the hell’s going on?
I find a parking spot one street over and casually walk toward the group. The air is mild today, but I wish I’d remembered my jacket. In front of Lauren’s building, bright-orange cones are blocking off a section of the road, and inside the rectangle are a sedan, police cruiser, and white van. A woman in a button-down, shiny badge clipped to her waist, disappears into the building.
Most of the people around me are gray-haired and sun-spotted, wearing elastic-waist pants and floral prints under windbreakers, but there are two younger women with babies in strollers. There’s a current of dark energy here, that hope of catching sight of something illicit, along with the smell of menthol and artificial roses. I maneuver around until I’m next to a sharp-eyed woman in a yellow cardigan.
“What happened?” I say.
“A woman got killed.”
“Killed?”
Not looking at me, the woman says, “Yes.”
Another woman, her hair a frizzy halo, says, “They found her last night.” She glances at me, frowning slightly at my creased slacks, my fitted jacket. “They had the whole street blocked off. You couldn’t even stand here.”
The two younger women are whispering to each other, their heads close. I carefully step toward them.
“You know who it was, right?” one says. “What the news said? If they’re right, then she deserved it.”
“Yup.”
Is it possible?
When I step a little closer, they both gift me with withering gazes. Flushed with warmth, I move back near the woman in the cardigan and say, “Do you know who—”
My phone rings, and everyone in the groups shoots a glare. I say, “I’m sorry,” and mute the call. Ellie can wait. The officer with the badge at her waist emerges from the building, glances around, then heads toward us. Shit. I can’t be seen here.
Phone to my ear, pretending to be engrossed in a conversation, it takes all I have not to run. With every step away, the fear of hearing a command to stop increases, and I don’t allow myself to breathe normally until I’m back in my car. I want to check my browser, but what if even now the women are telling the cop that I was asking questions?
I’m careful to obey the speed limit as I navigate out of the neighborhood, but once I’ve left it well in my rearview mirror, I pull into a gas station. Open a browser on my phone. “Come on, come on, come on,” I say as it slowly loads.
On the main page of the Baltimore newspaper: CONVICTED KILLER NOW A VICTIM, with the beginning of the first paragraph below: LAUREN THOMAS, WHO WAS RELEASED EARLIER THIS YEAR AFTER SERVING NEARLY THIRTY YEARS FOR THE MURDER OF HER DAUGHTER …
I click the link and skim the rest, each detail a sharp little shock. Found by a neighbor in her apartment on Wednesday morning. Killed Tuesday night. Blunt-force trauma. No suspects. Police still gathering evidence. Asking anyone with information to call the tip line.
I sit back, hands clasped together on my steering wheel. Dead. That’s why she never showed up for our meeting. Someone was bludgeoning her to death.
I bite back a sound. Will Mikayla tell the police I was there? I tap my fingers. Remember the flash of fear. No, I don’t think she will. Even if she does, I didn’t give her my real name. And I didn’t see anyone else. No one in the group of rubberneckers today will think of me as a threat. An outsider, yes, but a threat?
A tiny thread of hope winds its way through me. With Lauren dead, am I safe? Is it over? I scroll to the photos of her address and the hotel information in my phone. Hit delete. Check the gallery to make sure they’re gone.
But what about fingerprints? If I left any in the hallway and they find them, what will I say? I went to see Lauren and she wasn’t home? It’s the truth, but then they’ll want to know why.
Wait, wait, wait.
I don’t move. Don’t blink. Don’t make a sound.
If Lauren was killed Tuesday night, it means she wasn’t in my house yesterday. No. That can’t be right. Maybe it was a misprint. Or the police are wrong about the time of death. Lauren could’ve come to my house in the morning, and then someone killed her after she got home.
I’m still sitting there when an email arrives. From Lauren Thomas.
Fingers like ice, I click it open. The message reads WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY