“Isn’t it possible that they buzzed an apartment and someone let them in?”
“Every visitor to the building has to come by the front desk. You either have a keycard and pass through the gate or you sign in the guest log and are announced. Then, you’re issued a temporary keycard. Security is twenty-four seven.”
A high security building. On Schwartzman’s salary that was a big expense, which meant it was a high priority. Maybe the ex was more dangerous than Schwartzman was letting on. “There have to be other ways in and out. The garage, for instance?”
“Yes, but again, there’s a guard station there, too. You need a keycard to access the garage and then again to access the door from the garage to the elevator bank.”
“So even if someone snuck through with a car…,” Jamie began.
“They couldn’t get out of the garage and into the building,” Schwartzman said.
“It sounds secure.”
“I’d thought so,” Schwartzman said.
“So, it’s safe to assume that every time a keycard is used, it is logged?” Jamie asked.
“I think so, yes.”
“Text me your address and the contact information for the management company. Maybe I can get access to that log,” Jamie said.
“They won’t give it you,” Schwartzman said. “Not without a warrant.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jamie told her. “I’ll bet it costs a lot to live in that building. That security is probably a big part of how they can command those prices. People might not react that well if they knew it was so easy to get in without being detected.”
“Thank you, Jamie.”
“No problem, Schwartzman. Really. You want to give me your ex’s name? I can see what he’s been up to?”
Schwartzman hesitated. “Not yet.”
“Okay,” Jamie said. These days, people had all sorts of access to when someone checked up on them, even if that someone was the police. It was sometimes best to wait to dig into a suspect’s record. “You let me know if you change your mind.”
“I will.”
“We’ll catch up Monday, if not before.”
“Enjoy the weekend,” Schwartzman said.
Jamie didn’t respond. She wasn’t going to enjoy the weekend and neither would Schwartzman. The fact that Schwartzman had chosen to call Jamie was telling enough. She’d been close enough to these cases to know that whoever Schwartzman was avoiding had already done enough to prevent her from resting this weekend. “Call if you need me.”
Jamie hung up and called Vich. Her feet were on the cool wood, and she pressed her toes into the solid floor. Vich answered on the third ring, wide-awake. She explained Schwartzman’s request and gave him her number. He promised he’d get over there and take care of it.
“Keep me posted,” she told him as she hung up.
Jamie set her phone on her bedside table and walked out of her bedroom. She had left the downstairs hall light on, but it was off now. The boys would have turned it off.
She listened at Z’s door. With her palm against the wood, the door swung open, and she saw his unmade, empty bed.
“Z?”
She checked his room and then the bathroom, and then made her way down the stairs. No sign of him in the kitchen or the living room.
“Z?” she called out in a whispered shout.
No response.
She made her way down the hall to Tony’s room. “Tony?” She heard him moving in the bed. “Tony,” she said again.
The bedroom door swung open, and he stood in boxer shorts and a white T-shirt. His hair was on end and his eyes were barely open. “What? What is it?”
“Z isn’t in his room.”
Tony exhaled, leaning against the door jam. “He’s at Sam’s. They all went up there after the pizza place.”
“Sam’s?”
He nodded, stifling a yawn.
“I thought he was coming home.”
Tony studied her face. “What’s going on?”
“I thought we’d talked about him coming home.”
“We did,” Tony said. “And then I was out with the group and about five of the boys from the team were sleeping at Sam’s. Sam’s parents, Kate and Tom, were there, and they assured me that Z was welcome and that they would be home. So, I let him go.”
Jamie crossed her arms.
“Are you okay?”
An uncomfortable knot formed in her throat. “Fine,” she said. “It startled me when he wasn’t in his room.” She started back down the hall.
“Jamie—”
“Yeah?”
“You can talk to me,” Tony said, running his palm over his nest of hair.
“What? I know.”
“I mean really talk,” he added softly.
Jamie fought off the onslaught that followed. The tightness in her chest, the dense weight behind her eyes where the tears were building up.
Tony stepped into the hall. Not closing the space between them but minimizing it, leaving that gap that always existed between them. The safe space. “I know this has been hard.”
He was referring to his move to Ohio. But it wasn’t only about Ohio. “This” to her was their living together. Raising Z. Losing their mothers. Growing up with their fathers and so many things that had happened in between.
Their relationship was built on these things—these trials.
Maybe that was what it was like to have siblings. It wasn’t as though they’d chosen each other.
They were thrown together.
He cared for her, and she would have done anything for him. To help him.
But despite all the love and respect they might have for each other, there was always the burden of those difficult experiences at the base of their relationship.
“I felt like I needed to step up,” he whispered. “As a man, as a father, and be a provider.”
“I never asked for that.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t. You’ve always taken care of me. Hell, you mostly took care of Mick, too, and he was three years older. When I came out five years ago, I didn’t plan on—” He let out a dry laugh. “Well, I didn’t plan anything, but I definitely didn’t plan on moving in. Living in your house. Then, becoming a father to your son.”
