On her second day as an outcast, Abbey drove her rental car back to the small town of Hyattsville, Maryland, where she’d first met the girl known as Iris. She’d already tried to reach Iris by phone for more than twenty-four hours, but the girl’s voice mailbox was full. So Abbey had only one other way to reach out to the online conspiracy group that had first introduced her to the mystery surrounding the murder of Deborah Mueller.
One of our people, Jerry, works at the post office. He’s seen you in there several times.
Abbey had changed her appearance the previous day. Her lush mahogany hair was now jet black, and she’d had it cut short. She’d purchased silver sunglasses that she never took off in public. Her clothes were new and cheap—thanks to a stop at Target—and she’d put on no makeup or lipstick. So far, the disguise had worked. No one had recognized her when she was out in the city.
But the uproar hadn’t died down. She was still everywhere in the news. She’d decided that the only way to weather the storm was not to engage, so other than a few emails to close friends to proclaim her innocence, she’d steered clear of her phone and social media accounts. She’d given no interviews and offered no explanations. The calls and texts kept coming in, but she ignored them and, most of the time, she kept her phone turned off to make sure that no one could track her.
Her focus now was on finding the people who’d destroyed her.
The Pyramid.
Abbey parked on the opposite side of the Hyattsville town center from where she’d parked before. She walked down an alley to the post office, and as she reached Gallatin Street, she noticed the coffee shop where Iris had first met her. She took a detour inside the shop, but when she asked the baristas about Iris and described the girl, no one knew her. So she retraced her steps and went into the post office.
First she checked her mailbox, praying for a letter from Jason. But the box was empty, as it had been for months. She didn’t really expect a reply, not now, not after she’d sent him a postcard that said Fuck you, Jason. She could just as easily have said I love you, and it would have meant the same thing. But the result was the same. She’d pushed him away, and she was never going to hear from him again.
Then Abbey went to the postal counter. There was no line. The name tag on the clerk’s blue shirt said Paul, not Jerry, and Paul looked immune to her flirty smile. “Is Jerry around?” she asked.
Paul looked uninterested in a customer who wasn’t buying stamps or sending packages. “He’s in back. Why?”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“Why?”
Abbey shrugged. “We have a mutual friend.”
“He’s not on break yet.”
“Well, would you mind seeing if he could come out here? It’ll only take a minute.” Abbey glanced pointedly over her shoulder, a little reminder for Paul that the rest of the post office lobby was empty. She smiled again. “Pretty please?”
Paul sighed, then disappeared. A couple of minutes later, Abbey saw a tall twentysomething kid in a baggy USPS outfit appear from the back of the building. Jerry was Asian, with wavy dark hair and soft, almost feminine features. He wore a curious smile as he neared the postal counter, but then his eyes met Abbey’s. Almost immediately, he saw through her new look and realized who she was. His smile vanished, and he turned and bolted.
“Shit,” Abbey hissed.
She ran, too. She crashed through the doors leading outside, jumped down the steps, and sprinted into the alley that took her behind the postal building. A barbed-wire fence bordered the parking lot, and Abbey saw that Jerry was already outside, climbing behind the wheel of a Corolla. She continued around the corner at a run and got to the gate in the fence at the same moment that Jerry was heading out.
She blocked it with her body and hoped he’d hit the brakes. He did. The Corolla squealed to a stop inches away from hitting her, and Abbey stayed where she was until Jerry turned off the engine. Then she approached the driver’s window.
“Stay away from me!” Jerry barked at her. “You need to stay the hell away from me!”
She held up her hands. “You know who I am, right? Look, I just want to find Iris, okay? I need to talk to her. Tell me where she is, or how I can get hold of her. She’s not answering her phone.”
“Iris is dead,” Jerry snapped.
Abbey’s eyes widened in shock. “Dead? How? When?”
“Hit-and-run. Two days ago. The cops said it was an accident, but that’s bullshit. They came after her.”
