The Last Good Girl (24 page)

“My parents definitely didn't when I pledged.”

“You were in a frat?” Anna rocked back. “I didn't know that.”

“Yeah. It wasn't like the one you're investigating. I mean, sure, we had plenty of drinking in our basement. But there was community service, leadership roles. I learned a lot, made some good friends. In a big campus, it was a small place to call home. We did a few stupid things, but nothing earth-shattering. Mostly it was good.”

“Huh. Why'd you join?”

He shrugged. “I never really thought about it. But, I guess—in our world, there aren't many rites of passage for boys to become men. We don't have gladiatorial contests, right? There's something appealing about being tested and seeing how you measure up.”

“They must have
something
going for them. These frats, they have crazy successful alumni who donate fortunes. That's why colleges don't ban them or even really discipline them as much as they should. When colleges try to rein them in, the frats convince their alumni to stop donating.”

“Anna.” Cooper ran a hand through her hair. “Like I said before, you can't single-handedly fix America's campuses tonight.”

“I know.” She managed a tired smile. “I'm sorry to rant.”

“You're working hard, doing the best you can. So just keep that up. That's all anyone can give. One day, one task at a time. Focus on that. I happen to think that your best is as good as it gets. If you can't find Emily Shapiro, no one can.”

Anna sighed and laid her head on Cooper's chest. He wrapped his arms around her and held her for a while. Her eyelids started to drift down. He took her hand and helped her up.

“Come to bed now. You'll figure it out in the morning.”

She followed him up the stairs. Cooper wasn't a lawyer or an investigator. He couldn't help her solve this case. But he knew people—he knew her. And he'd always had her back. Always. There was nothing more precious than that.

As she brushed her teeth, Cooper stood behind her, swept her hair to one side, and kissed her neck. It was just a quick kiss, a casual moment of connection between familiar lovers. But she stopped brushing her teeth and concentrated on that feeling, the electric softness of his lips on her skin. When he straightened, she said, “Will you do that again?”

He smiled at her in the mirror. “Anything I can do to help.”

He brought his mouth to the side of her neck and kissed her again. She shivered as his tongue played circles on her skin. His hand encircled her breast, tracing the contours. Her nipples hardened, her breaths came quicker, and she knew she wasn't going to sleep any time soon.

She set her toothbrush on the sink, turned, and wrapped her arms around him. They kissed, gently at first, then with rising intensity. After all she'd seen the last few days, she just wanted to lose herself in this. Pure physical pleasure, touch, taste. Something good and easy and true. His hands slipped under her thighs, and she wrapped her legs around him as he lifted her up. He carried her to the bed and laid her on the cover. Their clothes came off quickly; his prosthetic took a moment longer.

She ran her hands across the scars that disfigured the taut muscles of his torso. She was no longer surprised by the wounds that radiated upward from his knee and tapered at his stomach. She did not blanch at the sight of his severed limb, the seam in his leg where the skin simply folded back onto itself. He was beautiful and kind, and she knew without a doubt that he loved her, even if she'd never allowed him to say it.

Anna pulled Cooper on top of her, needing to lose herself in the sweet and simple sensation of skin on skin. “Please,” she said. “Now.” He slipped inside her, and she drew him tighter still, burying her face in the crook of his neck. He smelled like pine trees; he tasted like Honeycrisp apples. His body brought her intense pleasure; she couldn't get close enough to him. They rocked in deep rhythm with each other. But even as she moaned with the intensity of it, she understood this wasn't just about sex. She was holding tight to the most solid thing in her life.

A
nna lay curled into Cooper, blinking into the milky morning light. She could hear Jody puttering around downstairs, speaking in soft singsong to her baby. She sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, took her phone from the nightstand, and started swiping. She had an e-mail from Sam entitled, “Pics from Traffic Cameras.” Anna tapped on the five attached images.

