212: A Novel Part 8

"Oh, s.h.i.t," she said, her momentary inner calm destroyed. "Did Mom call? I totally s.p.a.ced."

With rare exceptions, Ellie called her mother in Wichita every single night. The routine dated back to her first days in New York, where she'd followed Jess more than ten years ago to a.s.suage her mother's concerns about her only son, and most reckless child, living on his own in a city where a person like Jess could find more than his fair share of trouble. Ellie would call her mother each night because she knew her mother would sleep better once she heard her two children in the big city were safe.

Then slowly what had begun as a sweet habit had become a requirement-minimal validation to lonely, widowed Roberta that the children who'd abandoned her at least missed her from afar.

And now Ellie had forgotten to call. She knew from experience she would pay for it the next time they spoke.

"You didn't tell her where I was, did you?"

"Are you kidding? I didn't pick up the phone."

"Jess."

"Sorry, sis. That drama's your department."

"I a.s.sume she left an epic message?"

Jess nodded, knocking back a toss of bourbon.

"Don't tell me. She did her whole pa.s.sive-aggressive, I-know-you've-got-more-important-things-to-do speech."

"Something like that. I believe she may have said something about spending all your time with a man she still knows nothing about and has never met."

"Jesus. I never should have mentioned Max to her."

"Uh, duh? Don't ask, don't tell, is my motto. Tie me to a water board at Gitmo. Call out the dogs. I say notzing," he said in his best Sergeant Schultz impersonation.

"You know the only reason you get away with that is because I tell Mom what's going on with you."

"No, you tell her what she wants to hear about what's going on with me. The dude featured in the fictional tales of those phone calls is a complete and utter tool."

Ellie did have a tendency to convey to their mother a brighter version of her and Jess's lives. In the fairy-tale world that Ellie had created for her mother's benefit, Ellie was a well-adjusted woman who just happened to be a cop, who had girlfriends, dates, and hobbies. She was nothing like the father, and her mother's husband, who had given everything to the job. And in these stories Jess's band, Dog Park, actually got paid to play standing-room-only gigs, and a lucrative record contract was waiting for them around the next corner.

"You should have picked up, Jess. Just to make her feel better."

"And you should stop coddling her, and allowing her to hold you hostage with your daily calls. But that's not up to me."

Instead of responding, Ellie took another sip of her drink.

"So," Jess said, filling the silence, "I may have met the stupidest woman on the planet yesterday."

"Hmm, I don't know. The compet.i.tion in that arena can be pretty stiff."

"I was walking down Fifth Avenue to meet this girl at Park Bar when I notice this kid-couldn't have been but four years old-sitting in the pa.s.senger seat of this parked car. And I noticed because I was thinking that's how we'd ride when we were kids-just plunked down in the front seat like that-no child seats, no seat belts, whatever. Then I notice the windows are down and there's no one else in the car. Then I see there's a purse sitting on the console, and the keys are hanging from the ignition."

"Brilliant."

He took in another gulp of bourbon. "So then I see this lady stroll out of the deli with an arm full of flowers, carefree as can be, and she starts making her way over to the car. I said, 'This is your car?' 'Oh yeah,' like nothing's wrong. And I told her she couldn't be leaving her kid alone in the car like that. She's all, 'But I could see him the entire time.'"

"Idiot."

"Right. So I say, 'I could've hopped into that front seat and been gone in a second. Your car, your kid, your s.h.i.t, would be gone.' You know what she says? 'I don't worry. I'm a woman of G.o.d.' Like everyone in the world who has bad c.r.a.p happen to them must have turned their backs on G.o.d."

Ellie found herself smiling. "Aren't you the one who usually says 'Live and let live'?"

"Even I'm not such an apathetic sack not to notice when some little four-year-old's at stake."

"No, but getting in a woman's face like that? Trying to convince her to be a better mother? Jess Hatcher, you actually tried to change the world."

"s.h.i.t. I really have been spending way too much time with you. I'm turning...earnest."

"Poor you. You know you're welcome to vacate Chez Hatcher whenever you feel like it," she teased.

"And give up the best-priced sofa s.p.a.ce in Manhattan? And with cable, no less? Not a chance."

