Chapter Thirty-Six Kaitlyn
Chapter Thirty-Six
Kaitlyn
First thing Saturday morning, Kaitlyn drives straight to Amanda’s apartment building. There she finds Roger the landlord in the lobby, staring dead-eyed at his phone screen. When he looks up at her, his brows raise, and she wonders if that’s because she looks as crazy as she feels.
Because right now, she feels mad enough to snap.
She barely slept the night before, if she even slept at all; she was too occupied with thoughts of her almost-certainly-dead sister, and her sister’s potential murderer, and her pistol, suddenly and inexplicably missing from the trunk of her car.
If Kaitlyn ever wants to sleep again, she’s going to need some answers.
Figuring out who’s been paying Amanda’s rent feels like a good place to start.
“I need to see the security tape,” she says without preamble, and then just as quickly adds, “please.”
“Right.” Roger pockets his phone and waves her back into his office. She doesn’t need to tell him there’s urgency to this situation; he obviously feels it.
It takes the landlord an agonizingly long time to find the right moment, but eventually, he does. In silence, they watch the grainy footage of a dark-haired woman entering the lobby, exchanging a few words with Roger, and handing him an envelope.
“I can’t see her face,” Kaitlyn says, her heart sinking. Maybe she’s not going to get the answers she’s looking for after all.
Roger shushes her, even though the video has no sound. “Wait for it.”
Finally, the woman turns. Roger pauses the video, catching her face in profile.
“Know her?”
Kaitlyn squints at the screen, expecting to see the Indian woman with the nose ring she was shown yesterday at the police station.
Instead, she sees another familiar face: that of the sharp, accomplished woman she’s been watching for months.
“I do know her,” she admits, because on that screen—handing over money to her sister’s landlord—is Townsend’s girlfriend, Talia Danvers. “Well, I don’t, but I do.”
Like a pile of bricks, the realization lands on her with a shattering blow.
For so long, Kaitlyn assumed Talia was a victim, someone who’d attached herself to a rancorous (and possibly murderous) asshole without knowing any better.
But it’s clear now Kaitlyn was wrong. So wrong.
Because Talia can only have one reason for paying Amanda’s rent: She’s the one who killed her.
“Okay,” Roger says, as though her response makes any sense. He gestures to the screen. “So what do you want me to do with this?”
“Let me think for a minute.” Kaitlyn stands and then—the office suddenly feeling too hot, too crowded with their two bodies—steps outside.
Surely Robert Frost didn’t have anything like this in mind when he talked about those two roads diverging in a yellow wood, but still, this is how Kaitlyn feels: like she’s looking down two different paths, wondering which one will lead to any semblance of peace.
Pointing her gun at that amorphous human silhouette at the shooting range is nothing like pointing a gun at a living, breathing person; she knows that.
And she knows that, even if she were to find herself poised and ready (and even if her gun were not currently missing), she would never be able to pull the trigger. She is angry in a way that feels unshakable, a permanent part of her personality from here on out, but she isn’t a murderer.
Perhaps ShrinkGPT can help. After pulling out her phone and opening the app, Kaitlyn asks, “How do you know if you’re capable of killing?”
The app plays “Opus No. 1” as the chatbot generates its response.
But when the answer is finally provided—something about patterns of deception and an escalation of violence—Kaitlyn notices right away that something is off.
This isn’t the AI voice she is used to, the soothing baritone reminiscent of Morgan Freeman. This is another voice entirely.
The app confirms it: Though a half dozen new voice options have been added following the latest software update, the voice she’s become so accustomed to hearing—Male Dulcet Tone—is gone.
Great. Even her fucking AI-therapy chatbot has left her. She has no choice but to figure this out on her own.
For what feels like the hundredth time in the past few months, Kaitlyn wonders, What would Amanda do? If she closes her eyes, she can almost hear her sister’s voice, can almost feel her standing beside her.
Talia needs to get fucked, Amanda would say. Talia needs to pay.
Before she can change her mind again, Kaitlyn calls the police. “This is Kaitlyn Reade,” she says, her voice shaking, “and I have evidence that Talia Danvers killed my sister.”
Someone asks her to hold, and a moment later, a voice she recognizes as belonging to Detective Harris answers the phone. “Ms. Reade?”
“I have evidence,” she repeats. “I know Talia did it.”
Harris pauses. “Would you come back to the station?” she says at last. “Talia Danvers was just shot.”