* * *
I woke up to an empty house, in the big white bed by myself. I was sprawled in the middle like a starfish, with Buddy curled into my side. I couldn’t ever quite stretch out in my twin bed at home; my hands and feet hung off either end. Bear’s room was light as soon as the sun came up, but I’d been asleep through hours of sunlight, the room warm and drowsy, the dog snoring.
Apparently, I’d gotten used to taking up space.
I’d had Bear teach me how to make coffee in the high-end machine he had. It produced just regular coffee—nothing fancier than we had at work. I set it up and went out back to smoke a cigarette, standing, because all the patio furniture had been covered for winter.
First snow was possible as early as next week.
I let Buddy out to run in the back, watching his lean, athletic body leap through waves of tall, brittle corn, golden and dry, rustling like paper in the breeze.
The Land Rover was gone.
I was going to try finishing the basement, pull up the masking, touch up the edges where I needed to. The painting calmed me. The clean smell of it. The steady coverage. The straight grid of color going on thick. I imagined staying in the house until work tomorrow, a long free day, an evening with Bear. Maybe a walk with the dog.
But instead I heard the doorbell. And a baby.
I thought, there aren’t even neighbors up here.
And then whoever had rung the bell was now trying the knob, knocking it in its casing. Buddy was too far out to hear or care. I left him out there, chasing a swallow that teased him over a flat part of the field, swooping so low it looked like he could get it and then darting swiftly back up again. Buddy leaned and barked. Barked and ran. He would be tired.
I went in, crossing the great room like I belonged there, and swept open the big, heavy front door that had only a small window to peer out of, the window having its own tiny door, like in a medieval castle.
“Hi,” the woman said to me, impatient. She shifted the baby on her hip and pushed past me, walking into the open dining room.
She had red-gold hair, pulled up in a perfectly messy bun with soft, curved wisps hanging down at the temples. A sprinkle of freckles. The baby had the same copper hair, pierced ears. A blue corduroy dress.
They were the people in the pictures. The ones I had thought were fake. An advertising family.
I heard the coffee finish brewing. I thought, maybe that’s what they are. They are models, and Bear needs to pay them.
“Can I help you?” I asked, soft.
She laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “Is Bear even here?”
“No,” I said, suddenly glad I was dressed and hadn’t wandered into the kitchen in my shorts and T-shirt, one of Bear’s flannels over my shoulders.
She swung a diaper bag onto the formal dining room table, the one I’d never seen used for anything other than occasional pieces of mail. It sat eight. She stuck her hand in the side pocket of the bag, digging until she pulled out a small green pacifier and gave it to the baby, who sucked it right in.
“She’s tired,” the woman said. Then, “I’m sorry; you are?”
I felt like a puppet. Like a rag doll. I said my own name like it was someone else’s.
“What are you working on?” she asked.
“The basement,” I said. It was barely above a whisper.
Out the front window, her car sat in the driveway by the front sidewalk. A black Mercedes SUV. She had on slim navy-blue pants, cropped above her ankle, and shiny leather loafers.
“I don’t mean to keep you from your work,” she said, and then touched the side of her head, dumb. “Sorry!” she said, and held out her hand. “I’m Meghan.”
“Meghan,” I repeated.
The baby fussed and smashed her face into Meghan’s collarbone, hungry.
“I’m not staying,” Meghan said. “Unless Bear takes a really long time to come back. Do you know where he is?”
“No,” I said. I thought, Maybe getting my money.
My breath was coming short and hard, and I had to press my lips together to try to slow down my heart.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just have only ever dealt with Bear.”
“No surprise,” Meghan said, and she walked into the kitchen without hesitation, opened the fridge, rooted around. She set the baby on the floor with a soft square toy. The baby scooted around on her butt, pacifier tight in her mouth, bumping the toy, then going after it.
