by Leah Konen
I blinked slowly, trying to sort my thoughts.
It didn’t matter. He was dead, and I was trapped.
I turned the key in the ignition, the car revving to life. It was one o’clock—Vera must be home by now. I began to drive. As I pulled out of the parking lot, a cruiser followed. I squeezed the wheel tighter to keep my hands from shaking.
The police car tailed me the entire way through town. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I made a split-second decision and turned onto Tinker Street, pulled into a parking lot, my breaths calming ever so slightly as the officer drove on. Fingers fumbling, I fastened my coat, tumbled out of the car and into the cool air, thin and crisp.
On the main street, I turned left, shoving my hands deep into my pockets as I walked aimlessly, trying to figure out my next step. I had screwed it all up royally, maybe even worse than I ever had before. I had chosen my escape incorrectly. I’d wanted to find a way to cling to the life I’d created in my twenties. I hadn’t been willing to pull off the Band-Aid—I still wanted one foot in New York. After the night it all went to shit with Davis, I should have just driven out of town, gone west. Made that first email to Ellie a truth and not a lie.
Suddenly, I hated Woodstock. I hated its stone sidewalks, its overly forced progressiveness. Its hippie shops and its fresh fucking mountain air. I hated it all.
“Oh.” The word spilled from my mouth as I turned a corner.
There she was, in the alley next to Schoolhouse. She was leaning against the brick wall, scrolling through her phone with a fingerless-gloved hand.
“Claire,” I said, as if testing the name on my lips. “You’re here.”
It was a stupid thing to say—she worked here, after all—only I thought maybe she would have taken the day off.
Her head whipped up. “What, do you have more questions or something?”
“No, I didn’t even know you’d be here, I thought—”
“I don’t get the day off just because I have a funeral in the morning,” she said. “Plus, if I called out, they’d only use it as one more reason to gossip.” Her steely expression wavered just the tiniest bit, and under it, I could see how it hurt her, being the center of a story she’d never wanted to be part of.
“I’m sorry I chased you down this morning,” I said. “I was just . . . shocked. I didn’t know you knew him. I mean, I didn’t know you were Claire.”
For a moment, her expression was unreadable, but then her eyes narrowed. “Well, I didn’t know you still had a boyfriend.”
A constricted feeling in my chest, as if my windpipe had shrunk three sizes.
“What are you talking about?”
She shrugged. “Your secret boyfriend. It’s like, you want me to tell you things, even though you never asked, but here you are, chatting with me, and the whole time you forget to mention you’ve got some guy in the city. He was cute, too, with those nerdy glasses. The Clark Kent type. I get it.”
“What did . . .” I stammered. “What did he say?”
“He came in like an hour ago, as soon as my shift started, waving a photo of you around. Saying his girlfriend was missing, asking if we’d seen her. What was that about? He was going into like every shop on this block.” Her eyes widened suddenly, as if remembering. “Wait, does this have something to do with what you told your friend in the restaurant? Shit, I didn’t think. He didn’t seem like the type. I didn’t tell him anything, don’t worry.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Then I backed away so quickly, I ran into someone behind me. Mind reeling, vision blurring, I muttered an apology, turned on my heel, and stalked off down the bluestone sidewalk, back to my car, not stopping until I was in it, fumbling for my keys.
I pulled out so quickly I almost hit a pedestrian, an older lady who flipped me off as I careened down the road. I had to get home, get to Dusty before Davis did. I could grab him and head straight to Vera’s.
Find a way to keep him—to keep us—safe.
It took me a half hour to get there, road work closing one of the lanes on 212 East, but as I pulled onto Shadow Creek Road, my heart sank. Two police cars idled outside my cottage.
No no no, I wanted to scream. If McKnight had changed his mind, if he was going to arrest me now, Davis would get Dusty. I’d never see him again.
“Miss King,” McKnight said, before I’d even shut the car door. “I told you it wouldn’t be long before we saw you again. Didn’t expect it to be quite so soon, though.”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly chalky. Any semblance of safety I thought I’d created for myself was evaporating from moment to moment.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
Sometimes I wished that for one second, we could be honest with each other. Cut through the bullshit and say what we really thought. That I could look at McKnight right now and tell him the man I may have loved was dead, the man I used to love may have killed him, and that it felt like the memory of one and the presence of the other were pressing against me from both sides, like the walls of a cave, squeezing tighter and tighter, and at some point, they’d eventually meet, smashing me into oblivion. Taking away all I’d ever loved. I wished for one second I didn’t have to lie.
“Okay as it can be,” I said, forcing myself to speak as calmly as possible. “Did you have more questions?”
McKnight smiled, his concern for my well-being such an obvious charade. “No more questions for now.” He flashed a sheet of paper in front of my face. “But we do have a warrant to search your place. Just came through. Do we have permission to enter?”
I snatched the paper from his hand. It gave full permission for them to search my residence and car. What were they looking for? Surely they’d have had to tell a judge something to get a warrant . . .
“Do I have a choice?” I managed.
McKnight smiled his awful fake smile again. “Not really.”
As I opened the door, I prayed for the sound of Dusty’s paws.