“I don’t really think of it as my house, T. It’s our house. And Z—he thinks of you as his father. And so do I.” She drew an unsteady breath. “I wished you’d talked to me first. About Ohio and all of it…,” she said.
“We haven’t been talking much, have we?”
“We are a family, Tony,” she said. “Not the traditional kind where the mother and father share a bed,” she added softly.
“I know.”
She exhaled. “But we will still be a family if you’re in Ohio. We’ll need to save more for plane tickets.”
“Speaking of which, it’s an early morning,” Tony said.
“Right. You need to get some sleep.”
“We both do.” He started back toward his bedroom.
“Hey, T.”
He looked back.
“Z will miss you,” she said.
“I’ll miss him, too.”
“But he won’t be the only one.” There was so much more to say, but it was a start.
Tony retreated into his room and closed the door, and Jamie made her way back upstairs to her bedroom. She crawled under the covers and tucked them in along her sides.
What would their lives be like with Tony so far away?
She’d never imagined it before and now she couldn’t.
Chapter 32
Schwartzman woke midmorning on Sunday. Bright daylight streamed in along the edges of the dark shades. She didn’t remember her dreams, but she felt as though she’d barely slept at all. Thankfully, it was Sunday and nothing was expected of her today.
She would not leave the apartment.
She had intended to go to the Dipsea trail, stop for some groceries, but facing the real world was too much to take on today. She would order from her
favorite Indian restaurant, Curry, and have it delivered. Enough for lunch and dinner.
What she needed to do today was pull herself together so that she could walk into work tomorrow. That meant sifting through the emotions that were churning on the surface. From experience, she knew that they would not be dragged back down. Not without being felt and heard first.
The first thing was to let the memories come.
Lying in her bed, Schwartzman was flooded with images of their first date, to the country club. Eight weeks after her father’s death, Spencer MacDonald had called to invite her to dinner at the country club. His low drawl, his manner of speech so unassuming, the call made Schwartzman feel like he was a young colleague of her father’s. Safe.
“It sure would make me happy if you’d join me for dinner, Bella.” No one had called her Bella. It had seemed so loving, so intimate, even before they knew each other. How easily she’d been lured in. How desperate to get out of that house, filled with the emptiness her father had left behind, the gap between her and her mother impossible to fill.
Her father had been their bridge.
Now there was nothing to connect them.
Spencer MacDonald stepped in as though to build a new one. How gracious he was that first evening. Arriving to the front door in seersucker pants and a navy blazer, he brought her mother flowers. A bright bouquet of yellow flowers. Not something so large as to be gauche. Just the right touch of respect and something to brighten her day.
Her mother, of course, was thrilled. Spencer offered his arm to walk her to the car, opened her door, let her sit, and waited for her to gather her skirts before closing the door for her.
At the club, their table was in a prime corner, looking out at the room and, beyond it, the golf course. They were the center of a constant swarm of visitors. Spencer addressed each and every one by name. Polite but brief, he asked after their mothers and children. Then told visitors that he was there on a very special date, using her name. Bella.
“You haven’t met Bella Schwartzman?” he would ask with surprise in his voice when they said they hadn’t had the pleasure. And all of them said that. Her parents belonged to the country club, a concession to her mother. But her father never went and so she avoided it as well.
That night, she felt like some sort of celebrity. The way he reached out to touch her hand, she was the centerpiece of the entire room.
The envy of the women who passed their table was obvious. Spencer MacDonald was sought after. Wealthy, gorgeous, powerful. He was Greenville’s prize bachelor. Already thirty, he was wise to the world. And he had chosen her—barely twenty-three and finishing her third year of medical school. Her life had been studies.
Naïve and much younger than her peers, she was a child.
She’d had few friends and no experience with men.
At the time, she did not consider any other option. There was no chance that those girls knew more about Spencer MacDonald than she. No chance that what she’d interpreted as envy was actually pity.
That night, when Spencer suggested a nightcap, she’d accepted. There had been champagne and wine at the club, but the real buzz came from him. Back in his home, he poured a second nightcap only minutes before he pinned her down and raped her on the expensive Persian rug in his den. The sex (her first) was painful and rough. She had struggled against him for its duration.
But as soon as he had finished, he cupped her face for a kiss as though the act had been loving and consensual. Then, he led her, bleeding and crying, to the bathroom and ran her a bath. He insisted she soak, lit a candle, brought her ice water and Advil which she did not take.
Afterward, he delivered her home, clean as new.
The last thing he said was that he would call her the next day.
Which he did not.
Nor did he call the next day after that. Or the one that followed. Not for an entire week, while her mother asked for every detail of the evening, trying to discern where her daughter might have gone wrong and lost the interest of Spencer MacDonald.
She told her mother nothing about the sexual encounter. When pressed, Schwartzman recounted some of the details of the evening. The club, of course. The names of a few of the people she’d seen there. The glass of champagne. The Cajun shrimp risotto. The lemon crème brûlée. After that, the story became purely a work of fiction. They’d driven down to the water, she’d told her mother. Walked in the moonlight.
There had been almost no moon that night.
Not that her mother cared.
