I take a deep breath, letting Myrtle’s words wash over me, filling in all the gaps that have lingered in my understanding of my mother. “Thank you for telling me.”
She looks weary, as if telling me this has taken a little piece of her. I hate to press further, but there’s still something I don’t understand. “Can I ask you one more thing?”
“Sure,” she tells me, her lips pressing together.
“Why did the venery want access to me so badly? They didn’t know about the man I killed. And you let me live all those years without knowing what I was. Based on what I heard at the conclave, that was a risk the venery wouldn’t usually take. I know you thought the drugs had managed to suppress my gifts, but I still can’t reconcile that with everything I’ve learned over the last twenty-four hours. Why take that kind of chance?”
When Myrtle’s eyes meet mine, they are fathomless. There is so much to this woman I still don’t know. So much she can choose to share or not. But there is one thing I know for certain—whatever she is about to say, she means it.
“Because, Piers,” she says, watching me as she lets the truth spill from her lips, “your power is stronger than your mother’s ever was. Everyone can see that.”
20Impound
Reyes had to admit, she’d caught him by surprise. He’d a hunch the post office box would yield something enlightening about the Davenport woman, perhaps a bank statement to a separate account or a medical bill suggesting an injury, but all his expectations were in the realm ofmail.After all, that’s what post office boxes were for.
He took a step back and then another forward, shaking his head. Finally, he pulled out his nitrile gloves, dragging them onto his hands. Then, he grasped the only item in the PO box and brought it under the fluorescent lights. It was too thick and heavy to fit through the slot, which meant it was not delivered. She must have put it there. She had taken this box out solely to store this item.
It was wrapped in ruled notepad paper, held fast with a thick blue rubber band, a four-digit code scrawled across it. Unbinding it, he slipped the paper sleeve off, revealing an older model cell phone with the charging cord still attached. He pressed the power button, but the battery was dead.
Walking over to the counter, he smiled at the woman behind it. “Hi there, Cheryl. I need to come back and plug this in if that’s all right with you.”
She gave him a flat smile. “Suit yourself,” she said, lifting the counter for him to enter.
He quickly located an outlet and plugged the phone in, waiting a bit before he tried the power button again. This time, the screen flared to life and he entered the code on the paper. Several secondslater, he found himself staring at the home screen. The wallpaper was a photo of her with the husband, Henry, on what he assumed was their wedding day. There was no veil, but she appeared to be wearing white. Her smile was radiant, except for a slight dip on one side, causing her bottom lip to look crooked—a hallmark of a fixed smile, one held with effort as opposed to naturally given. He was smiling with a closed mouth, his lips pressing into each other, his eyes staring at some invisible point in the distance, as if she weren’t even beside him.
He checked the contacts and text messages, both were completely empty, scrubbed of whatever data they once contained. Reyes tried to slide to another screen, to look for any remaining apps beyond the most basic—games or video chats—anything that might explain why she hid this phone here, in a PO box her husband likely knew nothing about. But there was only one—photos.
With a hard swallow, he thumbed the image. A new screen flared to life. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. The first few were so close they were nearly featureless, but after a moment he could identify a cheekbone or a rib, a stretch of her neck, the inside of her thigh. Eventually, he reached several where part or all of her face could be seen. Each seemed to be documenting an injury. The eye was dotted with blood, the arm black with a jab or pinch, the throat wrapped in a collar of spectacular bruising, aubergine and greening at the edges, deep black spots where the fingers had dug in. In one, her eyelid was so puffy he almost couldn’t identify it; only her lashes gave it away. In another, the busted lip Henry’s assistant had told him about. They went on and on, each image automatically dated. Her neck being the most recent.
Reyes’s stomach turned. How many times had he seen injuries like these on his mother? How many baggies of ice had he gotten for her? How many mornings had he sat on the bathroom counter, helping her sponge makeup delicately over green or yellow skin? He remembered brushing her hair after each fight, after the tallman had stormed out in a rage, because it calmed her. And the sound of her sobs choking in her throat. The tremble of her shoulders. The smallness of his own hands, how powerless he felt, even as the rage simmered inside him with nowhere to go.
Mrs. Davenport was not his mother. He wasn’t even related to her. But they were connected in a different way, and Reyes felt that same fury building inside. He took a breath, reminded himself he was no longer powerless, and schooled himself against the desire to beat the living shit out of Henry Davenport. He had other ways to fight now.
The pictures were graphic and certainly compelling, but without the context, he didn’t know how much they might help him convict the man he believed had done this to her. Almost without thinking, he wadded the paper that had been circling the phone in his fist, the crunch of it against his palm reminding him to unroll it. He found her slanted writing staring up at him. He recognized it from the suicide letter, which a graphologist would be able to match conclusively, but if he had any doubts, she’d signed her whole name—Piers Corbin Davenport.
The letter read:
To whoever finds this:
This phone contains a series of photographs documenting my abuse at the hands of my husband, Henry Davenport, from October 2021 until June 2023. Please know, if you are holding this phone, reading this letter, then you are too late. Something terrible has happened. Henry has finally fulfilled his promise to me. Whatever he says about me, wherever he says I am, whatever he claims has happened ornothappened, do not believe him. He is a liar and a bully. He is a killer. If I am missing, then I am dead. If my body has been recovered, know that he is to blame. I placed this phone here because I knew he was preparing to kill me—he’s threatened it many times—and I believe it’s the only way left to defend myself. The things you see in these images—he did thosethings to me… and worse. Take this and whatever else you can find and make him pay. But understand, Henry is a fastidious man. His hideaways will not be obvious. What you seek can only be found barking up the least expected tree.
Help a dead woman find justice.
Piers Corbin Davenport
Reyes stumbled back as the letter sunk in. This was circumstantial evidence still, not physical, but it was a doozy of an inference. It might not be enough on its own, but taken with the phone, with the footage from the bridge and the lab analysis of the plant matter found at the scene, on the letter,andin the yard, it was painting a devastating picture of abuse and foul play. If he were able to get his hands on some kind of material evidence that he could corroborate with this, something that concretely connected Henry to the scene at the bridge, he would have a rock-solid case.
Carefully, he wrapped the phone and letter how he found them, unplugging it from the post office wall. Making his way outside, he took a minute to just breathe. The sun was high and painfully bright, but its warmth on the back of his neck helped to settle his stomach. It didn’t matter how many years passed, domestic violence cases still had the power to weaken his knees and set his hands shaking. Suddenly, he was a little boy, crouched in the corner in his Batman underwear, watching the tall man choke the life out of his mother with no way to help her or himself.
Almost as a reflex, he pulled out his phone and dialed his sister.
“Hermanito!” she chirped on the line. “What’s shaking, baby brother?”
“You know I don’t like you to call me that,” he griped. He said it every time, though he never really meant it.
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You’re a big, strong man now with a gun and everything. My hero!” she teased.
Reyes frowned. It had been part of their dynamic for as longas he could remember for Lucia to rib him while he feigned irritation. Secretly, he adored his sister and her affections. But today, her lighthearted words struck a little too close to home. The pictures on the phone still had him rattled, memories beckoning from the dark of his mind.
