by Kara Thomas
“If he was arrested, like you said, he’d be in the state database. If I can pull a license plate or something, it’ll be easier to track him down.”
Now that he’s on the database, I need to pull the trigger. I push away the thoughts of everything that could go wrong, like Mike taking his ID card out of the reader before he leaves or him insisting I leave his office with him—
I text Ginny. Do it. Go.
My ears ring as Mike scrolls through the hits the database gives him for Phil Cordero. “He used to live at 84 Pond Way?”
I nod. “Yeah. My friend and her mom still live there.”
My pulse ticks steadily. Mike hums to himself, scrolling, scrolling.
And then the radio on his desk crackles.
“Dispatch, I need an officer on North Howell’s Road. Woman walking her dog called in a suspicious person climbing a fence, possibly armed—”
Mike snatches the radio up. “What’s the address of the house?”
“She thinks it was one fifty-six…she wasn’t sure.”
Mike shoots up from his chair. Wipes his hands down his face. My stomach sinks to my feet.
“Monica, I’ve got to go,” he says, his face ashen. “I’m really sorry—that’s my house.”
My voice quavers as I stand. “I hope everything is okay.”
When he turns and grabs his coat from the hook behind his desk, I elbow the giant Diet Coke. It makes a slushing sound as it pours onto the tile, ice scattering everywhere. Mike jumps back to avoid the splash.
“Shit, I’m sorry. I’ll clean that up,” I say.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mike says, but before he can argue, tell me to leave it, he’s out the door. Shouting for the woman behind the desk in the lobby to call his house, to tell his wife to lock the doors and shut the windows.
Then he’s gone. The only sound in the office is my heartbeat. I can’t remember a time when I felt more disgusted with myself. Not even after what happened with Brandon.
My phone vibrates with a text from Ginny. Just saw him leave. The other cop went with him.
I shove my phone in my pocket and sit in Mike’s desk chair. A photocopy of Phillip Cordero’s driver’s license is up on the screen. I click back to the landing page and search for Juliana Ruiz.
RUIZ, JULIANA. HOMICIDE.
STATUS: UNSOLVED/INACTIVE
I can’t do this. There are things in here that I won’t be able to unsee. Pictures of the crime scene. Pictures of them.
But Ginny already made the call. Mike is on his way home, and even though he’ll find out there’s no intruder in his yard, he and his family will spend the night in fear. If I don’t get the file, it’ll all be for nothing.
I wipe my sweaty fingertips on my knees and open the file.
There are dozens of subfiles. Folders marked with jargon I don’t understand. My heartbeat quickens; I can’t possibly go through everything before Mike gets back, or before the woman at the desk realizes I’m still here and comes looking for me.
I scroll down, stopping when I see the label on one of the folders: Written Affidavits
There are several PDF files in the folder. Scanned written statements. My breath catches in my throat; I had no idea the police talked to so many people. I get a surge of righteous anger: Of course Daphne was wrong. They did do their jobs.
I hit control + P. A prompt tells me there are more than fifty pages in this file and asks if I’m sure I want to print. I glance at the door. Click yes.
While the printer in the corner spits out the pages, I comb through the statements on the screen. In a woman’s loopy scrawl, I spot the name Jack Canning. It’s signed Alice Berry. By the time I reach the bottom of the PDF, the printer wheezes and goes quiet.
Footsteps in the hall. I click out of the database and leap out of Mike’s chair. Grab a napkin from the McDonald’s bag and dab at the Diet Coke dripping from the corner of his desk.
The receptionist pokes her head in, eyes wide. “Oh.”
“I just wanted to clean this up.” I angle myself so I’m blocking her view of the printer.
The woman waves a hand. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll get some paper towels from the bathroom.”
When she ducks out of Mike’s office, I grab the stack of papers resting on the printer tray. Shove them in my tote bag and slip into the hall. I hurry toward the lobby.
