After image, p.27
After Image, page 27
Carefully, he begins walking me down the stairs, giving me just enough time to feel out each step before I put my weight on it. I can smell his cologne, and his sweat, sour underneath the expensive scent.
In my mind’s eye, I see Matthew hunched over his dining room table as he talked to the private investigator on the phone. Matthew at his wedding, beckoning me to come join the family photo. Matthew, bent over Allie’s body in the cabin, dragging her body out on the porch, the same way he’d dragged me out of the apartment bathroom.
The stairs seem to take forever, but it’s time I need. To think. Because, once we reach the parking lot, it won’t take Matthew long to realize my car’s not there. And then I’ll have a bigger problem on my hands. If I can’t deliver the essay to him, I’ll be of no value at all. I’ll just be a liability.
Like Allie.
Listening to our footsteps against the concrete stairs, I try to picture the bottom of the stairwell: a dim square barely large enough for two people to stand side by side. And I remember, suddenly, how in my high school photography class, the teacher had insisted we learn how to develop our film in an airless closet, a towel shoved against the bottom of the door to block out the light. In the blackness, you had to uncap a roll of film and carefully feed the strip of negatives onto a reel. The only way you could manage it was by carefully memorizing the position of the objects before you switched off the lights, by feeling for the things you couldn’t see.
Matthew guides me down the last step, and from the smell of car exhaust in the air, I know we’ve reached the parking garage. I’m not ready. I can’t recall the layout of the garage in my head. I’ve never had a reason to pay attention to it.
Matthew opens the door and pushes me through ahead of him. To my surprise, my brain instantly fills in an image of the space, details I didn’t realize I’d noticed. We’re standing at the edge of a concrete, windowless rectangle, lined with cars along the perimeter and in the center. To my right, I know, is Abby’s Toyota Prius, the bumper held on with duct tape. Straight ahead is Mrs. Singh’s boxy BMW. Somewhere along the far wall is an orange SUV with a surf rack.
“Where are you parked?” Matthew asks roughly. He’s aware of the seconds ticking by, of how small his window of time is.
“Give me a second.” I turn my head from side to side. “I need to get my bearings.” But what I really need to do is remember where the light switch is. It’s somewhere on the wall behind us—but how far to the left, and how many steps will it take me to get there? If I can manage to switch off the lights, I can level the playing field between Matthew and me.
I hear a clicking sound, repeated two, three times. And I realize Matthew is pressing on my key fob, waiting to hear the beep of my car unlocking.
“Natasha,” he says, fury gathering his voice. “Where the hell is your car?”
Suddenly, I collapse against him, startling him enough that he loosens his grip on my arm. Then I twist and lunge for the wall, running my hands along the rough concrete until I find the metal box I’m looking for and slam the switch down.
The electric hum from the ceiling abruptly stops, and Matthew lets out a yelp. The lights are off.
Quickly, I squat low against the wall. I sense Matthew coming for me even before I hear the scrape of his feet against the floor. There’s a flurry as his hands brush against my head, and I panic, running low and fast with my hand against the wall, scurrying between the wall and the line of bumper blocks on the left side of the garage. My shoes are making too much noise on the concrete, so I pause long enough to yank them off. Then I pad farther along the garage floor in my socks.
“Damn it,” Matthew says. I can hear him fumbling along the wall for the light switch. It won’t be long before he finds it. And then what? I hunker down between two cars, my heartbeat thumping so hard that I’m afraid Matthew will be able to hear it. I’m about to make a run across the aisle, headed for the street entrance, when there’s a snapping sound, and a clicking, hissing sound spreads across the ceiling. Matthew has found the switch. The lights are back on.
“Natasha,” he calls out. “You don’t have anywhere to go. You might as well come out.” I hear his footsteps moving slowly along the line of cars.
I crouch lower. Slowly, I’m beginning to make out shapes again. The looming shadow of the SUV on my right, the gap of light streaming past its bumper and almost touching my knees. Matthew’s footsteps grow closer. I’d like to crawl underneath the SUV, but it’s too low to the ground; I can’t squeeze my body underneath.
