“Who’s that?” I ask, steadying my voice to mask the jealousy rocking through me. In the photo, Laurel’s gorgeous, more gorgeous than I’ve ever seen her in real life, but there’s that other guy nuzzled up against her, his possessive arm around her naked waist.
“That’s the girl—Laurel Bloom—with the guy who fathered the child. Her phone’s got intimate selfies the two of them took together back last May and June. If you do the math, going back nine months from when she had her baby, this is the guy who would have been with her back when they, um, you know.”
I take the photo in my hands. Though I maintain my calm, inside, I’m sobbing. The evidence is unmistakable. Looking at the man in the photo, I think of Anne Elise. The resemblance, especially in their sleek noses, is uncanny. For years, I tried to have a baby with Trish. When that failed, I did stupid things, such was my desire to have a child of my own. I wanted so bad to have a child. Is that a crime?
“Are there other photographs?”
“You bet. This one’s the most salacious, though. I mean, get a load of her!”
Involuntarily, my glance wanders to the breasts that Simpkins points at. He’s right: Laurel’s magnificent. I want to punch Simpkins, shove the dirty money down his throat, do him bodily harm. Up until now, I looked at Laurel as being naive and innocent. I will never be able to look at her the same way again; I will never be able to love her again.
“Are there photos of her with other guys?” I ask, clinging to the hope that Laurel valued me enough to store photos of me, too, on her phone.
“Nope. There’s only a few photos of her and this guy. And nothing whatsoever from the end of June onward. She must have deleted everything else. If I had the actual cell phone, I might be able to recover some of those, but hacking into it from a remote location, there’s only so much I can do.”
“What else did you find?”
“Plenty.” Simpkins flips through pages and printouts, but I haven’t the heart to look at any of it. “She was arrested on thievery charge as a teen and spent her high school years at a juvenile detention center, where she was disciplined for a plethora of misconduct charges—namely, insubordination and fighting with the other inmates.”
Laurel hasn’t told me any of this. From what she mentioned of her past, I assumed she spent an idyllic girlhood playing in the sand dunes on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Meeting Belinda and Tully should have clued me in that this was unlikely, but I wanted to believe in her girlish goodness.
“And her parents!” Simpkins says. “They’re both messed up.”
“Wait. You investigated her parents?”
Simpkins grins. “You were right about me yesterday. Can’t you tell? I get off on this!” The dirt he gathered on Laurel’s parents is significant. Belinda’s been in and out of drug treatment centers for years for meth and opioid abuse. Assuming she hasn’t used since her most recent rehab stint, she might’ve been clean for all of three months. “So her mother’s been in and out of rehab, and her father, Tully, has been in and out of jail. Quite a pair, huh?”
My head whirls.
“Weird, huh?” Simpkins says. “I never heard of anyone named Tully before. Right now, there’s a string of outstanding warrants on him.”
“What for?”
“Skipping bail in Ohio. Petty thefts. Larceny. Grand theft auto. Possession with intent to distribute. Stuff like that. But in Delaware, he bashed in some guy’s face with a crowbar. Or maybe it was a tire iron.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. I sure wouldn’t want to cross that guy’s path.”
My stomach is all tied in knots. I’ve fucked myself over, giving all of Tully’s cash to Simpkins. Once Tully finds out I’ve squandered his money, it’s my face he’ll reconfigure with a tire iron. Or a crowbar. I’m angry at Laurel for deceiving me about Anne Elise’s paternity, angry at Trish for forcing me into this rabbit’s hole of an investigation, angry at myself for wasting Tully’s money, and angry at Simpkins for divulging the sordid details about Laurel. An hour ago, I was happily, blissfully ignorant. I thought Laurel was wonderful. I loved her.
“Pretty cool stuff, huh? I gotta say, this has been one of my more interesting cases.” Suffused with professional pride, Simpkins beams. He really does get off on the lurid stuff. He grabs Tully’s lunch sack and dumps out the money, the crumpled-up hundred-dollar bills spilling out into a pile that takes up half his desk. He paws the bills, rubs them between his palms. Money spills onto the floor and into his coffee mugs. For me, life couldn’t be much worse, and I’ve had a major hand in creating Simpkins’s gravy train. No good karma will rub off on me tonight. Simpkins smooths out one of the wrinkled bills and holds it to the overhead fluorescent light. His expression changes. Scowling, he picks up another hundred-dollar bill and holds it up to the light too.
“Hey, wait a sec,” Simpkins says, eyeing me. “All this money’s counterfeit.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
TRISH
Dusk falls. Ever since I finished my call with Simpkins an hour ago, I’ve been driving in circles with Anne Elise concealed beneath my jacket. The traffic light changes from green to a cautionary yellow, and after I coast to a stop at an intersection, people pour out onto the crosswalk to traipse to the other side of the street. Most stare at their cell phones as they walk, but a lone woman in a fake mink coat turns and smiles unexpectedly at me as she crosses in front of my car. My pulse quickens, for she’s spotted Anne Elise, and while she might think this is cute—a mother harboring her baby under her winter coat—later tonight, when news bulletins and missing-baby Amber Alerts appear on television, she’ll likely remember this moment. Would she be able to identify me? She’s looking at me, expecting me to return her smile, and then, because she sees my anxiety, she frowns. The traffic lights change. I stomp on the gas pedal, screeching the car to a roaring start.
Anne Elise starts crying. Nothing seems to soothe her. I sing lullabies about the twinkling stars, hug her, kiss her, rub her back, and yet no amount of twinkling stars can put her back to sleep. Brushing my hand over her cheeks, I feel the moistness of her tears. Finally, just like that, she closes her eyes, all tuckered out. It’s not good for a baby to go hungry, and yet I hadn’t the foresight to grab formula or bottles or other baby necessities before walking out of the hospital with her. I must get this caravan moving, and yet at every red light, stop sign, intersection, I worry about the pedestrians who turn and look at me as they cross the street. I’m bound to be caught. I drive back toward Sibley, and yet too much time has passed for me to return to the hospital grounds and pretend I was just promenading in the snow with Anne Elise. Nearing the hospital, I veer the car away onto a different street. Loughboro Road becomes Nebraska Avenue. Driving past American University and through Tenleytown and Connecticut Avenue, I find myself going toward Rock Creek Park. In the dead of winter, the park is underused, the perfect desolate place to disappear and never be found.
I park near the planetarium. Judging by the lack of tire tracks in the snowy lot, no one’s been here for days. Icy rain begins to fall. I walk down a path and then another path. Left outside in these elements, even the healthiest and hardiest would catch cold or pneumonia. No joggers, dog walkers, or bicyclists are in sight, no summertime ice cream vendors beckoning children with Nutty Buddy cones and Fudgsicles, and it’s hard to believe that in a city as populous and wild and self-important as Washington, you can ever be truly all alone. But I am not alone: Anne Elise, asleep, snuggles beneath my coat.