by Riley Sager
Sam turns away, dark hair whipping outward, her face a blur. It unlocks a memory of a similar sight. So faint it’s more like a memory of a memory.
“Sam, please—”
She leaves the dining room in silence. A moment later, the front door closes behind her.
I remain seated, too tired to move, too worried that if I try to stand, I’ll simply drop to the floor. The way Sam looked when she left replays in my head, gnawing at my memory. I’ve seen it before. I know I have.
Suddenly I remember, which sends me hurrying to my laptop. I log on to Facebook, seeking out Lisa’s profile. More condolences fill her page. Hundreds of them. I ignore them and head to the pictures Lisa had posted, quickly finding the one I’m looking for—Lisa lifting a bottle of wine with a happy glow.
Wine time! LOL!
I study the woman in the background of the photo. The dark blur that had so fascinated me the first time I saw it. I stare at the picture, as if I can will the image into focus. The best I can do is squint, trying to make my vision as blurry as the object in the photo and hope they balance each other into clarity. It works to an extent. A white smudge emerges in the far edge of the dark blur. Within that smudge is a drop of red.
Lipstick.
Sam’s lipstick.
As bright as blood.
Seeing it makes my body hum with an internal acceleration. I feel as if I’ve been strapped to a bottle rocket, hurtling through the ozone, streaking sparks until we both explode.
27.
The kitchen is cleaned and my bags are packed by the time Jeff gets home from work. One suitcase. One carry-on. He stands in the doorway to our bedroom, blinking, as if I’m a mirage.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going with you,” I say.
“To Chicago?”
“I bought my ticket online. Same flight, although we can’t sit together.”
“You sure?” Jeff asks.
“It was your idea.”
“True. It’s just very sudden. And what about Sam?”
“You said yourself that we can leave her alone for a few days,” I say. “She’s not a dog, remember?”
In truth, I hope she’ll be gone when we return. Quietly. Without fuss. A scorpion in such a hurry to get away that it forgets to sting.
Jeff, meanwhile, looks around the bedroom as if for the last time and says, “Let’s hope there’s something left when we get back.”
“I’ll take care of that,” I say.
• • •
Sam doesn’t return until late in the night, long after Jeff and I have gone to bed. Before we leave for the airport in the morning, I knock on the door to her room. After several knocks and no answer, I crack open the door and peer inside. Sam’s in bed, comforter pulled to her chin. The blanket ripples as she thrashes beneath it.
“No,” she moans. “Please don’t.”
I rush to the bed and shake her by the shoulders, barely getting out of the way before she bolts upright, wide-awake.
“What’s going on?” she says.
“A nightmare,” I say. “You were having a nightmare.”
Sam stares at me, making sure I’m not part of the bad dream. She looks like a woman just rescued from drowning—red-faced and damp. Hair sticks to her sweat-soaked cheeks in long, dark strands that resemble seaweed. She even does a little shake, as if trying to flick away excess water.
“Whoa,” she says. “That was a bad one.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, tempted to ask her what she was dreaming about. Was it Calvin Whitmer and his sack-covered face? Or was it something else? Maybe Lisa, bleeding out in the bathtub. But Sam keeps looking at me, knowing something is about to happen.
“Jeff and I are going away for a few days,” I say.
“Where?”
“Chicago.”
“Are you kicking me out? I can’t afford a hotel.”
“I know,” I say, keeping my tone calm and even. Nothing I say can upset her. That’s vital. “You can stay here while we’re gone. Kind of like a house sitter. Maybe do some baking, if you feel like it.”
“I’m down with that,” Sam says.
“Can Jeff and I trust you?”
A pointless question. Of course I don’t trust her. It’s why I’m going to Chicago with Jeff in the first place. Leaving her behind is my only option.
“Sure.”
I remove the cash I had stuffed into my pocket right before coming into the room. Two rumpled hundred-dollar bills. I hand them to Sam.
