Nessa sat in her car across the street from an old beachfront cottage. From the outside, the house looked cozy. Its blue-trimmed windows with their overflowing flower boxes were a perfect contrast to the weathered gray shingles. Nessa had never been inside, but she’d driven past on several occasions over the previous weeks. No matter what time of day she went by, there was always a silver SUV in the drive. So far, she’d resisted the urge to pull in behind it.
Nessa kept her hands on the wheel and left the car idling. She was scared. Not of the man who lived in the cottage, but of what he would say to her when she knocked on the door. She knew this was one of those moments when things were decided. If he sent her away, there would be no coming back. If he invited her in, she’d be there to stay.
Nessa had already turned the wheel toward the driveway and her foot was making the transition from the brake to the gas when the front door of the cottage opened and Franklin stepped outside. Whatever happened, she knew she would always be grateful for the few moments that followed. Dressed in an old T-shirt and jeans, Franklin walked barefoot down the crushed-shell drive and crossed the road to her where her car sat on the shoulder. Then he leaned in, his forearms resting on the edge of her window.
“Is this a stakeout?” he asked.
In that instant, Nessa knew everything would be okay.
“I’ve missed you,” she told him.
“You didn’t need to,” he said. “I’ve been here the whole time. I’ve seen you drive by. I’m glad you finally decided to stop.”
After she pulled her car into the drive, Franklin guided her down a little path that circled around the house to the back porch. It was nothing more than a wooden platform with two Adirondack chairs and a table between them. The dunes started right at the edge, and beyond them lay the sea.
“There aren’t many places like this anymore,” Nessa noted. When she was a girl, there had been hundreds of similar cottages along this stretch of shore, all owned by Black families who arrived every summer. Nessa’s great-grandfather had learned how to swim on the island. Her parents had met on a beach nearby. Now the families like hers were long gone and only a few cottages remained. The rest had been razed to make way for mansions and oceanfront condominiums.
“The house belonged to my great-uncle,” Franklin said. “He was a cop, too. When things got too much in the city, he’d come out here by himself to fish. Over the years, developers offered him a fortune for the land, but he said you couldn’t put a price on solitude.”
“You feel the same way?” Nessa asked.
Franklin laughed. “I like the house. Solitude is overrated. Have a seat. You want a beer?”
“Sure,” Nessa said, settling down into one of the wooden chairs and trying to remember the last time she’d had a beer.
She listened to Franklin bustling about in the kitchen, opening the fridge and popping the tops off bottles, and realized she felt at home. She’d expected it all to be awkward, but it hadn’t been. It was like easing into a warm bath on a frigid day.
Franklin appeared on the deck with two bottles in hand. He passed one to Nessa before taking a seat beside her. For a few minutes, they sat in silence, sipping their beers and watching the waves.
“I’m sorry about how we left things,” Nessa said.
“You’re sorry you did what you had to do?” Franklin asked. “If you guys had taken my advice, Spencer Harding would still be murdering girls. And Jo had every right to be furious after what happened to her daughter. I should be the one apologizing to the three of you.”
“I’m sorry Chief Rocca lied and said you were the source for the podcast. I know you lost your job because of it.”
Franklin looked over at her. “Do you honestly think I wanted to keep it after everything that happened? You and your friends were right. The system is broken. If you’re looking for justice these days, you have to find it by other means. That’s what you did. Then they went and blamed Harding’s escape on you. What they did to me was bad. But that was damned low.”
“Can I ask you—was anything the chief said on Newsnight true? Was Danill Chertov really an informant?”
She wished she could be more direct, but unless she wanted to see Harriett arrested, she couldn’t let on that Chertov was dead.
“Not to my knowledge,” Franklin said. “I was the lead detective on the case. If they brought Chertov in for questioning before Harding’s death, they must have hidden him pretty well, because I didn’t see him. Half of what the chief said on Newsnight was meant to cover up his incompetence. I just haven’t found a way to prove it.”
