Chapter 14 #2
wanted to be Carmen Sandiego. Her favorite movie was The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. While I went to college, she bartended and saved money to pay for these random trips, just wherever she wanted to go—one
month it was Peru, the next it was Romania or New Zealand—and then she’d return home and write about the crazy things she
did, what she saw, who she met. She traveled cheap and smart. Sometimes just a carry-on, hence the original name. She took
red-eyes and puddle jumpers, slept in hostels, used public transportation, walked whenever possible. She loved to walk, miles
every day. She even used to hitchhike, which I always told her was a terrible idea. But eventually she didn’t need to bartend
at all. She changed her name and Keep Calm became her day job, as crazy as it sounds.”
“What was her name, before she changed it?”
“Alma,” Tess says. “She said it sounded too dowdy.”
“What was her income?”
“It varied.”
“Ballpark?”
“It helps to break it out.” Tess counts on her fingers. “On her website, pre-roll and display takes in about four or five
thousand a month. Plus two or three more for direct clients we run special placements for, like homepage takeovers. Affiliate
links and subscriptions are maybe nine or ten. Sometimes she’ll do sponsored content, but she doesn’t like to—”
“You’re shitting me. Allie makes fifteen grand a month?”
“Before expenses and taxes and my part-time pay, yeah.” Tess hesitates, suddenly defensive of her best friend. “She works
her ass off.”
“And you’re her manager?”
A modest smile. “More of an assistant.”
These are fairy-tale figures. Then again, it’s a brave new world out there for content creators. People make a living filming themselves eating cheeseburgers or loudly reacting to movie trailers. Sometimes Washington wonders if her brain isn’t deteriorating quite fast enough.
And at least Allie seemed to deserve her meteoric success. Keep Calm and its two subsidiary sites are slick and cleanly designed, her prose snappy and often quite funny. She builds out itineraries
by budget tiers, writes packing guides, and lays out her articles intelligently. And she really does seem to be an authority
on thrifty travel—using Skyscanner to search for budget airlines, hitting the “shoulder season,” safely navigating public
transportation—even clever gig-economy stuff Washington never would’ve thought of, like signing up to pet-sit for local residents
in exchange for a place to sleep. Most important, Allie herself is a warm and likable presence in her self-shot videos, grounded
and gracious to her hosts and never afraid to try new food. She’d be a fun girl to have a beer with. Her life seemed every
bit as charmed as Tess described.
Until Costa Rica, at least. Until something happened there.
“So she’s successful. She has a public profile with a sizable following. She looks like Taylor Swift. Any of these things
could’ve made her a target.”
Tess frowns. “This guy couldn’t have known all that.”
“Unless he stalked her.”
“He got there first.”
“And he knew you’d both be there.”
The survivor hesitates.
“Did Allie have any connection to a guy named Jacob? Did she ever mention dating a guy by that name? Did she ever confide
in you that she felt someone might be watching her?”
“Not at all.”
“You help with her social media, right? Any creepy messages come in?”
“Mostly fan mail. A few haters.”
“Haters?”
“It’s the internet. Everyone hates something.” Tess shrugs. “Spam accounts trying to sell stuff. Some guy asking if Allie
would sell her underwear.”
“What did she think of that?”
“She thought it was hilarious. She made nine hundred bucks off him.”
Washington says nothing. Raindrops tap the window.
She’s always hated the phrase elephant in the room, but it’s apt here. For the past few minutes she’s been trying to coax Tess into mentioning it voluntarily, but she’s either
avoiding it or unaware of it, and now it’s time to change strategies. She sets her notepad in her lap and folds her arms.
Once this is said, it can’t be unsaid.
The pin can’t be put back in the grenade.
She studies the survivor’s nonverbal reactions closely. “You were aware of your best friend’s recent legal trouble, right?”
Silence.
Tess blinks. “I’m . . . I’m sorry?”
“Allie is currently under federal investigation.”
“For what?”
“Wire fraud.”
Tess stares numbly, like she can’t comprehend the words.
Wire fraud.
Other charges are likely, too. The field office hasn’t returned her call, but Washington knows they must be circling something
big. No doubt they’re scrutinizing Allie’s business records and bank accounts, matching up every transaction, looking back
years into the past.
Tess looks ill. “That has to be a mistake.”
“She would’ve already been served a target letter. And a boatload of subpoenas.” Washington tilts her head skeptically. “She
never told you? Even though you were her manager?”
“Assistant.”
“If it’s true, it means Allie’s career, her public profile, everything she built, might have been on the verge of crashing
down around her. If charges were filed, she’d be looking down the barrel of multiple felonies.”
“Prison?”
“Maybe.”
“She already made more money than she could keep track of,” Tess says. “She didn’t need more of it.”
Washington says nothing and watches the survivor process her shock. On the monitor, her pulse has spiked again. Understandably.
“I know Allie was your best friend and you loved her.” She reaches forward to touch Tess’s hand. “But no matter how close
you may have been, she still kept secrets from you. And other things happened that day, too, that you couldn’t have seen or
heard. Have you heard of the Rashomon effect?”
Tess shakes her head.
“It means two people can remember the same event differently. Ultimately, all memories are subjective. You might remember
Allie Merritt one way, but the truth, the real Allie, might be something else entirely.”
The events of the day are an interlocking puzzle. Every person present at the Devil’s Staircase saw something wholly unique,
and no one—not even Tess herself—witnessed the full picture. What did Allie see? And what did Jacob see?
“While I waited in the dark,” Tess says, “I heard singing.”
Washington blinks. “Singing?”
She nods.
“The killer’s voice?”
She nods again.
“Did you recognize the song?”
“No.”
“What were the lyrics?”
“It was mostly the same lyric over and over,” Tess says. “Maybe that’s all there was to the song, or he only knew that part.
The man downstairs, he waits and he waits.”
The detective looks at her sideways. “An old country song?”
“You know it?”
“It sounds like one I remember.”
“And I heard something else from the dark, like . . . grinding machinery.” The survivor’s voice is faint, shaken. “Almost
a screech, like metal on metal. And every few seconds, a click. In a steady rhythm. It started slow but got faster. I didn’t
know what it was.”
Washington does.
And she knows that song intimately, too, in some long-suppressed part of her brain. It’s a classic earworm. She was ten years
old when it released, and she remembers hearing it on her father’s radio almost every night while she did her homework, a
scratchy and oddly malicious electric voice from across the kitchen.
The man downstairs, he waits and he waits.
He waits and he waits.
And, baby, he’s waiting on you.