he was praying or something. And then later he said that it wasn’t good, that she was too dark.”
O’Donnell and Ellis exchanged glances.
“Are you sure that’s what he said?”
“Yeah, he kept saying, ‘She’s too dark. It’s no good; she’s too dark.’ And then after a while they left.”
“Can you describe their voices?”
“They were . . . I don’t know. Regular. Like I said, they mostly whispered.”
“Did you notice an accent? Anything at all?”
“No.”
“Do you think if you’ll hear one of them talking, you’ll be able to identify him?”
“I doubt it.”
O’Donnell sighed. “And what then?”
His eyes jumped around. “I don’ . . . listen, I don’ know. I was high. I’m sorry, I was high. I want to quit, I swear. Ellis knows. I’m gonna quit. Jus’ after this weekend. After selling this stuff, I’ll have enough for two rocks, but that’s it. I don’ want to be like this.” A tear slid down his cheek. “I jus’ need these two rocks because it was a really difficult week, and then I’ll clean my act. I have a cousin who can get me a job at garbage disposal, and he can find me a place to stay. I’ve been planning to talk to him for a while, I told Ellis about it, right?”
“Right,” Ellis said. “Your cousin at Pullman.”
“That’s right.”
“What happened then, Tony?” O’Donnell asked. “I promise you you’re not in trouble, okay?”
“I . . . I went over there. Just to see if they left something. And there was this woman. But she was dead, I’m sure she was dead. She had a knife stuck in her. Even if I called the police or got her to a hospital, they wouldn’t be able to help her, right? Right?” His tone got more and more desperate.
“She was already dead, Tony,” Ellis said. “There was nothing you could have done.”
“I thought so. And I wanted to call the cops. But first I needed to go somewhere, get my shit together, you know? So I went to this place where I sometimes crash. And I got really scared, because sometimes after I smoke . . . I started thinking those guys were probably looking for me. Because I heard them. So I hid. And later I heard the police found the body, so there was, like, nothing else I could do, right?”
“No,” Ellis said again. “There was nothing else you could do.”
CHAPTER 39
The thing Harry never admitted to anyone and vowed to keep a secret even on his deathbed was that he was proud of everything he wrote.
Even the trashiest pieces, and sometimes especially the trashiest pieces, about celebrity infidelity, or errant nipples peeking from plunging necklines, or that one ridiculous article about the Chicago Cubs’ coach stepping in dog shit. He wrote them knowing he did it better than any other reporter in America. Sure, Bob Woodward did an amazing job covering the Watergate scandal. But could Bob manage to write a five-hundred-word article about top model Tiffany Wu walking around an entire day with dry toothpaste on her chin? No, he could not.
But he was proudest of the articles he wrote about Zoe Bentley. Not because they were proper journalistic work, or because he wrote about something that mattered, or any of that rot.
It was because in a world of sordid stories about murderers and gory violence and heroic police work, he was the one reporter who understood that the real story was Zoe. And he made her shine.
His fingers were flying over the keyboard, pouring words onto the screen, an unlit cigarette sitting limply between his lips. He didn’t want to take a smoke break outside, so he tried in vain to suck the nicotine out of the cigarette as if sucking a lollipop. The filter was getting soggier by the minute.
“Harry Barry.”
For a moment he thought her imperious voice was just a figment of his imagination. After all, he’d spent the last few hours replaying in his mind their short conversation from the previous morning, milking it for what it was worth. But then he realized that no, Zoe was right behind him. He swiveled his chair, taking the wet cigarette out of his mouth.
“Dr. Bentley! What a pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Her blazing eyes met his. “You wrote about a possible connection between the murder of Catherine Lamb and Henrietta Fishburne. I told you not to write this story before you talk to me. It was irresponsible and misleading, and furthermore—”