The Herd (ARC)

by Andrea Bartz

  New cameras had gone in sometime last week, Hana had said, so we should be able to check exactly when Eleanor had left. She was typically one of the last people to head out, especially the night before a work-from-home day. I drummed my fingers on the edge of the laptop, then pushed it aside and found my notebook:

  ☐ Access security cameras (Ted?)

  ☐ Security cameras at street level? On Eleanor’s street?

  ☐ General background checks on E + D: financial trouble? New lawsuits, arrests?

  ☐ Open relationship: Who had Eleanor met up with?

  ☐ Confirm Daniel’s alibi last night/today: date (app/site?) + work

  ☐ UGLY CUNTS vandal: related? Leads?

  ☐ Where are E’s laptop + phone?

  I leaned back and tapped the pen against my lips. This was helping, a narrow egress for my worry. Something was bothering me from earlier today, prickling at me like stinging nettle. I wound the night backward in my memory, back across the bridge to Eleanor’s apartment, then inside Hana’s Lyft, and then Hielo, its back hallway, in all the servers’ way. Here the feeling intensified, desperate as a charades player when your guess is so close. Hana cinching in the huddle, Daniel on speakerphone …

  I caught it, snap: Hana had said something about location services—how Eleanor hadn’t turned hers on, how last week it hadn’t done her any good. Eleanor had shown up with a new phone case last week, a robin’s-egg blue that matched her new Herd-branded background, one of Mikki’s designs—and I’d hazily filed this away as a detail for my book proposal (“so chic, she changes cases the way most of us change handbags”). Was it actually a new phone? Had she lost (or ditched) the old one for some reason?

  My call to Hana went straight to voicemail, so I dragged my laptop back onto my knees and looked over my list. The spray-painting bandit intrigued me most, but I wasn’t sure how to chase him down. Daniel, then—what did any of us know about him, really, from before he meandered into Eleanor’s life? What other skeletons were in his closet? And where was he last night?

  I sent him a friend request on Facebook and, in the meantime, clicked through his profile photos. Most were of him and Eleanor, but one fit the bill: selfie, his game face encircled in a navy hoodie, his beloved Yankees splashed across his chest. I dragged it into a search engine, then—

  Bingo. Scouring the Internet, Google had found this exact same photo on Click, an online dating site. I made a throwaway profile, limited all my filters, searched for terms I’d seen in Google’s preview, and—

  “Gotcha,” I murmured aloud.

  Three photos, the hoodie one cropped so it was from the nose down, a vacation photo centered on his blue tank top and surprisingly chiseled arms, and then—I felt myself blush—an admittedly hot topless selfie from the chin down. Hello there, 82menace.

  My heart raced as I scanned through the usual profile words (running, CrossFit, travel, foodie … ). I was desperate for any clue, anything that would point me to Eleanor, panicked at the thought that just as we were reconnecting, I could lose her for good. My hands went cold when I got to the end:

  You should message me if: You’re patient, chill, and okay with the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing, lol. My wife ( MoreFracturedLight ) is the most incredible partner in the world and we’re making this up as we go along.

  I had never before clicked a link with such ferocity. MoreFracturedLight’s profile was less complete than Daniel’s, with only one image of her from behind, wearing a floral dress somewhere sunny—but that dark ripply hair, the hourglass frame, this was definitely her. Anonymous enough that no one could prove it, though. She’d filled out just one section, the most barebones of profiles:

  Self-summary: Exploring my options in a newly open relationship. I write back rarely; patience, please.

  I whimpered aloud; here I thought I’d found a lead, but it was just another dead end. A sudden electronic chirrup made me jump—I had a new message on Click, from a headless figure showing off his decent abs over some low-slung sweatpants in a dirty bathroom mirror: “So your the mysterious type lol.” God. A woman needs neither photos nor words to attract creepers here—just a female designation. I sent both Daniel’s and Eleanor’s profiles to my printer and listened to it screeching away, the sheets skittering onto the floor as the machine spat them past the tray. I stapled them and slipped them in the folder.