My prayers were answered. He ran immediately into my arms, and I picked him up, holding him close, pressing his tiny body to mine, never wanting to let him go.
McKnight led the way, the rest of them following. A younger female officer shot me a weak smile, but then her eyes darted around the room almost as if she were checking whether McKnight could somehow sense her kindness. Once they were inside, I shut the door, peeking out from behind the drapes to see if I could spot Davis, knowing it was no longer a matter of if, but when.
TWENTY-NINE
They took over an hour. They looked through my car. They rifled through drawers, searching methodically for anything that could incriminate me. They filled evidence bags with pieces of my life: My laptop. My composition notebook. A book of hikes in the Catskills, pages dog-eared, but not by me.
And the whole time, I sat there, throat parched and stomach cemented.
The whole time I sat there, I wondered when Davis was going to show up.
I knew there was still a chance he hadn’t done it. That it had been Sam Alby—or maybe even someone else. It would make more sense, in a way. Davis had never been to John’s studio, and he’d have had to find it by following John off the trail or discovering it some other way.
But if Davis hadn’t killed John, how could I explain the rest of it? My mother’s missing scarf. The photos and note stolen, too. The faucet running just so. The dirt dug from beneath the fence so Dusty could get out.
And more than that, the sinking feeling that Davis wouldn’t rest until he’d punished me; that Ellie had given him the perfect way to do it.
“Have a second to chat, Miss King?” McKnight’s voice was familiar to me now, gruff and accusatory, scratchy like he once smoked but didn’t anymore. In front of me, the woman lengthened the legs of a tripod and put a camera on top, training it on me. He gestured toward it as he took the seat opposite. “We have to record this, like
I mentioned before.”
I bristled. How could I explain it to them: fear and guilt look the same way on film. Catch me now—hair matted, pallor like bone china, beads of sweat in all the right places—and anyone would think I did it.
Catch me now, like this, when I just know that Davis is going to catch me at any minute.
The officer pressed a button, and a blinking light flashed a warning, then kept its eye trained on me, watching.
McKnight reached into his jacket, and I found my eyes landing on the drapes, on the inch or so of exposed window, wishing I had opened them so I could see the road, confirm it was empty, free of Davis.
Dusty jumped onto my lap, but I shooed him off; he whined as he slunk away. From the kitchen, the sound of water being lapped from his bowl. Dusty knew how to self-soothe; I had never learned properly.
McKnight retrieved an evidence bag, marked with words I couldn’t read, then used tongs to pull out its contents, a bra and underwear. “Do these look familiar?” he asked, holding them in front of me.
It was hard to tell for sure, but, yes, they looked like mine. Black satin, pink lace. From the shop in Williamsburg, if I wasn’t mistaken, where the drawers made no sound when you tugged them open. Ninety dollars of sex appeal, purchased for our first Valentine’s Day together. I’d always been the girl who lived in clean-edged cotton, and I’d wanted to surprise Davis, reach into my dresser and not grab something from Uniqlo. He’d gotten them off before he’d had a chance to take them in. My secret weapon, he’d joked afterward, fingers laced with mine on the sofa in his living room—stops men in their tracks. He’d bought me plenty in our years together, but the others had felt tainted, part of a story I no longer wanted to be part of. These were the only ones I’d brought with me, a memento of a different time, when it had just been Davis and me. And then Davis and me and Dusty. But never Davis and me and things that we didn’t talk about but that left me raw.
The tips of my fingers went cold and tingly as I realized they were now evidence against me.
“Miss King?”
“Sorry,” I said. “What are you asking?”
He sighed. “Are these yours?”
“I don’t know,” I said, hedging my words until I knew why he was asking. “Maybe. I mean, a lot of those sets look alike.”
He let them drop back into the evidence bag, then motioned to the officer. “Can you get a DNA swab from Miss King?”
She nodded, and then retrieved cotton swabs, plastic, out of a silver case. “It will only take a second,” she said, her voice kind. “Open your mouth, if you don’t mind.”
It felt so violating. Pieces of me on fuzzy cotton.
“I have an inkling they’re yours,” McKnight said. “But we do need to check.”
“Why does it even matter?” I asked as she tucked the swab into another container.
“Because today, while you were speaking to me at the station, our team found these buried pretty deep in a corner of Mr. Nolan’s cabin,” McKnight said, matter-of-fact. “We’ll be checking them against Ms. Abernathy’s and Rachel Dry’s DNA as well.” He cleared his throat. “And Claire Alby’s,” he said, turning red. “If they do match yours, we’ll have hard evidence that puts you in there, adds to your motive.”
“I wasn’t in there,” I said, shaking my head. “I told you. If those are mine”—my voice rasped—“it’s because someone took them. Or John did, I don’t know.”
It didn’t make sense, it didn’t align with who I thought John was, but the half-naked photo of me didn’t, either. Perhaps I hadn’t really known him at all.
The woman officer shot me a cutting look. Homewrecker, it said. Just like the rest of them.
“What are you saying?” McKnight asked, hands to knees. “That someone broke in?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Okay, so someone stole your underwear. How? There are no signs of forced entry. Do you not lock your doors?”
