And She Was

by Alison Gaylin

  There was a picture on her key chain. A miniature of a drawing Maya had done in first grade. A big round head with a stick body, long curly hair, and a smile. It had been during her princess-loving phase and so Maya had graced the head with a crown. On the crown she’d written “Mommy.”

  Brenna jabbed the gun into the hollow of his neck. “You’re still working for Roger Wright, aren’t you?” she said, her face throbbing, words slurred from blood.

  He said nothing.

  “How many people have you killed to cover up his affair?”

  Meade glanced down at the gun, then back at Brenna. His breathing had slowed now. She could smell the blood on him, the sweat—yet Meade’s face was strangely calm, the hate drained out of it along with the pain of his wounds. Meade was a statue, now. Cold, unblinking. He will never leave. “You have a gun,” he said. “Why don’t you use it?”

  Brenna felt a punch in her gut, then a barreling rush of pain. Meade backed away and her grip on the gun loosened, her head felt light. She saw it in his hand—a blade, covered in blood. Her vision blurred. She held up the gun with faltering hands, pulled the trigger. The gun exploded, threw her back onto the pavement, the keys dropping. Her ears ringing with the sound but still she could hear the clattering of the keys. Strange.

  Was Meade dead? Had she shot him?

  She felt pavement against her back, salt and copper filling her mouth. Her thoughts swam, her memories . . . “She’s crowning,” says Dr. Abrams. Brenna is wet with sweat. Her hair sticks to her forehead and her body is slick against the sheets and the pain—the wracking pain like a forest fire inside her and then . . . the baby’s shrieking cry, and the hot tears on her face and Jim’s hands grasping her shoulders, his lips on her cheek. Jim’s voice in her ear. “Do you hear her, honey? Oh God, oh my God she’s beautiful . . .”

  Remembered pain flipped back into real pain. Breathing was hard now, Brenna’s breath frail like a baby breathing, her body needing more air than she was able to give it. Brenna put her hand to her pain and felt her shirt—wet, sticking to her. She brought the hand up to her face and saw it black with her own blood. I’m dying. The cell phone. She reached for it, touched it . . . Call 911. She pressed the numbers, and she heard a tinny voice . . . “Help you?” But she couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak. Her breath was so shallow now. Goldfish breathing. As if her throat was a single gill and she was floating atop murky water, floating on her back and then turning on her side. And then over again, to the blackness.

  Chapter 29

  “She’s moving now. I think she’s waking up,” a voice said.

  Brenna opened her eyes to holes. Hundreds and hundreds of black pinholes in white squares—soundproofing tiles. Long fluorescent lights. She was lying in a hospital bed. Her eyes went to the IV in her arm; she raised her other arm and touched the side of her face and felt a thick bandage.

  “She’s awake,” said the voice again. Iris’s voice from the phone, and Brenna struggled up in bed and saw Morasco, sitting against the wall, next to a young girl Brenna had never seen in her life.

  Brenna’s mouth was very dry. She started to cough. Morasco took a paper cup from her bed stand, plucked something out, and slipped it between her lips. An ice chip. She sucked on it and chewed it up and caught her breath. “How did you find out about me?” she croaked.

  “Police radio. Don’t try to talk any more, though. Okay? It’s 9 P.M. You’re at Columbia-Presbyterian,” he said. “You needed a few stitches for the knife wound, a transfusion, but you’re in surprisingly good shape, considering . . . Brenna, what happened?”

  “Meade,” she said.

  “Oh my God.”

  “He . . . He wasn’t . . . I didn’t get him?”

  “No. Meade wasn’t there.”

  Brenna closed her eyes. “I shot at him. With his .45.”

  “I’d say I told you not to get involved, but that might make you talk again,” Morasco said. “I don’t want you to talk, Brenna.”

  Brenna’s gaze moved to the girl, still sitting against the wall. She wore square-framed glasses. She had a shy, heart-shaped face and silky brown hair, parted in the middle.

  “I’m Maggie,” she said in Iris’s voice.

  Brenna looked at Morasco.

  “That’s Maggie Schuler. She was a friend of Iris’s when she was very young. She used to live in the house right next door to the Neffs’. The split-level.”