Then I see Matthew’s shadow cross the shaft of light that nudges up against my knees. He’s facing away from me, bending down to peer between the cars in the opposite row. The cars there are parked at a slight incline, their back ends lower than their fronts. Matthew seems particularly interested in an old Camaro. He bends over to inspect the wheel. There’s a scraping noise. When he straightens, I see something rectangular in his hands. A brick, which the Camaro’s owner has put behind the back wheel to prevent the car from sliding downhill.
I creep backward, farther away from the light.
This is Matthew. Matthew, who I’ve known for years. But there are two Matthews now, the Matthew from my life and the Matthew from Allie’s. And it’s Allie’s Matthew who’s here with me now.
I slide back behind the SUV, searching for a safer hiding place, but as I do, my foot hits a piece of loose plastic, which skitters across the floor.
Matthew turns, his shoes scraping against the concrete. “Natasha?” he says softly. “Just come out, okay? Let’s talk this through. There’s no reason for it to be like this.” He is good at sounding like a calm, rational person, like the Matthew who stood up at the press conference pleading for people to come forward with information about Allie’s disappearance.
His footsteps move closer to the SUV.
The details of the garage are coalescing. Now I can see the dent in the SUV’s back bumper, the scratch in the paint on the yellow convertible. I’m trapped here, Matthew standing between me and the exits. And even if I were able to make it to the street entrance, I realize, I can’t open the gate without the clicker that’s in my car, the car that isn’t here. Matthew steps into the gap between the SUV and the car next to it.
Panic bubbles up in my chest, along with something else. Rage. Allie’s, and my own. In the end, Matthew will get what he wants from both of us—our silence.
The pressure builds up in the back of my throat. And suddenly, I scream. I lean back against the garage wall, kicking the bumper of the SUV so hard that the whole vehicle sways forward. The car alarm bursts into life, the noise deafening as it echoes against the walls. Matthew flinches, raising a hand to his ear, and I take advantage of the moment, ducking down and running to the other side of the SUV. As I hear him start to move, I run to the opposite row of cars, then squat low behind a green Subaru.
Matthew steps out from behind the SUV. From my position, I can hear his footsteps moving in my direction. Quickly, I jam my body against the Subaru, bruising my shoulder but managing to set off its alarm too. It’s only a matter of time before Matthew catches up with me—there’s only so far I can run in this space—but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I scramble through the parking garage, setting off alarms every few cars.
The garage has become an opera, a symphony, the concrete walls echoing with the sound of emergency. It feels good to cause this chaos—I’m Allie in one of her rages, powerful, out of control. I slip between two sedans and, breathing heavily, watch and listen for Matthew. He’s disoriented by the noise, and from my position, I can see his feet moving away from me. If I’m fast enough, there’s a chance I can make it to the stairwell doorway.
When I think I have an opening, I dart out from between the cars. But Matthew is closer than I’d anticipated, and he grabs me by the shirt, yanking me to the ground. My palms hit the rough concrete, and my knees register a white-hot feeling that is not yet pain. When I twist around, Matthew is impossibly tall above me, clutching the brick in his hand.
Don’t let him do it, Allie murmurs in my ear. Don’t you fucking let him win.
For a sliver of a second, Matthew hesitates, and that’s enough time for me to kick viciously at his kneecap. He stumbles and falls, his head knocking against the back of a pickup truck. Then he’s down on the ground, a trickle of blood leaking from his hairline.
Behind me, the door to the stairwell clicks open, and someone is yelling over the racket of car alarms, “What the hell is going on here?”
I scramble to my feet, grabbing for the brick that has fallen out of Matthew’s hand. Matthew’s hurt, but he’s not hurt enough. He’ll never be hurt enough.
“Natasha!” someone shouts as I raise the brick over my head. Then there’s the sound of running, and then someone clamps their arms around me and drags me away.
