Chapter 29 - Jillian
JILLIAN
“Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone”
— “Bones” by MS MR
Turns out that I never fall asleep at all. Hours pass by while I stare at Rae’s ceiling. In the end, it’s only a Signal notification buzzing my phone at a quarter to five in the morning that rescues me from more fruitless tossing and turning.
The message on the encrypted app is from a potential source I’ve been trying to lure into the light since I first sunk my teeth into this story a couple weeks ago.
Their contact is saved as F.T., which stands for Forensic Tech.
That’s because they are a forensic tech.
It’s not exactly the most creative alias that’s ever been dreamed up, but hey, I’m a reporter, not a fiction writer, alright?
F.T.
I’ve got a small window first thing this morning. Back alley behind the office. Be here before 5:30.
I read it twice, then a third time to make sure I’m not hallucinating from sleep deprivation. Then I’m moving, easing out from under the covers in slow motion so I don’t wake Rae, grabbing my jeans off the floor, and stuffing my feet into my shoes without tying them.
Rae doesn’t stir. I text her so she knows I didn’t get abducted in the nighttime—Had to run. Source finally agreed to meet. Will call later. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone. xo Bean—then slip out the front door and pull it shut behind me as gently as I can. It’s 4:53 AM.
The forensic tech in question works out of the NYPD crime lab in Queens.
He has access to evidence databases that would cement my entire investigation if the stubborn bastard would just agree to talk on background.
I’ve been texting him on Signal for weeks, ever since Ochoa let something slip about this person maybe knowing something useful, but until right now, all I’ve gotten back is radio silence and one very firm “lose this number.”
Something changed his mind. What that something might be, I neither know nor care. I just need to get to Koreatown before he changes it back.
Against all odds, I make it to the alley behind the crime lab just before my time is up.
F.T. is already there, leaning against a dumpster with a coffee in one hand and a manila folder tucked under his arm.
When he sees me, he doesn’t smile. His eyes roam around, everywhere but on me, like I might’ve brought spies along for funzies.
“I’ve got about four minutes before shift change,” he says abruptly. “So let’s make this quick.”
I know the drill here. What I’m doing is not, strictly speaking, legal or ethical, but when you live with one foot in the dirty world of crime like I do, you quickly learn that some lines simply have to be crossed if you’re going to do your job correctly.
I pull an envelope from my bag containing five grand in twenties and hold it out. “For your trouble.”
He takes the envelope, thumbs through it, and nods grimly. Then he hands me the folder.
Inside is a single-page lab summary. I skim through and my eyeballs almost fall out of my head.
The remains recovered from the Astoria dig site have been positively identified through dental records as Elena Sergeeva Lazareva—Lukas Lazarev’s deceased wife.
And there, halfway down the page, is a line that makes my pulse kick into a gallop:
Toxicology analysis of preserved bone marrow indicates the presence of barbiturate compounds consistent with phenobarbital.
In plain English, that means they found lethal levels of sleeping pills in the bones of a woman whose family claimed she died of an illness.
It doesn’t say MURDER quite that explicitly, but it might as well.
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.
“Jesus,” I breathe.
“Yeah,” F.T. says. “That’s about what I said, too.” He drains his coffee, crushes the cup, and tosses it into the dumpster behind him. “That’s all I got. I see anything else, I’ll let you know. Don’t text me.”
“Wait—can I ask you about—”
“No.” He rounds the corner and disappears.
I stand in the alley holding the manila folder against my chest, breathing hard, brain firing on every cylinder it’s got. I lean against the brick wall and let myself take stock of where things stand.
Giovanni Ochoa, my original source, is still missing.
That’s bad. But what I’m holding in my hands right now is better than anything Ochoa could have given me.
I’ve got a positive ID on the Astoria remains.
I’ve got a toxicology report showing barbiturates in her bone marrow.
That all adds up to the rough outline of a very clear and highly damning story: One of New York’s most infamous and powerful billionaires possibly, maybe, but definitely plausibly murdered his wife and dumped her body in an unmarked grave.
What I don’t have yet is someone willing to say any of this on the record.
