Stay With Me (21 page)

Brenna’s eyes widened. “You saw her. That night. On the street.”

“She ran away from me,” he said. “I don’t blame her.”

“Did you see where she went?”

“She got into a car. They headed up the highway.”

Both women gaped at him.

He opened his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

Brenna said, “What kind of car was it?”

“I don’t know. Like . . . Maybe a Subaru or a Volvo or something. ”

“Did you get the license plate?”

“No.”

“
What the hell is wrong with you?
”

“I figured it was someone she knew.” His voice cracked. “Maybe one of you guys. Or her dad.”

Faith got her voice back. “Why would you think that?” she said, very quietly.

“The car pulled up. She got in so fast, like she knew them. It was raining so hard and—”

“Jesus,” Brenna whispered.

“I’m sorry.”

Faith stood up. “Thank you for telling us.”

He started up after her, but she held up a hand. “That’s okay.” She looked at Brenna. “We’ll find our own way out.”

Brenna nodded, following.

After they left, Miles sat at his computer, staring at the place where Maya’s mom and stepmom had been sitting—the same couch he’d been on with Maya two weeks ago when, after half an hour of talking about his new studio equipment and their art class and best and worst teachers and Maya’s decision to cut chorus this semester, he’d taken her face in his hands and he’d kissed her.

If Miles tried, he could almost feel her in his arms again, so stiff, and then that moment of surrender, her body melting into him, but just for a few seconds. It was the most honest thing he’d ever felt from a girl. He wanted to think it was just because she was young, but there was something else in the way she’d given in. Something he couldn’t look at too hard.
I’ve got to go
, Maya had said, and he’d let her, with her coat buttoned wrong and her face all flushed and her eyes glowing in that way, like her whole life had changed.

It had been her first kiss. Miles had known that without Maya’s saying anything more. He hadn’t told anybody. He never would.

Outside Miles’s apartment, Faith turned to Brenna. “Two weeks,” she said.

Brenna nodded.

“Doesn’t it unnerve you a little, Brenna? I mean . . . here Maya goes and visits that boy in his apartment two weeks ago and we’d never know about it if it weren’t for . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.

They were facing the playground and Brenna gazed out at it, recalling a trip to a different playground—a cement monstrosity in Battery Park on October 5, 2000,
with the wind easing in off the river and pushing through Brenna’s hair and the sun shining, Maya darting over the concrete, heading for the slide. “Watch me, Mama!”

“That one’s too high for you.”

“No Mama, watch me! Watch me!”

“You remembering something?” Faith said.

Brenna nodded. “Maya at three,” she said. “She was too young to have secrets.”

“I wish she still was.” Faith stared straight out ahead. “I wish we all were.”

Brenna looked at her.

“It’s okay,” Faith said.

“What’s okay?”

“The instant messaging.”

Brenna stepped back. She opened her mouth, closed it again.

Faith’s sunglasses were back on. “I don’t get why neither one of you ever told me you were in contact,” she said. “But it’s okay.”

“How did you find out?” Brenna said, which was the wrong thing to say entirely. “I . . . I mean . . .”

Faith put a hand up. “Thank you so much for coming, Brenna. I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here.” She gave her a hug and started away.

Brenna closed her eyes. “You do know you mean the whole world to Jim,” she said.

But Faith didn’t answer. She was already at the corner, slipping into a cab, heading home.

A few blocks away from Brenna’s apartment, she spotted a coffee cart. She bought a black coffee and a kaiser roll with butter and mainlined both—just to keep from passing out. The roll was the first solid food she’d eaten since the pasta she’d made on Saturday afternoon, and it felt strange and tiresome, the whole act of chewing and swallowing. She felt antsy, as though she could find better use for her time, and the truth was, she could.

