Someone who had heard about this and passed on the information, letting it snake its way through the public—a call to action. A trail of whispers gaining force.
CHAPTER 25
The police prepared to leave, all evidence bagged and annotated, paperwork spread on my kitchen table. A pile of plastic-wrapped knives, a bunch of receipts pulled from the kitchen drawers. A lone sticky note that had been lost under the couch, in my handwriting, that said: CALL JIM.
“What’s with the receipts?” I asked.
Kyle spread his hands over the material as if they were artifacts at a museum. “Here’s what we know, Leah. James Finley, or someone at the motel, made several calls to this number in the days presumably leading up to his death. There are a few calls from here to there as well. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of knife here that looks like the murder weapon, and it doesn’t appear that any sort of crime happened in this house. But this is what we don’t know: We don’t know who she is. We can’t find a record of her working at any motel. Your neighbors can’t describe her, though they have seen her car. One man claims he’s seen her driving up the road before.”
My heart fluttered, a piece of Emmy, someone else who could bring her to life.
Kyle continued, “But there’s no paperwork in this house that belongs to her.” He tapped a pile of papers beside him. “Though I did take a picture of a few of your documents, car registration and the like, to rule them out. So, the receipts are our only lead right now. If any of these were from her, we could go to the store, trace back the time stamp, see if they have any video where we can find her.”
I looked over the pile. Didn’t like that he’d taken a picture of my information, but couldn’t find a reason to object. Those receipts were mostly mine. I doubted Emmy stored any in drawers. I imagined her balling them up and tossing them whenever she left the store, if she took them at all.
“So, your job,” he said, “is to sit with Officer Dodge and tell him which are yours and which might belong to her. Think you can do that?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
I looked at the knives on the table. Looked back up at Kyle, and his eyes softened. “I know you think she’s the victim here, but it’s hard to prove that. It’s hard, Leah.” But then his eyes flicked away, roaming the room. My stomach churned, wondering if he was playing me even now. He’d had that paper, and he’d gotten the search, just like he wanted. And now I wondered what else he wanted from me.
“You really think she had something to do with this?”
“Well, like I said, hard to prove that, too, right?”
I noticed Egan watching Kyle carefully, and worried anyone could tell. That maybe he wasn’t typically this forthcoming with information, or this friendly with a witness, or this gentle.
I sat at the table in front of the receipts, kept my eyes down, and waited for them to go.
“We all want the same thing here,” Kyle said. “We just want to find her. We want to make sure she’s okay. And we want to find out what happened.”
I can usually tell when someone is lying to me. It starts like this, with the setup, with the motivation.
This was how news stories worked as well, preying on the same desire of all mankind. We like the story arc. Give us the preamble and we crave the conclusion.
This is what keeps readers coming back to the paper. Searching for more information, to see if there’s been an arrest, a trial, a conclusion. The injustice, preceding the inevitable justice.
We demand a closed circuit.
Sometimes we don’t get it. But nobody wants to talk about that. It’s what drives us to orchestrate the story, forcing the pieces until they fit.
Sitting in front of the receipts on the table, a crowd hovering outside my window in the distance, and the policeman standing across from me, I knew we were all craving the same thing, one way or another—and I was the only one who could bring it to a close.
* * *
CALVIN DODGE SAT ACROSS from me, and I could see the dirt under his fingernails, smell the cold earth coming off him, and knew he had been under the house again. I was glad I had moved the box, not sure what I’d be able to say to explain it. I tried not to stare at his hands, to pretend I hadn’t noticed, as I began sorting through the receipts. I slid them his way, one after the other, telling him, “Mine.” He’d check them off and move them to a pile. There were a few gas receipts I wasn’t sure about and told him so. He took those from me, jotting down the details in a separate notebook.
He stretched and fidgeted, but he didn’t speak. I figured he was the one left behind because he had the least seniority. And I hoped that could work to my advantage. He was young enough that he could’ve been unjaded by the realities of his job—still running on adrenaline and the dream.
“Mine,” I said, handing him another receipt, and then I twisted side to side in the chair, stretching out my back. “Can I take a break?”
“Sure,” he said.
I stood and poured myself a glass of water, offered one to him as well. “I also have soda. Or beer.”
“I’ll take the soda,” he said.
I popped the top of a can and listened to it fizz as I poured it into a glass.
“Thanks,” he said, taking it from my hand.
I stayed standing at the kitchen counter, took a long drink, and said, “Does everyone think this has something to do with the Cobb case? I just can’t see how it’s all connected.”
Dodge held the glass with one hand, leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know. They’re keeping all options open.”
“Heard they think he used a rock, one of the ones down by the lake.”
“Yeah. Haven’t found it yet, though.”
“But someone called and said it was him, right? Down at the lake that night? I mean, that’s why you all picked him up, isn’t it?”
He took a sip, shrugged. “Call was anonymous. Lady said it was him. Enough for a pickup, a questioning, and a temporary hold. Not enough to charge him, though.”
