Whisper to Me (38 page)

I walked past a dead potted plant and got in the elevator, rode up to the third floor. I came out onto a utilitarian corridor, like you’d find in any office building, or at least any office building of a company that has seen better times. There were motivational posters on the wall—
BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE
. Also missing-person posters, and advertisements for charity barbecues and touch football.

I turned right and followed the corridor until I came to an open-plan office. I could see the ocean from up here—far off, a couple of recreational fishing boats. There was a haze over the water and the beach, the rides of the piers like smudged watercolor. Inside the office there were people sitting at desks, others standing and talking to each other—a whiteboard in a corner had some scribbled notes and questions on it. A few rooms with doors lined the side wall.

Dwight put his phone down, stood up from a desk, and walked over to me. “Cass,” he said. His tone was … wary. “What are you doing here?”

“I need for you to tell me what you know,” I said.

“About what?”

“About Paris. And about the cops. You went all weird when we were talking about it. I
know
there’s something.”

He took my arm and steered me back toward the corridor. “There isn’t, Cass. Leave it, okay?”

I looked over his shoulder at the other cops working; a couple of them had turned to watch us, and this is the part I’m not proud of.

“Do they know?” I said.

He stopped, so we were standing just in and just out of the open-plan room. “Do they know what?”

“About group. About Dr. Lewis.”

His eyes widened. He was looking at me like I had disappeared and some other, scarier person had been dropped down in front of him instead. Like I was an alien. “Keep your voice d—”

“Do they?”

“What do
you
think?” he hissed.

“I think they don’t. Not all of them anyway. Your boss, maybe, because I guess you had to tell him. Her? Him or her. I have no idea.”

“You’re babbling, Cass,” said the voice.

“Time to leave,” said Dwight.

“No.”

“What’s your deal anyway?” he said. “You hardly even knew Paris. Why are you so obsessed with this?”

I took a step back, like I’d been gut-punched. “
What
? She was my friend.”

He held his hands up. “Fine, fine. Just get out of here. I can’t have you here.”

“No,” I said. “Time to tell me what you’re holding back.”

“Jesus, Cass! I could lose my job. I’m not being blackmailed by some teenage girl into—”

“I’m not blackmailing you,” I said.

“Oh yeah, sure.” His breath was bad: coffee and cigarettes. It was not helping with the nausea in the pit of my stomach, the self-hatred. But the voice was egging me on. “Look, I’m not even working the case,” he said. “I don’t talk to anyone about it. I don’t know what they’re doing. Anything I said … it would just be a personal hunch.”

“Please, Dwight,” I said. “Please. I’m sorry about … about what I said, about your colleagues. For mentioning group. But I
need
to know. I need to find Paris.”

Dwight looked into my eyes for what felt like minutes.

“Cass,” he said slowly. “Please understand. I cannot do what you’re asking.”

“But—”

He shook his head, more sad than anything else. “No buts,” he said. “I’m a police officer. I’m not going to give you information. I’m not compromising our investigation, and I’m not supporting you in going on some vigilante mission of your own.”

“She’d want you to help me,” I said.

He flinched. “Low blow, Cassie,” he said. Then he put his hands on my shoulders. “Listen. You have to drop this. Promise me you’re going to drop this.”

“I promise,” I lied.

Dwight put his head in his hands. “****,” he said. “****.”

I should probably send him an apology letter too.

A picture, in my head:

Paris enters a dark house by the ocean. She thinks she’s meeting some guys for a bachelor party.

Then … what?

Someone hits her over the back of the head? She falls, seeing stars, scuffs her hands on the linoleum floor. There is graffiti on the walls; she can smell the acrid scent of urine.

She turns; it makes fireworks of pain go off in her head. She sees a cop standing by the door, in his uniform.

Thank God
, she thinks.

But then he takes a step toward her. And he smiles. And he raises the hammer again.

Why should it be a hammer? I don’t know. I just get these images. I wish I didn’t. I wish I could make them go away.

But we can’t always make things go away.

The voice has taught me that at least.

