You Are Not Alone(95)

A young guy wearing layers of dirty, frayed clothes enters my car at the next stop. I tense up, feeling my eyes widen, when he begins to head in my direction. He smiles, revealing a few missing teeth, and briefly holds up his hands, as if to show me he means no harm. Then he turns and takes a seat toward the opposite end.

I feel bad about my instinctual reaction; I hope I didn’t hurt his feelings. He’s tall and beefy, and I actually feel a little safer with him around. We ride together as the hypnotic, rushing sound of the train’s movement fills my ears again.

I know things don’t look good for me. I have no alibi for the night of August 15. I went for a long run—that much was in my phone’s calendar, which I showed to Detective Williams. But I can’t remember the exact route, or what I listened to on my headphones, or even what time I arrived home.

I didn’t kill James Anders. So who did?

Someone who knew him. Statistics I found earlier tonight show that between 73 and 79 percent of homicides were committed by offenders known to the victim.

One of the articles I read noted that James Anders’s wallet and watch were stolen, but that he’d paid for his drinks at Twist right before leaving.

So whoever killed him must have taken those items.

I can still see the brown leather wallet and gold watch on my floor, by the tan sundress with dried bloodstains on the hem.

The Moore sisters were in my apartment earlier that night, plus they—or Valerie—have a key to it. I’m convinced they planted those items. Every bit of data I’ve amassed tells me they must have killed James, too.

But why?

I have to find out how their lives intersected with his.

I turn back on my phone and use some of my waning phone battery to search their names all together again—Cassandra and Jane Moore, Valerie Ricci, and James Anders—but nothing comes up.

It seems logical that they must have crossed paths in New York. James lived here part-time for the past year, traveling to his home in Mossley on the weekends.

They could have met him anywhere in the city—at a bar, at the gym, at a restaurant, on the street. Could he have been one of their lovers? If so, surely the police would have investigated them.

I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my head. But I can’t figure out how to connect them. I underline James’s address in New York and the name of his company, my pen pressing hard against the page. Maybe the name Moore will mean something to one of his coworkers.

The train pulls into another station and the doors hiss open. But no one gets on. By now the guy toward the far end of my car is snoring gently. The doors close and we move on.

I look down at my phone screen again and read another obituary for James Anders, this one a brief few paragraphs created by the funeral home that handled his service. I’ve already written down the names of the people who survived him: his daughter, Abby; his mother, Sissy Anders; and his ex-wife, Tessa. His father predeceased him, the obit said. Except for the four years he spent at Syracuse, James resided in Mossley all his life.

I click on a few tabs one by one: The first allowed people to buy flower arrangements to be displayed at the church during his funeral. The second provided information about where mourners could donate to an educational fund for Abby. The final one served as a “tribute wall” where people wrote condolence messages.

I start to read through the notes. Someone quoted a line from the Bible about angels, another expressed outrage that James’s killer hadn’t yet been caught, and one wrote Billy Joel lyrics: “Only the good die young.…”

Some of the tributes are anonymous, unfortunately. I begin to jot down the names of those who signed theirs.

When the train plunges back underground, my phone’s connection cuts out. I hold my breath when the lights flicker, but they quickly stabilize.

When we’re aboveground again, I scribble down as many of the names on the tribute wall as possible. I keep getting kicked off the internet, but by the time my battery dies, I’ve recorded a few that seem like promising leads.

A man signed his comment “Principal” Harris—which I’m guessing refers to James’s old high school—and a few buddies referenced poker games, cookouts, and epic parties at the river. One signed his full name, Chandler Ferguson, and it’s unusual enough that I might be able to find him. He could be a link to James’s other friends, or maybe I could ask to see his old high school yearbook to collect more leads. A woman who signed only the name Belinda wrote, “You’ve always been like a son to me. God bless.” She could have been a next-door neighbor, or even a relative.

If I can figure out a way to get the people who knew James best to answer my questions, they could unveil the connection between James and the Moore sisters.

When my battery finally dies and my phone goes dark, my hand aches from writing so furiously, and pressure has built up behind my eyes.

I didn’t know the Moore sisters when James was murdered. I only met them after another violent death—their friend Amanda’s. So they couldn’t have been planning all along to set me up for this.

Why did they target me?

It was the purest of coincidences that led my path to cross with Amanda’s at such a horrible moment. They couldn’t have engineered that; if I hadn’t stopped on that muggy August morning to tie up my hair and lost twenty-two seconds, I would’ve caught the earlier train.