Every few minutes or so, a client arrived at Furious Fitness in workout gear, gym bag slung over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Heather would say, handing each of them a gift certificate for the smoothie place down the street. “We’re having plumbing problems, so we’ll be closed for the next hour. Have a treat on us while you wait.”
From her position right outside the changing room, Jo kept one eye on the entrance and the other on the crime scene. She watched anxiously as another client was sent away with a coupon. Thirty-two had already claimed one. “Any idea how much longer this will take?” she asked Franklin. “I’m not sure how many smoothies I can afford.”
“Looks like they should be finishing up soon,” Franklin said as the crime scene technician began packing his equipment. The combination lock had been bagged as evidence, as had the photo. The technician had dusted the inside and outside of the locker in question, but only two partial prints had been found. Jo, Nessa, and Harriett had all supplied fingerprints for comparison.
Jo heard the front door open once again. This time, Chief Rocca charged into the gym without so much as a glance at the young woman who’d held the door for him. He marched back toward the changing room, acknowledging Jo with a perfunctory nod as he passed.
She followed Rocca and watched him do a double take when he spotted Nessa and Harriett sitting on a changing room bench a few feet from the locker in which the photo had been found.
“All three of them were here?” the chief of police addressed Franklin brusquely.
“Yes,” Franklin responded.
“I’m sure you’ve made it clear to the ladies that everything they’ve seen and heard today must remain confidential for the sake of the case.”
“That’s going to be hard,” Harriett said. “Everyone knows ladies can’t resist the urge to gossip.”
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Osborne,” the chief acknowledged her coldly. “Taking some time off from your gardening?”
“I prefer Ms. Osborne,” Harriett corrected him.
He replied with a lazy, lizardlike blink and returned his attention to Franklin. “This the locker where the photo was found?”
“Yes,” Franklin confirmed, as Rocca squatted down in front of the locker. “Ms. Levison is the owner of the gym. She believes that the locker was being used by Rosamund Harding.”
Rocca’s head spun around to face Jo. “Do you have a record of Mrs. Harding renting the locker?”
“No,” Jo said. “It was being used without a rental agreement.”
“Were any of Mrs. Harding’s belongings discovered inside the locker?”
“No,” Franklin answered this time.
Rocca stood up. “Then how do we know that Rosamund Harding ever laid a finger on this locker?”
“The lock’s combination was F-A-I-T-H,” Jo said. “The only reason I was able to crack it was because Rosamund tossed an apple to Harriett and me with that word carved into it.”
Chief Rocca responded with a snort. “I’m sorry, she what?”
“She—”
“No, no.” Rocca cut her off, as though he had no time to spare and no interest in anything else she might say. “I heard you the first time—and once was more than enough. Let’s just hope someone left some prints on that photo.”
“But—”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, Mrs. Levison,” the chief said, making it perfectly clear that he didn’t. “But I don’t want to be the one who tells that story to the D.A. without some forensic evidence to back it up. Until we have fingerprints, I recommend you not breathe a word about any of this. Otherwise, you could have a very costly lawsuit on your hands. Some people are willing to do almost anything to protect their reputations.”
“Yeah, the law does a great job of protecting rich criminals,” Jo said. “What are you doing to protect the girls they kill?”
“The young woman in the photo was a prostitute who chose a high-risk lifestyle,” Chief Rocca said. “She abused her body and died of a fentanyl overdose. The medical examiner declared that she alone was responsible for her untimely death, and we’ve found no proof to the contrary.”
“You know what I find most remarkable?” Harriett chimed in. “How the girl wrapped her own body in a trash bag, tied the string in a neat little bow, and then disposed of herself in a patch of scrub. That takes real talent.”
Chief Rocca turned his attention to the tall woman on the other side of the changing room. The gap-toothed smile that Harriett offered him seemed like a challenge. Whether he held his tongue out of contempt or decided it was best not to mess with her, the chief of police said nothing in return.
The results came in the next afternoon. Nessa and Jo were in the middle of their workout routine when Franklin stopped by Furious Fitness with the news. The lab had found no fingerprints on the photo. The partial prints inside the locker didn’t belong to Rosamund Harding. There was zero evidence she’d ever used the locker—aside from the bizarre story of the apple with the word FAITH whittled into its skin. There was also nothing, Franklin informed the three of them, to connect Spencer Harding to the girl in the photo. Even the lilies he’d sent couldn’t be traced. The deliveries had been paid for in cash by an unidentified man the heavily tattooed florist could only describe as “painfully normal.”
