“I just decided that this place is bad for you. You don’t belong here. Just seeing you in the bar seals it. You need the city, kiddo. This place is depressing you.”
“Manhattan would depress me,” I say, even though in some ways, there’s no place I’d rather be. There’s no place like it in the world. But I got to know it through a cop’s eyes, and seeing it otherwise now would be like a cruel joke every day.
“Well, we need to figure something out,” he says as we reach his Beemer, fire-engine red with a beige interior. “This commute is a bitch.”
“It’ll be better after Labor Day, when the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts take off.”
“Talk about depressing,” he says as he uses his remote to pop the locks. “Summer’s the only time this place is interesting. Hey,” he says as I open the passenger door.
“Hey what?”
He nods at me. “Are you going to change? We’re going to Quist.”
For the first time, I take an inventory of myself. I’m wearing a sleeveless white blouse, blue jeans, and low heels. But even the nicest places—and Quist is the nicest, a hotel restaurant opened by some celebrity chef—have a pretty relaxed dress code in the summer.
“Let’s swing by your place,” he says. “Wear that lavender dress I bought you. Then you’ll be turning heads.”
“But I won’t turn heads in this?”
He chuckles at his faux pas. “C’mon, you know what I mean. We’re going to a five-star restaurant. You really want to look like that?”
I hike my purse back over my shoulder and remember my cell phone, the call I missed a moment ago. I pull out my iPhone and see that the call came from “Uncle Langdon,” which I really should change to “Chief James” now.
Taking another look at my phone, I see that the chief actually called me twice, once a minute ago and once twenty-four minutes ago.
Still standing outside the car, I dial him back.
“Jenna Rose,” he answers, the only person who’s ever incorporated my middle name when addressing me. The only one who’s lived to tell about it, anyway. “I was about to give up on you.”
“How can I help you, Chief? Were you looking for my recipe for grilled asparagus? It’s not that hard. Just grill the asparagus.”
“No, missy, not just now. You wanted to work a homicide, right?”
I spring to attention. “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”
“Then get your butt in gear, Detective,” he says. “You just got a homicide. One you may never forget.”
10
“IT’S MY JOB. It’s not like I have a choice,” I say to Matty, his knuckles white on the leather steering wheel of his Beemer as we drive along the back roads. “A woman was murdered.”
“It can’t wait until after dinner? She’ll still be dead.”
I close my eyes. “You didn’t really just say that, did you?”
The back roads are narrow and winding and unforgiving, two lanes at best, with no shoulders. Driving them in the dark is even worse. But without the back roads, the locals in Bridgehampton would collectively commit suicide during the tourist season, when the principal artery—Main Street or, if you prefer, Montauk Highway—is clogged like a golf ball in a lower intestine.
“I passed up Yankees tickets on the third-base line,” he says. “Sabathia against Beckett in game one.”
I know. I watched it in the bar. Sabathia got tagged for six earned runs in five innings. “It’s my job,” I say again. “What am I sup—”
“No, it’s not.”
“What do you mean, it’s not—”
“Not tonight it’s not!”
We find our destination, lit up by the STPD like a nighttime construction job, spotlights shining on the scene deep within the woods. The road has been reduced to one lane by traffic cones and flares.
Matty pulls up, puts it in park, and shifts in his seat to face me. “Don’t act like you have no choice. There are detectives on duty right now. You’re not one of them. You didn’t have to take this assignment. You wanted it.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Sorry about your Yankees tickets.”
“Jenna, c’mon.”
I step out of the Beemer and flash my badge to the uniform minding the perimeter. I dip under the crime-scene tape and watch my step as I walk through the woods, with their uneven footing and stray branches.
It’s a large lot, undeveloped land full of tall trees, with a FOR SALE sign near the road. Whoever did this picked a remote location.
Isaac Marks approaches me. “Bru-tal,” he says. “C’mon.” I follow him through the brush, my feet crunching leaves and twigs. “The guy who owns this lot found her,” he says. “Nice old guy, late seventies. He was stopping by for some routine maintenance and heard a swarm of insects buzzing around.”
I slow my approach when I see her. It’s hard to miss her, under the garish lighting. She looks artificial, like a museum exhibit—Woman in Repose, except in this case, it would be more like Woman with a tree stump through her midsection.