“He wasn’t covering up incompetence,” Nessa said. “He and Harding were working together. Harriett went out to the Pointe this morning and spoke to a woman who works there. The lady said Rocca was at Harding’s house before the helicopter took off that night.”
“Doing what?” Franklin asked, his curiosity clearly piqued.
Nessa shrugged and took a drink. “No idea. But it means the chief lied when he said Harding escaped after he was tipped off by the podcast. Rocca was at Harding’s house. He could have arrested Spencer at any point, but he didn’t. There should be security tapes that can prove it. We’re going to see if we can get our hands on them.”
“I’m impressed,” Franklin said. “You guys are turning out to be better detectives than I am.”
Nessa stared out at the water. “We’re still missing most of the story. I can feel it. The gift has limits, and this sure isn’t how my grandmother taught me to use it. I think you were right, Franklin—the two of us are meant to work as a team. I shouldn’t have pushed you aside like I did. We need your help. I need your help.”
“You really mean that?” Franklin asked.
Nessa nodded. “I do,” she said.
“Then come on,” he said, rising out of his chair.
“Really?” she asked. “Now?”
Franklin laughed. “Look who’s got a dirty mind.”
Nessa felt her cheeks burst into flame. “I’ve been spending too much time with Harriett.”
“Sounds to me like Ms. Osborne is an excellent influence,” Franklin said, holding out a hand to help Nessa up. “We’ll get to that later, after I cook you dinner. There’s something I want to show you first.”
He led her through the sliding doors and into a tasteful living room decorated in shades of blue. It opened onto an old-fashioned kitchen with white cabinets and appliances that had to be as old as the house. There wasn’t a crumb on the counters or a dish in the sink.
“You’re awfully tidy for a man,” Nessa said, though Jonathan had been tidy, too. “I drop by unannounced, and your house is spick-and-span.”
“That’s what ten years in the military will do to you. For your information, I’m a whiz with an iron, too.” He shot her a wink over his shoulder and Nessa clapped a hand to her heart as though ready to swoon.
Down a short hall from the living room were the cottage’s two bedrooms. The door to one was open, and Nessa could see a perfectly made bed with a nightstand beside it. Franklin opened the second door, and the smile slipped off Nessa’s face. The walls were plastered with pictures of girls. White girls and brown girls—they all looked like babies to Nessa. File boxes sat stacked against the walls, and three computer monitors cluttered an old desk.
“What is all of this?” Nessa asked.
“After your They Walk Among Us interview aired, I knew my days on the force were numbered. So I went straight to headquarters and started making copies of files I thought could prove useful,” he said.
“Who are these girls?”
“Missing persons cases going back a couple of decades,” Franklin said. “All were last seen on the island. Most lived here, but some were just visiting. All between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.”
“How many are there altogether?”
“I started with hundreds,” Franklin said. “I’ve managed to narrow it down to a couple dozen girls who might be connected. About two-thirds vanished in the last couple of years.”
Could they all be Spencer Harding’s victims? Nessa shuddered at the thought. “A woman came up to me in the store the other day. She said her daughter disappeared a year ago when she was visiting the island from Queens. Her name was Lena.” Nessa tapped her temple trying to dislodge the girl’s last name from her brain.
Franklin already had it. “You must mean Lena Collins.” He walked across the room to a picture pinned to the far wall. Nessa stepped forward and recognized the girl from the photo her mother had pulled from her wallet. “Seventeen years old. Captain of her school’s soccer team. Came out with a friend whose grandparents have a house not too far from here. It was two weeks before her high school graduation. File says she ran away, but there was nothing to suggest that this girl wasn’t happy at home.”
“And Harriett mentioned a girl who worked on Culling Pointe a couple of years ago. She disappeared after serving drinks at a party thrown by a man named Jackson Dunn.”