“He’s not great at talking about himself,” Meghan said. She poured filtered water into a tall glass. “Of course, there’s a reason for that. No one else has been here?” she asked, laughing.
I felt my eyes widen. “No,” I said.
“No … other women?” she asked. “Another wife? Another baby?”
I couldn’t stop looking at the baby. Bear’s baby. “No, ma’am,” I said. “Just Bear.”
“And what are you doing?” she asked again.
“Painting.”
She looked at my clothes. My own jeans, but Bear’s T-shirt. Both clean, both free of paint. I was barefoot.
“Is that it?” she asked.
I stammered. “Unpacking,” I said. “Moving stuff.” The words felt jumbled in my mouth. I couldn’t tell her what I was actually doing.
Meghan nodded and smiled. “You’re his minion,” she said.
All I could think was that a minion was an animal, a donkey, or an ass. A Sherpa who carries all your shit up a mountain. A minion was something the devil had, to do his dirty work.
“It’s okay,” Meghan said. In all her perfect, milky-white skin, there was a scar below her left ear. It followed the curve of her jaw, fading. It had healed well, had likely been stitched shut and watched carefully. Nothing like the rippled welts of my scars. When she saw that I noticed it, she touched it, ran her finger down the length of it. She wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“We’re not together,” she said. “We have an agreement.”
I heard the sweep and heavy close of the garage door, and Bear’s footsteps in the hall.
“Well, well,” he said, his voice echoing.
The baby scooted toward Bear, her arms bouncing, excited.
My stomach felt like it would never uncoil.
“What’s the occasion?” Bear asked.
Meghan took a stack of papers from her bag and slapped them on the kitchen island. I tried to turn and duck into the basement, where I’d belonged the whole time, but Bear caught my elbow.
“Stay,” he said.
That’s it. No introduction. No This is my minion, Shannon The one who sleeps with me.
Bear picked up the baby.
“Bee wanted to see you,” Meghan said.
“Oh, really?” Bear said. “Did she tell you that?” He flicked his eyebrows at Meghan, but he nuzzled the baby’s neck and Bee laughed, mouth open, gruff, from her belly. Then he put her back on the floor with her toy, where she was unsatisfied, scooting, fussing, and jamming her fist in her mouth.
Meghan flipped open the stack of long contract papers. They were flagged in places where Bear was supposed to sign.
“You didn’t have to drop these off,” Bear said. “But,” he added, “you wondered what I was up to.”
She looked at me. “I see what you’ve been up to,” she said. I looked away.
“I’ll send them back,” Bear said.
I could see that the baby, Bee, was about to let out a wail, so I did what came naturally to me and scooped her up, my arm under her butt and my hand in her armpit. She pushed her face against my shoulder, rooting.
Meghan watched me with her daughter. “You could sign them now,” she said to Bear. “Maybe he could nurse your daughter.”
I hid my face in Bee’s hair and tried to shush her. She smelled like clean powdery baby.
Bear showed his teeth. Not exactly a smile. “There’s no way I’m signing this without edits,” he said. He put his phone, his wallet, and his keys on top of the contract, claiming it
, saving it for later. Then he walked to the front door and pulled it open, stood waiting. A sharp wind had picked up, especially up there, on the hill. Leaves turned in circles across the lawn.
I smoothed Bee’s superfine copper hair.
“He’s cute,” Meghan said to Bear, and took the baby from me. “And too young for you,” she said. “Not that you care.” She took the diaper bag from the table, and the baby wrapped her fist into her mother’s hair. Meghan stared Bear in the eye, then shifted to the side and looked back at me.
“He’s a piece of shit,” she said to me. “There’s no way he’s told you everything.”
“Not in front of Bee,” Bear said. “I’m sure that’s in the contract?”
Meghan shook her head and didn’t look back.
When he was shutting the door behind her, I stole into the basement and stood in a dry corner, where I craned my neck and then smashed my face as hard as I could into the wall without getting a running start.
