“I know her. She went through the same thing I did, Jeff. I know exactly who she is.”
“I’m just worried that if you two get close, you’ll start dwelling on what happened to you. And you’ve moved past it.”
Jeff means well. I know this. And living with me isn’t always easy. I know this, too. But that doesn’t keep his comment from stinging like a slap.
“My friends were slaughtered, Jeff. That’s not something I’ll ever move past.”
“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
I lift my chin, defiant in my anger. “Then what did you mean?”
“That you’ve become more than a victim,” Jeff says. “That your life—our life—isn’t defined by that night. I don’t want that to change.”
“My being nice to Sam isn’t going to change anything. And it’s not like I have a whole army of friends beating down the front door.”
This isn’t something I plan to admit. My loneliness is something I generally keep from Jeff. I smile sunnily when he comes home from work and asks me how my day was. Fine, I always say, when in fact my days are normally listless and dull. Long afternoons spent baking in isolation, sometimes talking to the oven just to hear the sound of my voice.
Instead of friends, I have acquaintances. Former classmates and co-workers. Ones with husbands and kids and office jobs that aren’t conducive to regular contact. Ones I purposefully kept at a distance until they became nothing more substantial than occasional text messages or emails.
“I really need this, Jeff,” I say.
Jeff grips my shoulders, kneading them. He looks into my eyes, seeing something out of place, something unspoken.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I got an email,” I say.
“From Sam?”
“Lisa. She sent it an hour before she—”
Offed herself, I want to say. Finished what Stephen Leibman didn’t get the chance to do. “Passed away.”
“What did it say?”
I recite the email word for word, the text etched into my memory.
“Why would she do that?” Jeff says, as if I somehow have an answer.
“I don’t know. I’ll never know. But for some reason she was thinking about me right before she died. And all I can think about is the fact that, if I had seen that email in time, I could have possibly saved her.”
Tears form, hot in the corners of my eyes. I try to blink them back, to no avail. Jeff pulls me to him, my head against his chest, his arms tight around my back.
“Jesus, Quinn. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You had no way of knowing.”
“But you can’t let yourself think you’re responsible for Lisa’s death.”
“I don’t,” I say. “But I do think I missed my chance to help her. I don’t want to do the same thing with Sam. I know she’s rough around the edges. But I think she needs me.”
Jeff sighs a long exhalation of defeat.
“I’ll play nice,” he says. “I promise.”
We kiss and make up, tears salty on my lips. I wipe them away while Jeff lets go of me, jiggling his arms to release the tension. I give my shirt a tug and smooth out the tear-stained spot I left on his. Then we’re out of the bedroom, moving down the hall with hands entwined. A unified front.
In the dining room, we find the table unoccupied, Sam’s chair pushed away from it. She’s not in the kitchen, either. Or the living room. In the foyer, the spot by the door where her knapsack sat is now an empty patch of floor.
Once again, Samantha Boyd has vanished.
CHAPTER 9
My phone rings at three a.m., yanking me from a nightmare of running through a forest. Running from Him. Tripping and screaming, tree branches reaching out to circle my wrists. I’m still running even after I wake, my legs thrashing beneath the covers. The phone keeps ringing—an urgent beep slicing the silence of the room. Jeff, the heaviest of sleepers, trained only to wake to the Pavlovian bell of his alarm clock, doesn’t stir. To keep it that way, I cover the screen when I grab the phone, blocking its glow. I peek through my fingers, in search of the caller’s identity.
Unknown.
“Hello?” I whisper as I slide out of bed and rush to the door.
“Quincy?”
It’s Sam, her voice hard to hear over the din surrounding her. There’s chatter and yelling and the harried clack of fingers on keyboards.
“Sam?” I’m in the hallway now, eyes bleary in the darkness, brain swimming in a soup of confusion. “Where did you disappear to? Why are you calling me so late?”
“I’m sorry. I really am. But something’s happened.”
I think she’s going to say something about Him. Most likely because of the nightmare, which lingers sticky on my skin. Like drying perspiration. I brace myself to hear her tell me that He’s resurfaced, as I always knew He would. It doesn’t matter that He’s dead. That I gladly watched Him die.
Instead, Sam says, “I need your help.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I was sort of arrested.”
“What?”
The word echoes down the hallway, waking Jeff. From the bedroom, I hear the squeak of the mattress as he bolts upright and calls my name.
On the phone, Sam says, “Please come get me. Central Park Precinct. Bring Jeff.”
She hangs up before I get the chance to ask her how she knew my phone number.
Jeff and I take a cab to the precinct, which is situated just south of the reservoir. I’ve jogged past it dozens of times, always slightly confused by its mix of old and new. It consists of low-slung brick buildings, around since the park’s birth, bisected by a modern atrium that glows from within. Every time I see it, I think of a snow globe. A Dickensian village encased in glass.
Inside, I ask to see Samantha Boyd. The desk sergeant on duty is a ruddy-faced Irishman with love handles jiggling under his uniform. He checks the computer and says, “We haven’t brought in anyone by that name, miss.”
“But she told me she was here.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Twenty minutes,” I say as I adjust the half-tucked blouse bunched at my waist. Jeff and I dressed in a hurry, with me throwing on the same clothes I had worn that afternoon. Jeff slipped into jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, his hair jutting off his head in wild thatches.
Officer Love Handles frowns at the computer. “I’ve got nothing.”
“Maybe she’s already been released,” Jeff says, all but announcing his wishful thinking. “Is that a possibility?”
“She’d still be in the system. Maybe she gave you the wrong precinct. Or maybe you misheard her.”
“It was this one,” I tell him. “I’m sure of it.”
I scan the open expanse of the precinct. High-ceilinged and bright, it looks more like a modern train depot than a police station. There’s a sleek staircase, state-of-the-art lighting, the staccato click of footsteps on the polished floors.
“Have any women been brought in recently?” Jeff asks.
“One,” the desk sergeant says, still studying the computer. “Thirty-five minutes ago.”
“What’s her name?”
“I’m afraid that’s confidential.”
I look to Jeff, hopeful. “It could be her.” I then look to the desk sergeant, pleading. “Can we see her?”
“That’s not really allowed.”
Jeff pulls out his wallet and flashes his work ID. He explains, in his unfailingly polite way, that he’s a public defender, that we’re not here to cause trouble, that a friend of ours claimed to be in police custody at this precinct.
“Please?” I say to the desk sergeant. “I’m worried about her.”
He relents and passes us into the care of another officer, this one bigger, stronger, devoid of love handles. He guides us into the heart of the precinct. The room gives off a jittery, caffeinated vibe. All that institutional lighting brightening what’s technically the dead of night. Sam is there, after all, cuffed to a booking desk.
“That’s her,” I tell our escort. He grabs my arm when I try to surge forward, keeping me in place. I call her name. “Sam!”
The cop at the booking desk stands, asks her a question. I can read his lips. Do you know that woman?