“The Pyramid?” Abbey asked.
“Yeah. Exactly. Because of you. Iris approached you, and that’s why they killed her. You’re part of them, aren’t you?”
“Me? No way, I’m not. I didn’t know anything about this until Iris approached me. You guys came to me, not the other way around, remember?”
“Then you told someone about her. They found her, and they killed her. None of us are safe now. They’re going to track all of us down. I’ve got my family to think about. My parents. My sisters.”
“Who are they?”
Jerry shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know anymore. When I heard about Iris, I shut down my social media accounts. I’m done with this. Go away, and don’t come looking for me again.”
He turned the ignition key to fire the engine again, but Abbey reached into the car and grabbed his other hand and pulled it off the steering wheel. “Jerry, wait. Listen to me. You know what they did to me, right? You’ve seen the stories online?”
The kid nodded. “Yeah. They canceled you. So what? I can’t do anything about that.”
“At least tell me what you’ve heard. Rumors. Gossip. Theories. What is the Pyramid all about? Who are these people?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know. All we know is what they do. They control the narrative. They make sure people only believe what they want them to believe. And if you get in the way, they destroy you any way they can. Look at you. You’re a liability, so they cancel you. They change how people think about you, what they know about you. That’s who you are now. A racist. It doesn’t matter what’s true and what’s a lie. You’re living their reality now. We all are.”
Jerry pulled away and shoved the gearshift down. The Corolla lurched forward, dragging Abbey as she clung to his postal shirt.
“Hang on, hang on, wait a minute,” Abbey persisted.
The kid tapped the brakes impatiently. “What?”
“Iris said there are others in your group. Young people. How do I find them? Talk to them?”
“You can’t.”
“Jerry, give me something. You people got me into this, and now it’s blown up in my face. You owe me. You owe Iris, too.”
The postal worker squeezed the wheel tightly with both hands. He stared straight ahead through the windshield. “We think she was meeting someone.”
“Who? Deborah Mueller?”
“Yeah. She was there for a meeting, but the Pyramid found out about it and killed her.”
“Who was she meeting?” Abbey asked.
Jerry shook his head. “I have no idea. But whoever it is may know something. You should try to find him.”
“How do you know about any of this?”
The kid looked over his shoulder, as if he were sure that they were being watched. “You saw the video, right? The homeless woman who saw the murder? The one that’s being suppressed?”
“Yes.”
Jerry sighed. “I took it.”
“You did? Why?”
“Because that’s what we do. When we think a story’s being manipulated, we try to get the facts out before the media and the tech companies can stifle them. So I went down there to poke around and see what I could find. I’m the one who found this woman and interviewed her. Don’t you get it? That’s why I’m at risk. If they figure out it was me, they’ll kill me, just like they killed Iris.”
“Okay. I get it. Tell me about the meeting, and then we’re done.”
The kid looked as if he wanted to punch the accelerator again. He spoke quickly. “After I shut down the video, I told this woman I’d buy her some soup and a sandwich, okay? We started walking out of the park together. When we got near the parking lot, we saw a guy near a car on the far side. The woman pointed at him, said he was there that night. She said she saw him standing by the body a few minutes after Deborah Mueller was killed. The guy must have noticed us looking at him, because he got in the car and drove away.”
“Did you recognize him?” Abbey asked.
“No, he was too far away. Plus, he had sunglasses on. He was old, though.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know. Gray hair, wrinkled. He looked ancient to me. He moved that way, too. And his car was old. Vintage. Silver. I ran to get a better look and see if I could get the plates, but he was already gone. I think it was an out-of-state plate, though. Colors didn’t look right for anyplace around here. Not Virginia, Maryland, DC.”
“Is there anything else you remember?”
“That’s all.”
“But you don’t think this man killed Deborah Mueller?” Abbey asked.
“Nah. Definitely not. The woman said the killer was young, blond hair.”
“Okay. Thank you, Jerry.” She backed up from the car. “Stay safe.”
