by Nic Joseph
“I didn’t do what you think I did, so stop calling the cops,” he said. “We have a deal, Paula. I give you the money, you don’t say anything, to anyone. That’s how this works.”
Something about the way he said it made me angry, and even though I knew I shouldn’t, I leaned across the gear shift and peered up at him. “No, I don’t say anything about the affair,” I said. “That was the agreement. If you had anything to do with what happened to Beverly, I’ll turn you into the police so fast, you won’t know what hit you. That’s how this works.”
He stared down at me, and I could see the wave of emotions cross his face in the moonlight. Disbelief, desperation, anger.
“You really don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. “But trust me, you’ll learn.”
He shut the door and walked away.
It was way too late, but as I watched him, I reached out with a shaking hand and locked the doors.
Chapter 24
Claire
Two days after
Claire walked into the station early on Monday morning, her eyes red from lack of sleep. She’d lain awake in bed the night before, Beverly’s face crowding her mind the way her victims always did.
In the last day and a half, she’d talked to almost everyone who’d been at the dinner party on Saturday night, with the exception of the mysterious and elusive artist named Chris.
Emma had given her all the information she could—the woman’s physical description (brown hair, with eyes that were two different colors—one blue and one brown), her profession (an artist), her demeanor (nervous, jumpy), but nothing of value like a last name or telephone number.
“Did you see her interact with Beverly at all?” Claire had asked.
Emma had shrugged. “Besides introductions and basic chitchat, not really,” she had said.
Claire sighed and looked at the file folders spread out on the table in front of her, one for each of the residents of the apartment building on Oak Street. She had them all open, and they stared out at her, pictures pulled together from social media sites, driver’s licenses, and the like. It was amazingly easy to find information on suspects these days with a few simple mouse clicks. As she looked at them, her mind went over the same question repeatedly.
Which one of you is lying?
Claire heard a noise behind her and saw Greg walking in with two cups of coffee in his hands and a file folder tucked beneath his arm. “I have so many presents for you this morning, I don’t even know where to start,” he said.
“Start with the caffeinated one,” she said with a smile as he placed one of the cups on her desk. “Thanks. Okay, hit me with the rest.”
“First, no fingerprints on the statue.”
“None at all?”
“Nope,” he said. “Wiped clean. Still some traces of blood and hair, which are a match for Beverly Brighton.”
Claire nodded. “What else?”
“Got the results back on that red stain on the carpet next to the body,” he said, dropping the folder on Claire’s desk and then grabbing a seat beside her. Claire opened it as he continued to speak. “Definitely wasn’t blood. It was lipstick, and very fresh. It was still tacky; the techs say it couldn’t have been there for more than a few hours when we found it. We compared it to the lipstick found on Beverly and—”
“It was a match,” Claire said, looking up. She frowned. “Doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?” Greg asked.
“Why she put lipstick back on. According to her husband, she was in the shower when he got upstairs from the dinner party. Why shower and then reapply lipstick?”
They were silent for a few moments until Claire spoke again. “Okay, any other presents for me?”
Greg gestured toward the file folder. “It’s in there too,” he said. “So, remember I told you about the keypad lock on the backyard gate? Well, we checked the log, and nobody used it to get into the backyard that night.”
“So nobody got in that way,” she said, leaning forward and putting her head in her hands. “Damn it.”
“What’s wrong?” Greg asked.
Claire continued to stare at the desk, thinking as she spoke out loud.
“Since we first arrived at the scene, I knew that someone who’d already been in the building was responsible for Beverly Brighton’s death. That was clear to me the moment we saw the broken glass with no evidence that someone had actually come in that way. A real intruder wouldn’t work overtime to make it look like they broke in. So it had to be someone who was already in the building around one thirty or two o’clock, when Beverly was killed.
“So, imagine you’re the killer. You strike Beverly on the back of the head, and as Dr. Ortiz said, she falls over and hits her head on the corner of the table. You’re starting to freak out because you can see the blood spreading on the carpet. You’re still holding the statue, but you can wipe that off. There’s blood everywhere, and now you have to go back home. How did the assailant get inside one of the units without a trace? Maybe they ran downstairs and out the front door, washed off in the rain, enough so they wouldn’t track blood through their apartment, and then return through the back. They grab the brick and bust out the window near the back door to make it look like someone came in that way, but instead, they run over to the staircase and go back to their apartment unseen. Only problem there is that you’re telling me nobody used the gate code for the backyard last night.”
Greg nodded. “What are we missing?”
“I don’t know,” Claire said softly. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, one more thing,” he said. “We got the analysis on all the blood in the stairwell,” he said. “Most of it belonged to the victim.”
Claire froze. “Most?”
“Yes,” Greg said. “There was a smudge at the bottom of the staircase on the first floor, on the wall, and a small chip in the paint. As if someone fell forward and knocked into it.”
“But it wasn’t the victim’s?”
“No, it doesn’t match.”
