Stay With Me: A Brenna Spector Novel of Suspense Page 16

  “Believe me. I will.”

  She said it like a threat. Morasco let her words hang in the air for a little while. He looked at the assortment of magazines on the table: People, Atlantic Monthly, Highlights . . . All ridiculously out of date. His gaze went to People—from August 24 of the previous year. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on the cover, plus a Kate Gosselin exclusive: “I Cry All the Time.” Morasco wondered if she still did.

  “Detective Plodsky?”

  “Yes?”

  “Maya didn’t send that text of her own free will.”

  “I know you feel that way,” she said. “But you have no way of knowing.”

  He turned to her. “Back in December, her mom got carjacked. Maya had happened to call Brenna while the event was happening. She heard everything, as it was taking place. Maya had the foresight to call me on her landline. I contacted the precinct up in Inwood Park and got them to ping Brenna’s cell, but I stayed on the phone with Maya. I talked to her until her dad got there. I told her everything would be okay.”

  “And . . .”

  “And I’ve been a cop more than fifteen years. I’ve said ‘everything will be okay’ a lot, because I’ve been with a lot of people . . . a lot of family members . . . who needed to hear those words. But no one who needed to hear them as badly as Maya did. She loves her mother very much. She was terrified at the thought.”

  “Well, any child would be terrified. It was a terrifying situation.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said slowly. “She was terrified at the idea of having to live her own life, without Brenna.”

  “She told you this?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “She used those words.”

  “Yes.” He looked into her eyes. “So, I do have a way of knowing.”

  A guy in scrubs was talking to the front desk nurse. Morasco couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they kept glancing over at him and Plodsky.

  “Look,” she said. “I get what you’re saying. But from what I’ve heard so far tonight, Maya was held at knifepoint and witnessed her mother’s carjacking, all during the same month when most kids her age are thinking about what they’re going to get for Christmas. Whether she loves her mom or not, Detective Morasco, doesn’t it make sense that she might think about escaping that life?”

  “It might make sense,” he said. “But it isn’t what happened.”

  Morasco was aware of the guy in scrubs, making his way around the desk and through the waiting room.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Clark,” he said, standing over them now. He had a chiseled, overly handsome look, more like a soap opera doctor than a real-life one, and a golden tan, despite the time of year. For a moment, Morasco imagined that none of this was real, that they were all just characters in someone else’s script, wearing costumes and saying lines, unable to change things. He made himself smile at the doctor. “Everything okay?”

  He smiled back. His teeth were, of course, blindingly white.

  “Mr. Carver is out of surgery,” Dr. Clark said. “He seems to be stabilized.”

  Morasco and Plodsky exhaled at the same time.

  “Thank God,” Morasco whispered.

  “Will we know when he’s conscious?” Plodsky said.

  “He’s conscious now,” said the doctor.

  Morasco blinked at him. “How can that be?”

  “The bullet only grazed the outer left portion of his skull. It didn’t affect the brain. We were actually more concerned about the significant amount of opiate and cocaine in his system. Combined with the stress of the encounter with you, it led to a pretty massive spike in his blood pressure, which affected his heart . . .” His gaze went from Plodsky to Morasco. “Anyway, he pulled through.”

  Plodsky said, “Do we know when he’s ready to talk?”

  The doctor stepped back. “He says he wants to talk now,” he said. “He wants to get it over with.”

  Plodsky’s eyebrows went up.

  “That okay with you?” Morasco asked him.

  “It’s fine. Just for a few minutes though. He’s still weak. We don’t want him too stressed.”

  “No problem,” said Plodsky. She slipped her notebook into her bag and stood up, but the doctor stopped her.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said.

  “But I thought you said . . .”

  “No.” The doctor looked at Morasco. “He said he only wants to talk to you.”

  “Me?”

  “That’s right. In his words, he wants to talk to the guy who shot him.”