  “The Brady Bunch house.”

  “Sssh. Yes.”

  “She was in the police file,” Morasco said. “She was M.”

  Brenna’s eyes widened. She sat up in bed, and the stab wound seared. She put a hand to it, touched bandages.

  The girl looked down at her hands. “I’m so sorry,” she said, and Brenna flashed back to standing in Nelson Wentz’s kitchen. “Another ice chip,” she said.

  Morasco gave her one and said, “Start with the chat room.”

  The girl cleared her throat. “Back in August, I heard my brother, Eric, talking to his friend Jonathan Klein.”

  Brenna sucked at the ice, Nelson’s voice running through her head, talking to Trent, just after the press conference . . . Some antivirus programs to allegedly erase the spyware. None of them very good . . . Oh, and he said he threw in a few extras—word processing and the like . . .

  “Jonathan had been doing some computer work for Mr. Wentz,” Maggie said. “One day, Mr. Wentz was out at work or something, and he told Jonathan that if nobody was home, to use the spare key. He did, but when he went up to the computer room, he caught Mrs. Wentz on a chat room called Families of the Missing.” She tugged at her lip. “She freaked out—told him not to tell anyone.”

  “I know that chat room,” Brenna whispered.

  Morasco looked at the girl. “Maggie started lurking on it.”

  “I did,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

  Morasco said, “You don’t remember being interviewed by me.”

  “No. Not really. But I do remember Iris. I was so little and she seemed so big. I don’t have any sisters. Just my brother, and I guess, when I was a kid I just . . . I looked up to her.”

  Brenna nodded.

  “Anyway, Mrs. Wentz was on that chat room a lot, pretending she was Iris’s mom. It was so obvious it was her—she’s the only one from Tarry Ridge and she was always talking about Iris and how she would never give up on her. I . . . I don’t know why, but it made me kind of mad.”

  “Because it made you miss Iris,” Morasco said.

  “Yeah. Maybe. I also felt bad for Iris’s real mom. I mean, what if she went into that chat room and saw some lady imitating her?” She looked at Brenna. “Anyway . . . I was over at my friend Emily’s last Sunday and I told her.”

  “Emily Garvey.”

  “Yes. And Emily dared me to call Mrs. Wentz. Pretend I was Iris.”

  Brenna stared at her.

  Maggie’s eyes glistened. She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes with one hand. When she spoke, her voice shook. “I called three times,” she said. “You know how it is when you start telling a lie and then you start to believe it? After a while, you’re writing this whole movie in your head, and you’re kind of . . . you’re not inside yourself anymore. You’re like an actor, playing a part. I was Iris. I told her to stop pretending she was my mom. I told her to leave me alone.”

  “Maggie,” said Morasco. “What did Carol say to you?”

  Maggie swallowed hard. “She said, ‘Please let me help you, Iris. And then she said she was sorry.” She took a deep breath, released it. “She kept telling me she was sorry, over and over again.”

  Brenna stared at her, all of it hitting home. Carol hadn’t spoken to Iris. She hadn’t found a missing girl. Carol had received a prank call, and overreacted. God only knew why she was sorry—but did that matter now?

  Morasco said, “Carol’s first call on Monday morning was to Hutchins. She probably told him about the phone call and said she believed Iris was alive. Maybe she thoug
ht he could help her find Iris.”

  “Or Lydia,” Brenna said.

  He looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “Hutchins wouldn’t help her, so she called Klavel, who tracked down Tim O’Malley. Tim spoke to her a few times, and during one of those conversations he told her something that made her break into Lydia Neff’s old house and take . . . the items that had been hidden in the frame.”

  Maggie sank lower in her seat. “I’ve been going back to my old neighborhood,” she said. “I’ve been riding my bike on the path behind the houses. I’ve been looking at my old house, trying so hard to remember it, to remember Iris . . . Remember more than I do, but I can’t. Not really.”

  “Maggie’s family moved the year after Iris disappeared. Her parents were able to make an offer on one of the Waterside Condos.” He gave Brenna a pointed look. “Got it for a steal.”

  Brenna shook her head. “Amazing.”

  Maggie said, “There’s one thing I do remember. Nobody thinks I remember it, but I do.”

