Let Her Lie, page 16
Miracle dug deeper, stalking Bunny as well as other genetic relatives. Maybe she dozed off. Maybe not. Eventually the sun came up. The clinic opened. But she didn’t call back. Not that morning. Instead, still in the clothes she’d worn the day before, she grabbed her keys off the hook by the door and put Bunny’s address in her GPS.
* * *
The trailer sat alone on a swampy lot adjacent to the Delaware-Maryland border. A rotting plank walk led from the gravel drive over the muddy pine needles to a front entrance painted a sun-faded pink. A pickup rested on three wheels and a stack of cinder blocks in the side yard, and a dog barked from where it was chained in the back. Miracle reached out to knock, but the door opened before she could. A woman stared out at her, defiant.
“What do you want?”
“I … I’m looking for Roberta Henshaw.”
“You a bill collector?”
“No.”
“That’s the only folks who use that name.”
Miracle dug her nails into the sides of her jeans. “I’m … my name is Miracle Jones. I—”
“What kinda name is …”
The woman trailed off. She stared at Miracle for a time, suspicion rearranging the deep lines of her face.
“You were that Miracle Baby?”
Miracle nodded. “Yeah.”
Roberta’s head tilted, but her eyes narrowed. “I read about you. A long time ago. Why’d you come around here?”
“I … I took a DNA test, and I …”
Without meaning to, Miracle looked around her. She took in the condition of the trailer, the truck. She heard the dog baying in the back. She turned back to Roberta, noticing her frayed housedress. Her bare feet.
“I’m sorry,” she said, backing up.
“Hold up,” Roberta said, stepping out onto the planking. The look on her face had shifted, turning to an urgent need. “You took that test? And I showed up?”
“Yes,” Miracle said. “I think …”
“Roberta ‘Bunny’ Henshaw?”
Miracle went still. “Yes.”
“Ha! I never even seen my own test,” she said. “When my sister went missing, a friend of the family, the lady our mamma cleaned houses for, paid for it. But I lost my job and had to move out of the house I was renting. Forgot all about it.”
“Your sister went missing?”
“Yeah, Honey … I mean, Abbie Henshaw. She went missing a … long time back.”
Miracle fought through her demons to ask, “How long ago … did she disappear?”
“Just over twenty years now.”
They stared at each other for a moment. The pieces fell into place.
“I … I think you’re my aunt.”
“Seems I am.”
“Do you know—”
“Honey,” the woman said, shaking her head. “That’s what we called your mamma. She was Honey and I was Bunny.”
“She …”
“Come on in, child. We have a lot to talk about.”
CHAPTER
13
I LOOKED INTO MIRACLE’S eyes. “So, that was before you knew?”
Miracle laughed. It wasn’t a bitter sound, not entirely. “Yeah.”
“Have you, like, built a relationship with her?”
“I have,” Miracle said, distantly. “It’s weird. She’s so different than I am. I try to find something. There has to be some trait that we share. But it’s hard.”
“Did she tell you about your mother?”
“She did.”
I waited, needing way more than that. Miracle looked away, staring out through the window across from the counter. The questions built up inside me. But I kept them inside. Plotting the interview in my mind.
“At the time, all Bunny knew was that her sister went missing. She didn’t even know about the pregnancy.”
“How’d they find out …?” I asked.
I meant to finish the question. Ask her what had led to the police identifying her mother as the Halo Killer’s first victim. But I couldn’t get those words out. Not sitting face-to-face with her. Instead, I slipped down to the floor and moved toward where my bed had once rested. Each footstep echoed. I touched the wall against which my corkboard used to lean. My eyes closed, and I could see it again. Along with the boxes of files I’d compiled. My hand patted the pocket with my phone. At least I had all the recordings. And all the footage. Everything wasn’t lost, not yet.
“Have you met him?” Miracle asked.
I spun around and found those eyes trained on me.
“Jasper? Yes.”
“Is he as scary as they say?”
I nodded. “Worse.”
I felt uncomfortable again, so I moved to the window, laying my palms on the sill.
“Did Bunny help you decide to keep the baby?”
Silence. I turned, and Miracle’s stare withered me.
“I didn’t say that,” she said, toneless.
“Sorry.” I looked away. “I met your son. And I understand. I do. What happened to you is wrong. What Jasper did was—”
“He didn’t do anything to me,” she snapped. “I was already left behind. Tossed away. My mother coughed me out and spit me in a fucking sink.”
I flinched. Her anger was so raw. So visceral. I wanted to apologize again. Hang my head in shame. But then, work took over. Something Jasper had said to me came back with a jolt.
“No,” I said. “You don’t know that. He told me about that night. When he … found your mother. She was on the beach, Miracle. Not a mile from where you were born. It was that night. Your mother had no chance to change her mind. Maybe she would—”
“He’s lying,” she said, the words cutting through the air between us. “That’s all he does.”
I blinked. “I thought you never met him.”
“I haven’t,” she said.
