Still Here

by Amy Stuart

Malcolm’s face twists with genuine shock. “No,” he says. “That’s impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible anymore. Do you see that? That’s what I mean. You don’t understand. I’ve been here working, figuring this all out. This isn’t about you anymore, Malcolm. I’m not doing this for you, or because of you, anymore. This is about me now.”

  “Let me get you out of here,” he says. “Please. I can bring you somewhere safe.”

  “I’m not leaving, Malcolm. Do you get that? I’m not leaving.”

  “You can’t stay. Listen—”

  “No,” Clare says. “You listen. Do you know how many days I’ve been running, Malcolm? Because I’ve counted. Since I left Jason, I’ve counted in days.” Her voice rises. “Do you know what that’s like? To count your life in days? It’s been over two hundred and fifty days of running. And I’m done. I’m done, Malcolm. I’m not leaving. I’m going to see this through, no matter what. I need this to end.”

  Clare’s phone rings in her pocket. She looks down at the gun as if she’d forgotten it was in her hand. Clare tucks it back into her belt, then extracts her phone from her pocket to silence the call.

  “That’s Somers,” she says. “I was supposed to meet her at the hotel ten minutes ago.”

  “You can’t leave, Clare. We need to talk.”

  “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, Malcolm. If you want to talk, we can talk. Later. I have things to do. Do you understand that?”

  When her phone rings again, Clare lifts a finger to stop Malcolm from saying more. She swipes to retrieve the call. Somers.

  “Sorry,” Clare says. “I got held up. I’m fifteen minutes out.”

  “It sounds like you’re outside. Is that the ocean I hear?”

  “I stopped for gas,” Clare says. “I’m on my way.”

  Clare can’t bear the way Malcolm is watching her as she speaks.

  “Okay,” Somers says. “You sound a little off.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Clare says, ending the call.

  Behind Malcolm, Clare spots a couple on the path. They wave at her in friendly greeting. Clare watches them start up the beach arm in arm, the wind kicking up the woman’s hair, the man laughing at something she’s said to him. Clare takes a step forward and brings her face close to Malcolm’s.

  “Listen to me,” she says, her voice low. “I’m not leaving. I don’t know what you hoped would happen here. That you’d show up and whisk me away like some knight in shining armor?”

  “Clare—”

  “This needs to end, Malcolm. I have a job to do. So you go ahead and turn yourself in. Or don’t. Stay with me and help me do my job. But I’m not leaving.”

  “Okay,” he says, frowning. “Okay.”

  “Text me in an hour,” she says. “Tell me where to meet you.”

  Malcolm nods. Clare takes a wide berth around him and walks away. Her heart beats too fast in her chest. She feels angry, exhilarated. When she reaches the foot of the path to the parking lot, Clare glances over her shoulder. Malcolm has walked forward into the water. He stands so that the waves wrap him to the knees. He need only take a few more steps for the ocean to absorb him whole.

  Clare sits in the passenger seat of Somers’s car. They weave through the one-way streets of Lune Bay’s small downtown. If Somers is bothered by the lack of conversation, she reveals nothing, fiddling instead with the radio knobs and making occasional commentary on the scenery, the ocean that flits in and out of view. Clare’s eyes are fixed out the window. It is Malcolm who occupies her thoughts now. The sight of him, the pleading tone in his voice. It’s not safe for you here. Why does Clare feel numb to his pleas? She knows Malcolm could be right. Danger is circling, closing in on her. Zoe. Jason. She feels it in the air. So why is her reaction to Malcolm anger and not fear?

  “You okay?” Somers asks.

  “Fine. Lots on my mind. Lots to think about.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Somers says.

  In her message en route from the jail, Clare gave Somers the name of the shooter, Grayson Morris, but did not reveal that Donovan Hughes linked him to Malcolm. Despite everything, Clare is still protecting him. She knows she should tell Somers about their encounter this morning. But she can’t. Not now. Not yet.

  They pull up outside an older brick building. The sign reads COUNTY GOVERNMENT OFFICES. Somers kills the engine and shifts in her seat, unbuckling herself so she can face Clare head-on.