  Brenna looked at her.

  “I was with Iris on the day she disappeared.”

  Morasco said, “You never told me that.”

  “I never told anybody.” Her lip trembled. Her eyes welled and sparkled. A single tear slipped down her cheek, and Brenna wanted to wipe it away, Maggie was still that young. “I had been with my parents at one of the Koppelsons’ neighbors—don’t remember the name. But I was in the yard and I saw Iris on the sidewalk and I followed her.” She took a breath and stared up at the ceiling, losing herself. “I remember Iris telling me Santa was in town and we could visit him and get our presents early. I remember walking with her, and then I remember being scared because the sun was setting and we didn’t know where we were. We were lost. I saw Mrs. Wentz, coming out of her house. I remember seeing her in her yard and . . . and just running at her.” Maggie shut her eyes. “Mrs. Wentz picked me up and took me inside and called my mother. Iris stayed on the sidewalk. Mrs. Wentz never saw her. I never told her she was there.”

  “You think you left Iris,” Morasco said.

  “I know I did. I mean . . . I remember it. I remember going into Mrs. Wentz’s house and looking behind me and seeing Iris, running away.”

  Brenna kept her gaze on this young girl, with her baby-fine hair and her chubby cheeks, the same age as Maya, just three years older than Brenna herself had been when her sister had gotten into the blue car.

  “I’ll always remember it.”

  Brenna’s chest tightened. Her knife wound burned.

  “Her parents are in the waiting room,” said Morasco. “You ready to go, Maggie?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, and Brenna couldn’t help but think of the years and years Maggie Schuler would spend looking back rather than forward, of all the things Maggie might give up—her education, her happiness, even the people she loved most—all to try and take back one mistake, to fix one unfixable thing. “It isn’t your fault, Maggie,” Brenna whispered, as much to herself as to the stranger who stood in front of her. “It isn’t your fault. You were only a little girl.”

  Chapter 30

  Dr. Glassman was an excellent physician. Meade had met him while working at the VA Hospital. He was good back then—skilled and considerate. Yet he was too distracted by everyday things to be truly great. Little League games, anniversaries, tennis lessons for his daughter . . . He’d often leave work early for something as mundane as a school play—a school play, when there were lives to be saved. It didn’t make sense, but then again, human behavior rarely did. Meade didn’t begrudge Dr. Glassman that, his humanity. But still he saw the weakness—that flaw, thin as a nerve, that kept him from becoming the great thing he was meant to be.

  Then one day, a fire struck the Glassman home while the doctor was at work, killing his entire family. After a long mourning period, Dr. Glassman emerged changed. He was now a man without emotions, a man who lived only to save lives, to fix bodies—sew them up and send them out. Dr. Glassman never asked questions. In fact, he rarely spoke. He worked out of his small apartment in Morningside Heights, plucking bullets out of chests, sewing up knife wounds, sometimes stabilizing the erratic beat of a dying heart. He seemed to get no pleasure out of this, no joy, no sense of accomplishment. He healed, quite frankly, because he could do nothing else. Dr. Glassman was the closest thing to a machine Meade had ever met. For that reason, he trusted him.

  Dr. Glassman attended to the bullet wound first. It had struck Meade in the shoulder, and it burned when removed, but he stayed stoic, as he knew his father would have done. Soldiers don’t cry, Dad had told Adam, Adam at ten years old, a different Adam than the world saw now. Dad had said that to young Adam as he left their house at dawn, walked out that front door for the very last time, on his way to his sixth and final tour. “Don’t worry, son. Hanoi’s got nothing on me. Hey, what’s that in your eye? A tear? Soldiers don’t cry, Adam. You must be strong. I need you to take care of the ladies while I’m gone.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Atta boy.”

  As Dr. Glassman sewed up the gash on the side of Meade’s face, treated the cuts over his eyes, bandaged the shoulder, and disinfected the glass wounds, Meade put his father out of his mind. Instead he thought about machines—the simple beauty of them, the singularity of purpose. The Glock, of course, was a perfect example, and in a different way, Meade’s car. So was the tracking chip he’d stuck beneath the carriage of Brenna Spector’s van after the press conference, while she and her assistant were visiting Nelson Wentz.

