by Wendy Heard
I couldn’t ask my mom what to do. She didn’t know about Nico’s installations; as far as she knew, he was a sculptor and mixed-media artist.
Inside the police station, in a medical-looking room, someone swabbed the blood on my hands and dress and took samples from various parts of my arms and clothing while my mom was deep in conversation with Detective Salcedo.
It had to be only a matter of time until they figured out Nico was the one doing these things to the congressman. Or they’d connect him and Lily somehow. Panic was running through my veins, into my heart and out to my legs. This was so, so bad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
VERONICA
I had the Uber drop me off in front of the warehouse. It was dark outside, but the air was warm, with a salty ocean breeze ruffling my arm hair. Before he left, the driver rolled down his window to ask me, “Are you sure you want me to leave you here?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
The driver shook his head and drove away, leaving me alone in a decrepit alley under a flickering streetlight.
Keys in hand, I made my way around the warehouse. You’d think it was abandoned, with boarded-up windows and rusty shipping doors that looked like they hadn’t been opened in a decade. My approach startled a rat, which had been sniffing the bottom of a dumpster shoved against the warehouse wall. The rat made a squeaking sound and disappeared underneath.
The door had two ancient deadbolts, and I unlocked the top one; the bottom one was broken. I stepped into a dank, sour-smelling hallway and locked the door behind me.
The factory was owned by a slumlord who rented out the old offices as extreme low-income housing. There was one foul-smelling bathroom down here on the first floor, off this hallway, and all the “apartments” had to share it. There was no shower; Nico showered at my place or the gym, and judging by the appearance of the other inhabitants I’d caught glimpses of, most of them weren’t sober enough to bother. The massive warehouse space had been divided with badly constructed barriers, and Nico rented a huge portion of this space to store all the equipment and raw materials for his installations.
This wasn’t the first space like this he’d lived in. When he was a senior in high school, he was renting a similar place from a different slumlord in an adjacent warehouse district, and there had been a few other living situations in between. “Putting the starving in starving artist,” I used to tease him as he devoured plates of food while my mom looked on pityingly.
My mom was under the impression that Nico rented an apartment in Chula Vista with a few friends. It had taken her a while to be okay with me going to his place, but she’d never have come around if she knew I was hanging out at abandoned warehouses rented out by God knows who.
Music and conversation drifted into the hall from behind the apartment doors. They weren’t numbered like apartments would normally be, so people had created their own system for naming their units. One door was painted red and had REDRUM scrawled in dripping black paint. Another door had been painted blue, and white clouds had been sponged on in the shape of a heart in what seemed like a sad attempt to brighten the darkness. I passed a door covered in yellow caution tape that I usually thought looked cool but now gave me the creeps.
Nico lived on the second floor. I turned left at the top of the cracked concrete stairs and stopped at the door of his unit, which was painted a simple gray. I knocked, using my usual shave-and-a-haircut rhythm. I pressed my ear to the door but couldn’t hear anything over the music pounding through the floor below. I knocked again and was halfway through it when the deadbolt disengaged with a click and the door swung inward.
Nico stood in front of me, looking exhausted, his eyes ringed in dark circles, his hair lank and sweaty. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m paranoid about calling you. I’m worried they’ll look at my phone records.”
He pulled me into the apartment and closed the door behind me. “Where does your mom think you are?”
“Asleep in my bed.” The room was as familiar as my own and about the same size. The first thing that always struck me about this place was the neatness. After the dingy, dark hallway with the weed smoke creeping out from everywhere, Nico’s room felt spare and clean. It had a single, high window that didn’t open; its cracked glass was held together with wire mesh. The walls were painted white, and he had taken the time to paint the concrete floor in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern. A bed was pushed into a corner facing a love seat on the opposite wall. His few clothes were stored in an IKEA wardrobe beside a nightstand chest with a lamp on it that provided the only source of light. A desk against the wall with the window contained a few books, a Bluetooth speaker, and some other art and office supplies. That was it. That was all he owned.
I turned to face him. “What happened to Lily? How could you—” Grief rushed through me. “How could you leave her there? How could you do that?”
He sank down onto the love seat. His hands splayed palms up on his knees, and he looked down at them. In slow motion, his hands reached up to his face, and then he crumpled down, head to knees, and did something I’d never seen him do before: He started crying.
I stood above him, watching his back shuddering as he sobbed into his knees. I could see his ribs through his white T-shirt.
My anger evaporated, leaving me deflated. I collapsed onto the love seat next to him. “Tell me what happened. Why did you even go to that gala? And why didn’t you tell me?”
He straightened up, wiping brusquely at his face. At last, he looked me in the eyes. “When I realized you were going to be at the same gala I planned to do my install at, I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to have deniability.”
“So it was a coincidence that we were at the same event on the same night for different reasons? Come on, Nico, how dumb do you think I am?”
He threw his hands up. “And I was worried you would think I was trying to sabotage you. You get really weird and competitive with me sometimes, V.”