CHAPTER 58
The street outside the apartment complex flickers with flashing red and blue lights. Ruiz sits by my side on the back bumper of an ambulance as the EMT examines me, shining a small flashlight into my eyes.
The EMT clicks off the light and slides it back into his breast pocket. “She looks all right, apart from a few scrapes and bruises. But she should come down to the hospital for a once-over, just to be on the safe side.”
“Okay,” Ruiz says, but I’m shaking my head.
“Matthew . . .”
Ruiz’s thumb strokes my arm. “He’s in custody. What you need now is to rest.”
Someone walks out of the entrance doors—a police officer, murmuring into a walkie-talkie.
“The essay,” I say, trying to stand up, but Ruiz pulls me back down.
“Just sit for a minute.”
“It’s in the bathtub drain. I put it there when Matthew . . .”
“It’s okay,” Ruiz says. “We have officers in your apartment right now. I’ll tell them where to look.” He goes over to talk to the police officer, who relays the information on her walkie-talkie. Then there’s a brief exchange between Ruiz and the officer, their heads lowered as they talk.
The EMT wraps an emergency blanket around my shoulders. The apartment building, which I have seen a thousand times before, looks like a foreign landscape tonight. My ears are still ringing from the clamor of the alarms.
When Ruiz returns, his face is expansive with relief. “They’ve got it. That was good thinking, hiding it there.”
A shudder runs through me. It’s safe. The essay is safe.
Ruiz squeezes my hand. “You read what she wrote?”
I nod, watching the ambulance lights paint the side of the building in bright colors.
“What does it say?” he asks.
That’s when I start to cry, sobs scraping against the back of my throat, and as hard as I try, I can’t seem to make myself stop.
CHAPTER 59
At Gina’s, the television mounted on the wall blares the local news. Ruiz and I sit with cups of cooling coffee, today’s newspaper spread out between us, and watch the coverage in silence.
They’re playing clips from the last week: a helicopter view of Matthew’s cabin, the property crawling with police, the road beyond the driveway crammed with news vans.
A newscaster stands on the road outside the blocked entrance to the Crestline property, the wind blowing her hair around her face. “What we’re seeing here, Gary, is the continuing search of director Matthew Andersen’s vacation home in Crestline. Last month, almost four years to the day when Allie Andersen went missing, police recovered evidence from the property that may implicate Mr. Andersen in his niece’s death. Now, police are conducting a thorough search of these woods, hoping to locate Ms. Andersen’s body. So far, they have not been successful.”
My jaw tightens.
On the TV, they’re showing old photos of Matthew and Allie. Allie when she was young, Matthew carrying her on his shoulders. Matthew and Allie sitting on the steps of the cabin in Crestline, smiling happily at the camera.
“Hey, Diane,” Ruiz says. “Could you turn this off? It’s been the same thing on a loop for the past half hour.”
“Sure, hon.” Diane tops up our coffees and then walks to the cashier’s station, where she picks up a remote control and switches off the TV.
“Hey! I was watching that,” a man protests, but Diane ignores him.
“How’re you holding up?” Ruiz asks. He looks rumpled, exhausted. The investigation has taken a lot out of him, and I know it hasn’t been easy for him to carve out this time to meet with me.
“Fine, I guess.”
“The press bothering you?”
I laugh. My phone has been ringing constantly. My email inbox is clogged with requests for interviews. “It got too intense at my apartment, so I’m staying at my mom’s for a while. But they’ve caught on to that; now they’re outside her place too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” The diner is filled with sunlight. The cold front has passed, and people are wearing T-shirts again. “They’ll be able to convict Matthew, won’t they, even without her body? I mean, the blood, the DNA—you can prove that it’s Allie’s. Surely that’s enough.”
Ruiz frowns. He doesn’t respond for a moment. “It’s enough, in that it places her at the cabin. And Matthew admits to going to see her there, to the altercation in the kitchen. But you’ve heard his story. His version of what happened. Without her body, it could be difficult to get a conviction. His lawyers will work hard to get the essay suppressed as evidence. They’ll question whether Allie really wrote it. They’ll say we can’t prove it’s genuine.”