  My phone buzzed on my bed.

  “Calling you in 20.” Fatima, finally responding to the text I’d sent from my car ride home. A little space opened up in my chest.

  I’d first met Fatima when I was on-staff at Rocket (moment of silence), when the scrappy tech website not only existed but even had the funds to bring people in for workshops. Fatima had led a brief master class on “digital investigation techniques,” and she was fabulous and fierce, with her blue-green hair and shit-kicking boots. The next day I’d invited her to coffee, and over lattes she revealed that she’s a fairly talented hacker-for-hire. We hadn’t talked in years, but I felt galvanized by her quick reply.

  And she had taught her student well; while awaiting her call, I combed through some criminal databases, moving quickly to keep ahead of the hysteria smoldering in my chest. Nothing for Eleanor; a DUI for Daniel in June 2002, which put him in … college, if my calculations were correct. Neither one showed up in sex-offender registries, thank God. I checked a police report database: nothing for Daniel, but in October, Eleanor had reported her passport and wallet stolen. I couldn’t see the details of the incident report, but it didn’t ID it as a mugging or break-in—just a theft. To the printer with all of it.

  Most of Eleanor’s hits in the public-record database were unsurprising: trademarking Gleam and the Herd, that kind of thing. But my search resurfaced court records I’d been looking at just days ago to track down the angry Antiherd mob who’d brought a suit against the Herd. I shivered; in just twenty-four hours, Carl Berkowski had gone from an annoying potential source to something much more sinister. A potential abductor?

  My phone exploded with sound; I jumped so high, I practically bonked my head on the ceiling.

  “Fatima?”

  “’Sup.” It was a statement, not a question.

  My voice shook as I skidded past our normal pleasantries. “Look, I can’t really explain, but I’m going through some shit and I need you to look into something for me. And it has to be secret.”

  “Like everything I do. What’s up?”

  “A friend of mine just went missing,” I said, “tonight. I’m trying to find her.”

  “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. But, okay, I’m here to help.”

  I quickly brought her up to speed. “I feel like looking at their inboxes would tell me a lot. I know that’s not … entirely legal.”

  “What are their email addresses?” Fatima prompted. Her lack of hesitation steeled me. I shared them and she was quiet for a minute. “Nope, two-step verification on both. Not gonna happen.”

  If only hacking were as easy as it looked on TV: Hack into location services, hack into police records, hack into anything as if cyberwalls and VPNs and security measures were little white baby gates to be snapped open or stepped over.

  “What about browsing history?” I asked.

  “Do you have her Wi-Fi info?”

  “At her apartment? No.” An idea blossomed: “Is there a way to see what she was doing at the Herd?”

  “Just her? Hmm. If you were physically there, I could have you log into the router. Problem is, it’d include data on everyone’s devices.”

  “I could narrow it down by time—she’s usually the last person there.”

  “Ooh, that’s all I need. Might take some guesswork to get into the router, though.”

  I smiled. “I can ask the guy who set it up.” I jotted down her instructions and set a time for her to come by the Herd.

  “Anything else you want me to look into between now and then?”

  I rested my chin in my hand. “Eleanor and her husband
both have Click profiles,” I announced. “I’d like to see their messages. I’m trying to figure out who Eleanor was seeing, and who Daniel was with last night.”

  “That should be doable.” She paused. “And Katie, I’m so, so sorry. I’m sure she’ll turn up, but I’ll do everything in my power to help.”

  I fell asleep praying I’d wake to happy news: Everything’s fine, they found her and she’s A-OK, it’s actually a hilarious story, come on in and she’ll tell us all about it. My heart battered around in my ribs as I pulled my phone off the nightstand, but …

  Crickets.

  I showed up at the Herd around eleven and spotted Mikki and her things scattered across a sofa. She was wearing high-top sneakers and velvet leggings under a huge sweatshirt and drinking an iced coffee the size of Montana. “Nothing?” I said, in lieu of a greeting.

  “Nothing.” She gave me a halfhearted hug. “How are you doing?”

  “Broken. Miserable. Sick with worry.”

  She nodded. “I used up half my CBD pen trying to fall asleep last night.”

  I sighed. “Where’s Hana?”

  “She said something came up. Told me to tell you that.”

  “Huh.” For some reason, this felt like an affront.

  “I can see not wanting to be here with Eleanor gone. Since we’re not supposed to”—her eyes widened and she lowered her voice—“since we’re supposed to keep it on the DL.”

  I dragged an acrylic chair over. “Has anyone checked Eleanor’s office?”

  She groaned. “Aurelia said it’s locked. I suggested smashing the glass, but nobody seemed into that.”

  “Does Eleanor usually lock her door?” I asked.

  “I think so. Definitely after the whole vandal break-in situation.”

  “Good point.” I tapped her knee. “Hey, I forgot to return the question. How are you doing?”

  “I’m just worried,” she said with a shrug. “And I hate having to act like it’s business as usual. I’m supposed to have a gallery visit this afternoon.”

  “For the collages?” She nodded and I wrinkled my nose in sympathy. “I’m sure you can reschedule.”

  “I will. But it’s not like anything’s happening here anyway. With the investigation or whatever. Nobody’s heard anything from the cops.”

  I thought back to my checklist. “Can we review the security footage from Monday?”

  “You’re not gonna believe this.” She leaned forward. “You know how they just got new cameras? Well, they’re in the middle of switching over systems or something, so the cameras didn’t record.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  “I know. Aurelia had a long call with the technician this morning. She was so frustrated, she burst into tears.” She shook her head. “Poor thing is in over her head. Aurelia’s basically a glorified assistant, but with Eleanor MIA and Stephanie in fucking Goa, she’s somehow in charge.”

  “Hold on. You said she had a call with the technician? Was it Ted—did he install the new cameras?” Seemed odd he wouldn’t have mentioned it.

  “No, a private firm.” She sighed. “They installed the new cameras last week but then there was some issue with the router not recognizing them. The guy told Aurelia it was just bad luck.”

  “ ‘Bad luck’? That it just randomly stops working the night Eleanor goes missing?” I felt a stab of fear. Maybe someone needed that footage deleted. Maybe something really did happen to her. Maybe this was real.

  An issue with the router—Ted had been here to reset it Friday, packet overload. I texted and asked if he could walk me through his reset, adding that it might help us track down Eleanor, and he replied in seconds, noting that he’d be in the neighborhood later if I wanted to meet up. My phone jolted as I was still typing, and I stared in confusion at the text for a few minutes before the pieces snapped into place.

  The sights and smells and sounds around me, women and clatters and chatter and colorful fabric, sunlight from the windows and upholstery the color of jewels—all of it faded away, the world on a dimmer switch, everything reduced to a meaningless gray blob around the outskirts of this text.

  It was from Carl. My scheduled but noticeably absent coffee date from Monday. Carl Berkowski, men’s rights activist, plaintiff in the doomed case of Berkowski v. The Herd, Inc. Known enemy of Eleanor Walsh. He’d chosen now, right now, to finally answer my texts and calls.

  Ice pitched through my stomach as I reread it, over and over.

  It said: “So it seems Eleanor’s out of commission, hmm?”

  CHAPTER 11

  Hana

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 10:52 A.M.

  I dreamed about the numbers I’d found in Eleanor’s bed: They had something to do with money, and Daniel was using them in lieu of cash to pay Eleanor’s ransom. I woke up and willed the dream’s details to stick so that I could comb through them later in search of baubles of insight, but then I grabbed my phone and saw Mikki’s text still at the top: I think we need to tell them. Terror lurched through me again, so tense and taut that Cosmo sensed it and vaulted off the bed. Last night I’d sent back one word right away: No. Now I deleted the whole exchange and tended to my other alerts, and the dream slipped away like something sinking into a quarry.

  I’d failed to set an alarm and it was somehow almost eleven. I called Daniel as I was drinking coffee, still unsure if I should go into the Herd.

