I watched as my sister wiped at her eyes, hiding her face with her hand. She hated raw displays of emotion. She didn’t even cry at our parents’ funeral. It was as if she shed all her tears the night she showed up at our home to tell me about the crash, and then decided that was enough. She never shed a tear in front of me again. (Instead I heard her sobbing in the shower, in her bedroom, behind closed doors. Always alone.) But there she was, crying in front of him. I felt betrayed. Craig held out a tissue, and she took it, muttering something more as she swiftly dabbed at her cheeks. Then they strolled back into the hospital together.
Craig concealed his face the whole way, like he knew exactly where the camera was located.
“Okay, did you notice anything?” Dawkins asked, her dark eyes skipping between Charlotte and me.
I peered at my roommate, swallowing hard, and she nodded slightly as if she already knew what I was thinking.
“They were more serious than we thought,” I admitted reluctantly. My sister was seeing a guy she felt comfortable crying in front of, a guy who would show up at work and hold her hand.
“Yes, there seems to be a familiarity in their interaction,” Dawkins replied, nodding like we were getting somewhere. “So was this normal for Keira? Did she like to keep her relationships secret from you?”
At this point, I had no idea. “No. I mean, I don’t know. The last time she hid a relationship, the guy was married.”
“Okay.” Dawkins nodded, jotting in her notepad. “That could be a possibility.”
“I’ve checked her phone, emails, texts, contacts, former patients, everything. There’s no mention of a Craig,” Charlotte pointed out. “If they were talking, I have no idea how they communicated.”
“Well, this video was shot five days before the party, and she seems upset.” Dawkins noted. “Maybe they broke up? Tell me, how did they seem at the party? Were either of them angry?”
“No.” I shook my head. I would have told them that already. “Like I said before, I think she was expecting him. She had asked earlier if anyone had called for her. But when he showed up, there was no boyfriend-girlfriend interaction. They didn’t hug or kiss hello, nothing like that.”
Dawkins nodded, her eyes distant as she contemplated something.
A few moments passed, and Charlotte sat up straighter. “You think this was a crime of passion,” she deduced, watching the detective. “What, that they broke up in this video and he came to the party anyway, and this is all about some relationship gone bad?”
Dawkins held up her wrinkled palms to stop her, leaning cautiously back in her chair. “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. It’s a possibility. The video is being analyzed as we speak. I just wanted to take this time to see if the video sparked any new memories for you; we’ll also canvas her colleagues at the hospital again.”
It was the first motive anyone had presented since the cops showed up in my apartment that morning. This wasn’t some random psycho who showed up to attack the first girl he saw. They knew each other. And by the look of this video, they were having a serious discussion. They were serious. If we could find out what they were talking about, that would change everything.
“When do you think you’ll know what they’re saying on the video?” I asked.
“Hopefully, by the end of the week.” She snapped the laptop closed.
“So, Friday? We can come back then.”
She tucked the large black laptop under her arm and eyed me quizzically. “I’m glad that you came by and that you’re doing better. But this is an ongoing police investigation; we can’t share these sorts of details, not even with you.”
“But you wanted us to come in so we could help you,” I pointed out, feeling like I needed to show my name to a bouncer with a clipboard.
“Yes, and if we need your help again, we’ll ask. Trust me, it’s better for you.” Her tone was flat.
“How is it better? This is my life, Keira’s life. Are you seriously not going to tell me what they’re saying?” I rose quickly from my metal chair, almost knocking it to the floor.
“I understand you’re frustrated, and I know what you must be going through—”
“You have no idea what I’m going through,” I snapped through gritted teeth.
“You’re right, sorry, but I do know that we will do our best to find out what happened to your sister. Informing you of every line of inquiry could not only compromise the case, but give you false hope. You’ve got to let us handle this.”
“What about the anonymous tip? Any lead on who called in the footage?” Charlotte asked, standing solidly by my side.
Dawkins sucked in her lips for a moment, deliberating. “Whoever called used a burner phone, impossible to trace. We can’t even triangulate a location.”
“So they knew what they were doing,” Charlotte translated.
“Why would someone trying to help go through all that effort?” My eyes narrowed.
“That’s what we need to find out.” Dawkins moved toward the door. “We’ll be in touch.”
I watched her exit into the bustling station, as if this were over, as if she’d pacified us. But I knew, without even looking at Charlotte, that by sundown she’d have the video analyzed by a suite of illegal software on an NSA-worthy computer.
We’d get our answers ourselves if we had to.
Chapter Eight
I’d underestimated my hacker friend. Charlotte broke into the Boston Police Department’s security system and had the footage on her laptop less than an hour after we returned home from the station. Though after watching it for three days in endless rotation, we still weren’t able to decipher any clues. At best, I thought I caught Keira say my name, which was both eerie and heartwarming, but still didn’t tell us much.
Currently, Charlotte was tinkering with the video in recently “acquired” forensic software that claimed to have an algorithm for lip-reading speech recognition, but so far it had produced only gibberish. Regardless, it was better than the video montage I was presently watching. Charlotte had made it to commemorate her friendship with Keira. It was twenty-seven minutes long. “That’s What Friends Are For” was the opening number.