“Here’s some walking-around money,” I say. “Use it for food, maybe go to the movies. Whatever.”
It’s a bribe and Sam knows it. Rubbing the bills together, she says, “Don’t house sitters also get some sort of fee? You know, for looking after the place. Making sure everything’s fine.”
While she frames it as a perfectly reasonable question, it doesn’t keep the betrayal I feel from stinging like a slap. I remember Sam’s first night here, how Jeff flat-out asked if she had come seeking money. She denied it, and I had believed her. Now I get the feeling that’s the only reason she’s here. The late-night talks, the baking, the entire friendship was just a means to that end.
“How does five hundred sound?” I say.
Sam appraises the room. I can see her doing the math in her head, weighing the potential value of each object.
“A thousand sounds better,” she says.
I grit my teeth. “Of course.”
I leave to fetch my purse, returning with a check made payable to Tina Stone and postdated for the day after Jeff and I are scheduled to return. Sam says nothing when she sees the date. She simply folds the check in half and places it with the cash on the nightstand.
“Do you still want me here when you get back?” she says.
“That’s up to you.”
Sam smiles. “It really is, isn’t it?”
• • •
On the plane, the solo traveler next to me kindly agrees to switch places with Jeff, allowing us to sit together. During takeoff, Jeff grabs my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze.
After landing and checking into our hotel, we have an entire afternoon and evening alone together. Gone is the awkwardness of two nights ago, when Sam’s absence was as noticeable as a missing pinkie finger. We stroll the downtown blocks around our hotel, the tension from the past week thawing in the breeze blowing off Lake Michigan.
“I’m glad you came along, Quinn,” Jeff says. “I know it didn’t seem that way last night, but I mean it.”
When he reaches for my hand, I gladly take it. It helps having him in my corner. Especially considering what I intend to do.
On the walk back to the hotel, we’re both taken with a dress in a boutique window. It’s black and white, with a cinched waist and a skirt that flares outward like a 1950s-era Dior.
“Right off the Paris plane,” I say, quoting Grace Kelly in Rear Window. “Think it will sell?”
Jeff stammers, Jimmy Stewart–style. “Well, see, that depends on the quote.”
“A steal at eleven hundred dollars,” I say, still Grace.
“That dress should be listed on the stock exchange.” Jeff drops the charade, becoming himself again. “And I think you should buy it.”
“Really?” I say, also turning into myself again.
Jeff flashes that widescreen smile. “It’s been a rough week. You deserve something nice.”
Inside the shop, I’m relieved to learn the dress’s price tag is slightly less than my Grace Kelly estimate. Discovering that it fits brings more relief. I buy it on the spot.
“A dress like that deserves an occasion to match,” Jeff tells me. “I think I know just the place.”
We dress for dinner, me in my new frock and Jeff in his sharpest suit. Thanks to the hotel concierge,
we’re able to get a late reservation at the city’s hippest, most crazy-expensive restaurant. At Jeff’s encouragement, we splurge on the nine-course tasting menu, washing it down with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Dessert is a chocolate soufflé so divine that I beg the pastry chef for the recipe.
Back at the hotel, buzzed on wine and our foreign surroundings, we’re flirtatious and sensual. I kiss him slowly while unknotting his tie, the stubbled silk winding around my fingers. Jeff takes his time with my dress. I shiver as he inches the zipper lower, my back arching.
His breath grows heavier when the dress drops to the floor. He grips my arms, hurting them just a little. There’s lust in his eyes. A wildness I haven’t seen for ages. It makes him look like a stranger, dangerous and unknowable. I’m reminded of all those rough-and-tumble frat boys and football players I had slept with after Pine Cottage. The ones not afraid to yank off my panties and flip me over the bed. The ones who didn’t care who I was or what I wanted.
My body trembles. This is promising. This is what I need.
But then it’s gone, the mood falling away with the same ease as Jeff’s tie slipping from my hands. I’m not even aware of its passing until we’re on the bed and Jeff is inside me, suddenly his usual maddeningly conscientious self. Asking me how I feel. Asking me what I want.