The security camera hanging over the door blinks red. I keep my eyes down and stumble out onto the street. Power-walk to the corner and lean against the telephone pole, my stomach pumping acid.
Ginny pulls up in her mother’s car, her eyes white orbs in the night. I throw open the door and collapse into the front seat. “I got it.”
She’s silent as she pulls away. I watch the police station recede in the side mirror. When we’re back on the highway, I force out the words “Pull over.”
Ginny puts her blinker on. Drives onto the shoulder. I stumble out of the still-rolling car and retch, arms wrapped around my stomach.
Nothing comes up. A cold sweat has sprung out over my body. I shut my eyes, letting the thrumming in my ears drown out the sound of the cars roaring past us.
* * *
—
I’m sitting at Ginny’s kitchen table, face buried in my hands. I look up and move them when Ginny taps my shoulder. She sets a mug of hot water in front of me.
“I don’t know if you want one or two.” She shows me a handful of hot chocolate packets. “I always use two,” she adds.
I take two packets from Ginny. “I thought I was the only one who did that.”
She smiles and slides into the chair across from me. Wraps her hands around her mug, her smile slowly fading. “I gave the nine-one-one operator a fake name and number.”
“And you’re sure no one saw you by the pay phone?”
She’s probably so sick of me asking that, but she just nods. “Positive.” Ginny eyes me. “Are you okay?”
I take a sip from my mug. Lick a spot of grainy, sweet powdered chocolate from my lip. What we just did to Mike—to his family—is so not okay.
The thump of something landing on the table jolts both of us. Panda winds around the napkin holder. Cranes her neck, sniffing at Ginny’s hot chocolate. Ginny and I look at each other and exchange a nervous laugh.
My gaze falls to the stack of papers resting between us. Ginny’s follows; the cat sits back on her haunches, tail thwacking against the table. She’s looking right at me, beady eyes seeming to say Well, what are you waiting for?
I divide the stack in two and push the bottom half toward Ginny. While she examines the size of the stack, I dig a pen out of my tote bag and flip over the cover sheet on the first statement in front of me. Scrawl Timeline at the top of the page.
The first page is filled with shaky, slanted writing. Practically unreadable. I skim to the bottom first and see it’s signed by Mr. Joseph Brenner—he lived across the street from the Berrys. I flip the page and reveal the next one in the stack; mercifully, someone has typed up Mr. Brenner’s statement.
…while I was putting out the recycling around 9:45, and noticed a pickup truck parked on the street next door, diagonally from the Berrys’ house. A petite, dark-haired girl got out of the vehicle and crossed the street. I waved to her as she headed up the Berrys’ driveway, but she appeared not to see me. The pickup truck remained parked next door, the engine on. I went inside and made a cup of tea and straightened up the kitchen. Before I went to bed I looked out the window and noticed the pickup truck was gone.
I blurt: “Someone else saw the pickup truck.”
Ginny’s head snaps up.
I hold up the paper, a tremor of excitement moving through my arm. “This man—Mr. Brenner—I knew him. He lived down the street from us, across from Susan. He used to give out pennies on Halloween.” I scan the statement again. “Ha
ve you seen anything about when Juliana and Susan got home from float building?”
Ginny’s brow creases. She flips through the pages she’s already gone over. Pauses. “This one is from Juliana’s dad. He said he picked them up a little after nine and left them at the Berrys’ around nine-twenty.”
I look at Mr. Brenner’s words again. Petite, dark-haired girl. It had to have been Juliana. But if Mr. Ruiz dropped the girls off at 9:20, what was Juliana doing getting out of a pickup truck at a quarter to ten? “This can’t be right. Mr. Brenner said he saw someone dropping Juliana off around nine-forty-five.”
Ginny pushes the paper toward me. “Look. Juliana’s dad even said he walked them to the door and asked if they were sure they didn’t want to stay with the Ruizes, but Susan said she couldn’t leave her dog alone all night.”
She’s right. Mr. Ruiz said float building ended at nine, and he’d left the girls inside the house no later than nine-twenty.
