The Herd(58)

I marched up the steps and rang the doorbell. A wreath was thawing out from the week’s deep freeze. The door swung open and a puff of warm air floated past me. Daniel looked awful: hair greasy and unwashed, skin sallow, eyes swollen. Both gaunt and puffy, somehow.

“Daniel, hey. I’m glad you called me.”

He closed the door behind me and I gave him a long hug. Before this week, I’d never seen him be anything other than cheerful and removed, a polite conversationalist at parties and events but what Mikki had called a tough nut to crack. Now misery wafted off of him in waves.

“I wasn’t sure what else to do,” he said. “I mean, your name was on it.”

“On what?” His eyes bugged, and I gave a brave little smile and gestured toward the living room. “Should we sit down?” We were still in the disorienting entryway of mirrors.

He gazed over, like he was working out what the words meant, then nodded. “I’ll go grab it.”

I pulled my coat off as I made my way into the living room. I had that rushing feeling, the sense that something irreversible was about to happen. Daniel clattered down from the second floor, his steps staccato, then presented me with a sheet of printer paper. It was creased in thirds, like it’d arrived in an envelope. I took it from him and blinked:


RE: MAY 7, 2010

DATE DUE: 12/31/19

JINNY HURST

ELEANOR WALSH

HANA BRADLEY

MIKKI DANZIGER





Then strings of numbers—a payment amount, network cost, and account number. I looked up at Daniel, frowning.

“It’s about ten thousand dollars,” he said. “In Bitcoin. I think it’s blackmail Eleanor was paying anonymously.”

I gasped. “Where did this come from?”

“It was in our mailbox.” He swept his hand toward the front door. “I hadn’t checked it in a week, with everything going on. But then I went back through our bank statements. There were withdrawals, odd numbers from our different accounts, adding up to about ten thousand dollars a quarter. Going back a year.”

“Jeez.” I frowned. “Did you look at the postmark?”

“Yeah, it was sent Wednesday. From Nashville, of all places.”

Wednesday—after she went missing. The sender believed Eleanor was still around and able to pay.

I held the paper aloft. “Could this be why Eleanor was trying to get away? If she couldn’t go to the police, I guess that’d be a reason to try and disappear. Although, I don’t know. Forty thousand dollars a year is a lot of money, but not something she couldn’t keep up with.”

“Hana, what’s this about?”

I ignored him, reread it again.

“My first instinct was to call the police. Have them dust for fingerprints, investigate the cryptocurrency account.” He swallowed. “But my second, stronger instinct was to talk to you first. Because I don’t know what this means.” He pointed at the sheet quavering in my hand. “I don’t know what Eleanor did.”

I took a deep breath. The image of her flashed in front of me: eyes closed, nose flour-white, a wide, black smear along her collar. A few sharp sobs juddered out, and I sniffed. “I don’t understand either, Daniel,” I said. “Eleanor didn’t do anything.”

“Who’s Jinny Hurst?”

I shook my head, tears slipping from my eyes.

“I looked her up, Hana.” He was breathing deeply, as if fighting down the impulse to take a swing. “I know who she is. So what the fuck is her name doing on this list, with Eleanor? With you?”

“I don’t know her!” I wiped at my cheeks. “I only met her once. Right before she disappeared. We bought drugs from her one time—she was a dealer. I don’t even remember who had her number. I only saw her the one time.”

We sat together for a beat, the only sound the distant hum of traffic, car horns and rumbling trucks, their drivers barreling through today like any other day. Suddenly Daniel snatched the sheet from me. “Then what the fuck is this?”

“I don’t know! I have no idea.” My eyes filled with tears. “Here’s what happened: Right before graduation, the three of us were hanging out at Eleanor’s apartment one night. That Friday. The date on the sheet.” I flicked my chin toward the paper. “Eleanor had…she’d tried mushrooms at a party the weekend before, and Mikki and I admitted we’d never done it. It was just this stupid idea—safe space, a bonding moment or whatever. Eleanor had gotten this woman’s number at the party, so we had her pop over and we bought some stuff off her.” I sniffed, wiped my nose. “But she went missing that night. They never found her. We were pretty freaked out when we saw it on the news a couple days later, but of course we had no idea what happened to her…and we weren’t going to be like, ‘Hi, we met her while breaking the law.’ Nothing happened. I haven’t thought about it in years. But none of us had anything to do with that.”

Daniel kept shaking his head. “I can’t…why would somebody send this? And why would she pay it?”

“I don’t know. If you Googled Jinny, I’m sure you saw she’s from Tennessee, originally—where the postmark’s from. The only thing I can think is…Was there something else Eleanor never told us?”