Then it was my turn to laugh. “Are you kidding me?”
We both glanced down at the bed of the ravine, where the tarp had been laid flat on the muddy earth as Franklin County forensic technicians in white suits collected evidence into plastic bags. A ring of work lights had been set up around the tarp, casting a clinical glow through the foggy dusk. I had to look away, my stomach twisting.
“If the remains are human,” Lassiter went on, “we will work tirelessly to identify them.”
I wanted to tell him to save it for his press conference, but instead I just said, “Of course.”
“And if you think you’re the first hotshot who ever got the idea to take a look at the Cook case, you’ve got another thing coming,” the chief said. “Every couple years, we get some reporter, some random crazies, people just obsessed with the whole idea. You know we used to have a citizen ride-along program? Had to close it down because we got too many people just wanting to talk about the case, see the scene, see where Bev Stockton lives—it’s disgusting.”
“I didn’t—”
“The fact is, you never should have been down here in the first place,” he finished. “I told you myself. So don’t go thinking you should get some kind of a medal for discovering this today. Got it?”
I wasn’t acting like I wanted a medal. I was acting like I wanted him to listen to me. But all he wanted to do was to be mad. “It’s not like I killed her,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re pissed at me.”
Rage flashed through his face, like he didn’t know either and it made him even madder. “No,” he said evenly. “Brad Stockton did and he’s already in jail.”
So that was why he hated me so much, maybe: he had all the hassle of a homicide on his hands here, with none of the potential glory that could come with solving the case. I felt sick when I thought about Brad—or, not so much him, but his sister, who was stuck believing in something impossible.
“Now,” Lassiter said, “I want you to get in your car and go back to the city. We’ll handle it from here.”
It didn’t seem right to just leave. But my case appeared to be over. Brad had basically directed me right to Sarah’s body. I still didn’t know why. Maybe he was tired of the charade. Maybe he’d been wanting to tell somebody every day for the last fifteen years. Maybe I would never know why. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t up to me. It never had been.
I passed several television news trucks on my way back down from Clover Point and I realized that if the story wasn’t on the wire already, it would be soon. I called Danielle, thinking I didn’t want her to have to hear about this on the news the way she’d heard the Cooks were dead in the first place, but she didn’t answer.
Another job well done, indeed.
*
I went straight to my kitchen and poured a shot, downed it fast, then poured another. I hadn’t turned the lights on and the apartment took on an eerie glow from the streetlights outside. I leaned against the counter, swallowed my second shot, and closed my eyes. I couldn’t get the sight of the bones out of my head. I wondered how my father had been able to stand it for almost forty years, bearing witness to that ugliness every day. Maybe he hadn’t, I realized, and that’s why he was the way he was, hard and distant and drunk every night within thirty minutes of getting home. I dropped my shot glass into the sink. From the clatter it made, it sounded like there were a dozen others in there already.
I flipped the light on. It was not looking good in here: The pizza box from Yellow Brick was still sitting on the stove, though now with a square cut from the bottom. The sight of it reminded me, again, that a full day had passed and I had failed to get the door fixed. The sink was full. Someday, I told myself, someday soon, I was going to resume life as a normal person. It was easy to think of my life now as broken into two segments—before my father was killed, and after. The after part seemed like it might unfold forever. Maybe it would. Maybe every morning people like Joshua Evans and Cass Troyan woke up wondering if this was the day the after ended and their lives morphed into act three. Somehow, I suspected it wouldn’t be that easy, not for them, and not for me.
I ran hot water in the sink; then I noticed I didn’t have any sponges. Okay, fine. At least I tried. I flipped the lights back off and peeled off my damp clothes and dropped them in a pile on the laundry room floor. Then I stood under the steady stream of the shower for thirty minutes and might’ve stayed there all night, except the hot water ran out. I towel-dried my hair and got into bed naked and lay there waiting for something else to happen. I couldn’t place what I was feeling. No one was any worse off than they had been before this afternoon, not even Sarah. But I had a sensation in my chest like we all were, and like it was my fault.
I thought about Sarah’s parents. What had happened that night? What did they interrupt? I wanted to think that they died without knowing what had happened to their daughter, but it probably didn’t matter. There were no silver linings here, no small bits of comfort to cling to, not for anyone. I closed my eyes but all I could see was the blue tarp, the curve of a clavicle, the blond hair.
I opened my eyes again. My apartment felt suddenly, acutely haunted. I needed something but I didn’t know what. And then I wondered how long Catherine’s husband would be in London and if she was alone in her house tonight too. I grabbed my phone but before I could dial her number, Unknown called me again.
I didn’t even bother saying hello. “Who the fuck is this?”
Breathe in, breathe out.
“Cass?”
Breathe in, breathe out.
It had to be Cass after all. Brad was in jail. “Stop calling me,” I snapped, hanging up.
But thirty seconds later, the phone began vibrating again. I was about to throw the device at the wall, until I saw that the universe had finally intervened on my behalf: it was Tom.
I sank back to the pillow.
“I just heard the craziest story about you,” he said when I answered. “Belmont?”
I covered my face with my hand. “Is it the one where they gave me the keys to the city?” I said, and he laughed a little. “And who did you hear this from? It literally just happened.”
“News travels fast around cops,” he said. Then he added, “Someone I know in the coroner’s office was at the scene and heard your name. Like it or not, most of the police in Ohio know who you are.”