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I fasten my hand around the string, but before I give it a tug to lower the blinds, I look outside to see if the night’s forecasted snow has begun to arrive, and it has. There are flurries, visible in the halo of light given off by a nearby streetlight.
As I lie down to sleep, I wonder if Nat really is safe here like I promised.
Or if in bringing her here, none of us is safe anymore.
Thirteen
It’s hard to get up in the morning.
It’s hard to leave, to go into work. I always hate working on weekends but today in particular, it’s hard to leave the safety and warmth of the apartment. I leave a note and then slip quietly out, making as little noise as possible. It’s then—walking to work in the dark, early morning commuters absent because it’s the weekend and everyone else is fast asleep, so that the streets are dead, practically dystopian—that I start thinking about the note I found in my mailbox the other day, the one I’ve worked hard to put out of my mind until now. BITCH.
I try telling myself that I wasn’t the intended recipient, but my name on the envelope disproves that. I try to convince myself it was just a mean prank, but the fact that someone broke into my mailbox to leave it calls that into question. Someone wanted to scare me and they did.
I make it to work without incident, though I arrive to the news that someone from the hospital, a pharmacy technician who everyone adores, was attacked last night. It’s all anyone is talking about because she’s someone we work with, someone we know.
“I heard he followed her to her apartment from work,” Misty says as a small group of nurses stands in the break room, feeling like we’ve had the collective wind knocked out of our lungs, because this is far too close to home.
“I heard her fiancé, who she lives with, was out of town and so she was alone for the night,” says Natalia, which makes me uneasy because this man must have known somehow that she would be alone.
“Does anyone know how she’s doing? Is she okay?” I ask, though it’s a dumb question to ask because of course she’s not okay. I think of Hannah, who is young and friendly, if not a little shy, leaving the hospital last night and walking home by herself, which is the same thing I always do, and it makes me wonder why her and not me.
It could have just as easily been me.
When visiting hours begin and Mr. and Mrs. Beckett come into Caitlin’s room, the police are with them.
“Are you Meghan Michaels?” one of the men, a detective from the way he’s dressed, asks and I nod, wary, feeling anxious. Not yet ten o’clock and already it’s been an inauspicious start to the day. “Mr. and Mrs. Beckett tell us there was an individual here the other day to visit Ms. Beckett.”
“Yes,” I say. “There was.”
This man is everything I would expect of a detective: intense and austere. He’s tall, of average weight. He wears a suit, dark and fitted with a gun in a hip holster. I don’t see the gun at first, not until he moves the front panels of the coat by accident, and then I do.
“We’ve gone through Ms. Beckett’s phone records to see who she was in contact with over the last couple of weeks,” he tells me, and I bring my gaze from the gun to his eyes, which are observant and alert. “I’d like to show you some pictures and see if you can’t identify the man who was here. Would that be okay?” he asks, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have told them about the man after all, if I should have kept that to myself and stayed as far from this as possible.
“Of course,” I say, my mouth dry. “Whatever I can do to help.”
“Is there somewhere we can speak in private?”
I say yes. I lead the detectives to a small bereavement room, reserved for families to grieve. Mr. Beckett tries to follow, but one of the detectives asks him and Mrs. Beckett to wait there, with Caitlin, until we come back.
In the room, the detective tells me to have a seat, and so I pull out a chair and sit at a table across from him while the other man stands at my back, making me uncomfortable for many reasons, including his physical size.
I watch as the detective places a photo lineup on the table. Before me are six images of six men, each of them similar looking though my eyes go right to one. It’s a mug shot, like the rest, taken from the front with an almost identical, featureless wall behind him so as not to distract from the face. In it, he’s in his own clothes, not a prison uniform, though there’s no denying that this is a mug shot, taken from the shoulders up, so I only see the neckline of a white undershirt, but I see his eyes, which are hollow and angry.
My stomach tightens. I can’t decide if it’s guilt or fear. This man will be accused of attempted murder because of what I say. If they can find him, he’ll get in trouble. He’ll be arrested. He’s not a good man; clearly he’s been arrested for something before, which tells me he’s done something illegal in the past.
“Do you recognize any of these men?”
I pick up the picture. I hold it in my hand, taking in the dark, curly hair, a small tattoo on his neck that I hadn’t noticed until now, the cold blue eyes. “This is him.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes,” I say. “I have no doubt. It’s him.”
He takes the picture from me. “Thank you for your help, Ms. Michaels.” He gathers the rest of the pictures. “We’re through here,” he says. “You can go.”
I don’t leave right away. I hesitate, thinking how I could go back to Caitlin’s room and keep this to myself, but it seems like a missed opportunity not to tell the police about Jackson Beckett.
“Is there something else, Ms. Michaels?” he asks, his eyes coming to mine, sensing my hesitation.
