After Image, page 24
He looks around, pulling his jacket closer against his body. “Van Nuys, I could guess what that was about. You went to see Jairo, right? But what the hell is this? Where are you driving to?”
My lips are starting to feel numb in the cold. I tell Ruiz what Jairo told me—about Allie’s phone call, Greg’s car. Matthew’s cabin. I leave out the detail about Jairo destroying my phone.
Ruiz takes a moment to digest this information. “So that’s where you’re going? Matthew’s cabin?”
I nod.
I expect him to yell, to lecture, but instead his eyes stray to the road ahead. “How far away is it?”
“A few minutes, maybe.” The adrenaline spike I felt earlier is beginning to fade, leaving me shaky and exhausted.
The sky behind Ruiz’s head is turning dark gray, the air taking on that certain smell it gets before it begins to snow.
“Well,” he says. His breath forms a misty cloud in front of his face. “If we’re almost there . . .”
I blink. My vision has fully returned, and I can now see the details of his face, the flecks of yellow in his gray eyes.
“Better not let it wait,” he says grimly. “If Jairo knows where the hideout is, he may be headed here soon, to make sure he’s covered his tracks.”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? That Jairo might’ve known exactly where Allie was going. That he could have lied to me about that.
I follow Ruiz back to his Jeep. Once inside, I consult the crumpled receipt in my hand and give him the last few directions that will take us to Matthew’s place. He pulls out onto the road, and after a few minutes, we approach a sharp bend. Just up ahead, to our right, is a gravel drive that curves and disappears into the trees. As Ruiz slows the car, I peer closer at the address marker, half-hidden by bushes.
“Is that it?” Ruiz asks.
“I think so.”
He turns into the driveway, and the Jeep rocks from side to side as it struggles over the uneven road. The branches of the trees tangle above us, forming a kind of tunnel. It’s a few minutes before the car emerges into a clearing and we reach the cabin, a small structure overlooking the lake. In the summer, there would be boats and Jet Skis out on the water, people swimming and laughing. But in the winter, the beach looks bleak and uninviting. Gray water, gray sky.
Overgrown shrubs scrape against the cabin’s brown shingles. Nearby, a small carport sinks underneath the weight of a fallen tree.
Ruiz says, “Looks like this place has seen better days.”
I wonder if Matthew knows how dilapidated the property has become. From what Giles said at the party, it sounded like the place meant something to Matthew at some point, but maybe he’d let it fall by the wayside after he let go of his writing dreams.
I open the car door and step out into the clearing. Instantly, the cold slips through my clothes, raising goose bumps on my skin. As I walk to the front porch, my shoes sink into the thick layer of pine needles underfoot. Behind me, the slam of Ruiz’s door sends a jolt through the air. It’s so quiet out here. The only noise comes from the birds that have built nests under the cabin’s eaves.
We walk up the porch steps, the wood creaking beneath our feet, and peer in the front windows. It’s dark inside, and I can only make out the vague shadows of furniture. Ruiz turns, surveying the landscape around us. From the cabin, a dirt trail leads down to a rocky beach, where the lake is still and glassy. On all other sides of the cabin, we’re surrounded by trees.
Carefully, with his sleeve covering his hand, Ruiz tries the front door. It’s locked, of course, but this is a newer door, the kind with a key code panel above the handle—an oddly modern touch for such a rustic place. This must be one of the security measures Matthew put in place after the break-ins he mentioned.
“Any chance you know the code?” Ruiz doesn’t sound hopeful.
I shake my head. Then, after a moment, I say, “Hang on.” Once, when Matthew had been running late for dinner, he’d given me the entry code to his Venice Beach place. His birthday and Isabel’s combined: 8163. Tentatively, I step past Ruiz and punch in the code, being careful to use the edge of my sleeve to cover my fingertip. There’s a sharp beep, then a whirring noise as the dead bolt slides open.
Ruiz and I look at each other.
“Shit,” I whisper. I hadn’t been expecting that to work. Suddenly, I feel pinned to the spot. I don’t want to see what’s inside.
