Sixteen

0001: I have another assignment for you, but it is time-sensitive.

I see this once I’ve changed out of my funeral suit and into sweats and made a fresh pot of coffee, and even though I’m exhausted, both physically and emotionally, I answer quickly.

0417: I’m available.

I see the ellipses as my reply fades, and again it makes me wonder about 0001’s setup. How is it that she’s always available for a private chat? And how many people is she chatting with at once? I don’t have time to think about it long, though, because 0001’s reply comes as a rapid-fire series, and I have to read each message as carefully as possible before it disappears.

0001: Grab a pen and a piece of paper to take notes on the following.

0001: Drive to Tarry Ridge tonight. Write down this address: Beth Shalom Cemetery. 1561 Woodlawn Ave.

0001: Park across the street from the cemetery NO LATER THAN EIGHT THIRTY P.M. TONIGHT, and watch the entrance.

0001: A bald white man—approx. 5’9”—will leave the cemetery and cross the street between 8:40 and 9:00. Do not leave your car until you see him exit the cemetery. Act as if you are making a call. When he is in the middle of the crosswalk, look up. MAKE SURE THAT HE SEES YOU. Then SAY HELLO.

I wait, but the screen stays blank. Free of ellipses. Finally I type.

0417: Then what?

0001: That’s all.

0417: Just hello? That’s all I’m supposed to say?

0001: DO NOT speak to him until he is crossing the street. Understood?

0417: Yes.

0001: And do not move from where you are standing.

0417: OK.

As soon as my message is gone, this pops onto my screen:

0001: SCRIPT: You’re going to a grief-counseling group that meets at 9:00 p.m. It’s at St. Frederick’s Church on Peach Tree St. You saw an announcement for the group on an online forum. You are a first-time attendee. Use your real name.

I check the time on my phone. I have just about two hours to get to Tarry Ridge. I change out of my sweats and into a pair of jeans and boots and a dark turtleneck sweater. Then I throw on my coat, pour some coffee into my to-go cup, and grab a bottle of water, a banana, and a bag of chips on my way out the door so that I can eat dinner behind the wheel. I stopped for gas on the way home from the funeral, and I’m glad for that. I can hit the thruway right away and, barring unforeseen tie-ups, I’ll make it there with plenty of time to spare.

As I start up the car, I think about how I haven’t had an assignment since the night of Gary Kimball—not even a random purchase at a hardware store or a quick trip to a post office—and even though it’s only been four days, it’s made me feel a bit anxious and adrift. There’s a weight to having a destination and a purpose, even if that purpose is saying hi to a stranger as he’s leaving a cemetery. It tethers me, the way being a mother used to. It makes me feel as though I’m part of something more important than myself.

When I’m leaving Mount Shady and pulling onto Route 28, the sun is setting. It’s beautiful, the sky shot through with veins of purple and orange. I turn on the radio, but I don’t search for the news this time. I want music. I find a song I used to love in high school and start to mouth the words. “Just like heaven,” I whisper, my pulse quickening, that gorgeous bloodshot sky above me, the thruway entrance so close, I can nearly read the signs.

THE OLDIES STATION loses its novelty before it loses its signal, and so by the time I reach the exit for Tarry Ridge, I’ve been shifting back and forth between three commercial news stations, and an ad for an incontinence clinic is stuck in my head. I’ve been listening for information about Gary Kimball and Harris Blanchard, but I’ve heard nothing. Nothing new, anyway—just the same story about the search for Kimball continuing, played on two of the three stations twice within the hour. Harris Blanchard, it seems, is no longer big enough for radio news.

I drive past a row of Tarry Ridge businesses—a bagel place, a Mexican restaurant, a high-end boutique, a gym. What strikes me most about this ride is the loneliness of it—an entirely different experience than my ride with Wendy. It makes me long for her company, for company of any sort, really, even texts on a burner. Now that I know the collective is real, there’s something anxiety-producing about doing the work solo, and when I turn the radio off, the silence roars at me. I took my pills this morning; I’m sure of it. But it feels as though I haven’t, as though I’m not living but reliving this moment and there’s something inside me clamoring to escape. . . .