In her bag, she carried a flash drive, containing the video from Miles’s computer—Maya at the lowest, saddest point in her life. Brenna would get rid of the video as soon as she found Maya. She’d make sure all copies were destroyed before anyone else could see them. But she needed the video now, as it was the only record she had of what her daughter had been wearing on the night of her vanishing, of how Maya had looked just before Miles had seen her get into a colorless, makeless car for whatever reason, saw her speed up the West Side Highway to whereabouts unknown.

Nice eyewitness account, Miles, you self-absorbed, unobservant jerk
.

Regardless, she needed to get the footage to Trent and to Plodsky so that they could send it around, maybe take a still from it—if a decent one could be found, one that showed her face . . . Tears sprang into Brenna’s eyes. She was getting used to this, these waves of emotion crashing through her unannounced, knocking her down again and again.

Keep it together. Keep breathing
.

Brenna ran across the street to her apartment building, weaving around pedestrians, feet hitting the pavement hard, practically running over Mrs. Dinnerstein as she reached the door, Mrs. Dinnerstein standing there with her ever-present grocery cart, blocking Brenna’s way, her face hard and grim.

“Excuse me,” Brenna said to her, but she didn’t budge. “Mrs. Dinnerstein. I need to get in, please.”

“I heard about Maya,” she said. “I saw her father and stepmother today on the TV.”

“Yes.”

The old woman put a hand on Brenna’s shoulder, fear playing all over her features. “I need to talk to you,” she said.

“Okay . . . Maybe we could . . .” Brenna was about to suggest going into Mrs. Dinnerstein’s ground floor apartment, where at least it was warm. But then she remembered the wall-climbing clutter in there, and the way Mrs. Dinnerstein had reacted to her brief glance at it all. “Maybe we could go into the foyer.”

Mrs. Dinnerstein shook her head vigorously. “It’s better out here. Where we can see people coming.”

“Okay,” Brenna said. “But I really am in a hurry.”

“Do you remember all the reporters that were here back in December, after that woman broke into your house and you killed that gentleman?”

Brenna sighed. “I didn’t kill him, Mrs. Dinnerstein. He committed suicide.”

“However you want to look at it,” she said. “But last December, Ms. Spector. There were dozens of reporters outside this building every day. It got so a person couldn’t leave through this door without taking her life in her hands.”

“I’m sorry it was so bad for you, Mrs. Dinnerstein,” Brenna said. “Is that what you wanted to tell me? Because I really do have a lot of things to—”

“
No
. This is important.”

Mrs. Dinnerstein took one of Brenna’s hands in both of hers. The first time she’d touched Brenna in all the years she’d known her, and it took her aback. Her grip was unexpectedly strong. “There was one reporter in particular,” she said. “A woman. She kept talking to me.”

“Okay . . .”

“She kept asking questions about Maya.”

Brenna stared at her. “What kind of questions?”

“She wanted to know about Maya’s schedule.”

“What do you mean?”

Her grip tightened. “She wanted to know which days of the week Maya was at your ex-husband’s and which days she’s here. I assumed because she wanted to take pictures, but . . . well, she frightened me. There was something a little off about her. A little too intense for the questions she was asking.”

Brenna’s palms began to sweat. She had the strangest sensation—her pulse thrumming in the ears . . . as though something irreversible was about to happen and she was trapped here, in the dead quiet before the roar of the avalanche.
A woman
.

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” she said.

Mrs. Dinnerstein pursed her lips. “I don’t talk to you about things like that, Ms. Spector,” she said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I really don’t talk to you about anything.”

“Okay,” Brenna said. It was beginning to make sense, though—the way Mrs. Dinnerstein had been looking at Brenna lately—that odd mixture of fear and anger. She’d always known the woman didn’t approve of her, but this was different.

“Ms. Spector,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I saw her again.”

“The reporter?”

She nodded.

“When?”

“A few days ago. She was watching our building from across the street. I know it was her. I walked out of the door and looked right at her. I started across the street to talk to her, but she left very fast. She ran.”

