“Yes, a few times a week,” Avery said. “She would stay at Jenny’s. I figured she was there. So, I went into the living room and turned on the overhead light. That’s when I saw her.”
“What had caused the glow?”
“Her laptop. It was set up on the table opposite the couch.”
Avery closed her eyes and inhaled.
“The couch where you found Priscilla?” Kelly asked.
Avery nodded and opened her eyes.
“At first, I didn’t see the blood. I thought she was sleeping. Then I saw the stain. And her face. Still, I couldn’t process it. She looked like Priscilla.” Avery’s breath was short and her voice was slowly raising in pitch and volume. “I mean, of course she did, but she didn’t look dead. Even with the blood. I ran into the kitchen and called the police. I don’t remember what happened next.”
Kelly said, “Avery, you’re doing great. Please, go on.”
“I talked to the police. They were there with the ambulance. I called Roane. He came over, and, I went to stay with him. Priscilla was the only real family I had. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Ames. First Priscilla’s mother, now this.” Her eyes were glistening.
Kelly remembered that Ginny Ames had been killed in a car crash, ten years before. Kelly hadn’t known Peter Ames then, but she’d heard him talk about his wife, and knew how hard it was for him.
“I’m sorry,” Kelly said, handing her a packet of tissues from her bag.
Avery sat still.
To Kelly, Avery appeared composed. She spoke clearly and made eye contact. Kelly knew it didn’t necessarily matter; it didn’t indicate guilt or innocence. Kelly had assumed, when she first started at the force, that guilty parties would present themselves as restless, uneasy, or fearful—and sometimes they did. But often they didn’t.
“Have you read the stories in the news?” Kelly asked.
“Yes,” Avery replied. “Everything. I can’t help it.”
Kelly nodded. “I understand.” Kelly remembered those days after Cass disappeared, when she frantically searched for anything she could find related to the story. Logically, she had known it was futile because her family would have had any information first. Still, she was fixated on seeing every report.
“It makes me crazy, the way they talk about Priscilla’s family!” Avery said. Her eyes narrowed. “The reporters, strangers commenting online. People have no idea who Mr. Ames is, who Priscilla was. There was that one story though. The one that ran everywhere.”
Nigel Brickmat’s piece. Kelly nodded.
“Nothing they said in that story was true. Peter Ames is a good man. Priscilla, well, she had her issues, but she was a good person. And loyal. The most loyal friend.”
“That story wasn’t kind to you, either,” Kelly said.
Avery looked out of the large windows. “I don’t really care about that part,” she said. “Honestly, I’ll be okay.”
“I should get going,” Kelly said. She picked up a pen and paper from a side table and wrote down her number. “If there’s anything that might be important, or if you need any help, please call.”
Avery stood up and called the elevator. It opened with a whisper and Kelly rode down to the ground level.
The early evening was cool, but the rain had stopped and Kelly walked quickly, not minding where she was going. She figured she could use the exercise, regardless. A few days without her boxing workout was making her restless.
She liked Avery, poised even though clearly distraught and exhausted. She tried to picture Avery killing Priscilla Ames. It was possible. Things went wrong, friendships soured.
Brickmat’s article insinuated that Avery and Priscilla were lovers. It’s possible. She ran through the scenario in her head. They have a spat, one bullet in the gun and it looks like a suicide. It’s an intimate moment, so there’s no sign of struggle.
Still, Kelly’s gut told her that it didn’t add up. As she walked, she tried to clear her head to start over again with only the facts.
8
Peter Ames stood at his office window, looking at the New York City skyline as the sun lowered itself behind the Hudson River. He could remember the first time he had looked at the space early in the morning ten years earlier; he was driven to sign the lease that very same day. His company had grown so rapidly that they’d gone directly from dingy borrowed basement quarters in the East Village to the twenty-sixth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper. The first time Ames had stayed late in his office, the night view had taken his breath away. It was a gift, that view, both warm and expansive somehow. It was his favorite place to be in the evening these days. The only place he really felt like himself.
Priscilla had still been in grade school then, and Ginny, of course, had still been alive.
Ames had come from nothing, but Ginny had not. Her parents were both Manhattan doctors. Her perfectly honeyed highlights and manicures had charmed him when they first met. Ginny was so unlike the girls Ames had grown up with. She was always impeccably groomed, cultured, and confident in any situation. Despite her upbringing, and her looks and wealth, though, Ginny had never been vain.
Still, when he thought of her now, he pictured Ginny as a young mother, stopping into that basement office with little Priscilla, smelling of shampoo and Cheerios.
Ames turned the phone on speaker and made his call. There were no other associates left in the office at this hour. Superintendent Frame answered on the first ring. It was getting late in London, but she was still at her desk.
“I need an update,” he said.
“There is not much more to tell at this point,” she replied. “Your girl from Queens got in last night. The press briefing went well. The forensics and postmortem reports should be in soon. We will know more then about the circumstances.”
“What about suspects? Have you brought anyone in?”
“Not yet. We’re looking closely at Avery Moss, but no decisions have been made yet. I know it’s hard to hear, Peter, but it may have been suicide.”
