Her Last Breath

by Hilary Davidson

  Nobody looked up when I invaded the hive, probably because they all had headphones on. I scanned the worker bees carefully. No tech company worth a damn handed out client information without a subpoena. I was looking for an ally, someone who’d help me out because of sympathy or sadness. I picked a woman with candy-pink hair and an impressively large silver ring lodged in her nasal septum.

  “Hi,” I said. “My name is Deirdre Crawley. I got a message from my sister through Osiris’s Vault. Could you help me find out—”

  “Noah!” the woman shouted, without even a glance at me. “We’ve got another one!”

  A man’s head popped up over a cubicle at the far end of the room. “Can I help you?”

  “I got a message from my sister, Caroline Crawley Thraxton,” I said, opting to use her maiden and married names, in case that might jog his memory. “She passed away last week.”

  “Condolences.” He dispensed the word slowly, like it was honey in his mouth. “I’m Noah, manager for community relations.” He slunk out from behind the cubicle wall, a scrawny man with spiky ginger hair cut flat across the top. Thanks to his pointy goatee, his head was a perfect triangle. He sported Buddy Holly glasses, an eyebrow ring, and a tattoo of a mandala on his forearm. A perfect hipster trifecta.

  “Deirdre Crawley.” I took a step closer.

  “Whoa.” Noah put up his hands, as if I’d pulled a knife on him. “Step back. More.”

  “Okay.” People had been jittery about their personal space since the pandemic. A couple of worker bees had pulled off their headphones and were watching me. “Like I said, I’m here because of my sister. Today, at her funeral, I got a message saying that if she died, it was because her husband was going to kill her.”

  “Let me get you a form.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t clear. My sister said her husband was going to kill her, and now she’s dead.” I gulped. I’d psyched myself up to tell the story in an unemotional way. I wasn’t ready to fill out paperwork.

  “Hold on,” Noah said, ducking back toward his cubicle. He threw a bright-green sheet of paper at me. “This is what you need.”

  I caught it in midair. “My sister might have been murdered. In her message, she said—”

  “Fill out the form.” Noah’s face was impassive.

  “Her message said her husband, Theo Thraxton, killed his first wife. Until I read that, I didn’t know he had a first wife. Nobody did. But it’s true.”

  “Fill out the form.”

  All over my body, muscles were clenching in tight knots. I was desperate. “Can you at least tell me when her message was created?”

  “We can’t give information out about our clients. That would be a violation of confidentiality.”

  “But she’s dead.”

  Noah shrugged.

  “What will the form do for me?” I asked.

  Noah sighed, as if I were being obtuse. “Then we’ll check our records to see what information we can release.”

  I couldn’t hide my disappointment, but I fished a pen out of my bag. The questions on the form were basic: my name and address, my sister’s name and address, the reason for my inquiry. I filled it in, writing My sister was murdered as the reason for my query. Noah took back the form, holding it at arm’s length between thumb and forefinger.

  “Okay. Now you need to go. You’ll hear from us in the next thirty days.”

  I choked. “Thirty days?”

  “Look, we’re a digital-storage service that promises our clients absolute confidentiality,” Noah said. “We don’t give information to anyone who walks in off the street.”

  “But the message said there were files.”

  “Then click through for them.”

  “There weren’t any!”

  “That means you’re not authorized to see them,” Noah said. “That’s a dead end.”

  “I came here before talking to the cops,” I said, desperate to spur him to action. “You want them to come in here?”

  “They can fill out the form too.” Noah shut the door behind me.

  I braced myself against the wall, feeling physically ill. I’d been operating under a delusion, telling myself if people knew there was something suspicious about my sister’s tragic death, they’d help me. If Noah was anything to go by, I was dead wrong. Worse, I’d had visions of myself finding a key piece of evidence, bringing it to the cops, and forcing them to investigate Theo. But I was closing in on a truth I wanted to avoid: I had no clue what the hell I was doing.

