The Herd (ARC)

by Andrea Bartz

  But who could make sense of this? I pictured her coat, the crescent of blood black against the collar. And when I got closer, the jagged line against her white neck where a scarf should be.

  Katie slung her arm around me and briskly rubbed my back.

  “Is it cold?” I asked her. “They should shut the door to the stairwell.”

  “It’s not cold,” she said, leaning more of her body into me. “I think you’re in shock.”

  “I’m not in shock.” My teeth chattered. “I’m just cold.”

  A police officer approached. He was young, his face round and clean-shaven. My eyes floated to the gun on his hip. He kept addressing Mikki and Katie instead of me, and the two of them probably assumed it was because I was shaken and shaking, but I wasn’t so sure. They didn’t know what it’s like to be the one cops eye suspiciously, their tone just one degree off.

  “When we’re done here, I’ll need all of you to come to the station to make a quick statement,” he said.

  “How much longer will it be?” Mikki called out. She was slumped on a blue sofa.

  “Maybe an hour?”

  Mikki’s lip popped into a pout. “Okay.”

  I felt Katie looking at me. She turned back to the officer. “I don’t think Hana should be forced to stay here,” she said. “There’s a deli right on the corner. Could we wait down there?”

  He hesitated, and she gestured toward me. “I’m worried about my sister. Sitting here isn’t helping. I mean, we’re obviously not a flight risk.”

  Not a flight risk. Unlike Eleanor, a week ago. Had she really intended to leave, or was that a weird cover-up orchestrated by her killer? Or had she been trying to escape because she knew she was in danger? Someone killed Eleanor—my jaw took off clacking again and I wrapped the throw tighter around my shoulders.

  “Let me check.” He clomped away, shoulders hunched, moving like an awkward teenage boy.

  A little sob escaped from Mikki. Sad, that’s how I was supposed to feel, right? Or maybe afraid, freaked out by the horror show directly above our heads. Instead I felt … numb, maybe. Removed. Up on the roof, I’d felt fear as I crept toward what I first mistook for a forgotten boot, and now I could recall the jagged panic that’d gripped me when I spotted a second, but then my memory closed in around just one more sight—the stiff skin of a mannequin, a dark half-moon at the top of her coat, brownish in the roof’s sallow light. Next thing I knew, I was on my knees in the sunroom with Mikki and Katie staring at me. Like an audience, like theatergoers looking up at me onstage.

  “Sorry. They said we gotta keep you here.” The cop spoke as he was still scurrying back. Mikki whimpered. “Oh, and don’t—alert anyone. Or touch anything. Just stay here, okay?”

  For a while, we all stared into the distance. It was like I’d strapped on a heavy breastplate, making it difficult to breathe. I was the only one not crying, and this struck me as unfair: They hadn’t gone up on the roof. They hadn’t seen the gash in Eleanor’s neck. Instead they’d stayed warm here in the sunroom, staring at me.

  At first, they’d been confused—they thought maybe Eleanor was alive up there. Once I’d set them straight, Katie had yelled out, “No one goes up there—we’re calling 911.” We’d huddled on the floor as the sirens grew louder; each new whoop had made her jump. The cops congratulated us on not messing with the crime scene. Which I liked. I like when authority figures say “good job.”

  A little shout and some shuffling, and two men rolled Eleanor out in a body bag spread across a gurney. Mikki stifled a wail. They huffed directions as they navigated the tight corners, and I stared at the black sack, something blazing in my belly like an ember. The score along Eleanor’s neck. The darkness leaking from it, soaking the top of her coat. Someone had taken her, someone who had no right.

  I thought of the Fates again, the three of them, sisters who carried torches, whips, and cups of venom to punish wrongdoers on Earth. Relentlessly pursuing murderers, torturing them until they were driven mad. Monstrous, smelly hags with snakes in their hair and bat wings on their backs.

  Wait, not Fates. Those were Furies.