“Can you tell how long it had been there?”
“Yes,” Greg said. “Judging by how much it had dried—or, I should say, hadn’t dried—it had to have happened earlier that same night.”
Claire opened another file folder and pulled out some of the pictures from the scene. There were pictures of the first-floor hallway, of the third-floor landing, and of the outside of the building. She flipped through them mindlessly, searching for anything at all that would shed some light on what really happened to Beverly Brighton.
When she saw it, she stood up abruptly, knocking her chair back.
“What is it?” Greg asked, looking up.
“Of course!” Claire exclaimed.
“Of course what?” he asked.
Claire blinked at him for a moment and then finally responded.
“I need to make a call.”
• • •
An hour later, Claire was pulling up in front of the building on Oak Street. She rang the doorbell for the first-floor apartment.
“Hello?” Meggie Bentley said.
“Ms. Bentley, it’s Detective Claire Puhl. Mind if I come in?”
There was a pause, and then the door buzzed, and Claire stepped inside. As she walked toward the first-floor apartment, she heard a noise. The door opened, and Meggie Bentley peered out.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Do you mind if I come in?”
Meggie stepped back to let her inside. As Claire walked in, she saw that Patrick was sitting on the couch, his legs folded beneath him as he typed on a laptop.
“Good, you’re here too,” Claire said.
“What’s this about?” he asked.
Claire cleared her throat. “I had a couple of questions about Saturday night. Namely, why you lied about what
time you got home.”
“Sorry?” Meggie said, her forehead scrunching up. “What are you talking about?”
“You told me that when you arrived home, you saw the blood in the stairwell and on the carpet and decided to go upstairs to make sure everything was okay.”
“Yes,” Meggie said with a frown on her face.
“I took a look at the photos of the entryway and first floor of your apartment building. And it occurred to me: there’s no way for you to see the staircase when you walk in the door. If you walked in and went straight to your apartment, you wouldn’t have seen the blood, and you would’ve had no reason to go upstairs to the third floor. I don’t know about you, but I don’t walk past my apartment and take a look around before going inside. So tell me: Why did you walk over to the staircase?”
“I don’t know,” Meggie said. “We just did. There wasn’t a reason.”
“Of course there was a reason,” Claire said. “There’s a reason for everything, and it is my job to figure out what those reasons are. Here’s what I think. Actually, here’s what I know, since I just made a call to Boxer’s, and with a few threats of taking a closer look at their books, I got the owner, Kerry, to tell me the truth, not the lie you asked her to feed us. You two weren’t at the bar until two fifteen, as you said earlier; instead, she said you left by one thirty. You went in, you met with someone, and then you left, according to Kerry. Which means you were in your apartment before Beverly was killed.”
Meggie and Patrick looked at each other in an obvious effort to determine how much they should reveal. Claire jumped in again before either of them responded.
“I think you were here, and I think you heard something that concerned you. Something that made you scared. Maybe a yell, maybe the sound of someone running down the stairs. But you didn’t open the door and call the police, because you were otherwise occupied. The report came back on the swabs from your apartment, and we found traces of cocaine in the bathroom. Is that what you picked up at Boxer’s?”
Meggie slumped forward, and she rested her forehead against the palm of her head.
“You knew something was going on, but before you could call the police, you wanted to get rid of the drugs. So you finished up and then opened the door. You already knew something was wrong. You were going upstairs to see what happened and to make sure everything was okay.”
“We didn’t do anything to her, we promise,” Patrick said.
“How about you tell me exactly what you heard from your apartment?” Claire said.
Meggie sighed, straightening up. “We heard the sound of someone yelling. We couldn’t really make out who it was. And then we heard a loud thump, like something had fallen. We heard the sound of someone running on the staircase, and then that was it. We finished up, then called the police.”
“Was the person running up the stairs or down?”
“I don’t know,” Meggie said. “It was hard to tell.”
“Did you hear the front door open?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said.
“You should’ve called the police right away,” Claire said.
“We know. We’re sorry,” Meggie said, and there was something about the way the woman said it that made Claire believe her.
Chapter 25
Paula
Two days after
I couldn't bear to go inside.
I knew Keith would be upset, yet I couldn’t bring myself to go home, to look him the eye, to not tell him what had just happened.
I couldn’t lie to his face.
So I did it from the front seat of my car.
“Hey, I’m still at the diner,” I said when he answered. I was leaning forward with my head on the steering wheel as I spoke. “I’m so sorry, but Vanessa needs me to work her shift.”
“Are you kidding?” Keith asked. “What time will you get home? Randy is coming for me at three o’clock.”
I took a deep breath before responding. “Probably not before then,” I said. “I’ll be here until six or seven this morning. I’m so sorry. Text me when you leave.”
We hung up a few minutes later, and although he was upset, I knew he would get over it. I told myself that he was so nervous for the trip, not saying goodbye to me was probably just a minor disappointment in the grand scheme of things.
