And Now She's Gone

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Gray didn’t leave the bed even then, because her limbs refused to move. She didn’t feel … together. There was the pain in her abdomen, but her unease was more than that. She dragged herself to the bathroom, popped another oxycodone, then dragged herself back to bed.

  Outside, Los Angeles was so bright—it looked too hot to verb in that light. She fell asleep, so tired, and awakened again to watch the sun move across the sky. She listened to fire engine sirens wail over the thrum of freeway music; listened to her refrigerator gurgle like a swamp thing; heard her phone vibrate with texts and calls and emails. She responded only to her body and its needs. Sleep, relax, let go. She didn’t eat—didn’t need to. The soul food had taken care of her daily calorie requirements for the next month.

  Finally, Gray turned on the television and found The Lord of the Rings on cable.

  At four o’clock, she answered one phone call.

  “You okay?” Nick sounded guarded, worried.

  She sat up in bed as the Ringwraiths surrounded the Fellowship. “Meh. Mental and physical health day.” She glanced at her phone’s call log.

  Tea, Tea, Isabel, Clarissa, Jennifer, Clarissa, Toyia, Tea, Tea …

  “From the appendectomy,” he asked, “or…”

  “That”—and narcotics—“and I just needed a moment to do nothing. This Lincoln case is a Dumpster fire caught in the middle of a tire fire, and the heroine needs to regain her strength in order to continue.”

  “Maybe you should go to urgent care.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m flying back tonight, but call if you need me before then.” He paused, then asked, “You ever find out who sent you the roses?”

  Dread—of Nick’s reaction, of Sean’s resurgence—bundled in her stomach. She rubbed the scar along her jaw. “Uh-huh.”

  “Who?”

  “Take a guess.”

  Silence. Then, “Who?”

  “Sean.”

  More silence, and then, “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  She rubbed her face and groaned. “Girl runs from boy, boy finds girl, boy sends girl menacing texts and her favorite flowers. Tale as old as time.”

  “I’ll get an earlier flight—”

  “Don’t. I’m good.”

  “How did he find you?”

  “No idea. I did a search and I can’t find the old me. But you know what? It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not okay.” His voice had climbed an octave, and she pictured him pacing the floor wherever he was, hand over his eyes then running through his hair. “How can I hide other women if—”

  “Nick, calm—”

  “This is my fucking business model, Grayson. You and Lauren and Christina and … and … All of you rely on my ability to keep you hid, to keep you safe, and now this fucker is sending you flowers? What the fuck?”

  She clamped her lips. He was right.

  “Your gun?” he asked.

  She lifted the pillow and saw the Glock nestled there. “Right next to me. She says hi.”

  “Natalie—”

  “Uh-oh. Calling me by my name name.”

  “Sorry. Slipped. This can’t—”

  “I’m gonna handle it.”

  “How, Grayson?”

  “So many questions this early in the morning.”

  “It’s after four o’clock.”

  “It’s morning somewhere.”

  He took a deep breath and released it. “Listen. Stay with me for a few days. At least until I figure out how he found you.”

  “You’re not in charge of my messes. How many times do I have to keep saying that?”

  “I’m only asking for you to stay until I find out how … Shit.”

  “I’ll think about it.” She raked her fingers across her scalp. “I’m kinda itching for a fight, to be honest. Slaying the dragon has always been on my ultimate bucket list.”

  “Do you understand my concern?”

  “I do.”

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “I’m so sorry, Nat,” he said. “I should’ve done better. Guess I got cocky. Guess—”

  “Dom,” she whispered. “Don’t. Evil squeezes into tight spaces. We’ll figure it out.”

  “You’re remarkably calm.”

  “I’ve been asleep all day.” And drugged. “I have a gun. I have knives. I have a phone and muscle memory. I’ll watch my back. If it starts to get crazy, I will move in again. Promise. I’m not planning to lose my life to this man. I’ll go to jail first.”

  “It won’t come to that. I’m still taking an earlier flight home. You have the house key?”

  “Yup. I have to do a little work now. Earn my paycheck.” She peered through the window blinds at the dusky sunlight turning the hills of Chavez Ravine creamy blue. “Thank you for calling. I feel a little better, to be honest.”