“Yeah. You, too. Watch your back.”
That night, Abbey left her car at the hotel. She walked twenty minutes to a beer hall on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. It was noisy and crowded, but she figured there was safety in numbers. Nobody was likely to recognize her there. She found an empty seat on one of the long benches, at a table filled by a group of twentysomething college girls. She didn’t have to worry about trying to be sociable. She brought along her Deaver novel to read, although she couldn’t concentrate on anything. She ordered a veggie burger and fried cauliflower, which she barely touched, and she drank an Oktoberfest-sized beer way too quickly. When she finished that one, she ordered a second, which drew a raised eyebrow of surprise from the waitress.
Halfway into the second beer, Abbey was drunk and feeling sorry for herself. Her plan had ground to a halt, and she didn’t know what to do next. Iris was dead. She had no clues that would lead her forward, and her life was in ruins. She tried reaching out to several editors for whom she’d done freelance work, and in every case, she was met with deafening silence. She texted Tom Blomberg at the Sentinel, but he didn’t answer, and the text didn’t show as read. When she dialed his number, the call went to voice mail.
Abbey kept drinking, and the beer hall began to spin. When she checked her watch, she saw that it was nearly midnight. Several hours had already passed as she sat in a numb stupor, feeling more and more depressed. She paid her bill, but she didn’t leave. She felt the need to talk to someone, to have a chance to explain, to tell anybody who knew her that she was innocent.
But nobody wanted her. Nobody called her back.
“Hey,” she said to one of the college students sitting next to her on the bench. “My phone died. Mind if I make a call with yours?”
The girl gave Abbey a once-over, as if she must know her from somewhere, and then she unlocked her phone and handed it to her.
Abbey dialed Tom Blomberg again. This time, with a call coming in from an unknown number, he answered.
“Hello?”
“Tom, it’s Abbey Laurent. Don’t hang up.”
There was a long pause. “What did you do, borrow a phone? Very smart.”
“You weren’t taking my other calls.”
“And I’m not taking this one,” Tom said. “Goodbye, Abigail.”
“Wait! Wait, just hear me out. Jesus, Tom, you have to know that this is all fake. I’ve been set up. This Twitter shit wasn’t me. Somebody hacked my account.”
“And then they called into a radio station pretending to be you?” Tom asked. “That was fake, too?”
“I know it sounds wild, but yes.”
“Why would someone do that to you?”
“My guess? Because of Deborah Mueller.”
She heard a sad chuckle on the phone.
“What did I tell you about chasing zebras? To me, those hoofbeats sound like horses. They sound like they’re from a reporter who got drunk and made a big, big mistake, and now rather than own up to it, she’s concocting a fantastic conspiracy story to cover her ass. And by the way, I can hear in your voice that you’re still drinking, so maybe it’s time to admit that you have a problem.”
Abbey tried to say something, to protest, but she was too angry and humiliated to say anything at all.
“I’m sorry, Abigail,” Tom went on. “You’re smart, and you’re good, but you’re toxic right now, and you will be for the foreseeable future. I can’t help you, and I can’t give you any more work. We’re done here.”
He hung up.
“Fuck!” Abbey swore. Even in the noisy beer hall, her voice was loud.
The college girl on the bench gave her a concerned look. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Great. Thanks for the phone.”
She handed it back to the girl, and she swayed to her feet. Seeing her unsteadiness, the girl took her arm. “Hey, you’re not driving or anything, right?”
“No. I’m not.”
Abbey did her best not to fall down as she exited the beer hall onto the quiet after-midnight street. She walked—staggered—half a block toward the waterfront park at the Potomac, then realized she’d never make it back to her hotel without having to pee or throw up. Or both. When she saw the lighted sign of an empty cab in the cross street, she flagged it down, and then she poured herself into the back.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked her.
She leaned back against the seat, her head spinning. She closed her eyes and told him where to go. “The Melrose Hotel.”