“No I don’t!”
He shook his head. “Anyway, I thought it would be easier, okay? But the install was riskier than the last rooftop one. I had to store all these sandbags up on the roof in advance. I didn’t know if they’d come crashing down before I was ready.”
“What happened to Lily?”
He took a deep breath. “We were on the roof. The install went off without a hitch. It worked amazing. Did you see it?”
I nodded. “I was in the audience. I couldn’t believe I was watching you kill this congressman. What—”
“I didn’t kill him,” Nico protested. “He’s fine. He’s not even in the hospital.”
“It looked like—” I took a breath. I was glad Osgood was okay. But still. “You went too far.”
“I know,” he replied quietly.
“Who was taking pictures?”
“I thought Lily. But she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. She was supposed to be planted in the audience photographing, but she had come up onto the roof with us.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know!” It came out as a shout. He bit his lip. “I don’t know,” he repeated, quieter. “We finished and were up on the roof, getting ready to leave on the boat we had pulled up in the marina. But— Fuck!” He ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what happened. David was over by the roof’s edge. I heard some shouting. I came to tell David to shut up, that he was making too much noise. He was at the edge, looking down. Lily was there. You found her. I thought she might still be alive, but then you turned her on her back, and I could see that she was dead. So we ran. I mean, what were we supposed to do? If we stayed, we’d all go to jail. We got the hell out of there, and we all went our separate ways, and—” He gestured to his room as though to say he’d been here ever since.
“So you think she fell on accident? David couldn’t have pushed her?”
“No way. He wasn’t anywhere close to her. No one else was near her. And I don’t think she would have
jumped. Why would she? It makes no sense. Not there, not then. There’s no reason.”
I slumped back into the love seat. “She was supposed to be taking pictures?” I asked.
He nodded.
“With what?”
He frowned at me. “What do you mean?”
“With what kind of camera?”
“She was going to use a disposable. But I found it on the roof. She hadn’t taken any pictures.”
“You found the camera? Just on the roof lying there?”
He looked down at his hands again. “Well, it was in her purse. I took the whole purse.”
“You took a dead girl’s purse?” My voice rose an octave. “Are you insane? Do you have any idea what that will look like to the cops?”
“I got rid of it! I couldn’t let them find evidence!”
“Nico,” I breathed. “Holy shit. You have dug yourself a hole.”
“I know.”
We sat there in silence. He looked so thin and beaten, I couldn’t help putting my hand over his and squeezing it.
I turned things over in my mind. “What does David think we should do?” I asked.
“He thinks we should go about normal life and pretend it never happened, stop the installations, and act like we don’t know each other. I mean, you and I should still text each other normal stuff, act like normal friends, but the series is dead in the water.” He looked hopeless and lost. His art was everything to him.
I wrapped my arm around his waist. I pulled him close to me, and we leaned back into the cushions, looking up at the stained, water-damaged ceiling. “I know your art has gotten you through some really tough times,” I began carefully. “I know how much it means to you.”
He didn’t say anything, but I saw his jaw tighten in profile.
I went on. “I just … I know you get so hyper focused. I want to make sure you understand what I’m about to tell you.”
He turned his head to look at me. “What?”
“David is right. You need to stop for now. You can start another series when this all calms down,” I said. “But he’s right. It’s enough.”
“I know.” He put his arm around my shoulders, and we held each other for a minute. He murmured, “I should have kept a closer eye on her up there. But she’s a graffiti artist—was a graffiti artist. She was used to being up high, doing pieces on underpasses—this shouldn’t have been hard for her.”
“I know.” He was right; Lily was fine to work on a roof, or dangling from a freeway overpass, or anywhere else she needed to go. She was tough and competent, and it hit me all at once how much I was going to miss her, how badly I wished I’d gotten to know her better.
I felt a little suspicious of how easily he’d given in. I’d expected him to get angry, to yell at me, to get defensive. It wasn’t like Nico to be so easily convinced.
We sat like that for a while, arms around each other, lost in thought.
“You should go,” he said at last.
“So we’re playing dumb. We’re pretending to know nothing about the installs. You don’t have any evidence lying around anywhere?”
“Nope. Just stuff for sculpture. I’m sure they’ll check everyone you know, but all they’ll find is a bunch of stuff for metalwork and mixed media.”
“What if they get your IP address from when you update your Tumblr?”
He was already shaking his head. “I use a VPN. I’m fine. And I got rid of that laptop just to be safe.”
“And the photos themselves? Any film you have lying around? What about the roll from that night at the fire? You didn’t publish those pics on your Tumblr. Do you still have it?”
He shook his head and said, “Gone. We’ve left no trace. What about you? You have any film hanging around?”
“No. I always give you the film to develop. You know that.”
Again, I was hit with a feeling of suspicion. I couldn’t quite picture Nico destroying all traces of his art. It was all he had.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MICK
My legs, back, and shoulders are all cramping up when Nico pulls the door open. “She’s gone,” he says.