“Isn’t it obvious what happened?” Jo demanded. “Rosamund found the photo and suspected her husband of murdering the girl. She hid the photo at the gym for safekeeping, but he knew she was onto him, so he killed her to keep her quiet.”
Franklin was clearly pained to be the bearer of bad news. “While that’s all very possible, there’s not a single scrap of evidence to support it,” he said. “We can bring Harding in for questioning, but unless he’s in the mood to confess, there’s no way we’ll get anything out of him.”
“So that’s it?” Nessa looked crushed. “All these young women die and we have a good idea who killed them, but he gets to go free?”
“The law is reason free from passion,” Franklin said. “Gut feelings don’t get you very far with D.A.s or juries. We have to take our time and collect the evidence we’ll need to get a conviction. Don’t get discouraged. Justice may be slow, but she’s also relentless.”
He made a good point, Nessa thought. Then Jo made her case.
“In the time it takes to gather proof of what we already know is true, another girl could be murdered. Seems to me, the law does a good job of protecting the rights of the powerful and a pretty shitty job of taking care of the people who need its protection the most.”
That was the truth, too, and Nessa knew it. Though most of the police officers she’d met did their jobs with the best of intentions, the system was designed to punish, not protect.
“Our legal system is far from perfect,” Franklin said. “But it’s all we’ve got. We throw it out, and we’ll be left with nothing but chaos.”
Jo felt every molecule vibrating with indignation. She liked Franklin, and she knew what he meant to Nessa, but his line of argument was ridiculous and she wasn’t afraid to say it. “So we have to play by the rules while men like Spencer Harding do whatever they like. You know why he sent flowers to Harriett and me, don’t you?”
“We haven’t confirmed that he sent the flowers.”
That statement floored Jo. “Does obeying the law mean abandoning your common sense? That’s a four-hundred-dollar bouquet. Who the hell do you think bought it? Of course Harding sent the flowers. They were meant as a threat—what else could they mean?”
Franklin sighed. “I can’t read minds, Jo, and I have to be honest with you, I doubt a grand jury would interpret flowers as a threat.”
“Well, I’m telling you, if that motherfucker or any of his hired thugs set one foot inside my gym or my house, I will kill them all and enjoy doing it.”
“Please don’t take the law into your own hands,” Franklin warned her. “You could be the one who winds up in jail.”
“For defending myself?” Jo asked.
“There’s no such thing as preemptive self-defense, Jo.”
“So we know who the bad guy is, but there’s nothing we can do. I guess that makes me, Harriett, Nessa, and every young woman in Mattauk sitting ducks.”
Franklin looked over at Nessa and shuffled uncomfortably. Nessa knew there was truth in Jo’s words, and so did he. “Jo, I swear to you, I’ll do my very best to make sure this case keeps moving forward—and that the three of you remain safe.”
He was so earnest. So dedicated. There was no doubt in Jo’s mind that Franklin meant everything he said. She wished it could be enough. But it wasn’t. Not even close.
Franklin drove Nessa home, but Jo stayed behind. She asked Heather to look after the gym, then she climbed the stairs and claimed a treadmill by the second-floor windows. Running usually burned off her rage, but an hour passed and her hands were still balled up in fists. With every pump of her arms, she punched an invisible face. First it was Spencer Harding’s, then Jackson Dunn’s. Chief Rocca got his, and even Franklin wasn’t spared. How could men get away with killing so many women? Why did the law stand between them and justice? How could anyone run the risk of another girl being killed? And with the energy coursing through her every muscle and vein, why was she still so powerless to do anything about it?
Fifteen miles later, Jo slowed to a walk and her surroundings began to come into focus once again. The woman on the treadmill to her right caught Jo’s eye and gave her a wave. To her left, a petite brunette was running at an impressive pace. Something about the woman’s posture made Jo do a double take. The large silver headphones she wore made it hard to identify her by her profile, but Jo could see enough of her face to be intrigued.