Brenna’s eyes watered from the cold. She wanted to pull her coat closer, but Mrs. Dinnerstein wouldn’t let go of her hand. “It might very well be nothing other than an overzealous reporter,” she said. “But I did think I should share it with you.”

“I’m glad you did,” she said. “I need to find my daughter. And any lead, any lead at all . . .”

“She left her phone number with me.”

“Who?” Brenna said. “The reporter?”

“Yes. Back in December. She told me to call it if Maya’s schedule changed in any drastic way, or if she were to leave town for an extended period of time.” Mrs. Dinnerstein dropped her hand for a moment. She reached into her coat pocket and produced a scrap of paper with a phone number on it. “I save everything,” she said, averting her gaze. Then she pressed the scrap into Brenna’s hand.

Brenna opened it, read it, her pulse starting to race.

“Her name is Miss Barnes.”

Brenna stared at the small piece of paper
.
“J. Barnes,” it said, in block letters similar to the note that had been pinned to Mark Carver’s body. But it wasn’t the name or the handwriting that made Brenna’s hands start to shake. It was the phone number. It belonged to Sophia Castillo.

When Brenna opened the door to her apartment, Trent was sitting at his desk, Maya’s desktop on his computer. He started to say something, but she held a hand up, tapped Morasco’s number into her phone and hit send. She sighed heavily. “Nick, please call me whenever you get this message. I really hope you were able to do that NCIC search. Sophia Castillo has been stalking my apartment.”

Trent’s eyes went big and confused. After Brenna hung up, he said, “The lady who called here about her son?”

“Weird, I know,” she said. “But I’ll need you to get me everything you can on her.”

“Okay.”

“Did you find anything on Maya’s computer?”

He nodded slowly. “I hacked into her Families of the Missing account,” he said. “Read a lot of private messages . . .”

Brenna’s phone rang. She saw Morasco’s name on the screen and picked up fast.

“Hi Nick.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know . . .”

“About Sophia Castillo stalking you.” His voice was pulled tight enough to break. “How do you know?”

“My neighbor saw her . . . She asked her about Maya. What Maya’s schedule was, when she’d be at my place versus Faith and Jim’s. She claimed to be a reporter, but the number she gave her is the same as Sophia Castillo’s.”

“I’m on my way. I should be there in about ten minutes.”

“Wait. Ten minutes . . . You’re already on the road?”

“Yes. I’m on the West Side Highway.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Call Plodsky. Tell her about Castillo. Tell her what you told me.”

“What the hell is going on? Did you check NCIC? Did you find out anything?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“A DUI two years ago,” he said. “And four years ago, breaking and entering.”

“Wait,” Brenna said. “Slow down. Why are either of those things such cause for alarm?”

“It’s not
what
her crimes were that concerns me, Brenna. It’s
where
.”

“What do you mean?”

Morasco took a breath. “The DUI,” he said, “was in City Island.”

Brenna swallowed hard. “That could be a coincidence.”

“The breaking and entering.”

“City Island, too?”

“Yes.”

“So again, it could be—”

“Brenna, listen to me,” he said. “The house Sophia Castillo broke into.”

“Yes?”

“It was your mother’s house.”

17

When their son Robert was a little boy, Sophia Castillo and her husband, Christopher, took him up to Saratoga Springs for the weekend. Robert was just learning how to speak at the time, and whenever he figured out a new word, he’d take that word everywhere with him, tossing it around, repeating it over and over and over again until he got sick of it and a new one took its place.

In Saratoga Springs, of course, the word was “horse.” The first morning of the trip, they’d gone to the track to look at all the Thoroughbreds before the day’s races began, and Robert had stood up in his stroller, pointing at one of the shiny muscular creatures. “What dat? What dat?”

His father had told him, and for the rest of the trip, that had been his chosen word, whether there happened to be a horse around or not. “
Hosse, hosse, hosse!
”

Sometimes, when Sophia went to sleep at night, she could still hear him, so delighted with the sound of the word, leaning on Hs and the Ss. Funny how she could remember the exact sound of Robert’s voice at that age. It wasn’t like other memories. She didn’t have to strain for it.