It lit up all my bones. The hot pain, ringing in my skull. It gave the other pain a place to go. I did it again.
“I’m sorry,” Bear said from the stairs. He stood with his shoulders square, his hands open. He hadn’t seen me hit my face.
“You should have told me,” I said with my back to him.
“It’s usually a deal breaker,” he said, light.
I turned around, not smiling. When he came closer, he looked at my face, where it was flaming, and at the wall, where my face had left a mark in the fresh paint.
“Were you just not going to tell me?” I said.
“I was,” he said.
“When?”
He slid his fingers along my cheekbone, where it pulsed under his touch. And then down the line of my jaw, his thumb over the curve of my top lip.
“Soon,” he said, low.
“What else don’t I know?” I said.
He leaned in and kissed the skin in front of my ear, not where I’d smashed my face but behind that, a soft, tender spot. My skin prickled with his breathing.
“I’ll tell you,” he said.
He didn’t have his hands on me anymore. Just his mouth. He grazed his lips over the hot part of my cheek, where my face throbbed underneath. I could feel my pulse.
“What are you going to tell me?” he asked. I had to grip his shirt to keep from falling over. My knees were turning to water.
Anything, I thought. Anything you want to hear. He could ask me to kill someone, with his lips on my ear, and I would do it.
TWENTY: KATERI
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25
It’s not a jail; it’s a justice center. It’s where both Kateri and Joel have small offices adjacent to each other, where Chief Whittaker has a large office with a wall of windows, where the deputies have their cubicles. And it’s where Shannon Jenkins is held in one of a few small cells. If he is ordered to stay incarcerated after his arraignment, they will move him to a county prison outside of town. If he is convicted on even one count of murder, he will end up in maximum.
He is likely to be charged with one count of second-degree murder in the killing of Craig O’Neil, second-degree murder in the killing of his mother, and first-degree kidnapping.
She can’t imagine him in maximum, his thin arms and his soft face.
“I don’t think it was forethought,” she says to Hurt.
“Really?” he says. He stands with his back to her in her own office, fidgeting with the fat leaves on a jade plant on top of the filing cabinet. “Don’t be naïve, Fisher.”
“I just don’t,” she says again, but looks down. It weakens her argument, she knows, but she feels weak about all of it, like she put herself on the line.
“It’s an open-and-shut case, Fisher,” he says. “All the pieces are there.”
“They don’t fit,” she says. “We can’t confirm the murder weapon without a body. A good defense lawyer will eat this case alive,” she added.
“That’s not our job. Our job is just to arrest him.”
She chews her lip, looks at the situation board, the young, scared picture of Shannon from high school.
“I’m going to be out tomorrow morning,” Hurt says then. “Unreachable. For a few hours.”
Kateri raises her eyebrows at him.
“I have a breakfast.” He doesn’t want to tell her.
“For the case?”
“No,” he says. He stands sideways in the doorway, slim. “With my son,” he says.
She tucks her head back, surprised. “Oh,” she says. “I didn’t realize.”
“You don’t know everything about me,” Hurt says.
“I don’t know anything about you,” Kateri says.
“He’s twenty-two,” Hurt says.
“Oh,” she says.
“I’ll check my messages after one,” he says. “Text me if anything new develops.” He walks out and then steps back with one foot. “It won’t,” he says.
But she feels like there’s something she’s missing. Some other thread that has eluded her, something more complex than Shannon Jenkins acting alone. She misses things all the time. Has no idea what gives someone like Joel Hurt joy, or what has caused him pain, but now there’s a full-grown man who belongs to him, who is part of him, and for whom Hurt is taking a very rare half day.
Details, she thinks.
There is something she has not noticed.
Her phone alerts her to a new email, and there’s a message from Bear Miller.
I’d like to provide a defense attorney for Shannon Jenkins. Please call me.
She hits reply and types, Why?
But then deletes it.