If Mr. Brenner was mistaken, and it wasn’t Juliana he saw getting out of the truck and going into Susan’s house…it means there was a third girl there that night.
A girl who left alive.
But if it was Juliana…“She left Susan’s to meet someone,” I say. “Whoever was parked by Mr. Brenner’s—she probably met him inside his pickup truck.”
“He says he saw this happen at nine-forty-five?” Ginny pauses. “Ethan said he saw the argument on the deck around ten.”
I take a sip of my long-cooled hot chocolate. “So whoever Juliana was meeting followed her to the house after Mr. Brenner went back inside.”
A chill crawls up my back. He waited. He waited until no one would see him.
But someone did see him: Ethan.
Ginny says what I’ve been thinking: “Why wouldn’t the police follow up on Mr. Brenner’s statement?”
The clock on the stove says it’s after ten. We’ve been at the kitchen table for almost two hours. “He was really old—like ninetysomething, I think. Maybe they thought he was confused about what he saw.” I rub my eyes. “Or maybe they did follow up and it turned out to be nothing.”
I sit back in my chair, nausea ripping through me. “What if there’s nothing here? I could have gotten us both in serious trouble for nothing.” I can’t even entertain the possibility that we didn’t actually get away with it and that Mike will figure out what I did. “I’m sorry,” I say to Ginny. “I almost ruined everything.”
Ginny taps the handle of her mug. There’s a dried streak of blood on her thumbnail where her cuticle meets the skin. “Monica? Can we please focus?”
I nod, my throat tight. We go back to reading, my eyes getting progressively heavier. Around midnight, I look up and find Ginny out cold, using her stack of witness statements as a pillow.
I reach over and poke her arm with my pen. She stirs and blinks at me.
“I think it’s time to pack it in,” I say. “I haven’t found anything useful anyway.”
Ginny yawns. “Me neither.”
We clean up the piles of paper and stuff them into a spare folder Ginny finds in a kitchen drawer, and I put the whole thing in my overnight bag. I eye the pajamas at the top of the bag.
Ginny spies them and says around another yawn, “My bedroom is upstairs.”
I follow her up the stairs, making a pit stop in the bathroom across the hall to brush my teeth and change.
In Ginny’s room, a twin bed is pushed against the wall. Christmas lights are strung from corner to corner on the ceiling; between each bulb, a photo hangs from a clothespin. I spot a picture of a group of girls in gymnastics leotards. Next to it, an action shot of Ginny standing on the bottom of the uneven bars, arms over her head, reaching for the top bar.
I stop staring, aware that Ginny is watching me from her closet.
“Do you miss it?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Sometimes I do. Mostly it reminds me of when things were bad.”
I swallow, thinking of her reaction to my bringing up her father. Ginny turns back to the closet. Emerges holding a fleece blanket and lays it over her rug. She sits on it, cross-legged, and fluffs the pillow waiting on the floor next to her.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” I say.
“It’s okay.”
“No, seriously. I’m not kicking you out of your bed.” I plop down on the blanket next to her.
She sighs. “Well, we’re not both sleeping down here. We can fit on the bed, if we lie head to toe.”
“Okay. That’s a decent compromise.”
I climb onto the bed first, getting as close to Ginny’s wall as possible to make room for her. She lies down and adjusts, her socked feet inches from me, and reaches to flip off the light on the wall over the foot of her bed. It should feel weird, sharing a bed with someone I barely know, but it doesn’t.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, breaking the silence.
Ginny shifts on her pillow. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Have you ever done anything you feel like you’ll never be able to forgive yourself for?”
Ginny goes still. “You mean like what we did tonight?”
“I don’t know.” I think of Brandon’s lips on my throat. The look on my mother’s face when my doctor brought her into the exam room. How she asked what I wanted to do. My answer was reflexive; I’d given more deliberation to haircuts.
I swallow. “Do you think doing something shitty is less shitty if you really believe you had no other choice?”