  12

  “Killer.” Carver said it just as Morasco entered the room. His head had been shaved and wrapped with a large white bandage. He wore a hospital gown, the white sheet pulled up to his chest, his arms, surprisingly pale, outstretched and taped with several IVs. An oxygen tube was fitted at his nose, dark eyes swimming in blanched skin. He brought to mind a big white spider, belly up to the sun. “You gonna shoot me again?”

  “Don’t have my gun,” Morasco said. “So the point is moot.”

  Dr. Clark cast him a worried look. “I’ll be right outside the door,” he said.

  As soon as he left, Carver said, “I don’t know where she is.”

  “But you saw her.”

  “No.”

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “We . . .”

  “What, Mark?” Morasco drew a breath. Let it out slowly. “It’s all right. Tell me.”

  “My head hurts.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We partied a little.”

  Morasco’s jaw clenched up. “You partied a little.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You gave her drugs.”

  “We shared.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s true,” he said.

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Oxy.”

  “Oxycodone.”

  He gave Morasco a look, his eyes flat. “Yes that’s the full name.”

  “Where did she get oxycodone?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “Where did you meet?”

  “I want some water.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “I can’t talk.” He stared at Morasco.

  “Yes you can. You’re talking now.”

  “My mouth is dry. Dehydrated. The doctor said. It’s the . . . uh . . .”

  “What?”

  “Anastasia.” He laughed a little. “No, that’s a princess.”

  “Anesthesia.”

  There was a pitcher of water next to his bedside. Morasco took a deep breath. He walked over to the nightstand and poured some of the water into a plastic cup. Carver was still chuckling over his princess pun. Out of it. Christ, what a loser. Don’t get angry . . . He held the cup out to him. “Here.”

  “Can’t hold it.” With his big, insect eyes, he cast a deliberate glance at his arms. “IVs.”

  Morasco held the cup up to his lips. He sucked at it for what felt like a long time, too long. He drained the cup.

  Morasco said, “Tell me how you met her.”

  He muttered something.

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Craigslist.”

  “What?”

  “Craigslist. She was looking for pills. I was selling.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s the truth. We met. Partied a little. I sold her the bag.”

  “What did she pay you with?” he spat out the words. “Her allowance money?”

  “The phone. She gave me the phone.”

  Morasco glared at him.

  “The phone. A little cash. Some coke, too. An eightball.”

 
“What happened to her?”

  “Fuck should I know where that bitch went?”

  Morasco’s back stiffened. His fists clenched, and his jaw tensed, every muscle in his body coiling, the tiredness draining out of him until he was all anger. He wanted to punch Carver in the face. But he didn’t want to stop there. He wanted to beat him senseless and rip out his IVs and kick him in the stomach until he bled to death. He took a breath. Stepped back.

  “Why did you run?”

  “I need more water,” Carver said.

  “No.”

  “Thirsty.”

  “You’ll get water if you tell me the truth.” Morasco kept his voice down as he said it, his gaze focused on the dark, swimmy eyes.

  “I am telling you the truth. We partied. Said she liked danger. ‘I’m into danger, Mark. How far will you go? How close to the edge?’ Kinda hot. She cooked the oxy, blew the smoke in my mouth . . .”

  Morasco took another step back. He gritted his teeth. “You’re sick.”

  “Huh?”

  “She didn’t tell you that. She didn’t do anything like that. You didn’t meet her on Craigslist.”

  “Yes I did.”

  “She’s thirteen years old!”

  “No . . .”

  “She didn’t give you an eightball, you asshole. She didn’t blow smoke in your mouth. She’s a kid. You fed pills to a little girl.”

  “I need water.”

  Morasco grabbed the pitcher, his hands shaking. He poured it into the cup and jammed it up against Carver’s mouth and upended it, spilling it over his face, down his chin. Carver started to cough. Morasco pushed the cup against his jaw, kept pushing. The plastic cracked and sputtered, water spilled out the sides. The oxygen tube pulled loose from his nose. “Tell me the truth,” he said, “Or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

  “Doctor!”