Ellie spun the bottom of her gla.s.s-down only to the remnants of ice-in a circle against the bar. There had been a time when she'd been annoyed by Jess's repeated periods of tenancy in her living room, each one a sign that his most recent job and/or roommate situation hadn't taken. But he had now held the same job for more than six months-a new personal record. It happened to be at a strip club called Vibrations, but Ellie had long stopped worrying about that. To know that he was staying with her by choice changed everything.

"So, El, when are we going to talk about what happened?"

"What happened when?"

"Don't try to play this cool with me. Yesterday. In court. Getting a judge mad enough that he put you in a jail for a night? That doesn't sound like my well-behaved team player of a little sister."

"I already told you what happened. The entire thing got out of control."

"You don't get out of control, Ellie. It's not your nature. You are the most controlled person I have ever known."

"What are you saying?"

"I've seen how you work. Even at home, when you're reading cold case reports, you hunch over your doc.u.ments and create this private world that no one else can penetrate. That little notebook of yours? You treat that s.h.i.t like the gold at Fort Knox. So you tell me: How'd that rich p.r.i.c.k's lawyer wind up sneaking a peek?"

"You think I did this on purpose?" She shook her head and laughed. Catching the bartender's eye, she pointed to their empty gla.s.ses to signal for another round. "Maybe we should take this conversation home so I can lie on the couch while you tell me what other Freudian tendencies I have."

"I'm not saying you did it intentionally. I'm saying you did something that's not you, El. You're usually the chick who can talk her way out of anything."

They sat in silence while the bartender set down two fresh gla.s.ses. Ellie gave the guy an awkward smile as he cleared away their empties, extricating himself from what he clearly sensed was a private conversation.

"I can't believe you're blaming me for this. Do you have any idea how much last night sucked? It was filthy, and awful, and lonely, and terrifying. And totally humiliating."

"You're misunderstanding me," he said, his voice softening. "I'm not saying you wanted this to happen. All I'm saying is that it could only have happened if you were off your game. And I'm sorry, El, but that scares me. For your own whacked reasons, you are totally committed to doing the same crazy work Dad did. This time you got twenty-four hours of h.e.l.l, but next time, you might really f.u.c.k up. That's the kind of s.h.i.t that can really get you hurt."

"I'm fine."

"You're not," he said, holding her stare.

Her brother was rarely serious, let alone stern. As she looked at his concerned face, she felt her defiance begin to melt away. She didn't want to talk about this. She didn't want to think that Jess had seen something in her that she was completely unaware of.

"I don't know what happened. It's Sparks. It's this feeling in my gut that I missed something, and now he's getting away with it. Because of me. And no one else cares because he's who he is. And that poor man, Jess." She thought about Robert Mancini's body, laid out naked and b.l.o.o.d.y against the crisp, clean white cotton sheets. G.o.d, she was tired. And the whiskey on a near-empty stomach was taking its toll. "It's been four months. He has a sister, and two little nieces, and they don't have any answers. And Sparks. He doesn't even care. And his lawyer had the nerve to bring up the Dateline thing and People magazine, as if I had done any of that for myself."

Media interest in her father had briefly landed Ellie in the national spotlight. Back in Wichita, Jerry Hatcher spent the better part of his career as a detective-close to fifteen years-hunting the infamous College Hill Strangler. When he was found dead behind the wheel of his Mercury Sable on a country road north of town, the department labeled it a suicide, but Ellie had spent the length of her father's search and then some convinced it was not. The media became momentarily fascinated with Ellie when the Wichita Police Department finally captured the killer, nearly thirty years after his first murder. Ellie thought the attention would pressure the WPD to honor her father's pension.

That was all in the past. Six months ago, she had begun to accept the truth about her father's death. Sometimes fathers killed themselves. Ernest Hemingway. Kurt Cobain. Jerry Hatcher. She'd never understand it, but she had finally stopped fighting. But then Sam Sparks's lawyer tried to use it all against her in court.

"I let him get to me," she said. "I hate him. I hate him, and I let it show. I let him get to me."

