Or you could call the cops, a voice that is both mine and not mine tells me. Technically, a crime was committed earlier tonight, and there has to be evidence—
I cut the fantasy off, mid-stream.
Nothing would come of calling the police, save for a fruitless investigation and a whole heap of publicity. It would be a hassle to go from mom’s room to the car, let alone getting back into the rental property without being attacked by the media vipers camping out on the lawn.
I know how this works.
The irony is, it’d probably keep the one lunatic off the fringes of your life, this holier-than-thou voice tells me.
I keep staring at the photos, hoping for something to jump out at me like they do in the movies, but nothing does, and so eventually I’m drunkenly staring at pixelated representations of a stranger.
There are no clues.
There is no revelation.
However, I become convinced I know what happened.
At some point in the night, I snap awake. The hum-and-whir of the equipment in the room had slowly lulled me into a light and fitful slumber. My head throbs not just from the alcohol but also the angle at which I’d fallen asleep.
But it’s not my head I’m concerned with.
My screen flashes when I pick up my phone, and I notice that I have a voice mail from none other than Madeline St. Clair.
A new and blistering hot anger swells in my chest. It’s like I’ve been inflated with pure venom.
Staring at her name on the ID, I can’t help but feel cheated, somehow. This woman, she had every chance in the world to get in touch. But she chose a time she knew I’d probably be asleep. She never intended on actually talking to me.
This is her way of manipulating me.
It’s the first step, and I find myself balking at it.
Oh, no, I think. You don’t get to dictate the terms of our relationship like this, just picking and choosing when you speak to me.
Angrily, I delete the message without listening.
I call her back.
She’s going to have to answer to me.
If she was the one at the rental property tonight—first of all, how crazy would that be? Secondly, if she was, then why in the world would she be doing this?
I argue with myself.
She doesn’t need a reason, that self-same voice tells me. This is Madeline St. Clair we’re talking about. She doesn’t need a reason to do a goddamned thing.
What she doesn’t know is that I’m no longer afraid of her. I was once the timorous little schoolgirl, grateful to lick her boots.
No more.
I’ve been through the wringer, and I am a different person. She might still draw power from those who have spent years under her heels, but I am not one of them.
She cannot hide behind her alcoholic husband. Not if she wants to do the right thing. If she truly is a different person—
(I miss you)
—she’ll gladly apologize and listen to what I have to say.
Even if not, she still must answer to me.
I’ve got to know where Madeline’s been tonight, and when she doesn’t answer, I wait for the beep on the voice mail, and I let her have it.
“I don’t know who you sent to do your dirty work, but it’s not going to scare me. I’m not afraid of you, Madeline. In fact, you should be afraid of me.”
And then, feeling a particularly potent rush of adrenaline, I hang up the phone.
11
The next morning, I eat some stiff eggs and soggy bacon in the cafeteria and bring a cup of coffee back to my mother’s room.
“You don’t have to stay here and wait for me to get better,” she says, when I return.
“I want to,” I say, sipping my coffee, full of sugar and cream.
“I know this isn’t the time to say something like this, but I really wish you could find a way to move back to Nashville.”
“Mom—”
“This is your home, darling,” she responds. “Seattle is a place to get yourself together. Nashville is a place to live. Everyone you’ve ever known is here.”
“That’s the problem.”
“And your job. You don’t think you could make a living working in computers here? It’s not like we don’t have the internet.”
“I know, Mom. But—”
“I mean, do they think we’re all barefoot and sucking on hayseeds down here?”
“Mom!”
My hand jerks with the force of my response. Coffee splashes out of my cup and lands on my shirt front. I get up and yank some paper towels from the bathroom.
“Mom, I don’t think this is a good time to have this conversation. Once you get better and I get back on my feet, maybe we can talk about it. But I work for a start-up. They don’t allow people to work like satellites in different states. They need me there. I help make decisions.”
“Uh-huh,” she says. She’s huffy. She might as well have her arms crossed, to boot.
I make it a point to talk about the future, to soften the blow of my mom’s condition. They say talking about the future gives them something to work toward.
“Listen,” I say, sitting down next to her, “I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now. I’d love to move back to Nashville.”
A convenient lie.
“But this moment is just not right. I’m just reconnecting with old friends to see what that’s like, and I think putting myself back in this city will complicate things. I mean, there’s already been an article in the Tennessean about me.”
Her eyes widen. “What?”
“I’m a perennial headline, Mom,” I say. “That’s just the way it is with the—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—Suicide blondes.”
“Why can’t they leave you alone? What about the others? When is it going to be their time?”
I sigh. “Never.”
“Well, it just doesn’t seem fair.”
“It’s never been about fair, Mom.”
“We paid your tuition. We did all the things we were supposed to do.”
“It was never about the money.”
I get up. It’s all too much for me to handle right now.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“To figure some things out,” I respond, placing the coffee mug to her food tray.
Sitting in the waiting room, the TV above me projecting a daytime talk show, I email back and forth with my boss, who wonders, in his own modern and sensitive way, where my work has been for the last few days.
