to go, why I’d prefer to stay home with my father than spend a sunny weekend in Florida. I hated having to choose between them, but there was a big part of me that feared my father’s disapproval more than mom’s disappointment.
I walked her out to her car that night, my dad stayed sulking in front of the television. She kissed me on the forehead.
“Take care of your dad.”
It sounded weirdly final, and I felt a shiver of dread and regret. I should have said yes; I should have gone with her. Another part
of the reason I didn’t want to go was because of Seth. I wanted to meet him that night at the bridge.
“Don’t go,” I said. I held on to her.
“I have to.”
“It’s just a wedding.”
She smiled at me, ran a gentle hand down the side of my head. Other than the minor dustups in moments of stress, I don’t remember her ever getting truly angry with me my whole life.
“You’ll understand when you get older. Sometimes you have to do things—just to do them. Just because if you don’t, you’re saying who you are. And you don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be the person who never goes anywhere or does anything. There’s a big world out there.” She looked around, her pale eyes sad. “It’s not just this little place.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, not really.
“He’s mad.”
“Let him be mad,” she said. “Just do your own thing. That’s what I’m going to do. For once.”
But a few hours later, after we’d eaten in silence the dinner that she’d left for us, she came back. Her flight had been canceled, bad storms in Florida. The next flight wasn’t until tomorrow, and even if she took it, she’d miss the wedding. She looked smaller, deflated somehow, as my dad helped her off with her coat.
“I’m sorry, Heather,” he said.
He took her into a rare hug, and I watched her sink into him. He meant it. He was sorry—that he didn’t go with her, that her flight had been canceled, that she’d miss her friend’s wedding. And more—there was so much more to the whole thing. I get that now.
“I know you are,” she said.
They stayed that way, kind of holding each other, swaying, for a long time. I left them to whatever grown-up thing they had going on. All I remember thinking was that I was glad I didn’t have to spend the next few days alone with my dad.
Boz came back to that again and again. Turns out that Mom’s flight wasn’t canceled at all. Security cameras caught her entering the lot and taking her long-term parking ticket. A couple of hours later, she exited. She never went into the terminal.
She must have just sat in the car all that time, then, for whatever reason, finally decided to come home. Why? Why didn’t she just go?
For a while, suspicion turned to her. Had she met someone there? Had she hatched some plan, then changed her mind? Had it all gone wrong somehow? Crazy. My mom—she was the best person. Kind, thoughtful, faithful, loving. She never even got a parking ticket, freaked out if she found an overdue library book in my room. There just aren’t too many people like her in the world.
• • •
I WANTED TO LAY EYES on Rhett Beckham. But as I left Seth’s, I got a text from Mike.
He’s awake and asking for you. Come to the hospital.
And those goddamn cats, Tiger and Milo, they were weighing on my mind. Milo was just a kitten; he needed attention.
I drove by my old house. I couldn’t see it from the road, but I could just make out its shape through the trees, the golden lights of the windows. Then I veered off that road and took the one that led to the Beckhams’. Their house was not visible at all. The mailbox at the bottom of the drive was tilted; I noticed a tire track up its side, as if it had been run over and then hastily righted again. It wasn’t like Josh Beckham to leave something like that unattended. He must have been unsettled by Rhett’s return. I sat a minute, waiting for I don’t know what.
Then I gunned the engine and headed back to the city.
twenty-two
When Claudia woke, the bright sun washing in through the gauze of her curtains, she was happy. It was her natural state, a kind of open welcoming of what came next, an inherent optimism.
But slowly, as she stretched, it came back. Raven, the news about the house, the shadowy figure she’d seen. Of course, there were other things, too. The chaos of her kitchen—and the rest of the house, for that matter. And money. Always money. Her accounts were dwindling, credit card balances climbing. She wasn’t going to ask Ayers for money; he already paid most of Raven’s expenses. She’d left her decent-paying publishing job to take on this project, that optimism of hers in full gear. You don’t achieve extraordinary things without taking extraordinary risks. That was her mantra; who’d said it? Maybe she’d read it on Pinterest. Shit.
By the time her feet were on the cold wood floor, it had draped itself around her like a cloak. Not despair. No, not that dark, slick-walled abyss—been there, done that, wasn’t going back. But more a kind of malaise, a generally blue-to-shades-of-black mood.
