by Katie Sise
FIFTY-ONE
Haley
Dean was gone. An officer had taken him away for more questioning, and Rappaport sat across from Haley now, offering what she assumed were supposed to be soft words of condolence. He’d told her his working theory of what Josie did to Emma, and Haley was stuck somewhere between a dream and reality, the pieces slipping into place like a dark puzzle coming together in her mind’s eye.
Icy black water . . .
Emma falling.
Josie, at the top of the cliff, her teeth bared like an animal’s.
Haley couldn’t erase the images—she couldn’t even fight them—so she let them come one after the other. She wasn’t sure they’d ever stop, or if she’d ever be able to think of anything else.
“Should I leave you here?” Rappaport asked her carefully. “Would you rather be alone?”
Haley shook her head.
Rappaport opened a briefcase and retrieved a manila envelope. He unfastened the top, carefully pulling out a stack of photographs. “I hope these won’t upset you too much,” he said, but Haley was already reaching for them. Rappaport went on, “We insisted everyone at the party send us any photographs or videos they took that night. Nothing turned out to be helpful until now. Here’s a shot of Josie,” he said, “and you can see her wearing the bracelet.” Haley leaned closer, finding it hard to breathe as she took in a grainy shot of Josie standing near the keg and clutching a plastic cup. Josie wore a bright red winter jacket that left an inch of her wrist exposed. The bracelet glinted against her skin. “You’re sure it’s the same one?” Haley asked, her heart constricting. She let her eyes travel to Josie’s face. Josie’s blond hair fell over her shoulders the same way it did now, but her ten-years-ago features were slightly rounder.
“It’s a very close match,” Rappaport said. “And perhaps more important, we have photos of your sister, and we don’t see a bracelet on either wrist. It could have been caught beneath her coat, certainly. But I feel confident the bracelet you see here on Josie’s wrist is the one that was found in the gorge. It means Josie had to have a reason to descend into that gorge, and I believe it was to put your sister’s body in the water.”
“How long have you known this?” Haley asked, her words echoing through the tiny room.
“Since right after the bracelet was found two weeks ago,” Rappaport said. “I went through the photos within the hour, and I called Josie in the next morning for preliminary questioning, but I didn’t push hard on her until our second meeting last week when I showed her the photos.”
Haley’s mind raced to put the timing together. She must have met with Josie at the café after Josie had been interviewed the second time. “Did you outright accuse her of killing Emma?” Haley asked. No wonder Josie had gone into full attack mode, trying to pin Emma’s murder on Brad with the pregnancy test.
“No, but like I said, I pressed very hard. She had to know she was the prime suspect based on what we found in the gorge.”
“Why didn’t you arrest her?”
Rappaport shifted in his chair. “Because I had to obtain a warrant, which I now have. Obviously I wish I had tried to hold her, but I didn’t, and now she’s been attacked. My mistake, and because of it, we have two crimes. Josie will still be arrested, likely today before she’s released from the hospital, but with the attack and the circumstances surrounding it being related to your sister’s death, there’s a better chance she gets away with your sister’s murder. All we have to go on is the bracelet and a hunch. And if the case ever made it to trial, any jury would be sympathetic to a woman who was subsequently almost murdered after being questioned about suspicious circumstances. Which means I need to figure out who stabbed Josie, so that I can build a stronger case against her with fewer unknowns. So let’s work together, shall we?” Rappaport asked, sitting up taller. “Let’s figure her out.”
Haley froze, her body made electric by his wording. Figure me out, she heard her sister say, just like in all the dreams, look a little closer. Rappaport stared as Haley started tapping the table with rapid-fire fingertips. “You said you have pictures of my sister,” she finally said, trying to gather herself.
“I do,” Rappaport said. “Are you sure you can handle seeing them?”
Yes, of course she could handle seeing them—she could do anything for Emma. She nodded, and Rappaport retrieved a second envelope, much smaller, and passed it across the table. Haley removed the photos with shaking hands, and there she was: Emma. Her heart seized. Of course she’d looked at photos and videos of her sister during the past decade, but she’d never seen any from the night she died. All she’d wanted that night was to meet Emma in the woods, but she’d never gotten past her mom. If only.