Ames felt the anger rise in his chest.
“My daughter did not kill herself,” he said firmly. “And the idea that Avery would do that is completely ridiculous.”
“Look, Peter,” she replied in an even tone, “please trust us. We need to look at every angle. Avery’s involvement on the scene necessitates her being investigated.”
“I read the story written by that little shit, what’s he called—Brickbane or something. How could he know anything about Avery at this point?”
There was a pause at the end of the other line.
“Reporters find things out,” she said. “They have their ways.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Ames replied. “I do not like it at all. Avery will never be able to get out from under this if her name is dragged through the mud. The girl is twenty years old, for Christ’s sake. I can’t even imagine what she went through finding Priscilla like that. God, what she must have looked like. I’ve spoken to Avery; she’s destroyed by this.”
Superintendent Frame’s voice was firm at the other end of the line. “I asked you not to talk to Avery. Not at this point. Please, stay away from any of her friends or teachers or acquaintances. And out of the way of the investigators. It’s the best thing that you can do to help. I’ve put Detective Moore on the case as a personal favor to you. Because of the work you’ve done for my father. In return, I need you to help me by giving us room to work.”
“Alright, Janet. I will.”
Ames thought about the first time he met Kelly Moore at One Police Plaza. He didn’t believe she was a detective. She had barely looked older than Priscilla. The minute she began to speak, though, he had known she would be the one to help him. He’d met resistance from Chief Delancey when he asked for Moore to step in. Kelly had only led a few smaller cases at that point, but Ames had been insistent, and where insistence failed, his influence at City Hall had gone the distance. Ames knew the value of raw intelligence. Every person h
e interviewed for a position at his firm got a battery of logic and reasoning tests. Their scores, rather than their experience, were how he hired.
“Moore’s the lead investigator, right?” he asked Frame.
“No, Peter,” Frame replied. “We do have our own police force here, you know. DCI Jack Dunne is the Senior Investigating Officer on the case.”
“That is not what I understood to be our arrangement.”
“You understood wrong.”
“Listen, this is my little girl we’re talking about. This is justice for my daughter.”
“We plan to see justice served, Peter.”
Ames could hear the desperation in his own voice. He pictured a case file—a thick folder, sitting on a desk in London, collecting dust. He envisioned the worst-case scenario—that nothing at all was being done; that the London brass might not think the story of a “poor little rich girl from New York” was one that needed to be the top priority of their police force. But he knew Kelly Moore wouldn’t let it sit. She would find out what happened to Priscilla.
“The decision’s made,” Frame said.
Ames stood; he walked over to the drinks cart he kept next to the bank of windows. He poured two fingers of bourbon into a glass and gulped it down silently, waiting for Frame to speak again. She did not.
“Listen, I need Moore to have complete access,” Ames said finally. “To every document, every interview. I need to know she is fully involved in the investigation, not just there to appease me.”
“Everyone on the team has full access,” she said. “Everyone.”
“And I’ll need daily briefings.”
“We will keep you informed.”
Ames shook his head as he stood, gazing out at the blinking lights of the darkening city. “Okay,” he heard himself say. “I’ll be there in the morning. My plane leaves in a few hours.” But his stomach lurched as it had been doing since Priscilla’s body had been found, and he had to steady himself against the corner of the desk.
“Good night, Mr. Ames,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.” And there was a dial tone before he could reply. It droned through the speaker as he finished his drink. Then he shut off the phone and started up his computer again. He had intended to go home before the flight, but decided to continue working instead. There was nothing for him at home.
He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the numbers in front of him; he tried to forget the conversation. His only daughter was dead. She wouldn’t have taken her own life. She had everything to live for. Avery couldn’t have killed her. They were like sisters.
He threw the keyboard across the room and it crashed against the wall with a sharp bang.
9
Outside Superintendent Frame’s office in Fulham Broadway, the station had the low hum of the evening shift: officers who didn’t have the seniority to get out of it, doing paperwork and organizing computer files, and young insomniac detectives working to dig up anything that would help tie up the loose ends of their cases.
Frame had been one of those night owls, desperate to find an angle everyone else had missed. A few times she’d done it, but the truth was, many cases went unsolved. There were hours and hours of drudge work, reading through piles of information, and talking to countless insignificant people, and even then, there often was no conclusion. Luckily, her pedigree and her connections helped get her out of there. She made her way up into management, and all the way up to superintendent.
Still, she had loved it back then: the strong bitter coffee brewing at every hour of the day, the piles of paper, the banter with the other detectives, the pub after her shift ended, and then back to work to check her leads, because it never really ended.
The name Kelly Moore rang a bell in the back of her mind from that time in her career. Have I met her on a case? Has she been to an anti-terror summit here in London?
Frame’s cell phone rang and she saw Nigel Brickmat’s name flash across the screen. She sent the call to voicemail, not interested in speaking with the handsome tabloid reporter. It seemed her debt to him would never be fully repaid. He could cause a lot of damage if he wanted, but she didn’t need to jump to his every whim.