I stumble out of the IKEA wardrobe and collapse onto the edge of the bed, gulping in big greedy breaths. “I’m not normally claustrophobic, but that took forever.”
He sits on the bed next to me, so close our legs are touching. “I didn’t want to make her suspicious by rushing her out of here.” His eyes are so, so dark. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into all this.”
After a long moment, I whisper, “I can’t believe Lily is dead.” He winces like I slapped him, and I rush to apologize. “I’m sorry. She was your friend. I barely knew her.”
He shakes his head hard, like he’s pushing the whole thing away. “I wish I hadn’t asked her to take pictures. If I had just let her do her normal thing, she’d still be alive right now.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I protest. “How could you have known?”
He stares down at his hands miserably. What he said about pictures reminds me of the question Veronica asked. “Did you really destroy that film from the night of the fire?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
How do you even destroy a canister of film? By burning it? And he’d been so desperate to have it, wrenching it away from Veronica with actual violence. I’m not sure I believe him.
I remember the conversation I heard from inside the closet. When Veronica came in, he switched on a different tone of voice, one that had gotten her to soften and swing from being angry with him to comforting him. It made me wonder how honest he was being with me.
“I want to talk to Veronica,” I say. “I need to apologize for leaving tonight. I need to come up with an alibi for where I was when everything happened, don’t I?”
He shakes his head, his face solemn. “Mick, you need to stay away from this. As far as anyone is concerned, you left and were nowhere near the gala when Lily fell. In a few days, when everything calms down, you can call Veronica. For now, let’s focus on getting you a car.”
“Okay,” I agree, because this does sound like the right way to handle the situation, and because without him, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I need that car. I can’t risk upsetting him. I feel like I’m walking on a tightrope. If I fall to the left, I’ll make Nico angry and be out on the street. If I fall to the right, I’ll find myself tangled up in lies to the police and ruining things with Veronica.
“Speaking of calling people, did your phone turn up?” he asks.
I shake my head glumly. “I must have left it in the Uber on the way to the gala. It’s nowhere. And I can’t replace it without my mom signing off on it with T-Mobile.”
He gives me a sympathetic look. “If you want, I can get you a prepaid phone from the carrier I use. No parents.” I’d told him the full story about what was happening with my mom.
“Thank you,” I say, grateful and relieved.
“Hey, guess what?”
“What?”
“I have a surprise for you.” He stands, pulling me with him, and leads me out of his little apartment, down the dark stairs to the warehouse. He fumbles along a wall and flips a switch.
The now-familiar piles of equipment and boxes light up dimly, illuminated by a row of naked hanging bulbs. Nico’s supplies occupy most of the warehouse; the rest is partitioned into smaller cubicles for the other residents. We were in here earlier, loading evidence from the series into a van so Nico could get rid of it, and I’m struck again by how much stuff he has. It makes sense that installation art would need an incredible amount of equipment, but the contrast between the sparsity of his living quarters and the hangar-sized storage area is striking. It’s clear that his life is here, not up there.
“Come here. It’s this way,” he says, weaving past towers of boxes, something that looks like a kiln surrounded by bricks and bags of dry concrete or maybe soil, and a million more boxes, until he stops in front of a poster-sized black-and-whi
te photo tacked to the partition wall that separates us from the next storage area.
It’s the picture of me. From the gala.
I gasp. “You stole it?” I don’t know how I’m still shocked by him.
He cracks a grin. “No, I outbid the thirty-thousand-dollar offer that was on the table. Of course I stole it.”
“Thirty thousand dollars?” I stare at him, dumbfounded.
He cocks his head at me. “You still don’t understand what this is, do you? This is just the beginning for this photo. And people know it.”
I step closer to the photograph. It’s huge, my face so much larger than life.
This black-and-white me is so much more me than I am, like I’m a shadow of her and not the other way around.
Nico is at my side. He points to a metal trash can. “I thought you might want to kill it with fire.” He offers me a lighter from his pocket, the same black Bic he lit the tiki torches with when we started the wildfire.
I accept it. It’s warm in my palm. I say, “It doesn’t change anything to destroy this one. It’s still online. Besides, Veronica has the negative.”
“Sometimes the gesture can be therapeutic.” He steps away. “I’m going to work on something. Take your time.”
He disappears between stacks of boxes. I step closer, eye to eye with this other version of myself. She looks past me, at the person taking the picture, at Veronica. She’s lost and a little frightened, but she’s full of adventure. She’s me, but better.
I find myself tracing the outlines of her lips with my fingertips, the curve of her arm, the space behind her, the rows of blurry seats.
And then, explosively, I rip her off the wall.
I tear her down the middle. The shiny photo paper protests, a shriek. I ball it up, stiff and unwieldy, shove it into the trash can, and flick the Bic until I get a shaky flame.
I light the edges on fire. It takes a minute to really catch, and her eyes peek out at me from the folds.