“We just have these three photographs,” Rappaport said quickly, “and you’ll see nothing seems nefarious.”
Haley set the photos in front of her in a row. In two of them Emma looked like an afterthought, just a bystander caught in the background of a shot featuring other kids posing with smiles. But the final photo was a close-up. Emma’s chin was tilted down, her light eyes held the camera, and because of the way her arms were held up to protest the photo, you could see the two bare, jewelry-free wrists the detective was talking about.
“This one,” Haley said, pointing at the photo. “Who took it?”
“Chris Paxton,” Rappaport said. “Or at least, we got it off his phone. He was intoxicated that night, but the detectives working the case claimed he sounded reasonably reliable a few days later when he told us he’d taken it. We have him here now for questioning, and he’s telling us the same story. He claims he talked to your sister at the party, but that he was never alone with her that night.”
Haley looked closer at the photo. Emma wasn’t smiling, and her eyes looked resigned to having a photo taken. Or maybe it was the fact that Chris was the one taking it that made her uneasy.
Rappaport had told Haley that there were no fingerprints on the knife used to stab Josie, and that because Noah and Chris had helped Josie set up the open house that morning and Brad, Haley, Dean, and Priya had entered into the crime scene, there were fingerprints from all of them in the kitchen. The only other fingerprints were from Chris on a shovel leaning against a shed outside, and the cleaning crew who’d scrubbed the kitchen beforehand, and some from the woman who lived there and was selling the house. The forensics team was still working to determine what they could from the stab wound, but as of now they knew Josie had been stabbed at close to ten forty-five. There were footprints in the kitchen from everyone, including Noah and Chris, but if whoever stabbed Josie had exited the house through the ajar kitchen window, the snow had wiped clean any evidence of their escape. “So what if Noah’s hiding something about my sister—like the fact that he got her pregnant—and wanted to shut Josie up?” Haley ventured.
Rappaport sat back in his chair. His voice was harder when he said, “Or what if Noah knew your fiancé was secretly meeting with Josie, and his jealousy sent him into a rage? Or, what if Brad Aarons was so terrified that Josie would come forward with the pregnancy test and that it would implicate him in Emma’s murder that he attacked Josie? Or maybe his wife did, maybe Priya wanted to protect herself and her son from a husband in prison . . .” Haley’s heart pounded as Rappaport went on. “Chris Paxton has had a few scrapes with the law, so maybe it’s him. Or, here’s an idea: What if something happened between Josie and your fiancé, who were meeting privately, and he tried to attack her for any number of reasons? We have several suspects, Ms. McCullough, each with motive. So as much as I appreciate your theories, what I really want to know is: Do you know your fiancé well enough to know whether he’s capable of violence? Has he ever been violent with you?”
“No,” Haley said, holding his stare. “Never.”
Rappaport shifted his weight and let a minute pass. When he seemed sure Haley wasn’t going to say anything else, or change her story, he said, “He lied to you about the night your sister died.”
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br /> “He did,” Haley said. It was true, wasn’t it? Dean had lied about Emma. Haley thought back to the night Dean had found her at that bar, which she now knew wasn’t a happy accident, but which she also didn’t believe was sinister, either. After that night, the way they’d fallen in love had been so slow and careful; it wasn’t forced, and it didn’t feel weighted by the past. She trusted that.
And she trusted that Dean hadn’t hurt someone.
Haley shook her head slowly, marveling at the feeling. Trust. What a slippery thing. Emma had trusted Josie and shouldn’t have; her mother had trusted her father, and he’d cheated; and now Haley was choosing to trust a man who had omitted a truth about the night she lost the person most important to her, based entirely on a feeling. But maybe that’s what trust was, and maybe that was what love was.
“Dean didn’t hurt Josie, I’m sure of it,” Haley said.