But still, Sophia wasn’t sure why it had come to mind now, as she stood in the bathroom of the Quality Inn near the Mount Temple train station, waiting for Maya to wash the dye out of her hair. “Do you like horses?” she said.

Maya didn’t answer.

“My son used to love them when he was little.”

Still, not a sound. Maya stayed bent over the sink, water pouring over her head, not even moving. As though she’d frozen that way.

“You’re going to have to talk to me sometime.”

This wasn’t going the way Sophia had hoped it would. She started to say more, but she stopped herself. She tamped back her anger. She was a good parent, after all, and good parents were patient, even with sullen teenagers who refused to say a goddamn word. She’d had Robert for only one of the teen years, and when she looked back on it, she’d felt him pulling away like this, too. It was part of nature. Kids needed to assert their independence in order to grow up.

“You know you don’t hate me,” Sophia tried. “I’m still the same person I’ve always been. I’m the one you can talk to. I’m the one who rescued you from the storm, from that boy. Remember that. The nice things I said to you . . . The way I listened.”

Still no answer.
Fine
. Sophia pressed the gun between Maya’s thin shoulder blades. “That’s enough,” she said.

Maya lifted her head from the sink and turned off the rushing water. Sophia draped the towel over her and put her hands on it, buffing and plucking at the girl’s bowed head.

How many times had she towel-dried Robert’s hair like this, when he was a little boy? Sophia had cut his hair until he was eight. Well, most of the time. Robert loved the barbershop at the mall because of the big basket of lollipops, and sometimes she’d relent, maybe buy herself a pair of shoes at the Payless across the way while she was waiting, and if he was a good boy, they’d go for ice cream . . .
Done
. She lifted away the towel.

“Oh.” Sophia gazed at Maya’s reflection. “Look at you.”

Shorn to just half an inch, Maya’s hair was now close to black, and in the baggy men’s sweatshirt Sophia had purchased with cash at a nearby Duane Reade along with the electric hair trimmer and the package of Garnier Nutrisse color in Deepest Mahogany, Maya looked . . . She looked . . . “You look like my son.”

Maya stared at herself in the mirror, her blue eyes bright and glistening sad.

“Do you miss your hair?”

Maya nodded.

“I’m sorry,” said Sophia. “But we had to do it. You saw the TV. Your stepmom showed your picture.”

Maya said nothing. A tear trickled down her cheek. Sophia longed to comfort her.

“We can make it a different color if you want. Red? Maybe a blue streak?

She smoothed Maya’s glossy hair, watching her face in the mirror. “You’ll get used to it.”

Maya had dark circles under her eyes, puffy red patches on her cheeks from crying, but that would change, wouldn’t it? It had to. Kids cried until they stopped crying. It was a fact of life.

“I’m still the same person,” Sophia said again. “I’m still your friend.”

Trust me, Maya. Be nice to me. It will be easier on both of us if you are.

Sophia wanted pills, and that wasn’t helping. She wished she’d remembered this feeling last night before she’d used, or at least before she’d given all the rest of her supply to Carver.

It wasn’t that Sophia was an addict—she’d been in recovery for a while. Last time she’d gone to a meeting, in fact, she’d had nearly two years. But that was if you didn’t count the here-and-theres. Sophia never counted the here-and-theres, though she did feel their aftermath, which was the problem now. Her head pounded, and everything was too bright—the bathroom lights, and the white countertop and the red sweatshirt she’d bought for Maya, the dark hair dye that spattered the sink, her shirt, the plastic gloves in the wastebasket.

All these colors. It brought new meaning to
assault on the senses
. It would pass. It always did. It came in waves, the ache, and then the waves would subside each time they came in, just like changing tides. They’d keep receding until they disappeared, even from her memory. And then she’d be back in recovery again.

Weeks could go by. Months. But then she’d crave again and she’d fall again and then, this feeling. The punishment. Like everything else in life, a cycle. You want. You take. You pay for it.