“Rosalia Cortez.” He took a few steps and tapped a picture of a stunning young woman with wild black hair and sweet eyes. “Also seventeen. She and her mother came here on H-2B visas to work on the Pointe. She was saving money to attend a nursing college in Guadalajara. Her school records were in the file. The girl was smart as hell—not the kind of person who’d be easily duped.”
“You know them all,” Nessa marveled.
“Of course,” Franklin said. “If you’re looking for someone, it helps to know who they are.”
“It sounds like no one really looked before.”
“No,” Franklin said. “Girls this age are often assumed to be runaways. But girls don’t run away if they’re saving for nursing school. And they don’t run away if they’re two weeks from their high school graduation.”
“And you think all these disappearances could all be connected to Spencer Harding?”
“Not all of them,” Franklin said. “But maybe a few. And if so, their families deserve to know.”
“Could any of them be the two girls we found who haven’t been identified yet?” Their ghosts may have moved on, but the girl in blue and the girl in the red hoodie hadn’t left Nessa’s memory. Their faces were on her mind every morning when she woke. They were with Nessa each night that guilt and frustration kept her awake.
Franklin shook his head. “That’s one of the strangest things about this whole case. I haven’t found a single clue when it comes to those girls. But don’t worry—I’m going to keep looking till I do.”
Nessa turned to him. “So this is what you’ve been doing since you lost your job?”
“All day, every day,” he said. “I figured when I had some conclusions, I’d come share them with you.”
“I can’t believe you did all of this,” Nessa said.
“The eulogy you gave at Mandy Welsh’s funeral inspired me. I wanted to do something to deserve you.” He put an arm around Nessa’s shoulders and gently guided her out of the room. “Now, if it’s possible, let’s pick this up in the morning. I have a few important questions to ask you about this team we’re forming.”
Franklin closed the door to the office behind them. They walked back through the house to the deck and its gorgeous view. Nessa came to a stop. The migraine that had been her constant companion was gone. For the first time in weeks, her mind felt clear.
“What do you want to know?” Nessa asked.
“You like steak?” Franklin asked.
Nessa remembered the joke her daughters had made. She stepped up to Franklin and put her arms around his neck.
“I love it,” she said.
They didn’t eat their steak until midnight.
“So how was the second time?” Jo asked the next day as they did squats in front of a mirror at Furious Fitness. “Better than the first?”
Nessa glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “It felt like a religious experience,” she whispered. She’d never shared such private thoughts with another woman before.
Jo laughed so hard she nearly dropped her ten-pound barbells. “You mean like angels singing and harps playing?”
“To be honest?” Nessa stopped and smiled at the memory. “Yeah. I don’t know what it is about that man. He just knows exactly what to do.”
“Well, whatever he did, you definitely needed it. You looked like a whole new woman when you walked through the door this afternoon.”
“That’s because my headache went away,” Nessa said.
“I bet,” Jo joked.
“No, it wasn’t the sex.” Nessa was suddenly serious. “My migraine disappeared after Franklin showed me all the work he’s been doing. I think there are more dead girls around here who need to be found, and they’ve been yelling at me all at once. They’re frustrated that no one’s been looking.”
Jo set down her barbells. “Shit,” she sighed, her fears confirmed. “Remember that morning we drove out to Danskammer Beach to look for the first body? I thought that was going to be the worst day of my life. Now we’re in the middle of a fucking conspiracy. You’re saying there are more dead girls out there, and we know the chief of police and Jackson Dunn are involved somehow. God knows who else is. And somehow we’re supposed to bring them all to justice.”
“I know, but what are we going to do?” Nessa asked. “We obviously can’t go to the police. And after that Newsnight special, no one in the media’s going to talk to us.”
“As soon as we’re done with our workout, let’s reach out to Josh Gibbon and see if he wants to rehabilitate his reputation. Bet he’ll be interested in that surveillance footage from the Pointe, if we can get our hands on it.”
“I guess we could give it a shot, but what do you want to bet he’s got our numbers blocked?” Nessa asked.
“If he does, then we’ll just have to hunt the little bastard down, won’t we?”