Ruiz reaches past me and pushes the door open so we can see into the living room. The place is plain and old fashioned, nothing like Matthew’s glamorous home in Venice. There’s a small brick fireplace, and in front of it, a lumpy plaid couch. I step inside. The place smells of dust and old woodsmoke.
“Don’t touch anything,” Ruiz says quickly. “We’ll just look around and see if we find anything that might indicate Allie was here.”
I stand in the middle of the living room, turning in place. After a minute, I walk to the kitchen and glance through the doorway. Everything in this room is green: green linoleum, green cupboards, green curtains. There’s a kitchen island in the center with a knife block on it. The room is tidy and clean, except for the thick layer of dust that coats every surface.
Turning, I walk to the other side of the living room, where another doorway leads into a small bedroom with a double bed and a bedside table. The room is bare. No personal items anywhere. I can’t see any evidence of Allie’s presence. Carefully, I nudge the closet door open with my elbow. It’s empty except for a few wooden hangers. I get down on my hands and knees and look under the bed. Nothing there either.
When I stand up, Ruiz is watching me from the doorway. “Anything?”
I shake my head. I mean, what was I expecting? A note from Allie saying, I was here?
Ruiz walks the perimeter of the living room, tilting his head back to look at a rectangular cutout in the ceiling that must lead to an attic. It’s cold in the house, and I hug myself, trying to keep warm. It was silly, thinking we might find something here. Even if Allie did make it out here to the cabin, that was four years ago. There’s nothing here that can help the investigation now.
Ruiz walks into the kitchen, and I follow him. As he carefully opens cupboards and drawers with the edge of his hand, the clouds part outside, and a shaft of sunlight beams in through the window, lighting up the whole room. I stare down at the linoleum, which has a busy design—green flowers over a crisscross pattern—and notice that, in one place, the flooring has become pale, discolored.
“What is it?” Ruiz asks when he abandons his search of the cupboards.
“Look,” I say. “There’s a light patch by your feet.”
He steps back, then squats down to examine the floor. The spot is an irregular oblong, maybe a foot wide. “Bleach?” he says.
That’s what it looks like. Someone had done a spot-clean, but they’d neglected to dilute the bleach.
Ruiz shifts his attention to the edge of the kitchen island. The linoleum, where it butts up against the island, has warped and buckled, leaving a crack that exposes the floorboards underneath. Slowly, Ruiz reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pen, using it to draw back the edge of the warped linoleum. He peers underneath for a long moment. Then he stands up and says briskly, “Okay, let’s step outside.”
“What?” I say. “What’s down there?” I try to move past him, but he blocks me with his body.
“Natasha. Let’s go.” His hands are on my shoulders, urging me backward. But I push away, breaking free of his grip, and kneel down to see what he’s seen. “Don’t touch anything,” he says, his voice urgent.
But I don’t have to touch anything to see what’s there. Wood planks, stained with a dark, rust-colored substance. And there, caught in the edge of the warped linoleum, one long black hair.
Ruiz pulls me to my feet. “C’mon. We need to get out of here.”
I let him lead me out onto the porch, no longer resisting. My brain feels like it’s moving at half speed. The stain. The hair.
“No.” I feel hot, sick. I won’t believe it. Allie’s not dead.
Carefully, Ruiz closes the front door of the cabin behind us.
I can’t seem to draw in a full breath. “It’s her blood, isn’t it? Allie’s blood.”
He keeps his face carefully blank. “We won’t know anything for certain until the scene is processed.” But from the look in his eyes, I can tell he knows what we’ve just seen.
It happened here. Allie died here, with no one to call out to for help. Was it Jairo who did it? Or someone Isabel put on her trail?
“Natasha,” Ruiz says. “Nothing is for sure, not yet. I need to call my partner, get an evidence team up here.” He pulls out his phone, then holds it up in the air. “Shit. No signal.” He turns to me. “Here. Sit down.”
I ease myself down onto the top porch step, the splintery wood poking me through my jeans.
“I’m going to walk back toward the road, see if I can get reception there.” His gray eyes search my face. “I’ll only be a few minutes. Will you be okay?”
