“I can see that,” I said. I stopped, out of breath. I wasn’t used to exercise.
The woman was staring at me. I’m not good at judging the age of adults. I guess she was in her thirties? No makeup, hair pulled back. Tight yoga leggings and a zipped-up body warmer. I assumed she had been at the gym. She looked hard. Wiry. Like she spent too much time there.
“You think this is the killer?” said the voice. “Really?”
I scanned from her to the car. There was no one else in it.
“Uh … can I help you?” she said. Blond eyebrows tight together. Concerned.
“I …”
“Yes?”
I breathed deep. I suddenly felt like this was a big mistake. A feeling that was familiar to me.
“Is your husband home?” I said. I had seen the ring on her finger.
“No, I’m afraid not. Do you … I mean … what do you want him for?” Worry in her voice now. Is this girl having an affair with my husband? I bet that’s what she was thinking.
Come on, Cassie, come on.
“I, uh, my dad owns Donato’s. The pizza place? Your husband left his business card in our prize drawing? Raffle, you know? It’s a big prize. A vacation to Italy. I … My dad sent me to tell him.”
“Oh.” Still suspicious. But curious too. “Italy, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s a vacation for two.”
“Well, he’s working in Dubai. He’s in construction project management.”
I nodded. “We called his phone. I figure that’s why it wouldn’t go through.”
The woman examined me. “You’re shivering.”
I glanced down. There were goose bumps on my bare arms.
“You should get inside,” said the woman. “Storm’s coming.” She wasn’t inviting me into her house. That much was obvious. It was clapboard, but from what I’d seen on Street View, better maintained than the one Paris had gone into. Clean paintwork, no peeling—a new mailbox bolted to a post. Little round trees by the door.
I looked up. The sky was a bruise now, thin sickly bars of light showing through clouds that were almost black. Pressing down. The air was frigid on my skin. How had I not noticed? I’d been running, I guessed. But also I was in my head, thinking of Paris. Always thinking of Paris.
And how all hope was gone now.
Almost all hope.
“How long has he been in Dubai?” I said. “I mean, I’m trying to figure when he put his card in the jar.”
“Four months,” said the woman.
Nope.
That was it.
All hope gone.
“He wasn’t here when Paris … disappeared,” said the voice.
“I know that, genius,” I said.
“What?” said the woman.
“Nothing,” I said. “Sorry. I’m sorry I came. I’ll go now.” I started to walk away, down the street, toward the house, the one where … the one where … I could feel it pulling me, could feel its painful gravity.
“What about the vacation?” she said to my departing back.
“Can only give it to him,” I said. “Call us when he gets back.”
I kept walking.
“Wait,” said the woman. “Wait. His business card would have his work address. How did you find us?”
I ignored her. I ignored her and kept walking. I heard her go into the house. Maybe she was going to call the cops. Maybe she didn’t believe my story.
I didn’t care.
The license plate was a dead end, and that just left the Houdini Killer and Paris’s dad and there was nothing a seventeen-year-old girl from Jersey could do about either of those.
I didn’t care about anything anymore.
We’re coming to the part when I died, now.
I know, spoiler alert.
But I’m writing this, aren’t I?
So maybe that’s spoiler number two.
The woman was gone now, forgotten.
The wind was up, whipping from the ocean, leaving a thin layer of freezing water on my skin, but it was okay, I deserved it.
I took maybe ten more steps, and I was right outside the house. Wooden numbers, one of them with screws missing and tilted on its side, were screwed to the wall.
3151.
The number I had written down.
3151 Seafront Drive.
I would like to say the house loomed or crouched there, or something that might make it seem evil. But it was just a one-story clapboard house, on a seen-better-days street near the ocean. But where the neighbors had gentrified, here the neglect was obvious. Everything was dirty or worn or peeling or all three. The front yard was overgrown with weeds. There was a little driveway, and the house had windows and a door and all the stuff you would expect. There was a satellite dish on the roof.
Even now, there was a police tape across the door. But I could see that it was standing open. “Ajar”—the word popped into my head. There was a discordant ringing in my head too, a sickly resonance. Spray painted on the front of the house were the words SICK ****.
Kids, I realized. Kids had tagged the place, and broken in. Probably they went in there at night, with a Ouija board. Got stoned, drank 40s. I don’t know. Dared one another, maybe. It was the kind of thing kids did.