  I left the building with my tail between my legs. Outside, on the cracked sidewalk, I kicked the side of the building. I did it again and again, until my foot hurt.

  Bring him to justice, no matter what you have to do, Caro had written. My sister had faith in me, but it was misguided.

  I lurched away from the building, my foot aching. I felt like an idiot. Moving slowly, I made my way south back toward 161st Street. After a block, I heard steps behind me. Turning, I spotted a heavyset guy hurrying toward me. “Hey!” he called, waving.

  “Hey,” I answered back. He’d been tucked into a cube in the office, though all I’d seen of him was a shaved head and a T-shirt with “Rough Trade” written across the top. As he came closer, I could make out the photo underneath. It looked like an album cover, with two androgynous figures, one in silhouette and the other in a white suit. When we were finally face-to-face, I realized the suited character was a curiously attractive woman.

  He noticed me staring at it. “Carole Pope. She’s an icon.”

  I didn’t recognize the name, but I nodded. “Cool shirt.”

  “Noah sucks,” the guy said, slightly out of breath. “He just called you a bitch and shredded your form.”

  “I regret not poking him in the eye. I should go back and take care of that.”

  “He gets away with shit on account of being the CEO’s kid brother.” The guy took a couple of breaths. “I really need to get out more. I’m Todd, by the way.”

  “Deirdre.”

  He handed me a folded sheet of paper. “I printed this for you.”

  I unfolded the page. Caroline Crawley—account created April 3, 3:25 p.m.

  “That was two weeks before she died,” I said. “What are the other dates on this page?”

  “Most people create an account and log in a bunch of times to fine-tune their messages,” Todd said. “Your sister logged in a lot on April third and fourth, checked in on the eleventh, then not again until the fifteenth.”

  I scanned them and almost stopped breathing at the last one. “April fifteenth, 5:17 a.m. That’s the day she died.” I stared at him. “You’re telling me my sister wrote this message to me right before she died?”

  “She started writing a message to you before that,” Todd said. “I can’t tell you about earlier versions. They’re on a server somewhere, but you really will need a subpoena to get them.”

  “Why did I only get her message a week after she died?”

  “That was the dead man’s switch.”

  “The dead man’s what?” My shock must’ve shown in my face, because Todd took a step back and put a hand up, like he was warding off evil.

  “Don’t freak out,” he said. “You never heard that phrase? It’s a security feature, basically a fail-safe. It’s dormant so long as a person is checking in on it, but if they fail to log in within a certain time frame . . . boom. It goes off.”

  “The letter went out because my sister didn’t check in?”

  “Exactly. Her account was set for a week-long delay.”

  My eyes stung as if a thousand invisible hornets were attacking me. “Sorry.” I wiped away a tear. “That’s helpful.”

  “The bad news is the dead man’s switch deleted all her files,” Todd said.

  “But the police can get that with a subpoena, right?”

  He shook his head. “We’re called Osiris’s Vault for a reason. Our shit is locked down tight. Those files are gone for good. There’s no way to recover them
.”

  I felt so lost at that moment. My sister needed my help, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do for her.

  “The other thing I can tell you is that your sister wrote messages to three people,” Todd added.

  I took a breath. If Caroline had written to me, she’d surely sent a message to our father as well. “Let me guess: Ryan Crawley?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t print that one out because I figured he’s family, and he can show it to you. I don’t need more trouble.”

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed but unwilling to spill the truth, which was this: I was more likely to visit the moon than see any message Caro sent our father. She had always been close to him. When she’d had to choose between us, she’d taken his side. “Was the other one to Theo Thraxton?”

  Todd shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know. In the name field, your sister put an X.”

  “Like X marks the spot?” I asked. Heathcliff was the only alias I remembered her using for Theo.

  Todd shrugged. “I figured you’d know. I wrote down the email address for you.” He handed me another piece of paper. “With the message.”

