The Perfect Stranger

by Megan Miranda

  The note about Cobb probably had been from Theo, as a joke, to shake me. Just like the newest assignment from Theo, an assignment that I had given them all carte blanche on and allowed to be anonymous.

  From Mitch’s warning, I knew this Davis Cobb thing was going to swing back around unless something changed with Bethany Jarvitz. I’d heard nothing more about her—not from the police, or the students, or the teachers. It was beginning to feel like she was a ghost already. Who, even if she woke, might not remember or be trusted to remember.

  I just wanted it all to go away. And the only person I’d feel comfortable talking it all through with was gone.

  The space Emmy had occupied only grew more insistent, demanding my attention. I’d taken to sleeping in her bed out of habit. I’d taken to trying on her clothes and looking in the mirror, to remember. Sliding John Hickelman’s watch on and off my wrist. Sitting cross-legged in the dirt, staring off into the forest. Wondering what she was really looking at or for.

  Shh, she’d said.

  Be quiet.

  As if I might spook it. Or as if something had spooked her instead.

  * * *

  EMMY HAD BEEN FLIGHTY at times, but never easily spooked. She could brush off anything and anyone. The crowd was ever changing on us eight years earlier—that summer, we were the only constant. On weekdays, I had my internship and she’d sleep in—and when I got home, she’d be dressed for the night, on her way to a bar across town. On weekends, she worked days. But Friday and Saturday nights belonged to us. On those evenings, she’d wave from across the bar, call my name, push someone over to make room, drape an arm over my shoulders in the already hot and sweaty bar, and I’d feel at home. Let’s dance, she’d say, and I’d hook a finger into her belt loop as she led me through the crowd, so I wouldn’t lose her.

  And eventually, in between the laughter, in between the drinks and the friends she’d just made and the people who smiled too big, she’d lean toward me and say, This is boring, let’s get out of here—and, head spinning, we’d spill out into the night, dizzying and electric and ours.

  She kept everyone else at a distance. Even the guys she brought home from time to time.

  But this was the biggest thing I knew of Emmy—the reason I thought she’d invited me here to begin with: She hated to be alone. It was why she’d wanted me for a roommate eight years ago, even though I couldn’t pay. And why she’d brought people back during the week when I didn’t go out with her. Why she’d liked the voices outside our apartment at all hours of the night.

  Why she’d looked so panicked and stricken in that barroom where I found her again. My being here was supposed to help her. It was supposed to make her better, bring her back.

  And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had somehow left her alone again. Not realizing she was already gone.

  * * *

  I HAD FALLEN ASLEEP in Emmy’s bed and had just hit my alarm in the early morning when my phone rang on Emmy’s bedside table.

  “Did I wake you?” A man’s voice, heavy with sleep. “This is Kyle Donovan.”

  “Nope,” I said, “I’m up.” Though my own voice must’ve given me away.

  “Can I swing by this afternoon? Once you’re home? I thought we could go through some of the phone calls.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Any news from the Peace Corps?”

  There was a pause. “No, not yet.” He paused again. “So, how’s five?”

  “Sure, five. I’ll be here.”

  He’d give me something, and then he’d want the take. And I needed to know what was really happening. If, like Mitch said, they truly were going to let Davis Cobb go back to school. If people believed he had done nothing wrong. If that was true, what the hell did Bethany Jarvitz have to do with anything?

  * * *

  THE JANITOR HADN’T BEEN by my classroom yesterday. He worked on an every-other-day classroom schedule, alternating halls. I noticed the garbage can in the same position I’d left it, and I took the balled-up piece of paper left by Theo from the top with the tips of my fingers. I unfurled the edges, smoothed it along my desk. It was a landscape scene, sketched in pencil. I ran the side of my hand against the page once more, ironing out the creases, and my fingers began to shake.

  The image was of tall weeds. The surface of the lake beyond. It was drawn from the angle I’d stood at that morning and seen the blood.

  I took a deep breath and looked again. It was a crumpled-up piece of paper, a scene of the lake—as anyone could see it.