Downstairs, Troy was in the kitchen brewing coffee. He knew his way around the kitchen by now, always felt at home with her and Raven, because he was. She sat and stared at him a minute, the young man in her kitchen. How tall he was, how handsome, how he’d grown. Weren’t they just seven, Troy and Raven? Weren’t they all just baking cookies together, five minutes ago, their little fingers covered in sprinkles, flour in their hair? There was a weird relationship that sprung up between a mother and her child’s close friends. You were part parent, and part friend yourself. She felt like Troy belonged to her in a way. When he was in her home, she was responsible for him. Claudia and Troy had their own private jokes, a shared knowledge and love for Raven. There was an intimacy, and a distance.
“I like it here,” he said. “It’s so quiet.”
“You weren’t scared,” she said. “After last night.”
“Nah,” he said. He was the kind of kid who smiled even when he was nervous or sad.
“Thank you for taking care of Raven last night,” she said. “You’re a good friend.”
He did that kind of shrug-nod thing that teenage boys do when they don’t know what to say.
“What was he like? Andrew Cutter.” She hated herself for asking. “Did he look like her?”
“Honestly,” said Troy, stopping with the pot hovering over her cup. “He seemed like a dick. And no, I don’t think he looked much like her. I think Raven looks like you and Mr. Martin.”
She looked away from Troy so that he wouldn’t see her tear up. He finished pouring. He even knew how she liked her coffee—light with two sugars, though she’d only allow herself one. He set the cup in front of her and sat down.
“Don’t they, like, have to disclose something like that?” he said. “About the house, I mean.”
“God!” Raven entered the room like a tiny storm, a beautiful bluster. “I had crazy nightmares!”
She breezed by the table, leaving the scent of lilac behind her. Claudia knew that Raven had not had nightmares, that even after everything, the girl had slept like the dead. Claudia had checked on them both every hour, kept looking out the window. Claudia had barely slept a wink.
“Well, I didn’t buy the property,” she said to Troy. “I inherited it. So no one had to disclose anything. And I didn’t really do any research.”
“Aunt Martha said that you’ve always been prone to impulsive action. Is that what she meant?” said Raven with mock innocence. “Hey, let’s renovate the murder house!”
Claudia ignored her, sipped her coffee.
“I did some research,” said Troy. He glanced down at his enormous smartphone. The thing was practically a tablet. “Like the cop said, a police officer and his wife, renters of the property, were murdered. Their daughter, Zoey, was—”
He paused and looked up at her, worry creasing his brow.
“Go ahead,” Claudia said.
“She was tortured, shot, and left for dead,” he said. “But she survived.”
Raven had grown still, looked down at her nails, leaned on the edge of the sink.
“The theory was that the cop, Chad Drake, was dirty. He’d stolen money from a drug dealer, and the men who came were trying to find it.”
“Where did you find this?” Claudia asked, amazed.
“There are a bunch of old articles in area papers,” he said.
How could she not have known this? Of course, she’d done no research on the house
at all. She’d obtained a survey from the city. But that was it. She planned to, of course, when it was time to start writing the book. But, as far as she knew, it was just an old ramshackle house, whatever history it might have had was long forgotten. If there’d been extensive news coverage of the event when it happened more than a decade ago, she’d missed it, wrapped up, she supposed, in the drama of her own life then.
Troy pushed his glasses up; they’d drifted down his nose. For a second, he was seven years old again.
“The money,” he went on. “It was never recovered.”
“How do they know that the killers didn’t get the money?” Raven asked. “Used it to disappear.”
“Because of the girl,” said Troy. “She says her father had no idea what they were talking about. They didn’t find what they were looking for. Shot her and her father when they heard sirens and ran.”
There was the sound of blood rushing in Claudia’s ear.
“The mother died right here, in the kitchen,” said Troy. He looked around the room. “The father died in the basement.”
“Jesus,” said Claudia. She dropped her head into her palm. “Jesus.”
Nobody said anything for a moment, two. Then,
“So that money?” said Raven. “It could still be here?”
Claudia looked up at her daughter, who had some kind of dark glee thing going on, as if they were watching a movie or acting out a scene. The horror of it was distant, insubstantial to her. But not to Claudia. She felt as though someone had dug a valley through her middle.
“There probably was never any money,” said Claudia. “Officer Dilbert said that people have been sneaking out here, looking for years.”
“You should totally blog about this,” said Raven, coming to sit beside Claudia.
She looked at her daughter. She still had raccoon eyes, her eyeliner from last night smudged into the valleys there.
“Don’t think I’m going to let this drama distract me from what you did last night,” she said. “We have a lot to talk about today. And I have to call your father.”
Raven picked at the black nail polish on her fingernails.