“Call Luke.” I say it without thinking. My phone dials his number, and he answers before I have time to think better of it, the warmth of his voice lassoing me back.

“You’re a mind reader,” he says. “Grady and I were just talking about you.”

Jim Grady. His police consultant. My nerves roil again. I take a breath, deep into my lungs, then let it out slowly. It’s what Joan used to call a cleansing breath, and it works, somewhat. The world around me shifts back into focus, and when I speak, I sound normal and relaxed. “Actually, I butt-dialed you.”

“Then I guess your butt is a mind reader.”

I force out a laugh. Make myself ask it, because if I were innocent in the matter, it’s what I would ask. “Anything new about Harris Blanchard?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. I was just telling Grady how much I admire you.”

“Okay, what do you want?”

“I’m not kidding. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about everything you’ve been through as a parent. It would have killed most people. But you’re still here. You’ve survived.”

“That’s debatable.”

“I mean it, Cam. I don’t think I’ve ever told you this. You’re the toughest person I know.”

The GPS tells me to turn left on the next street, and as I do it, I feel myself smiling. “I survive,” I tell Luke, “because I have a friend who’s worth living for.”

“Aw.”

“Not kidding,” I tell him. “You and Nora had better take care of yourselves. Roll yourselves up in Bubble Wrap or something—”

“Hey, where are you?”

“Huh?”

“I just heard your GPS,” he says. “You’re not doing another Bachelor thing, are you? It’s not even Monday.”

I take another cleansing breath, recite the script 0001 sent me. “I’m actually going to a grief-counseling group I saw an announcement for online,” I tell him. “Rest assured, no Final Roses will be served.”

“I’ll let you go, Cam,” he says. “See you soon.”

After I hang up, I think about him and Nora coming to visit in just four days. I wonder if he’ll notice anything different about me and, if he does, what lies I can tell to keep him from learning what that thing is. I’ve never lied to Luke before. I don’t know if I’ll be able.

I ARRIVE AT Beth Shalom Cemetery at 8:20, then drive twice around the block before finally parking my car directly across the street from the cemetery’s entrance at 8:28.

There’s a large vacant lot here, with a sign that reads, FUTURE HOME OF FOX GLENN ASSISTED CARE FACILITY. I hope that when the place is built, all the windows face in the other direction.

There are very few cars besides mine along this street—a Tesla and a Porsche, their drivers nowhere in sight. It must be a safe area, people trusting cars like that across from a lonely cemetery this late. There is no crosswalk, but the street isn’t busy. One car passes, then another, and then there’s no one for a long while. I settle in and watch the entrance, sipping some of the bitter, lukewarm coffee from the to-go cup.

Even on such a dark, quiet night, this cemetery seems more welcoming than the one at Brayburn College, I imagine because there’s no imposing gate outside—no gate at all, actually. Just a simple illuminated sign out front—gold letters on a pale marble background.

My second cemetery today. I replay the funeral in my mind. Those two weak speeches, the girls with their sign, Lisette Blanchard sobbing into her husband’s lapel. The flip side of the Martha L. Koch Humanitarian Award ceremony at the Brayburn Club, as though a sparkling curtain had been pulled, revealing something sad and rotting behind it.

What would Luke say if I told him I’d been one of the people to pull back that curtain—that I bought the knife that was found on Blanchard’s body? I want to think he’d still admire me, but I know he would be horrified. Unlike me, Luke Charlebois is not a monster.

I switch off my radio. It’s 8:40 now. I aim my eyes at the cemetery’s entrance.

Five minutes later I see a shifting form moving up the walkway, a shadow playing on the illuminated sign, and then on the path out front. Right on schedule.

He wears a long dark coat and moves quickly. He’s a giant. A freak. My hands ball into fists. This feels like a nightmare—an enormous ghoul emerging from a cemetery, flying straight at me.

But when he steps into the dim light, he’s much smaller than his shadow had led me to believe. It’s not a nightmare. He’s just a man, approximately five nine.