I pulled out of the space and headed to Vanessa’s apartment. When I arrived, she took one look at my face and then stepped back to let me aside.
“Sorry for just dropping in,” I said.
“No problem,” she said as I walked over to the couch and sat down. She grabbed a blanket and tossed it over to me. “Is everything okay?”
I desperately wanted to tell her what was going on, but I didn’t know where to start.
Hey, you remember when you joked around that I should try to get some money out of the whole Ryan Hooks thing?
Well, I did.
And now, I think he might have murdered someone.
Oh, and he just showed up in my car and threatened me.
So, no, not really okay.
How was your day?
“You look like you need one of those too,” Vanessa said, pointing to the glass of red wine on the table in front of her. “Yeah?”
I sighed and nodded. Even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t drink ever again after Emma’s dinner party, I couldn’t help but say yes.
Vanessa left for a moment, then came back with the glass of wine. She handed it to me and dropped down on the couch beside me.
“Want to talk about it?”
“Would rather just watch TV,” I said.
She nodded. “Done and done.”
She unmuted the television, and we sat there for a while, watching the screen. Earlier, when I’d been at the diner, I’d been grateful that she wasn’t there, because I didn’t know how I could be in the same room with her and not let her know what was going on. But now, all I felt was exhaustion, and I appreciated the comfortable silence.
Three glasses of wine later, I stood up to leave.
“You sure you don’t want to sleep here?” she asked.
“No, I have to go home and take Shelby out. Thanks, though.”
I left, walking past my car and climbing into the DAC that I’d called to take me home. I’d come back for my car in the morning. There was something about leaving it at a place because I was too drunk to drive home that made me feel like I was in my twenties again, and I smiled to myself as the DAC driver moved through the streets.
“How’s your night going?” she asked.
“Not too bad,” I said as I leaned my head back. The car smelled like some sort of strong deodorizer, and I wrinkled my nose. “How about you?”
“Oh, not too bad,” the girl said cheerily. She sounded young—she couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three, and she drove with both hands on the steering wheel. I wondered if she had a can of bug spray between her legs and considered telling her that she should, but that felt like it would be the wine talking. She looked up at me in the rearview mirror. “I just started, so I’m going to be driving for a while. You heading home or leaving home?”
I laughed. I tried to imagine who left home at three thirty in the morning. “I’m heading home.”
“Oh, okay, cool! Well, let me know if the AC is cool enough for you.”
“It is, thanks,” I said.
We were silent for the rest of the trip, which I was grateful for. When she pulled up in front of the house, I thanked her and got out of the car. I made sure to leave her a tip in the app; I figured there was certainly bad karma for not treating other drivers well. Not to mention the driver who’d helped me get home the other night. I owed all the DAC drivers all the tips for that.
I felt a chill rush over me as I walked up to my front door. When I opened it, I heard S
helby shuffle. I turned on a light and walked over to her. She stirred for a moment and then looked at me before lying back down.
I walked into the bedroom, the pull of the red wine making me tired but not sleepy. I lay back on the bed, fully clothed, spread out in the center of it, since I had it all to myself. I lay there for a few minutes, hoping the wine would lull me to sleep, but it didn’t. I rolled over, stretching out, my hands sliding under my own pillow and Keith’s—
I froze when my fingers hit something that felt like a small postcard. I pulled it out and sighed deeply when I saw what it was.
A scratch-off ticket.
One that I hadn’t bought.
In any other case, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but the single ticket told me that even though Keith said he was fine with accepting money from the Art Bowl, he was still looking for another way out. He’d been so upset when he saw that I was buying the scratch-offs, and here he was, sliding back into his old habits.
I’d have to watch out to make sure it didn’t get any worse.
I put the ticket back and then rolled onto my back. My mind still raced, my thoughts jumping from Detective Puhl’s face on the news to Hooks’s face as he stared at me in my car.
I just wanted sleep. I needed rest so that I could get rid of the fog that seemed to be in front of my mind and wouldn’t go away. Tomorrow would be a brand-new day; I would go to the diner and try Emma again and hope that she answered. I hadn’t decided if I’d tell her about Hooks climbing into my car; that would require a lot of explaining.
After another twenty minutes, I finally sat up. Maybe if I took a shower and changed into pajamas—maybe then I’d start to feel sleepier. I got up and walked back into the living room. Shelby stayed in her bed and didn’t lift her head as I walked by. I went into the bathroom and showered and brushed my teeth. As I walked past Shelby again, I saw her peek one eye open, but then I went into the bedroom and shut the door most of the way.
I lay down again, feeling more relaxed, more comfortable, but sleep still felt a million miles away. I punched the pillow angrily and flipped over, near tears for the need to let go of all this and just fall asleep. I was suddenly too hot, and I stood up on the bed and pulled the cord for the ceiling fan. The cool breeze brushed over me, and it was comforting, as was the loud white noise that the fan brought, blocking out almost everything else.