All five were photos of Dylan's red Viper driving on city streets the night Emily disappeared. If the Viper wasn't distinctive enough, his license plate was clear. The first picture showed the car on the I-75 highway, southbound. Two silhouettes sat in it, one in the driver's seat, one upright in the passenger seat. The time stamp said 1:34
A.M.
The next picture, taken ten minutes later, showed the Viper passing a line of abandoned buildings, their walls covered in graffiti and their windows covered in plywood. Detroit. Anna looked at the location stamp and saw that it was taken on Dequindre Street. Her stomach dropped. Why would a college kid from Tower, fifty miles away, be in downtown Detroit in the early hours of the morning?

The third picture, taken at 2:30
A.M.
, was different. It was a photo of the Viper from the front, as it idled before a brightly lit glass-enclosed booth. Dylan's face was clearly visible in the front seat, and his best friend, Peter York, was in the passenger seat. The sign on the booth read
U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT.
Anna recognized the booth. As a younger woman, she'd passed there many times herself, on wild nights out with friends who'd gone that way because the drinking age in Canada was nineteen. This picture was taken at the checkpoint for the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor.

The final two pictures showed Dylan's car driving back toward Tower University at 4:45
A.M.
Peter was still in the passenger seat.

A pit in Anna's stomach opened up, feeling deeper than the Pit at Tower University. There were a few legitimate reasons for Dylan to be heading to Canada the night Emily disappeared. Maybe he went to Windsor to party. It was not uncommon for Michiganders—especially teenagers—to cross the border for a night out. But Dylan and Peter were twenty-one; they didn't need the lowered drinking age that Windsor offered. And the time stamp between his Detroit-bound trip on I-75 and his appearance at the international checkpoint was too long. He'd stopped somewhere for an hour. To dispose of a body?

If you committed a crime, Detroit was a good place to hide the evidence. There were hundreds of abandoned buildings and empty lots. Countless forgotten basements and empty attics. Once home to 1.7 million people, Detroit's population was now under 800,000. The abandoned lots alone would fill the entire city of Paris. The Detroit police, stretched thin and woefully underfunded, had hours-long delays in responding to 911 calls—if they responded at all. A body could lie, undiscovered, for months or years.

Anna could picture it. Dylan and Peter, dragging Emily's blanket-wrapped body from the trunk of the Viper. Carrying the bundle out onto the empty street, where no living soul was around to see them. Walking it into an abandoned skyscraper. Finding an abandoned elevator shaft. Heaving. The silence as her body went down. A muffled thud as she hit the ground.

Anna closed her eyes, trying to shut down the image. She felt Cooper sit up next to her in bed. He put his hand on her arm. “You're shaking,” he said. “What's going on?”

She turned to him, trying to find reassurance in his clear blue eyes. But while she found kindness and concern, Cooper couldn't provide the hope she wanted.

“I don't think we're going to find Emily Shapiro alive.”

A
needle in a haystack might be easier to find,
Anna thought,
than a corpse in the city of Detroit.
At least a haystack had a finite number of straws. In Detroit, there were countless nooks and crannies, rotting cellars, forgotten buildings, rooms known and rooms unknown. And that was just Detroit. Windsor had to be searched too. She went in to the FBI command center and hammered out the details with Sam, Jack, and the team. They needed police, boats, dogs, cold-water scuba divers, volunteers. Lots of volunteers. The scope of their task was mind-boggling.

But so was Cooper's response. As Anna and Sam pulled up into his driveway three hours later, they had to slow the SUV. His long circular drive was covered in people. The backyard was filled with people. People stood on the porch and spilled into Cooper's house. Anna gaped as she estimated. There had to be over two hundred of them, in jeans and flannel shirts, puffy winter jackets and ski hats, carrying flashlights and shovels, assembled on Cooper's property.

She got out of the car and climbed the steps to his house, saying, “Excuse me,” as she moved through the crowd. Cooper came out of the front door, followed by his big white dog. They met on the porch. Sparky sat on Anna's feet and grinned happily as he looked between his owner and her.

“How'd you do this?” Anna asked.

“Everyone wants to help. It's mostly Detroit people, but we even have some students who came in from Tower. I just gave them all a place to meet.”