Sophia’s head ached. Her eyes felt too big for their sockets. And Maya was too quiet. This morning had been a real downer, right from the sleepless start of it.

“You look like I feel, Maya.” She moved the gun from between Maya’s shoulder blades and pressed it against her temple. She stared at the child’s face, her trembling lip. Should she just give up on this whole idea? Would Maya let go as easily as Carver had?

Stop it
. That was no way to be thinking. Not after all her hard work, her planning. She needed to give this a chance. Maya needed to eat, for one thing. She hadn’t touched her sandwich at the rest stop, and when Sophia had picked her up, she’d just been sick from alcohol—she’d said so herself.

This was the problem: Maya and Sophia were both in need. And if something wasn’t done to feed those needs soon, things would get bad around here.

There was a doctor Sophia knew. His office was right near the Metro-North stop at 125th Street. Down the block, there was a pharmacy, and around the corner, a good diner. Every need met, within a two-block radius.

She looked at Maya’s reflection, tried a smile. “What do you say we get something to eat?” she said.

To her surprise, Maya nodded.

Sophia breathed a little easier, though she kept the gun in place. She was, as they say, cautiously optimistic. “Okay, great,” she said. “But we need to make one stop, first.”

Diane Plodsky didn’t have a large circle of loved ones. She would be the first to admit that. Yet compared to Mark Carver, her life was a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting, which didn’t make her happy. It actually made her disappointed in the world, the idea that anybody could be that much more alone in it than she was . . .

Ostensibly, Diane was at Mark Carver’s squalid duplex in Mount Temple to notify next-of-kin, though as she soon found out, Carver had no next of kin. Both of his parents had died ten years ago in a car crash. His brother had overdosed three years ago and, being woefully short on anyone-else-who-gave-a-damn, he’d gone on to live with a succession of Craigslist-gleaned roommates in this duplex, which had been left to him by his parents (though they’d apparently never taught him how to clean it.)

The latest roommate—a big bearded biker type who inexplicably called himself Ethel—was sitting across the kitchen table from Diane, wearing a black T-shirt advertising Mickey’s Big Mouth beer, two elaborate Chinese dragon tattoos crawling up his arms. Diane kept her elbows off the table, her hands neatly folded in her lap. Not out of politeness, but out of the knowledge that direct contact with any object in this room could easily result in staph infection.

“So Mark kicked it, huh?” Ethel said this after an uncomfortably long pause. From anyone else, Diane might have hoped for something more profound, but it was pretty much what she’d expected out of Ethel. He flexed his muscles. The dragons shimmered. Diane was pretty sure he thought that was impressive.

“Did Mark have a job?”

“You mean besides selling oxy online?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“Nope.”

Diane slipped Maya Rappaport’s picture out of the folder she was carrying and showed it to him. “Have you ever seen this girl?”

He squinted at it. “Nope.”

“How about a woman? Someone you might mistake for that girl’s mother.”

“Never saw any ladies come by here . . . except today.” He grinned at her. He had a silver front tooth with a gold skull inlay that dared you not to look at it. She tried to accept that dare.

“He never mentioned anybody?”

“Nope.”

Diane sighed. “Oookay.” With the right type of witness—i.e., one with the potential for having actual information or, at the very least, an IQ higher than that of a piece of paper—Diane was a questioner of infinite patience. But Ethel wasn’t that type of witness.
Ethel wins
.

“Okay,” Diane said. “I’m going to get out of your hair, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to have a look around. I’ll need to take a few of Mr. Carver’s personal items for our investigation.”

“Personal items?” He said it like it was the punch line in a dirty joke.

Diane sighed heavily. “His computer. Cell phone.”

“Oh that other lady already took his computer.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“The other lady cop. Left just a couple of minutes ago. I figured she came with you.”

“Excuse me, please . . .”