  And she did. Still, she decided not to do too much today, since today was damn near over. She listened to her voice mails—every woman except Toyia wanted something from her.

  Call me back.

  Let us know you’re okay.

  Call me back.

  Let me know if you got it.

  Toyia’s message was exact: “Omar ain’t married. I don’t know no Elyse Miller.”

  Gray said, “Fuck it,” because Omar Neville wasn’t her client. Not my monkeys, not my circus. What grown people did in the privacy of their own homes did not concern her. And with that, she pulled on her favorite pair of relaxed Levi’s and a soft black T-shirt. After makeup, hair, leather jacket, and black leather Cons, she went out the door and down into the twilight.

  Located off Venice Boulevard, the Helms Bakery District used to be exactly that—a strip of shops, established in 1931, that delivered baked goods to Angelenos all around the city. Now a landmark, that strip was home to fancy furniture stores and restaurants that charged too much—for a couch and for a sandwich. Shalimar sold Persian-inspired decor, from curly-edged accent tables to fussy chaise longues that cost as much as Gray’s Camry.

  Mitch Pravin, the store owner and Isabel Lincoln’s ex-boyfriend, wore a Bluetooth earpiece like the commander of the starship Enterprise and twisted impatiently in his scrolled and ornate, built-for-a-shah office chair. His work space smelled domestic and exotic—French fries and paprika.

  Gray asked him about his relationship with Isabel Lincoln.

  That’s when he stopped twisting in his chair to sneer at her. “Who?”

  She held up the picture of the Mary Ann with the long ponytail and Vogue cheekbones.

  He flicked his hand. “We never dated.”

  “Slept together, kicked it, booty call, whatever.”

  “You don’t get it. I didn’t date her. I didn’t sleep with her. That bitch T-boned my Maserati last year.”

  According to Mitch Pravin, the accident had happened four months before Isabel met Ian O’Donnell. “And then she tried to talk me out of suing her. Letting her pay me off the books and shit. And yeah, she offered to blow me, so I took her number. She sent me a promissory note … Where’d I put that?”

  Gray waited, nervous and wanting to chew her fingernail or rub her jaw scar or pace, but she willed herself to sit and wait and ignore the pew-pew-pew now going off around her body.

  He opened a drawer and halfheartedly pawed through some papers before slamming the drawer shut. “It said she’d pay me six hundred a month. The first money order she gives me goes through, right? But then the next month? She sends me nothing. So I called her, and she called back, but I was with a customer. I called her again and no answer. She stopped returning my calls, but I kept lighting up her phone all times of night. From March to September, every fuckin’ night I’d call, understand? And then I started texting her. Nothing.

  “That’s when she finally blocks me. The address she gave me, some dump over on Vermont, near USC? A complete lie. She didn’t live there. I didn’t have any other information cuz how many fuckin’ Li
sas or whatever live in L.A.? Hundreds. Anyway. You find her, let me know, cuz so help me, I’m coming after her ass.”

  30

  The stalking, violent boyfriend? Wasn’t violent. Wasn’t a stalker. Wasn’t even a boyfriend. He was a victim. Isabel’s victim.

  And now she was gone.

  But Gray would find her. Just like Sean had found her.

  And how had he done that?

  Had he used someone like Nick to search for her? Had he somehow obtained her medical records? Always sold and shared, those records, and the janky clinic that had performed her appendectomy looked like it needed some cash.

  But she hadn’t used her old name at admissions at that janky clinic. Hell, she hadn’t used her married name at admissions even when it had been her name at that moment.

  Back then, she’d only visit shady clinics in Las Vegas, or farther south in Henderson. Hours-long waits. Clinics where iodine was the solution to everything. Blood everywhere, since the staff hoarded bandages like dwarves hoarded gold. Drug addicts shot up while waiting to see a doctor. No ventilation. Every floor was sticky with … something.

