He opened his mouth, shut it, twisted the glass back and forth on the tabletop. “No,” he said.
Which was a lie. They could trace the source of the call, where it was placed from. They would have the voice on file. They would have something.
I looked around my house, searching for understanding. “What’s the working theory here?” I asked. Took another sip so I wouldn’t be caught holding my breath.
Dodge looked at me, debating. He licked his lips. Stood on that line. In my experience, they’ll usually tip my way if they’re already on the line. They’ll answer not because I’ve tricked them into it but because they want the same thing we do.
“The working theory is what you told us. That’s the strongest lead we have.”
But I didn’t really believe him. “Yeah? Then what’s with the search?” I pressed.
His jaw shifted. “If she was taken from here like you thought, then a weapon could’ve been taken from here, too. It could’ve been a weapon of opportunity. Maybe she and James Finley were here together. Maybe this is where things started to turn bad. Maybe one of them took it for defense, and it was used against them.”
A string of maybes, all placing Emmy as victim.
“If you really thought that,” I said, “you would’ve taken her toothbrush or her hairbrush for DNA. You would’ve dusted for fingerprints. You would’ve had someone in here, interviewing me some more. You would’ve—”
The words stuck in my throat, realizing what they would’ve done. What they should’ve done.
They would’ve had someone in here, taking a description from me. A detailed description. A sketch artist who would bring Emmy to life.
Sometimes it’s what’s missing that’s the answer. Sometimes that’s the story. The missing knife. Or the No comment, or the demand to speak to an attorney. Sometimes what they don’t do or don’t say is all the evidence you need.
The police had not called someone in. Maybe they were waiting some more, maybe they didn’t have someone on payroll. But there was another explanation. It made Dodge look away as the papers on the table rippled with urgency in the breeze.
I blew out a breath. “Let’s just get this done,” I said, sitting across from him once more.
* * *
AT THE END, THERE were a few possible receipts, paid in cash, that could’ve been Emmy’s. Gas in the car, a few dollars here or there at the nearby supermarket. But they could’ve just as easily been mine. Still, I had to try.
Because despite what Dodge had claimed, I believed there were a few different theories they were looking into:
The first, that something happened to both Emmy and James Finley.
The second, that Emmy did something to James Finley and left.
And then there was the third theory, the one that Kyle had alluded to earlier, before I’d convinced him otherwise—or so I’d thought. Nobody had yet spoken it outright, but I could see it buried underneath, starting to poke its way to the surface. In the way they carefully approached a subject. In the things they took or didn’t take. In the things they hadn’t yet done and hadn’t asked me.
The third theory, of course, was this: that Emmy Grey did not exist. Not just in name but the girl herself.
And that she never did.
CHAPTER 26
It was after midnight, and I was finally sure I was alone. The crowd outside had dispersed at dusk, slipping away in their cars or fading into the woods—going back to wherever it was they came from. The house was a mess, in disarray, and my hands shook as I put everything back in its place.
The utensils had all been handled, jumbled, replaced. I dumped them into the sink to clean again, imagining dirt and germs everywhere. They’d reached their hands underneath our mattresses, and our sheets were disheveled and twisted. Underneath the bathroom sink, they’d seen my box of tampons, the bottles of lotions, bars of soap. The tweezers and the toothpaste tube, which was mostly empty and crusted around the opening. They knew the brand of deodorant I used, had seen the razor hanging on the shower wall, had found the opened box of condoms in my bedside table.
They may have taken only the knives and slips of paper, but they’d come away with far more. An insight into the intimate workings of our lives.
I wondered if Kyle had gone through here himself. If he’d opened that box in my bedside table. If he’d counted.
I sat on my heels in the corner of the bathroom, feeling exposed and dirty and angry, and I heard my own breath, like that of an animal in a cage. I stood, splashed water on my face, leaned against the counter, and stared at myself in the mirror. Pull it together, Leah. My eyes looked wild, red-rimmed, and my face gaunt—and in the dim light, I could almost see her here. Hunched over, tracing her fingers over her own cheekbones, surprised by the person she discovered.
My God, Emmy, what did you do?
I tore down the hallway and turned all the lights off so no one could see in. Then I slid open the door and listened to the night. I closed my eyes, made my breathing slow and even, counting off all the things I knew: the crickets; things moving in the woods, far away; the whisper of the night wind.
I kept my eyes closed, moved with my hand on the railing, so I would not imagine things in the darkness that I couldn’t see.
I reached the dirt at the base of the steps and walked by heart to the dark shape in the driveway. I felt the unknown calling me—pulling me closer. Until I was at the car, and the beep of the key, the flash of the brake lights, cut through the night. I eased the trunk open as silently as I could before lifting out the box, which was mostly empty and nearly weightless.
I didn’t turn the lights back on until I was firmly inside my house, in Emmy’s room, with the door closed behind me and the curtains pulled shut. It wasn’t safe to bring the box out to the surface. It was too dangerous to keep it up here when they’d just gone through my house. To leave a photo around that could only tie Emmy to the Davis Cobb case. I opened the top and pulled out each item, careful to hold them with my sleeve, leaving my prints off them, taking pictures with my phone.
She had left this box in Boston, and I imagined everything had come from there, from eight years earlier. She was living in an apartment. Other people saw her, saw us, and I could prove it.
I stared at that photo again, the girl who was almost me, twisting it back and forth until the glare from the bedside table light reflecting off the glossy surface burned my eyes, and all I could see in the dark, as I walked the box back to the trunk of my car, were the spots where the light once was.
* * *