  “How are you doing? Hanging in there?” I swiped at a drip sliding slowly down the mug.

  “Okay. I’m just … at my desk.”

  “At the hospital?” I let out a surprised laugh, tried to turn it into a throat-clearing. “You went into work?” That explained his low, sheepish tone.

  “I did. I don’t … I’m out of PTO days for the year.”

  “Jeez. I’m sorry. You didn’t want to just tell them you have a family emergency?”

  “We’re not …” His voice got even lower. “Since we’re not saying anything. The cops, last night. They said to just maintain my normal routine. And I—I have a bunch of meetings today.”

  “Huh.” His behavior was so strange, I almost felt embarrassed for him: Your wife goes missing and you’re thinking about PTO days? Carrying on like nothing had happened—Christ, was that the behavior of an innocent man? I didn’t have a spouse, but if he went missing, I wouldn’t give a shit about my stock of personal days—I just wouldn’t show up. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll just be here all day.” A beat. “Uh, thanks, though.”

  “Of course. So no updates from the detectives?”

  “Nothing. They went through the apartment last night, pawed through all our stuff. Didn’t seem to find anything interesting, though.”

  An idea crystallized, a better plan for my day. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? Anytime, day or night.”

  He thanked me and hung up.

  I thought about inviting Mikki along, since, after all, she faced the exact same stakes as me. But she was probably at the Herd right now, likely with Katie, and after her text last night, the last thing I needed was another chink in her resolve. Instead I let her know I wouldn’t be coming to the Herd today. Then, pushing through the fug of my worry for Eleanor, a heady sadness that billowed like incense, I got dressed and headed out.

  A few whiskery clouds bristled the edges of the sky, the sun over us almost taunting in its coldness. The streets were nearly empty—even at lunch hour, no one wanted to venture out into the Arctic afternoon. I checked my phone: a wind chill of -6 degrees. Aurelia had touched base from the Herd, letting me know Ratliff had just arrived, and this soothed me—no cops would be knocking at Eleanor’s door anytime soon.

  Her street looked different in the light: a tree-lined road of row houses, their stoops spilling outside like the graham-cracker paths leading into gingerbread houses. I’d always thought of this block as warm and fairy tale–like, but today a crust of bruised-looking snow capped the curbs, and the tr
ees, spindly and stark, raked at one another angrily. I climbed the stoop and froze—what if Eleanor never walked out of this door again? My mind skipped ahead to funerals, black dresses and hot tears, Daniel tearily putting a For Sale sign out front. But the cold had found me: My nose prickled, my fingers stung, so I fumbled with my spare key and shoved the door closed behind me.

  I had no clear idea why I was there, what key or keyhole I was looking for or even whether I’d know when I found it. But maybe Eleanor had left behind another clue, possibly tucked deeper under her mattress, that’d give these random numbers meaning.

  Or perhaps there was something in her apartment that I had to be sure nobody could find.

  I’d only been here without Eleanor once or twice, when I’d walked over from the Herd to water her plants while she and Daniel were away. Alone in her huge townhouse, I’d always felt the vague, faraway urge to poke around—the same distant impulse I’d felt as a teenage babysitter, feeling grown-up and saintly as I resisted. The house was empty, the cops long gone. Finally, I could give in.

  I left my coat in a heap in the foyer and climbed upstairs, then practically flipped the mattress confirming there wasn’t anything else under there. Her nightstand drew my eyes—Daniel had said she kept pills in the drawer, right? Antidepressants? I pulled it open but if there had been anything in there before, it was gone now. On top of the nightstand was the bell hooks book (very on-brand) with a Books Are Magic bookmark two-thirds of the way through (ditto). I thumbed through the pages for notes but found nothing.

  In the dresser, I found myself groping through lingerie. I blanched with embarrassment before moving on to the other two drawers: nothing out of the ordinary. I stepped back and surveyed the bedroom, my chest throbbing, my thoughts a wail: Where are you, Eleanor?