“This is really sad, and I mean pathetic-sad, not sad-sad,” I mocked as Toy Story’s “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” trailed off to a selfie of their close-up faces.
“Hey, you were semi-unconscious when I made that. I had to do something.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard. She could continuously type for three minutes while looking at me and holding a conversation. I timed her once. Her green eyes flicked my way, still rapidly typing. “I’m glad you finally exited the depression stage of your grief.”
“Don’t speak too soon. I haven’t accepted anything,” I quoted the five-stages-of-grief book that her parents were mandating I read if I was to continue under their care, though most of the stuff I’d learned from psychologists while grieving for my parents. Turned out not much had changed in grief philosophy since then. “The only thing keeping me going is the fact that there isn’t anything to grieve about. We have a lead. Keira is out there.”
Charlotte’s eyes turned worried. Yes, she wanted Keira’s body found, and her killer brought to justice, but I knew she had no hope of finding my sister with life in her veins. I had enough hope for both of us, though.
“Eat something,” she insisted.
I dug my fork into a plate of mac and cheese with hot dog slices. Charlotte made it every week. On Wednesdays, Keira used to make Hamburger Helper. On Thursdays, we ate pasta, and on Fridays, pizza. The other days were up for grabs—canned soup, sandwiches, cereal. It was our routine. Our old routine. And Charlotte seemed determined to recreate it, or more accurately “assimilate back to our normal lives and focus more on our personal relationships.” It was the shrink’s suggestion.
“How did you have time to make a sappy montage, hack computers, and go to work?” I garbled as I chewed on a gooey bite.
“It’s called insomnia. T
urns out a tub full of blood has the opposite effect on me as it does you,” she quipped.
A bite lodged in my throat as I realized the magnitude of my overdue apology. I never thought about Charlotte’s pain during my funk. I hadn’t thought about anyone else actually; it was one of the beautiful side effects of going numb. “I’m so sorry I disappeared on you.” I forced down the noodles. “What your family’s done for me— I could be in foster care right now.”
“It’s okay. You’ve been through enough,” Charlotte shivered, running her fingers through her frizzy curls, already greasy at the scalp from mindlessly repeating the gesture. “This software is getting us nowhere!” she groaned, thudding her hands on the keyboard. “I’ve got to start looking at more hospital footage. I’d focused only on the days and times Keira was scheduled to work. But whoever called in the tip knew she’d be on camera at a time she wasn’t scheduled to be on duty. I mean, why was she even there?” Boston General was not only one of the leading hospitals in the U.S., but in the world. It was affiliated with Harvard. Searching every camera, at every minute of every day, would be nearly impossible, especially for one person.
“Maybe she was working overtime?” I suggested.
“I already checked that.”
“Covering someone’s shift?”
“It would be on her timecard.”
I stabbed another hunk of noodles.
“At this point, I’m going back as far as the hospital system will allow,” Charlotte continued. “I’m gonna focus on the outdoor cameras, see if I can find her with Craig elsewhere.”
“Okay. I’ll help you.”
Charlotte shook her head. “No way. Absolutely not. You gotta get out of here.”
“What?”
“We’ve been at this for days. You’ve recently returned from the Walking Dead, and you’ve spent all of your time either hounding the police or staring at a computer screen.”
“So have you.”
“Yes, but I have a clean bill of mental health,” she said pointedly, grabbing her fork and stabbing a hot dog. “You don’t. Not yet. The doctors, the social workers, my parents, all say you need to ‘see friends and loved ones who can offer support’.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m seeing you, aren’t I?”
“That’s not enough. You need to ‘set personal goals, learn a new skill’…”
“Now you’re just quoting Web Doctor.”
“Well, it’s better than watching you slip away.” She tugged at her hair aggressively. “Tyson and Regina have been calling nonstop. They’re about ready to send up smoke signals to find you. Why aren’t you calling them back?”
She knew why.
Tyson and Regina had tried to be supportive. They attended the memorial. They cried, dropped off lasagna, made donations. (“In lieu of flowers, gifts can be made to Boston General’s Children’s Hospital.”) But I could see it in their eyes—if I was hard to relate to before, I was an eight-legged Martian now.
To Regina’s credit, she was incapable of understanding. She hadn’t lost anyone, ever. Her childhood dog was still alive. And she saw the whole ordeal as some atheistic circle of life. “It’s up to you to keep on living. We never know how much time we’ll have.” Then she patted my head like a puppy. Tyson took the opposite approach. He didn’t get within ten feet of me at Keira’s service, afraid touching me might spread the death disease. He was only one step away from my situation. If his mother cracked, took one too many pills, it would be him, the sole surviving member of his family.
Then I slipped away, and so did they. They stopped calling, stopped trying to visit—not that I really wanted people to join in my funk. But it was a little obvious that my phone was suddenly blowing up now. Charlotte had clearly tipped them off about my return to functioning society, only I wasn’t sure any of us were really ready to communicate.