She felt her brother's arm around her shoulder and saw him throw crumpled bills from the front pocket of his jeans onto the bar. He managed to shuffle her out of Plug Uglies, away from the view of her fellow officers, before she began to cry.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26.

8:15 A.M.

Eight-fifteen a.m. on Friday.

Two days had pa.s.sed since Megan Gunther had discovered that hideous Web site, Campus Juice. Day one had been spent reading and rereading the posts, trying to digest the fact that someone out there apparently despised her. Day two had brought her parents and a trip to the police station, but nothing had changed. She wondered whether day three might finally be the end of it.

She laid belly-down on her double bed, kicking alternating calves against the bedspread while she read her next biochemistry a.s.signment and listened to Death Cab for Cutie on her iPod. With a neon pink highlighting marker, she traced a sentence in her textbook about the biosynthesis of membrane liquids. She had an exam in a week and was going to have to set the curve to have any shot at an A after missing lab yesterday.

She had e-mailed her lab TA with a polite explanation for the absence, but had not received a reply-at least not when she'd last checked her e-mail twenty minutes ago. She thought about logging in again but didn't want to go online. She didn't want the temptation of reading those horrible messages about herself again. She didn't want to think about the possibility that there could be newer postings.

As impossible as it seemed, she was trying to follow Courtney's advice to ignore the Web site altogether. She and Courtney had practically grown up together in New Jersey. When they had both accepted college admissions in the city-Courtney at Columbia, Megan at NYU-they had celebrated the fact that going off to school was not going to separate them. But now they were soph.o.m.ores, and the reality was that the six miles between Courtney's Morningside Heights apartment and Megan's Greenwich Village place may as well have been a train ride between Chicago and Philly. Between cla.s.ses, homework, and making new friends at their respective schools, they were lucky to see each other once a month.

But Courtney had dropped everything when Megan had called her yesterday. And Courtney had proved more helpful than either Megan's parents or the police. Courtney was a volunteer at a domestic violence hotline and had some experience dealing with stalking-or at least its victims.

According to Courtney, Megan would be best off ignoring what had been written about her on the Web site. They were merely words in cybers.p.a.ce. The first post she'd found went back three weeks, and until she came across her name two days ago, the words had sat online-stagnant, black and white, incapable of harming her. She simply needed to erase the problem from her mind-forget she'd ever seen the posts, and force herself to go back to normal.

Easier said than done.

She kept replaying Sergeant Martinez's words in her mind. Messing with someone's head isn't a crime.... There's a whole bunch on there that's way worse.... You can't let this get to you.

She reminded herself that there were thousands of posts on that Web site, millions if one were to count all of the many anonymous chatboards and blog comments that were on the Internet overall. She couldn't let a couple of sentences-among all of that garbage-get to her.

Still, instead of learning more about how the molecules of life were synthesized, she found herself running through a host of possible suspects. Her father had immediately brushed off the sergeant's suggestion that Megan might know the author of the notes. That's the kind of father he was, the kind of father who instinctively leaped to his daughter's defense. Of course he had sought to protect Megan against the notion that she might have made herself an enemy. Of course he hadn't stopped to wonder.

But he had reacted so quickly that Megan hadn't stopped to wonder, either. Even standing for half an hour in the precinct, she had never paused to really think through the question of who might be in a position-or have a motive-to "mess with her head," as Sergeant Martinez had said. Or, as Courtney had put it more bluntly, "pull a mind-f.u.c.k on her."

There was that guy outside their apartment last month. He was at the bus stop when she ducked inside Jamba Juice. She initially noticed him because he was cute, but by the time she had her Mango Mantra, the 3 bus had come and gone without him. Instead, he stood at the entrance of her building, and as she approached, she could have sworn that he'd been reading the list of names posted at the entrance, his finger resting close to her buzzer. She'd blown it off once the lobby door shut securely behind her, but now she wondered if there was some possibility she'd seen him before on campus.

As hard as she tried to remember that man's face, her mind kept pulling up another image. Keith.

They were still together when she picked her fall cla.s.ses, so Keith knew her schedule. Keith would know how much something like this would distract her from school. Keith was addicted to the Internet. He would know about a site like Campus Juice, and he would know that the site provided anonymity. And Keith could be vindictive when he set his mind to it.

