by Riley Sager
“Did Lisa get any threats?” Coop says, leaning into the phone to address Nancy.
“A few,” she answers. “Some more worrisome than others. We treated all of them seriously, even managing to track down some of the guys who wrote them. They were lonely cranks. Nothing more. Certainly not killers.”
“So you don’t think Sam and I could be targets?” I say.
“I don’t know what to tell you, hon,” Nancy says. “There’s nothing to indicate that’s the case here, but it’s better to err on the side of caution.”
Not what I want to hear, which keeps the anger rising. I long for an answer, good or bad. Something definitive and tangible I can use to guide me going forward. Without it, everything is as murky as the fog that shrouded Central Park last night.
“Isn’t anyone else upset about this?” I say.
“Of course we’re upset,” Coop says. “And if we had answers, we’d give them to you.”
I turn away, unable to see the earnest way his blue eyes try to offer comfort but reveal only uncertainty. Until today, Coop has always been something solid and strong that I could rely on, even when the rest of my world was tilting into oblivion. Now not even he can make sense of the situation.
“You’re angry,” he says.
“I am.”
“That’s understandable. But you shouldn’t worry that what happened to Lisa is going to happen to you.”
“Why not?”
“Because if that was a possibility, Nancy would have told us,” Coop says. “And if I truly thought someone was trying to hurt you, we’d already be on our way out of the city by now. I’d take you so far away from here that not even Jeff would be able to find you.”
He would too. Of that I have no doubt. It’s finally the answer I’ve been looking for, and for a moment it’s almost enough to snuff out the anger burning in my chest. But then Coop looks across the table and fixes Sam with a blue-eyed stare.
“You too, Sam,” he says. “I want you to know that.”
Sam nods. Then she starts to cry. Or maybe she’s been crying for a while and Coop and I just haven’t noticed it. But now she makes sure we notice. When she sweeps her hair off her face it’s impossible to miss the tears slanting down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “This—the whole situation—is really getting to me.”
I stay where I am, trying to discern if Sam’s tears are real, which makes me feel awful for even thinking they might not be. Coop, though, stands and rounds the table, edging toward her.
“It’s okay to be upset,” he says. “This is a bad situation all around.”
Sam nods and wipes her eyes. She stands. She holds out her arms, seeking comfort in the form of an embrace.
Coop obliges. I watch him wrap his bulky arms around Sam and pull her against his chest, giving her the hug I’ve been denied for the past ten years.
I look away. I march into the kitchen. I take another Xanax and begin to bake.
17.
I’m preparing the dough for apple dumplings when Coop finally makes his way to the kitchen. Bowls of ingredients line the counter in front of me. Flour and salt, baking powder and shortening, a bit of milk to mix them with. Coop leans against the doorframe, silently watching me combine the dry ingredients, then the shortening, then the milk. Soon a large ball of dough sits on the countertop, malleable and glistening. I form a fist and give the dough several rough punches, mashing it into an uneven heap.
“Gets the air out,” I say.
“I see,” Coop says.
I continue to punch, the dough bulging under my knuckles. It’s only after I feel the smack of countertop beneath it that I stop and wipe my hands.
“Where’s Sam?”
“She went to lie down, I think,” Coop says. “Are you okay?”
I offer a smile stretched as tight as a rubber band on the cusp of snapping apart. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Really, I am.”
“I’m sorry we don’t know more about who killed Lisa yet. I know this is hard to deal with.”
“It is,” I say. “But I’ll be fine.”
The mounds of Coop’s shoulders droop, deflating, as if I’ve also punched the extra air out of him. I grab a handful of flour and sprinkle it across the countertop. Then I slap the dough onto it, sending up tiny puffs of white. Rolling pin in hand, I flatten the dough in long, hard strokes. The muscles in my arms tighten with each push.
“Will you put that down and talk to me, Quincy?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say. “Hopefully, they’ll somehow catch whoever did this to Lisa and everything will go back to normal. Until then, I trust you’ll do your best to keep me safe.”
“That’s my plan.”
Coop chucks my chin, just like my father used to do. It was a common gesture when we baked together and I invariably messed something up. Spilling a tide of flour over the rim of a bowl or cracking an egg so poorly that fine bits of shell swam in the yolk. I’d get upset and he’d squeeze my chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting it and thereby steadying me. Even though it’s now Coop doing the steadying, the effect is the same.
“Thank you,” I tell him. “Truly. I know I can be a handful. Especially on a day like today.”
Coop starts to say something. I hear the pop of tongue on teeth as he opens his mouth, the word just starting to form. But then the front door opens and Jeff’s voice fills the apartment.
“Quinn? You here?”
“In the kitchen.”
Although Jeff is surprised by Coop’s presence, he does a good job of hiding it. I notice only a slight double-take. It lasts barely a second before he comprehends the situation and realizes Coop is here for the same reason he’s come home in the middle of the afternoon with a box of wine and two bags of takeout from my favorite Thai place.
“I left work as soon as I heard the news,” he says as he deposits them in the fridge. “I tried to call but your phone went straight to voicemail.”