  The doctor was a machine now—a machine that saved lives—and though he might not care enough to realize it, this made him great. Tragedy had transformed him. Just as it had transformed young Adam.

  Before he left the apartment, Meade put the money on the kitchen table. As usual, the doctor didn’t look at it. Instead of just leaving, though, Meade put a hand on his shoulder, looked him in the face. “Some fires,” Meade said, “happen for a reason.”

  Dr. Glassman said nothing. His eyes were dry as stones.

  “You do realize I hate hospitals,” Morasco said. He was standing next to Brenna’s bed at 10 P.M., just about to leave.

  “Then you must be miserable at this point.”

  “Not really. In fact, I kind of like this hospital, if only because it’s keeping you from going out and getting attacked again.” He smiled, and Brenna flashed on Wright, naked in the photograph, staring at Lydia . . .

  Amazing what love did to the eyes. It made them light up in the same way pain made them light up, the same way tears did. How could anyone be capable of that much love and that much hate at the same time?” Brenna said, “How do we know?”

  “How do we know you won’t get attacked here in Columbia-Presbyterian?”

  “No,” Brenna said. “How do we know that Meade is still working for Wright? How do we know he’s not going after these people of his own accord?”

  “Are you serious?”

  She looked at him. “I’m not saying Wright didn’t bribe the Schulers and Chief Griffin with homes in the Waterside Condos. And I’m not saying he didn’t make sure Hutchins took that interview out of the police file. I’m just saying . . . Maybe he isn’t responsible for the killings. Maybe Meade is a stalker. Maybe he somehow found out that Carol Wentz had the photos, and he’s doing this out of some weird loyalty to Wright.”

  Morasco stared at her.

  Brenna sighed. “I know,” she said. “I guess I just don’t understand why any sane human being—even an entitled asshole like Wright—would be able to destroy that many innocent people. Seriously, how could you live with yourself?”

  Morasco glanced away for a moment. “People make all kinds of excuses, Brenna. They tell themselves lies. They repeat those lies in their heads over and over until they become memories,” he said. “That’s how they live with themselves.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Of course you don’t,” he said. “Your memory never lies.” Morasco t
ouched the bandages on her cheek. “Please don’t get attacked by goons anymore.”

  “Goons.” Brenna smiled. “That sounds like a word Jack Paar would use.”

  “Wiseass.” His gaze stayed locked with hers, and for a moment, she might have seen it in his eyes—that spark, love or pain, she wasn’t sure which.

  Or maybe she was just remembering the picture.

  Trent showed up per Brenna’s call at 10:30 P.M. with a packed bag that included a change of clothes, toothbrush, plus Brenna’s laptop and the envelope containing the three pictures and the drawing, all of which Trent had scanned, downloaded, and copied. He’d come in just after Morasco had left and must have passed him in the hall, because the first thing he said when he saw Brenna was, “You and Morasco. Huh? Huh?” accompanied by a hand gesture she hadn’t seen since fifth grade.

  “Uh, no.”

  Trent gaped at the bandages on her face. “Man,” he said. “I hope you gave it to Meade fifty times worse.”

  “I tried.”

  By now, doctors had informed Brenna that her tests had all come back within normal range and she didn’t need another transfusion, but that they’d like her to stay the night for observation. Fine with her—the hospital was as good a place to figure things out as any, and, as Morasco might have said, a place where she wasn’t likely to get attacked.

  She took the laptop from Trent and flipped it open, connecting to the hospital’s wi-fi. Then she placed the pictures over the screen like a lightboard, stared at Wright’s face. What did a man like him do with a great love once he was through with it? Did he throw it into his work? His marriage? His children? How could he just turn and aim that laser elsewhere? How could he ever forget?

  How could any man ever forget?

  She stole a glance at her home screen. Jim wasn’t online. Fine. She’d call Faith tomorrow morning, arrange for her to pick up Maya at school, explain to her that she was laid up for a bit but it was nothing serious . . . Brenna shut her eyes tight, as if by doing so, she could squeeze the pain out of her mind. Forget. “Thanks for all this, Trent,” she said. “I’ll probably be out of here sometime tomorrow, so I’ll see you.”