A car passes, and it feels like a screen wipe. I’m back to business now. I can see 0001’s words in my mind: Do not leave your car until you see him exit the cemetery. Act as if you are making a call. . . . DO NOT speak to him until he is crossing the street. I get out of my car. I step into the streetlight and start playing with my phone. I sense him stepping off the curb, but my gaze doesn’t lift until I hear his footsteps jogging across the macadam.

And that’s when I see his face.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. The clean-shaven head, the hollow cheeks, eyes peering out from beneath a low brow, just as they’d glared into his rearview mirror and through my windshield two weeks ago. That purposeful Manhattan stride. That expensive coat. That shiny Porsche, parked up the street, behind the Tesla. It’s his Porsche. I know you. His name escapes my lips. “Dr. Duval.”

He stops jogging. “You.”

He did see me that night. I wasn’t imagining it.

“Who are you? Why are you following me?”

I don’t know what to say. For a second I’m embarrassed, but then I remember who he is. I think of that woman on our page, a sister. My sister, her daughter killed by this plastic surgeon’s carelessness—a cruel, callous man, she said, who had never apologized, never paid. Her daughter gone forever. Cancer didn’t get her. But you did. I hear myself say, “Were you visiting her grave?”

He stands perfectly still. “You’re one of them. You’re sick. You’re all—”

A big pickup truck roars through the intersection and runs down Dr. Duval, crushing him beneath its wheels.

MY THROAT FEELS very sore, which tells me I screamed. But I can’t remember doing it.

I can’t move, and when I finally am able to take a step, it’s as though I’m pushing through water. My legs shake. My lips tremble. It’s very hard to breathe.

By the time I make it to the middle of the road, the driver has backed up and gotten out of the truck, and she’s kneeling beside Dr. Duval. He seems to have gone between the truck’s wheels rather than under them, but it doesn’t matter. Blood pools beneath his body. His mouth forms a word. “Cla . . .” And then his eyes go as still as glass.

The pickup truck driver has gray-streaked dark hair that hangs in her face, and she wears tan corduroy pants, now stained with Duval’s blood. Her build is sturdy, her movements practical. She puts two fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. Thumps his broken chest hard with both hands, then feels for a pulse again. She shakes her head. “I didn’t see him coming.” She says it like an incantation, her voice low and melodic. “I didn’t see him coming.”

My own voice returns, but it sounds weak and tinny, as though it’s coming from somewhere else. “We have to . . . Don’t we have to . . . to call . . .”

“He just jumped in front of my car. I didn’t have time to move out of the way. You saw it.” She brushes her hair out of her eyes and turns her face to me, and it’s as though we’re all members of the same repertory theater, Dr. Duval and me and this steely-eyed woman—I’m Susan, she had said to Wendy and me—and we’re all starting work on a new play. The one about the plastic surgeon stepping into traffic. “You saw it, sister.”

“Yes.” I feel numb, but I know my role. I understand. “I’m the witness. I saw it happen.”

Susan removes a phone from her pocket. “Where were you going?” she says. Running lines.

“A grief-counseling support group. At St. Frederick’s. It was supposed to start at nine.”

“You pulled over to make sure you got the address right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you see this crazy man, running into the middle of the street.”

“I . . . I saw him . . . walk right in front of your truck.” My gaze travels up the length of the streetlight, the security camera at the top. What did it capture? A woman on her phone. A man hurrying into the middle of a two-way street then stopping abruptly. A truck driving through an intersection on a dark quiet night. A woman rushing out of the driver’s side, doing everything she can to help . . .

“I wasn’t even speeding,” Susan says. “Speed limit is forty-five. I was going forty-four.”

I look at his face. He had mouthed a word, just as the truck made contact with his body. A name, I think. His mouth is still open from the end of it. Claire.

He killed a woman’s daughter and got away with it. This is what needed to happen.

Just like Shawger and Kimball and Blanchard and Krakowski. He was no better than they were. He was no more human.