  It was nothing. Or it was everything.

  The note I believed he’d left in between assignments: It wasn’t Cobb. Because it was him? He’d come in late that day. I’d sensed someone behind me as I walked back from the lake . . . Was it Theo Burton, even then?

  I slid the paper into a folder in the bottom drawer of my desk, the beginning of a file. And then I did exactly what Theo Burton would accuse me of doing: I looked up his information on my class list. Pulled his birthdate, his parents’ names, his phone number, his address. Wrote them all down on a slip of paper and clipped it to the drawing.

  Played the game right back—balling up a random piece of paper, throwing it in the trash, so he wouldn’t think I had noticed. So he wouldn’t know it was missing.

  * * *

  ON THE WAY HOME, I swung by the hospital. Although swung by makes it seem like it was on the way, which it wasn’t. The hospital was a good thirty minutes away, off the highway.

  Inside, I gave Bethany’s name at the front desk and followed the signs for the intensive care unit. I’d been told to check in with the ICU visiting station, but the desk was momentarily vacated, and I found her room first. I peered through the small square window, saw a prone body on a single bed, the tube snaking out of her mouth, the bandages around her head, the curtain covering her lower half.

  I imagined it in print: The halls are empty outside Bethany Jarvitz’s hospital room. A monitor beeps inside the room, her chest rises and falls in time to the rhythm—

  I heard footsteps approaching and made myself stop.

  “Can I help you?” A woman in scrubs peered in the window beside me. “Visiting hours don’t start for another hour. Do you want to wait?” She gestured down the hall toward the lobby I’d just come from.

  “No, it’s okay. I can’t today.”

  Her eyes traveled quickly over my face. “Are you a relative?”

  “No. I just live near her. I was hoping to hear she was getting better.”

  The woman placed a hand on my arm, not saying what I already knew: She wasn’t. “Come back. Visitors help. She could use them.”

  I thought of what Kyle had told me, that Bethany Jarvitz lived alone, had no family, was not from around here.

  Who was this woman whom nobody seemed to know? Where were her friends or colleagues? Her out-of-town relatives?

  “I will,” I said.

  I peered through her window once more. A massive hematoma, Kyle had told me. I pictured the scene from the tall weeds, the gnats in the moonlight—the scene Theo had drawn. A woman walking alone in the middle of the night. A man’s voice rising in anger. Something swung into the side of her head that left her bloodied, left her for dead. I could picture this same scene on any street, on any night, in any city.

  I wished someone had told her: Stick to the roads, to the lights; call a cab or a friend; scream, scream louder, until someone hears.

  Seeing her with a tube down her throat, prone on the bed, I knew: Unless she woke up, unless she spoke up, nothing would happen. There would be no arrest. I could feel it. The way the story was shifting already. The way people were forgetting her. How they never really knew her in the first place.

  On the way out through the lobby, I saw someone I recognized but couldn’t place at first. An older woman, gray hair mixed with black, a narrow face.

  She was the woman I’d met down at the lake that morning. She was the woman who’d found Bethany. Her hands were folded in her lap now, her
eyes cast downward, as if in prayer.

  “Hi,” I said, sitting in a cushioned chair beside her. “Are you here for Bethany?”

  Her green eyes met mine, and she nodded once. “Are you family?” she asked.

  “No, I didn’t know her. I just figured she could use the company. But I missed visiting hours.”

  “Martha,” she said, holding out her hand, looking at me closely. I imagined what she must be seeing—the same similarity the police had noticed. The same eye color, hair color, and shape to our faces; the underlying bone structure of our cheekbones. The element tying me to Bethany to Davis Cobb.

  “Leah,” I said, taking her cold hand in my grasp.

  “I didn’t know her that well, either. But I saw her . . .” She stared at her feet. “Well, and nobody else has come. I feel some responsibility for the girl.”

  “Did she live near you?”

  She tipped her head, almost a nod. “They said she moved up for the data center. Some entry-level job. She lived in the apartment units nearby, with that bus stop.”

