The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,75
key. “And wait.”
He kicked back and watched the commenters comment. Likes, shares, tweets, retweets, texts. It was a virtual feeding frenzy. His laptop pinged away with each new mailbox notification. The thread growing, branching out like a spiderweb.
She’s been lost for a while now, said one ambivalently.
Guess that’s the end of her “Lucky” streak, jibed another.
Dibs on her shoes and jewelry if she’s dead, posted LucyBFF.
Don’t bother, it’s all loaners, responded LULUToo crassly.
At least there weren’t any Die, bitch! posts, he thought, but then again, it was early. Every snide thought was being vented, a veritable dam break of vitriol spewing forth into the electric ether. In the battle between sympathy and schadenfreude, sympathy was running a distant second.
Funny thing, Jesse noted, is that this was coming from the very same people who’d kiss her ass if they saw her at a club, begging to ride her wake through the velvet ropes for a free drink and entrée to the VIP section. All hypocrites. Just like her. Just like him.
Then the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Jesse Arens?”
“Go.”
“This is Richard Jensen from the Amalgamated Press city desk. I’m calling about your item.”
“And?”
“I’ve just gotten off the phone with the Seventy-Sixth Precinct and they wouldn’t confirm a thing.”
“So?”
“Can you verify any of this information or point me to someone who can?”
“I don’t reveal sources.”
Frustrated, the newsman pressed on.
“Then how do I know if what you’re reporting is true?”
“You don’t.”
“Listen, kid, you need to give me something. How do you know these girls are tied to this guy?”
Jesse hung up on him. He thought about the chaplets and the fact that he’d intentionally left them out of his post along with the names. It wasn’t a detail he was ready to share. He was keeping the clue to himself and for himself. There might be more to be milked out of this story if it popped. Like money.
He was very comfortable playing God. Deciding who suffered indignity and who was saved from prying eyes with every stroke of his keyboard and leaving these old media types, who regularly ignored or berated him, twisting was fun to say the least. The call meant the story was out there, and he wasn’t about to do their homework for them.
The reporter’s question however was a good one. All he had to go on was the doctor’s story, and who knew what his agenda was. These girls didn’t know one another, hadn’t crossed paths as far as he could tell, lived in different worlds entirely. The only connection, as far as he knew, that could be made to Sebastian was the bracelets. He knew Lucy could be superficial, but what could be so compelling about a bracelet, or about a guy, that would get her to bail on her life, on him? No, it couldn’t be voluntary.
He spent a good long while studying the last picture of the fight in the club. He used the touch screen to magnify every bit of the image, including Lucy’s body, something he had been in the habit of doing anyway. He stared long and hard at the chaplet and charm trying to unlock whatever fascination it might have held for her. There was something vaguely familiar about it to him, but he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just remembering it from the other night.
The phone rang again, but this time it was his landline, which he rarely used. Jesse let it go to voice mail.
“Don’t bore us, get to the chorus,” his outgoing demanded.
“Mr. Arens. This is Captain Murphy from the Seventy-Sixth Precinct.”
Jesse hit talk.
“That was quick.”
“We’d like to have a word with you regarding your story. I’ll expect you down at the station tomorrow morning. If that’s not convenient, I’m sure I can arrange to meet you at your apartment. Don’t keep me waiting.”
Psychiatrists, reporters, investigators. This was all getting a little heavy. He took a look out the window and noticed the weather improving, despite the shitstorm he’d just kicked off. Jesse grabbed his phone and his keys and hit the street to clear his head and his conscience. And to look around.
3 Martha stood gazing out Agnes’s bedroom window and into the small backyard. She’d barely moved from it in the time since Agnes had gone. For her, waiting meant Agnes was coming back. If someone is waiting for you, expecting you, then you just had to be coming back at some point. It was just two nights, but it felt like forever.
A loud knock at her front door rattled