  Dr. Clark hurried through the door.

  Morasco stepped back. “It’s okay,” he said. “Everything’s okay,” as Carver stared up at him, wheezing and dripping.

  “You need to leave now,” Dr. Clark said.

  Morasco closed his eyes. “It’s okay. It’s fine.”

  “No.” Calm and cold. “You need to leave now.”

  Dr. Clark opened the door, waited, and Morasco moved toward it, hating himself, the way his anger ruined things, his emotions. Behind him, he could hear Carver’s labored breathing. Clark telling him, in hushed tones, to “just relax please . . .”

  As he reached the door, though, he heard Carver’s frail voice. “Wait.”

  Morasco turned, looked at him, this weak, wheezing man, soap opera doctor hovering over him. “What?”

  “I wasn’t . . .” He coughed. “I wasn’t partying . . . with the girl.”

  “Then what were you doing with her?”

  “Detective.”

  “I wasn’t partying with the girl,” Carver said again, as Clark adjusted his IVs. “I was partying with her mother.”

  Brenna cried for a solid five minutes into Trent’s chest. Then she stepped back, pulled herself together. Trent walked over to his desk, slipped open the top drawer, and removed a small pack of Kleenex. “My mom gave me a huge box of these when I moved out of the house,” he said. “She’s like, ‘Have one of these with you on all times. You never know when a lady might be crying.’ ” He ripped open the pack and handed Brenna a stack of tissues.

  “You’re actually the first lady who’s ever used them,” he said as she dabbed at her eyes. “I guess I’m more a make-’em-laugh kind of stud.”

  The Kleenex, like everything else Trent owned, stank of his cologne. Brenna didn’t mention it, didn’t care really. In a weird way, the smell was comforting. “Making ’em laugh is a good quality,” she said.

  “Uh, not always.”

  “Well.”

  “So.”

  She looked at him. “So.”

  “Let’s find your kid.”

  “Okay.”

  And that was it. Amazing how the most intense grief can dissolve in the face of hope, any kind of hope at all. “Do you have Maya’s computer?” he said.

  “I’ve got a copy of it. Jim loaded it onto an external hard drive.”

  His eyebrow went up at the mention of Jim’s name, but all Trent said was “Awesome.”

  As always, Trent had been carrying his camouflage-drag man purse (or as he insisted it be called, a messenger bag). He dropped it onto his desk. “I keep all my essentials in here,” he said. “Axe spray, gel, lip balm, a bottle of rubbing alcohol in case one of my piercings gets infected because that happens sometimes and let me tell you it is so not fun . . .”

  “Is this leading anywhere?”

  “Yes, boss, it is.” From the depths of the bag, Trent produced a small laptop. “This baby’s an essential. 40 gigabyte hard drive. If I could marry a piece of equipment, and, you know . . . sex robots weren’t on the table . . . she’d be wearing my ring.”

  He moved over to Brenna’s computer, replaced the external hard drive with his own, and copied the Maya folder onto it, then attached it to the laptop. “Maybe she’s been chatting with someone online who she shouldn’t be chatting with. Maybe she e-mailed or instant messaged a friend about her plans.”

  When he was done, he moved back to his desk. “You go through her regular files,” he said. “I’ll check out her online history.”

  “Faith told me she’s walked in when Maya’s been typing on her computer, and then Maya hides what she’s typing.”

  “Okay.”

  Brenna moved over to her computer, ran her gaze over the cluster of folders, feeling, if not better, then a little more in control. “Trent?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  He looked up at her. “We’ll get her back,” he said. “Kanye’s gonna need a babysitter.”

  Brenna smiled a little. She went back to the screen. She clicked on the folder marked “Pictures.” “Missing Persons Unit already has her ninth grade picture, but I’m going to find a few more. I’d like you to send them to . . .” Brenna couldn’t get herself to say hospitals, police stations, morgues . . .