“Jo?” The door to the weight room opened. It was Heather, who’d been promoted to manager just that morning. “You asked me to remind you about the young women’s self-defense class?”
Jo had posted an invite on social media the day before. Nervous that turnout wouldn’t be enough to impress her benefactors, she’d done her best to put it out of her mind.
“Is it five already?” Jo asked, glancing down at her smartwatch, which told her they were still fifteen minutes short of the hour.
“No,” Heather said, “but I thought you might want to come out a bit early. Your friend Claude just arrived, and we’ve got quite a few people out front.”
“Really?” Jo felt a jolt of excitement. She set her barbells aside and jogged out of the weight room, with Nessa right behind her. From the stairs to the first floor, she could see a crowd of girls and their mothers crammed into the gym’s reception area. A line to get inside stretched into the parking lot.
“Oh wow,” Nessa gasped. “You’ve really started something.”
Claude was practically bouncing with glee when she greeted the two of them at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh my God, Jo, I think every mother in Mattauk is here with her daughters!”
“I had no idea it would be so popular,” Jo said. “Heather, would you mind calling Art and asking him to bring Lucy over?”
For the first time, Jo could envision a day when Lucy would walk to the gym on her own. The fear that had been Jo’s constant companion since her daughter was born no longer felt like an invincible foe. For years, it had lurked inside her, springing out the moment Jo lost sight of Lucy in the grocery store—or Lucy took too long walking home from a friend’s. Within seconds, the fear could grow into something monstrous. Jo scanned the crowd of mothers who’d come to Furious Fitness with their daughters. Jo could tell they all knew that same terror. Like her, they’d battled it daily. Now it was starting to feel like their war might have an end.
“I knew.” Claude reached out a hand to Nessa. “Hi, I’m Claude.”
“Shit, sorry,” Jo said. “This is my best friend Nessa James. Nessa, this is Claude.”
“What a wonderful thing you guys are doing for these girls,” Nessa told Claude. “I’m so proud of Jo. I think she’s really found her calling.”
“Maybe, but I don’t know if I’m prepared to deal with this many girls on a regular basis,” Jo admitted, her confidence a bit shaken. “There have to be two hundred girls here, and it’s not even five.”
“Leave the logistics to me,” Claude said. “I’m used to handling Leonard’s charity events.”
“What kind of stuff does Leonard’s charity do?” Nessa asked.
“Right now, we’re focused on building schools in developing nations. Earlier this year, we were in the Caribbean. Before that, we spent a month in Nepal. We had four hundred kids show up for opening day there. So I have a lot of experience with crowds this big.”
“Great. So where should we take these girls?” Jo asked. “There are too many to fit inside the gym. I guess the park’s a few blocks away. Why don’t I lead them all over there, and we can have one giant class?”
“See? You’re already getting the hang of it!” Claude cheered her on. “While you’re teaching them how to kick butt, I’ll go around and group the girls by age and assign them to classes. I’m thinking six classes in total, and each girl comes once a week.”
Jo gazed out over the crowd, which had continued to grow while she, Claude, and Nessa were chatting. There were giddy little girls wearing shirts emblazoned with glittery unicorns and surly teens rocking red lip gloss and eyeliner. Every variety of girl was represented. Rich girls, poor girls, good girls, badasses. It was the makings of a formidable army. She would teach them everything. She would make them invincible. This was the generation that would finally turn the tables. Maybe when their own daughters were born, they wouldn’t need to spend their days fighting fear.
Jo looked over at Nessa. “Looks like I may have my hands full for the rest of the day. You want to get in touch with Josh Gibbon like we talked about?”
“The podcast guy?” Claude asked. “Aren’t you done with him after that Newsnight debacle?”
“I’d love to be done with him,” Jo said. “But he’s still the only person in the media who’s likely to return our calls.”
“I’ll reach out to him,” Nessa said. “You two go have fun.”
