Chapter 19
I lie on the couch. I lie on the bed. I stand at the kitchen window where I just lost my cool. I sit on the front stoop in the chilly night, but I feel exposed. The stars say nothing. My thoughts tangle.
Wallace Scott, my ex.
The missing earrings.
The FBI . . . watching me.
A very dead and buried Mark Coleman.
Billy Railes, who no doubt long ago counted all the lucky stars in this universe and the one next to it and wondered why in that instant I sided with Team Blue instead of Team Female Rogue. I could have sold Railes out, but instead, I handed him the hall pass of his life.
And Detective Mitch Ewing. Does he know the truth?
My open investigations, especially into Robbie Ridgeway and Clarissa Haynes, all derailed.
And more than a few times I wonder what I missed, or what remains to be learned, about Jeremy K. Fisher.
I flash to Sophie. I see her slumped over her desk, her head in the crook of her arm.
Her beautiful strawberry hair fanned out, touching a sticky, half-empty bottle of Jose Cuervo near the edge.
I had walked into the room to check on her, thought she’d only fallen asleep over her homework.
Or wanted to believe that, but the cold, knowing dread was already creeping in.
As I went to nudge her awake, I found her body had already begun to stiffen.
I wipe the image away, but it’s only replaced by Jess. Jess, traumatized and a shell of her former self.
Then Leon. God, Leon. The pain clutches my chest, then rises to my throat and clenches it like there’s no tomorrow.
It forces me up, so I leave the front stoop and go to my kitchen table, my thoughts stirring through all these players like a wooden spoon in a rancid stew. The pressure of knowing I only have less than four full days is not going to allow any sleep, no matter how exhausted I am.
There’s a loose thread I’m not seeing. It’s all a tangled mess.
The question is pretty simple. Where should I focus my fear?
I decide to get organized. I think of the crazy murder boards we’ve all seen on television and the murder books used to compile evidence that I learned about when studying for my homicide detective’s license while still on patrol.
I need an about-to-be-murdered manual. And I’m the one in the crosshairs.
Instead, I find blank sheets of paper in my office, take them to the kitchen table with a couple of inches of whiskey in a cheap glass tumbler, and start writing shit down. Every note I deem worthy earns me one sip.
The CA stuff makes me circle back to my short-lived, so-called cop career.
Did it even last long enough to call it a career? In the eyes of the old guard, no way. I was a washout. A dud. A loser. Someone whose tumultuous stint in uniform would be quickly forgotten by all except for the slimeball Billy Railes.
I had begun college thinking I’d become a reporter, that I’d enter the school of journalism, but after what happened to Sophie, I only wanted one thing: to make a difference in the criminal justice system. I switched my major to criminology. Became a cop two years after I graduated from college.
I had believed the system could work, despite all the stories of corruption. I believed that I could be fair, that I would model what it looked like to be a good cop.
Instead, I earned a bloated rodent in my locker, got the word bitch scrawled across my car’s windshield in brown shoe polish, and was subjected to the daily parade of black bands tied around thick, hairy, masculine arms. Constant accusing eyes from the very institution I wanted to believe in.
Around and around.
Wallace keeps bubbling back up, not necessarily in a bad or worrisome way, but with a voice saying Look here. But it’s just Wallace, after all, someone I’ve known since my college days, so I’m not sure why my thoughts keep landing on him. Perhaps because he’s the one who gave me the earrings.
And the last time I wore them would have been with him. I catalog all the places we’ve been since he’s given them to me, which leads me to think of how we got together, how his eyes seemed to ask me after our day of hiking, Is this for real, Cros?
The next weekend, after a night with other friends out at a bar in Whitefish, I was suddenly ravenous for him. I went for it, kissing him when we walked to his car on a dark street.
Why didn’t it last? What was it about the space between us?
When does a relationship go from fizz to flat?
After several months, when the passion faded, all that remained was the basic, unerotic foundation of a bond conducted under the guise of a romantic couple.
Where was my ability to judge potential boyfriends? For that matter, anyone?
The whole harassment ordeal at work left me feeling powerless.
My sister’s rape quadrupled that feeling of impotence.
Of uselessness. I had already had feelings that things weren’t right with Wallace, but when all this went down, he was the one person in my life who felt secure.
Honestly, at the risk of sounding like some fucked-up Jezebel, not breaking up with him when I knew things weren’t right, even as the relationship dragged on, was something I could control.
After I fully came to grips with the idea that we were clinging to Sophie through one another, each trying to assuage our guilt that we’d failed to do more to protect her, and I realized I needed to be there for Jess more fully so I didn’t make the same mistake, I finally broke up with him, even with him as a steady keel in my life.
Wallace said pretty much the same thing when I told him I wanted to return to only a friendship. “I understand,” he said after a long pause. “I sort of knew it wasn’t going to last. I guessed the ghost of Sophie would always hang over us.”
That was hitting the nail on the head, all right. True, there wasn’t much zing between us. The sex was fine, sometimes great, but it became as routine and uninspired as a meeting for coffee. Those problems, had we chosen to put some effort into them, were solvable. Workable, at least.
But the ghost of Sophie, as he had worded it, was the real weight that shattered us.
Wallace had also brought up Sophie one of the last times we had gone out as a couple.
It was a benefit for his orchestra around Christmastime.
The symphony had already played their set, and a chamber group was up next.
Wallace decided to hit the booze since he was finished performing. I had hit it, too.
