by Riley Sager
We could be next, Dylan and me.
I think Ingrid knew that. It’s why she arranged to talk to Dylan. It’s why she left me the gun and the note. She knew that we could also disappear just as suddenly as the others.
To avoid such a fate, we could leave.
Right now.
Flee in the night, just like I hope Ingrid did but am starting to believe she didn’t.
Or we could pay a thousand dollars to unlock Erica’s phone and possibly get answers about what happened not just to her but to all of them.
“You still there, Jules?” Zeke says.
“Yeah. Still here.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“Yes,” I reply, wincing as I say it. “Meet me in an hour.”
I end the call and stare at the animals in the diorama. The vultures and jackals and hyena. I feel a twinge of pity for them. What a cruel afterlife they have. Dead for decades yet still gnawing, still fighting.
Forever red in tooth and claw.
32
I now have only twenty-seven dollars to my name.
Dylan and I agreed that we should split Zeke’s asking price between us. Five hundred from Dylan, five hundred from me.
With the cash stuffed uneasily in our pockets, Dylan and I now sit at the spot in Central Park where we’re scheduled to meet Zeke in ten minutes. The Ladies Pavilion. A glorified gazebo with a cream-colored railing and gingerbread trim, the place exudes romance, which must confuse passersby who see Dylan and me inside. Sitting on opposite sides of the pavilion with our arms folded and scowls on our faces, we look like two mismatched people in the middle of a very bad blind date.
“How do you know this guy again?” Dylan says.
“I don’t. He’s a friend of Ingrid’s.”
“So you’ve never met him before?”
“We’ve only talked on the phone.”
Dylan frowns. Not entirely unexpected, seeing how he’s agreed to give a substantial chunk of cash to a complete stranger.
“But he knows someone who can hack into Erica’s phone, right?” he says.
“I hope so,” I say.
Otherwise we’re screwed. Me, in particular. Right now, I have nothing. No cash in my wallet. No usable credit cards. Until I get my first apartment-sitting payment in two days, I’m flat broke. Even thinking about it makes me feel faint.
To counter the panic, I look at the sky outside the pavilion. It’s an overcast afternoon, the clouds heavy and gray. Heather weather no more. Across from me, Dylan stares at a group of kids scampering up nearby Hernshead, a rocky outcropping that juts into the lake. Although his hoodie and angry-bull build should give him a vaguely thuggish look, his eyes betray him. There’s a sadness to them.
“Tell me something about Erica,” I say. “A favorite story or fond memory.”
“Why?”
“Because it reminds you of what you’ve lost and what you’re trying to get back.”
One of the detectives on Jane’s case told me that. She had been gone two weeks by that point, and hope was fading.
I told him about the time in seventh grade when a bully named Davey Tucker decided to make my bus ride to school a living hell. Each day as I boarded the bus, he’d thrust his leg into the aisle and trip me as others laughed. This went on for weeks until, one day, I tripped, fell face-first in the aisle, and got a bloody nose. Seeing the blood pouring down my face sent Jane into a rage. She leapt over two bus seats, grabbed Davey Tucker by the hair, and slammed his face into the aisle until he, too, was bleeding. From then on, she was my hero.
“Erica told me a story once,” Dylan says, smiling slightly. “About when she was a little girl. There was a mouse in the kitchen, and her aunt set traps everywhere. In the corners. Under the sink. I guess she was hell-bent on killing that mouse. But Erica didn’t want it to die. She thought it was cute. So every night, when her aunt was asleep, she’d sneak into the kitchen and use a stick to set off all the traps. That doesn’t surprise me. I know she was an animal lover.”
“Is an animal lover,” I say. “Don’t use the past tense. Not just yet.”
Dylan’s smile fades. “Jules, what if we never find out what happened to them?”
“We will,” I say, not having the heart to mention the alternative. How you learn to live with a lack of knowledge. How you eventually train yourself not to think about the missing every minute of every day. How the not knowing still gets under your skin and in your blood like an incurable disease.
A lanky man with an unkempt beard appears on the path leading to the pavilion.
Zeke. I recognize him from his Instagram photos.
With him is a short girl with pink hair. She looks young. Barely-in-her-teens young. Her frilly white dress and Hello Kitty purse don’t help matters. Nor does the fact that she never looks up from her phone, even as Zeke leads her into the pavilion.
“Hey,” Zeke says. “I guess you’re Jules.”
I nod. “And this is Dylan.”
Zeke gives Dylan a wary glance. “Hey, man.”
Dylan responds with a brief nod and says, “So can you help us or not?”
“I can’t,” Zeke says. “But that’s why I brought Yumi along.”
The girl steps forward and holds out an open palm. “Cash first.”
Dylan and I give the money to Zeke, my stomach roiling as the cash leaves my hand. Zeke passes it to Yumi, who quickly counts it before giving him his cut. The rest is shoved into the Hello Kitty purse.
“Now the phone,” she says.
I give her Erica’s phone. Yumi studies it the way a jeweler does a diamond and says, “Give me five minutes. Alone, please.”