“Thanks, babe.” Jo gave Nessa a hug and hurried outside to meet her army. “You ladies ready to kick some butt?” she shouted out at the crowd, and a cheer went up from the girls and their mothers. “Then let’s go take over the town!”
As Jo led her army to the park, cars slowed and drivers stared. Jo hoped they all got a good look. Consider yourselves warned, motherfuckers, she thought.
Nessa called Josh Gibbon right away, but he didn’t answer the phone and his voice mail was full. She made five more attempts that evening from Franklin’s house. Josh wasn’t responding to Nessa’s urgent texts or emails, either. Please! her last text to him read. I have news!
The next morning, Nessa sipped coffee while she watched the sunrise from Franklin’s deck. With her hopes in check, she opened her messages. There were six from Jo, two from her daughters, and one from Josh Gibbon.
I’m in town. I have news too. Are you at home?
Nessa’s squeal of excitement brought Franklin out to the deck in his boxers. “Lemme guess. You heard from Gibbon?”
“Mmmhmm.” Nessa was already typing. When can we meet?
“It’s six fifteen in the morning,” Franklin noted, settling into a chair beside her with a cup of coffee in his hand. “Gibbon strikes me as the kind of guy who doesn’t get up before noon.”
Nessa had just set the phone aside when a chime proved Franklin wrong.
About to head back to Brooklyn. Stop by your house before I go?
Just give me fifteen. Nessa wrote back.
“I gotta get dressed and get home!” Nessa launched herself out of the lounge chair and toward the sliding glass doors. “Josh is coming over before he heads back to the city.”
“He’s here in town?” Franklin asked. “I thought he didn’t want anything to do with Mattauk anymore.”
“I don’t know what he’s doing here, but he says he’s got news.”
Franklin started to rise from his seat. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, stay here and enjoy your coffee,” Nessa told him. “The kid’s skittish enough as it is. I show up with a posse, he might not talk at all.”
“I still don’t understand. Why’s he want to see you? Why not Jo?”
It was a fair question, but Nessa felt annoyed by the unspoken assumption that seemed to accompany it. “’Cause I’m the one who’s been texting him—and Jo is scary.” Nessa scrunched up her face. “You think I can’t handle this on my own?”
“I think you can handle just about anything,” Franklin assured her. “But I’m trained to be cautious. You’ll let me know what he tells you?”
She bent over his chair and planted a kiss on his forehead. “You kidding? As soon as I’m finished with Josh, I’m coming right back here. You’re going to have a very tough time getting rid of me again.”
Nessa made it out of the house in record time, but paused once her key was in the ignition and fished her phone out of her pocketbook. Was it strange that Josh wanted to come by first thing in the morning? She scrolled through the messages she’d exchanged with him until she reached her first. She’d sent it to Josh, along with the second, third, and fourth. There was no doubt the responses had come from him.
She turned over the engine, then sat for a few seconds more, staring out at the dunes. Something was off. Franklin had sensed it, and now she felt it, too. Back in her hospital days, Nessa had learned to rely on her intuition. It always seemed to know when a tale wasn’t true. It informed her if a black eye came from a fist, not a fall. It whispered a warning if a visitor wished a patient harm. From time to time, it would insist that she double-check a prescribed medication—even if the doctor who’d ordered it was standing beside her. Nessa’s intuition may have injured a few egos among the medical staff, but it had also saved lives.
Now it was telling her to proceed with caution. But it wasn’t telling her to go back and get Franklin—or to stop by Jo’s house on the way. Whatever it was, Nessa was sure she could handle it. She put the car in reverse and backed out onto the street.
When she reached her pretty white house, Nessa stopped across the street and left the engine idling. There were no cars in the drive. Her visitor had yet to arrive. The windows were dark and everything looked just as she’d left it. But something told her the house wasn’t empty. There was someone waiting for her inside. The text was a trap, her gut warned her. Josh hadn’t sent it. Whoever was inside had lured her here.