  The interview room was nicer than I’d expected. Years of TV-watching had primed me for a blank, bare-bones box, a table between us with a ring meant for affixing handcuffs. But this pretty much looked like the meeting rooms I’d rented for sit-downs with my own PR clients. Cream walls, a decent-sized window, rolling chairs, that smooth, generic table.

  Still, my heart banged in my chest. Pounding like the big bass drum that’d jolted me up to the roof in the first place. Detective Ratliff appeared and shook my hand warmly.

  “Ms. Bradley, I’m so sorry for your loss.” She pulled out a seat across from mine. I was glad it was her. Detective Herrera, the little ham hock of a man who’d shown up at Eleanor’s the night she went missing, gave me bad vibes—something in the cock of his hip, the confident set of his shoulders. He reminded me of the Cambridge cop who’d wandered over when, senior year, a bouncer with white dreadlocks had refused to believe my driver’s license was real. Mikki and Eleanor had made a scene, jabbing their fingers in his face as tears coated my eyes, until the officer had intervened and snatched the ID from the bouncer’s hand. Mikki and Eleanor had been so relieved—finally, an authority figure to set things straight—and their faces crumpled as the cop snorted, “This is obviously fake” and folded my (state-issued) Michigan driver’s license in his fist.

  “We appreciate your giving a statement tonight,” Ratliff said. “I know this must be difficult for you.”

  “Well, anything to help you figure out who did this.” A little honk escaped my lips and I cleared my throat to cover it. “Has anyone contacted her parents?”

  “We left messages for them. We have someone driving up to their home now.”

  “Good. They’re going to be just … devastated.”

  She nodded, shot me a sympathetic look. “We’re doing everything we can. Now, can you walk me through what happened, starting with when you decided to go up to the roof?”

  I recounted it, careful to get the details right, to mention anything that might be useful, always eager to please. Back in the Herd’s sunroom: Katie and Mikki pressed against the glass, gazing at the street below as I beelined for the stairs.

  “I got to the roof and my first thought was how cold it was,” I continued. “I started making my way to the edge—it’s kind of a maze of different sections, which are, like, seating areas when it’s open in the summer. Now all the furniture is in piles.” I saw it again: chair- and cushion- and table-shaped lumps haphazardly stacked against little barricades. How I’d hustled by, the clamor of the drummers echoing off nearby buildings, when something made me stop and glance back.

  “I looked at one of the piles and at first, my thought was, ‘Why did someone leave a shoe up here?’ It was kinda sticking out, a boot. And then I realized there were two. So I got a little closer to try and look, and I saw—I realized—”

  Something in my throat squeezed and bobbed. I pushed out a deep breath. “I got closer and realized it was a body. For a second I was like, ‘Is a homeless person squatting on the roof?’ But it’s way too cold for that. So I took a few steps around the pile of lawn furniture, and she was there, in this little space between the pile and the partition. I already had my phone out so I turned on the light, and I could see—”

  “Where were you standing?”

  I blinked. “Right at her feet. I basically shined the flashlight up along her body.” I indicated a sweep over my own torso.

  “And you didn’t touch her.”

  “I didn’t touch anything. As soon as I got to her coat I think I knew, although I hadn’t consciously processed it yet. And then I got to her face and it was—there was no mistaking it.” My voice wobbled but I breathed again, controlled it. “Her eyes were closed and her skin was so white—it looked like, I don’t know, a dummy that was designed to look like her, or a wax figure or something. And then I realized
there was sort of a gash across part of her neck.” I waved my nails alongside my throat. “At first I thought it was a choker? And then I spotted this big stain along the top of her collar. Right underneath it. In the darkness it just looked black, but that’s when I ran back downstairs.” I could still feel the fumbling panic, my feet skittering backward over the wooden slats as my lizard brain hit the air horn: Get away, get away, get away.

  Ratliff nodded. “Did you notice anything else unusual up there?”

  “I’m not up there much in the winter. No one is. There’s a sign saying the door is alarmed, but we discovered early on that nothing happens if you push it. But this is the first time I’ve been up there since maybe October.” My thoughts were popping out of me in the wrong order, swirling nonsensically.

