“Okay, but then I’ll go to the police. Tell them you sent the texts.”
“Search my phone if you want,” he says, digging it out of his pocket and holding it out to me. “You aren’t going to find any fucking texts.”
“What does that prove? Come on, you’d use one of those secrecy apps to send them or a burner or something,” I say. “What if I tell the police you admitted it? Who do you think they’re going to believe?”
The anger in his eyes is frightening. “What the hell do you want from me?”
“I want to know what happened that night. Where did the blood come from?”
“I. Don’t. Know.”
“I’m not kidding about going to the police. You must know something. Did she get into it with another kid here? Sounds like the girls were pretty rough.”
He glares at me. “All I know is it wasa lotof blood. Somebody else would have shown up hurt. Besides, she snuck out, that’s what Daitch said.”
“Snuck out where?”
“Fuck if I know, probably to see that college prick. Did tutoring here. You ask me, those two spent way too much fucking time together.”
THE DAY OF
Did you get it?
Nope. It’s a no-go. Sorry.
“A no-go. Sorry”? Seriously?
Now what am I going to do?
I think you should stop worrying.
Forget about it. Really.
Easy for you to say.
What does that mean?
You don’t have to worry about anything.
Because no one is counting on you to fix anything!
What a fucking luxury that must be!
Whoa! I don’t think I deserve that!
Hello? Janine. Come on. Where did you go?
Are you going to answer me?
Helllllooooo.
Katrina
THE DAY OF
I stood on the sidewalk outside of Mark’s beautiful limestone town house on West Seventy-fifth, staring up at the huge gleaming windows. It was midnight, the house dark and still apart from one small lamp left on downstairs—the kind that signaled people at home and asleep inside, poor burglary opportunities. I was putting off ringing the bell.
Surely Mark didn’t personally know about Doug’s emails, not the down and dirty details of what Tim had seen. And even Tim surely didn’t know he was helping to cover up a murder, though he’d be an idiot not to suspect it now. Perhaps his sudden trip out of the country was even a response. I could easily imagine Tim being enlisted to help handle Doug’s threat of blowing the whistle about Xytek, and then Darden getting impatient and handling the problem themselves. And Mark would have made sure to remain in the dark, as he always did when it came to the matters I handled. Certainly Mark didn’t know that Darden appeared to have targeted me. Doug’s draft email to me would have been enough to clue them in to our connection, and with a little digging they’d have uncovered our relationship. Who better to enlist in helping throw Doug under the bus than me: somebody with something to lose?