  “How do you want to play this?” Somers asks.

  “Play what?” Clare asks flatly.

  Somers heaves a long sigh. “Are you with me here? You’re in the clouds.”

  Clare cannot look at Somers. She remains turned to the window, silent.

  “I sent the video to forensics,” Somers says. “I copied Germain. Included the guy’s name you gave me too. We’re dropping this stuff in Germain’s lap. I did a quick search on any Grayson Morris names and couldn’t find much of note. A couple of hits, but I’ll need access to the wider database to really mine the options. Your jailbird friend Hughes might have it wrong, who knows?”

  “You knew all along,” Clare says.

  “Knew what?” Somers asks, impatient.

  “You knew that everything here was connected. You sent me here knowing that. Knowing that these missing women were connected to the Westmans. Knowing…”

  Clare trails off. Somers reaches over and jabs a finger into Clare’s leg.

  “Look at me,” she says. “Look at me.”

  “What?”

  “You’re mad,” Somers says. “I get it. You’ve got a lot to be mad about. You don’t even have a specific target for your anger, do you? You’re just mad at the world right now and I’m in your sights. But let me tell you something. For the last time, I am not your enemy here. I’m not the person to turn on. You’ve been telling yourself the wrong story, Clare. Because I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, I am not the bad guy. I know I didn’t tell you about the Norton case, and I’m sorry about that. But trust me, I’m the one who’s got your back.”

  Clare bites at her lip. The car is too warm. It feels impossible to make sense of the day so far, the video of a man knowing he was about to get shot, Donovan naming the shooter, Malcolm here. These scenes that feel unreal, dreamlike, even though they unfolded barely hours ago. Somers is right: Clare can’t pinpoint where to direct her rage. She takes a few deep breaths to compose herself before speaking.

  “I had this realization this morning,” Clare says. “I was driving back from the prison and I had an epiphany. Is that the right word for it? Epiphany?”

  “Yeah,” Somers says. “The aha moment.”

  “Right.” Clare pauses to quell the tremble in her voice. “The thing is, my whole life I’ve been a pawn. A chess piece in someone else’s game. My dad was obsessed with teaching me how to shoot. He didn’t want a daughter in pink, a doll-playing daughter. He wanted a sharpshooter. Then my mom got cancer, and my brother and my dad were absolved somehow of anything to do with her illness and death. I was a teenager, but she was my problem. Then I met Jason, and by then I just—I felt like my role was to play along. You know? To just participate in other people’s games. It was easier. So that’s what I did. I did what other people told me to do. I went along with plans. Jason proposed and I said yes because honestly? I just couldn’t conceive of an alternative. And we got married, and it was horrific, but I couldn’t break away. Eventually I did. Because when he hurt me and I lost the baby? That was the first thing in my life I felt happened to me. It was my loss, and mine alone. So it spurred me to leave.”

  “Yes,” Somers interjects. “It would.”

  “But then I met Malcolm,” Clare continues. “And I wonder now: Did I let myself become a pawn in his game? Old habits die hard, you know. But, Somers? You? I figured somehow you’d be better, that you were actually my friend, that you were trying to help me, but now maybe I’m just a pawn in your game too. You need me to do this work for you. Y
ou’re too visible as a cop. And I fit right in, no matter the danger to me.”

  At this Somers shakes her head.

  “You need me to do your dirty work. You’re using me.”

  “Come on, Clare.”

  “Really?” Clare says. “Am I wrong?”

  “Come on,” Somers says again. “All investigation is dirty work. All of it. I’m not using you. I need your skills. I hired you because you’re good at this work and I wanted you to see that. Like you say, my hands are tied as a cop. I have a long list of rules and procedures I’m bound to follow. I walk a thin line that you don’t need to walk. Yes, I need you. You could argue that I’m using your skills to my advantage. But I found room in my tiny little cop budget and a workaround with my superiors so I could pay you. I gave you a shot at your own case. Have you ever considered that I might be doing you a favor?”

  “A favor that suits you.”