Fiction was fine by her.
Each day, her mother scratched for some new detail, commented again on how strange it was that, after such a lovely evening, Spencer MacDonald hadn’t called. Before leaving Schwartzman to suffer, her mother would offer some backhanded encouragement. “I’m sure he’s busy with other things,” she would say. “We can only hope he’ll call. Keep your fingers crossed.”
Which was not at all what Schwartzman wanted. Her plan was to write him off completely. She’d read plenty of cases in her studies about women losing their virginity by rape. More in the south than in the north or west. More in broken homes, more in impoverished areas.
It wasn’t her fault.
All the books said that.
It was never the victim’s fault. She was the victim. It wasn’t her fault. She had repeated that mantra over and over.
Sometimes out loud.
The steady stream of her mother’s feedback fed her own insecurity about what had happened, what she’d lost to him. Lost to him. That first night it was what he had stolen, robbed from her. But the brain was an amazing organ. Much more powerful in its subconscious than in anything she had trained it to do.
Over the course of one week, Spencer MacDonald was silently transformed from a monster into a modern prince. Without a single word from him. Of course, he had wanted to have sex with her on the first night. He wasn’t about to waste his time courting someone blindly. He was a highly prized bachelor. If they weren’t compatible, he would want to know immediately. And hadn’t he bathed her afterward? Hadn’t he let her know that it was okay, that she was safe?
The lovemaking—that was how she came to think of it after only a single week. The lovemaking had been painful, but that was to be expected with her first time. Like a bandage. Just rip it off. Surely, he would be gentler the next time. Now that he knew they were compatible. But they were, weren’t they? Hadn’t he seemed pleased afterward? She had certainly felt it when they’d kissed, hadn’t she? Yes. She was sure she had. The rest, well, she couldn’t have been expected to enjoy that, could she?
By the time ten days had passed, Schwartzman was convinced Spencer MacDonald was the man of her dreams.
When he called on the eleventh day, his voice was enough to make her cry with joy.
Chapter 33
Jamie had only seen Z for all of thirty minutes since the ball game. He’d arrived home while she was at General Hospital Sunday, doing rape kits on three women who were attacked Saturday night across the city. Three who were attacked and had reported it. She’d finally gotten home at almost midnight on Sunday, and Z was sound asleep. His phone was on his bedside table. She’d taken it into the bathroom and read the two text messages displayed on the front screen.
The first was from Amanda at 10:29 p.m. Amanda Steckler. Nice game.
The second came in at 11:09 from Jake. Wat up?
Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, Jamie had swiped the screen to access his messages. The words “Enter Passcode” had appeared at the top of the screen. Below were four dashes and the numbers 0-9. She tried his birth month and date. The screen flashed, returning her to the passcode screen. What else would he use as a passcode? His birth year? No. Their street address. No. Her birthday. Jamie crept back into Z’s room, replacing the phone on his table and went to bed.
She had changed her alarm on Sunday morning to take Tony to the airport, then forgot to reset it, so when her alarm did go off on Monday morning,
she was a full forty-five minutes behind schedule. Thankfully, Z had been able to catch a ride to school with Paul. But it had left them no opportunity to talk.
Worse, with Tony gone, her whole day was going to be cut short. She went to the lab first. The mitt was in a proper paper evidence bag, she’d turned it into the same tech who had been at Delman’s apartment building that day. Nadia or something. God, she was terrible with names.
The tech slid the evidence slip in front of her and Jamie stared at all the things she needed to log. Where it was found. When it was found. Day and time. Jamie stared at the form. She didn’t want to lie. She couldn’t be entirely honest.
“Everything okay?” Roger asked.
“I’ve got a piece of evidence that may be related to Charlotte’s attack.”
Roger waited.
“It’s a baseball mitt.”
“Okay,” Roger said.
“It isn’t Z’s mitt,” she said, happy to be able to say that with total confidence. “But it does belong to one of his friends.”
Roger looked at the form. “And you’re not sure exactly when or where it was recovered.” It was less a question than a statement.
“Something like that,” she said.
“You know the name of the kid who it belongs to?”
Jamie nodded.
“Put his name there and record the date and time of collection as now. We’ll see what we can find.”
Jamie froze, conscious of how she reacted to this request. The desire to bask in the relief, or let tears fall, was almost overwhelming.
Roger took it for something else. He put his hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”
As she left the lab, her sense of relief waned quickly. Just because the mitt wasn’t Z’s didn’t mean he wasn’t involved. She’d done what she had to do.
No matter what Roger found out, she would stand by her son. She hated the idea that she had to wait to learn whether the blood on the mitt was Charlotte’s and if there was anything to link it to Z. After all, the mitt had been in his baseball bag.
Only she knew that.
She had to keep her head down and work until Roger called.
The bad news rolled in. Jamie and Vich made Brody’s loft their first stop of the day. No Brody. And his cell phone went straight to voicemail, so no way to track him by GPS either. The front desk manager told Vich and Jamie that Brody was out of town for the weekend, attending an art festival in Telluride. But the manager also thought he was due back last night.
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