Final Girls(47)

Both of them immediately stop.

I do, too.

Something is going on outside my building. A horde of reporters has gathered there, so large and unruly we can see them from two blocks away.

“Coop.” My voice is weak. An echo of its normal self. “Something’s wrong.”

“No shit,” Sam says.

“Stay calm,” Coop says. “We don’t know for certain why they’re here.”

Yet I know. They’re here for us.

I reach into my purse and grab my phone, which I turned off when Sam and I left the apartment. It springs to life with an explosion of alerts. Missed calls. Missed emails. Missed texts. Worry numbs my hands as I scroll through them. Many numbers I don’t recognize, which means they’re from reporters. Only Jonah Thompson’s is familiar to me. He called three times.

“We should walk away,” I say, knowing it will be only another minute or so before we’re spotted. “Or get a cab.”

“And go where?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know. Jeff’s office. Central Park. Anywhere but here.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Coop says. “It’ll give us time to find out what’s going on.”

“And they can’t stay out here forever.” I squint at the crowd up the street, which seems to have grown in the past thirty seconds. “Can they?”

“I’m not waiting that long,” Sam mutters.

She sets off up the street, marching straight for the reporters. I manage to grasp the back of her blouse and tug, trying to hold her in place. But it’s no use. The silk slips from my fingers.

“Do something,” I tell Coop.

He watches her retreat, blue eyes narrowed. I can’t tell if he’s worried or impressed. Maybe it’s a little of both. All I feel, however, is worry, which is why I rush after Sam, catching up just as she reaches my block.

The reporters see us, of course, their heads turning toward us more or less at the same time. A flock of buzzards spotting fresh roadkill. The TV people have cameramen with them, who jostle each other for prime position. The still photographers duck beneath them, shutters clacking.

Jonah Thompson is among them. No surprise there. He, like the other reporters, barks our first names as we approach. As if he knows us. As if he cares.

“Quincy! Samantha!”

We fall back a few steps, accosted on all sides by the surge of cameras and microphones. A hand lands on my shoulder, heavy and strong. I don’t even need to look back to know it belongs to Coop, finally joining us.

“Come on, guys, step aside,” he tells the reporters. “Let them get through.”

Sam pushes forward, swinging her arms back and forth to clear a path, not caring who she hits.

“Get the fuck out of our fucking way,” she says, knowing how all that swearing will prevent the footage from being used on newscasts. “We’ve fucking got nothing to fucking say to you.”

“So that’s no comment?” asks one reporter. He’s a TV guy, the camera behind him swiveling toward Sam like the eye of an angry Cyclops.

“Sounds that fucking way to me.”

She turns away from him, looking to me instead. All those flashbulbs give her face a luminescent glow. The light flattens her features, making her expression as pale and blank as a full moon.

On the edge of my vision, I see Jonah nudge his way toward me.

“You’re really not going to say anything about Lisa Milner?” he says.

Curiosity stirs in me, pushing me forward. Lisa’s suicide happened days ago. In a 24-hour news cycle, that’s an eternity. This is something else. Something new.

“What about Lisa?” I say, sweeping in close. Cameras fill the spot I just vacated, surrounding me.

“She didn’t kill herself,” Jonah says. “Her death’s been ruled a homicide. Lisa Milner was murdered.”

These are the details:

On the night she died, Lisa Milner consumed two glasses of merlot. She did not drink alone. Someone else was with her, also drinking wine. That same someone spiked Lisa’s glass with a large quantity of anitrophylin, a mighty antidepressant sometimes used as a sleep aid for the seriously traumatized. Lisa had enough in her system to put an adult male gorilla to sleep.

The wine and anitrophylin were discovered in the toxicology tests performed in the wake of Lisa’s death. Without them, everyone would have continued to think she killed herself. Even with them, it would have appeared that way. The responding officers found more anitrophylin on the kitchen counter. What they couldn’t find was a bottle or a prescription from Lisa’s doctor, but that means nothing in an age of online pharmacies that charge three times the going rate for pills shipped from Canada. Any drug your pharmaceutical-deprived heart desires is just a border hop away.

After the tox report lit up like a Vegas casino, a CSI unit was again dispatched to Lisa’s house. They took the closer look they should have done days earlier but hadn’t bothered to because everyone thought she had offed herself. They found Lisa’s wine glass, its bottom crusted with granules of anitrophylin. They found two rings of dried merlot on the dining room table, created by the bottoms of two wine glasses. One wine ring contained anitrophylin. The other did not. What they couldn’t find was that second glass. Or any signs of struggle. Or forced entry.