“You’re shutting out people because you think they won’t understand. You have to give them a chance,” Charlotte said, as if reading my mind.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Go. Out.” She rose from the kitchen table and grabbed my empty dish encrusted with cheese the color of traffic cones. “It’s not like you’re going to miss anything. I’ll continue the search. My nightly activity of scanning surveillance footage will not cease just because you leave the house. So make plans. Do something. It would do a lot to get my parents off my back. They’re already talking about us moving in with them again. You know how well that discussion went last time. Please, let me tell them how much better you’re doing.”
I may have been semi-catatonic, but I remembered that argument well enough to be embarrassed by it now. I had turned into a primal-screaming cave girl. And from making dinner to watching Wheel of Fortune to buying trashy magazines, Charlotte had been working overtime to make my days so normal I’d never want to sink away again. If she was getting a hard time from her parents, or worse, from social services, I owed her this favor. Actually, I owed her a lot more.
“I’ll call him back,” I said, like I was agreeing to take out the garbage.
“Good.” She smiled, relief on her face.
I reached for my cell phone. Tyson answered on the first ring.
Chapter Nine
Turned out the student body of Brookline Academy had very sophisticated plans for the evening. While I would have preferred my first night reentering teenage civilization to have been more of a reality-show-fest on Regina’s couch, I was instead seated at Boston Harbor. My classmates had gathered to watch a movie on the outdoor screen set up alongside a gazebo on the edge of the wharf. We weren’t the only ones there, of course. Café tables were packed with yuppie couples sipping Sam Adams and gray-haired retirees slurping buttery lobster as water lapped against the massive yachts docked nearby.
It was a starless, humid night, and we were watching The Princess Bride. Most of my classmates were present, because a cousin of Wyatt Burns had been an extra in the film. (You can see her briefly during the wedding scene right after the priest says, “Mawidge is what bwings us together today…”) Tyson and Regina were attending as part of a “grown-up date night,” and I was the grieving third wheel who had to smile awkwardly as they ordered ice cream in decorative glass cups and took little bites from each other’s spoons. At one point, Tyson put a dollop of cookie dough on Regina’s nose then licked it off. It was making me more depressed.
“We’re so glad you came out,” said Regina as she wiped her mouth with one of those unusually thick paper napkins, courtesy of the five-star hotel attached to the café. “You look so much better than when we saw you last.”
“You mean at my sister’s memorial?” If that was the standard to which I was being compared, I’d imagine I must look like a runway model now.
“Yeah, that.” She stared down at her melting fudge ripple, sweat on her brow, which I hoped was due to the heat and not the uncomfortable conversation.
“How’s Charlotte?” Tyson asked, his gleaming head also beading with perspiration.
“She’s good. Worried about me.”
They nodded, eyes locked on their melting ice cream as they visibly strained to come up with a gentle topic of conversation. Finally, Regina sat up, her smile perky.
“You get the summer reading list for English?” Her voice was high and squeaky like this was the greatest subject matter ever. “I can’t believe we have to read Sophocles.”
“The plays are pretty short, actually. I already finished them,” said Tyson.
“Really? Give me your notes.”
“No way. Read them yourself. The Oedipus one is famous.”
“Some guy killed his mother, blah, blah, blah…”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Like I care.”
I looked away, staring at the boats swaying in the harbor. When we were younger, Keira and I used to complain endlessly about having to switch schools and read the same books over and over because the curriculum never aligned from o
ne district to the next (or one country to the next). Every time we whined, my mother would roll her eyes and say, “Pray this is the biggest problem you ever face in your life.” Now, I understood what she meant. I wished I could worry about summer reading.
“It’s, like, the basis for an entire psychological condition,” Tyson continued.
“What, are you auditioning for Criminal Minds?”
“No, but I’m planning on passing English.”
“Good, then you can write my essay for me.”
“That would be cheating!”
“So?”
I popped to my feet, certain that if I had to pretend to be normal for one more second, I’d start howling like a lunatic. “Do you guys know where the bathroom is?”
They both pointed toward the café, hardly looking my way as they continued debating the validity of classic texts being mandated as required reading during vacation hours. I pulled at my knotted shoulder, my body aching from disuse. I needed to go to karate; that could be my “normalcy”—wailing on something repeatedly.
I cut through the rows of round tables, squeezing past the backs of wrought iron chairs as I wove toward the café’s interior, the flickering blue lights of the movie lighting my way. I slapped a mosquito on my arm as the crowd started laughing.
“As…you…wish,” the hero called from the screen, followed by the sound of actors toppling down a grassy hill. Keira and I had watched this movie so many times that I didn’t need to look at the film to know what was happening.
I spotted the electric sign for the restrooms and veered toward the red neon letters.
That was when it hit me.
Right between the eyes.
A chicken wing.
I never saw it coming.
Even with the blackness of night surrounding me, and the movie blasting from the speakers above me, I could still hear him laughing and spy his hulking silhouette.
Wyatt Burns.
He’d pitched a barbecued chicken wing at my head and was now barking out a hard hollow laugh that rivaled the sound system. He wasn’t alone. An entire table of baseball players and their girlfriends flanked him, all laughing hysterically, hands clapped to their mouths.
Proof of Lies (Anastasia Phoenix) Page 6