Susan dials 911, and when the operator answers, her voice goes an octave higher. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I think I killed him. Help me. Help me, please. Please let him be alive.”

I can hear the operator’s voice through the phone, asking the woman who exactly she killed.

“I don’t know. He just . . . Oh my God.” She starts to wheeze. “I . . . I have asthma.”

“It’s okay, ma’am. Take a moment. Now tell us your location.”

She grabs an inhaler from her coat pocket and puffs on it audibly. “I’m on . . . on Woodlawn Ave. . . . in front of Beth Shalom Cemetery. He just . . . He ran out in front of my car. I can’t believe this. Hurry, please!”

“Can he speak?”

“No.”

“Is he breathing?”

“I don’t know!”

“We are on the way.”

“Okay . . . Okay . . .”

“Is there anybody there with you?”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Yes,” she says. “Yes. I . . . A woman. She’s still here. She saw the whole thing happen.” She bursts into sobs, then glances up at me. Her eyes are flat gray dimes.

DR. DUVAL IS dead. The paramedics know that instantly. As we wait for the police, they turn their attention to Susan, who tells them haltingly that her name is Vicky, but can’t seem to get out much more. “I . . . I think she’s in shock,” I tell them as Vicky starts to shiver. One of them grabs a blanket from the ambulance and wraps it tightly around her shoulders, talking to her in measured tones. “Can you breathe all right?” he says as two cop cars arrive, sirens blaring.

She nods, twirling the inhaler between trembling fingers.

“I’m Officer Dunne,” says the cop from the second car—a young guy with a powerful build and a military-style haircut. He’s speaking to me.

“Hello.”

“You saw all this happen, ma’am?”

“Yes.”

He leads me away from the scene to where his squad car is parked, and asks me questions. I recite to him the words from the script I was given—about the grief-counseling group at St. Frederick’s Church on Peach Tree Street. How my car’s GPS had confused me and I’d gotten lost and stopped to get my bearings. I add in a bit about how I was programming the Peach Tree Street address into my phone when the man had rushed into the street etcetera, etcetera. Through it all, he scribbles on his notepad and nods at me with sympathy and understanding. He takes my driver’s license and looks at it.

“Can I get your phone number, ma’am, please?” he says, and I give it to him, Dr. Duval’s words still in my mind. You’re one of them.

“Wait,” Officer Dunne says. He peers at my face. “Camille Gardener?”

I swallow. “Yes.”

“You’re . . . um . . . I know you. I mean, I don’t know you, but—”

“You saw the video.”

“Yeah. And . . . uh . . . I’m sure you know that the guy . . .”

“Harris Blanchard. He’s dead. Yes. It’s . . . a lot to process.” I clear my throat. “It’s actually why I was looking for a support group.”

“Sorry you weren’t able to make it.”

“Oh . . . I’ll find another one.”

He says, “Interesting you came all the way down here for a support group. I mean . . . isn’t this town far from where you live?”

“It’s about two hours.”

“But instead of going to a local church or whatever, you drove two hours to Tarry Ridge. And then you got lost. . . .”

My face flushes. I hope he doesn’t notice. “Someone was talking about this particular group in an online forum I’m in. Plus, I didn’t want to go where people might know me.” I give him what I think is a pointed glare. “I’m not sure what it is that you’re implying.”

“I’m just saying it’s weird, you coming down here and seeing what you did.”

“Why?”

“Dr. Duval lost his child too. It was three years ago, when I was graduating high school—big local news story. A hit-and-run.”

I stare at him. “Oh my God. Did they ever catch the driver?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Turned out to be some billionaire’s teenage daughter. Wound up with a suspended sentence. Community service or something, I don’t know.”

My jaw tightens. “Not fair.”

“Not fair at all,” he says. “Anyway, their kid is buried in that cemetery. The Duvals moved to Croton, and I heard his wife died last week. So, it makes sense in a super-sad way . . . him walking into traffic.”

My ears start to ring. You’re one of them. “How did she die?”

“Suicide,” he says. “Like I said, it’s super sad.”