She hung out by the free weights until the treadmill stopped. When the woman stepped off, Jo headed her way. Seen from the front, the woman’s delicate features were unmistakable.
“Claude?” Jo asked.
The woman lifted a finger and pulled off her headphones.
“I don’t know if you remember me. My name is Jo Levison. We met at Jackson Dunn’s Memorial Day party.”
“Of course I remember you!” Claude’s smile grew as she used a towel to dab at the sweat dampening her hairline. “You’re one of Leonard’s whale-watching buddies. Your name is Jo and your friend is Harriett.”
“That’s right,” Jo said. “And this is my gym. I haven’t seen you here before. When did you become a member?”
“This is your gym? How amazing! I just joined this afternoon,” Claude replied. “I don’t usually run indoors, but, as I’m sure you’ve heard, we’ve been having some problems out on the Pointe that have made outside exercise a bit challenging.”
“I haven’t heard anything,” Jo told her. “What’s going on out there?”
“An invasive species of weed sprang up on the Dunn property and spread around the entire neighborhood. The flowers smell delicious and they’re really quite pretty. The only problem is, they’ve attracted a rather large swarm of bees.”
“Bees?” Jo barely got the word out.
“Yes. By the thousands, I’m afraid. Leonard won’t do anything to harm them. I think he loves bees almost as much as he loves whales. I’ve got the best bee wranglers on the East Coast out on the Pointe trying to round them all up. But between the bees and the clouds of pollen, the plants have made outdoor exercise impractical for the last few days. So wait—does this mean you don’t know about Jackson?”
Jo felt her stomach drop. She’d had a hunch where the story was heading the moment she heard the word bees. “No, what happened?”
“He’s in intensive care in the city. Apparently, he was up on his roof deck yesterday when he was attacked by a swarm. He’s deathly allergic, unfortunately. They’re not sure he’ll make it.”
“Oh my God.” When Harriett had tossed seeds off the roof of Jackson Dunn’s home, she’d known exactly what she was doing. It hadn’t been a prank. It was attempted murder.
“Between Jackson, the bees, and Rosamund Harding, this has been a difficult summer. I imagine you heard the tragic news about Rosamund?”
“I did. She was a client of mine.”
“I remember,” Claude said. “You spoke to her husband at the party. You and your friend seemed convinced that Rosamund wasn’t safe with him. I think you were right, and I wish I’d done more to help her.” Claude was hinting at something and Jo eagerly took the bait.
“What makes you think we were right?”
“Leonard can’t stand Spencer. He’s heard through the grapevine that Spencer launders money for some pretty bad men. Drug lords, dictators, oligarchs—you know the type.”
“What? I thought Spencer Harding was an art dealer.”
Claude sighed. “I was an art history major in college. I even managed my dad’s collection for a while. I thought rich people bought paintings because they love great art. Maybe some do. But for many, the art world is a racket. Let’s say you’re looking to sell a ton of heroin or a bunch of illegal weapons. How are you going to get paid? You can’t take cash and put it in a bank. The authorities would want to know where the money came from. So instead you buy an expensive work of art and then sell it to an anonymous buyer for an enormous profit. Now all that money can go right into your pocket, and no one looks at you funny. Leonard says deals like that are how Spencer got so rich so fast. Rumor has it, he also shares some unsavory habits with his clients.”
“What kind of habits?”
“Drugs. Women—though I don’t know if you’d call Spencer’s type women. Apparently, he likes them young. That’s one of the reasons Leonard despises him. He’s made it clear that he wants Spencer to leave the Pointe. Maybe this latest turn of events will finally inspire Leonard to crack the whip. There’s no doubt in my mind that Spencer Harding was responsible for his wife’s death.”
“How?” Jo asked. “I thought she drove into a utility pole.”
Claude snorted. “You think Spencer doesn’t know people who could hack into a car’s computer system?” she asked. “But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the cops to figure it out. They’d never pin a murder on him, anyway. Men as rich as Spencer do whatever they like. Every time they get in trouble, they buy their way out. Spencer’s got some of the best lawyers in the world on retainer.”
“Justice will be served, one way or another,” Jo assured her. “I promise you that.”
Claude seemed to study Jo’s face. “Harriett said there would be hell to pay if something happened to Rosamund. Do you really think she’ll take action?”
