Chapter 35
35
FIONA
T he man lived here for two months, but there’s little sign of him around the apartment. There are six hangers in the closet, holding dress shirts, pants, and his plain black suit. There’s one drawer in the dresser, filled with socks and underwear, with solid-color T-shirts folded into perfect dark rectangles. There’s a shelf in the medicine cabinet—a razor, a can of shaving cream, and a toothbrush.
And an amber bottle of pills.
Fuck the pills. Fuck Patrick Moran. He’s a fucking criminal mastermind. He can get more fucking pills whenever he needs them.
I shove all his crap into the duffel bag he carried when we drove up from Philadelphia. While I’m at it, I add my dress. I’ll never be able to look at it again without thinking about this fiasco of a night.
I want to drench it all in lighter fluid and set it on fire in the backyard, but one of my neighbors would probably complain about the smoke. With my luck, they’d call the cops. And the Globe would be monitoring the police scanner. Along with every podcaster in the state. Every last one of them would show up on my doorstep, and my face would be spread across the Internet with enough information to let any idiot track me: Beacon Street Bonfire Battle.
Fuck my life.
I’ll take it all to the dumpster down the street tomorrow. Toss it into the bin behind the Chinese restaurant. Let it get buried beneath cabbage leaves and moldy pork.
For now, I pull on my oldest pair of yoga pants. I find an ancient cami, a plain one without lace. I go into the bathroom and scrub my makeup from my face. And when I’m done, when I’m clean, when I’m nothing like the woman who faced down the Corman Gala and my uncle’s trained kidnappers, I grab a bottle of vodka and climb into bed.
I down shots like medicine. Two off the bat, then one more every thirty minutes. In between, I scan my phone, looking for news about murders on the golf course.
I pass out before the story breaks.