I want him to stop caring about my needs.
I want him to shut up and take what he wants.
None of that happens. The sex ends the way it normally does—with Jeff spent and me stretched on my back, a tight lump of dissatisfaction in my gut.
Jeff showers afterward, returning to bed pink and tender.
“What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?” he asks, voice distant, already sailing on the boat to dreamland.
“The usual sights. The Art Institute. The Bean. Maybe some more shopping.”
“Nice,” Jeff sleepily murmurs. “You’ll have fun.”
“That’s why I came along,” I say, when, in fact, it’s not.
Fun has nothing to do with my reason for coming here. Jeff has nothing to do with it either. While he was in the shower, washing off the sweat and smell of humdrum sex, I was on my phone, reserving a rental car.
In the morning, I’m going to drive to Indiana and finally get some answers.
28.
Roughly 230 miles lie between Chicago and Muncie, and I drive them as fast as my rented Camry will allow. My goal is to get to Lisa’s house and see if I can learn something—anything—before returning to the city by evening. The trip is long, about seven hours total, but if I keep a quick pace, I can be back before Jeff knows I’m gone.
On the way there, I make good time, stopping just once at a convenience store off I-65. It’s one of those sad, generic places that wants you to think it’s part of a chain. But the seams show. All those sticky soda cans, scuffed floor tiles, and racks of nudie mags wrapped in condoms of clear plastic. I buy a bottle of water, a granola bar, and a pack of cheese crackers. The breakfast of champions.
A rack of silvery lighters sits on the counter. When the stoner clerk cracks open a fresh roll of pennies for the register, I grab one and stuff it into my pocket. He catches me, smiles, sends me off with a wink.
Then I’m back in the car, marking my time by the way the sunlight slants across the flat ribbon of asphalt. The scenery streaking past the window is rural and stark. The houses have stripped siding and leaning porches. Miles of fields fly by, their cornstalks reduced to stubs. Exit signs point to small towns with misleadingly exotic names. Paris. Brazil. Peru.
By the time the sun has become an unblinking yellow eye directly overhead, I’m steering through Muncie, searching for the address Lisa gave me in case I ever wanted to write.
I find her house on a quiet side street full of ranch homes and sycamore trees. Lisa’s is noticeably nicer than the others, with fresh paint on the shutters and pristine patio furniture on the front porch. A circular flower bed sits in the middle of the well-trimmed lawn, a fiberglass birdbath rising from its center like a giant mushroom.
A station wagon with a PBA sticker slapped to its back bumper sits in the driveway. Definitely not Lisa’s car.
After parking on the street, I check myself in the rearview mirror, making sure I look somber and curious, not deranged and stalkerish. At the hotel, I had taken great care in picking an outfit that walked the fine line between casual and mourning. Dark jeans, deep-purple blouse, black flats.
I head to the front door using the flagstone walkway that cuts through the yard. When I ring the doorbell, I hear it echo back at me from deep inside the house.
The woman who answers the door is dressed in a monochrome outfit of tan slacks and beige polo shirt. Tall and angular, she might have resembled Katharine Hepburn in her younger years. Now, though, webs of wrinkles surround her hazel eyes. She brings to mind an Okie in a Walker Evans photo—thin, hard, and bone-tired.
I know exactly who she is.
Nancy.
“Can I help you?” she says in a voice as blunt as a Plains wind.
I have no plan about what to do or say. All that mattered was getting here. Now that I’ve arrived, I don’t know what my next step will be.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m—”
Nancy nods. “Quincy. I know.”
She looks at my fingernails, messily painted black. My right hand, with its mottled scabs smarting like a sunburn across my knuckles, catches her attention. I shove it deep into my pocket.
“You here for the funeral?” she says.
“I thought that already happened.”
“Tomorrow.”
I should have known there’d be a delay. There had been an autopsy to contend with, plus that all-important tox report.