  “So … you’re saying you wouldn’t have noticed if anything else was disturbed.”

  “Right. But I didn’t touch anything. You guys saw the exact same roof I did.”

  “Okay. The crime scene investigators are doing a thorough job.”

  I frowned. “Will they be looking through the entire coworking space?” When we’d left, the Herd was still crawling with forensic experts measuring and swabbing and photographing.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I imagine so. It’s unlikely the body was dropped there from somewhere else.” My eyes widened and she shook her head. “Sorry—that was callous.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m just realizing we’ll have to close the space tomorrow.” Another thought unfurled: I was still the Herd’s publicist. Would I be tasked with breaking this news? “Will you guys be making an announcement? Holding a press conference?” It was like all my knowledge of public relations had leaked out with my snot and tears: How did police briefings come to be?

  “Our media relations department will handle that,” she replied. “In conjunction with the family. You don’t have to worry about it.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Ratliff didn’t say anything else, so I went on: “It’ll be big news, right? Because she’s a public figure?”

  She hesitated. “It’s likely we’ll have to keep the local media apprised of the investigation, yeah. But we’ll wait until the timing’s right.”

  I stared at the scratched tabletop, then looked up at her. “What are you going to do? To catch this person?”

  “Detective Herrera and I will be following up on all leads. We take every homicide investigation seriously.”

  “Just like you take every missing-persons case seriously.” I raised my eyebrows.

  “We’ll be taking into account everything we learned about Ms. Walsh over the last week. The stolen phone, the defacement, the planned escape to Mexico—we’ll be poring over everything for leads.”

  The email … from Mexico. “You must be able to track down whomever sent that email yesterday. That had to be her killer, right? She must have been long dead by then.”

  She folded her hands on the table. “We’ll wait for an autopsy before we try to place the time of death. But at first glance, my medical examiner—” She hesitated. “They aren’t sure if they’ll be able to pinpoint it. Because of the weather. It’s like a deep freeze.”

  Like a chest freezer. I thought of the hulking one in our basement in Kalamazoo, how Katie and I would run down there, feet pattering, to choose a flavor of pizza or ice cream. Eleanor, frozen in time like a gallon of rocky road.

  Something clunked in my brain. “But we can look at what she was wearing, right? See if it’s what she wore to the Herd that Monday?” The thought chugged along. I was so tired. “Daniel was pretty sure she didn’t come home that night. Which would mean someone else faked those emails and texts from her the next day. You guys should look into that.”

  “We’ll be exploring all leads,” she said again. She jumped and then glanced down at her phone. “Unless there’s anything else you need to tell me, we’re gonna let you get home and get some sleep.” She paused and I fought to keep my expression neutral. There was one other thing, a massive one, but I’d already confirmed this wasn’t about that.

  I managed a bland smile. “Will I need to come back in?”

  “Not sure yet. Will you be available?”

  I sighed. “I’m flying home on the twenty-third. For Christmas.”

  “That should be fine, as long as you remain accessible.”

  Didn’t realize I needed your permission, I wanted to say. Instead: “Just let me know how I can be helpful.”

  Katie was asleep in the waiting room, cheek in palm, elbow on an armrest. I felt a crackle of annoyance that Mikki had left her here. But it was late and I probably wouldn’t have waited for anyone other than my sister either. I woke her and we blurrily figured out that her subway wasn’t running; I was about to order her her own Lyft when she asked if she could stay with me.

  At home I set her up on the couch, carrying pillows out from the linen closet even as she crashed her head onto the decorative moleskin cushions there. I collapsed into bed, my door left open a crack, as always, for Cosmo. I was asleep within minutes and then woke, swimming only halfway toward the surface, from pressure on the bed. Not Cosmo—Katie climbed in next to me, then curled away. We’re not a touchy family; we hug hello and goodbye and say “I love you” when we think of it, always with a wide globe of personal space. I was almost nervous as I reached out and rubbed her back. Without turning, she curled an arm across her chest and touched my fingers near her side, held them there and then gave a little pat. I rolled away then and together, we fell asleep.

