Stay With Me: A Brenna Spector Novel of Suspense Page 14

  Faith’s stomach dropped. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t expected that answer, but she’d been hoping. Believing. She closed her eyes for a few seconds. Jim was right. At times like this, it was better to close yourself off, weave that cocoon, protect yourself . . .

  Jim said, “She texted this afternoon that you guys were going to the movies . . .”

  “We . . . we didn’t go to the movies, Mr., uh . . .”

  “Rappaport. I figured. But my daughter is missing, so any help you might be able to give . . .”

  “What?” Miles’s voice cracked on the word, his face flushing. Lindsay shot him a look.

  Faith trained her eyes on him. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. Maya is missing,” she said. “I’m sure the police will be talking to you as well, but we just wanted to know if you had any idea where she might be.”

  “Missing,” Miles said.

  Lindsay said, “The police?”

  “Maybe she mentioned something at the sleepover . . . Do you remember Maya saying anything that seemed strange or out of the ordinary?” Jim said. “I hear there was a party here last night, and maybe—”

  “She wasn’t here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Maya was never here?” Lindsay said it like a question. “I did have a party, but she . . . um . . . She wasn’t invited.”

  “You’re being serious with us,” Jim said.

  “Yes. No offense or anything,” Lindsay said. “Right, Miles?”

  “Uh . . . no. I mean yeah.”

  “She’s just a freshman. I don’t know her that well.”

  “She never came to your apartment yesterday.”

  “No.”

  Jim stared at her for several seconds, saying nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Rappaport,” Lindsay said. “We have a test tomorrow and we have to study.” She took Miles’s hand. “I really hope you find Maya.”

  Jim and Faith watched them go, Miles glancing over his shoulder briefly as the elevator doors opened.

  Jim exhaled—a long, slow breath that seemed to drain everything from him—life, hope. “She could be in Tarry Ridge,” he said. “They might be with her right now.”

  Faith could feel Jim turning to look at her, but she didn’t meet his gaze. She stayed focused on the closed elevator doors, on the spot where the boy, Miles, had turned to her. She’d seen something in his eyes then, something crumbling and sad.

  “I hope so,” Faith said.

  “Help me,” Lindsay told Miles. She was taking everything out of the overnight bag Maya had left, and she was shoving it into a black plastic garbage bag. She looked psychotic. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Give me that coat.”

  Maya’s bright blue coat was draped across a chair in the corner. Miles picked it up and handed it to her, thinking of Maya, standing at his door in this coat, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Two weeks ago. Not even. A week and a half, and now she was . . . Where was she? This was surreal. This stuff didn’t happen to people. Not in real life. Miles needed to wake up from this. He wished so badly that he would just wake up and it would be three weeks ago and then he’d know. He’d know what not to do.

  “You can’t do that,” Lindsay said. “You can’t check out on me.” She stuffed the coat in the bag along with everything else, pushing the arms in, as though the coat was alive and fighting with her. “You’re as much a part of this as I am.”

  “You lied to her parents.”

  She stopped what she was doing. “You want me to tell her parents what we did to her . . . what you did to her?”

  Miles swallowed hard.

  “I’d be glad to do it, Miles. You want me to?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Lindsay finished stuffing the coat into the bag.

  “We have to delete the video,” she said. “Did you record it?”

  He stared down at the rug. Lindsay had cleaned it, but you could still see the puke stain. “No,” he said.

  “I thought you said you wanted to.”

  “I didn’t record it.”

  “Okay . . .” She frowned at him. “Well . . . whatever. We’re good then. It means I have the only copy.” She moved over to her desk, squeezing around Miles, slipping her hands around his waist to move him.

  He heard her behind him, tapping on her keyboard as she called up the video. Lindsay’s voice slipping out of the speakers. “And anyway, Miles said you liked to party . . .”

  Lindsay click, click, clicked. Miles stared at the far wall, at a framed poster from the American Ballet Theater—pink ballet shoe against a black background. He thought of all the time he’d spent in this room, on that bed, looking up at that poster. Strange how you can be in the same place, looking at the same thing, yet feel so differently.

  “Done.” She spun around, started across the room. “Now we have to take her stuff out to the incinerator.”

  “What?”

  Lindsay stopped. “You heard me.”

  “But . . . what if there’s some clue in there. Maybe . . . like . . . a note from somebody or a receipt or . . .”

  “Listen to me,” Lindsay said. “Maya Rappaport was never here.”

  “They’re going to find out.”

  “No they won’t.”

  “You texted her, didn’t you?”

  Lindsay stared at him, blinking. “Whatever,” she said finally. “I’ll tell them someone stole my phone.”

  “Come on,” he said. “There could be something important in her overnight bag.”

  “Stop it, Miles.”

  “We could leave it at the police station anonymously. No one has to know it came from us . . .”

  “There’s nothing in this bag other than clothes and stuff.” She gave the coat one more push, then tied it off at the top. “Look. We played a little joke on her. It wasn’t a big deal. Just because she showed up over here and booted on my carpet, it doesn’t mean we’re required to participate in an investigation.”

  “But she is missing.”