Or wait a second…
Do I?!
After all, Kir offered me a deal, didn’t he? He’s going to participate. He wants Lukas gone, said so himself, and there was nothing in his face or his words that said he was lying.
If Kir would confirm even half of what’s in this folder, I’d have the whole thing.
But asking Kir means seeing Kir. And seeing Kir means confronting the mask and the window and his hands and his mouth and the way my brain turns to white noise the second he touches me.
I press the folder tighter against my chest. This is the problem. Everything is knotted together now. The story, the sex, the danger, the need. I can’t pull on one thread without dragging the rest with it. Kir is my source and my subject and too many other things to name.
Whatever he is or isn’t, I can’t think about him without my professional judgment getting clouded the second he lays a finger on me.
That complicates things.
I take the train back to my apartment as thoughts buzz around in my head.
I hit the elevator button in my lobby and ride up, thinking of how and when to report this to Doug.
Should I solidify everything first, or let him know I’ve got a huge breakthrough in my hands?
At what point do I tell him about Kir? Not by name, of course, but just “a key internal source close to the family” that will confirm lots of this stuff.
It takes me a second to realize that the sound I hear when the doors slide open to let me out on my floor is a muffled male scream—
—and it’s directed at me.
Elliot is in the hallway, waiting to ride down.
As soon as our eyes lock, every drop of color drains from his face.
The stitches above his left eye are still fresh, the bruising around his orbital bone faded to a sickly green-yellow.
His good eye goes wide and his mouth flops open and shut like a goldfish.
“I’ll—I’ll take the next one,” he stammers. He turns and flees down the stairs before I can even muster up a response.
It takes me another second to gather my thoughts on that one. I still feel awful about what happened to Elliot. He didn’t deserve that, and Kir is positively psychotic for staking his claim so violently.
But I guess it’s a good thing that at least one person in this building has a healthy survival instinct. It sure as hell ain’t me.
Sighing, I let myself into my apartment, drop my bag by the door, and kick off my shoes.
Then I stop.
Something is off.
It’s not a person, I don’t think. I don’t feel that telltale, you’re not alone prickle at the back of my neck. But there’s something else, a wrongness I can’t name, a detail nudging at the edge of my awareness like a word on the tip of my tongue.
I stand in the middle of my living room and turn in a slow circle. Unlike last time I had this feeling, my kitchen is clean and normal. On the table, my laptop is closed and my chair pushed in. Living room: couch cushions straight, throw blanket folded, remote on the armrest.
Everything looks exactly the way I left it.
So why does my gut keep insisting otherwise?
I walk into the kitchen and open the fridge, like there might be a sexy masked stalker guy hiding in there. Sadly, it is only a variety of half-expired dairy items and a suspiciously green loaf of bread.
I check the window above the fire escape. Locked, latch secure. I check the front door deadbolt. Engaged.
I drift into the bedroom, but as with the rest of the house, nothing in here looks out of place. I’m about to write off the whole thing as sleep-deprived paranoia when my eyes finally snag on the wrongness.
The air vent. The rectangular metal grate near the ceiling, above my bedroom closet door. I’ve looked at that vent a thousand times without seeing it. It’s one of those things that’s just there, part of the architecture, part of the background noise.
But right now, in the dim morning light filtering through my curtains, there’s a tiny red dot blinking behind the slats.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
A small LED. Unmistakable once you notice it, but invisible if you’re not looking.
I drag my vanity chair over to the closet and step up on it. My face is level with the vent now. I press my eye close to the metal slats and peer through.
There it is. A small black device, no bigger than a thumb drive, wedged into the ductwork just behind the grate. A pinhole lens the size of a pencil tip. The little red light pulses beside it.
It’s a camera.
There is a fucking camera in my bedroom vent.
I step down off the chair and stand there for a long moment, stunned.
My brain runs through the list of suspects, which is a very short list, because only one person has had unsupervised access to my apartment on multiple occasions.
Only one person would plant a camera in my bedroom.
Only one person would want to watch me when he’s not here.
Oh, this motherfucker.