The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(76)

“We burned my wedding dress to make s’mores,” I answer blandly.

Yvonne cheers in the background.

In the second long silence of the conversation, Burnside sighs and shakes his head at Kearney, and the officers look well beyond confused. Kearney hides her grin against her hunched shoulder.

Finally Vic says, “Keep me posted.”

Coward.

I end the call and look at Kearney, but it’s Officer Wayne who speaks.

“What did he mean, ‘the psychology’?”

“Davies has been reliving his daughter’s illness and death for thirty-one years,” I say quietly. “Right up until the moment that he got Brooklyn downstairs into that room, he could probably recognize her as Brooklyn, as someone else’s daughter. As soon as she was in Lisa’s environment, though, she became Lisa. He became incapable of recognizing her as anyone else. It’s how he could be genuinely worried about Brooklyn and help search for her; the girl in the basement was Lisa, not Brooklyn. She was his daughter. And now we’re threatening that delusion, trying to force the rational part of his mind beyond the compulsions.”

“So if he’s that fixated on his daughter . . .”

“Precisely. He’ll remember me, but my resemblance to his daughter will be shocking all over again. Like a goldfish finding its castle in the bowl again.”

“My girlfriend keeps pushing me to train up for the detective’s exam,” Todd says. “Next time she brings it up, I’m telling her this is the reason I won’t.”

Officer Cupcake barks, as if in agreement.

I text a wish list to Priya, which includes the request that she take the rent check off my fridge and drop it off at the office for me tomorrow. The residents have been begging the office to let us pay early, or pay online or have a drop box or something that doesn’t limit us to office hours on the first three days of the month, but no such luck. There have been a number of months where I’ve been out of town and Jenny Hanoverian has delivered it for me.

I have a feeling Priya is already driving, because the response is garbled into incomprehensibility, which is what tends to happen when she uses the dictation feature. The London-born, Boston-raised Paris resident has a drifting accent anymore, and it confuses the hell out of her phone.

“Once the ME gets here, we should get you to a clinic,” Kearney informs me, standing and stripping off her gloves.

“Huh?”

“There’s grave dirt on your bandage, and it looks like your burns are seeping through the gauze. It’s not a great combination.”

Right. “Brooklyn accidentally popped some of the blisters. And does it really count as grave dirt if there’s no decomp?”

“Probably not, but you know why I’m not going to care about that just this minute?”

“Because dirt is dirt and it doesn’t belong in open wounds?”

“Good girl.”

Burnside reaches out to pat Kearney’s shoulder. “Our little Kitten. Right where she belongs.”

She tries to hiss at him, but because she’s laughing, it comes out as a sneeze.

I look at the sad bundle of what was once an active little girl. Given the aneurysm, it’s entirely possible she would have died within the last year no matter what. But she wouldn’t have spent that year scared and sick and locked away. She would have been buried properly, with her family and her own name, not hidden away. She would have died as Kendall.

Not as Lisa.

“We’ll get you home soon, sweetheart,” I whisper.





25

It does not surprise me in the least that when Jenny’s minivan pulls up outside the hospital, it is Bran, not Priya, behind the wheel. He’ll deal with it when it’s Vic driving, but he really is a terrible passenger.

“Tampa is in the high seventies and low eighties, and Omaha might get snow,” Priya reports, waving at Kearney through the window as I slide into the middle row of seats. Ian is stretched across the back, fast asleep and wearing his sunglasses. “Accordingly, you have a bizarrely packed bag.”

“Sounds about right.”

“I’ll take care of your rent check tomorrow. Stupid of them to make it so difficult.”

“Thank you.” Before buckling in, I lean forward to tug on one of Bran’s curls. “How are you holding up?”

“Stubbornness is a useful tool. Why are we picking you up from the hospital?”

“Cleaning out the blisters that popped and changing the bandage that got dirty.”

He gives me a long look in the rearview mirror but doesn’t comment.

“Are Inara and Victoria-Bliss going to be okay tonight?”

Priya wriggles in the seat until she can see both me and Bran. “I think so. Before this year, the get-togethers were mostly for Keely’s sake. They’re sad about the girls who died, of course, and angry, and any number of things, but it’s also the night that saved their lives. The memories have weight, but they’re not suffocating under them. With Keely stretching her wings, they came here, because why wouldn’t we come here when we can? Actually, I think they’re excited to hand out candy to the kids. They’ve never done it before.”

“They don’t get trick-or-treaters in New York?”

“No, all the kids in their building have an event at their school, for safety.”