Then a silhouette appeared in the dim living room. As it moved toward the window, it acquired color and dimension. A familiar face took form—pasty white skin, bushy beard, and unkempt hair. Purple bags drooped beneath the eyes. Nessa sat back with her hand over her pounding heart, relieved to see she’d been wrong. It was Josh after all.
Nessa almost raised a hand to wave. Then she remembered. There was no one at home to let Josh in. Her foot slammed on the gas and she sped away. When she reached a safe distance, she dialed Franklin.
“There’s someone in my house,” she told him. “The text was a trick.”
“I’ll be right over.”
“I won’t be there,” she said. “There’s a key hidden behind a loose brick on the first step.”
“I don’t understand,” Franklin said. “Where are you going?”
“Brooklyn,” she said. “I’ll call you as soon as I get there.”
She looked up the address of Josh’s studio and plugged it into her GPS. The hour-long drive into the city was agony. When she finally reached the address in Greenpoint, Nessa saw nothing but a dingy industrial building. She parked the car and approached the entrance slowly, giving her gut time to warn her if necessary. But nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and now that it was almost eight o’clock, the sidewalks and streets were busy. Nessa looked for a bell, but found only an old red button.
She pushed it, expecting nothing, but a kid in his early twenties appeared almost instantly. Behind him, Nessa could see a sun-washed loft space filled with modern furniture. And thanks to Harriett, she was able to quickly identify the stench wafting through the doorway. A few months earlier, she would have sworn it was a skunk.
“I’m sorry, is this Josh Gibbon’s studio?” she asked.
“Oh my God, it’s you!” the kid squealed with excitement.
Nessa took a nervous step back. “You know me?”
“Of course I know you!” he said, looking like he might give her a hug. “I’m Chet. I help Josh with the show’s website. I posted all the pictures you took at Danskammer Beach and the footage that was shot after you found the first body. Nessa James, am I right?”
“Yes,” Nessa said. “So this is his studio?”
“It used to be Josh’s house and his studio. But the biz just moved to better quarters down the street. That’s where he’s at, if you’re looking for him. He was there all night. The construction crew is there during the day, so Josh works the graveyard shift.”
“You’re saying Josh is right here in Brooklyn—at a studio down the street?” Nessa confirmed. “Right now?”
“Should be. Unless he popped out for something to eat. You know, it’s so funny you’re here. Before Josh left for work last night, he gave me a package to send to you.”
“To me?” Nessa asked. Something bad is going down, she thought. Really bad.
Chet held up a finger. “Wait here,” he said, before disappearing into the house for a moment. When he returned, he had a padded manila envelope in one hand.
Chet’s bloodshot eyes opened wide as he held up the envelope for his guest to see. Nessa’s address was scrawled on the front in black Sharpie. “Creeeeepy! But you must be used to this kind of thing, with your ESP and all.”
Nessa reached out, took the package and felt through the padding. It seemed to be empty aside from a small, rectangular object.
“What time did Josh leave for work last night?”
Chet shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe eight?”
“Have you heard from him since?”
“No, but I wasn’t expecting to,” Chet said. “He hasn’t been using his phone for the past few days. He thinks it’s been hacked. He’s gotten too paranoid, if you ask me. I mean, I love Josh to death, but you gotta admit, he’s not the poster boy for mental health. I think all this serial killer shit has really damaged his brain.”
“Who does he think hacked his phone?” Nessa asked.
Chet shrugged again and shook his head. “You gotta ask him. He won’t tell me anything. Like I said—totally paranoid.”
A bad, bad feeling was pressing Nessa to act. “I need to talk to Josh right away. What’s the address of the new studio?”
Chet pointed down the street to an old brick factory at the end of the block. “Entrance is around the corner,” he said. “Not sure if the buzzers are working yet. There’s still a lot of construction going on.”
Nessa felt nauseous. “Thank you,” she told the kid.
“Sure thing,” he responded. “Keep up the good work!” He called out cheerfully as she hurried away.
