There are several PDF files in the folder. Scanned written statements. My breath catches in my throat; I had no idea the police talked to so many people. I get a surge of righteous anger: Of course Daphne was wrong. They did do their jobs.
I hit control + P. A prompt tells me there are more than fifty pages in this file and asks if I’m sure I want to print. I glance at the door. Click yes.
While the printer in the corner spits out the pages, I comb through the statements on the screen. In a woman’s loopy scrawl, I spot the name Jack Canning. It’s signed Alice Berry. By the time I reach the bottom of the PDF, the printer wheezes and goes quiet.
Footsteps in the hall. I click out of the database and leap out of Mike’s chair. Grab a napkin from the McDonald’s bag and dab at the Diet Coke dripping from the corner of his desk.
The receptionist pokes her head in, eyes wide. “Oh.”
“I just wanted to clean this up.” I angle myself so I’m blocking her view of the printer.
The woman waves a hand. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll get some paper towels from the bathroom.”
When she ducks out of Mike’s office, I grab the stack of papers resting on the printer tray. Shove them in my tote bag and slip into the hall. I hurry toward the lobby.
The security camera hanging over the door blinks red. I keep my eyes down and stumble out onto the street. Power-walk to the corner and lean against the telephone pole, my stomach pumping acid.
Ginny pulls up in her mother’s car, her eyes white orbs in the night. I throw open the door and collapse into the front seat. “I got it.”
She’s silent as she pulls away. I watch the police station recede in the side mirror. When we’re back on the highway, I force out the words “Pull over.”
Ginny puts her blinker on. Drives onto the shoulder. I stumble out of the still-rolling car and retch, arms wrapped around my stomach.
Nothing comes up. A cold sweat has sprung out over my body. I shut my eyes, letting the thrumming in my ears drown out the sound of the cars roaring past us.
* * *
—
I’m sitting at Ginny’s kitchen table, face buried in my hands. I look up and move them when Ginny taps my shoulder. She sets a mug of hot water in front of me.
“I don’t know if you want one or two.” She shows me a handful of hot chocolate packets. “I always use two,” she adds.
I take two packets from Ginny. “I thought I was the only one who did that.”
She smiles and slides into the chair across from me. Wraps her hands around her mug, her smile slowly fading. “I gave the nine-one-one operator a fake name and number.”
“And you’re sure no one saw you by the pay phone?”
She’s probably so sick of me asking that, but she just nods. “Positive.” Ginny eyes me. “Are you okay?”
I take a sip from my mug. Lick a spot of grainy, sweet powdered chocolate from my lip. What we just did to Mike—to his family—is so not okay.
The thump of something landing on the table jolts both of us. Panda winds around the napkin holder. Cranes her neck, sniffing at Ginny’s hot chocolate. Ginny and I look at each other and exchange a nervous laugh.
My gaze falls to the stack of papers resting between us. Ginny’s follows; the cat sits back on her haunches, tail thwacking against the table. She’s looking right at me, beady eyes seeming to say Well, what are you waiting for?
I divide the stack in two and push the bottom half toward Ginny. While she examines the size of the stack, I dig a pen out of my tote bag and flip over the cover sheet on the first statement in front of me. Scrawl Timeline at the top of the page.
The first page is filled with shaky, slanted writing. Practically unreadable. I skim to the bottom first and see it’s signed by Mr. Joseph Brenner—he lived across the street from the Berrys. I flip the page and reveal the next one in the stack; mercifully, someone has typed up Mr. Brenner’s statement.
…while I was putting out the recycling around 9:45, and noticed a pickup truck parked on the street next door, diagonally from the Berrys’ house. A petite, dark-haired girl got out of the vehicle and crossed the street. I waved to her as she headed up the Berrys’ driveway, but she appeared not to see me. The pickup truck remained parked next door, the engine on. I went inside and made a cup of tea and straightened up the kitchen. Before I went to bed I looked out the window and noticed the pickup truck was gone.
I blurt: “Someone else saw the pickup truck.”
Ginny’s head snaps up.
I hold up the paper, a tremor of excitement moving through my arm. “This man—Mr. Brenner—I knew him. He lived down the street from us, across from Susan. He used to give out pennies on Halloween.” I scan the statement again. “Have you seen anything about when Juliana and Susan got home from float building?”
Ginny’s brow creases. She flips through the pages she’s already gone over. Pauses. “This one is from Juliana’s dad. He said he picked them up a little after nine and left them at the Berrys’ around nine-twenty.”
I look at Mr. Brenner’s words again. Petite, dark-haired girl. It had to have been Juliana. But if Mr. Ruiz dropped the girls off at 9:20, what was Juliana doing getting out of a pickup truck at a quarter to ten? “This can’t be right. Mr. Brenner said he saw someone dropping Juliana off around nine-forty-five.”
Ginny pushes the paper toward me. “Look. Juliana’s dad even said he walked them to the door and asked if they were sure they didn’t want to stay with the Ruizes, but Susan said she couldn’t leave her dog alone all night.”
She’s right. Mr. Ruiz said float building ended at nine, and he’d left the girls inside the house no later than nine-twenty.
If Mr. Brenner was mistaken, and it wasn’t Juliana he saw getting out of the truck and going into Susan’s house…it means there was a third girl there that night.
A girl who left alive.
But if it was Juliana…“She left Susan’s to meet someone,” I say. “Whoever was parked by Mr. Brenner’s—she probably met him inside his pickup truck.”
“He says he saw this happen at nine-forty-five?” Ginny pauses. “Ethan said he saw the argument on the deck around ten.”
I take a sip of my long-cooled hot chocolate. “So whoever Juliana was meeting followed her to the house after Mr. Brenner went back inside.”
A chill crawls up my back. He waited. He waited until no one would see him.
But someone did see him: Ethan.
Ginny says what I’ve been thinking: “Why wouldn’t the police follow up on Mr. Brenner’s statement?”
The clock on the stove says it’s after ten. We’ve been at the kitchen table for almost two hours. “He was really old—like ninetysomething, I think. Maybe they thought he was confused about what he saw.” I rub my eyes. “Or maybe they did follow up and it turned out to be nothing.”
I sit back in my chair, nausea ripping through me. “What if there’s nothing here? I could have gotten us both in serious trouble for nothing.” I can’t even entertain the possibility that we didn’t actually get away with it and that Mike will figure out what I did. “I’m sorry,” I say to Ginny. “I almost ruined everything.”
Ginny taps the handle of her mug. There’s a dried streak of blood on her thumbnail where her cuticle meets the skin. “Monica? Can we please focus?”
I nod, my throat tight. We go back to reading, my eyes getting progressively heavier. Around midnight, I look up and find Ginny out cold, using her stack of witness statements as a pillow.
I reach over and poke her arm with my pen. She stirs and blinks at me.
“I think it’s time to pack it in,” I say. “I haven’t found anything useful anyway.”
Ginny yawns. “Me neither.”
We clean up the piles of paper and stuff them into a spare folder Ginny finds in a kitchen drawer, and I put the whole thing in my overnight bag. I eye the pajamas at the top of the bag.
Ginny spies them and says around another yawn, “My bedroom is upstairs.”