  “The usual places?”

  She nodded.

  “Yep. Will do.”

  There was a big collection of folders—downloaded manga covers, an assortment of glamour shots of Justin Bieber from two years earlier and a GQ photo shoot of Taylor Lautner, downloaded last November. There were silly shots of Larissa and Zoe, posing next to the lions at the Midtown Public Library, pictures of shoes and ice cream sundaes and a folder filled with headshots of young TV and movie actresses, marked “Haircuts,” which made Brenna smile a little. Maya’s hair nearly reached her waist. She kept saying she wanted to cut it short, but every time Brenna had obliged her and taken her to the salon, Maya had chickened out when she was getting shampooed. I don’t think I’m ready, she’d say.

  There were folders dedicated to manga characters and “cute animals” and then one, unmarked, that contained just one picture of Maya, cuddling with Zoe’s cat. The cat’s name was Bananas and for a moment Brenna remembered Maya chasing him across Zoe’s living room on the morning of June 3, 2007, when Brenna was picking her up from a slumber party. “Come back here Bananas and give me a hug!”

  Brenna wanted to enlarge it, if only to look at the smile on Maya’s face, proof that she was a happy kid, that she is a happy kid . . . when she noticed a separate folder, marked “Shopping: 1/14.” Three days ago.

  Brenna opened it.

  Inside, a whole series of pictures of Maya at a store, modeling clothes and posing with the same three girls—a willowy blonde; a tanned, petite girl with bone-straight black hair and mean eyes . . . and the girl who had rushed into Miles’s arms on September 30 after chorus practice. The same girl.

  Lindsay. Bre
nna clicked on one of the photos. “Wow,” she whispered.

  Maya was wearing a skintight, bright red bandage dress that made her look at least three years older. The dress wasn’t Maya, not the Maya Brenna knew, and her smile looked just as uncomfortable—big and plaster-bright and not really happy at all. Standing next to Maya was Lindsay, wearing the same dress but in cobalt blue, making up for Maya’s lack of confidence with a surplus of her own. Lindsay, sticking her chest out, working it, her smile relaxed and knowing. It reminded Brenna of one of those “who wore it better” spreads in the gossip magazines. Lindsay in her glittery statement earrings and platform pumps. Maya wearing Converse sneakers and the diamond studs her grandmother had given her for her thirteenth birthday along with a note that read “Welcome to Womanhood!” (Oh, how the poor kid had cringed over that . . .)

  Brenna clicked on another photo—all four of the girls, outside the store, holding bags. She enlarged the picture so she could see the logo on the bags: Forever 21. Same bag as in Maya’s room, the perfume and the thigh-high socks, bought to impress, then stashed at home, unused, still in the wrappers they came in.

  Brenna opened a third picture—Maya and her three new friends, the older girls making kissy faces, Maya smiling that same pained smile—thrilled and terrified and achingly awkward. She wants to impress these girls so much.

  She recalled Jim on the phone, the pain in his voice. If I could trade myself for her, I would. If I could take twenty years off my life, I would, just to bring her back right now . . .

  She went on to her e-mail, composed a new one, addressed to both Jim and Faith, and attached the folder.

  In case you guys haven’t come across these yet, she wrote. I wouldn’t be so quick to trust Lindsay over Maya re: sleepover.

  “You finding anything?” said Trent.

  “Sending you an e-mail,” said Brenna. She clicked on her own browser and sent Trent the bandage dress shot and the one with the cat. The two faces of Maya.

  Trent opened up his e-mail, stared at the pictures. “You want me to crop out Heather, right?”

  “Yeah.” Brenna gaze locked with that of the girl on the screen. Miles’s girlfriend. Lindsay.

  He nodded at his laptop. “BTW, I’m gonna have to run a bit-by-bit transferal on this hard drive. See if she’s deleted any files . . .”