The Night Shift(75)

“I actually need to do this alone.” A man she’s trusted, a mentor, her support system through it all, lied to her. Knew something devastating and did nothing. And she needs to understand why.

She hands Chris the keys to the car. “You can take it. I can Uber.”

“I can wait, if that’s okay?”

She nods. She’s starting to worry about him. He’s pale, clammy. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” Chris puts his head back and closes his eyes.

Ella walks up the driveway. There’s a beat-up red convertible—a two-seater that’s seen better days—in the driveway. He has a guest, his girlfriend, maybe.

She knocks on the door. There’s movement inside, then a delay before the door opens.

“Ella?” Mr. Steadman says. He’s flustered. Maybe she interrupted him. A romantic evening, perhaps. She realizes that she’s never been inside his house.

“I’m sorry to come unannounced. But I need to talk with you about something, and I—”

She stops. A wave of electricity vibrates through her. Instantly, she’s drenched in panic sweat. It takes her brain a second to catch up with her eyes. There’s a man behind Mr. Steadman, staggering toward the door. His suit jacket and dress shirt are steeped in red.

“Run,” the man says. “Run!”

“Oh my god, what’s going—”

“Oh, Ella…” Mr. Steadman spins around and rams a fist at the man’s abdomen. When he pulls his hand away, it’s covered in blood. Ella realizes that it wasn’t Mr. Steadman’s fist, it was a knife. The man stiffens, takes in a sharp breath, and slumps to the floor.

Ella opens her mouth to scream but her voice box is paralyzed.

Steadman seizes her by the arm and yanks her inside.





CHAPTER 68


KELLER





Keller is back at the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, which is mostly empty at this hour. Atticus hasn’t returned her texts, so she imagines he’s holed up in his office, immersed in his research.

She walks down the dark hallway, her footfalls echoing, her shadow conjuring the word waddle in her mind.

She opens his office door and slaps on the lights.

Not here. Maybe he took off for the night, though it seems out of character. The kid works really hard.

She sees the empty Tupperware container on his desk, smiles as she recalls his mom bringing him dinner.

He was here, working late. Doing some additional research, it seems. The box of yearbooks they’d taken from the school sits on the floor. On his desktop, two yearbooks lie side by side, each opened to the last pages, where local businesses run advertisements. One of the yearbooks is from 1999, the other from last year.

Glancing around for other clues, she notices that he’s removed one of the photos from his Blockbuster crime wall—the shot of the cars parked in the lot of the video store. It’s on the desk next to the yearbooks, the pushpin hole dimpling the old shot. The photo has always taken her breath away. The lot empty except for the vehicles of the slain employees. Its black-and-white finish only adds to the desolation of the image. One of the cars has a STUDENT DRIVER sticker on the bumper, the last vestige of innocence lost.

Atticus left a magnifying glass next to the photo. She smiles, imagining him playing Sherlock Holmes. She holds the magnifying glass over the photo, enlarging the video store in the background. She makes out shelves of movies, and part of the Blockbuster logo, a giant movie ticket, painted on the back wall. There’s no one in the frame. The store is empty.

She moves the magnifying glass to the cars. There’s no one inside any of them either. What were you looking at, Atticus?

She hovers the glass over each car, zooming out, then back in. Then she sees it. Small lettering on the STUDENT DRIVER bumper sticker. It reads, STEADY AS THEY GO DRIVING SCHOOL.

Then Keller’s attention turns back to the yearbooks, both opened to local business ad pages. And each has an ad for STEADY AS THEY GO.

It’s then that Keller realizes the yearbooks aren’t from the same school. One is from Union High, where most of the Blockbuster victims attended, the other from Sacred Heart Catholic School, where Katie McKenzie went to school. Then she remembers something Arpeggio said when she’d confronted him: “I taught Katie to drive when she flunked out of driving school.”

She thumbs through some phone records Atticus was also looking at. They were for the ice cream store victims, Madison and Hannah Sawyer. Earlier, Atticus had said that the older sister, Madison, the one who’d had a dispute with Jesse Duvall, was fighting with her sister about something. She was threatening to tell their mother.

Keller flips through the pages, which are sorted by day. Atticus has dog-eared the pages for every Tuesday and Thursday. On each of those pages, he circled the times from 5 to 7 p.m. Keller doesn’t understand. There was no cell activity on Hannah Sawyer’s phone on those days and times—some of the only times the girl wasn’t on her phone. What was Hannah doing every Tuesday and Thursday from five to seven?

Then it hits her. She quickly calls Atticus’s mobile.

Right to voice mail.

She clicks on the number for Joe Arpeggio.

He answers on the first ring. “Look, I don’t know if there’s much more for us to—”