February 2, 2023
4:54 p.m.
A sound outside, like footsteps, and I jolted, looking out the front window, whose curtains were still drawn open. It was beginning to get dark, the sky splashed with pinks and purples, and then I saw her, bent down, beneath where the structure had caved in.
That girl again. Blond in her combat boots. So young. Young enough to perch precariously under a half-caved-in awning weighted down by snow.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I whipped open the door. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
Her shoulders hunched up, and she whipped around, her eyes widening.
Before she could run off again, I walked forward a couple of steps, grabbed her wrist. “Hey,” I said. “Wait.”
Her breathing was coming fast now, and despite an air of I-don’t-give-a-shit plastered across her face, applied thick like too-heavy makeup, I could feel her arm shaking beneath my grasp.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, letting her arm go. “But you can’t be out here, digging around in the snow when the roof is ready to fall on top of you.” I took a deep breath. “What are you doing here?”
Her weight shifted, and her eyes darted back to the snow.
Then I saw it: a glint of metal.
At first I remembered what Siobhan had said, only minutes before—we found a knife—and I was sure that was what I was looking at, but as I stepped closer, I could see that the image I’d conjured was all wrong. The metal…it wasn’t sharp; it was round.
The girl saw where my eyes landed, but I jumped for it before she did, lifted it in my hands.
A ring of keys, just like the one Maisy had given me.
I looked up at her, my stomach turning in on itself, my heart beating fast as I remembered that whoever had killed Allison would have had to have access to the pantry at the very least, and here was a whole set of keys, ready to unlock any and every door.
I struggled to rationalize the vision of someone carrying a body across the snow with the waifish girl in front of me. The words in my mouth were like ash, but still, I had to get them out. “Did you do it…did someone help you?”
Finally, the girl spoke, her voice that upstate twang, a mix of old-school New York City and an obvious rural upbringing. “No one helps me. I help myself.”
“Did you kill her yourself, then?”
Her eyes widened, and I saw in them what looked like genuine surprise. “What?”
“There’s a body. In the freezer in the pantry.”
“All right, Poy-rot,” she said, raising her eyebrows in disbelief. “Whatever you say.”
My head tilted to the side, and it took a moment for it to click, and then it did. Poirot, she meant the Agatha Christie detective. Only she didn’t know the right way to say it, because she’d never heard it, only read it, a mark of someone trying to educate themself, reaching out beyond their station, trying to grasp something better. She reminded me, suddenly, of myself, going down to the library, checking out every paperback classic I could get my hands on, desperate to escape into a book, to find a world beyond my own. That was what used to drive me, finding a new story to dive into, drinking up Dostoevsky even if I didn’t learn how to pronounce Karamazov until years later in college. Now I chased Instagram validation and my next drink. The thought both sickened me at how far I’d fallen away from myself and softened me toward the girl.
“It’s not a joke,” I said carefully. “It’s real. A woman has been killed. Her name was Allison. I found her out in the snow this morning, and then I went out to get help, and when I came back, she was gone. She didn’t deserve anything that happened to her. And whoever did it is still out there. And if you had nothing to do with it, all that means is that we’re both in danger until we can get some help.”
The girl shivered, and she opened her mouth, shut it again, then let her arms drop to her sides. “I didn’t know that,” she said. “I…I didn’t see anything like that.”
“What did you see?” I asked. “And what are you doing here? You still haven’t told me.”
Instead of answering, she pulled her arms close, crossed them in front of her. A gust of wind whipped at both of us, and above us, the awning once again began to creak.
“Come inside,” I said. “The heat is finally back on. Lights, too. Come inside and explain yourself.”
She hesitated.
“Unless you want me to hand these keys over to the police, as evidence of your trespassing.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
I held the door for her, ushering her in, not wanting her out of my sight for a moment, sure she’d try to run again, and this girl might not have seen a body, but she knew something that could help decipher this—I was sure of it.
Once inside, I shut the door behind me and nodded to a file cabinet on the opposite wall. “Come on,” I said. “Help me with this.”
At first, she looked like she was going to argue, but then, reluctantly, she went to the other side of it, and together, we pushed the thing, legs scraping against the hardwood, until it was in front of the door. I secured the chain lock, too, and then adjusted the curtains so there wasn’t even an inch of space. I didn’t want anyone to be able to see in.
For a moment, I wondered if I should get Siobhan, if she should be part of this, too, huddled here with us, but then I thought of her sobs, the way I’d destroyed her. And I thought of what I’d seen on that camera, too…
I went to my phone on the wall, checked the service again. Still nothing.
“Is your phone working?” I asked the girl.
“I don’t have one,” she said.
“You don’t have a phone?”
She looked almost embarrassed. “My parents took it away.”
“Oh,” I said. My voice softened. “How old are you?”
Her body stiffened.
“Look,” I said. “We’re stuck together now, until we can get some help. I’m Kerry. I was supposed to be the caretaker here for the month of February, but everything got off to the wrong start. Obviously. I’m thirty-nine, a whole lot older than you, and I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.”
The girl made her way over to a cream-colored canvas sofa, took a seat on the edge closest to the door, as if she might bolt up at any moment. I sat down a few feet from her, giving her space, my eyes on the door, making sure the knob wasn’t turning so much as a millimeter.