  “Ha!” Somers laughs before her expression snaps back to focus. “I’m not going to apologize to you. You say you’ve always been a pawn. Let me ask you something, Clare. Do you have free will? Does your brain function on its own?”

  Clare crosses her arms, silent.

  “Well. You know what? I’m a black woman and I’ve been a cop for fifteen years. You have no idea the shit I’ve dealt with in my life. The crap people throw my way. Half my colleagues can’t make small talk with me without regularly jamming their foot in their mouth. I won’t bore you with the stories, because there are thousands of them and there’s just no way you’d understand. You couldn’t. Just like I can’t understand what it’s like for you to have endured the kind of marriage you had, to have lost your mother so young, to have dealt with addiction like you have, and losing a baby? That’s a form of grief that could do anyone in. It could. But I’m going to tell you what I tell my kids every day: don’t exhaust yourself focusing on the various ways other people have failed you. Shit will come at you that you can’t control, and no one else is going to change their ways on your behalf. And if you operate that way? Looking to others? You might end up blind to the people who actually care about you. So scrub out anyone who causes you harm and move forward. But telling yourself that things are the way they are because you’ve been a pawn? Fine. Fate has not been good to you. But that way of thinking isn’t getting you anywhere. You need to jump off the hamster wheel, Clare. You’ve got to take control.”

  Clare blinks fast and looks up. Her cheeks feel flushed. She cannot make eye contact, but when Somers reaches to squeeze her hand, Clare does not withdraw. She releases a sharp laugh to mask the tears.

  “Okay?” Somers says.

  “Okay.”

  “We ready to regroup?”

  “Yes.” Clare rubs her eyes and gestures to the building. “What are we doing here? Seeing the coroner?”

  “Jack Westman’s autopsy was never publicly released. You remember when Douglas Bentley mentioned that? Well, he was right. That’s pretty standard when no one is charged. I could request access from the police file, but that can take a while. And I have this feeling that your friend Germain might not be terribly amenable to sharing it. So I figure we’ll go right to the source.”

  “And the coroner will just give it to you?” Clare asks.

  “I have some tricks to make sure he does,” Somers says.

  Again they sit in silence. Clare cannot give in to how tired she feels. Part of the exhaustion comes from trying to keep everything straight, to keep track of what she’s told Somers and what she hasn’t. Perhaps, Clare thinks, full disclosure is just easier. She takes hold of Somers’s arm.

  “I need to tell you two things before we go inside,” she says.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I called my friend Grace this morning. My friend from home. I grew up with her. She and my ex, Jason, kind of became friends after I left. Long story short, he convinced her that I was bad news.” Clare coughs. “That I was just some junkie who ran off on all my family and friends because I couldn’t hack my life. Anyway. I called her after I left the hotel this morning. And she told me that a woman came to her door a while ago, asking about me. So I had this gut feeling, like this terrible gut feeling, and I emailed Grace a picture of Zoe Westman. It was her. Apparently, Zoe Westman showed up at her house asking about me.”

  Somers presses her fingers to her temples with a groan.

  “This is not computing,” she says. “I don’t get it. How is that possible? She must be wrong.”

  “She’s not wrong,” Clare says. “She wouldn’t make that mistake.”

  “Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. You know that. They can see things that aren’t really there.”

  “Not this time,” Clare says.

  “What in the bloody hell, then?” Somers says. “So Zoe Westman is alive and she’s searching for you? I do not get it.”

  “There’s nothing else you know that you haven’t told me?” Clare asks. “About Jason? About Malcolm? Because like I said, this is all connected. It is. It must be. And I feel like I’m in the middle of it.”

  “I don’t know anything I haven’t already told you,” Somers says. “Like I said, I’ve got my best people on it. And now I’m confused as hell. What’s the second thing you need to tell me? Do I even want to know?”

  “I saw Malcolm Hayes this morning,” Clare says. “He’s here.”

  “Jesus Christ. Are you kidding me?”

  “We’ve been emailing back and forth. That note you got that was directed to me? It was from him.”

