Friends Like These(47)

And for a beat I did consider saying no. But who was I kidding? I needed that screwdriver to stop working at my joints, needed to stop the vise before it crushed my skull. I just needed it all to stop.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m coming.”

But in the morning I would finally call an end to all of it. The drugs and the bad choices and all the fucking risks. Maybe I’d call the police or the FBI or whoever you called when you had people like Frank pissed at you. I’d tell them everything, and then I’d live with the consequences. No one else was getting hurt, not on my account. Not anymore. From now on, it would just be me footing the bill.

But first, I was going to get high one last time. And who knows, maybe it would finally be the time I didn’t survive.





DETECTIVE JULIA SCUTT


SUNDAY, 10:10 A.M.

I’m waiting for the nurse behind the Hudson Hospital reception desk to get me a room number for the John Doe. Feels like she’s been tapping away at her keyboard for twenty minutes, but it’s probably been more like two. The clock is ticking, though, and this entire visit to the hospital could be a dead end.

There are plenty of reasons an assault victim might try to leave against medical advice that have nothing to do with our murder— a domestic situation, debt, some minor outstanding warrant. And Seldon’s already got my team turning to Dan. The only thing that’s going to head that off at the pass is me having a solid suspect, one who’s got nothing to do with Kaaterskill.

“Any luck yet?” I ask, trying to hustle the nurse.

She glares at me— I did hit a little too hard on the yet.

“Does it look like it?” she asks, then goes back to her hunting and pecking.

At least I’ve had Jonathan, Stephanie, and Maeve moved down to the station for safekeeping. It was mostly for their protection. Whoever is our perpetrator could decide to show up at the house and finish what they started. But there are also way too many holes in their story, holes big enough for them to disappear through.

The doors at the end of the hall swing open then, and a man in a white coat and a rubber apron comes through. A morgue guy. My mind flashes back to the night we came down here with Jane’s dental records. With her face smashed, it was the only way to identify her. I’d sat there on the bench between my parents, trying not to fidget with Jane’s ring, already secreted on a chain at my neck. The special one that looked like braided twigs with the teeny sapphire set in between. As soon as we realized she was missing, I’d taken it from Jane’s jewelry box without asking my mom, too afraid she might say no.

I shouldn’t have even been there at the hospital at that age, but ever since Jane disappeared, I hadn’t wanted to let either of my parents out of my sight. We’d be ripped apart before long anyway. Within weeks my dad had switched from the occasional beer with the game to a nightly Johnnie Walker. Soon it would be two Scotches then three, bigger and bigger pours each time. In the years that followed, the man I knew as my father— loving, kind, attentive, and so funny— was replaced by a mean and unpredictable drunk. He died when I was in eighth grade, his car wrapped around a telephone pole on his way back from a client meeting in the city. My mother’s health declined rapidly after that, patchy memory turning into full-blown dementia by the time I was in my second year on the force. The last time I visited before she died, she kept calling me Jane. I didn’t have the heart to correct her.

“The Aftermath.” That was what they’d called the episode of The River about what became of my family and Bethany’s in the wake of the murders. Drugs, arrests, divorces, alcoholism— surely not all of it could be blamed on Jane and Bethany’s deaths. Judging from the riveted listener reviews, the episode had been full of salacious details, which probably explained the sickly fascinated look on that woman’s pretty round face when she approached me at Home Depot, asking if I would autograph her receipt.

I asked her twice to please go away. When she didn’t, something in me just broke, and I shoved her. Not nearly hard enough for her to fall the way she had, loudly knocking over the rack of specialty paint samples as she hit the ground. She’d wanted to make a scene. That’s what these people always wanted— to become part of the story.

“Maybe you should, you know, talk to somebody about it?” Dan had suggested in the car on the way home. He’d managed to beat the patrol officers to the scene and talked the woman out of pressing charges. Luckily, there was no record that any of it had ever happened. He’d said we’d come back later for my car.

“Talk to somebody about the fact that there are sick people in the world who want my autograph because my sister is dead?” I asked, pouncing. “How is talking to anyone going to change that?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dan snapped right back, at long last annoyed.

“Then what did you mean?”

“I’m just saying— sometimes, Julia, you only see what you want to see.”

“So this is me in denial?” My face was hot, my voice loud. I’d been gunning for this fight— the big one— and I was ready.

“Maybe counseling could help you process things. So you don’t have to feel so angry.”

“Stop the damn car!” I shouted, already reaching for the door.

“Whoa, calm down!” Dan jerked the car onto the shoulder. “Julia, wait . . .”