Another picture in my head:

I’m with you, in the glow of sunset, sitting squashed together in a lifeguard stand, close to Pier Two. The lifeguard is gone, and the beach is empty apart from a few stragglers, apart from couples like us in the other stands; we were lucky to get this one, though pulling up in the company pickup probably worked pretty well to reserve it for us.

It was inevitable we’d end up here, sometime. We’re both Jersey, and we follow the old paths, the old patterns. It’s in our blood, like bees swarming to the same tree, year after year.

We were a boy, and a girl, and we were at the shore in the summer, and the lifeguard stand was there. Like a beacon.

The late-evening sun is hitting us horizontal, heat-lamp warm on my skin. You put your arm around me, and I feel your strength, the sheer
life
of it, buzzing, and we spark like a plug and a socket held close together, like an arc welder; the energy of it is a jolt to my heart, defib pads; ka-bam.

A seagull drifts past, eye level, on dirty white wings. Waves break whitely.

“We should do this more often,” you say.

“Hmm,” I say. I am merging with the sun, with the ocean, with you. I look at the white-hot disk in the sky and then my eyes put stuttering circles of light on everything—the sand, the waves, your face.

“And go on a date.”

“Hmm.”

“A real date, like, movie and dinner.”

I frown. “I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do a date?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My dad,” I say. “I can’t go out at night.”

Now it’s your turn to frown. “Your dad works late almost every night.”

I shake my head. “Too risky. He knows
everyone
. Someone might see us.”

“
You
go out,” you say. Accusation is a seam of freezing cold quartz in the rock of your voice.

A moment passes; the sun lowers one more increment; the seagull dives, splashes.

“I …”

“I’ve seen you leave. Take the bus. Last Thursday, right? You didn’t get back till late.”

“Um, yes,” I say.
Group
, I think. But of course I can’t risk you finding out about that part of me.

“So how come you can do that and you can’t go on a date with me?”

“I just can’t.”

You shift in the seat so you’re looking at me. I am very conscious of the steps leading up, white peeling paint in the sideways sun. I can hear the gulls, the ocean, cars, even, on the roads close to the pier, music. It’s as if the volume has been turned up on the world. I have a brief urge to jump, to leap down to the sand below. I might break my leg. I might not. I half close my eyes instead, and the sun makes butterfly wings of my eyelashes; iridescent. Glow fills my vision like lens glare.

But this is incapable of stopping time.

I know the question that is coming.

I know it like you know the vibration in the track is a train coming, when you put coins on the rails, as a kid.

And I can’t stop it anymore than I could stop a train.

“Where do you go?” you say. “Where
did
you go?”

“Nowhere.”

“Nowhere?”

“Yes.” I pause. “You don’t need to worry. It’s nothing like that.” But in my head, I’m thinking: Is that true? Is that true that he doesn’t have to worry? This is a question I don’t even need the voice to ask me.

“I wasn’t worried. I just don’t get why you won’t tell me.”

“It’s … personal,” I say.

“I thought we were in a personal zone,” you say. “Like … getting to know each other.”

“We are,” I say.

“Apart from your telling me about your life. About why you looked so gray when we first met. Why you go off mysteriously. Why your dad seems so concerned about you.”

“Yes,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “Yes, apart from all that stuff.”

You sigh. “So what are we supposed to do now?”

I look at the glowing ocean, the boats bobbing far out, the surf, hushing below us. “Traditionally I think the idea is to kiss.”

You smile, slightly, at that at least.

“Okay,” you say.

And you kiss me, and just like before, everything disappears—
flash
—like a magician’s trick, the stand, the peeling steps, the susurration of the ocean, the town behind us, the calling of the gulls, everything.

There is only you, and the blackness, and the fireworks behind my eyelids, exploding across an infinite sky.

Only …

Is it just my imagination? Is it just retrospect, is it just what I know now that makes me think there’s a hesitation, a slight pulling away? A chink of light, in the darkness, flatter and harsher than the bursting rockets of my blood vessels, something bright and cold, a lamp for examining the cracks of things, for tilting them over, and revealing their flaws.

My flaws.