I breathed slowly, making room for the information. An anonymous source, and for what. For what? There was a reason for the anonymous. There was always a reason.
“You don’t know who it might be?”
He opened his mouth, shut it, twisted the glass back and forth on the tabletop. “No,” he said.
Which was a lie. They could trace the source of the call, where it was placed from. They would have the voice on file. They would have something.
I looked around my house, searching for understanding. “What’s the working theory here?” I asked. Took another sip so I wouldn’t be caught holding my breath.
Dodge looked at me, debating. He licked his lips. Stood on that line. In my experience, they’ll usually tip my way if they’re already on the line. They’ll answer not because I’ve tricked them into it but because they want the same thing we do.
“The working theory is what you told us. That’s the strongest lead we have.”
But I didn’t really believe him. “Yeah? Then what’s with the search?” I pressed.
His jaw shifted. “If she was taken from here like you thought, then a weapon could’ve been taken from here, too. It could’ve been a weapon of opportunity. Maybe she and James Finley were here together. Maybe this is where things started to turn bad. Maybe one of them took it for defense, and it was used against them.”
A string of maybes, all placing Emmy as victim.
“If you really thought that,” I said, “you would’ve taken her toothbrush or her hairbrush for DNA. You would’ve dusted for fingerprints. You would’ve had someone in here, interviewing me some more. You would’ve—”
The words stuck in my throat, realizing what they would’ve done. What they should’ve done.
They would’ve had someone in here, taking a description from me. A detailed description. A sketch artist who would bring Emmy to life.
Sometimes it’s what’s missing that’s the answer. Sometimes that’s the story.
The missing knife. Or the No comment, or the demand to speak to an attorney. Sometimes what they don’t do or don’t say is all the evidence you need.
The police had not called someone in. Maybe they were waiting some more, maybe they didn’t have someone on payroll. But there was another explanation. It made Dodge look away as the papers on the table rippled with urgency in the breeze.
I blew out a breath. “Let’s just get this done,” I said, sitting across from him once more.
* * *
AT THE END, THERE were a few possible receipts, paid in cash, that could’ve been Emmy’s. Gas in the car, a few dollars here or there at the nearby supermarket. But they could’ve just as easily been mine. Still, I had to try.
Because despite what Dodge had claimed, I believed there were a few different theories they were looking into:
The first, that something happened to both Emmy and James Finley.
The second, that Emmy did something to James Finley and left.
And then there was the third theory, the one that Kyle had alluded to earlier, before I’d convinced him otherwise—or so I’d thought. Nobody had yet spoken it outright, but I could see it buried underneath, starting to poke its way to the surface. In the way they carefully approached a subject. In the things they took or didn’t take. In the things they hadn’t yet done and hadn’t asked me.
The third theory, of course, was this: that Emmy Grey did not exist. Not just in name but the girl herself.
And that she never did.
CHAPTER 26
It was after midnight, and I was finally sure I was alone. The crowd outside had dispersed at dusk, slipping away in their cars or fading into the woods—going back to wherever it was they came from. The house was a mess, in disarray, and my hands shook as I put everything back in its place.
The utensils had all been handled, jumbled, replaced. I dumped them into the sink to clean again, imagining dirt and germs everywhere. They’d reached their hands underneath our mattresses, and our sheets were disheveled and twisted. Underneath the bathroom sink, they’d seen my box of tampons, the bottles of lotions, bars of soap. The tweezers and the toothpaste tube, which was mostly empty and crusted around the opening. They knew the brand of deodorant I used, had seen the razor hanging on the shower wall, had found the opened box of condoms in my bedside table.
They may have taken only the knives and slips of paper, but they’d come away with far more. An insight into the intimate workings of our lives.
I wondered if Kyle had gone through here himself. If he’d opened that box in my bedside table. If he’d counted.
I sat on my heels in the corner of the bathroom, feeling exposed and dirty and angry, and I heard my own breath, like that of an animal in a cage. I stood, splashed water on my face, leaned against the counter, and stared at myself in the mirror. Pull it together, Leah. My eyes looked wild, red-rimmed, and my face gaunt—and in the dim light, I could almost see her here. Hunched over, tracing her fingers over her own cheekbones, surprised by the person she discovered.
My God, Emmy, what did you do?
I tore down the hallway and turned all the lights off so no one could see in. Then I slid open the door and listened to the night. I closed my eyes, made my breathing slow and even, counting off all the things I knew: the crickets; things moving in the woods, far away; the whisper of the night wind.
I kept my eyes closed, moved with my hand on the railing, so I would not imagine things in the darkness that I couldn’t see.
I reached the dirt at the base of the steps and walked by heart to the dark shape in the driveway. I felt the unknown calling me—pulling me closer. Until I was at the car, and the beep of the key, the flash of the brake lights, cut through the night. I eased the trunk open as silently as I could before lifting out the box, which was mostly empty and nearly weightless.