But they had broken up back in June, and the online posts didn't start until the beginning of September. Would he really stew for almost three months before carrying out a full-on a.s.sault of terror against her that continued to this day? It was hard to imagine.

But as she wrapped her necklace-the thin silver chain dangling the heart pendant that Keith had given her-around the tip of her right index finger, she couldn't help but wonder.

Over the quiet distraction of the background music flowing through her headphones, she heard the clang of a pan against the electric stovetop in the kitchen. Heather had emerged from her cave for a feeding.

Megan had hoped that the one upside to getting a roommate would be a new friendship, a girlfriend to talk to late at night. And when Heather first moved in, she wasn't particularly cold. In those initial weeks, she joined Megan in the living room for a couple of episodes of Project Runway, one of the only shows Megan ever made time for. They also formed a habit of piggybacking their takeout orders so they could share dinner at the table.

Then one night in June, after Heather caught Megan crying in her room after officially calling it quits with Keith, Heather had actually opened up to her. She said she'd gone through some rough times-a boyfriend, someone older, someone who really f.u.c.ked with her head. She said she was pretty screwed up until she went through counseling for it, and now she was getting a fresh start. But then Megan had made the mistake of asking her what had happened between her and the guy to make it so bad, and all of a sudden, Heather was gone. She had a paper to write or something, excused herself from Megan's room, and never mentioned the conversation-or any other one, for that matter-again. She was just a tenant renting a room.

Then, yesterday, when she got home from the police station, for just a second, Megan had felt something like a bond again when Heather noticed how upset she was and asked what was wrong. But when Megan told her about the Web site, all Heather had said was, "Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. That must be really stressful."

Megan supposed it was a polite enough response. But it wasn't the kind of thing a real friend would say. Courtney had spent nearly an hour with her on the phone yesterday, helping her pull herself together and put the entire situation into context. "The big picture," Courtney kept saying.

Then later, when Megan was hanging her coat in the closet outside Heather's room, she heard Heather on the phone saying something about "threats" on a Web site. She hadn't asked Heather to keep it a secret. And she probably should have expected Heather to gossip to whomever it was she spent most of her time with when she wasn't home. But she didn't want anyone else talking about it. About her.

And she didn't need to hear that word. Threats.

Megan looked at her watch. Eight forty. She should be at her morning spin cla.s.s, pushing through a sprint to spike her heart rate. But Courtney had advised her to deviate from her usual schedule, just in case.

She turned her attention back to a paragraph about steroid biosynthesis in rat cells, and realized she was actually starting to feel better. She had gone a full hour without crying. Maybe in the afternoon, after cla.s.ses, she'd go to the gym and use the elliptical trainer for a little while.

As she turned the page, she heard a knock on the apartment door. She pulled one bud from her ear to make sure Heather was going to respond. Maybe she would finally meet one of Heather's friends.

"I'll get it," Heather yelled from the kitchen.

Megan readjusted her headphones and turned back to her book just as she realized she hadn't heard the security door buzzer.

"No, wait," she yelled, pulling off her headset.

Jumping from her bed and lunging toward her bedroom door, she heard voices in the living room, then a loud groan, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

Megan should have stayed in her room. She should have jumped out the window to the street below if that's what it was going to take.

But she didn't think. She acted on instinct. And her instinct was to help Heather. Heather. Poor innocent Heather. In the wrong place at the wrong time.

She opened her bedroom door to see her roommate sprawled on the floor next to the breakfast table. A man in a black-wool ski mask was plunging a six-inch blade into her torso. As he pulled the knife from Heather's body, he looked up, saw Megan, and charged toward her.

Following instinct again, she slammed her door shut. She found herself grasping at the doork.n.o.b, but there was no lock on the bedroom door. She pressed her back against the door, trying to hold it closed with the weight of her body, but it was no use.

As she felt the door spring open and push her forward to the ground, Megan knew she would die. She knew she would never see her mother, father, or Courtney again. She would never graduate from college. She would never become a doctor.

She wished she could have saved Heather. She wished she knew why this was happening. And she wished she could have said good-bye.