  “I didn’t make her disappear,” Lindsay said. “I’m not going to freak out my parents by getting involved with the police. I’m not going to have cops in this apartment making me feel like this is all my fault when it isn’t.”

  Miles had never noticed how pale Lindsay’s eyes were. He’d only noticed her shiny hair and her tight body and the way she smelled, like fresh flowers. But the way she was looking at him now, they reminded him of ice shards, or maybe lasers. Something so pale and cold it hurt.

  “All we did was talk,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That’s all we did. She came over. She said she was in the neighborhood. We talked about art class. She told me she might drop chorus. That was it.”

  “Bullshit.” Lindsay pushed the garbage bag at him. “The incinerator is down at the end of the hall.”

  Miles took the bag and left her apartment. He could feel the brass buttons on Maya’s blue coat through the thin plastic. Again he thought about her at his door a week and a half ago, the way she shifted from foot to foot, her teeth dragging against her lower lip. He remembered the earrings she was wearing and how she tugged on one of them, twisting it around. I like your earrings, he had said.

  Thanks. My grandma gave them to me.

  He remembered how nervous she’d seemed, how obvious it was that she’d worked up courage to come see him and how flattered he’d been by the thought of that. He remembered how he’d stared deep into her eyes as she talked to him, trying to make her more nervous, liking that feeling.

  Miles threw the bag into the incinerator. He closed the door and headed back to Lindsay’s apartment, trying to keep hims
elf from thinking about her, about Maya, poor Maya, and how he’d made her disappear.

  The squad car yanks itself away from the curb and hurls up Twentieth Street, the siren burning Brenna’s ears. Her stomach drops with the sharp movement. Forty minutes, she thinks. Forty minutes and I’ll be in Tarry Ridge and so will she. The uniformed officer in front of her shifts in her seat. She has cornrowed hair, and when she moves the beads in her braids click against one another. A comforting sound. The seat squeaks as Brenna shifts her weight and the beads click and the siren blares, every sound pushing against her, echoing in her ears. Her heart, too. That echoes, too.

  “You okay, Ms. Spector?” says the cornrowed officer. Officer Benoit, she’s called.

  Brenna nods. She realizes how hard she’s been breathing.

  “It will be okay, ma’am.” Her voice is very calm. Her partner turns onto the West Side Highway, the car making a wide arc. She closes her eyes. She pictures Maya, standing next to the pump at the Lukoil station on Van Wagenen and Main, Maya spotting the car and rushing up and racing into her arms. I’m sorry, Mom. It was a dare. I didn’t mean to scare you . . .

  Brenna bit her lip hard, coming back to the chair in the waiting room at the Tarry Ridge ER.

  “Are you okay?” said Detective Plodsky, which made Brenna miss Officer Benoit. It made her miss two hours ago, riding in the squad car, feeling that hope.

  “Just thinking.”

  Detective Plodsky was from the Missing Persons Unit—a thin, no-nonsense woman with a gunmetal bob and pursed lips and eyes like a gate slamming. She’d shown up at the gas station in her own car just as the ambulance was leaving and followed the squad cars to the hospital.

  During their first hour together in the waiting room, Plodsky and Brenna had barely exchanged three words, but she seemed to be making up for it now, as though she’d just remembered she was supposed to question her. The mother of the missing girl. The runaway. That’s how Plodsky had referred to Maya when she thought Brenna wasn’t listening. She’d said it to Morasco just as they arrived at the hospital. How much do you know about the runaway? she’d said.

  Plodsky said, “Ms. Spector?”

  “I didn’t hear your question.”

  “Has Maya’s schedule changed at all in the past few weeks? Maybe she signed up for a new class, or activity . . .”

  “She’s in the school chorus,” Brenna said.

  “And that’s new?”

  “Since September.”

  She nodded. She had a steno pad in her lap. She wrote a word on it.

  Brenna wished Morasco was here instead of Plodsky. Morasco, of course, was being questioned himself, his gun taken away, suspended from work while Internal Affairs investigated him as they would any police officer who had discharged his firearm. The man he’d shot—the only man who might know what had happened to Maya—was in surgery right now. He’d grabbed for something under his coat, yes. But as backup units discovered, the something had been a small white envelope containing half a gram of cocaine. He’d wanted to throw away his drugs, not shoot three cops. And while Cerulli and Cavanaugh had both agreed that there was no way of knowing what this obviously intoxicated guy was going to pull out from under his big black coat on a dark street after attempting to run away from police, Morasco had been the only one who’d fired.

  The bullet had been found on the sidewalk, which was good—shots to the head tend to be easier to survive if there’s an exit wound. But Brenna hadn’t been able to find out whether it had gone through his brain. Last time she’d checked, doctors were using expressions like “touch and go” and “not out of the woods yet.”

  Plodsky said, “Does Maya like to sing?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did she join chorus?”

  “Because of a boy.”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “No. A crush.”

  “Does Maya tell you about all her crushes?”

  Brenna turned. Looked at her. “How would I know that?”

  “Pardon?”

  “If she didn’t tell me about one of them, how would I know that she hadn’t told me?”

  “Has she been acting differently? Since she had this crush?”