“Ms. McCullough,” Rappaport said, his voice hard again, “in your fiancé’s phone, we found texts with Josie that arranged for him to come early to the open house, to meet her there so they could talk.” A pit formed in Haley’s stomach as Rappaport went on. “The texts are very vague, but it would be helpful if you could confirm your fiancé’s whereabouts from ten until ten forty-five yesterday morning.”
“I can,” she said. “Well, I mean, I wasn’t there with him, but he was at the grocery store stocking up on water and food for the storm.”
“The entire time?”
“Yes,” said Haley, “and surely there’s credit card activity?”
“There isn’t,” Rappaport said. “Dean says he paid in cash.” Haley’s heart beat faster. She’d almost never seen Dean pay in cash for anything; he always paid with the credit card that got him miles.
“We’d gotten in an argument that morning. Maybe he was flustered and forgot his credit card.”
“But had cash with him?” Rappaport asked. “Does he keep his credit card separate from his wallet?”
“No,” Haley said. “He doesn’t. But there should still be a record of his purchases.”
“We’re still going through receipts from that morning, but we’ve been by the store with his photo,” Rappaport said, “and no one remembers ringing him up. There’s been a delay in obtaining security camera footage, but we should have it shortly.”
“I have the food and water at home, in our pantry. You can come by and see it,” Haley said, keeping her voice steady.
“But even so,” Rappaport fired back, “Dean would certainly have time to do both: meet Josie, possibly hurt her, and still pick up groceries so he’d have an alibi. Dean was the one who initiated the meeting. He asked Josie if they could see each other and talk, alone, and she suggested meeting early at the open house, where they could speak privately. Dean maintains that he didn’t actually end up going there early or alone, that Josie called him and called it off. But we don’t see any evidence on his cell of her calling. There’s a received call from an untraceable number from that morning, but that’s it. Dean claims that must have been the one Josie used to call him, but you can imagine that none of this sits very well with any of us. Dean and Josie were seeing each other privately, without telling their respective fiancée and spouse, and he was trying to get her alone the very morning she was attacked.”
Angry tears burned Haley’s eyes, and she tried to swipe them away, not wanting to be this way, to be this vulnerable. “Dean didn’t do it,” she said. “I don’t know how to prove it to you, but I will.”
FIFTY-TWO
Priya
Priya stood in the attic of her home for the first time in years. She stared at the canvases tilted against the walls, some of her finished paintings, some half-finished, and some entirely blank.
It had been Josie who killed Emma. Not Brad. Josie.
Priya wasn’t supposed to know, no one was. The plan was to arrest Josie as soon as she’d been cleared from the hospital, but Haley had come by to tell Priya and swear her to secrecy, as though she somehow understood the switch it would flip inside Priya to know the truth.
A morning glow hovered on the horizon. Elliot would wake soon, and Priya would hold him close and whisper into his ear the things she loved about him. But for now she had other ideas. She stepped carefully across the attic and lifted one of the blank canvases upright. She found a bundled, dusty tarp and set it free around the canvas. Burlap covered her paints, and she lifted the sheet and studied the cans. She removed the tops, and the familiar pine and oil smell swarmed her nostrils and took over the attic. Brushes were scattered everywhere, and she found the one that looked the most pliable and plunged it into the paint. She coated it in inky navy, and her lips curved into a smile at the familiar feel of the smooth wooden brush, the weight of it so completely perfect in her grasp. She turned it over, marveling at the way daylight caught the inconsistencies and imperfections in the paint, little lumps and tiny bubbles that came to the surface and released almost imperceptible exhalations. And then with one quick gasp she streaked it across the canvas, her hands shaking, her heart quickening. The paintbrush moved back and forth as the tiny muscles in her hand remembered what to do, intuitively knowing how to create something that wasn’t there before. She painted for minutes that could have been hours, feeling herself unspool and unwind, making space as the parts of her that had been lost for so many years began to come together again. Bolts of color filled her canvas, her touch tentative at first but gaining confidence as she went. She began to cry, but she kept going, brush against canvas, until she felt something inside her finally release as the guilt and pain that had been bottled up ever since Emma came to the doorstep all those years ago slowly released its hold on her.
