Dad waited while I threw a toothbrush, makeup, and a change of clothes in a bag, then drove me up to Cleveland Park. Mom was standing on the front step. She folded me in her arms, kissed my hair, whispering, over and over, Sweet baby girl. She insisted that I follow her into the kitchen and take some soup. It was only nine in the morning, but I submitted. Hot lentil with lamb and cinnamon. Delicious.
I excused myself and climbed to my old room on the top floor. I stripped and stood beneath a scalding shower, until my skin bloomed pink and my fingertips shriveled white and wrinkly. The ache in my wrist eased a little. The adrenaline that had carried me these last several hours was depleted. I needed sleep.
Before I drew the curtains, I pulled out my phone and dialed Will. It went straight to voice mail. He might be with a patient, I mused. Or he might still be angry from our argument last night. Or punishing me for never answering my own phone.
The phone beeped, indicating it was recording.
“Hi. Call me.” I couldn’t think what else to say, couldn’t think where to begin an accounting of what had happened in the hours since we’d parted.
I fanned my still-dripping hair across the pillow, drew up the covers, and sank into dreamless sleep.
? ? ?
WHEN I WOKE, the clock read four o’clock.
My phone showed three messages. The first was from Madame Aubuchon, a stiffly formal message inquiring as to my health and adding that she had changed her mind, she wanted her soup pot back. Next came messages from Beasley and from the surgeon Marshall Gellert. These were both short, stating only their names and asking me to call back at my earliest convenience.
I called Beasley first. Washington Metropolitan Police had already been in touch and filled him in on last night’s drama, but he made me retell what had happened, in painful detail.
“I surely am sorry you had to go through that,” he said after I finished. “You’re the last person on earth I would wish it on. And I’m sorry to make you relive it again right now. But I needed to hear the details firsthand from you, make sure nothing important got left out.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know—I’m being honest with you—I don’t know whether what happened last night has anything to do with what happened back in ’79. But say somebody does want to get his hands on that bullet. Coming after you, when you were home alone at night, would make sense.”
I shivered.
“Tonight you’re staying with your parents, correct? They’ll be with you the whole time? You’re not going out?”
I glanced at my reflection in the mirror on the bedroom wall. My hair had dried in a weird cowlick while I slept, my eyes were ringed by dark circles, and I was wearing saggy sweatpants and a Duke basketball T-shirt filched from an ex-boyfriend. “If you could see me, you’d know I’m not fit to be seen in public.”
“Good. If they haven’t been already, local police will be in touch. They’re arranging a cruiser to drive by your house throughout the night. But they can’t watch you every second, so it’s best if you stay inside and keep people around you.”
“You really think I’m in danger, then.”
“I think I would never forgive myself if anything else were to happen to you.” Beasley was quiet for a moment. “In better news, I can tell you that last night has lit a fire under people here. I’ve been pushing all week for your family’s files. Kept getting told they couldn’t find them. Then, lunchtime today? Not three hours after Washington MPD got on the horn asking about you? Two big, fat boxes appear on my desk. They must have finally sent somebody with a brain out to off-site storage.”
“What’s in the boxes?”
“Stuff. I’m going through it. That’s about all I can say at the moment.”
“Because you’re not allowed to say or because you need time to—”
Beasley acted as if he hadn’t heard me. “Your formal interview. I’d prefer to do it in person. But in the interest of time, let me see if I can schedule a slot in one of Washington MPD’s interview rooms. We’ll send a car for you.”
“Can’t we just do it by phone?”
“No, we need it videotaped. Let’s aim for first thing tomorrow.”
I chewed my lip, weighed what to say next, decided what the hell. “My brother wants to buy me a gun. For self-defense.”
“You know how to shoot?”
“No.” I didn’t add that I’ve never handled a firearm in my life. “I’d have to get some instruction.”
Beasley made a doubtful noise. “You’re talking a handgun, I assume. Takes a while to get comfortable with one, feel like you know what you’re doing. My advice, my official advice, would be to leave the guns to the cops. Local police will do fine looking out for your security.”
“Hmm. You said that’s your official advice. What about unofficially?”
He hesitated, then sighed. “Off the record . . . speaking as a -father . . . I’d say something small, maybe a nine-millimeter Baby Glock, might not be a terrible idea.”
? ? ?
“I HEAR YOU’RE agitating to move up the surgery by a few days.”
“Am I? Where did you hear that?”
Marshall Gellert and I had played phone tag the better part of the afternoon. He finally caught me as I was setting my mother’s table for dinner.
“Oh,” he said, taken aback. “I thought—I assumed—I got a call at lunchtime from a police detective down in Georgia. Saying that bullet in your neck is relevant to an investigation, and they want to examine it sooner rather than later. He wouldn’t give me details, but I assume that isn’t news to you? I thought you must know he was calling.”
“I didn’t, but I’d welcome getting the surgery over with.” So Beamer Beasley wasn’t messing around. “When, then?”
“I’m closing in on next Monday. Instead of next Wednesday. Would that fit your schedule?”