But it’s okay
, I tell myself.
It’s okay, because he’s still kissing you.

But the magic is broken. And of course, it’s not like you’re kissing me now.

I wish you were. I am looking at a stick insect instead. It does not seem like it wants to kiss me. And I wouldn’t want it to.

I’m not that desperate.

Yet.

The next day, Julie called me. It was kind of out of the blue.

“Um … hi,” I said.

“Hi, Cass.”

Silence.

“Listen,” said Julie. “You want to come over later, maybe? Just … I don’t know. Just to talk.”

I nodded, like an idiot, as if Julie could see that through the phone. “Uh, yeah, that sounds good,” I said. It did actually. “What time?”

A couple of hours later I arrived at the condo. There was a police car outside, parked. Empty. I noticed it because I always noticed police cars, those days. I figured it couldn’t be anything to do with Julie, I mean she couldn’t be in trouble, but I quickened my pace anyway.

I rode up in the elevator and went down the corridor, then knocked on Julie and Paris’s door. Julie’s door, I guess I should say. Julie opened it and the first thing she said was “Sorry.”

“Sorry what?” I said.

She inclined her head toward the living room. “There’s a cop here,” she said. “He just showed up.”

“More questions?”

“No. No … he’s the one who came. That night. When I called 911. He says he just wants to talk about Paris. He seems … upset almost.”

“Weird,” I said. Thinking:
The killer?
“Do you think he … I mean … could he be …?”

Julie shook her head. “No way.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll see.”

I followed Julie into the living area. A guy in cop uniform stood up and blinked at me, as if I were brightly lit.

“Brian,” he said, holding out a limp hand to shake.

“Cassie,” I said.

Julie made coffee. The three of us sat there in the living area, drinking it. The others ate cookies, but I didn’t of course.

“Paris made these,” said Julie. “They’re kind of stale.”

Brian didn’t complain.

For a while no one spoke. I was thinking: Julie was right. Because Brian did not seem like a killer. I mean, he had a little goatee and he kind of sniffled when he cried. He was weedy too—I couldn’t see him hoisting a body over the side of a boat. Or overpowering a prostitute, for that matter.

“So, Brian,” said Julie after a while, after it became clear that Brian wasn’t going to break the ice. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know,” said Brian.

“Um. Right.”

“I just … I wanted to talk to someone who knew her,” he said.

A pause. Brian looked at me as if for help, but I didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to help him because I didn’t understand what he wanted.

“Why?” said Julie. “Why do you want to talk to someone who knew her?”

Brian looked down at the carpet between his feet. “Because I … I liked her. Loved her, I guess.”

He looked up, then down again.

“Oh,” said Julie.

She met my eyes, and mouthed:
What the ****?

“I was … I was following you that night, you know,” said Brian, looking at Julie now.

“You were
following
us?” said Julie.

“Yeah. I mean, following Paris. But it was usually you who drove her, right?”

“Yes,” said Julie.

“Why?”

“Because of the killer! Because I was worried about her. I kept telling her, she had to be careful. But she didn’t listen to me. She just laughed. She thought she was invincible.” Julie turned to me. “Immortal, you know?”

“Yes,” I said. I did know. I could picture her laughing.

“Well, I was the same,” said Brian. “That’s why I followed your car. I just … I just wanted to protect her.”

“Yeah,” said Julie. “You didn’t do such a good job of that, did you?”

Brian started crying. There was no warning: tears just started leaking out of his eyes abruptly.

“Jesus ******** Christ, Brian, pull yourself together,” said Julie. I was starting to see why Paris had liked her. She was tough.

“Sorry,” said Brian.

Julie flinched. “No. I apologize. There was no need to snap at you.” I could hear her mom in her voice; it’s weird how people can do that, kind of scold themselves—it’s wired into them from childhood, I think. “It’s just …
everyone
was in love with Paris.”

It was my turn to flinch. That was me, wasn’t it? I was just like everyone else. I didn’t mean anything to Paris. I was just one of the people, the little people who—

“So,” said Julie, interrupting my thoughts. “You were there, already, when I dialed 911. Right?”