I nod. As he walks away, I draw my coat tighter around me and stare up at the skeletal branches of the trees, the crows circling in the sky. It’s a black-and-white photograph come to life.
It’s clear to me now. Allie came up here that night. And someone followed her. Not twelve feet from where I am sitting, someone killed her. I lean forward and rest my head on my knees, my breath coming quick and uneven in the back of my throat. I think of the stretch of woods, dark and silent, that surrounds the cabin. Is Allie’s body out there somewhere? Or at the bottom of the lake?
Suddenly, I sit up straight, rubbing my hands across my face. I can’t allow these morbid images to take over. I have to think logically. In my head, I try to re-create the sequence of events that night. If Allie came out here and someone followed her, there would’ve been two cars on the property. What had happened to her car, the one she’d traded for Greg’s Porsche? Her killer would have needed to get rid of Allie’s car and then return for their own. Unless there were two people involved . . . in which case, they could’ve driven away both cars at once.
I turn and stare up at the cabin, as if, by looking hard enough, I can make it give up its secrets. But all I see are brown shingles and a bird’s nest perching at a precarious angle above the front door. There are no more answers to be found here.
Then I squint. The bird’s nest—it’s impossible for it to be jutting out from the house at that particular angle. It must be propped up on something. Standing, I walk closer and see that it’s perched on an object mounted against the siding. I brush aside some sticks and pine needles to see what’s underneath. A security camera.
I hear Ruiz’s footsteps crunching through the clearing, feel the porch shaking as he climbs the steps behind me. “What is it?” Then he sees the camera. “Shit. Is that thing on?”
The camera’s eye is trained on the cabin’s doorstep, gazing right at me. “I don’t know.” The camera is the same brand as the one I just bought, the little logo on the side identical to the app installed on my phone.
“Do you know when this was put in?” Ruiz says. “Before or after Allie went missing?”
My brain should be connecting the camera to something important, but my thoughts are stalling out. “I’m not sure.”
“Natasha. Think.”
I close my eyes. At the party, what exactly had Matthew said? I’d only been half listening. “I think Matthew said it was 2012 sometime. After a break-in. I don’t know any more than that.”
Ruiz blows out a breath. “Fuck.” And then, as he examines the camera more closely: “Fuck. It’s on. It’s working.”
I know I should understand why he’s so upset, but my mind is a curious blank.
“Natasha,” Ruiz says. “If Allie came up here that night and this camera was already installed . . .”
I shake my head. “No.”
“It would’ve sent an alert to Matthew. Wherever he was, he had to have known that she was here.”
That’s not possible. “No. Matthew was . . . Matthew was at a conference. In Redlands.”
“Redlands isn’t far from here. He could’ve made it here, in—what? Thirty minutes? An hour?”
“Maybe he didn’t get the alert. Maybe the camera was off that day.” Maybe I have it all wrong, and Matthew didn’t put the camera in until after Allie went missing. But as soon as the thought crosses my mind, I know that can’t be true. Matthew, after Allie’s disappearance, had been a complete wreck. Matthew could barely eat or sleep. He wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to install new security measures at a cabin he barely used.
Ruiz pushes his baseball cap back on his forehead, rubbing at his hairline. “The morning after Allie went missing, Matthew missed his panel at the Redlands conference. The one he was supposed to speak at. The organizers were all bent out of shape about it.”
I remember. Matthew told me he’d partied too hard the night before—going overboard, as he was in the habit of doing back in those days—at some gathering with lots of dull faculty members and free champagne. I never questioned his story. Nobody did. He’d been nowhere near LA that night.
I turn away from the cabin, toward the cloudy water of the lake. I think of Matthew, how he’d been after Allie’s disappearance. Red eyed, sleepless. He’d gotten fired from the movie he was working on after he’d shown up to work drunk. Four years ago, I’d seen Matthew’s behavior as proof of his shock, his distress over losing Allie. But what if Matthew was such a wreck not because he didn’t know what had happened to her, but because he knew exactly what had?
Small flakes of white begin to spin in front of my eyes. At first, I think I’m hallucinating, and then I realize—it’s beginning to snow.
