Wherever She Goes(18)

“There is no sign of a child with the woman on that CCTV footage. Which was taken two blocks away . . . and almost an hour after you reported the supposed kidnapping.”

“Then . . .” I struggle for an explanation. “Then they grabbed the boy first.”

She crosses her arms. “So why wasn’t he with his mom? Why wasn’t she in the park with him?”

“I . . . I don’t know, but there must be an explanation. What I do know is that this is, beyond any doubt, the woman I saw Sunday afternoon.”

“Sure, okay, this woman matches the description you provided. The very, very vague description.”

“I can give you more. On Sunday, she wore no makeup except thick black eyeliner. She had what looked like track marks on her arms. Old ones.”

Her brows shoot up. “You know what track marks look like, Ms. Finch?”

“I have seen them before. Now, when I was talking to her on Sunday, she took a call. She sounded very upset. She was speaking in another language. I don’t know exactly, but I’m guessing Slavic.”

“And your linguistic experience comes from . . . ?”

I walk farther into the room, taking a moment to relax. Don’t get my temper up. Don’t take offense.

“I’m not claiming any expertise, Officer. They may have been pockmarks, not track marks. She may have been speaking Portuguese. I’m taking wild guesses, the upshot being that this woman has marks on her arms and speaks a second language.”

“You may say you’re not positioning yourself as an expert, Ms. Finch, but there is a name for what you are doing. It’s called attention seeking. Officer Cooper believes you did see a boy pulled into an SUV. I’m not so sure, and I think this proves I’m right. You invented a kidnapping story, and when that failed, you jumped on this tragedy to insinuate yourself into a real investigation.”

“I don’t want to insinuate myself into anything. I just want you to take my information and do your damned job.”

Her eyes flash. “We are trying to do our job, Ms. Finch. That job right now is solving a murder. Please do not make that any more difficult than it already is.”

She opens the door for me to leave.

“I’d like to speak to Officer Cooper, please,” I say, with as much dignity as I can muster.

“You’ve wasted enough of his time.”

I straighten and walk out, head high. I get three steps when a woman says, “Ms. Finch?”

I turn too eagerly, as if in the last three seconds Jackson has realized her mistake. Instead, I’m facing a woman with a microphone, a cameraman behind her.

“Ms. Finch? Aubrey Finch? Is that right?”

I look at the camera. I see that recording light on again. I see the call letters again, too, with two words I’d missed: Live News.

Live.

The reporter continues, “Did you say you know the woman whose body was found in Harris Park this morning?”

Live. I am on live TV.

My face. My name. On the news.

I back away slowly. “No, I’m sorry. I need to—”

“You said her son was kidnapped? You saw him taken the same day she was murdered?”

My face is on live television.

That’s all I can process, her words barely penetrating.

“N-no. I’m sorry. It—it was a mistake.”

I try to stop the babbling denials. I should not retract my words. I know the dead woman is the young mom. I know her son was taken.

I want to say yes. State my case. If the police aren’t paying attention, well, maybe they will when I explain the situation on live television, and they’re flooded with calls demanding that they investigate.

That is what I want to do. The heroic thing.

Instead I babble something unintelligible, and then hurry off down the hall. I take the coward’s path, but it is already too late.

My name is in the news. My face is on television, connected to a major crime case.

What have I done?





Chapter Twelve





I spend the rest of the morning obsessively watching the footage of me on the local news channel. It’s there before I get back to my apartment. I stand at my laptop, newly bought fan belt abandoned on the counter as I watch and rewatch the video.

I could remove the segement. I know how. But that’s as pointless as pulling a risqué photo uploaded by a pissed-off ex. Believe me—I know that from experience. The guy has the original, and by removing the copy, you only show him that it’s upsetting you, which is the point. If I remove this, the news station will just replace the video and then wonder what made it hackworthy.

My footage is short. Mercifully so. I tell myself I don’t look that bad in it. Yes, I appear to have just rolled out of bed, but I don’t look crazy.

Is that what it’s come to? I don’t look crazy?

I don’t sound crazy either. That’s even more important. On the way home, I kept replaying those moments, and with each iteration, I imagined myself falling deeper into raving-maniac territory. But what I see is a just harried-looking woman explaining an admittedly wild theory.

My five seconds of infamy is buried in a longer clip of raw footage shot as they’d been coming into the station and caught me trying to talk to Officer Jackson. There’s already a polished version of the live broadcast, which I have been left out of. Discarded on the editing room floor.