That’s because my phone has been turned off the whole time I’ve been home. By now the texts, emails, and missed calls are probably stacked so high I’ll never be able to sort through them.
His hands now free, Jeff pulls me into a hug. “How are you doing?”
“She’s fine,” Coop says dryly.
Jeff nods at him—the first overt acknowledgment that he’s even in the room. He turns to me. “Are you?”
“Of course not,” I say. “I’m shocked and sad and angry.”
“Poor Lisa. They know who did it, right?”
I shake my head. “They don’t know who or why. All they know is how.”
Jeff, refusing to let me go, turns to Coop again. My head remains against his chest, turning involuntarily with him. “I’m glad you were here with them, Franklin. I’m sure it was a big comfort to Quinn and Sam.”
“I only wish I could do more,” Coop says.
“You’ve already done so much,” Jeff says. “Quinn is lucky to have you in her life.”
“And you,” I tell Jeff. “I’m so lucky to have you.”
I press myself deeper into Jeff’s chest, his tie slick on my cheek. He mistakes it for distress, which I suppose it is, and holds me tighter. I let myself be held, turning inward, Jeff’s body edging across my field of vision, eclipsing the image of Coop staring at me from across the kitchen.
• • •
Later, Jeff and I watch another film noir in bed. Leave Her to Heaven, with Gene Tierney as an obsessive, murderous bride. So beautiful. So damaged. When the movie is over, we watch the eleven o’clock news until a story about Jeff’s case comes on. The police union held a press conference with the dead cop’s widow, urging stiffer penalties for those convicted of crimes against officers. Before Jeff can grab the remote and switch of
f the TV, I get a split-second glance of the widow’s face. It’s pale, deeply creased, smudged with sorrow.
“I wanted to see that,” I say.
“I thought you’d want a break from bad news.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Just like Sam’s fine. And Coop’s fine.”
Coop had left minutes after Jeff arrived, mumbling excuses about the long drive back to Pennsylvania. A clearly subdued Sam spent most of dinner trying to avoid the need to speak. And I remained mad, despite the Xanax and the baking and probably half the box of wine. I still am, hours later. It’s an irrational, all-encompassing anger. I’m mad at everything and nothing. I’m mad at life.
“I know this is hard on you.”
“You have no idea,” I say.
That’s more than anger talking. It’s the stone-cold truth. Jeff doesn’t know what it’s like to have one of only two people just like you snatched from this earth. He doesn’t know how sad and scary and confusing that feels.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right. I don’t. I never will. But I do understand that you’re angry.”
“I’m not,” I lie.
“You are.” Jeff pauses. I tense up, knowing he’s about to say something I don’t want to hear. “And since you’re already mad, I might as well tell you that I have to go back to Chicago again.”
“When?”
“Saturday.”
“But you were just there.”
“The timing sucks, I know,” Jeff says. “But a new character witness has come forward.”
I look at the television’s blank screen, still picturing the face of that cop’s widow.
“Oh,” I say.
“The guy’s cousin,” Jeff continues, even though I have no desire to hear about his client’s character. “He’s a pastor. The two of them grew up together. Got baptized together. It could really help his defense.”
I flip onto my side and face the wall. “He killed a cop.”
“Allegedly,” Jeff says.
I think about Coop. What if he had been gunned down by this guy? Or what if Jeff’s client had murdered Lisa? Would I still have to pretend to be happy that some niceties from a preacher cousin could reduce his sentence? No, I wouldn’t. Yet Jeff seems to expect exactly that.
“You do know that, in all likelihood, he’s guilty, right?” I say. “That he shot that detective just like everyone says he did.”
“That’s not for me to decide.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Of course not,” Jeff says, matching me in testiness. “It doesn’t matter what he’s been accused of. He deserves as good a defense as anyone else.”
“But do you think he did it?”
I sit up slightly, peering over my shoulder at Jeff. He’s still on his back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He blinks once, and I can see the truth in that swift flutter of his eyelids. He knows his client is guilty.
“It’s not like I’m some expensive criminal defense attorney,” he says, as if that makes it slightly better. “I’m not getting rich from defending obvious murderers. I’m upholding a cornerstone of the American justice system. Everyone has the right to a fair trial.”
“What if you were assigned to defend someone really bad?” I say as I flop back onto my side, unable to look at him.
“I’d have no choice.”
But he would. If his client were Stephen Leibman, he of the swinging knife, or Sack Man Calvin Whitmer, he’d have that choice to say no, that men like them don’t deserve defending.
Yet I know deep down Jeff wouldn’t make that choice. He’d choose to be on their side. To defend them. To help them.
Even Him.
“There’s always a choice,” I say.
Jeff says nothing. He simply stares at the ceiling until his eyes grow heavy and eventually close. Minutes later, he’s asleep.
For me, sleep is an impossibility. I’m still too angry. So I thrash under the covers in search of a comfortable position. If I’m being completely honest, there’s a part of me that’s doing it just to wake up Jeff. To make him as sleepless as I am. But he doesn’t wake as the clock moves from eleven to midnight, then midnight to one.
