Authors: Alison Gaylin
T
raffic was vicious. It couldn’t be helped, though. Brenna was headed to the suburbs at 6
P.M.
, along with enough commuters to successfully overthrow and repopulate a good-sized third world dictatorship.
Brenna wondered if Will Garvey himself was among this throng. She’d seen more than a dozen shiny black Esplanades while crawling up the West Side Highway to the Cross County, the SUVs multiplying by tens and twenties as she left the city behind.
Garvey was supposedly through shooting
The Day’s End
at 4
P.M.
today, after which he would come directly home, as it was one of his nights with his son and daughter. At least, that’s what his housekeeper had told Morasco over the phone—far more amenable, apparently, to a policeman’s voice in her ear than to some strange woman at her door, asking about her boss’s possible connection to a murdered woman.
Four
P.M.
Morasco and Brenna had figured on maybe forty-five minutes to remove the TV makeup and get into his street clothes, another half hour to say good-bye to his castmates, pick up his car, and get on the road. He ought to be home by six, they’d assumed. The timing worked for Brenna. Maya had texted her at five, wanting to spend the night at Larissa’s again, and this time, Brenna didn’t argue about it.
Be good
, she’d texted back.
Mind her mother.
After arranging to meet Morasco at Garvey’s house at six, she’d gotten her car out of the garage, said good-bye to Trent, and hit the road, only to be stuck in this hell for more than forty-five minutes, with some goddamn gold Chevy Cavalier riding her bumper like a Brahma bull in a state of extreme arousal. “Any closer, you’d be in the front seat,” Brenna muttered into her rearview.
Brenna looked at her watch: six-ten. She sighed, called Morasco on her cell, and got his voice mail. “Better go on into Garvey’s without me if you haven’t already,” she said. “The Cross County is a nightmare.”
No sooner had she hung up, though, than Brenna saw the light at the end of the tunnel. About half a mile up, the highway branched off—Whitestone Bridge traffic to one side, Merritt Parkway to the other. Most of the cars were headed for the Whitestone, but Brenna wanted the Merritt
.
A get-out-of-traffic-hell-free card.
Praise be.
As soon as the road ahead cleared up, Brenna accelerated, but wouldn’t you know the Cavalier was right behind her, reaming her Sienna as though it still had no other choice. “Use the fast lane!” she yelled.
Brenna sped up even more, and the Cavalier chose that moment to take Brenna’s advice and try the fast lane on for size, clipping her in the right rear bumper. “Goddamn it!” Brenna pulled onto the shoulder and flipped her hazards on. She just could not get a break today. She checked her rearview, fully expecting the Cavalier not to be there—a hit-and-run, on top of everything else. Okay, at least it was pulling over, too.
Has to be a rental car
, she thought as she opened her passenger’s side door and got out to inspect the damage.
Some jerkoff from out of town, paid the collision insurance and obviously wants his money’s worth
.
She sensed a tall body behind her—the rental car driver—and anger barreled through her. This was the worst time for something like this to happen. The absolute worst. “What were you thinking?” Brenna snapped. She started to spin around to face him, but stopped when she felt cold metal at the small of her back. The barrel of a gun. She turned her head just enough to see the shadow of a face behind her, clear for a few seconds in the lights from a passing car. The pretty features. The thick jaw. The mole.
Adam Meade slipped the cell phone out of her front pocket. “Get back in your car,” he said. Brenna obeyed. She had no other choice, Meade directing her behind the wheel and sliding into the passenger’s seat, Meade and his gun, forcing her back onto the highway, telling her where to drive, leaving his rented Cavalier behind.
M
orasco got the message from Brenna just as he was arriving at Willis Garvey’s overdone wedding cake of a mini mansion. She was caught in traffic. Going to be late.
Morasco sighed. He took a look at Garvey’s house. The shades were drawn in front of the enormous great room window, but Morasco could see shadows moving behind them, all the lights in the house blazing. He rang the bell, and within seconds, the door opened—answered by a guy who looked like he’d walked off the cover of a drugstore romance novel, minus the puffy shirt and the breathless woman in the corset. “Mr. Garvey?” Morasco said.
He frowned. “Yes . . .”
“Detective Nick Morasco. Tarry Ridge Police Department.”
Garvey stared at him for a full twenty seconds. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “Am I supposed to know what this is regarding?”