I stared at Miracle, and it was her turn to look away under my scrutiny. My instincts fired across ever nerve of my body.
I was right!
From the very beginning, I’d known. She’d met Jasper and was lying about it. My gut had me certain. With that confirmed, it was easy to assume she had been that woman on the beach, the one from Jasper’s first story. Her slipup proved it to me. Maybe Jasper had lied. Maybe that night had never happened. But he’d met her. I was sure of it now. I had to turn away to hide the smile on my face.
“I want to help you find your ending,” I said.
And I waited. She would say something if I stayed quiet long enough. It’s the oldest interview trick in the book. But that day it failed miserably. Not a minute after I put the bait out there, someone pounded on the door.
“Come on,” Zora yelled from the other side. “We need to go. Now!”
CHAPTER
14
“HURRY!”
Zora reached out for Miracle’s hand as she passed me. They ran down the hallway, toward the exit. I watched for a second, confused by how familiar that gesture appeared.
“Come on!” Zora snapped at me.
Her tone forced me to move. I bounced off the doorjamb getting out of the empty apartment and caught up quickly as they reached the stairs.
“Are the police here?”
“No,” Zora said.
Then she stopped on the steps. Her finger came up to her lips. My mouth opened, and she hissed at me.
“What?” I whispered.
Zora moved like a flash. One second she was a good ten feet away from me. The next, her face was so close to mine that I could smell her breath—coffee and Altos. She gripped my shoulder, pulling me so that her blazing eyes leveled with mine.
“This is serious,” she said.
“Then tell me—”
A scream cut me off. I jumped. Zora spun around, focusing on the floor below us, where the sound seemed to have come from.
“Shit! Hurry.”
Even I ran then. All my questions were gone as a second scream, definitely from the seventh floor, ripped into the stairwell. Grabbing the railing, I vaulted around that landing and left the sound behind.
“Is it Jasper?” I called out.
Zora kept running, Miracle right in front of her. We broke into the lobby and straight through it out onto the sidewalk. As the cool air hit my face, so did the whine of approaching sirens. I slowed, thinking that was a good thing. But Zora kept jogging down the block.
“The police,” I said.
She didn’t respond. Instead, she disappeared around the corner. I sprinted after them. When I reached the intersection, I saw them a distance ahead. I had no choice but to follow.
“What the hell,” I muttered.
At the next crosswalk, Zora turned. She waited for me, which was something, at least.
“What is going on?”
“I was on the way to the Midtown precinct on Fifty-Fourth. I decided to listen to the police scanner. I wasn’t four blocks away when someone in your building called the cops. They reported a suspicious man in the hallway. Short, with a shaved head and pale complexion.”
“Oh God,” I said.
“Yeah, so I came back for you two. I had to. We need to keep moving, though.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”
He’s there. He was after Miracle. And he was close. The strange thing is, I didn’t feel afraid. Not at all. I felt excited. A part of me wanted to turn around. Go back and find him. With Miracle. Be there for the confrontation. For the answers. Instead, I turned on my phone video camera, documenting our escape.
“Let’s go,” she ordered.
“Where?”
“Out of the city. Too many eyes here. We’ll find somewhere random and safe, then plan our next move.”
“We could go to the police,” I said.
Miracle jumped into the conversation. “No.”
“Why?” I asked, suspicious.
“Let’s just get out of here. The police will think we’re crazy.”
“They just got a call that Jasper was seen in my building. They’ll believe us.”
Miracle’s hands balled into fists at her side. For a second, before she turned away, I thought she might hit me. But Zora stepped in.
“We can do both. Let’s get across the water. Then we’ll decide.”
“But—”
“You don’t know everything, Theo.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe she”—Zora nodded her head back toward Miracle—“doesn’t want to go to the police because she doesn’t want them to know where she is.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Zora rolled her eyes. “Her mother reported her missing. If they find her here, can you image the news stories? We need to figure out how to deal with all this … quietly. Are you in or not?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Theo, we don’t have time for this. Not in the middle of the street. If you want to go to the police, fine. Just don’t mention her. Otherwise, come with us now. And we’ll talk it all through once we find a safe spot.”
I stared at her. That wasn’t really a choice. There was no way I was leaving them now. Not until I had my ending. So I just kept filming.
CHAPTER
15
“I GOT US ADJOINING rooms,” Zora said, walking away from the front desk of the Residence Inn just across the river in New Jersey.
“Who’s rooming?” I asked.
For a second, I thought she was going to say the two of us. That would have been awkward. But when she pointed at herself and Miracle, it somehow felt more so. It made perfect sense, in a way. But I remembered the way Zora had taken Miracle’s hand.
“You two?” I asked.
“I’m not rooming with you,” Zora said harshly.
“Yeah …” I let it go, for the moment. “What’s that running us?”
“You can write it off.”