  “Okay,” Somers says. “Remember that conversation we just had about lying to each other?”

  “I know,” Clare says. “I saw him less than an hour ago. I was going to tell you. I just needed—”

  “He just rides back into town after taking off, what? Eighteen months ago?”

  “He thinks I’m in danger. That’s why he came back. Or so he says.”

  “Or he’s putting you in danger, Clare. Maybe you’re exactly where he wants you.”

  “He says he’s willing to talk to Germain. To turn himself in. After he knows I’m safe.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” Somers says. “You don’t know what he’s going to do.”

  “You’re right,” Clare says. “I don’t. He said this is all a game to Zoe. So this is what I’m thinking. I think that he’s telling the truth. That Zoe has been alive this whole time, and she disappeared because she’d gotten herself embroiled in some bad business dealings. It was a game to her. She knew they’d pin her disappearance on him, because they always do. It’s always the husband, right? And then she found out about me. I don’t know how. And I became part of her game too. Why? I don’t know, but I have to find out.”

  “So, she went to find Jason. She found out about you.” Something dawns on her. “She was the one making the calls to me.”

  “Maybe,” Clare says. “I think so.”

  “And now they’re here together?” Somers squeezes her eyes closed. “Jason and Zoe Westman? I don’t get it. What for?”

  A cry finally escapes Clare. It comes to her suddenly and clearly, her sprint through the woods behind her and Jason’s home. Running. Running to the car she’d hidden deep in the grove of trees. The note she’d left for Jason to say she was out for a jog, hoping it would buy her enough time, that before he realized, she’d be too far gone for him to catch her scent. She can recall the precise crunch of the snow under her feet. But the strange thing is, the memory of that escape no longer plays in first person for Clare. Instead, it unfolds in her mind as if she’s watching it from above, a spectator instead of the woman running.

  “Listen,” Somers says. “If they show up here, we’ll bring them in. I can drum up some reason to round them up. Give you a head start. Simple as that.”

  “Nothing about this is simple,” Clare says. “I want this to end.”

  “This?”

  “Everything. Malcolm. Jack Westman. Zoe. I’m done running, Somers. I’m done. That’s why I’
m still here. I need to see this through. I need to find my way to the other side so I can stop running.”

  “Okay,” Somers says, quiet.

  “And I want Jason dead.”

  “Jesus. Don’t tell me that. Let’s go with, I want Jason arrested.”

  “I want this to end,” Clare says again.

  Somers removes a notebook from the center console, all-business. “Let’s just do this right, get to work. I’ll call my guy who’s been tracking the signal on Jason’s cell phone. I’ll read him the riot act about the importance of it. We’ll figure out where he is, track him. They’re working on the video, we’re doing everything we can. For now, we deal with this coroner.”

  “Okay,” Clare says. “Let’s go.”

  The county offices are modern and clean. Clare follows Somers through the reception area to the desk. A young man looks up from his phone and offers them a wide smile. Behind him is a poster of a cartoon rabbit outlining proper hand-washing technique. Whatever dark notion of a coroner’s office Clare had formed over years of watching detective shows with her mother, this does not match it.

  “What can I help you with?” the young man asks.

  Somers pulls her badge from her pocket. “Detective Hollis Somers. Is Dr. Flanagan here?”

  “He just arrived back from his lunch, actually. You can go right in.”

  They circle the desk and the receptionist buzzes open the heavy set of double doors. On the other side is a long, sterile hallway. Somers cranes to read the name plates on each door until she comes to the one marked DR. SAMUEL FLANAGAN. CHIEF CORONER. She knocks and enters before getting any response. A man in his fifties looks up from a laptop. This office is large and square, the picture window behind him giving way to the green of a park.

  “Officer Somers,” he says, standing to offer his hand.

  “Detective,” Somers corrects him, glancing at Clare.

  “Right. My mistake. And this is?”

  “Clare O’Kearney. She’s working with me on a case. It’s related to the Westman family. The Lune Bay Westmans. That family.”

  Dr. Flanagan nods with no shift in his expression. “Of course. And you need something from me?”