  I woke and lay in bed for a moment with my eyes closed. Then it all came rushing in, like someone had turned on a cold tap: Katie next to me, Ratliff in the station, and, with a dizzying lurch, Eleanor, Eleanor frozen like a venison steak, Eleanor’s neck with its rimy crust of blood.

  My stomach seized and I rolled over, clutching it, wishing wildly I could back up into my dreamland, where none of this was reality. A few feet away, Katie snored softly. Trying not to disturb the covers, I slid my legs out and padded down the hall.

  I was just squeezing toothpaste onto my brush when, in the mirror, something moved behind me. I jumped and whirled around: Katie was thumping down the hall, holding my phone out in front of her.

  “Daniel keeps calling you,” she announced, her brows knitted.

  I set the toothbrush on the sink and took the phone from her. “Thanks,” I said, pushing the door closed. She didn’t move, her eyebrows now reaching for the sky, so I basically shut the door in her face.

  “Hana?!” he yelped, before I could hear a single ring.

  I kept my voice low, pictured Katie with her ear pressed against the door. “What’s up?”

  “Get here now,” he said. “I don’t—I don’t know what to do.”

  “Are you in danger? Should I call 911?”

  “No police. You don’t want police.” He sounded terrified, unhinged.

  “I don’t want police?”

  “It’s about—Hana, it’s about what happened in 2010.”

  It hit me like a force, like a fire hose, shot at all of me all at once. My ears rang and I clutched the side of the bathtub. How on earth did he know? What had he found?

  “Listen to me very carefully.” I curled away from the door, my voice just above a whisper and so cold, so bloodless, it scared even me. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t contact anyone else. No one else. Do you understand?”

  Another gaping silence and the air itself seemed to lean in.

  “Get here,” Daniel said, and then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  Katie

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 8:10 A.M.

  Hana flung the door open and stood centered in the frame. The sconce lights on either side of her mirror glowed behind her so she was silhouetted, an outline of Athena preparing for battle.

  “I have to go,” she announced.

  I was lingering in the hall, all casual. As if my ear hadn’t been one with the door a second earlier.

  “What’d Da
niel say?”

  “I’m heading over there now.”

  “Why, what’d he say?”

  She sighed and her shoulders slumped. “He’s freaking out. Threatening to kill himself.” I waited, and she went on: “I guess he started drinking and didn’t go to sleep all night, and now he’s, like, out of his mind and consumed by grief. I don’t actually think he’s going to try anything, but he’s freaking out.”

  “So it’s a cry for help?”

  “Sure sounded like it.”

  “But why did he call you?”

  Hana tipped her head back, closed her eyes. “My thoughts exactly. God, I don’t need this.”

  She pushed past me, down the hallway, and I called after her: “Doesn’t he have any other friends?”

  “Not that many, honestly.” She made it to her bedroom and threw open the closet. “He got out of a ten-year relationship right before he met Eleanor. At the wedding he had one guy, a friend from high school, as his best man, but that’s it.” She hooked on a bra, stepped into a pair of underwear.

  “So why not call that dude?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s unavailable. Maybe Daniel doesn’t want to talk to someone who barely knew Eleanor.” She yanked a turtleneck over her head.

  “Did he try calling Mikki too? I’m just trying to understand why—”

  “Katie.” Hana stared at me for a second before unfolding her jeans with a flick. She had tears in her eyes, and a spear of guilt went through me. “I don’t know what you want me to say. He just called me, repeatedly, begging me to come over.”

  She turned away and yanked her curls into a bun. She looped the elastic, then whisked her knuckles across her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Then: “Let me know if you need anything.”

  Tossing things into her purse, she pretended not to hear me.

  The slam of the front door seemed extra-loud and final, somehow, like the clang of a gavel or the bang of a book’s heavy back cover. I leaned against the kitchen island, statue-still, until Cosmo padded over and rubbed against the hem of my pajama pants.