She thought for a moment, then opened her smooth leather Furla satchel and pulled out an old flip phone. She’d have to put in a different call, make sure that things didn’t get out of hand. They were playing with fire and she wasn’t ready for the whole house to burn down.
10
Kelly unlocked the door to her new digs. She had planned to go back to Fulham Broadway and continue to work, but a wave of exhaustion hit her and she needed to think clearly, so she found her way to the rented flat.
First thing in the morning, she and Dunne would go to the morgue and talk to the medical examiner. But for the moment, she could use a drink, a hot bath, and a good night’s sleep. She had arranged to stay at the apartment on the fly, knowing Peter Ames would cover her expenses, and to her surprise it was pretty nice. It was cozy, but tidy, and close to the station. Out of habit she went from room to room to make sure everything was clear. The bedroom was small, with just enough room for a bed and an end table. The closet had three empty clothes hangers on a rod and an extra woolen blanket folded neatly on a shelf. Clearly no one was living here. The living room had a dark gray sofa that sat under three large bay windows with mustard yellow curtains. Not her choice of décor, but it would work. Bookshelves lined the wall alongside—whoever owned the place was a scientist of some kind. There were lots of books about physics and the cosmos. Kelly shook the curtains and looked behind them out the window. Parked cars lined the narrow street in front of the brick row houses. Some were painted yellow or white, one was bright blue and it glowed in the lamplight.
On the surface, everything seemed in order, but Kelly had a strange feeling in her stomach. She looked out the window again. Nothing moved.
She went into the narrow galley kitchen and looked inside all the cabinets. Some tomatoes in cans, a jar of artichoke hearts, organic olive oil.
Kelly flipped the switch on the electric kettle.
The weight of exhaustion was too much and she knew it wasn’t just the case, it was all the things the case brought back, a flood of images rising up to drown her. She had to keep ahead of it. The sudden memories—the instant images. Cass’s face, her hair blowing in the wind while they stood on the shore. Sometimes when she was working, Kelly felt like she was fixing that feeling, pushing it down and out of sight. Helping anyone crack a case made her feel like she was that much closer to understanding what had happened to Cass. If she could amass enough clues, enough case studies, enough experience, enough guts; she could find out what happened. And she dreamed of bringing her sister home. Driving through the old neighborhood and out to the beach.
She found a packet of black tea and put it in to steep.
Then she walked into the bedroom, taking off her shirt. Her naked belly was taut in the mirror, stomach muscles well-defined from years of boxer’s training. She’d have to figure out the best way to stay fit while in London, find a place to hit the heavy bag, maybe even a little sparring.
Kelly usually lost weight when she was in the middle of a case. When she was working at capacity, her appetite for food would disappear and mealtimes flew by without a thought. The last week of the Wall Street murder case, where she first met Peter Ames, she had subsisted on pretzels and coffee and protein bars. He was a tough nut, Peter Ames. Kelly saw why he was successful in business; when she put a wire on him and sent him in to trap a suspected killer, he was calm and confident. The murderer had been a rival. Ames had done the right thing, but he had also profited.
The shower was scorching hot and Kelly scrubbed herself until her skin was pink and raw. She heard her phone chime dimly in the other room, but stayed put, letting the water run over her shoulders and back while her mind roamed through the facts of the case.
She toweled herself off quickly and threw on a tank top and a pair of Tom’s old boxers
. One of the many things he’d left at her apartment that she hadn’t the heart to throw out or give back. Eventually, she repurposed them as pajamas.
She brushed out her hair, taking a good long look at the streaks she had bleached in just before getting the call from Ames.
Kelly picked up the phone to check the text. It was from a private number, blocked by the caller.
She felt a little surge of adrenaline as she looked at the screen.
GET OUT NOW BEFORE YOU’RE IN TOO DEEP.
Kelly’s heartbeat quickened and she reflexively scanned the windows and doors. Threat? Warning? Who the hell would try to intimidate her? Someone with something to hide. Someone who didn’t know anything about her. If it was a caution though, it was coming from someone with information. For now, she’d keep this from her new friends at the London Met. For all she knew it could have been from one of them, trying to get her off the case. She took a screen shot of the text and emailed it to herself.
In the kitchen, Kelly rummaged around the cupboards until she found what she needed. There was a dusty picture of a plum on the label of the bottle and the liquid inside was clear. She dumped half her tea into the sink and topped off the cup with the brandy.
The long sip she took warmed her inside and her mind turned again. Then Kelly was suddenly there, in the months after Cass disappeared, hearing the phone ring. She’d pick it up, and there would be no one on the line.
In her better moments, she imagined Cass taking off on her own, leaving her known world behind, giving herself a new start.
Teacup in hand, the sound of her cellphone was startling and it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t a lucid dream, but that the phone was actually ringing.
It was a London number. She picked it up.
“Yes?”
“Detective Moore, I’m sorry to disturb you. It’s Jack Dunne.”
“No worries. I was just sitting down to some hot tea. Decompressing. What’s going on, Jack?”
This Dark Place: A Detective Kelly Moore Novel Page 4