The whistle of the wind in the trees outside Ginny’s window fills the silence in the room.
“Yeah,” she says after a beat. It feels like she wants to say more, but I sense her rolling over from her back to her side and I leave it.
When my eyes flicker open a few hours later, my mouth parched from the hot chocolate, I turn over, not sure how I’ll be able to climb out of bed to find a glass of water without disturbing Ginny. But the space where she fell asleep is empty.
I pad out of the bedroom and into the hall. The door to the room across from Ginny’s is open, the sliver of moonlight coming through the window cast on the vacant bed. Her mom’s room.
The floorboards groan under my feet as I creep toward the end of the hall. I try to make myself weigh nothing as I take baby steps down the stairs. I’m halfway to the bottom when I see a silhouette in the living room’s bay window.
Ginny is sitting on the window seat, angled away from me. Knees pulled up to her chest, arms hugging them as close to her as possible. For some reason, the sight of her sitting there, staring out at the street, her pale skin almost ghastly under the light of the moon, makes me feel like I’ve walked in on someone naked.
I head back up the stairs and down the hall to Ginny’s bedroom. I’ve forgotten why I got up in the first place.
I wake up alone in the bed again. My phone says it’s twenty after seven; Ginny’s mom’s shift at the hospital ends in ten minutes. Ginny would have left to pick her up not too long ago.
I undo my bun and rake my fingers through my hair. My mom said to come straight home when I woke up, and I don’t want to give her reasonable cause to doubt that I was at Ginny’s all night. Tom might be the cop, but my mother is the one who will interrogate me until my story falls apart.
I stuff my clothes into my overnight bag and head downstairs. A Post-it is stuck to the front doorknob. You don’t have to lock it. I’ve never seen Ginny’s handwriting before; her small print is neat and unassuming.
My mother is Windexing the hell out of the kitchen countertops when I let myself in at home, which means she drank too much last night. She only gets like this when she’s hungover—someone comes to clean our house twice a month.
This morning, she even has rubber gloves on. I plunk my dance bag onto the kitchen island to announce my presence and she spins around. Her face falls when she sees me, like maybe s
he was expecting someone better.
“How was the dinner?” I ask brightly.
“Painful.” She sets the Windex on the counter. “We had to sit next to Heidi Coughlin.”
“Mrs. Coughlin?” That woman is like a gnat; I cannot get away from her. “Why was she at a PBA dinner?”
“Her father was killed in the line of duty in the city years ago. She goes every year in his memory.”
I keep my eyes on the fruit bowl on the kitchen island. Select the least-bruised banana and begin unpeeling it. Mom never could stand Colleen’s mother. She and my sister would cringe every time Mrs. Coughlin’s name popped up on the caller ID at home. I think all of the cheer moms should get warm-up jackets to match the girls’! What are you bringing to the potluck, Mrs. Carlino? All the other mothers have signed up for something!
The force of my mother’s stare is so intense I can’t ignore it any longer. I look up. She’s watching me, in that frightening way where I can’t tell what I’ve done to piss her off.
“She said she asked you to help plan a memorial ceremony, but she never heard from you.”
Of course Mrs. Coughlin said something. She was always a meddling pain in the ass. “She didn’t ask me herself. Mr. Demarco did.”
Mom’s eyes flash. “I wanted to tell her that my daughter would never be so inconsiderate. Should I have?”
“I’m sorry. If you want me to, I’ll tell her on Monday that I’ll help.”
“You can do whatever you want, Monica,” she says, like she couldn’t care less. I’d almost prefer it if she’d yelled at me.
She goes back to her Windexing, and I feel like I should say I’m sorry again. But I can’t bring myself to do it. It never makes a difference anyway.
* * *
—
I’m tired enough from a crappy night’s sleep in someone else’s bed that I think I can nap, even though my body is still racing from last night. I wake up around ten to my phone ringing. The sight of Mike Mejia’s name on the screen plunges me into a panic.