  Back then, she’d used aliases for check-in: Kirby Lewis, Keisha Laramie, Karen Larson. Always Ks and Ls, always those three names, sometimes scrambled—from Kirby Laramie to Keisha Larson. There were no Natalie Dixons with a cracked third rib. No Natalie Dixons with twelve stiches above their jawline or lacerations above the left eye. The beaten Natalie Dixon never existed in patient records, and her regular general practitioner never knew that Natalie Dixon had been cheating on him with Dr. Oxley at Canyon Medical Center, Dr. Mendelbaum at Nevada Health Center, or Nurse Anderson at Rapid-Care.

  As she healed, those first few days, she’d stay away from Sean and home. She usually hid in a room at Whiskey Pete’s in Primm, Nevada. No hot water in the shower. Damp. Red Cross–thin blankets on the bed. She never pressed charges against Sean—and he knew that she wouldn’t, and that she’d never cross that state line into her home state. California was as far away as Tasmania, even though it sat five hundred steps away from her hotel room. She’d use makeup to hide bruises that took too long to heal, then hit the road to return to her Spanish-Californian with the silver porch light and the stark, red-bloom succulents, with “Next time, I’ll leave for good” on her lips, just like the now-dry blood that would come alive in the next quarter, her own red bloom, so stark in the wasteland of her life.

  But she’d taken pictures of her injuries. Nurse Anderson had held the camera, not saying a word, just using a finger to move her patient’s head to the right or to the left. Those pictures were printed and sent to a P.O. box she’d told Natalie to open. “It’s safer there,” the old black nurse had told her. “Keep the pictures in there along with some money. Mad money, my momma used to call it. When the time comes, you’ll have what you need.”

  Mad money. Like the kind sitting in an account in California, bursting with rent payments from her tenants in Monterey Bay.

  Sean had always noticed her stitches. He had also noticed withdrawals from his bank account—three hundred dollars—every time his fist crashed at some destination around her one-hundred-ten-pound frame. He knew his wife would be discreet and handle her business.

  And she was discreet … until she wasn’t.

  After changing her name, Grayson Sykes had used those pictures and identity in her argument to the judge to seal her court records—as protection and to keep the new name secret. And it had worked. With Nick’s know-how and Gray’s vigilance, Natalie Dixon wasn’t in the system anymore.

  Years later, she still worried about doctors’ visits, that Sean would somehow obtain her records from clinics and the courts. And now that he had found her, she knew she’d been right to worry.

  Had Isabel Lincoln, an abused woman, escaped like she had?

  Maybe.

  Except Gray no longer believed that the missing woman was an abused anything. The fake proof of life picture, the banged-up Maserati, the blackmail … Gray had no body, and sure, Isabel Lincoln could indeed be dead. But something in Gray’s gut told her …

  And Tea: the way she and Isabel had texted Gray all day, asking if they were done. So desperate to end it. “It.” What was It? There was something, the It of it all.

  Maybe Noelle Lawrence would know some of It.

  Phillips BBQ on Centinela Boulevard was nearly invisible—fragrant purple smoke billowed from the smoke pits in back of the barbecue joint. A few customers waited for their orders on the sole bench—and none of them looked like Noelle Lawrence.

  Gray peered at her phone—three minutes after six o’clock—then ordered hot links with medium-heat barbecue sauce, beans, and coleslaw. “And one of those.” She pointed to the sweet potato pie wrapped in cellophane.

  So far off the road of postsurgery restrictions.

  After paying for her meal, she retreated outside to wait. Since she was waiting, she called Beth, Isabel’s coworker over at UCLA.

  “Like, what kind of injuries?” Beth asked.

  “A busted lip, bruises…”

  “Hmm…” Beth thought for a minute. “Not that I can remember.”

  “You have any pictures taken with her in April or May?”

  Beth texted Gray three shots: a scholar reception with donors and Isabel, smiling, flawless. At Diddy Riese cookie shop. Close-up of her bare face with the ice cream sandwich. No bruising or swelling. No makeup trying to hide bruising or swelling. Taken on April 28. And the last picture: jogging at the track on campus. All smiles. No bandages. No stitches.

  Gray then called Noelle. The phone rang until voice mail picked up. Gray didn’t leave a message—she didn’t know who had access to the woman’s phone.