I know you’re going through a lot, he says.
Ian prefers emailing to texting. It imbues his nuggets of wisdom with a little more weight. He’s always struggling with the concept of credibility.
Of course, I’d love for you to be doing the work right now, but it’s important for you to figure yourself out. I see that you’ve logged in to the system, but don’t stress yourself out. Just keep the boat moving down the river, so to speak.
His response is so even-keeled, I want to scream. I can’t even be defensive and angry with him, and it drives me crazy. He gets the detail about me logging in wrong—unless I did that in a blackout—but otherwise, he’s right.
The fact is, though, that work does circle the back of my mind. It’s frustrating to be far away from home and not doing my work.
I’m not Madeline St. Clair.
If I were any other Suicide Blonde, I’d be all right. I could simply tell Ian to fuck off—because I’d have fuck you money—and live off the trust fund until something else came along.
None of them, not even Gillian, has to work. It’s more like a hobby. Like playing stupid iPhone games on a bus. You’re just waiting for your stop.
But what Ian doesn’t understand about my predicament is, I do need a job. I need to work. What happens when I don't have a million things to do is that I go crazy.
Not haven’t-had-my-coffee-on-a-Monday crazy. But actual crazy. Legit crazy. Like, committe
d to a psych ward crazy.
So, yeah, Ian, I do need to figure out work as well as myself.
But even then, I am stuck in a holding pattern. The other blondes have my time and attention in their hands, so work—both the concept and the actual thing—feel distant, like someone yelling a reservation name across a crowded restaurant.
There is nothing I can do about my professional life until I have this thing solved for myself. Then, perhaps, I can focus on all the code in the world. I can put in headphones and type until my fingers bleed.
But not yet.
Plus, I’m afraid of what I’ll find if I go back to the rental property. Any number of things could be waiting there for me.
A ransacked house. A broken computer. A psychopathic killer.
Or nothing at all. Somehow, that would be most fitting.
Just then, I catch sight of someone in my periphery, which breaks the hold my phone has on my entire existence.
A very serious and official-looking man sits across from me. He has a bald head and very unstylish clothes. Suit coat. Button-down Oxford shirt with a loose knot on the tie. Sort of rumpled, kind of like a tortoise wearing an off-the-rack suit.
“Can we talk?” he says.
No introduction. No preamble. Just right to the chase. The perfect bum’s rush.
I think he senses I see the gun in his shoulder holster, but I ask for formal ID nonetheless, and I am obliged to check every detail before handing it back to him.
He’s a cop. Maybe FBI, but usually they clean up a little better. They’re like the Mormons of policing. Local cops, they’re football fans. Saturday night sinners.
“How can I help you, Officer...Ciccotelli?”
“Detective Ciccotelli,” he says, nodding once.
“Not a lot of Ciccotellis down this way,” I respond, “and—no offense—you don’t sound like you grew up in Brentwood.”
His eyes never leave me. He’s not harsh, not intimidating, but he’s as straightforward as coffee with no cream and no sugar.
“Brooklyn,” he said. “I’m like ninety percent of Nashville now. I’m a transplant. I moved down here twenty-five years ago—”
“—Which does make you special,” I interrupt. “That ninety percent you mentioned dates back to 2010 or so. Maybe.”
“I suppose you could say that,” he responds. “I’m here so long, sometimes I forget I still got a little piece of the accent. Like a reverse southern thing.”
My mind drifts back to last night, and I run through the options of what he might want to ask me. Did Colton end up calling the cops? Did I drunkenly run a red light? Has my house been ransacked by some mask-wearing lunatic?
“I suppose you want to speak with me about something?”
It’s as even-keeled as I can make it, and I have to work to keep my voice from shuddering. Not an easy task when you’re on the verge of breaking down.
“Listen, I don’t mean to scare you, but I have a few questions, and I don’t think there is a better time to ask them than now. You mind? It’ll only take a few minutes.”
I glance at my phone. Click the side button to check the time.
He notices this gesture. “It’ll be quick. I promise.”
“Sure,” I say, trying to convey strength, but really I’m shaking so bad I think I can feel bones rattling.
He looks around, taps the ring finger of his left hand on the table. He’s married, and the ring has some wear on it.
Turning back to me, he says, “Listen, I know you’re in a bad way. I don’t mean to intrude like this. There’s just some things got to be done a certain way—”
“Just let out with it,” I say. “I’m not fragile, and I’m sure you know my history.”
He nods. He does. He’s probably got a whole file on me.
“A friend of yours was found murdered last night.”
“Murdered? Who?”
And then it dawns on me. Just my luck. Just my shitty fucking luck.
I say it before he has a chance to. “Madeline St. Clair.”
He looks puzzled. “How—”
My voice doesn’t feel like it even belongs to me. It feels like someone else’s, some ventriloquist, using me as a sick little puppet.
“Because it’s the way it has to go,” I reply.