CHAPTER 52
I sit in the Jeep, which Ruiz has turned on and left running so I can stay warm while he makes more phone calls outside. I’m not sure how much time passes while I sit there, but eventually a police car edges its way down the gravel driveway and parks next to the Jeep. Ruiz walks over to the cruiser and has a long conversation with the officer inside. Then, finally, he returns to talk to me.
“The San Bernadino Sheriff’s Department is going to secure the cabin until we can get our evidence team up here. In the meantime, I’ll drive you back to LA.”
Although my body has warmed since sitting in the car, I still feel frozen.
Ruiz gets behind the wheel and buckles his seat belt. “We’ve got an APB out on Matthew,” Ruiz says, “but if he’s seen the footage from the security camera today, he may already be on the run.”
On the run. What a far-fetched phrase. How many nights had Matthew cooked me dinner, poured me a glass of wine as he asked about my law school applications? This Matthew, the one Ruiz is talking about, doesn’t seem real.
As Ruiz navigates the car back along the driveway, I see the sky growing dark and heavy. By the time we reach the main road, snow has begun to gather on the asphalt.
“Matthew loved Allie,” I tell Ruiz. “He didn’t have any reason to hurt her.”
Ruiz is silent for a long time. Finally, he says, “Natasha, that Friday, at Redlands—Matthew didn’t show up at the conference panel until after noon. That gives him maybe twelve hours of time when he’s unaccounted for.”
Time enough to drive up here, kill Allie, then return to the Redlands campus.
“But why?” There has to be another explanation for the blood on the floor. “Why would he hurt her?”
Ruiz frowns. “I don’t know.”
I lean my head against the cold car window. All these years, I’ve believed Matthew and I understood each other. It is the two of us, I’ve always thought, who’ve missed Allie the most. The two of us holding out hope when everyone else had given up.
But now, the picture shifts. This whole time, Matthew hadn’t been helping me. He’d been keeping me close. In becoming my friend, he’d made sure that I looked for answers everywhere but where they were. Everywhere except right in front of my face.
CHAPTER 53
At my request, Ruiz drops me off at my mom’s house in Reseda. I don’t want to go back to my apartment right now. For the first time in a long time, all I want is my mother.
When he pulls up at the curb, he glances at the front windows of the house. “Is she home?”
“No,” I say. She’ll be at work for another hour or two, I know. “But I know where she keeps the spare key.”
“You’ll be okay till she gets here?”
I nod. I know he can’t stay with me, not with everything that’s going on, but I suddenly feel afraid to be on my own, alone with my thoughts.
“Hey.” He reaches out and grabs my hand. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. We’ll figure out what happened. Then we’ll deal with whatever we find.”
“I know,” I say numbly.
“Natasha. It’s important that you don’t do anything. Don’t answer any calls from Matthew. Don’t tell anyone what we found. Not even your mother. Not until we know more.”
I nod. After a moment, he surprises me by pulling me close, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. For a minute, I let my head rest against his shoulder. He smells faintly of soap and coffee. A distant part of me thinks that I should cry. But I don’t. I think I’ve forgotten how.
When he lets go, I brush my hair away from my face. “You should go,” I say. I know he’ll be needed up at the cabin.
“I’ll call as soon as we know something,” he says.
I get out of the car and walk around to Mom’s backyard, where I retrieve the spare key from the ledge above the back door. After I let myself in, I find myself walking restlessly around the living room. Maybe it was a mistake to come here. The house is too quiet; it’s too easy to think. Without my permission, my mind conjures up images. Matthew driving to the Crestline cabin. Matthew standing over Allie’s body in the kitchen. Matthew dragging her body into the woods.
I force myself to shut out these thoughts. I can’t get ahead of myself. Ruiz said he would call when he had more information. Except, I realize belatedly, I don’t have a way to receive his call. I pull my phone out of my bag and examine the cracked screen. Experimentally, I press the Home button. Nothing. Then I remember the low-battery light that had flashed right before the phone shut off. Maybe, if I plug it in, I can see whether it’s totally dead.
