Chapter 74 Rae
RAE
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER
Evidence Log
Item: Leather-bound journal, recovered with remains (Lazareva, Elena)
Nobody looks up at me when I step into the 24/7 diner. It’s like slipping into a coffin.
Jillian is in the back booth, hunched over a cup of coffee she hasn’t touched.
She looks like hell. Her red hair is limp and unwashed, intent on escaping from its messy bun.
Dark circles mar the skin beneath her bloodshot eyes.
Her clothes are stained and rumpled, nothing like the chic facade she normally presents to the world.
I haven’t her like this since the day before she left me for a year with no explanation.
When she sees me, her face falls.
“Rae…”
I hold up a hand to tell her to stay seated—we won’t be hugging today.
I slide into the booth across from her. Taking a page out of Lukas’s book, I fold my hands in my lap, straighten up as tall as I can, and breathe.
It helps to center myself. Even if I don’t feel grounded in the slightest, I can at least pretend to look that way.
Jillian gulps.
Then she reaches into her purse where it rests on the booth next to her and produces a manila envelope. She slides it across the Formica toward me. I see that her nails are bitten down so close to the quick that they’re crusted with bloody scabs.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I wanted to give you a heads up before publication, but you disappeared, and— Not that it’s your fault.
It’s not. I know that.” She swallows hard, her throat clicking.
“Things got out of hand, Sunshine. Higher powers got involved—not just my bosses, but, like, people with real sway—and it just… it all spiraled. I couldn’t control it anymore. ”
I don’t know what I’m feeling right now. There’s a piece of me that’s furious at her. She knew I was falling for Lukas and she pursued this thing without revealing a bit of it to me. Ominous warnings aren’t the same thing as telling me the whole truth.
But there’s another piece of me that understands. Jillian is a journalist. This is what she does. She follows stories wherever they lead, even when they lead somewhere ugly. Even when they lead straight through the people she loves.
And she did try to warn me. Multiple times.
I just didn’t want to hear it.
“Open it,” she says, tapping the envelope. “Please. You need to see what they found.”
I hesitate. My fingers twitch toward it, then retreat. Toward, then retreat.
Whatever’s in here, it won’t change anything. I’ve already lost the man I thought I loved. What more damage can it do?
I slide my finger under the flap and tear it open.
Inside are photocopies. A few dozen pages, maybe more, reproduced in stark black and white. I can tell immediately what I’m looking at.
A journal. Someone’s private journal.
The paper is creased and water-damaged in places, the ink faded to near-illegibility in spots. The handwriting on the first page is an elegant, looping cursive with a distinctly European flair. The date at the top reads March 3rd, 2007.
“Is this…?”
“Elena’s,” Jillian confirms quietly. “They found it with her remains.”
I flip to the next page. The handwriting is still beautiful here, controlled and precise.
But as I continue through the stack, something changes.
The loops become less uniform. The lines slant at sharper angles.
Words are crossed out, rewritten, crossed out again.
By the final pages, the elegant cursive has devolved into something frantic and rushed.
The handwriting of a woman coming undone.
“Jillian… how did you get this?”
My best friend’s gaze drops to her untouched coffee. “I may have done some small crimes.” She laughs hoarsely. “I’ll understand if you want to write an exposé of your own.”
I don’t laugh. Hers withers quickly.
“I bribed a forensic tech,” she explains. “It cost me a few grand, but he let me see the photocopied pages before they logged it into evidence.”
“Jill—”
“I know.” She holds up a hand. “I know what you’re going to say. It was unethical. Definitely something that could end my career if anyone finds out.”
“Then why—”
“Because you needed to see it.” Her bloodshot eyes finally meet mine. “Before the police decided what parts to release to the public. Or worse—what parts to suppress entirely.”
I stare at her. “You think they’d bury evidence?”
“I think Lukas Lazarev has been buying cops and judges in this city for forty years,” she says. “If there’s anything in that journal that contradicts the narrative he wants to tell, it’ll disappear into an evidence locker and never see the light of day again.”
She reaches across the table and taps the photocopied pages once more.
“Read it, Rae. All of it. Then decide for yourself what really happened to Elena Lazareva.”
I look at her, then down at the pages, then back up at her. “What do you get out of this, Bean?”
She recoils in confusion. “What?”
“What do you get out of helping me?” I wave the envelope at her. “You could be squeezing me for an interview, but you’re not doing that. You’re handing me evidence that could blow your entire narrative apart and ruin your life in the process. Why?”
It happens slowly, like watching a building collapse in on itself—first the corners of her mouth collapse, then her jaw, then her eyes.
“I’m scared,” she whispers. “Kir…”
My stomach flips. “What about him?”
“It’s too much to explain right now. But he… he wanted to control this story. As soon as he found out about it, he… he…” She wraps her hands around her coffee cup like it might anchor her.
“But you published anyway,” I say.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” she says.
“Exposing a murderer, you know? Being brave.” She laughs bitterly and shakes her head.
“Then the photos came out of the arrest, Lukas getting led out of the house, and you watching him… I saw you, saw your face, and I know that face, Sunshine. I knew then and there that I might have just destroyed my best friend’s life over a story I don’t even fully understand anymore. ”
I study her face. She says she knows me, but I know her, too.
Jillian is a killer through and through.
She hides things, even from me—the year she disappeared being chief among them.
But I have seen all her seams and her little cracked edges.
If there’s anyone in the world who can suss out if she’s lying or concealing, it’s me.
I don’t see any of those signs.
All I see is exhaustion. Fear. My best friend, breaking.
“Did Kir put you up to this?”
Jillian’s head snaps up. “What?”
“This whole thing. Is this another one of his games?”
“Rae, no.” She reaches across the table and grabs my wrist. Her fingers are ice-cold. “I haven’t talked to Kir since the article went live. I’ve been staying at my cousin’s place in Jersey, sleeping with my phone under my pillow and a kitchen knife on the nightstand. I’m terrified of him.”
I hold her gaze. It looks like it costs her terribly to do it, but she doesn’t look away, either.
“Okay,” I say eventually. “Okay. I believe you.”
She exhales like she’s been holding her breath for days.
I really do believe her. I actually do, even if it’s dumb. It feels like she’s caught out here with me, both trapped in the vicious Lazarev undertow, and neither one of us can figure out how to swim to shore.
I look down at the diary pages. Maybe this is our life raft.
I open up the journal and start to read.