The rest of us leave the pavilion, making our way to Hernshead. The children who were there earlier are now gone, leaving the whole craggy area to just Zeke, Dylan, and me.
“Hey, is that Ingrid’s phone?” Zeke says.
“The less you know, the better,” I say.
“Fair enough.”
I look over his shoulder to the pavilion, where Yumi sits on the bench I just vacated. Her fingers fly across the phone’s screen. I hope that means progress is being made.
“I’m guessing you haven’t heard from her?”
“Nah. You?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you think happened to her?” Zeke says.
I look to Dylan. Although the headshake he gives is tiny, his message is loud and clear. We need to keep this to ourselves.
“Again, you’re better off not knowing,” I say. “But if you hear from her, please tell her to contact me. She has my number. She knows where I live. I just want to know she’s okay.”
Behind Zeke, Yumi emerges from the pavilion. She thrusts Erica’s phone back at me and says, “All done.”
I swipe the screen and see all of Erica’s apps, not to mention her camera, photo gallery, and call log.
“I turned off the lock function,” Yumi says. “If it locks up again for some reason, I reset the passcode. It’s 1234.”
She walks away without another word. Zeke shakes my hand and gives Dylan a strange little salute. “It was a pleasure doing business with you,” he says before hurrying to catch up with Yumi.
I watch them leave with Erica’s unlocked phone in my hand. I hope that whatever’s on it will be worth the high price.
Dylan and I return to the Ladies Pavilion, sharing a bench this time, the two of us crouched over Erica’s phone. Both of us know the answer to what happened to her—and, by default, to Ingrid—could be hidden somewhere inside it.
“Part of me doesn’t want to know if something bad happened to her,” Dylan says as he cradles the phone in his palm. “Maybe it’s better to just assume she ran away and that she’s living this amazing new life somewhere.”
I used to think the same thing abou
t Jane. That she had escaped, trading our sad Pennsylvania town for some far-off locale with blue water, palm trees, and nightly fiestas in a cobblestone square. It was better than the alternative, which was assuming she was murdered within hours of hopping into that black Volkswagen.
Now I’d give anything to know where she is. Grave or tropical villa, I don’t care. All I want now is the truth.
“That will change,” I say. “You might not think so now, but it’s true.”
Dylan pushes the phone into my hands. “Then let’s rip the fucking Band-Aid off now, I guess.”
“Where should we look first?”
“Her call log,” Dylan says.
I swipe to the phone’s call history, starting with outgoing calls. The first one listed is a number with a Manhattan area code. Seeing it brings a tightness to my chest.
This is the last place Erica called.
I look at the time and date the call was made. Nine p.m., October fourth.
“That’s just hours before she vanished,” Dylan says.
“Do you recognize it?”
“No.”
I dial, my heartbeat knocking at my rib cage as the phone rings once. I hit the speaker button so Dylan can hear the second ring. Still, he presses against me, our shoulders touching.
On the third ring, someone answers.
“Hunan Palace. Takeout or delivery?”
Immediately, I hang up.
Dylan pulls away from me, his hopes dashed. “She ordered us Chinese food that night. I forgot all about that. Fuck.”
Undeterred, I scroll through a month’s worth of Erica’s outgoing calls. Nothing stands out to me. There are a few calls to Dylan. Some made to a woman named Cassie and a man named Marcus. I see another call to Hunan Palace made a week earlier, and a second one to Cassie a few days before that.
The rattle of my heartbeat slows to a disappointed crawl. I’m not sure what I expected. A frantic call to 911, I guess. Or a goodbye call to Dylan.
I move on to Erica’s incoming calls. The last one she received was from Dylan.
Yesterday. Three p.m. He didn’t leave a message.
But he did the night before, when he called shortly before midnight.
I play the message, watching the clench of Dylan’s jaw as he listens to his plaintive voice blare from the phone.
“It’s me again. I don’t know why I’m calling because it’s clear you no longer use this phone. I hope that’s the reason and that you’re not avoiding me. I’m worried, Erica.”
Dylan says nothing as I play the other messages he’s left in the past two weeks. In each of them, I note the way his voice wavers between worry and defeat.
It’s the same with messages from other people. Cassie and Marcus and a woman who doesn’t give her name but sounds vaguely British. Tension tightens their voices. An aural tug-of-war between forced hopefulness and barely contained concern.
Tucked among those messages are ones from less well-meaning sources. Visa calling to remind Erica that she’s sixty days late with her payment. Discover calling to tell her the same thing. A man named Keith calling from a collection agency asking where the hell their money is.
“If you don’t contact us in the next twenty-four hours, I’m going to call the police,” he warns.
That was eleven days ago. How wonderful it would have been if he’d followed through on that threat.
I search the text messages next. Again, Dylan is well-represented. He’s sent dozens of them. So many that my index finger cramps up before I get through the past week.
The most recent was sent shortly after midnight, two days ago.
Please tell me where you are.
It was followed a minute later by another.
I miss you.
Two of the people who left voicemails also texted.