  At seven o’clock, and with no word from Noelle Lawrence, Gray finished the last bite of sweet potato pie. Her phone vibrated on the car’s dashboard.

  It wasn’t Noelle.

  I don’t know why you haven’t responded yet.

  Isabel.

  Ian is a liar.

  I can prove it.

  He and Trinity are scamming patients. This is all about insurance

  TRUST ME

  Gray’s heart hammered. Trust me?

  Something was up, and she was now caught up in it.

  31

  Trust me?

  Isabel was also a liar.

  But I haven’t proven that yet.

  That’s because Gray had spent the day sleeping and watching spider monkeys and hobbits and Ringwraiths do things as she did nothing but sleep and watch.

  Guilt kicked in—for blowing off most of Saturday, for not answering emails or phone calls. The sun still sat in the sky, and since investigators didn’t work banker’s hours, Gray drove to work in an effort to move files from one place on her desk to maybe a cabinet or credenza.

  “Allow me to either, like, jack up your evening or make it totally better.” Clarissa stood on the other side of Gray’s desk, iPad in her hands. “First, though, you feeling okay?”

  “Stomach.”

  “Ew. T.M.I.”

  “You asked.”

  “What if I told you…” Clarissa plopped into the guest chair. “What if I told you that Kevin Tompkins is, like, totally shifty in everything except disappearing Isabel Lincoln?”

  “I’d say spill it.”

  Clarissa launched into all that she’d found. Like Kevin Tompkins enlisting in 1995. Like how, in 2009, he had been arrested for public drunkenness but found not guilty. He had been charged with trespassing a year later, but the case was dismissed.

  “He totally has great credit, though.” Clarissa faked a smile and offered a thumbs-up.

  “With those dings on his record, how is he working at the recruitment center?”

  “Also, he was stationed up in Seattle the last part of May up until July third.”

  “I’d kinda eliminated him as a suspect,” Gray admitted. “I think Isabel is alive and that she’s the one texting me. What about Noelle Lawrence? Find anything out
about her?”

  “Noelle is, like, literally one of those children of the corn,” Clarissa said. “If it’s something worth stealing, she’s stolen it. She spent more of her childhood in juvie than in school. She just got out of jail jail back in November and … no job, no degree, and literally thousands and thousands of dollars in debt.”

  “She’d said Isabel was up to something.”

  “Duh. Weren’t you supposed to meet her?”

  “I left a message and haven’t heard back. One more thing: find out if there’s a marriage license registered to…” She handed Clarissa a sticky note with the names Omar Neville and Elyse Miller. She’d told herself that she didn’t care—and she didn’t. But Negro Nancy Drew couldn’t completely ignore a mystery.

  Clarissa tapped at the keys. Her brows crumpled. “No licenses in the County of Los Angeles. Shall I try Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino?”

  “And throw in Clark County—they could’ve tied the knot in Vegas.” She twisted in her chair, eyes on Clarissa.

  Finally, the younger woman shook her head. “Nothing. Sorry.”

  Maybe they got married …

  Occam’s razor. Simplest explanation. They’re not married.

  Gray called Rebekah Lawrence and told her that she and Noelle had connected briefly and that Noelle hadn’t called Gray back as promised. Rebekah sighed and said, “That’s what she does. Welcome to my life.”

  Rader Consulting housed the creatives and the geeks on the other side of the floor. Their space had been designed with broad entryways flanked with fancy lights or twisting wreaths of iron. There was a pool table alongside the Ping-Pong table, and that’s where Gray found Sanjay, alone, pool cue in hand, not responding to her voice mail from yesterday.

  “I was just about to call you,” he said. “I’m working today and not coming in Monday.”

  Gray followed him into his office, where foam cups mixed in with ceramic mugs, magazines, comic books, and design manuals. “So, the picture you sent…” He plopped in front of his Mac and brought up on the screen the shot of Isabel Lincoln standing in the Westin Kauai’s breezeway. He then threw a bunch of words at Gray, and each syllable chipped away at a nerve and at her patience until she finally squeezed shut her eyes. “Sanjay, ohmigod, stop.”