At quarter past the hour, I crawl out of bed, slip on some dirty clothes, and tiptoe into the hallway. Light still peeks from under Sam’s door, so I knock.
“Come on in, Quinn,” she says.
I find her sitting cross-legged on the bed, reading an Asimov paperback bent at the spine. She’s changed her clothes, returning to the black jeans and Sex Pistols T-shirt of yesterday. Her leather jacket has been added to the ensemble. When she looks up at me, I assume she can sense my anger. She certainly knows why I’m there.
Sam wordlessly leaves the bed and roots through her knapsack, removing a purse, of all things. It’s a pleather monstrosity with short handles that can only be slipped to the elbows. Next out of the knapsack is a pile of paperback books, which Sam stuffs into the purse.
“Here,” she says, snapping it at me like a football.
I catch it, surprised by its heft. “What’s it for?”
“Bait.”
I say nothing. I simply follow Sam out of the room, the purse’s handles gripped in my sweaty palm as we slip out into the night.
18.
Outside, unseasonable warmth clings to the clear air, raw and oppressive. The heat of the day seeping into night. By the time we reach the park, I’ve broken into a sweat, my face slick and shining.
Inside the park, it’s so hot that most of the men we see have discarded their hoodies, content to prowl the park in sticky-tight T-shirts. We nod to some of them when we pass, as if we’re one of them, cruising the night for supple flesh.
In a way, we are.
There’s no mist in the park this time. The night is almost brittle in its clarity. Blades of grass catch the moonlight, glowing white, looking like sharpened teeth. In the trees, leaves droop from their branches like recently hanged men.
We choose a bench not far from the one we sat on last night. I can see it just across the way, a triangle of streetlight thrown over its seat. I picture me sitting there twenty-four hours earlier, nervously wanting nothing more than to go home. Now I scan the night-shrouded corners of the park. Every shadow seems to tremble with untold danger. I’m ready for it. Eager.
“See anything?” I say.
“Nope,” Sam says.
She pulls the pack of cigarettes from her pocket and taps one out. I hold out my hand.
“Give me one.”
“Seriously?”
“I used to smoke,” I say, when in truth it was only once and only after being goaded into it by Janelle. One puff made me cough so violently that she had to take it from me, fearful of inflicting more damage. Tonight, I do better, taking two tiny half puffs before the first cough erupts.
“Amateur,” Sam says, inhaling deep and blowing smoke rings.
“Show-off,” I say.
I merely hold my cigarette while she smokes the remainder of hers, always on the lookout, our eyes never leaving the dark horizon of the park.
“How are you feeling?” Sam asks. “About Lisa.”
“Mad.”
“Good.”
“What happened to her is so wrong. I think it was easier—”
I can’t say the rest of what I’m thinking. That it was easier to deal with when we thought Lisa had killed herself. It’s not something you want to articulate, even if it’s true.
“Do you really think someone’s out to get us?” Sam says.
“It’s a possibility,” I say. “We’re famous, in our way.”
Rather, we’re infamous. Notable for going through unthinkable situations with our lives intact. And some people—like the sicko who drove to Quincy, Illinois, to send me that letter—might see it
as a challenge. To finish off what others couldn’t complete.
Sam sucks in the last dregs of smoke from her cigarette. She then puffs it out, talking as she does it. “Were you ever going to tell me about that email from Lisa?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I wanted to.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t know what it meant.”
“Now it means we might be in danger,” Sam says.
Yet here we are, sitting in Central Park at an ungodly hour, just asking for trouble. Hoping for it, in fact. But I see nothing in the clear night. Only our streetlamp-enabled shadows stretching across the path in front of us, dotted with the smoldering butts of our two cigarettes.
“What happens if we don’t see anyone?” I say.
Sam jerks her head toward the purse still looped over my forearm. “That’s why we brought that.”
“When can we use it?”
She lifts one drawn-on brow and smiles in spite of herself. “Now, if you want.”
Quickly, we form a plan. Because I’m smaller and therefore an easier target, I’ll stroll through the park alone, the purse a tease dangling from my arm. Sam will follow at a discreet distance, staying off the path, where it’s less likely she’ll be noticed. If and when someone strikes, we’ll be ready to strike back.
It’s a solid plan. Only mildly reckless.
“I’m ready,” I say.
Sam points the way down the tree-shrouded path. “Go get ’em, tiger.”
• • •
At first, I walk too fast, the purse swinging as I tear down the path in a hurried gait that would give even the most experienced muggers second thoughts. I move so quickly that Sam has trouble keeping up. Looking over my shoulder, I glimpse her far in the distance, skirting around trees and hurrying over the grass.
After that, I slow down, reminding myself the aim is to look vulnerable and easy to catch. Also, I don’t want Sam to fall so far behind that she can’t rescue me if the need arises. Eventually I settle into a nice, even pace and head south along the path that hugs the shore of Central Park Lake. I see no one. I hear nothing but the occasional car on Central Park West and the scuffing of my soles against the ground. To my right is a sliver of empty park, bordered by high stone walls. On my left sits the lake, its placid surface reflecting a smattering of lights from buildings along the Upper West Side.