  “Hill Crest?” I asked. I knew them. Knew they looked out of place, carved out of a section of the woods, with an ugly sign at the edge of the road, no hill or crest in sight. These were the strangers the locals complained about. There was more of a pass given to the strangers who owned the massive houses built in the new subdivisions.

  “Yes, I think so. She said the apartments, and, well, I don’t know any others nearby.”

  “Kind of out of the way from where she was found,” I said. The apartments were on the other side of the main road, away from the lake, on the street leading out toward the highway instead of cutting in toward the water.

  “Not if you’re walking,” she said. “I’ve seen her down there before, feeding the ducks. That’s how we met. She knew the way. That’s exactly how you’d go if you were walking to a house on the other side of the lake.”

  “Why wouldn’t someone give her a ride back? It was pitch-black.”

  She shook her head. “Why does anyone sneak around in the middle of the night? Why does anyone move to one of those apartments in this town?”

  The place was full of people wanting to start over. Me, Emmy, Bethany Jarvitz. How many people here were dying to escape something? How many people hoped the trees would curve up and around, and the mountains would keep the outside at bay?

  “I have to go,” I said. “But can I leave you my number? Please let me know if she wakes up. If anything changes. Please.”

  She took the slip of paper from my hand. “Sure. This place is full of strangers now. It didn’t used to be like this.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Bethany or me. And I wondered if she thought it was a stranger who had done this instead of Davis Cobb, as my students also believed.

  “Well, I’m glad we’re not strangers anymore,” I said.

  She smiled, and her teeth were slightly crooked, and the skin around her cheekbones was papery thin—but I thought she was someone you’d want on your side. She sat here, keeping watch. She was someone who wouldn’t let anything else happen to a girl all alone in a hospital room, not while she was sitting vigil.

  CHAPTER 14

  I pulled in at home with not much time to spare before Kyle was supposed to arrive. I quickly changed from my work clothes to jeans and tied my hair up.

  Kyle showed up promptly at five, which made me smile. I liked that he was the type of person who knew exactly how long it would take to get somewhere. I watched through the sliding glass doors as he walked from his car. His eyes skimmed the surroundings, and I noticed him pause on the drive. My smile faltered as I wondered what it was he was looking for. In the daylight, I loved these windows: You could see out, and no one could see in. But at night, they worked the other way around.

  He was in a dark jacket and a light button-down, what I’d come to think of as his uniform, his strides measured, and he took the steps two at a time up to my front porch before knocking. I noticed he was chewing gum. For the first time since I’d met him, I thought he looked nervous. Or anxious. That cusp I’ve been on myself, the edge of a story, so sure it would all be mine soon.

  I flipped the lock, slid the door open, forced an easy smile when he smiled first. But when he stepped inside, his nerves dissipated, and so did mine. I liked how I had to look up to see him, and the way he smelled like peppermint gum, and how he put a hand to my waist as he stepped around me. And I knew I was in trouble.

  I got him a glass of water as he sat at my table, and I felt his eyes on me, even as I was turned away. Suddenly, I didn’t want to get started, get serious, with the conversation. I knew how this worked. Cops were like reporters: compartmentalizing.

  I purposely didn’t sit down, prolonging the moment.

  “How’ve you been?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I said, “all things considered.”

  He nodded, sat straighter. “Speaking of things to consider . . . I have something I want you to take a look at.”

  “Okay.” I lowered myself into the chair across from him.

  He took out a photo of a man, slid it my way. “Ever seen this man before?” The switch was flipped, and we were a go.

  The man in the photo had sandy blond hair cut to his chin, his face narrow and angular, his eyes a dull gray. I sat up straighter. “Yes,” I said. “This is him. Emmy’s boyfriend.” My eyes locked with Kyle’s, and he tilted his head to the side. “Jim.”

  But Kyle’s expression was not matching my own. The corners of his mouth tipped down. “James Finley,” he said. “He’s the one who worked at Break Mountain Inn, as you said. He was the one who stopped showing up for work, who they replaced.”