Right before the intersection, Nessa passed a newly painted sign for Gibbon Media on the factory wall, just above a faded ad for a long-defunct funeral home. When she turned the corner, Nessa spotted a young man in dirty shorts and a baseball cap with an untrimmed beard sitting on the short set of steps that led up to the front door.
“Josh!” she shouted, and he rose. He paused for a moment at the top of the stairs as if waiting for her to catch up. Then he walked straight through the glass door and into the foyer.
“Oh Jesus,” Nessa whispered as it became clear what that meant. She’d suspected as much when she’d seen Josh in her living room, but she’d prayed all the way to Brooklyn that her suspicions were wrong.
At the top of the stairs, Nessa tried the handle and found the door unlocked. Inside the building, construction equipment clogged the entrance. She squeezed between it and hurried up the stairs to the second floor, reaching the landing just in time to see Josh vanish through a wooden door with a sign that read Studio.
This door was locked. Surprising herself, Nessa raised a foot and kicked at it. It took four tries before the wood splintered and the door flew open.
The studio was a white room with no furniture aside from a table and six chairs. Sound-absorbing panels lined the walls and a six-headed microphone crouched like a spider in the center of the table. Exposed industrial pipes crisscrossed the ceiling. Hanging from one of them, an electrical cord looped around his neck, was Josh Gibbon.
“No,” Nessa groaned.
She scrambled on top of the table to check for signs of life. There was no pulse and his flesh was cold. Josh had clearly been dead for hours. His ghost stood in the studio’s doorway, gazing up at the corpse as if captivated by its swollen head and blue face. Then it looked straight at the package Nessa had stuck in her purse, and she knew that was why she’d had to come to New York. She climbed down from the table and ripped it open. Inside was an unlabeled microcassette. When she looked up, the ghost was gone, and there was only one Josh left in the room.
Nessa grabbed her phone and dialed 911. As soon as the police were on the way, she started snapping pictures. She wasn’t going to let anyone rewrite history again.
As she held the camera up, a new text arrived from Josh’s phone.
Sorry I missed you, it said. I’ll catch up with you later.
The threat was clear.
Nessa got back to Mattauk at a quarter past midnight. Harriett, Jo, and Franklin were waiting for her outside her house, Jo pacing the sidewalk and Harriett sitting on the lawn smoking a joint and sipping a Chateau Lafite Rothschild. The second the car came to a stop, Jo pulled open the door and wrapped her arms around Nessa. When Jo finally let go, Harriett stepped forward and handed Nessa an empty glass, which she filled to the brim with wine.
“I’m so sorry,” Jo said. “I should never have asked you to talk to Josh on your own.”
“It’s okay.” Nessa stopped speaking to guzzle the wine. “I think I managed to take care of myself pretty well.”
“Yeah,” Jo agreed. “Speaking of which, you and Harriett are really starting to give me a complex. If you’re both so good at protecting yourselves, what the hell am I here for?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Harriett said.
Jo spun toward her. “Is that supposed to be a joke? If not, what does it mean? If you know something, Harriett, you better tell me!”
“What I know and what you discover may not be the same thing,” Harriett said.
“Would you stop speaking in riddles? You’re an advertising executive, not a fucking Zen master.”
Nessa left them to argue and went to greet Franklin, who was waiting for her by the front door. As soon as she was within reach, he pulled her close.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I am,” she said. “Poor Josh. His ghost was here this morning. He came to warn me. I don’t know what would have happened to me if he hadn’t.”
“I couldn’t see any evidence that someone broke into the house, but I need you to have a look for yourself. You ready now or do you need a few minutes?”
“Let’s do it now,” Nessa said.
She toured her own house, carefully noting the position of every object and examining every scuff and mark. Nothing seemed out of place until she reached the living room. There, sitting on the coffee table, was her grandmother’s scrapbook, filled not with family memories but of newspaper clippings and sketches of all the women she’d found. The message was clear. Whoever had been in her house knew about her gift.