We rarely spoke of Sophie by this point.
I didn’t know how to handle it when he said he missed her, both of us sloshed, standing among a crowd of locals as well as his colleagues and donors.
Even a few police department folks attended, which would’ve made me nervous enough.
It was so strange to see Allison and Fiona and her husband, Trey, to step out and do something in the community.
It was the first time I’d seen any of my friends since I’d quit a month ago.
“I wish she was here,” Wallace said. His state of inebriation was obvious.
He was wistful. I saw Allison standing in line at the bar near us to get a drink.
I wanted to go chat with her, anything other than going down the road of mourning Sophie, once again, with Wallace.
Why step in an emotional river thrashing with rapids? Why even dip a toe?
“You act like you’ve erased her from your mind,” Wallace said, one of the most inaccurate accusations ever leveled in my direction. He left in a huff.
Allison quickly took his place, making easy small talk without either one of us bringing up the fact that I’d quit the force.
She’d been drinking more lately and chatted about how she enjoyed Jess’s podcast and wanted us to get drinks or coffee to confirm that our friendship wouldn’t change because I’d left the department.
But I wasn’t in the mood to make any social plans beyond the fundraiser with anyone from the department, even Allison.
It was still too raw for me. I fake smiled, trying to forget my gruff interaction with Wallace, then excused myself.
Then it hits me so hard I slap the table.
My clutch.
Of course.
I had worn a little black dress to the fundraiser that night, and the earrings. I carried my shiny purse. I’d driven my car and met Wallace in Kalispell, since he’d been working late. Fiona and Trey wanted to go to a bar after the banquet.
Wallace didn’t want to because he was exhausted from all the prepping he’d had to do for the fundraiser—he said—but I knew he was irritated with me.
And I with him. I felt awful that I didn’t say anything sweet and comforting when he brought Sophie up, but still, I didn’t want to be around him.
I needed space. We’d both been too irritable.
Fiona and Trey have a child, Adriana, who was twelve months at the time.
Fiona said she was with her grandma, so I could crash at their place, which I did, since I’d had a few too many at the bar to go with the few too many I’d thrown down at the fundraiser.
I don’t even remember taking the earrings off and putting them in the purse, but I have a strong hunch that that’s exactly what I did.
I go to my bedroom, hit the light, and go into my walk-in closet. Clothes, belts, scarves, and other accessories are piled in a heap from the FBI’s search. I rummage through it all but come up empty.
I glance at the time: 12:45 a.m. It’s too late to ring Fiona. Or is it? It should be a no-brainer. Who disturbs parents of a young child at that hour?
I pull up Fiona’s number anyway and call.
“Cros?” Through her grogginess, I can tell she’s rattled to get a call so late.
“Hey, Fiona. Everything’s fine. I’m fine.”
“What the hell, then? It’s the middle of the freakin’ night.”
“I’m sorry. I know. Look, I should have called you earlier, but do you have my black clutch?”
“What?”
“My little black clutch? When I stayed at your place in December after the banquet for the symphony, I left it there.”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Can you look for it?”
“What? Now?”
I give her silence as an answer.
“Seriously?”
“It’s about those earrings in the sketch.”
“What?”
“I think they’re in that clutch.”
“Oh. Oh my God. Cros.”
I can’t tell if her voice means she’s frightened for me, or excited to be a part of the story.
If she’ll be posting by morning how I phoned her in the middle of the night looking for the earrings in the Confession Artist’s sketch.
A part of me curses myself for not waiting until morning.
The other part of me doesn’t care. I need to know.
I hear shuffling and can tell she’s out of bed.
“Cros?”
“Yeah?”
There’s something in the way she lets my name hang in the quiet night that sends a shiver down my spine. I glance at my bedroom window and meet my own reflection again, as I did in the kitchen window. I see the woman in the drawing. My breath catches.
“What?” I press.
“Is everything okay? Are you safe at home? Maybe you should go to Jess’s.”
“No. I’m good.” I say it firmly. That’s out of the question. If I’m being stalked, the thought of bringing the killer anywhere near Jess or Sam makes my stomach do wild things.
“But—”
“No. I’m good.”
“Do you want to wait on the line or want me to call you back?”
“I’ll wait.”
An eternity. Almost four long minutes. Three and forty-seven seconds, but who’s counting.
“I sent you a picture,” she announces proudly.
My phone dings.
I open the text and see the picture of them cupped in Fiona’s pale palm.
A wave of relief takes hold. Yes. I pump my fist. “Thank you,” I say.
“I found the clutch in one of the bins in my closet.” She sounds fully awake. “I guess I accidentally threw it in with my stuff.” Which is her way of admitting she’s used it without asking me. “The earrings were in the outside zippered pocket. I had no idea they were in there when I used it last.”
I shake my head. I’m such an idiot for not having remembered the event and the awkward evening with Wallace, but it was probably because I wanted to put it all out of my mind.
But I’m still relieved to have located the earrings.
It feels like a small win. In the morning, I’ll call Greene and Alderson and let them know I found them.
“Fiona,” I say. “Please keep all this to yourself, okay?”
“Of course,” she says.
I hang up feeling lighter, like I’m suddenly floating in a colorful hot-air balloon. As if simply locating these earrings erases the fact that there’s a psycho out there who’s drawn replicas of these very earrings on ears that match mine.
But I know better. This balloon only stays afloat if I catch the CA before he catches me.