  My hands shook as I unfolded the page. There was Caroline’s third message in black and white:

  If I fail, you have to do it. I am putting all of my faith and trust in you. My son’s future depends on it.

  “What the hell?” I asked aloud.

  “It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” Todd said. “It’s spooky as fuck, right?”

  It was, and it tightened the knot in the pit of my stomach. What had my sister been up to before she died?

  CHAPTER 8

  DEIRDRE

  That evening, I had energy to burn, so I went to my dojo to punch and kick the heavy bag until it gave in. It was too late for a class, but Sensei Higashi kept the dojo open until eleven for students who wanted to train on their own. He was in a corner, jumping rope so fast you couldn’t see the cord, though it cracked against the splintery wooden floor now and again. I was working on the bag when my best friend walked in. I caught sight of Reagan in the mirror.

  “How’d you know I would be here?” I asked her.

  “Where else would you be on the day of your sister’s funeral?” she answered. “You’re nothing if not predictable.”

  We were in the same rectangular room where we’d started studying karate together when we were seven. A mirrored wall ran along one side, with a framed photograph of Dr. Chitose, the founder of the Chito-ryu style of karate, hanging above it. The other walls were mangy gray, equal parts old paint and smoke from the pool hall that shared the hallway with the Higashi School of Karate. Around the dojo were black-lettered banners saying things like Only those who have patience to do simple things perfectly can do difficult things easily. At seven, I’d been a pocket-sized cynic who read that as a hackneyed cliché. That hadn’t changed.

  “You suiting up to spar?” I asked.

  “Facing off against you in a mood? No, thanks.” She set down the duffel bag she was holding. “Tiger Mom is worried you’ll get rickets from living on protein bars. She cooked for you.”

  “She’s the best,” I said.

  “You say that because you don’t live with her anymore,” Reagan said. “Last Saturday, I slept in until eight, and she lectured me about wasting my life. I told her I worked seventy hours last week and got a spiel on how hard she and my dad had to work when they were our age.”

  “I like that she’s tough.” Reagan’s mom was named Vera, but I could only think of her as Mrs. Chen. She was incredibly kind, but also bracingly direct and opinionated. Now that Caro was gone, Reagan and her mom were the closest thing I had to family. When Reagan’s dad had gotten sick with a brain tumor when we were ten, my best friend had practically moved in with my family. She stayed with us for the two years Mr. Chen suffered through before he died. Then Reagan and her mom had taken me in when I was a teenager who couldn’t live in her parents’ house anymore.

  “She’s kind of worried about you.” Reagan crossed her arms. “She figured we’d hear from you after the funeral. I told her you’d be hiding out like a wounded wolf.”

  “It wasn’t just the funeral. It was . . .” The words died on my lips. Reagan knew me well enough not to say anything. I took a few breaths from my diaphragm. That was one thing karate had taught me that I carried everywhere. “What would you say if I told you there’s something suspicious about my sister’s death?”

  Reagan didn’t flinch. “She died suddenly, and no one knew she had a heart condition. You could call that suspicious.”

  “More than that. Something else.”

  “Is this about a feeling you have, or evidence?” Reagan was a data analyst, and I had yet to meet anyone whose work matched their personality better than hers. She had a photographic memory and the ability to recall conversations perfectly. It could be annoying sometimes, because she questioned everything.

  My phone was against the wall, charging. “I got a message from my sister today,” I said, picking it up and scrolling through my email. When I found what I was looking for, I passed the phone to Reagan.

  She stared at it for what felt like an hour. When she finally looked at me, she was frowning.

  “It sounds like your sister,” she said. “But are you a hundred percent sure it’s real?”

  I ticked the reasons off on my fingers. “She mentioned what our mom went through, and who else knows that? She called me Dodo, which was her nickname for me when I was a kid. I found out it’s true that her husband was married before. What part doesn’t ring true?”