Diane headed out of the house, onto the street. She scanned the area surrounding the house and then ran up the sidewalk, cursing Ethel in her mind for taking so goddamn long to say absolutely nothing. The sidewalk was empty and lined with parked cars. Her own car was double parked; one of the perks of being a cop—but the other woman wouldn’t have had that luxury no matter what lie she’d told . . .

She ran past dozens of town houses and duplexes, all of them nearly as neglected as Carver’s, tarry snow remnants pushed up against them, dotting brown, weed-choked lawns. She ran all the way to the very end of the three very long, sad blocks, and that’s when she finally saw her—a good forty feet away. A woman getting into a parked blue car, a laptop bag thrown over her shoulder.

“Wait!” Diane hollered.

She opened her door.

She held her badge in the air. “Police.”

The woman turned. She stopped and stared at Diane, alarm all over her face.

Diane kept running until she reached her.

“Is something wrong?” the woman said. She wore a long dark coat, her hair pulled back from her face.

Diane squinted at her. She didn’t know her. She was sure of that. Yet there was something about this woman’s face that seemed familiar.

“Were you just at the home of Mark Carver?”

“Who?” The woman’s face flushed. She grasped the laptop tighter.

“Mark Carver.” Diane saw an ID tag on the case and pinched it toward her. On it, she saw Mark Carver’s name and address. She showed it to her. “See?”

“Oh . . . right.” She exhaled hard. “Listen, I’m sorry. I’m Ethel’s sister. He owes me a ton of money. He gave me this laptop to partially pay it off.”

She looked at her. “Ethel told me you said you were with the police.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ethel’s a jackass.”

Diane had to agree with her there.

“We had a big fight,” she said. “I guess you’re his way of getting in the last word.”

“I’m honored,” she said. “But is Ethel really the type of person who would give away his roommate’s laptop without even knowing he was dead?”

“His roommate’s dead?”

“Yes,” she said. “But he didn’t know that until I told him.”

She sighed. “What a tool. His real name is Edward, by the way.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Janine.”

Diane shook it. “Okay Janine, well I’m sorry. But I’m going to have to take that laptop.”

“Okay, sure.” She handed it to her. Her forehead was shiny with sweat. Odd, considering how cold it was outside and the way she looked otherwise, so neat and put-together and . . . she really did look familiar.

Diane said, “Can I take a quick look in your car?”

“Sure,” she said. “But do you mind if I ask what’s going on?”

“We’re looking for a missing girl,” Diane said.

“Seriously?” she said. “I mean . . . I can tell you right now, I’m a mom myself and I would never—”

“I’m sure of it. But you know . . .”

“No stone unturned.”

Diane smiled a little. “Yes.”

The woman met her gaze. Her eyes were bloodshot. “You . . . You don’t suppose Ethel  . . .”

“No, ma’am. It’s his roommate we were interested in.”

She nodded. “Okay, whew,” she said. “Sure. Look in my car.”

She unlocked it.

Diane opened the front door, and looked inside, then the back. All the seats looked relatively clean, though she did notice three empty water bottles strewn across the backseat. “Yep. You’re definitely a mom.”

“How do you know that?”

“The water bottles. My partner has four kids. The backseat of his family car looks like a recycling bin.”

“I forgot those were even back there.”

Diane said, “How old are your kids?”

“I have just one,” she said. “He’s . . . um . . . thirteen. Listen. Can I ask you a favor?”

“Uh-huh?”

“I mean . . . would it be that big a deal if I kept the laptop?”

Diane frowned at the car floor. “Why?”

“I really need one. And I’m so low on cash on account of Ethel.”

Diane pulled herself out of the car, straightened her back. “I can see about getting it to you once we’re done going through it,” she said.

“But . . .”

“Now if you could just pop the trunk for me, too, I’ll take a quick look and be on my way.” She started to close the car door, then stopped. On the floor she saw something, a small glittering thing. She pulled a Kleenex out of her pocket and plucked it up, careful not to touch it, her pulse racing.