* * *
When she visits the cell, Shannon won’t look at her. He sits on the stainless-steel cot, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his face turned away. He looks small in the prison-issued scrubs, his shoulders bony. His long, willowy arms are faintly striped with scars that Kateri recognizes as self-inflicted. Years ago, she thinks. They hold the pattern of purposeful injury.
“Shannon,” she says. “I need you to tell me where we might find your sister.”
He lets it sit between them, the heaviness of the missing girl, for a moment before he answers. “I don’t know,” he says, flat.
“The more time that passes,” Kateri says, “the more dangerous it becomes.”
He looks her in the eye. “I know.”
She waits, and he says nothing more.
“A lawyer is being provided for you,” she tells him.
“Free of charge?” Shannon says, and then looks at her. His right eye is bruised underneath—again, Kateri thinks, self-inflicted. “I need a court-appointed lawyer,” Shannon says. “I can’t afford one. Which basically means you can just move me to death row now,” he adds.
“There’s no death penalty in New York State,” Kateri says.
“Oh, well goody,” Shannon says.
“Bear Miller is providing an attorney for you,” she says.
“Why?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she says, and feels catty, and hates that feeling in herself. “He seems to have a soft spot for you,” she says.
Shannon scoffs and then laughs, but it’s bitter, hard, and there’s not a hint, she thinks, of a smile, or any kind of mirth, on his face.
“Great,” he says.
* * *
The attorney Bear sends is slick. Kateri has seen his type before, in Syracuse. He’s not exceptionally good-looking, but his dress is outstanding. An expensive, precisely tailored suit. Immaculate shoes. A heavy watch that Kateri cannot make out the brand of. His hair is dark and well cut, combed off his forehead. He’s fit. In fact, his body is perfect, like the only thing he does, other than work, is work out. He might be a machine, Kateri thinks. Or a robot. Or most likely, a sociopath.
He’s a different kind of fit than Hurt. She knows that Joel runs, hikes. She imagines him kayaking with a slightly younger version of himself. His body is lean and well used. She wants to think that’s wha
t gives him joy. But she detects something hollow and lonely in Joel Hurt. Somehow, the wind blows through him.
“David Brewer,” the lawyer says, and shakes her hand. He has dark eyes without smiling.
He is either a freak about cutting his nails, or he gets manicures.
Kateri begins to feel, as she often does in the presence of highly professional men, like she’s the help instead of the lead investigator. Like she should be getting his coffee. Or minding his children.
It’s the morning Hurt is off. She notices that Brewer looks around for another detective.
She hands him the Jenkins file, which he opens and appears to fall right into. Kateri’s handwritten notes. The crime scene photos.
“Excellent,” Brewer says, and leaves the file open on a photograph of the burned bones, the delicate curve of spine, the butterfly pelvis. “This is all you have?” he says.
“Nothing else has surfaced,” Kateri says. “I think it’s all that survived the fire.”
She can see his wheels turning as he looks at the bones.
“DNA match?” he says.
“Not to Shannon,” Kateri says. “I can put you in touch with the medical examiner. The blood found on the murder weapon matches what was in the house.”
“Does the blood match?”
“Not Shannon,” she says again.
He straightens up, like his job just got easier.
“His prints are all over the weapon.”
Brewer looks at the photo of the bones. “How do you know that’s the weapon?” he asks.
“It was with the bones.”
“Hmm,” he says, dissatisfied. He slaps the folder closed and looks first at Kateri’s chest before meeting her eye. “I’ll see my client now,” he says.
She can’t do it. It’s a small team. She could walk down the hall, make small talk, usher him into the interrogation room. Make eye contact with Shannon to make sure he’s okay with all of this. But she steps out of her office and motions to Dawn, the fiftyish mother who works for them as a receptionist.
“Dawn?” she says. “Would you escort Mr. Brewer down to Interrogation B, please? And have a guard fetch Mr. Jenkins?”
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