Jo thought of the bees. “Spencer Harding has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.”
“Well, I, for one, am thrilled to hear it.” Claude’s dark eyes remained fixed on Jo’s. “And I’ll do anything I can to help. You guys ever feel like kicking some ass, just give me a call and I’ll invite you out to the Pointe. You can get my phone number off my membership profile.”
Furious Fitness was three miles away from Harriett’s house. Jo hoped that was far enough to burn off the energy that was still coursing through her. She ran at a brisk clip down the sidewalks in town. When she reached Woodland Drive, she stuck to the shoulder. There was more than enough room for cars to pass, yet a black SUV that took the turn onto Woodland after she did remained right behind her. Finally, she stopped and waited for the car to roll by. Perverts always leered as they passed. Misogynists smirked, spat, or shouted insults. But it quickly became clear that the guy behind the wheel of the car belonged to neither group. He wore a polo shirt and sunglasses. His no-nonsense haircut was a style Jo had nicknamed “professional douche.” Plenty of Jo’s neighbors shared the same look, yet somehow, she sensed this man wasn’t one of them.
Once the car was out of sight, Jo continued her jog up the hill toward Harriett’s. The setting sun lit the sky a brilliant orange, and Harriett’s jungle appeared in silhouette on the horizon. Jo stopped in the road and snapped a picture. When she got home, she’d show Art and ask if he saw it, too. The scene looked just like the old movie posters for Apocalypse Now.
As she neared the house, she could hear Harriett speaking to someone in the garden. Her voice was low, almost conspiratorial. Jo wasn’t there to spy, and even if she had been, she couldn’t have made out any words. She wasn’t convinced Harriett was speaking in English.
“Hello?” Jo called out. “You there?”
The voice paused for a few seconds. Then Harriett replied, “Yes, in the garden, come on through.”
Jo passed easily through the wall of vegetation that surrounded the property and found Harriett seated cross-legged in a patch of tall yellow flowers, her eyes closed and her hands cupped in her lap as though she were collecting some invisible substance raining down from above. Tendrils of silver hair snaked away from her scalp and a fine layer of dirt dusted her skin like bronzer. She appeared to be wearing a silk pillowcase, and she made it look good.
Jo scouted the garden for visitors. “Who were you talking to just now?” she asked.
Harriett’s eyes slowly opened. Jo remembered them being hazel, but now they appeared brilliant green. “I was having a word with my silphium,” she said, running a hand fondly over the flowers around her. “It was extinct until very recently, and it needs a little encouragement.”
“It didn’t sound like you were speaking in English,” Jo noted.
“I wasn’t,” Harriett said. “These seeds were found in a grave that was over two thousand years old. Silphium only understands ancient Greek.”
“You’re telling me you know—” Jo started to ask. Then she stopped. “Never mind.” She couldn’t get distracted from her mission. “Harriett, what were those seeds you threw off the roof at Jackson Dunn’s house?”
“A variety of Scotch broom,” Harriett replied. “As a weed, it’s very difficult to eradicate, but it does have lovely flowers.”
“Scotch broom,” Jo repeated. “Do bees like it?”
“Of course.” Harriett rose out of the flowers like a cobra emerging from a snake charmer’s basket. Even without shoes, she was at least four inches taller than Jo. “Is there something you’re trying to ask me, Jo?”
Jo studied the witch looming over her. She’d never been frightened of Harriett, and she wasn’t now. But she was wary of Harriett’s power. Jo now realized Harriett needed to be handled with caution. There was something about her friend that wasn’t quite human anymore.
“You knew Jackson Dunn was allergic to bees. And yet you spread seeds for a plant that would attract them.”
“Yes.”
“He’s in the hospital,” Jo said.
“You don’t say?” Harriett replied with a hint of amusement but not a drop of concern.
“Were you trying to—?” Jo didn’t want to say the words.
“Kill him?” Harriett shrugged as if the question were moot. “Not necessarily. No more than he was trying to ruin my career by excluding me from his rooftop gatherings. And no more than he was trying to traumatize me by grabbing my pussy.”
Jo cringed at the phrase. “Yes, but—”
“But what, Jo?”
“I thought we were supposed to be the good guys.”