“Just a few quick questions, if you don’t mind.”
Garvey nodded.
Morasco followed him into the house, through a hallway and into a great room that turned out to be a housekeeper’s nightmare—all of it white. From somewhere up the stairs, music blasted—bass that shook the floor above them and a woman’s voice: “That’s not my name,” over and over and over, punctuated by uproarious, girlish laughter. Morasco felt like he was in a nightclub’s basement.
“My daughter has a friend over,” Garvey said, stating the obvious.
“Mr. Garvey,” Morasco said, “how is it you knew Carol Wentz?”
Garvey’s face went to stone. “Listen,” he said. “I already told that investigator you’re working with, I don’t know Carol Wentz. Outside of the news, I’ve never heard the name in my life.”
“Then why did you call her?”
“She called me,” he said. “I never called her.”
Morasco cleared his throat. “You called Carol Wentz three times on September 21, starting at three in the morning.”
Garvey stared at him. Above them, the singing woman asked if you’d been calling her darlin’, and someone cranked the volume up even more. “Girls, would you turn that down,
please
!” Garvey shouted. Then he looked at Morasco. “I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Morasco removed the phone call list from his pocket. “These are all the incoming calls to the Wentzes’ phone.” He pointed out the September 21 calls. “This is your fax number, right?”
Garvey stared at the page, his tanned skin going pale. “I . . . I honestly don’t know how that could have happened.”
“It happened three times in a row.”
The girls had turned the music down, but the bass prevailed.
Bump-da-dum, bump-da-dum
, like being trapped in a giant metronome. Garvey took the paper from Morasco. He held it in both hands, staring at it for a long while, as if he expected the numbers to suddenly change. Was this acting? If it was, Garvey was really, really good.
“Mr. Garvey, if you could just explain to me what you told Carol Wentz, then—”
“Wait a minute. September 21. . . . That was a Monday.”
Morasco nodded. “Just about ten days ago. Shouldn’t be that hard for you to remember.”
“Girls!” he hollered. “Come down here please.”
“Just a minute, Dad!”
“Right now!”
Mercifully, the music switched off. And within moments, two young teenage girls appeared at the top of the stairs—one tall and blonde and bearing a striking resemblance to Garvey; the other smaller, with brown hair and glasses.
“What, Dad?” said the Garvey look-alike.
“Detective Morasco, this is my daughter, Emily,” Garvey glared at the girl and her friend. “You girls had a sleepover last Sunday.”
“Uh, yeah.” Emily looked at Morasco. “Is that against the law?”
“Don’t be rude, Emily.”
“Sorry.”
Garvey took a breath. “Emily, were you two making prank calls from my fax machine?”
Emily’s smile dropped away. “No, Dad. Of course not—”
“I mean it.”
Emily turned to her friend. The girl looked stricken, Morasco had to say—a look of crippling guilt crossing through her face. There was something familiar about that face, too, something in the eyes . . .
“It wasn’t me,” Emily said.
“I will not tolerate lies.”
“I’m not lying, Daddy,” the blonde girl said. “I swear.”
“I have the proof right here, Emily. I have the phone—”
“It was Maggie.”
Maggie . . . Oh my God . . .
Morasco stared at the big eyes, the worried little mouth, the wispy brown hair . . . and he remembered blue plastic barrettes. Tinker Bell barrettes. He remembered pink sneakers with Velcro straps, dangling a foot off the floor . . .
“I’m so sorry,” Maggie said, tears forming in her eyes. “I’m so, so sorry. It’s my fault.”
Sitting on the metal chair in the interview room, the chair dwarfing her, the yellow T-shirt with a fluffy white cat on it. Little fingers clutching the plastic cup of water. Three and a half years old. The squeaky voice. The shy laugh.
Nobody’s scared of Santa
.
“I prank-called Mrs. Wentz. But it wasn’t my idea. It was Emily’s idea.”
“It was
not
. You were the one who told me about the chat room!”
“I can’t believe you girls,” Garvey said. “I mean I honestly cannot believe you.”
“I told her not to do it.”
“You did not, Emily. Stop it.” Maggie had tears in her eyes.
Emily said, “Mrs. Wentz thought Maggie was . . . was somebody else.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry . . .”
