Chapter Thirty-Nine Ana
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ana
Now
Artis is just outside the back entrance to the small rink. I send a text to Jolene.
Grace left The Palace.
She might be headed to you.
She replies. Kayla’s here. We have her truck. We’re coming to look.
I run to the car through the whipping wind, thinking she must have called Kayla the moment I left the condo. She didn’t trust me to find Grace. To keep her safe.
I reach Artis’s car and get inside.
“No sign?” he asks, but he already knows. If I’d found Grace, she would be with me.
“She couldn’t have gone far.” My eyes turn to the road, the exit, the places Grace might be heading. I’m expecting Artis to shift the car into drive and hit the gas.
Instead he looks at me and waits.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t know where to go. Maybe we should wait for the next call from the monitoring station.”
“Artis—no!” I protest. “She could freeze to death by then! And what if they lose the signal?”
He hangs his head. “Okay—then where would she be going? What did she tell you in there that made her run away again?”
I think now about what she said, what spooked her.
“She heard them fighting—Emile and Dawn, and possibly Westin, the night he was killed. They were in Emile’s office.”
Artis goes quiet as he fights to hold an expression. What is it, exactly? Curiosity? Surprise?
“Did you know?”
Now a change, the pull of his cheeks, squint of his eyes. “Know what?”
I rattle off everything I learned from Jill back home and Grace just moments ago.
“Emile was speaking to a reporter about The Palace. He was telling them things about Dawn’s training methods and Westin’s practices. And about us—me, Jolene, Kayla, and Indy. He knew everything. He wanted to take this place down before leaving for California.”
Artis shifts back in his seat. “You think they killed Emile? And then what—moved his body? And now they’re letting everyone believe Grace did it?”
Impatience seethes inside me—I need Artis to catch up, to get to where I am in understanding what happened. He doesn’t know what they’re capable of. I can see it on his face. How crazy I must sound.
“There was something else Grace saw—a car she recognized in the parking lot. But she heard you coming down the hall, and she ran out the back before she could tell me.”
“Wait—someone else was at The Palace the night Emile went missing? Besides Dawn and Westin?”
“Yes . . . please—just drive. We need to find her.”
Artis puts the car in gear and starts to move.
“Who does she think was there? Besides Dawn and Westin?”
“I don’t know—just drive toward the condos. Maybe she’s going back there.”
Artis does as I ask, but I can see his face growing apprehensive.
“It’s a little convenient that she didn’t have time to tell you—don’t you think? Before she ran away again?”
I shake my head, look at him. “No—I don’t. She was scared.”
He exhales long and hard. “And you’re sure it was blood in that closet?”
Now I understand. “You think this is all a ruse? That she’s making it up?”
“She hasn’t exactly been helpful—until now. Saying, what? That she heard a fight, then someone else coming, and now there’s blood in the closet between the offices . . . she’s found a way to explain the blood on her skates.”
I can’t believe what he’s saying. But then I think, maybe it’s me—maybe I’m blinded by the past. She knew exactly what to tell me to ignite my own fear—that Emile knew a secret about me.
“And what about the dress?” Artis asks. “Someone would have seen them in the dorm if they’d taken it from Grace’s room.”
“Not necessarily—and what are we even doing? It’s their job to prove Grace is guilty. Not ours . . .”
My phone pings, and I reach for it in my coat.
Artis glances over with anticipation. “Is it Grace?”
I shake my head. “It’s my office,” I tell him. “They’ve been chasing a lead.”
He returns his eyes to the road, hands on the wheel, while I read the text.
Not sure what this means but read the file, it says.
So I click the link and get to a filing in a Colorado court. It’s a family matter.
Artis pulls onto the access road, his SUV slipping in the deep snow. “Christ,” he says. “This is bad.”
I’m reading a court filing in a custody case. Emile Dresiér v. Shannon Finch—Petition for Sole Legal Custody and Relocation of the Minor Child, Caleb Finch . . .
What the hell is this?
I read on, pulling out the facts. The minor child is five years old, the petition says. It recites the history of the legal proceedings. The ongoing custody hearings. The recent decision in Emile’s favor. The appeal Shannon filed.
I think about the cartoons playing in Shannon’s apartment at Avery Hall. The LEGO set in the corner. Shannon never married, but she had a child—with Emile, the pleadings say. They’d been battling over him for years. And now Emile was moving to California. He was taking his son with him.
And then I hear Artis’s question from moments before. About Grace’s dress and who might have had access to her room.
There’s the answer—right in front of me. Shannon Finch.
Artis looks from me to the road. Back and forth.
“Ana,” he says, as the car creeps through a tunnel of white. We can’t see more than a few feet beyond the hood. Can’t even get our bearings from the landscape, the shape of the road, the direction we’re heading.
“I know it’s bad—just keep going,” I say. But that’s not what he wants to tell me, about the storm and the snow and the dangerous driving conditions.
“It’s about the dress . . .”
Now he has my full attention. “The dress? What about it?”
“Look on the back seat,” he says. So I do. I turn and see a clear plastic bag with something inside. A piece of clothing.
Baby blue. Yellow butterflies. The distinct reddish brown of dried blood.
My heart is in my throat as I reach back for the bag. But then I stop. If that’s Grace’s dress, it’s evidence in the crime. There could be prints on the bag, from whoever took it from her room that night. And now from Artis.
“Where did you get that?” I ask, my mind reeling with possibilities as I get another text.
And this . . . it says, with a second file attached—one with supporting affidavits.
But I’m still focused on the dress with the blood in the back seat of Artis’s car. I think now that Shannon must have taken it and given it to Artis after we left this morning. Maybe that’s where he’s been all day.
“Did you get that from Shannon?” I ask him, not sure what to think or do. We have no obligation to disclose incriminating evidence, but Shannon was technically obstructing justice.
And then I have to wonder—why would Shannon take the dress? And why would she give the dress to Artis?
I look back to the files. My eyes dance over the names but now one of them is pulling me back as the pieces fall into place.
Affidavit of Artis Frauhn in Support of Defendant Shannon Finch.
My God . . .
“Artis,” I say now. “Why did Shannon give you that dress?”
He sighs, gripping the wheel tighter as the car moves at a slow crawl. Too slow to catch up with Grace if she’s on foot.
Then he says, finally, “We’re together. Me and Shannon. We’re getting married.”
Jesus. Yes—this makes sense now. I look back at the documents on my phone but don’t say a word about them. I want to hear what he tells me first.
“Did she give you Grace’s dress?”
I stare at him, but he doesn’t look back. And I try to understand what’s happened. Shannon must have given him the dress to help him, not Grace. Because Grace is his client. But why is this dress covered in blood?
And right then he draws another long breath. And says:
“It’s not Grace’s dress, Ana. It’s yours.”