I followed her to the elevator and to the room without saying another word. Honestly, a severe annoyance had been growing since we’d talked at the crosswalk. It wasn’t just that conversation; it was everything. Things were out of control. In the silence, it was all piling up. Miracle, Zora, Cassandra. Bender and Pepper. I was on the run. That maniac had been in my building. Broken into my apartment. Stolen all my stuff. He’d left that damn book. Could one man, no matter how notorious, be behind all of that?
Then there was Miracle. Ever since we’d spoken, something had been gnawing at me. Maybe even before that. When she walked into my apartment, I had expected a victim. A scared, traumatized young woman. Instead she had seemed relaxed, or oblivious. Then there was what she’d said—He was lying. That’s all he does. She knew Jasper. She’d spoken to him. Yet when I called her on it, she’d lied to me.
Lost in thought, I stepped through the door behind Miracle. Zora turned, a hand on her hip.
“You’re next door,” she said.
“Oh, I thought we were going to talk.”
She smiled. “We will, but first you need to sleep.”
“I do?”
“Look.”
She pointed at the mirrored closet door. I took another step and turned. It would be totally cliché to say I didn’t recognize the face that stared back at me. But I certainly looked awful. Even the bags under my eyes had turned a sickly gray. Veins nearly filled the whites of my eyes. For some reason, I stuck my tongue out. It seemed fine.
As I stood there, the exhaustion hit me, hard. I shuffled back toward the hallway.
“Yeah, that sounds like a plan.”
Zora’s head shook as she handed me the key card. “You’ll need this.”
* * *
The call tore me out of a deep, surprisingly dreamless sleep. My phone vibrated on the nightstand. I swiped at it, knocking it to the floor. I had to slide off the bed to find it. With a quick glance at the unfamiliar number, I answered.
“This is Theo Snyder.”
I heard the hiss of breath before his voice filled my head. “Hello, Theodore.”
“Jasper!” I scurried across the floor until my back pressed against the bed. “Where are you?”
“Now that’s a strange question,” he said.
My head spun. I pulled back the phone and checked the screen again. I’d never seen the number before, but it was a Manhattan exchange. At the same time, his voice sounded strange, distant.
“Are you on speaker?” I asked, distracted.
“Theodore, follow me, please.”
“I want my stuff back! My files. My corkboard. I don’t give a shit about the furniture.”
Jasper didn’t say anything right away. When he did, I swear he sounded concerned.
“You’re not well,” he said softly. “I think you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know,” he said.
I rubbed at my eyes, digging into the sockets like I might mine the confusion from my head. Nothing made sense.
“I need my stuff, Jasper,” I said instead.
“I don’t have anything of yours,” he said. “I owe you the conclusion to a story, however.”
“What?” I asked, unable to hide the hunger I felt.
“Don’t you remember our first conversation? I didn’t finish that time. You’ll find that I am a man of my word.”
“Jasper, I—”
He didn’t let me get another word out.
* * *
ACT TWO/SCENE 13
EXT. BEACH—NIGHT
We return to where our story began. The dark figure on the dune is the Halo Killer. His senses are keen, focused on his prey. Seemingly unaware, a woman moves along the surf, dangerously close to her fate. In the pale light of the moon, we see a neon yellow Sony Walkman on her head. A CHYRON appears on the screen: AUGUST 12, 2016.
Jasper stood among the daylilies at the top of the dune, watching her. The moon hung in the lightening sky, casting a pale shine around his long, dark shadow. The woman neared, moving along the surf line, her head down. He blinked, and as his eyes closed, Jasper could have sworn he heard the faint echo of classical music floating across the beach from her neon-yellow earphones.
In that moment, he forgot the other one. At the time, he didn’t know her name was Barbara Yost. Nor did he care about that. But he’d never forgotten one in the middle of the process. Before the question was even asked. He’d never skipped a single step, no matter how minor. He needed to get back. Shape and freeze the daylily. Secure the building for the night. Incinerate the clothes he wore.
Instead, his intricate plans slipped away. Jasper took a step down the dune. He angled to cut this new target off, without even a thought of how he would take her. How unplanned it would be. How much evidence he would leave behind. Nothing seemed to matter. Nothing but an overwhelming need to lay his hands on her. To wrap his fingers around her wrist. To pull her out of her world and into his. To ask her. To hear her answer.
His pace quickened, and a new realization dawned. It came out of the darkest corners of his past. Like a crack of warm light under the door of a lonely closet. Like the soft whisper of a mother never heard. The feeling filled him at once with hope and searing need. After all the others, Jasper knew somehow that this one had the answer. Maybe it was finally over.
He stared at her. There was no subtlety to his hunt this time. Only a shining lust. And she never looked up. She never seemed to notice. She moved ever closer, oblivious to her starring role in the final act.
To his surprise, saliva filled Jasper’s mouth. The muscles in both of his forearms cramped. He did not flinch. He didn’t slow as she came to him. As she …
The woman stopped, carelessly turning and heading back the way she came. Her movement, so sudden yet so benign, startled him. He froze, his toes digging into the soft, pale sand. His body reacted first, spinning and following her, cutting the angle to intercept her. Speeding up. But his mind faltered.