Mrs. Wentz thought you were Iris. We all thought you were Iris
. Morasco shook his head, staring speechless at this girl, seeing the passage of time in her face, from three and a half to fourteen, the same little girl, causing so much trouble . . . “Maggie?” he said finally. “Maggie Schuler?”
B
renna drove. Meade kept his arm against the back of her seat, the barrel at the base of her neck. He’d taken the safety off—made her watch him take the safety off and then placed the barrel there, just above her collarbone like a cold, extended kiss. Brenna’s mind would try to rescue her—it would take her, for instance, to April 18, 1994, to the roof of the Fourteenth Street apartment building at midnight with REM on the boom box, Jim’s fingertips against Brenna’s cheek and his lips moving to touch hers, but no sooner would she feel those lips, that impossible tenderness welling up in her chest, no sooner would she hear Michael Stipe sing about corrosives doing their magic slowly. Brenna would feel the metal against her skin, and she would return, again, to Meade.
“Get off here,” Meade said. They were on the Deegan expressway now, the 230th Street exit. The Bronx. Brenna did as she was told. “What do you want from me?” she said.
He didn’t reply.
Meade had her turn down a long avenue, and then make a left on a smaller side street. Another left and two quick rights, and they were on a desolate stretch of road, where if you looked down, you could see the dark murky water. Pelham Bay.
God.
Was this some kind of existential joke, or had Meade planned it this way? Brenna could see City Island from here.
“Stop the car.”
After she pulled onto the shoulder, Meade grabbed the keys out of her hand. “Get out,” he said, and as she got out of the car and let him push her around it, looking down at the bay, the gun now between her shoulder blades, Brenna felt herself step into the night of September 7, 1981, Meade’s calm, quiet voice morphing into her mother’s shrill one . . .
“Get out of my house.”
“Clea told me not to tell you, Mom. That’s why. Because Clea made me prom—”
“Two weeks ago, Brenna. Your sister could be dead right now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“If she is dead, it is your fault. It’s your fault she’s gone. Get out of my house.”
Brenna’s watch says 9:45
P.M.
It is September but the air is still warm and wet and thick, like breath. Brenna opens her front door and walks down to the sidewalk. She turns left, heads toward the bay.
“Where did you put it?” Meade said.
Brenna passes the Lindens’ house, the Moskovitzes’, the Mangiones’, the Conrads’ . . . She opens the gate to the Center Street Beach. She takes off her shoes and feels the cool sand under her toes. Pelham Bay is a black mirror, city lights reflecting off the surface. She walks into the water until it is past her ankles, past her knees. She will not swim. She will not fight. The water is cold but she will keep going in . . .
“Where?” He jabbed the gun in her ribs.
Brenna heard herself say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do.”
The water is at Brenna’s waist. The current tugs at her.
I will not fight
, she thinks
. I will not fight
.
“I don’t understand.”
It is up to her neck now. She pushes against the current, seaweed brushes against both wrists, wraps around her waist. It makes her cringe. She sees the lights of the city in front of her. “Good-bye,” she says. Brenna closes her eyes
.
She is about to go under when she hears something behind her, a splashing . . .
For a moment, the gun lifted away from her back.
A splashing in the water and then her mother’s voice. “Brenna! Brenna! Don’t, sweetheart, please! I’m sorry! Come back!”
Meade punched Brenna in the stomach with the side of the gun. The air rushed out of her, and she fell to her knees gasping. Back in the present. “Where is it?” he said.
He wants the picture of Wright
. Brenna wheezed. Her hands scratched and grasped at the concrete beneath her—tiny bits of gravel, shards of glass.
Yes. There
. . . She struggled to her feet, a good-sized glass shard clenched in her palm. He grabbed her by the arm, forced the barrel of the gun to the base of her chin, and held it there. “The question is not going to change. The drawing wasn’t yours to take. I know you have it. I will get it back.”
“The
drawing
?” The cold barrel pushed against her throat. It was a big gun. A .45, and if he fired it, right now, at this range, her head would explode. Yet in spite of it all, he was using euphemisms. Not the picture of Lydia Neff with Meade’s car, not the picture of Meade’s naked, very married boss. Not the evidence of Lydia and Roger’s affair. The child’s drawing those pictures came wrapped in. “You’re talking,” she said slowly, “about the items Carol Wentz removed from the Neff home.”