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As Jo listened to the conversation over speakerphone, a text came through her own phone. Once Arnett verified the arrangements would be in place by the evening, she checked it. “Lopez wants us to come see her as soon as we can.”
“No time like the present.” Arnett climbed into the car and fired up the engine.
* * *
Almost before they crossed the threshold into Lopez’s office, she jumped up to greet them, buzzing with manic energy.
“I’m sensing good news,” Jo said.
“My system is overcompensating for sleep deprivation. I hope it’s good news, though.” Lopez flicked a hand at her desk. “You know how we said we were going to start fresh today, go back over everything and hope something we’ve learned in the meantime will make something pop out?”
Jo’s hopes bumped up a notch. “Something popped out?”
“A whole big load of nothing, nada, zip. So I figured I’d try looking at it all a new way. I reorganized everything chronologically, and looked at everything I had about everyone hour by hour over the last week.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Arnett said.
“I pulled everything up, either on my monitors, phone, or via printouts, and laid it all out. Then, starting exactly one week before Madison was found murdered, I went over everything hour by hour. So, I looked at the emails Madison sent in that hour, the calls she made, the emails Naomie sent, etc. That way I had a picture of what exactly was going on with everyone at the same time, and I wrote out a summary for each hour as I went.”
Jo leaned forward. “Can I get a copy?”
“Of course you can, but hold your damned horses,” Lopez said.
Jo held up her hands and laughed. “Sorry. I should have known better.”
“One of the things I included was the cell phone pings for both Madison and Naomie.” She slid forward two stacks of papers, stapled and folded to her target page, where a line was highlighted. “This cell phone tower is the one closest to Naomie’s house, here.” She pointed to a map on the side of her main desk. “Then, at quarter to five, the phone starts pinging off this tower, here.”
“On the east side of the park. So she was far enough in the park by that point for her phone to use another tower.” Jo’s brows creased. “You said it switched at four forty-five? But she hadn’t left for the park by that time.”
Lopez smiled triumphantly, then pointed at the second stack of papers. “Her cell phone feels differently. According to the pings, she didn’t text her husband that she was going for a walk until she was alreadywell into the park.”
CHAPTERFORTY-EIGHT
Julia prided herself on always being ready for life to turn on a dime. But after finally spending an evening hidden away in the emotional fall-out shelter of Rick’s sister’s apartment, curled up in his arms, having the detectives show up at her door the next morning was like being plunged into an ice-filled lake.
She tried to go on with her day as though their visit hadn’t happened, a trick she’d always used when life threw massive piles of shit at her. When her father died, when her mother died, when she couldn’t afford to support herself, when the preeclampsia with Ethan had almost killed her; each and every time she’d picked herself up and just pretended it never happened. Shoved the inconvenient emotions into a mental deep freeze and did whatever she would have done otherwise. Completed the next task, took the next step, got the next job done. Naomie once told her it sounded an awful lot like denial. Julia had laughed and told her to call it whatever she wanted, because it’d worked extremely well her whole life.
Until now.
She taught her morning class, and while the exercises normally cleared her mind, today it only opened up a vacant space where Detective Fournier’s face loomed in front of her.They’re coming for you, her mother’s voice kept telling her.It’s only a matter of time. It took all her focus to ignore the voice and scrape her anxiety and anguish back into their sealed box.
Then, after class, she got another text.
Disappointed you haven’t called when you know I want to see you. We need to talk.
The emotions roared out of that sealed box and knocked through her like a tidal wave. Not just the emotions from the last few days, but from all the difficult, ugly situations she’d had to face in her life. And all the consequences of every choice she’d made, along with everything she currently had to lose. Which really boiled down to Rick, the first man to really love her. She’d give anything to go back and change those decisions, make all of this go away. But it was way too late for that. A reckoning was coming, and for once in her life she had no idea how to handle it.
She stared down at the text, at his whiny ass making demands of her just like he used to do, caring only about himself, with no regard for everything she was going through, and no sense of proportion about what was real. He was a fucking bacterium that no antibiotic could kick.
She grabbed one of the classroom pillows and screamed into it, at the top of her lungs, until she couldn’t scream anymore. It didn’t help, not in any real way, but it took the edge off, enough that she could put back a veneer of self-control.
She picked the phone up and texted him back.I have the police on my back, Pete on my back, and clients I have to think of. If I step one foot out of line, I’m done. You need to understand that.
His response came quickly.Why are the police on your back?
For a moment she wanted to scream again. Then, something inside of her released, like a popping balloon, and fatigue seeped into every cell and system of her body. She didn’t have the energy to explain it all to him. She didn’t have the energy to tiptoe around his volatile ego.
She glanced at the clock—she didn’t have the time, either. She needed to leave immediately if she was going to make her scheduled client check-up. On another day she might have just canceled it, but if she didn’t keep putting one foot in front of the other and doing what she needed to do, she’d lose her last, tenuous grasp on order and reality and she’d spiral completely out of control.