I didn’t turn the lights back on until I was firmly inside my house, in Emmy’s room, with the door closed behind me and the curtains pulled shut. It wasn’t safe to bring the box out to the surface. It was too dangerous to keep it up here when they’d just gone through my house. To leave a photo around that could only tie Emmy to the Davis Cobb case. I opened the top and pulled out each item, careful to hold them with my sleeve, leaving my prints off them, taking pictures with my phone.
She had left this box in Boston, and I imagined everything had come from there, from eight years earlier. She was living in an apartment. Other people saw her, saw us, and I could prove it.
I stared at that photo again, the girl who was almost me, twisting it back and forth until the glare from the bedside table light reflecting off the glossy surface burned my eyes, and all I could see in the dark, as I walked the box back to the trunk of my car, were the spots where the light once was.
* * *
I GOT READY FOR school early, waiting to make the call until I knew he’d be up. And then, in the time I usually took my shower, I turned off the lights and watched out the window—looking toward the woods. Waiting to see who might emerge. If there was someone who watched, as I had believed. Someone who came during the time they knew I wouldn’t be focused or paying attention.
But by the time I was usually cleaning up after breakfast, nobody had made an appearance. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I was imagining things. I searched my mind once more for the footsteps, tried to hear them again. Tried to be sure.
I checked the clock one last time, knew he’d be up, probably on his way out the door—and placed the call.
“Whitman,” he answered.
“Hi, Noah,” I said. “I need a favor.”
There was a pause, and his voice dropped lower, felt closer. “Gee, Leah, nice to hear from you. A favor, huh? I think that ship has sailed.”
I cringed. We used to throw idioms around like this as a joke. Somehow ironic, or so I’d thought. But maybe I’d only imagined that, thinking him more clever than he actually was.
“You owe me one, Noah. You know you do.”
“You’ve lost it,” he said.
“I know what you did. I know the deal you took, because you sure as hell didn’t earn that promotion. You think I won’t bring the whole thing tumbling down? Think your name won’t come into play? What do you think will happen to your career when people find out that you knew what happened and helped cover it up?”
“Jesus Christ, Leah,” he said, and I knew I had him. “I don’t know what’s in that Pennsylvania air, what type of shit they put out into the atmosphere, but it has seriously twisted your perspective.”
I felt a little flip of my stomach, the discovery that he knew where I was. I wondered if he’d looked me up, whether he wondered, whether he thought of me. And what that meant.
It had been my biggest mistake, confiding in Noah. Six months together, and a friendship before, and in the end, he traded it all in without remorse—I was a scoop he gave our boss, a step he used for leverage. His motivations weren’t pure, despite what he claimed.
Maybe he’d been that person at one time, maybe he thought he still was. Maybe he told himself it was the right thing to do—that the ends justified the means. But the fact remained that he had benefited where others had fallen.
The paper had to watch its back. That, too, was a business first. Even after Noah told our boss, Logan couldn’t turn on me completely. He just had to buy them some distance and hope it stayed buried.
Quit, he said, and I did.
They kept no loose ends. Even Noah, they sucked into the mess. His silence for a promotion. And by accepting, he had become complicit.
But maybe we were all complicit, with the company we chose to keep.
And maybe that was reflected in living with two other people in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment eight years ago. I slid into their lives, too comfortable, never putting up walls. I had followed Emmy here, this woman I truly knew so little about.
“They won’t believe you, Leah.” Noah had gotten a grip, and I heard his voice more pronounced now, his lines
prepared and delivered with more clarity. “You’re a known liar.”
But I had his attention. We lived and died on reputation. Whether it was true or not, he had to wonder what it would do to him. “Everyone goes down, Noah. Everyone.”
“Listen,” he said. And there was something different about his voice, something knowing. “Are you listening? Do you ever listen? Because right now would be a great time to start, Leah. So turn off those gears and pay attention. There’s not even an inkling of a civil suit, okay? Not a peep. Let sleeping dogs lie.”
How had I fallen for someone who used the basest and most primitive of idioms? Everything about him grated on me.
“One thing, Noah. It’s just a name. You owe me. You know you owe me.”
There was silence, and I seized it.
“Bethany Jarvitz. I need everything on Bethany Jarvitz. J-A-R-V-I-T-Z. History, next of kin, known associates, everything. Date of birth, places of employment, current and past residence—”
“I got a call yesterday evening. Thought it was a job reference for you, which I thought was pretty ballsy, even for you. But it was just Kassidy putting someone in contact. Seems a colleague down in western Pennsylvania called about a Leah Stevens, last known residence of Boston, had your license and everything. A teacher, Leah? Really?”
So that was how Noah knew where I was. Someone had called him. It was beginning, the house of cards, ready to fall.
“Who was it?” I asked.
He laughed, like he knew he had me.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Really.”
“Really. So what I’m thinking, what I’m really thinking, is that I don’t owe you shit.”
“I don’t believe you. You must have said something.”
“Like hell I did. All I said was Leah Stevens? Real nice girl. Real. Nice.” He dragged out the words, laced them with something else. “The job got to her, is what I told him. Was all I told him.”
The Perfect Stranger Page 18