“I’m real sorry to have to be the one to tell you,” he says. “Hazard of the job. But I am sorry.”
The resulting silence is meant to give me time to react, but I don’t. It’s not that I don’t recognize I should have some moment of teeth gnashing, eye wiping, hair pulling sorrow, but shock has robbed me of everything but limp-faced shock. I take enough anti-anxiety and anti-depression meds to tranquilize a buffalo, so I could be told my arm needs to be amputated and sold on eBay, and the best I could muster is a bewildered shrug.
At last, when he appears sure that I’m not going to cause a scene, he leans forward.
“What—what happened?” I ask.
“It was planned,” he says, giving me nothing. “With the...nature of the crime, it is not consistent with robbery or breaking-and-entering. Officially, we are ruling it an intentional homicide.”
“Oh,” I reply.
“I find that, until we have a clearer picture of the case, there is no need to delve into the particulars. It...complicates things.”
I can’t help but place Madeline on the couch with me, her head resting on my shoulder, wanting to tell me her secret but somehow incapable. Now I’ll likely never know.
“We don’t have any solid leads on it, but I thought, considering your, you know, relationship with the victim, it was imperative I contact you first.”
“I—that was so long ago.”
With an even gaze, he says, “A nurse working the late shift tells me you wandered in late last night and begged her to let you stay here. Said you were frantic and wild-eyed, her words. Care to take a stab at that?”
I can feel my heart beating an imprint against my chest.
“What if I told you someone had broken into my place, too?”
He adjusts his glasses and rubs his stubble with one hand. It’s so fresh I can’t see it, but the sound is like sandpaper on corrugated metal. It’s distracting, and I can only imagine what it’s like to be in a legit interrogation room with him.
“If that’s true—”
“Why wouldn’t it be true?”
“—then I am going to suggest you keep a very low profile.”
A few moments of strained, pained silence. Detective Ciccotelli has the look of a man who hasn’t slept in years, and the silence only emphasizes the hang-dog countenance.
“Why don’t we take a ride over to your home—”
“I’m renting a place.”
He smiles, despite my eat shit tone.
“Your rental, then. It’s not too far from here, no?”
“It’s in The Nations.”
“Perfect. Why don’t we go take a look around, and then maybe I’ll call in a crime scene unit. We’ll just put this conversation on hold until a later date.”
A half-hour later, and we’re standing on the front steps of the house off 51st. Detective Ciccotelli is standing behind me, and I am numb with dread.
In momentary flashes of memory, I see Timothy Allred’s body crumpled on my computer, a giant, living metaphor bleeding out on my monitor.
“It’s all right,” Detective Ciccotelli says. “I’m right here. No need to worry.”
I unlock the door, and he asks for me to step aside.
“Better if I take a look around first,” he says, pulling his weapon.
When I glance at it, he says, “Just a precaution.”
As he disappears into the small foyer, I feel an acute need to scream. My whole body jolts with a kind of electricity, and I have to fight the urge to run back to the car and drive away, never looking back.
I anticipate the worst. If a guy nearly died last time, who’s to say there isn’t a dead body curled over my keyboard right now?
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The detective’s footsteps echo through the house and drift down to me. He’s a big guy, tall and broad-shouldered, exactly the kind of cop you’d want protecting you in these kinds of situations. Always in control. Cautious. Seasoned.
“Ms. Hanneford?” Detective Ciccotelli calls from deep within the house. “I think you better come see this.
My mind cannot quite contain all of the horrors that could have occurred in this place in my absence. But what I see when I step into the main living room is worse than I could have imagined.
It’s nothing.
I mean, Detective Ciccotelli is there, but he’s already holstered his weapon, a nothing to see here kind of gesture.
He shrugs, as if to put a finer point on it.
“House looks clean,” he says. “Nothing seems out of place, no physical evidence, and I don’t see any form of forced entry. Do you?”
I don’t fucking know, I think, and I tell him as much. “I know what I saw. In fact, I can show you what I saw. But no, it doesn’t look like somebody ransacked the place.”
“Show me? What do you mean?”
“I, um—I took pictures last night.”
“You mean, like, you got photos of the suspect in the midst of breaking in?”
I nod, simultaneously going for my phone. A slight hesitation marks the movement, and I consider the idea that perhaps handing my phone over to a cop might not be the best idea. And yet, I find myself opening my device and tapping the Photos icon.
“If you look outside, you can see the owners’ car parked in the driveway. I knelt behind it and—”
I stop. There’s something wrong with my camera roll. All of my pics from the previous night—no wait, all of my pics period—have been erased.
With a flick of the thumb, I try to scroll up, but nothing happens.
“Everything okay?” the detective asks, and I nod, but internally, I’m freaking out. I know what’s going on—even if I don’t understand the how—but for some reason, I think that denying it will make it go away.
“My pictures. Something’s—”
And then I find them. They have been moved to another folder entirely, a folder named camera roll that is not the actual roll from my iPhone.
My stomach twists as I open it.
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