The best search efforts were always those that had volunteers working side by side with the police. Especially in a situation like Emily's where there was so much ground to cover. The more volunteers, the more likely they were to stumble upon a clue, a piece of clothing, the body itself. At Tower University, where Emily had friends, professors, fellow students, there'd been an impressive volunteer turnout. Anna had feared that they couldn't assemble that kind of response in Detroit.

Cooper must have been going full-out since she left this morning, making phone calls, sending e-mails, calling in favors. She knew that he was involved in the community. Living with him the last few months, she'd seen the network of activists, artists, musicians, urban farmers, and religious leaders who came to Cooper for advice or to till a section of his community garden. But this response—and his ability to spark it—shook something inside her.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Anything I can do,” he said, “I will.”

They stood an arm's length apart, not touching. Looking up into his kind blue eyes, she felt a connection that was more intimate than anything they'd done in his bedroom.

The sound of a throat clearing made her realize that the crowd had gone quiet as they watched her and Cooper. She turned and saw Jack walking up the porch steps. She was disoriented at the sight of Jack here in Cooper's yard.

“Jack,” she said. “I, ah, didn't expect you here.”

“I'm coordinating the Detroit search teams.”

“I see.” She recovered her composure. “Have you met Cooper Bolden?”

“Not yet.”

Anna could hear the struggle in Jack's voice, trying to keep it casual and professional. She glanced at Cooper and saw in his face resolve to keep himself polite and helpful as he met his rival. Both were tall and good-looking, both skilled at their chosen work, so different from each other. She'd spent months contemplating what her life would be like with each one. She'd never imagined them meeting each other.

“Cooper,” she said, “this is Jack Bailey. Jack, this is Cooper Bolden.”

Both men put out their hands in a vigorous male handshake. Both men put on good faces.

“You've assembled quite a team of volunteers,” Jack said. “I've never seen anything quite like this. Thank you.”

“Glad to be able to help,” Cooper said.

Anna realized she wasn't breathing. She exhaled. Jack and Cooper might be rivals, but they were not about to throw down. They were good men who would work with each other to find the missing girl.

A few more police officers climbed the steps, led by Sam. Sam shot Anna a look that said
How you gonna handle this one, sister?
, before huddling into the conversation. They all stood on the porch, hammering out the logistics. After about ten minutes, they had a plan.

Cooper led them through the house. The kitchen table was covered with casserole dishes and Tupperware containers full of food, which some of the volunteers were eating. Cooper had turned his house into a command center not unlike the command center that Sam had established at the FBI's Detroit field office—only with better grub.

Cooper's backyard was a large grassy space, surrounded on three sides by the apple orchard. The skyline of Detroit stood gray and solemn behind the orchard. The trees were bare and the ground was brown. A few sad piles of snow remained in shady areas. Hundreds of people stood in the yard, sipping coffee, huddled in groups talking softly. They quieted as Cooper walked out with the team of investigators.

Cooper stood by his hand-dug fire pit. Jack stood to one side of Cooper, and Anna and Sam stood to the other.

“Thank you for coming here today.” Cooper's deep voice carried over the yard. “It means a lot to the family of Emily Shapiro. And it means a lot to me. I appreciate you all giving up your time for this.”

“We gotcha covered, Coop,” yelled a man.

Cooper nodded. “This is Jack Bailey, the chief homicide prosecutor from D.C., and Sam Randazzo from the FBI. And of course, a lot of you know Anna. They're coordinating the Detroit search teams.” He turned to Jack. “You want to take it from here?”

“Thanks.” Jack stepped forward and spoke to the volunteers. “We appreciate your help today. It's crucial. Your work may be long and tiring. But please know how important it is.” Jack had an air of gravitas, the experience of a man who'd seen all that there was to see and who knew what he was doing. In this crowd of strangers, he held their attention and respect. “We're going to split into a bunch of smaller teams, with each team assigned to a particular area that you can go over in detail. Anything notable should be brought to the attention of me and Agent Randazzo.” He gave them a hotline number and e-mail address set up for receiving tips. He laid out the guidelines for the search effort, then stepped aside and let Cooper take the floor again.