  The image floated through Brenna’s mind—The Very Hungry Caterpillar book, the folded-up sketches fluttering out . . . She pushed the thought away. The thought was irrelevant. The question was irrelevant. All of these questions . . . The runaway. All of it.

  Plodsky needed to stop. She needed to leave. Brenna turned to her. “There’s a man who’s getting operated on right now. I doubt he has anything to do with Maya’s crush or her school activities, but he has her goddamn cell phone in his pocket so maybe it’s him you should be finding out about. Not . . . school gossip.”

  Detective Plodsky gave her a look. To Brenna, it registered as a blend of pity, condescension, and disdain. “These questions are necessary, ma’am.”

  “I think I just need a little quiet right now.”

  Plodsky nodded. “Take all the time you need.” She didn’t sound like she meant it.

  The man, the man whom Morasco had shot, the man who was getting operated on. His name was Mark Carver. They’d learned that from the driver’s license, along with his place of residence (2920 Woodhall Road, Mount Temple, New York) and his age (thirty-five). He owned an American Express card, a Kohl’s card, a membership to Planet Fitness. No business cards. No phone of his own. Save for his wallet, which had held the aforementioned items, as well as twenty dollars in fives and tens, nothing else had been found in Mark Carver’s pockets. No pills, which was rather surprising. Morasco said he looked like he had swallowed a medicine cabinet’s worth.

  Detective Plodsky said, “Has Maya been behaving differently at all?”

  Brenna sighed. I suppose you’ve decided that’s all the time I need. “Differently?”

  “Aside from signing up for chorus, does she have any new, out-of-the-ordinary activities or habits?”

  “She asked to see a psychiatrist,” Brenna said it very calmly. “I took her to one yesterday.”

  Detective Plodsky’s jaw dropped open. “Do you have any idea why?”

  “She was held at knifepoint a few weeks ago.”

  “Are you . . . what?”

  “We managed to keep that part out of the news. It was DeeDee Walsh. The senior detective on the case was John Krull. Sixth Precinct.” She turned to Detective Plodsky. “Do you think DeeDee Walsh might have anything to do with Mark Carver?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you should ask her.” Brenna glanced at her notepad, then back at her face. “Maybe you should write it down.”

  Plodsky returned Brenna’s gaze, held it long enough to make her feel uncomfortable. “Ms. Spector.”

  “Yes?”

  “How does your daughter feel about your job?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but has your work as a private investigator made her feel . . . unsafe?”

  Brenna stared at her. “What are you saying?”

  “Has she ever said she’d be happier somewhere else?”

  She swallowed hard. “All teenagers say that.”

  “Has she?”

  Brenna turned away from her. She tried to focus on the sounds of the ER waiting room—the hum of the electric lights, the fuzzy voice over the loudspeaker. “Dr. Clark, you are wanted in surgery . . .” She stared across the room, at the portrait of the older woman on the wall—Lily Teasdale, same as at the police station, the gold plaque beneath it, the cream walls, the clean, pinkish floors . . . But she still felt the radiator-warmed air of her own apartment on October 1, the garlic-laced scent of the spaghetti Bolognese she’d made for dinner, a memory of her former boss invading her brain and Maya standing over her, Maya’s sad, cracking voice, yanking he
r out of it.

  “You know what’s weird, Mom?”

  Brenna sees Maya standing feet away from her, her dish in her hands, but she’s still got her foot in the memory. “What . . . what’s weird?” Brenna can see the way Maya watches her, the sadness in her eyes, the start of tears. But in her mind she is still in October 23, 1998. She is in a diner with her old boss Errol Ludlow. She is hearing his voice . . .

  Maya says, “In order to get your full attention, you have to be something that happened in the past.”

  Brenna slipped her hand into her bag, touched Clea’s journal. As always, the feel of it brought her back. But it didn’t soothe her. She still held on to the image in her mind—her daughter standing over her, thin fingers wrapped around her plate, the lost look in her eyes, and the way Brenna had seen her that night, as though through glass . . . “Not my job,” she said to Plodsky.

  “Pardon?”

  “Maya may have been unhappy with me. But not because of my job.”

  “Did you have any arguments recently? Any times when—”

  “Please. Stop.”

  “I’m trying to help find her.”

  “I know.” Brenna got up. “I’m sorry.” She walked up to the front desk, another image in her mind: Maya’s drawing of Clea, shot in the head and bleeding. Brenna tamped down the thought. “Any word on Mr. Carver?” she asked the nurse.

  “No, ma’am,” she said. Her eyes were large and clear and very blue. Like Clea’s. Like Maya’s. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.”

  “Brenna.”

  She turned around to see Nick Morasco, standing behind her. She exhaled, some of the tension draining out of her. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Through being questioned?”

  “For now,” he said. “There’ll be more tomorrow.” He looked pale, very tired, his eyes bigger and darker than usual behind the wire-framed glasses. “Any word on Carver? Is he still in surgery?”

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  “Brenna. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t help it. Seeing her phone . . . Maya’s phone on him. He said it was his, and it rang and I saw your face on the screen . . .”

  “He reached into his pocket, Nick,” she said. “He could have been grabbing for anything.”