“And you think…that is not a coincidence?” Sybilconsidered herself an amateur expert in true crime, but even she didn’t see where the dots were connected.
“I think that my dad was tracking Betty for a long time. From what I can tell, he found her, here in his backyard, and you guys were a good excuse to meet her. Probably less threatening as a group than a solitary Black man showing up at her place of work asking questions,” Simone said. “And maybe someone else didn’t like that very much, that he found her, was asking questions.” She clenched her jaw. “Of course he couldn’t leave it alone. Of course he couldn’t justlet it be.”
“Letwhatbe?” Sybil’s knees felt unsteady, and she sank onto the arm of the couch. She was obviously aware that Julian was tied to Betty, but it hadn’t occurred to her that his death was somehow tied to Betty as well.
“I don’t really know,” Simone offered. “But I do know my dad. And if he thought that there was a loose end in one of his cases, he wasn’t going to quit until it was all sewn up. It nearly killed him four years ago. And my guess is that this time, it actually did.”
44
Night Seventeen
Zeke
Zeke was transfixedby the cityscape, working out how to call Sybil now that he was back in town. Had been back for two days actually and still hadn’t figured out how to smooth things over. He wasn’t used to fighting with friends, but as Lani pointed out as they drove around their town Christmas Eve because there was nothing else to do, he wasn’t really used to having many friends in the first place. And maybe he shouldn’t go and fuck this one up. And maybe he thought of her as more than a friend, she added, and that’s why the stakes felt so much higher.
He’d told her she was an idiot, that she’d seen too many rom-coms, then turned up the radio to that Chumbawumba song that they used to play whenever he struck out a batter in high school and veered onto the highway where he could floor it.
He pressed his forehead against the floor-to-ceiling window, which was cold, a buffer from the elements outside and his extremely pleasant always-seventy-two-degree living room. Twenty-nine floors below, Sybil was out there. Yet here he was, a grown man paralyzed about doing anything about it.
Someone was pounding on his door, and he jerked back from the glass. He checked the time on his phone, nearly three in the morning. He knew almost no one who would barge in at three in the morning other than, well, maybe Timothy, and two other people, neither of whom he dared to think could be in his hallway.
He peered through the peephole. And there she was. Sybil.
“Hey,” he said once he opened the door. He felt like a barely postpubescent boy, saying hi in chemistry class to a girl he’d had a crush on.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” she said.
“No, no, I was awake.” He glanced down, only now realizing he was shirtless, in flannel Christmas pajamas and barefoot. Pluto sniffed his feet, then licked his right big toe, and she unleashed him and let him into the apartment. As if that was that.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d pick up,” she said, and then he stepped aside as if to sayCome in, please, I’ve missed you. Even though he didn’t say any of that out loud. He was a fucking idiot.
“I would have picked up,” he said, closing the door, bolting it.
“I came right from Julian’s.” She sat on the couch, more like fell into it, rested her elbows on her knees and placed her head into her palms. He was beside her in half a second.
“Julian’s? Why?”
She looked up at him, and for the first time that he could remember, even with all the sleepless nights between them, she looked so tired. A new line between her brows, a new weariness in the way her lips pressed together. He thought this made her even a little more beautiful than just five days ago when they’d last seen each other. When they’d had their fight. He suspected this would sound ridiculous if he tried to tell her, but it was true nevertheless.
Rather than answer, she opened her purse and passed him a phone.
“Simone wanted me to have this. There’s a photo of Betty. A recent one.” She took the phone back, swiped, then set it on the coffee table, as if it were a specimen that they needed to examine in a lab. Zeke tilted over to look more closely.
“Okay. And?”
“I think it’s the night she met Caleb.”
Now Julian reached for the cell and brought the screen closer.
“You think Caleb is part of the reason why Betty left?”
Sybil sighed, dropped her head back on the couch. He turned toward her, rested his hand—his good hand, even though now they were both working, but he still thought of it that way, good or broken, useful or worthless—on her knee. Her own hand found its way to his, and they braided their fingers together.
“I actually don’t. I can’t explain it, but Idon’tthink Caleb has anything to do with her disappearance.”
“Okay.”
“But why…I guess what I don’t understand, if Julian thought Betty was responsible for the fire, what did he need us for? He knew where she worked; he could have just…I don’t know, arrested her or whatever the FBI calls it. Indicted her.” She lifted the hand that was holding his and pressed her temples, like she was staving off a headache.