“No,” Harriett said, and Jo could see she was no longer joking. “Nessa is a good guy. I do what I believe to be necessary.”
Jo felt the atoms inside her vibrating like mad and slamming into each other. “I’m the protector. I’m a good guy, too.”
“Are you sure that’s what you are?” Harriett asked her. “You’ll have to decide soon. Do you want to follow the rules that have been laid out for us—or would you rather find the path that’s meant for you?”
“I just want to make the world a safer place for my daughter,” Jo said.
“Yes, but are you sure you’re willing to do what it takes?” Harriett asked. “What if the world as it is will never be safe for her? What if you realize you have to burn it all down?”
They heard the sound of a car pulling up fast in the driveway. The engine switched off and a car door slammed. “Harriett!” Nessa shouted. “Where are you? Jo! Are you here?”
“We’re in the garden,” Harriett called. Her eyes remained focused on Jo. It was Jo’s decision, she was saying, whether or not to tell Nessa about the bees.
Jo’s lips stayed sealed as Nessa emerged from the brambles and charged toward the two of them, her phone in her hand.
“The lab just emailed the results of the DNA test that Franklin and I ordered.” The words came gushing out before she’d reached Harriett and Jo, as though Nessa could no longer hold them in. “Laverne Green, the woman who claimed to be our girl’s mother, is no relation of hers whatsoever. She was lying.”
“Is there a chance she might have made a mistake?” Jo asked. “Maybe she saw the missing person post and honestly thought the girl was her daughter.”
“Nope.” Nessa shook her head. “There’s no way she made a mistake. Remember—she had an envelope filled with pictures. They were Polaroids, too, like the photo in the locker. She had to know that the person in those pictures wasn’t her daughter.”
“Has Franklin heard about all of this?” Jo asked.
“He found out this afternoon and tried to get in touch with Laverne Green. She’s disappeared.”
“If she isn’t related to the girl, who is she?” Jo asked.
“I think she must be an actress, but Franklin isn’t convinced. He says it would be extremely expensive to hire a good actress and forge a birth certificate and medical records for a make-believe child.”
“The person responsible would have to be very connected and very rich,” Jo said. “Like Spencer Harding.”
“You think he’s capable of arranging something like that?”
“Leonard Shaw’s girlfriend, Claude, was in my gym today. Apparently, Spencer’s a pretty bad guy. She’s convinced he had Rosamund murdered, and she seems to think he knows people who can get just about anything done.”
“Leonard Shaw’s girlfriend was at Furious Fitness?” Nessa asked. “Why?”
Jo’s eyes were on Harriett as she delivered her answer. “She said she needed somewhere to run. Apparently, they’re having a problem with bees out on the Pointe.”
“Bees?” Nessa asked. “How strange.”
“Yes,” Jo agreed, still staring at Harriett. “Very.”
Later that night, after her groceries had been delivered, Harriett didn’t bother to dress. She left the house without a stitch on to walk among her plants in the moonlight. She pictured the confusion on Jo’s face earlier that day when she’d shown no regret for what had happened to Jackson. Harriett wondered how long Jo would think in terms of good and evil. Her friend was an intelligent woman, and such simplistic concepts were beneath her. But some people, even smart people, relied on those labels to make sense of the world. They slapped them on everything without ever realizing the placement was arbitrary.
When Harriett was a girl, she’d been taught to live in fear of evil. Her grandparents, who’d raised her, had warned her that men would whisper lies in her ear and steal her purity the moment she let down her guard. She was told the urges she felt were sinful. The boys who would have satisfied them were filthy. The girls, unspeakable. After high school, Harriett had fled from the Midwest to New York. But even there, a thousand miles from home, wherever she looked, everything had been labeled.
That changed the day she discovered her husband was fucking the head of his production department. She’d known plenty of women who’d suspected their husbands were unfaithful. She’d listened to their Nancy Drew tales of marital espionage. Harriett hadn’t spent months following Chase. She hadn’t installed spyware on his phone. She’d assumed their relationship was mutually beneficial, and trusted him not to fuck it up. It had never occurred to her to question his whereabouts. Then his lover grew tired of playing second fiddle and sent a video to Harriett’s phone.