“McKenzie,” she said finally. “But everyone calls me Mac. I’m twenty-one.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Fine. Eighteen. But I am eighteen. Really.”
“Okay,” I said. “And you’re not in school or anything? I mean, I guess that’s obvious.”
“No,” she said. “My parents, they were going to help me with college, but…”
It took me a second, and then it hit me. “Wait, McKenzie? You’re not the girl—the young girl who applied for the caretaker position? I saw you in Maisy’s binder. You had orange hair, though.”
The girl went beet red. “It seemed like a good opportunity to get away from my parents. But Maisy didn’t pick me.” She raised an eyebrow. “Surprise surprise.”
“So you’re—what—squatting? You steal these keys and—”
“I didn’t steal anything,” she practically spat. “I’m not a thief.”
“Then how did you get these keys?” I asked. “They’re not yours.”
She crossed her arms. “They are, actually. Well, my family’s.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t follow.”
“It’s not my fault Maisy didn’t even get someone to change the locks.”
“Your parents—”
“Yup,” she said. “We were the original owners of the Twilite Motel. My great-grandpa started it in the fifties. Moved up here from Queens. It was really popular then. Lotta Irish folks. They like to stay with other Irish, I guess? I don’t know. By the time it got to my dad, it was a money suck. I mean, I used to play in all the empty rooms, growing up. And there were a lot of empty rooms back then. And not this nice, either. We almost lost everything because of it. It was a whole thing. But then Maisy came along, ready to take it off our hands. Of course, they had no idea how much she was going to charge for the rooms after. Pisses my dad off. He should have known, though. It was obvious she was going to pour city money into it. Still, she could give him a break about the property lines. Especially since she’s charging everyone so much.”
“The property lines?” I asked. “You mean the dispute between the neighbors?”
“There’s that, yeah, but Maisy was threatening to sue my dad if she loses that lawsuit. Because she says he lied about the property before selling it.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, taking in this new information, wondering how it all connected to Allison—and if it even did. “And that’s why you’ve been hanging around here?”
She shook her head.
“Then why?”
“My parents are difficult, okay? They’re super strict—their house, their rules kind of thing—and they found, you know, my birth control, and they saw, you know, some texts on my phone, between me and—” She stopped herself. “Anyway, they totally flipped out. And it’s not like they threw me out or anything, but they took my phone, and they said they weren’t going to help me with college, and it’s just—it’s made living with them impossible. And so I come here sometimes. To get away. I think my dad is catching on, though, because I saw him here a few weeks ago. You might have seen him, too.” She tilted her head to the side. “I guess the other girl would have seen him, not you. You just got here, right?”
I nodded. “Right.”
“I didn’t see anything, though, I promise. Just you. And the cops, earlier today.”
“What about two nights ago?”
“Oh, you mean the party?”
“Yes,” I said. “Were you there?”
“No,” she said. “I went out with my friend that night. But I heard them talking about it. A couple of days before. The two women.”
“Did you ever see them arguing?”
She shook her head.
“So you don’t know who could have—”
“I really don’t,” she said, cutting me off. “I promise you. I didn’t kill anyone, and I didn’t want anyone to die.”
“What about the knife?” I asked. “Siobhan said you had one with you.”
“Oh. That. Yeah, I guess I got scared the first night I stayed here. There were so many noises. So—” She shrugged. “I took a knife. I kept it under the mattress. I don’t know, it made me feel safe. But when the women found it, they took it. See—at the beginning of January, the woman, she didn’t really check all the rooms that much, but then when the other woman came, they did. So I couldn’t come around as much.”
I believed her, which didn’t get me any closer to knowing who had killed Allison.
“Here,” I said, pushing the keys toward her. “I’m going to be out of here as soon as I possibly can. It’s not my business what you do with them.”
The girl reached for them, but I let them go a second too soon, and they clattered to the floor.
“Sorry,” I said, as she leaned over, reaching for the keys, her jacket riding up, exposing a few inches of pale skin.
Pale except for the marks, red and angry, cascading across her skin.
My heart seemed to stop. They were the same marks I’d seen on Siobhan’s back.
“What is it?” she asked when she looked back at me.
“Your back,” I said. “Who did that?”
Her face went red again, and she zipped her lips together. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It was Jeremy,” I said. “Jeremy did that to you?”
She rolled her eyes. “It was consensual, okay? And it’s none of your business anyway.”
“He’s old enough to be your father,” I said.
“God,” she said. “You sound just like my dad.”
I wanted to argue; I wanted to tell her that it was fucked-up, that a man his age—he had no business. With Siobhan was one thing, but a girl—this was a child.
Then it hit me: What if Allison had found out? What if the girl wasn’t even eighteen? What if she’d threatened to tell Siobhan? What if Jeremy had wanted to stop her?
I didn’t have time for any of that, because the girl was looking at the wall now, where my phone was suddenly vibrating, coming back to life.
Service was back.
I rushed for the phone, my heart already racing. The service was indeed back, and it was a lot better here in the office than it had been back in my room. I actually had three bars.
A series of notifications popped up at me—all from Frank—but I ignored them.
Instead, I tapped into the phone. And I dialed 911.
We had to get out of here.
Before it was too late.