The Perfect Stranger

Chapter 25

The police prepared to leave, all evidence bagged and annotated, paperwork spread on my kitchen table. A pile of plastic-wrapped knives, a bunch of receipts pulled from the kitchen drawers. A lone sticky note that had been lost under the couch, in my handwriting, that said: CALL JIM.

“What’s with the receipts?” I asked.

Kyle spread his hands over the material as if they were artifacts at a museum. “Here’s what we know, Leah. James Finley, or someone at the motel, made several calls to this number in the days presumably leading up to his death. There are a few calls from here to there as well. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of knife here that looks like the murder weapon, and it doesn’t appear that any sort of crime happened in this house. But this is what we don’t know: We don’t know who she is. We can’t find a record of her working at any motel. Your neighbors can’t describe her, though they have seen her car. One man claims he’s seen her driving up the road before.”

My heart fluttered, a piece of Emmy, someone else who could bring her to life.

Kyle continued, “But there’s no paperwork in this house that belongs to her.” He tapped a pile of papers beside him. “Though I did take a picture of a few of your documents, car registration and the like, to rule them out. So, the receipts are our only lead right now. If any of these were from her, we could go to the store, trace back the time stamp, see if they have any video where we can find her.”

I looked over the pile. Didn’t like that he’d taken a picture of my information, but couldn’t find a reason to object. Those receipts were mostly mine. I doubted Emmy stored any in drawers. I imagined her balling them up and tossing them whenever she left the store, if she took them at all.

“So, your job,” he said, “is to sit with Officer Dodge and tell him which are yours and which might belong to her. Think you can do that?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

I looked at the knives on the table. Looked back up at Kyle, and his eyes softened. “I know you think she’s the victim here, but it’s hard to prove that. It’s hard, Leah.” But then his eyes flicked away, roaming the room. My stomach churned, wondering if he was playing me even now. He’d had that paper, and he’d gotten the search, just like he wanted. And now I wondered what else he wanted from me.

“You really think she had something to do with this?”

“Well, like I said, hard to prove that, too, right?”

I noticed Egan watching Kyle carefully, and worried anyone could tell. That maybe he wasn’t typically this forthcoming with information, or this friendly with a witness, or this gentle.

I sat at the table in front of the receipts, kept my eyes down, and waited for them to go.

“We all want the same thing here,” Kyle said. “We just want to find her. We want to make sure she’s okay. And we want to find out what happened.”

I can usually tell when someone is lying to me. It starts like this, with the setup, with the motivation.

This was how news stories worked as well, preying on the same desire of all mankind. We like the story arc. Give us the preamble and we crave the conclusion.

This is what keeps readers coming back to the paper. Searching for more information, to see if there’s been an arrest, a trial, a conclusion. The injustice, preceding the inevitable justice.

We demand a closed circuit.

Sometimes we don’t get it. But nobody wants to talk about that. It’s what drives us to orchestrate the story, forcing the pieces until they fit.

Sitting in front of the receipts on the table, a crowd hovering outside my window in the distance, and the policeman standing across from me, I knew we were all craving the same thing, one way or another – and I was the only one who could bring it to a close.

CALVIN DODGE SAT ACROSS from me, and I could see the dirt under his fingernails, smell the cold earth coming off him, and knew he had been under the house again. I was glad I had moved the box, not sure what I’d be able to say to explain it. I tried not to stare at his hands, to pretend I hadn’t noticed, as I began sorting through the receipts. I slid them his way, one after the other, telling him, “Mine.” He’d check them off and move them to a pile. There were a few gas receipts I wasn’t sure about and told him so. He took those from me, jotting down the details in a separate notebook.

He stretched and fidgeted, but he didn’t speak. I figured he was the one left behind because he had the least seniority. And I hoped that could work to my advantage. He was young enough that he could’ve been unjaded by the realities of his job – still running on adrenaline and the dream.

“Mine,” I said, handing him another receipt, and then I twisted side to side in the chair, stretching out my back. “Can I take a break?”

“Sure,” he said.

I stood and poured myself a glass of water, offered one to him as well. “I also have soda. Or beer.”

“I’ll take the soda,” he said.

I popped the top of a can and listened to it fizz as I poured it into a glass.

“Thanks,” he said, taking it from my hand.

I stayed standing at the kitchen counter, took a long drink, and said, “Does everyone think this has something to do with the Cobb case? I just can’t see how it’s all connected.”

Dodge held the glass with one hand, leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know. They’re keeping all options open.”

“Heard they think he used a rock, one of the ones down by the lake.”

“Yeah. Haven’t found it yet, though.”

“But someone called and said it was him, right? Down at the lake that night? I mean, that’s why you all picked him up, isn’t it?”

He took a sip, shrugged. “Call was anonymous. Lady said it was him. Enough for a pickup, a questioning, and a temporary hold. Not enough to charge him, though.”

I breathed slowly, making room for the information. An anonymous source, and for what. For what? There was a reason for the anonymous. There was always a reason.

“You don’t know who it might be?”

He opened his mouth, shut it, twisted the glass back and forth on the tabletop. “No,” he said.

Which was a lie. They could trace the source of the call, where it was placed from. They would have the voice on file. They would have something.

I looked around my house, searching for understanding. “What’s the working theory here?” I asked. Took another sip so I wouldn’t be caught holding my breath.

Dodge looked at me, debating. He licked his lips. Stood on that line. In my experience, they’ll usually tip my way if they’re already on the line. They’ll answer not because I’ve tricked them into it but because they want the same thing we do.

“The working theory is what you told us. That’s the strongest lead we have.”

But I didn’t really believe him. “Yeah? Then what’s with the search?” I pressed.

His jaw shifted. “If she was taken from here like you thought, then a weapon could’ve been taken from here, too. It could’ve been a weapon of opportunity. Maybe she and James Finley were here together. Maybe this is where things started to turn bad. Maybe one of them took it for defense, and it was used against them.”

A string of maybes, all placing Emmy as victim.

“If you really thought that,” I said, “you would’ve taken her toothbrush or her hairbrush for DNA. You would’ve dusted for fingerprints. You would’ve had someone in here, interviewing me some more. You would’ve–”

The words stuck in my throat, realizing what they would’ve done. What they should’ve done.

They would’ve had someone in here, taking a description from me. A detailed description. A sketch artist who would bring Emmy to life.

Sometimes it’s what’s missing that’s the answer. Sometimes that’s the story. The missing knife. Or the No comment, or the demand to speak to an attorney. Sometimes what they don’t do or don’t say is all the evidence you need.

The police had not called someone in. Maybe they were waiting some more, maybe they didn’t have someone on payroll. But there was another explanation. It made Dodge look away as the papers on the table rippled with urgency in the breeze.

I blew out a breath. “Let’s just get this done,” I said, sitting across from him once more.

AT THE END, THERE were a few possible receipts, paid in cash, that could’ve been Emmy’s. Gas in the car, a few dollars here or there at the nearby supermarket. But they could’ve just as easily been mine. Still, I had to try.

Because despite what Dodge had claimed, I believed there were a few different theories they were looking into:

The first, that something happened to both Emmy and James Finley.

The second, that Emmy did something to James Finley and left.

And then there was the third theory, the one that Kyle had alluded to earlier, before I’d convinced him otherwise – or so I’d thought. Nobody had yet spoken it outright, but I could see it buried underneath, starting to poke its way to the surface. In the way they carefully approached a subject. In the things they took or didn’t take. In the things they hadn’t yet done and hadn’t asked me.

The third theory, of course, was this: that Emmy Grey did not exist. Not just in name but the girl herself.

And that she never did.