  “That first line—I keep thinking of Mom, and how you never believe you’re going to end up like one of your parents, until you do—I can literally hear Caroline’s voice in my head saying that,” Reagan said. “But the part where she says to bring her husband to justice? What does she expect you to do?”

  I had been wondering about that myself. “Maybe she meant I should go to the police. Or maybe she wanted me to do to Theo what I did to my father.”

  “Absolutely not.” Reagan’s voice was sharp. “Your sister cared about you. She wouldn’t ask you to do something that would land you in jail, Dee. Stop thinking like that.”

  I sighed. She was right.

  “Caro wrote it because she knew she was in danger,” I said. “She was expecting something awful to happen.”

  “That makes sense,” Reagan said. “But here’s another thing that doesn’t sound like Caroline: she knew Theo killed his first wife, and she stayed with him? No. She wouldn’t do that.”

  Reagan was right about that too. She was good with puzzles, and she was sliding bits of information into place, creating a picture I could barely grasp the edges of. Maybe I wasn’t ready to look at it.

  “When I confronted Theo, he was shocked I knew about the first wife. Maybe Caro just found out about her? That could be what put her in danger.”

  “Back up,” Reagan said. “What’s this about you confronting Theo?”

  “I was in the car with him on the way to Green-Wood. I felt like . . . like it was now or never. I had to find out if what Caro wrote was true.”

  “One day, you’ll pass the marshmallow test, Dee. But today is not that day. You just lost the element of surprise.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Dee, if this guy killed his wife, what do you think he’ll do to you?”

  “I don’t care,” I repeated.

  Reagan set the duffel bag on the floor and retrieved the medicine ball. It was a misshapen leather sphere weighed down, we suspected, with lead. Gyms had them, too, but the dojo’s was unique. It looked like Dr. Chitose himself might’ve sent it over from Kumamoto, back in the day. It was no longer spherical, if you wanted to be picky about it, and it was crisscrossed with dozens of Frankenstein-worthy seams that were probably sewn with fishing wire. It had been in the dojo as long as I could remember.

  She threw it at me. There was no way to catch it without absorbing some of the blo
w with my body.

  “Okay, you’ve got some sense of self-preservation,” Reagan observed.

  I tossed it back. Reagan was five four, but she had a lot of muscle, and she caught the ball easily. “My sister trusted me,” I said. “She sent me this message asking for help.”

  “Caroline could’ve sent your father a message too. Have you talked with him?”

  I almost dropped the ball. Sometimes Reagan seemed to have ESP. There was no point hiding any detail from her, because she’d drag it out of me. “I went to the company that forwarded the message. They were assholes, but one guy tried to help me. Caro sent a message to our father, but I don’t know what it said.”

  “You could ask him, you know.”

  “Ha ha. And there was a third message.”

  “To her friend Jude?” Reagan guessed.

  I set the ball on the floor. I’d guessed Theo, but I’d been wrong. Jude was a much better guess.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, retrieving the page from my bag. “There’s no name, just an X. This was the message.”

  Reagan took it in quickly, and her eyebrows shot up. “This is nuts. Is that Jude’s email? It looks like a random string of numbers and letters.”

  “It’s not the one I have for her.”

  “This is getting crazier by the minute. Who else was your sister tight with?”

  I shrugged. “I can’t think of anyone.”

  “Maybe the police can figure that part out.”

  “I don’t have a lot of faith in cops.”

  “Fair enough, based on your experience,” Reagan said. “Promise me one thing. You will go to the police. You will not try to get revenge on Theo by yourself.”

  “You think I can’t take him?”

  “Dee, listen to me. You can’t do this alone,” Reagan said. “If we’re going to get justice for your sister, we need the police to be involved.”

  “We?”

  “Yes. We,” Reagan said. “Dummy.”

  There was a hard lump in my throat. “Okay. I’ll talk to the cops before work tomorrow.”