She’d locked her office door and watched every second of it—from the moment the two had entered the frame, attached at the mouth and frantically fumbling to remove the clothing between them. She’d seen the woman get down on her hands and knees with Harriett’s husband behind her. She heard the woman gasp as his penis slid inside her and listened to her husband pant as he pumped faster and faster. Harriett watched fifteen minutes of furious lovemaking followed by an hour and twenty-one minutes of stillness as the two slept, wrapped in each other’s arms. It wasn’t their first encounter. It wasn’t even their tenth. They were comfortable with each other. Harriett knew they’d been doing what she was witnessing for a very long time.
When Harriett pressed play, her world had seemed solid, sturdy, dependable. By the time the video ended, she was surrounded by rubble. She wandered through the wreckage for months, distraught and disoriented. She no longer believed in anything.
Chase left for good in August. His girlfriend wanted a baby, he’d informed her during their final blowout. Two, if possible. Bianca was thirty-five, and her clock was ticking. The news shook Harriett almost as much as the video. She and Chase had agreed early on that they wouldn’t have children. She’d always thought that was one of the things that bound them as a couple. Maybe Chase had meant it back then. Or perhaps, Harriett realized, he just hadn’t been in a rush. After all, her body was the one on a schedule. He had all the time in the world. Now they were both forty-eight, and she saw in his eyes that he truly wanted a child. That was the moment she let him go.
Over the two months that followed, Harriett moved through the world by rote. She stuck to a schedule at first: wake, work, sleep, repeat. A few weeks passed, and the routine began to break down. She stopped sleeping, which meant no more waking. She took three weeks off work and watched her garden go to seed. The grass grew so high that she had to wade through it. Flowers that couldn’t keep up perished from lack of sunlight. Colonies of iridescent scarab beetles flew from plant to plant, devouring their victims’ leaves and leaving lacy skeletons behind. A hawk dropped the disemboweled carcass of a squirrel at her feet, and a coyote stopped to sniff at her late one night. By the time Harriett walked off the job on the thirtieth of October, the garden had almost completed its transformation. On the morning of November first, she looked out her window and saw what it wanted to be. For the rest of the winter, she shut herself off from the world outside and began her own metamorphosis.
Harriett paused to stroke the leaves of a philodendron that had recently poisoned the neighbor’s cat. It hadn’t acted out of malice. There was no evil in the natural world. There was pleasure and pain and life and death. The plant had made the cat sick so it would nibble and piss somewhere else. It was an act of survival, nothing more. What she’d done to Jackson was no different. Maybe he would live. Maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, he knew who was responsible. He’d fucked with the wrong female, and he’d think twice before he messed with a woman again.
Harriett’s next pupil was parked across the street from her house. He’d been there for hours, waiting for Eric’s car to pull out of her drive. Harding’s bodyguard thought he was clever. He assumed no one had seen him. Harriett had been aware of his presence the entire time. As long as he kept his distance, Harriett didn’t give a damn. He could watch all he wanted. She had nothing to hide. But she knew he wouldn’t stay away, and so she’d been waiting for him to arrive.
A car door opened and closed softly. She heard shoes walking up her drive. The footsteps paused when the man reached the brambles and searched for a way through them. She watched from the shadows as he emerged in her garden. A thorn had scratched a long, red line across his thick neck, and a trickle of blood fed a growing stain on his collar. She enjoyed the way his eyes bulged as they took in his surroundings. He headed for the door of the house, which stood open. She didn’t try to stop him from entering. She didn’t waste time wondering what he would have done if he’d come across her inside.
Not long after, he stepped back through the doorway and into the garden. From behind him, Harriett reached out and gently brushed the side of his neck where the thorn had left a gash. His fingers instantly flew to the wound and came away covered with a thick green substance along with his own blood.
“Did you find what you were looking for in my house, Mr. Chertov?” Harriett asked.
He tried to go for the weapon hidden under his jacket, but his muscles were no longer obeying orders. Harriett took the gun and tossed it aside just before his knees buckled and he hit the ground.
She kneeled down beside the man. “Don’t struggle. You’ve just received a large dose of conium. As it is, you don’t have much time until the paralysis reaches your heart,” she warned him. “Tell me why you’re here, and I’ll consider administering the antidote.”
There wasn’t an antidote, of course. But he didn’t know that.