I pictured the unlocked door the morning I’d woken to find John in my bed. We had been so drunk the night he’d stayed over, so stupid. It wasn’t beyond reason to imagine Davis coming in, seeing us, grabbing my key, finding a place to make a copy—Walmart was open twenty-four hours, and it was only a few miles away in Kingston—then slipping my key back onto its hook.
“I do, but I might have forgotten once or twice. If those are mine, and if they weren’t taken by John, someone else took them.”
McKnight cut me off. “So you’re reaffirming you’ve never been in that cabin?”
“Yes,” I said. “Like I said earlier, I swear.”
He made a show of checking his notes. “Yes, you did. The thing is, we have witnesses in the area who say they saw a woman of your description around the cabin at night.”
I wrapped my arms around my body, digging my hands into my sides as my blood ran hot and my pulse sped up. “What do you mean of my description?”
“Dark hair,” he said. “Medium height. Slim build. Black coat.” He nodded to my wool winter coat, hanging on a peg near the door.
I released my grasp on myself, and for a second, the hatch had opened, and all I could do was burst through. “That’s me, all right. And half the women in this fucking town. And if it was dark, light hair might look brown. So might as well be Vera, too. Or Claire. Or Rachel. Jesus.”
McKnight’s eyebrows shot up. Then his head twisted, slowly, toward the camera, reminding me.
I didn’t need his admonishment. I knew. We women weren’t supposed to let our anger slip, lest we seem hysterical, unhinged. It was half of why I loved Vera. She wore her anger like a designer cardigan—right there on the outside for anyone to see.
I took a deep breath, closing the hatch again.
McKnight shrugged. “So maybe it is a common description. But we have to pursue all leads, I’m sure you understand.”
He paused, and then a smile crept to the corners of his mouth, the smile he always got when he had another card up his sleeve.
I grabbed at coils of hair, pushing them out of my face and then tugging, just enough so it hurt. “I swear to god, I never even got out of the car.”
McKnight glared at me. “I didn’t tell you earlier, because I was hoping you’d come clean on your own, but your prints are there,” he said. “On two different bottles of wine.”
“Because it’s John and Vera’s cabin,” I said, my voice choking at the words, anger churning once again. “We drank a lot, okay?”
He glanced at an errant bottle of wine on my coffee table. He didn’t say another word, but his eyes fixed on me, judging. It was easy to see myself as he did: a high-strung, alcoholic Brooklyn bitch. Someone who’d fucked her friend’s husband and then killed him when things didn’t go her way, attempted to hightail it out of town as soon as the memorial service was over. The narrative was infuriating, story after story of unhinged woman, of girl gone mad, told and whispered and reported, laying the foundation for his beliefs about me.
“If John had taken half a bottle out to the cabin when he was working, one I’d helped him drink, of course my prints would be on it.”
“Of course,” McKnight said. “I suppose that’s why identifying the owner of that underwear will help. As well as seeing what turns up on your laptop and from our search here.”
My gaze darted around the room—I wanted him out, I wanted all of them gone—now. I needed to know if they’d found my hiding spot, if they’d taken those parts of me, too. I needed a second to think. “You’ve got it wrong,” I said, drawing in staccato breaths. “I don’t care how it looks, you’re still wrong. And every moment you spend on me is time wasted.”
McKnight leaned forward, placing his hands on his knees. “Is it, Miss King? Because no one else in this investigation has lied to us from the start—and in official reports, too. We have to dig deeper into someone who’s made fal
se statements on record.”
The woman took a few steps back, giving us space, as McKnight drummed his fingers on his knees. “Here’s the thing: Maybe you’re innocent. Maybe you got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there are things you aren’t telling me. And when you’re not frank with me, about your relationship with Mr. Nolan, about what happened that day on the hike, what am I supposed to believe? Now, is there anything else you want to tell me?”
I wished I could tell him about Davis, ask McKnight to investigate him, but I couldn’t. If they spoke to him, he would twist it all—it would only serve to make me look more suspicious. Instead, I jerked my head toward McKnight. “Are you arresting me?”
He sighed, disappointed, like my dad after I lost it on my piano teacher, leaving me no choice but to quit my lessons. Like my dad, so many times.
I expected better of you.
“We’re still exploring all avenues,” McKnight said.
Then, without another word, he grabbed his bags, the woman stopped the camera, and they walked out of my house.
THIRTY
Heart racing, I stared at the floorboard beneath my bed. It remained hammered down, just as I’d left it. I momentarily considered reopening it, just to make sure, but before I could, I heard three quick raps at my door.
Through the drapes, I saw Vera, standing on my porch.
I opened the door and ushered her in, a burst of cold following behind her.
Her coat hung open, and she was in the same dress she’d worn at the memorial, but a run in one knee of her tights exposed pale flesh. Her topknot had come undone, and her hair bent every which way from the hair spray—contortionist hair. “What happened?” she asked, her lips pressing into a thin line. “You just . . . disappeared.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. The memorial felt a million miles away, but I tried to stay calm, act normal. I needed her on my side now more than ever. “It was too much, being there, with my parents and everything. It was overwhelming.”