He looked out the window, at the rain streaking the glass, distorting everything. “His wife says they both took her car home, that he was there all night with her. And it was dark, so the witness isn’t that reliable. Would help if we knew where he was when he called you. If you’d listened to that message.”
“But I didn’t,” I said. It wouldn’t have proved anything, anyway. All I could ever hear, back when I listened, was an owl or the wind. Never glasses clinking in the background or a television. Just him, his mouth too close to the phone, his voice dropped low to a whisper, to avoid being heard. He could be anywhere—walking home, standing just outside his front door, anywhere. “Don’t his phone records help?” Even without my statement, that should be some sort of proof. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear he’d been making late-night calls to other women as well. There was a mold, and he fit it.
Kyle tipped his head to the ceiling. “No, he’s playing us. Happily turned his phone over to us as evidence. Nothing there. Which wasn’t surprising. Almost all cases like this, someone uses a prepaid phone. You can get them anywhere, buy them with cash. Fairly untraceable.” He paused. “He knows what he’s doing.” A warning, then. An appeal to something baser inside me.
Bringing him in to the station had been a Hail Mary, a hope to scare him into a confession, or that I would come forward to add to the case, with the threat now safely behind bars.
“You had to let him go, and you’re here to make me feel guilty, is that it?”
“I’m here because we had to let him go,” he said. “But I’m also here to tell you I’m going to have a few units swing by your place tonight. So if you see lights, it’s probably just them. Still, you should feel free to call my number if you see anything unusual.”
“You think I have reason to worry? That would be pretty dumb of him, don’t you think?”
“The court system is not exactly brimming over with people who’ve made good decisions,” he said.
The bell rang. “Thank you for letting me know,” I said.
“You can talk to me, Ms. Stevens.” His mannerisms reminded me vaguely of someone I knew—or maybe just a type of person—with the way he spoke and moved: contained, even-tempered, and self-assured. Someone who had been in the business long enough, had become accustomed to its ups and downs, and had learned to hold himself steady.
“Leah,” I said.
“Leah,” he said, and he tapped his forehead, like a gesture of a salute—as if we were on the same team.
* * *
I CHECKED MY PHONE repeatedly during class, and I listened for the gossip. But the students held their secrets closer today.
I faced the board, writing out an assignment that would hopefully keep them busy and quiet.
“Ms. Stevens.” I didn’t have to turn to know who was speaking. Could imagine her hand held in the air, back straight, fingers faintly waving. Izzy Marone.
“Yes,” I said, still facing the board.
“If we can’t feel safe at school, how can we be expected to concentrate?”
“You’re right, Izzy,” I said, turning around and brushing my hands on the sides of my pants. “This is relevant, and current, and important. So take out your journals, and write an opinion piece.” I walked toward her, leaned close, my hands on her desk. “Let those emotions guide you. Let’s shoot for some authenticity here.”
Her eyes went wide, but she held herself perfectly still. “Is this for a grade?” she asked.
I tapped her desk. “This is an exercise. A participation grade. Get to it.” This was what I had done the first week of school, when I felt myself sinking fast—just to hold their focus, just for some silence. Embarrassed that I had to bribe my own students to do the work. Promising free passes, free grades.
But this time was different. This time I wanted information.
By the end of the day, I hadn’t had a call from Emmy, but I did have a stack of seventy-five opinion pieces, all presumably about school safety, and the rumors, and Davis Cobb. This was how to start.
Truth and story—doesn’t matter which comes first, as long as you get where you need to be at the end.
As long as you end at the truth, all’s fair.
CHAPTER 7
I took the turns too fast, my back tires fighting for traction.
Slow down, Leah.
I eased my foot off the gas, listened to the engine relax, watched the dial of the speedometer drop, tried to remind myself that nothing would be altered by my presence. Still, I was itching for home.
I had a sudden irrational sensation that it was no longer me chasing a story but the story chasing me instead.
I pulled into the driveway, dust rising in the rearview mirror, and I could almost taste it. Emmy’s car still wasn’t back. The house took on a new slant, settled deep into the trees: slightly sunken, the charm giving way to disrepair.
I did a check of the rooms, as I had the night before, looking for any sign of her. My sad sticky note still rested against the gnome. A pathetic plea, like the one you might make in a voicemail even after you know your relationship is over.
Emmy had decorated the place—a chipped vase on the counter, a red ceramic heart hung from a nail over the couch, a random assortment of glass, plastic, and pewter knickknacks positioned haphazardly on end tables, over the refrigerator, on the kitchen windowsill. They’d turn up out of nowhere, like they had when we’d lived together years earlier. Our house was littered with them, as our apartment had been back then. It was a harmless habit, she’d claimed, and I rarely called her on it. Rarely called it what it was: theft.
Tokens, she called them. Reminders of places she’d been or people she’d been with. Emmy’s version of a scrapbook. A salt shaker from a restaurant where she’d eaten, an ashtray from the apartment of some hookup (though neither of us smoked), a magnet from the bar where she used to waitress on weekends.
Once, at our old place, she’d brought home a watch. I could tell from the heft of it, from the glint of the face and the multiple ticking pieces, that this was worth more than the typical items she lifted. She’d hung it from a nail over the door the morning she returned from John Hickelman’s piece-of-shit apartment, where it acted as our own makeshift wall clock.
“I’m sure he didn’t pay for this himself,” she said when I called her on it. And then, “Oh, come on, he had mirrors on his ceiling, for Christ’s sake.”
And it was hard to argue with that. So John Hickelman’s watch became ours. A game, really, as she knew I was uncomfortable with keeping it but that we would. She hung it from our bathroom towel bar. I moved it to the fridge. She hid it in my sock drawer. On and on it went, something I’d find only once I’d stopped looking, the surprise catching me in a laugh each time. Until I left it under her pillow, like the tooth fairy, and never saw it again.