“Lisa thought a lot about the two of you,” Nancy says. “I know she would want you there.”
As would members of the press, who I assume will be arriving in droves, the clicking of their cameras punctuating the Twenty-Third Psalm.
“It’s probably not a good idea,” I say. “I’m afraid I’d be a distraction.”
“Then it’d be real nice if you told me why you’re here. I’m no genius, but I sure as hell know that Muncie’s not exactly a stone’s throw from New York.”
“I’m here to learn about Lisa,” I say. “I’m here for details.”
• • •
Inside, Lisa’s house is a tidy, depressing affair. The bulk of it is taken up by the living room, dining area, and kitchen, which merge together to form one giant room. The walls are covered in wood paneling, making the place feel musty and old-fashioned. It’s the home of a widowed grandmother, not a forty-two-year-old woman.
I see no signs that a murder took place here. There are no cops dusting for prints, no grim-faced CSI grunts picking through the carpet with tweezers. Those tasks are complete, results hopefully pending.
Stacks of cardboard boxes—some folded, others not—clutter the living room, which has already been stripped of a few knickknacks. End tables bear dust-free circles where vases and bowls once sat.
“Lisa’s family asked if I could start packing up her things,” Nancy says. “They don’t want to set foot in the place anymore. Can’t say I blame them.”
We sit at the oval dining-room table. In front of her is a laminated place mat. I assume it’s where Lisa usually ate her meals. A table setting for one. We talk while sipping tea from mugs with pink roses around the rims.
Her full name is Nancy Scott. She’s been an Indiana State Trooper for twenty-five years, although she’ll probably be retired by this time next year. She’s single, never married, owns two German shepherds that are decommissioned police dogs.
“I was one of the first people to enter that sorority house,” she says. “And I was the first person to realize Lisa wasn’t dead like the rest. All the other guys—and they were all guys except me—took one look a
t those bodies and assumed the worst. I did too, I guess. Oh, it was bad. The blood. It was just everywhere.”
She stops, remembering who she’s talking to. I nod for her to continue.
“When I took one look at Lisa, I knew she was still alive. I didn’t know if she’d stay that way, but somehow she pulled through. After that, I took a shine to her. She was a fighter, that girl.”
“And that’s how the two of you became close?”
“Lisa and I were close in the way that you and Frank are close.”
Frank. It’s disconcerting to hear him called that. To me, he’s simply Coop.
“She knew she could call me whenever she needed to,” Nancy says. “That I was there to listen and help in whatever way I could. That kind of thing is delicate, you see. You need to let them know you’re there for them, but not get too involved. You have to keep a distance. It’s better that way.”
I think of Coop and all the invisible barriers he’s built between us. Always nodding, never hugging. Not coming up to the apartment until he absolutely had to. It’s likely Nancy gave him this same spiel about keeping a distance. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who keeps her opinions to herself.
“It was only in the past five years or so that we became what you’d call friends,” she says. “I became close with her family as well. They’d have me over for Thanksgiving dinner, family birthdays.”
“They sound like good people,” I say.
“They are. They’re having a hard time with this, of course. That grief will be with them for the rest of their lives.”
“And you?” I say.
“Oh, I’m furious.” Nancy takes a sip of tea. Her lips pucker from the heat before flattening into a harsh line. “I know I should feel sad, and I do. But more than that, I’m mad as hell. Someone took Lisa away from us. After all she went through.”
I know exactly what she means. Lisa’s murder feels like a defeat. A Final Girl finally vanquished.
“Did you always suspect foul play was involved?”
“I sure as hell did,” Nancy says. “I knew Lisa couldn’t have killed herself. Not when she’d fought so hard to survive and had done so much with the hand she’d been dealt. I’m the one who ordered that tox report, conflict of interest be damned. I was right, of course. They found all those pills in her system but no prescription bottle in the house to keep them in. Then they looked at the knife wounds, which is something that should have been done in the first place.”