Friends Like These(35)

“Um, Keith was staying back here,” Jonathan says, pointing as he walks ahead down the upstairs hall. “In this bedroom.”

We turn into a big room with two large windows overlooking the Hudson. The day is gray, the water like steel in the distance. Two of the walls are covered in a bold black-and-white wallpaper, like some kind of abstract painting. The wall opposite the windows is painted an actual matte black, something I’d have said would be absurd, but actually doesn’t look half bad. I notice that the unmade bed has a twisted white comforter and a bunch of pillows, but no sheets. Dan had mentioned something about a sheet, hadn’t he?

Jonathan hovers near the windows with his arms crossed. Stephanie is on the opposite side of the room, staring at the bed like something happened there. I wonder if she and Keith were sleeping together.

“His bag is over here,” Maeve offers, now seeming the most relaxed of the bunch as she walks across the room toward it.

“Don’t touch anything, please,” I say, heading her off. “I need to preserve the chain of custody.”

Maeve’s hands shoot up as she takes a step back. “Oh, sorry.”

I pull out some plastic gloves and put them on before picking through Keith’s duffel. Expensive clothes jammed in the bag like he was making a run for it. At the very bottom I find a glass tube wrapped in tissues. I hold it up.

“What’s that for?” Jonathan asks.

“Snorting something,” I say. “Cocaine, crushed pills, heroin. Could be anything.”

“Heroin?” Stephanie sounds genuinely appalled.

I’m still looking in the bag when I notice the nightstand drawer ajar. When I open it, there’s a small fabric pouch inside. Partially unzipped. I lift the top with a finger, and sure enough, there are needles, a spoon. A cooking kit.

“Looks like maybe he was using needles, too,” I say. “I’ll have the medical examiner check for evidence of intravenous drug use. Might help us make an ID.”

“Jesus,” Maeve whispers.

“Keith’s been having a hard time for a long time. We didn’t know it had gone that far.” Jonathan sounds stricken. “Maybe we should have. But we didn’t.”

“His girlfriend, a friend of ours, Alice, killed herself when we were at Vassar,” Maeve says. “Keith never got over it.”

“Could they have been headed to the Farm instead of the Cumberland Farms?” I ask.

“The Farm?” Jonathan asks. Hard to believe that as a weekender, he hasn’t heard of it. They’ve been leading the charge to get the place torn down.

“Yeah, you know, the falling-down barn on Route 32?” I say. “It’s the main place around here to buy opioids. The guy who runs it kind of has a lock on the market.”

And Seldon’s made no concerted effort to shut him down. Claims he’s planning a coordinated effort with the state. Seems to me some effort might be better than no effort at all.

I see something shiny then, on the floor between the nightstand and the bedframe. I pick it up— a driver’s license, the photograph of a pretty, smiling blonde. She looks like somebody’s favorite babysitter. Crystal Finnegan. Twenty-three now. But the license was issued seven years earlier when, from the photo, Crystal was a fresh-faced, young-looking sixteen.

“Who’s Crystal Finnegan?” I ask, holding up the license.

There’s a long delay before Stephanie finally steps forward to look at the picture. Maeve and Jonathan quickly follow suit.

“I don’t know,” Jonathan says, giving one palm a quick rub across his leg. “Do you guys?”

The others shake their heads.

I nod. “So you have no idea how her driver’s license ended up on Keith’s floor?”

More head shaking. “No,” Jonathan says. “I mean, there are cleaning crews and maintenance in when we’re not here. Maybe she works for one of them?”

“Sure,” I say, slipping the license into a plastic bag and tucking it in my pocket. Though I’m guessing the answer is way more complicated than that.

We stop to take a look in Finch and Derrick’s room next. The beds are clearly slept in. On the floor on the other side is another small duffel bag. I head over, check the name tag: DERRICK CHISM in flawless penmanship.

I kneel down, grabbing a fresh pair of gloves from my pocket and sliding them on before I open it. I move my hands carefully through the pristine contents, underwear and T-shirts rolled with unnerving military precision. I set them next to the bag.

“Beth probably packed for him,” Jonathan says, regret in his voice. “She’s a control freak.”

The rest— jeans, socks— is totally unremarkable. But there is a plastic grocery bag tucked into a corner, and inside that are a pair of fitted cotton boxer shorts and a very soft T-shirt. Expensive, you can tell from the touch. In the bag there’s a receipt for a deodorant stick and a toothbrush.

“Finch came last minute,” Stephanie says as I look at the receipt. “They probably stopped on the way to get things for him. Except that’s one of Finch’s T-shirts, I think. A little weird that he had a change of shirt with him.”

At the very bottom of it all is an 8 ? x 11 unsealed manila envelope. I lift it out and open it. Inside are a stack of handwritten pages. Actually, photocopies of handwritten pages. I pull them out a couple inches to look more closely.