FIFTY-THREE
Haley
In anatomy class that morning Haley looked down at Susie, her hands trembling as she followed the dissection instructions given by a substitute teacher named Dr. Cotler. It was hard not to think of Brad being held at the police station, wilting beneath the weight of everything that had happened, everything he’d been accused of. The anatomy lab, just like Waverly, was abuzz with the news of Josie’s attack, and Haley could tell by the way the students stared at her that details about who was at the open house had filtered through the community.
Haley swallowed. Maybe she wasn’t ready to move here after all. Maybe, after they’d put all of this behind them, she and Dean could move back to the city, somewhere more anonymous, and somewhere they’d never have to see Josie again.
Or maybe Josie would be behind bars before then.
I’m sorry, Susie, Haley thought as she worked on her cadaver, her hands numb as she dissected, following Dr. Cotler’s instructions and the slides she put up on the screen. I’m sorry I’m so distracted, and I’m sorry for whatever terrible thing might have happened to you. Haley made the next cut into Susie’s heart, trying to focus only on Susie as she’d promised, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Emma. She felt as if she was out of her own body as she stared down at Susie, her vision going fuzzy, making Susie’s heart double in front of her, the valves and ventricles, muscle and arteries all becoming one pulpy blur. Haley wasn’t sure what was wrong, and she thought she was going to be sick, or that maybe the stress of everything that happened had finally become too much. She felt out of her body as she reached down and traced the spot on Susie where Josie had been stabbed just above her right clavicle.
A shiver passed over Haley. She put down her scalpel and grabbed the steel table, trying to stay upright. Sweat gathered on her skin, and she tried to breathe, to be okay, but she wasn’t. Her hands didn’t feel like her own when she picked up her scalpel again and clutched it in her hand, when she raised it above Susie’s body. She felt herself release a fast, hard breath, and then she wrapped her other hand around the scalpel and plunged it into the trapezius muscle above Susie’s clavicle. The other students at nearby cadaver stations turned to stare, one of them barely muffling a gasp. Haley stared at her scalpel sticking straight out of Susie, barely believ
ing what she’d just done. Look closer, said Emma somewhere in the back of Haley’s mind, and an idea began to form, something so wrong, so strange and disjointed it could hardly be possible . . .
Unless it was.
Below the clavicle sat the subclavian artery, one of the main branches of the aorta, and plenty of other important stuff, but where Josie had been stabbed there wasn’t much besides the trapezius muscle and nerves. Certainly someone could have tried to stab Josie in the heart and missed, or thought their attack would do enough damage that it didn’t matter—that was the assumption the police seemed to be operating under. But as Haley stared down at the scalpel, she knew that person couldn’t be Brad, not if he was actually intending to do real damage. No surgeon or anatomy teacher would have made that wound and thought it would be fatal. And why would it behoove Brad to stab Josie without actually killing her? Just to scare her? No way—it was too much of a risk that she’d be able to identify him to the police as soon as she recovered.
Haley felt the other students’ eyes on her, but she didn’t care. Her mind reeled as the substitute teacher droned on. Wasn’t it possible that instead of intending to hurt Josie but messing it up, someone had purposely inflicted a nonfatal stab wound? And what if that person was Josie? What if Josie had been so desperate to frame Brad, or even Dean, that she stabbed herself in the kitchen that morning?
Haley blinked hard, taking in Susie’s serene features. Figuring out how to stab yourself so that you wouldn’t be fatally injured as long as someone found you in time was something you could figure out from research online. Certainly it would take the heat off Josie, and with the pregnancy test she’d been holding on to, she had to think framing Brad for Emma’s death would be a slam dunk. Who would care about a silly bracelet if Brad were framed for both Josie’s attack and Emma’s murder? Maybe Dean was just an additional possibility, to muddle the scenario if Brad didn’t work. What if that’s why Josie had been contacting Dean for all those secret meetings? What if it was to secretly throw suspicion on him when the police inevitably searched his phone after Josie was found stabbed on the floor of an open house he attended? Was that why Josie said she couldn’t remember anything about the attack and who did it, so that both men would be potential suspects?
