Morgan shivered. Water droplets clung to her skin before evaporating. She wrapped a frayed towel around herself. She would never be warm again. Not after last night. Witnessing the murder of that cop, and the words he’d whispered to her in his final seconds, had left her chilled to the bone.
This was her third shower since finally arriving home at 1:00 A.M. A Black Harbor investigator had dropped her off after he’d taken her statement. He was fortysomething, she’d guessed, with brown hair and a five-o’clock shadow, and shorter than her. He said his name was Devine, or something like that. She sat in the back seat of his unmarked vehicle, behind the cage, while he followed the GPS coordinates to her address. It wasn’t her first time in the back seat of a cop car. She remembered being eight years old, wrapped in a fleece blanket and hugging her Bart Simpson doll as two middle-aged investigators muttered things like “Jesus Christ,” and “Goddamn house of horrors.” That was when she’d learned that the back of cop cars wasn’t just for criminals, but victims, too.
“Victim.” She hated that word. Even “survivor” was starting to have a sour taste. Why not “endurer” or “outlaster”? She was more than a victim, wasn’t she? And yet, she’d seen Investigator Devine mark her with a V on his paperwork last night. Technically, she supposed she was a victim. After all, the suspect had driven off in her car.
She wiped the steam off the mirror. The woman who stared back looked as though she hadn’t slept for days. Purple half-moons cupped her eyes. Her skin was wan and snow white. Her mouth was open, just a little, as though she’d been frozen mid-speak, the words caught in her throat. A row of bottom teeth peeked from behind her bluish lip. They looked like piano keys.
Victim. An ugly word for an ugly person. V was for “vulnerable.” It made her feel small and weak, which perhaps she was, but did it need to be broadcast to the world?
But V was for “villain,” too. And she had been that, hadn’t she? While she’d whiled away in Chicago in a little place called The Ruins. Yes, she’d had something of her own, once. Before it burned to the ground and the only possession she had to her name was a blackened key and a note.
My Ruin: All roads lead back to home.
Well, she was home now, standing naked in her parents’ unfinished basement bathroom. Exposed two-by-fours stood behind her like prison bars, tufts of pink insulation stapled between them. Her eyes grazed the sink that had become her makeshift vanity, littered with her makeup: eyeliner, mascara, and a palette of red eye shadow swatches. She picked up a tube of concealer and dabbed it on her skin.
A message from Bennett Reynolds floated on her phone’s steamed-up screen. She read the preview without opening it. We should do that again sometime, Morgan Mori.
It was just after 1:00 P.M. now, almost twenty-four hours since she’d stood on the Reynoldses’ back porch. So much had happened since then. She was now carless, cameraless, and soon to be penniless when she returned his cash. So you don’t have to claim it on taxes, right, he’d said as he’d given her the envelope of hundreds. Her stomach twisted into knots as the dread of explaining to the Reynolds family they would have no Christmas party photos settled in, and she wished, for the hundredth time, that she had never stopped at that gas station. That she had never gone out with Bennett. That she had driven directly home and not gone to the house on Winslow Street.
But alas, curiosity killed the cat. Or in this case, the cop.
I found you.
He’d spent his last words on her. And yet, she was certain she’d never seen him. Could he have remembered her from years ago, when she was a skittish eight-year-old girl with matted hair and bruises on her skin? Or had he been tracking her dastardly deeds at The Ruins?
Morgan finished her makeup, taking care to ensure perfect symmetry on the right and left halves of her face. Then, she left the bathroom and padded her way across the main area of the basement where she spent most of her time these days. It wasn’t her childhood bedroom. That space belonged to Grandpa Teddy now. But she had pushed an old mattress up to an even older couch and had a comfortable enough area to sleep and watch TV. Her Bart Simpson doll lay on her pillow. Stained and faded to a shade of muted yellow, the white paint on his eyes scratched and all but flaked away, he looked—and smelled—like a stale french fry. She’d had him for as long as she could remember. Aside from the scars and nightmares, he was the only thing from her childhood that followed her everywhere she went.