A jolt runs through me. We need the essay to prove Matthew’s motive. “You can’t be serious.”
He grimaces. “I just want you to know what we might be up against. When we interviewed Isabel, she claimed you were the source of the essay. Said the stress of the investigation had gotten to you and that you fabricated the whole thing.”
I slump back in the booth. Why does it surprise me, even now, what Isabel is capable of? She’s publicly condemned Matthew for keeping his altercation with Allie that night a secret. But she stands by his story: he didn’t kill Allie. Not for the first time, I wonder why Isabel’s loyalties fall the way they do. Is the bond between Isabel and Matthew that strong? Or has she simply calculated the impact on her reputation if she admits what Allie has written in her essay is true?
“But we can prove it, can’t we, that Allie wrote it?”
He swirls the dregs of coffee in his cup, before taking a sip, wincing at the bitterness. “The creation date of a Word document, it seems, can be fabricated pretty easily. And no one was with you when you discovered the flash drive. It’s going to be a challenge authenticating it. They may claim you had her flash drive all along.” He leans forward, resting his arms on the table. “Look, Matthew’s going to spend time in prison; there’s no question about that. We’ll get him on obstruction of justice, assault . . .”
“That’s not enough!”
His face is drawn. “I know. And I’m sorry.” He does know. He knows exactly what this is like. “But you may want to prepare yourself for the fact that Matthew may not be convicted for Allie’s murder.”
“So he’s going to get away with it.” After all this.
“We’re going to do our best,” Ruiz says. But he doesn’t sound hopeful. The search for the body will be wrapping up soon. And without the essay as evidence, Matthew appears to have no motive; his story about what happened at the cabin might ring true to a jury.
While Diane’s busy with a table in the back, a different waitress turns the television back on, and sound fills the diner again. On the screen, reporters crowd around Isabel as she leaves the police station. Her beautiful face looks haggard. Her bodyguard pushes a path to her car, and she ducks the microphones being shoved in her face and slides into the back seat of an SUV. After that, tinted windows protect her from view.
“What about Macnamara?” I say suddenly. “Surely he can verify that Allie wrote the essay?”
“He’s lawyered up,” Ruiz says. “Won’t talk to us.” The police have looked into Macnamara’s finances, trying to determine his source of income for the past four years. On the surface, his income looks legit, deposits from some nonprofit he claims to have been doing contract consulting for. But Ruiz suspects the nonprofit’s just a shell company, and that the payments funneled through it are coming from Isabel.
I feel a burning sensation in my chest. “He doesn’t want to admit she paid him off. To keep quiet.”
Ruiz nods.
I grip the edge of the table. None of these people will pay for what they did. Their money and their lawyers will protect them.
“It’s a shitty situation,” Ruiz says. “We might make more headway if we could locate Allie’s therapist. But Allie never mentioned a name to anyone. So unless the therapist decides to step forward voluntarily, we’re stuck on that front as well.”
A long minute goes by, and I discover that I’ve lost feeling in my fingers. I let go of the edge of the table. Something has been bothering me the past few days, but I’m hesitant to voice the thought. “Ruiz, what if there isn’t a body to find in the woods?”
His forehead wrinkles. “You mean if the body was moved?”
“I mean, if there’s no body at all,” I say. “If Matthew’s telling the truth.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Natasha. You can’t possibly believe him.”
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice strained. “It’s just—I don’t get why he would’ve pushed so hard for the investigation to keep going all those years, if the whole time he knew she was dead.”
“It was a cover,” Ruiz says. “He got to look like the hero.”
“But that would be a hell of a gamble, wouldn’t it? The longer people looked for Allie, the greater the chance he’d be found out. It doesn’t make sense.”
Ruiz shakes his head. “Maybe we can’t understand how Matthew’s mind works.”
But I can’t stop picking at the topic. “Well, then, what about the flash drive? Who left that on my doorstep? If not Allie, who?” I’m jittery from all the coffee I’ve drunk.