  “Oh,” I said. Not Emmy, then. No sign of Emmy. “Still, this is something, right?”

  “Have you ever spoken to him, Leah?”

  “Only on the phone. Only to take a message for Emmy.”

  “Not in person, then?”

  “No. I only saw him a few times, when he was leaving. Or dropping Emmy off.”

  “He’s got a record,” he said, and I froze. Kyle raised his hand. “Nothing violent, nothing like that. But a record.”

  “What kind of record?” I asked.

  “B and E, check fraud, drunk and disorderly conduct. Your basic lowlife fuckup.”

  “You think . . .” I swallowed air. “You think he did something to her?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Leah. But we’ve got people on it. They’ll pick him up, bring him down, question him, okay?”

  I pressed my thumbs into my temples, resting my elbows on the table. He’d been in my house. In this hall. Maybe even while I slept. Maybe standing right outside the door. Maybe he’d once seen Emmy hiding a key under the deck and knew where she kept it. Maybe he didn’t like the way Emmy could change her mind so quickly, leaving people behind.

  I should’ve seen it. She should’ve seen it. I thought of what I knew of them together, tried to pinpoint the signs, see the warnings in hindsight.

  Early morning, woken by low words from her room, a man’s laughter. “Shh, you need to go,” Emmy had said. Firm and unwavering.

  “You sure about that?” His laughter again.

  My alarm had sounded, and I’d waited in my room. Waited him out. Waited for his steps down the hall. I’d gone out to the hall once I’d heard the front door slide shut, the scent of cigarettes and honey lingering in his wake—stale and sweet. Watched him through the glass as he shrugged on his jacket, tucked his chin-length hair behind his ear. I saw Emmy’s reflection in the glass behind my own.

  “My car broke down, he gave me a ride,” she said.

  I laughed. “Euphemism?”

  I saw her face in the reflection, saw it break into a smile, could imagine the sound of her laughter in the moment before I heard it. “Jim,” she said, as if I had forced it from her.

  I had filed it away in a list of names that wouldn’t mean anything: John and Curtis, Levi, Ted, and Owen—a name uttere
d and soon forgotten.

  When he’d called later that day, asked for her, left his name, I almost wanted to tell him: She’s not going to call you back. Let it go.

  So I was surprised when I saw him again, then again. When his car pulled up and she tumbled out the passenger side. When I heard his voice in the early morning or the middle of the night. When Emmy didn’t tear herself away from him after he fell asleep, to knock on my door, seeking an escape. When I scrawled his name on the sticky notes and slapped them to the wall, and I heard her on the phone later, her voice indecipherably low, pacing as far as the cord would allow.

  “Leah?” Kyle was gesturing toward a paper in front of me.

  “What? Sorry.”

  “This.” Kyle was pointing to a highlighted call on my bill. Labeled Anonymous. Arriving in the dead of night, late last week. When I’d stood in front of the sliding glass doors, listening to the soft movement of air on the line. “Is this Davis Cobb?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Nobody spoke.” Had they let him go already that evening? Had he meant to scare me? To threaten me, as the police believed? I needed to calm down.

  Kyle leaned back in his chair, placed his hands palm-down on the table. “They think she was hit with a rock,” he said. “Bethany Jarvitz. A rock probably picked up from the shoreline.”

  An unplanned attack. I pictured a man following her through the woods. A man picturing me instead.

  “You have some options here,” he continued. “You can document what you have, especially with the emails, and try to file a restraining order against Davis Cobb, keep him from making contact. But I think it will be tough to make stick. Still, getting it going in the system can’t hurt.”

  I was already shaking my head. Definitely not. My stomach churned. If I filed anything, it would go on record, and the police would have to go digging through mine. Then they’d see I had one set against me back in Boston. They’d see the details: harassment, unwanted calls, showing up at the residence of Paige and Aaron Hampton—the whole thing was ridiculous. If the police here found out, everything I said would be tainted—for Kyle, for Emmy. Maybe even for my job.