Chapter 4 #3
Good guy, she mutters. Violent toward women.
Nineteen years old to Sabrina’s seventeen, not much of a difference but old enough that he would have the upper hand.
Or want to have the upper hand. Wouldn’t want to give her time, money, sacrifice his independence, his will to do what he wants when he wants.
What was it that Kirby had said? Don’t piss that guy off.
In his mug shot Fauver looks offended. Chin thrust forward, mouth drawn in a tight line.
Handsome, in a sneering way. Maybe Sabrina Riley would have found him magnetic, before she understood that he was really just mean.
Maybe Fauver was a boyfriend, maybe a one-time hookup.
Maybe she felt like she couldn’t raise the baby on her own.
The fight with Fauver might have been about paying for childcare.
About getting him to help out. It would have been three months before the baby was found.
The clock ticking. Riley getting increasingly desperate.
She cross-checks Sabrina Riley’s address in the system with the location where Baby Doe was discovered, on Jenna’s old street, three-quarters of a mile away from Sabrina Riley’s house.
Not inconceivable, if the girl had gone into the woods for privacy.
Maybe she carried the child to the road, left it somewhere she hoped it would be seen before it was too late.
A Safe Haven law wasn’t passed in New Jersey until 2000, which made it legal to surrender an infant at a police station or fire department.
She probably thought she would get in trouble for asking for help, or for leaving the child where the authorities could find it. And she was probably right.
She looks forward to dinner, to a glass of wine, to the simple, bare walls of her cabin, but when she gets home there’s a dark stain at the base of her mailbox. She follows it upward, a trail of red up the post, the mailbox door hanging open.
She flicks her Maglite over it and makes out fur.
Inside the mailbox are the bodies of three muskrats, all of them slit open along their stomachs, revealing the wet ropes of their insides.
A message. A warning.
It could be any of them: Latour, Collins, Mac. Could even be Jimmy Nichols before he came around the bar to have beers with the old boys, the man they all think should be in her job right now, getting his payback.
She takes a breath. Methodical. Act first, react later.
Heaves the bodies into a trash bag. Hauls a bottle of bleach and a roll of paper towels from under the sink.
Scours the metal insides of the mailbox until the blood seems to lift.
Bleach, bleach, and more bleach, until she is woozy with the stink of it.
Her appetite is gone by the time she peels the rubber gloves from her hands.
She showers, needs to wash her hair but can’t muster the energy.
Instead she leans her head against the tile.
She wills her mind to go blank but she can’t shake the feeling of Layla’s pulse going fainter, slower, underneath her fingertips. The life draining out of her face.
Her hands shake as she towels off, grabs her phone.
She tries Jenna’s cell phone again, but this time it goes right to voicemail. She calls the two watering holes Jenna used to frequent but the bartenders she speaks to tell her neither have seen her in months. “Never thought I’d say that,” one of them says, laughing as he hangs up.
An hour later her phone buzzes, but when she looks at the screen her relief is replaced by dismay. It’s not Jenna, but Deveraux.
“Out with it.” She likes him, but her reserves of patience dried up hours ago.
“Hey there, Chief. Uh, we’ve got something down in the station you should see.”
“Can I get some details here?”
Deveraux sighs into the phone. “It’s your mom’s bag. Her wallet’s inside. Her phone. A hiker found it in the woods off the Batona Trail an hour ago, about a mile from the Buttonwood Camp.”
She tells Deveraux she’ll be right there, even as a part of her is convinced he’s gotten something wrong. Why would Jenna have been on the Batona Trail? That’s fifteen miles from her house and her car is still impounded. And Jenna of all people was never one to hike.
There’s something Deveraux isn’t telling her. She can hear it in his voice, or not so much in what he says, but the careful way he’s choosing his words. There’s nothing she can do but climb into her Jeep and make her way back to the station again.
She finds him in the interview room. The purse is indeed Jenna’s, an impractical straw bag with a fraying handle that belonged to Callie’s grandmother.
Deveraux hands her a box of latex gloves.
She slides a pair on and removes the wallet.
Inside she finds a twenty-dollar bill, a Stop and Shop card, Jenna’s invalid license behind the clear plastic pane.
A tube of lip gloss in a frosty pink—Jenna gave up lipstick years ago, too hard to apply when you’ve got the shakes.
A package of Tic Tacs. She places each item on the table and once the bag is nearly empty she understands why Deveraux was so hesitant on the phone.
She shuts her eyes for a second, steadies herself with a deep breath before she pinches the green glassine baggie between her fingers. There’s a scrim of white powder inside.