Cassie: Haven’t heard from you in a while. You OK?
Marcus: Where you been?
Cassie again: Seriously. You OK?? Text me as soon as you get this.
Cassie a third time: PLEASE!
There are even two texts from Ingrid, made the day after Erica disappeared.
Um, where are you?
Are you around? I’m worried.
I swipe back to the main screen, taking inventory of her most-used apps. Missing are the usual suspects. No Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
“She didn’t—” Dylan catches his use of the past tense and stops to correct himself. “She doesn’t believe in social media. She told me it was a huge waste of time.”
I go to the gallery of photos stored in the phone, finding a trove of ones snapped inside the Bartholomew. The most recent photo, taken in a bathtub, is a close-up of her toes peeking out of a mound of frothy suds.
It’s the claw-foot tub in the master bathroom of 12A. I know because I took a bath there myself during my first night at the Bartholomew. I might have even used the same bubble bath. It makes me wonder if Erica, too, found it beneath the bathroom sink, or if she brought it with her. I hope it’s the latter. The idea of me repeating her actions gives me an uneasy chill.
I scroll through the rest of Erica’s pictures. It turns out she’s an impressive cell phone photographer. She took dozens of well-composed shots of 12A’s interior. The spiral steps. A view of the park taken from the dining room. George’s right wing kissed by the light of dawn.
It seems she’s also a fan of selfies. I find pictures of Erica in the kitchen. Erica in the study. Erica at the bedroom window.
Sitting among the selfies are two videos Erica took. I tap the oldest one first, and her beaming face fills the screen.
“Look at this place,” she says. “Seriously. Look. At. This. Place.”
The image streaks away from Erica to the bedroom window before swirling around the room itself, the visual equivalent of the dizzy euphoria she must have felt in that moment. I felt the same way. Amazed and fortunate.
After two full spins around the room, Erica returns. Looking directly into the camera, she says, “If this is a dream, don’t wake me up. I never want to leave this place.”
The video ends a second later, freezing on a shot of her face halfway filling the screen. The other half is a canted angle of the window, George and the city skyline beyond his wing.
I turn to Dylan, who’s still staring at the phone with a vacant look in his eyes. I saw that same expression on my father’s face shortly after Jane vanished. It never truly went away.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Dylan then shakes his head. “Not really.”
I slide my finger to the second video. The time stamp says it was taken on October fourth.
The night Erica vanished.
Steeling myself with a deep breath, I tap it.
The video begins with blackness. There’s a rustling sound as the phone moves, giving a glimpse of darkened wall.
The sitting room.
I’m intimately familiar with those faces in the wallpaper.
The phone suddenly stops on Erica’s face, painted gray by moonlight coming through the window. Gone is the giddy, pinch-me grin she displayed in the other video. In its place is quickly building dread. Like she already knows something bad is about to happen. The image blurs as the phone shakes slightly.
Her hands. They’re trembling.
She whispers to the camera. “It’s just past midnight, and I swear I heard a noise. I think—I think something’s inside the apartment.”
I let out a gasp. I know the noise she’s talking about. I’ve heard it as well. That ethereal sound, like the whisper of fabric.
On-screen, Erica looks over her shoulder. My gaze drifts there, too, searching the shadows, expecting to see someone waiting there, watching. When Erica turns back to the phone, she locks eyes with her own image on the screen. She seems unnerved by what she sees.
<
br /> “I don’t know what’s going on here. This whole building. It’s not right. We’re being watched. I don’t know why, but we are.” She exhales. “I’m scared. I’m really fucking scared.”
A noise rises in the background.
A single knock on the door.
Erica jumps at the sound. Her eyes become as wide as silver dollars. Fear sizzles through them.
“Fuck,” she whispers. “It’s him.”
The screen suddenly goes black.
The video’s abrupt end is jarring. Like a slap to the face. Yanked back to reality, I realize I’m holding my breath and have been since the video started. When I do breathe again, it’s a slow exhalation. Beside me, Dylan leans forward, practically doubled over, as if he’s about to be sick. He takes a series of quick, shallow breaths.
“Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” I say.
Dylan gulps before answering. “None. If she was feeling threatened by someone, she never told me about it.”
That word—threatened—makes me think of Ingrid. She definitely felt that way. For proof, one need look no further than the gun in a shoe box under my kitchen sink. I wonder if she grew to feel that way on her own or if Erica warned her. If so, I now understand why Ingrid was so afraid of the Bartholomew. Watching that video has shaken me to my core. It’s not just what Erica said that disturbs me. It’s the way she looked. Like someone frightened beyond all reason.
“Dylan, I think we’re in real danger here,” I say. “Especially if we’re right and Ingrid vanished because she knew what happened to Erica.”
Dylan stays silent, his face pensive, almost passive. Finally, he says, “I think you should stop looking for them.”
“Me? What about you?”
“I know how to defend myself.”
Of that, I have no doubt. Dylan’s got the build of a bodyguard. Big enough to give anyone second thoughts about attacking.
“But I need to know what happened to them,” I say.