Jo had spent all afternoon searching through boxes in the gym’s basement storeroom, looking for the microcassette player she’d purchased back in the nineties when such devices were cutting-edge tech. She found it in a box, along with a collection of tiny tapes that she’d used to practice her responses to job interview questions.
Nessa, Franklin, Harriett, and Jo gathered around Nessa’s dining-room table with the cassette player in the center. Then Jo leaned forward and pressed the play button.
“Okay, we’re recording.” It was Josh Gibbon’s voice.
“What is that thing?” asked a female voice. She sounded young and nervous.
“This? It’s a microcassette recorder,” Josh said.
“Like from the Middle Ages?”
“Like from the days before people could hack into your phone. So let’s get started. I’m standing in a broom closet at Brooklyn Flea with a young woman and her mother who just came up and introduced themselves to me. Would you mind repeating everything you just told me, starting from the top?”
“All right. Umm. My name is—”
“Okay, stop,” Josh said. “Don’t use your real name. Who’s your favorite celebrity?”
“Beyoncé?”
“Great. We’ll call you Beyoncé.”
“All right,” the girl said, as though she suspected he might be insane. “My name is Beyoncé. I’m fourteen years old, and I live here in Brooklyn.”
“I just want to cut in for a moment to say that Beyoncé’s mother is here with us. Right, Mom?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said an older woman.
“Okay, Beyoncé. One more time.”
“Yeah, so I’m a big fan of your podcast. I listen to They Walk Among Us every week, and my mom and me went to see you live at the Bell House last year. Like I told you, I’m fascinated by serial killers, and something happened to me that I thought you’d want to hear about.”
“Tell me your story.”
“Yeah, so I was out on the island at the beginning of July visiting my friend—” She paused. “. . . Kim Kardashian.”
“Good job,” Josh praised her. “No real names.”
“So Kim and I stayed late at the beach talking to some kids. Before we went home, she stopped to pee in the public restroom, and I waited outside in the parking lot. It was just getting dark when this man pulled up beside me.”
“What kind of car was he driving?”
“I dunno much about cars,” the girl said. “But it was black and nice. Anyways, he gets out and tells me he’s a police officer. He said someone had reported me for keying one of the cars in the lot. He told me I had to come with him to the station so the witness could ID me.”
“What did you say?”
“I figured he was full of it, so I said I wanted to see his ID. Mom told me that when a cop’s out of uniform, they have to show you their ID. But the guy wouldn’t do it. So I told him to go to hell.”
“And what did he do when you said that?”
“He grabbed my arm and tried to drag me to his car.”
“How’d you get away?”
“I kneed him in the nads just like Mom taught me. Then I ran into the restroom and banged on the door. My friend let me inside and we called her parents to come get us.”
The conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Just a minute!” Josh Gibbon called out. “Did you recognize the man?” he asked the girl.
“Not when it happened. But the next day, I was watching TV and I saw him on an ad for Newsnight. He was the cop talking about the Danskammer Beach murders.”
“Hey!” someone shouted in the background. “You aren’t supposed to be in there!”
“Okay!” Josh shouted back. “Are you positive?” he asked the girl.
“Oh yeah. A hundred percent.”
“Thank you, Beyoncé. I have your number. I’ll call you this evening, and we’ll set up a studio date to record this for real.”
After that, the recording came to an end. Jo leaned forward and pressed the stop button.
“That girl would be dead if she hadn’t fought back. How many teenage girls would kick a cop in the balls? Every girl in America should be able to do what she did.”
“Now we know how Rocca was involved,” Harriett said. “He was using his job to kidnap teenagers.”
“The girl on the tape said Rocca approached her the beginning of July, the day before the Newsnight episode,” Jo said. “That’s three whole weeks after Spencer Harding’s helicopter went down.
“What does it mean?” Nessa asked.
“It means that not only was Rocca involved—he didn’t stop after Spencer died,” Franklin said.