“Or the others,” Lula says. “We’ve still not located Vanessa and Haruto North, or the mystery couple with the Audi, and so far we have two pregnant women unaccounted for.” She pauses. “We have unborn babies in possible jeopardy.”
Mal says, “Arnav, can you start on socials? Anything we can find on Kit Darling, her friends, comments, any indication of her recent movements, or her plans leading up to last night.”
The investigator nods. “On it.”
Mal turns to Jack. “How are we doing with other witnesses and CCTV? Did any cams pick up the Audi and Subaru in the vicinity as they sped from the scene?”
Jack says, “The door-to-door yielded one additional witness, who was on the corner of the lane, walking his dog around midnight. He saw two vehicles matching the description of the Audi and Subaru. As per Beulah Brown’s statement, he says the vehicles did not stop at the stop sign. He heard tires squeal as both vehicles turned east onto Marine Drive. We’ve got techs combing through Marine Drive cam footage, plus footage from the bridge cams. If the vehicles headed east on Marine, there are a few options—either they turned off Marine and went into a residential area, and are now lying low somewhere on the North Shore. Or they headed all the way east toward Deep Cove area, or they crossed one of the two bridges over the Burrard into the city.”
Benoit says, “Take a close look at the Lions Gate Bridge cams. If this Audi comes from Point Grey, there’s a chance it might have headed back that way.”
“Or not,” says Jack. “Maybe they went to dump their rug somewhere first.”
“Okay,” Mal says. “Let’s get moving with what we’ve got. We need to locate those vehicles. We need IDs on our mystery couple. We need to find the Norths. And we need everything and anything on the missing maid, Kit Darling. We’ve got a lot of mileage to put in today still. We’ll reconvene here at six a.m. sharp tomorrow. Hopefully forensics will have some preliminary results, and we’ll know more about what we’re dealing with.”
She meets the gaze of each of her team members. “Given the blood loss and type of spatter, our victim is either critically injured or we’re looking for a body. Lula, can you get someone to check hospital ERs?” Mal assigns other tasks, checks her watch. “Let’s go. Clock is ticking.”
THE MAID’S DIARY
Holly called me right after my Rose Cottage shift yesterday. It was a sign. A window of opportunity to beg out of the Rittenberg contract before I got sucked in too deep. But I froze. I couldn’t make myself ask. So I said nothing as she inquired whether I could squeeze in some extra shifts over these next few days for another maid who’d called in sick. I agreed. It would keep me busy and stop me from googling Jon and Daisy Rittenberg. Stop me from scanning for their accounts on social media. Buy me time to still back out. Because the smart Kit would. The wise Kit knows no good can possibly come of poking about in the Rittenberg house.
Today was thus super busy with back-to-back work. I’m home now. Exhausted. And I must leave for the theater in an hour—our nonprofit troupe has been staging a production of The Three Lives of Mary. I play the role of Mary. We have two more nights in our eight-week run. Tomorrow is final curtain call. After that, Mary goes dark. So I will be quick with my journaling before I leave.
Now you know, Dear Diary, about my snooping issues. But who doesn’t have issues, right? If my therapist insists on calling mine an addiction, then I’m a “high functioning” addict, because I hide it well. Outwardly the rest of my life is pretty fun, to be honest. My hobby—my passion—is amateur theater. Improv, immersive acting, pop-up performances “in the wild,” puppetry, mime—I enjoy it all. I also love dressing up to attend drag shows with Boon. It’s the pageantry, the costumes, the imagined narrative, that I love. I can be anyone while still being Anonymous Girl, the invisible cleaner who riffles through your drawers. The ghost in your house.
Boon and I have a tight group of friends. We’re all part of the same amateur theater troupe. We act together, socialize together, and meet regularly to play Dungeons & Dragons. D&D is also about role-playing. So there you go—I see what you’re doing again, Dear Diary. You’re showing me that even my happy social life, the “normal” part of me, hides behind roles, masks, theatrical characters. It’s me being the ghost. It’s me journaling on these pages because my therapist wants to know why I need so badly to remain the ghost.
But what I really want to tell you, Dear Diary, is I am proud of myself. I have managed so far to not google the Rittenbergs. I have not trawled social media in search of their accounts. And I can still tell Holly I need to back out.
I am still in control.
I check my watch.
I need to leave. Mary is waiting. The play is about a young woman who gets to make a pivotal life choice three times over. Each time she chooses differently. Each choice spins her life into a vastly different direction. In one life Mary chooses to keep a baby from an unwanted pregnancy, and she marries the father. In another she kicks the man to the curb, terminates the pregnancy, and becomes a powerful businesswoman. In another she’s a freewheeling, single-mom bohemian. Each life comes with its own unique battles and triumphs.
Before I go, I quickly check my @foxandcrow Instagram account. I pull up my most recent post. A “reel” of me standing in the baby’s room at Rose Cottage, holding Daisy and Jon’s ultrasound scan in front of my tummy. I’m smiling. The elephants and unicorns dance in a circle behind me. The tinny music sounds like background for some horror show. I’ve added a filter that makes it look both innocent and darkly spooky. #babyontheway #lifechoices #whichlifedidshechoose
Already 207 hearts. People love my post. The comment section is filled with congratulations and smiley faces and more hearts. I have no idea who these people are who have decided to follow some arbitrary false narrative in the name of @foxandcrow, but they are happy for me.
Usually this makes me happy, too.
But today it leaves me oddly hollow.
I’ve created in myself a longing.
Sometimes life direction is not a choice. It’s imposed on us. Against our will.
But what if, years later, we get an opportunity to redress that? Like Mary. We choose a different path.
DAISY
October 18, 2019. Friday.
Thirteen days before the murder.
Daisy holds her smartphone up high, angles her head, smiles, and clicks. Shifting her position, she clicks again. She’s searching for a perfect image for her daily @JustDaisyDaily Instagram selfie. For the next shot she tries to capture in the background the people fishing along the Stanley Park seawall. They sit with buckets at their sides, dangling lines into rocky pools. As she clicks, Daisy considers potential hashtags:
#SeaWalkFishermen #StanleyParkMorning #SunnyBreak #PregnantMomsNeedExercise
She likes to capitalize the first letter of each word in her tags. Uppercasing helps visually impaired screen readers, as well as Instagrammers who struggle to identify patterns and relationships between words. Someone with dyslexia, perhaps, or some other cognitive disability. Or so she’s been told. Her goal with her social media account is to demonstrate that she’s warm and inclusive. Culturally aware. Her narrative—the story Daisy so very carefully curates—has to land just right.