She tossed her damp towel on the bed and grabbed the pair of black leggings and oversized T-shirt she’d crawled out of earlier. Her socks were thick, machine-spun wool––the kind only worn at cabins and in clammy basements. She put a sweatshirt on over it all and looked like a homeless person. Which, for all intents and purposes, she was.
Her parents let her stay, rent-free, as long as she drove Grandpa Teddy to the senior center twice a week for games and socialization. That was easy enough, especially because he’d stopped going about a month ago, when he’d ordered Morgan to pull into the beach parking lot. They’d just sat there in silence, watching the tide slam against half-sunk piers. Seagulls pecked at the salt. Black plastic bags occasionally wandered by, like tumbleweeds rolling through a tundra. The lighthouse, on its distant rocky perch, looked like a middle finger. They never spoke, just stared out the windshield at the darkening sky until the clock read 4:30 and he said, “Okay.”
Now on Sundays and Wednesdays, Morgan didn’t even plan on going to Silver Maple Assisted Living anymore. She knew she’d be driving straight to the beach. They’d have to take Grandpa’s car today, since hers had been ditched God knows where. Along with her phone and all her gear.
The cops said they’d call her when it turned up. They’d said “when,” not “if,” as though the reemergence of her Civic was inevitable. Regardless of whether or not her vehicle came back into her life, her camera was long gone. She knew that for a fact, as she imagined her gear bag being rifled through like a fresh carcass being gutted by zombies. One hand would take her 70–200mm lens, another would snatch her 50mm. The camera body itself would be passed around. Someone would grab her flash, the 600EX II-RT she’d paid five hundred dollars for brand-new, and it would all be pawned. Except for the lithium-ion batteries––they would crack those open like oysters and drink the acid. Maybe the cops would recover her SD cards months or even years from now, lying on the table of a drug dealer’s house, being used to cut cocaine.
She didn’t have insurance on any of it. That would have been the responsible adult thing to do. She’d pay the consequences for that now, though. It would take at least five more jobs like the Reynolds party to recoup her equipment. Five more jobs for which she would need––and not have––her camera.
The envelope from Bennett lay on her computer desk. She had to return it.
Morgan sat on the edge of the mattress, her shoulders slumped under the weight of everything. How was she going to tell her mother she couldn’t help with groceries this week? Or pay her portion of the phone bill this month? She couldn’t bear to think about the moment when her mom would inevitably check the Nestlé tin and discover it to be empty. Although her parents had graciously refused her offer to pay rent, Morgan, after shooting family photographs, stuffed a few hundred dollars into the Nestlé chocolate-chip tin the night before she knew her mom was going to make cookies. No one ever mentioned the money, but it was gone the next day when Morgan checked, and so always, on the last Friday of every month, she refilled it. She knew her mother had come to rely on that income more than she would be proud to admit.
Morgan cradled her head in her hands. The scene from last night played on a relentless loop in her mind—another image that would haunt her every time she closed her eyes. She saw the cop’s body buck with the impact of the first bullet. He’d danced, almost, his toes frantically tapping the tile as he’d fought to regain his footing. The fingers of his left hand were curled around the grip of his gun. His right hand reached toward her, grasping only empty air. And then the rest of the bullets had slammed into him and the surrounding area.
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
Pop!
The clamor rang in her ears even now. She pictured him lying on the dirty floor, the spark of warmth in his eyes fading as something like terror took over.
No. Recognition.
I found you.
Goose bumps stippled her flesh. She felt compelled to crawl under the covers, drift out of consciousness with some Ambien and a few mouthfuls of the Absolut she stowed between the couch cushions. She crawled across the mattress and felt for the remote, when from upstairs, the muffled sound of knocking at the front door startled her. She heard her mom’s hurried footsteps across the kitchen floor, and twenty seconds later, her voice calling down to her: “Mor-gan! A policeman is here to see you!”
Her fingers squeezed the corner of her pillow. Fuck. Found her indeed.