“Everything helps,” he says. “Maybe the sight of her will jog your memory. The earlier you can get here, the better.”
I nod, agreeing, before hanging up the phone and sinking back into bed.
“Lacey’s dead,” I say, not as much to Daniel as admitting it to myself. “They found her outside my office. She was killed right outside my office. I was probably still upstairs.”
“I already know where you’re going with this,” he says, leaning against the headboard. His hand finds mine in the sheets, and our fingers intertwine. “There’s nothing you could have done, Chloe. Nothing. You would have had no way of knowing.”
I think back to my father, that shovel slouched over one arm. An inky outline making his way through our backyard, slowly. Like he had all the time in the world. Me, upstairs, curled up on my bench with that little reading light, peering through a window. Present for the entire thing, yet completely unaware of what I was witnessing.
I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner. I … I didn’t know …
Had Lacey told me something that could have saved her life? Had I seen someone that day that looked suspicious, someone lingering around the office, but failed to notice? Just like before?
Aaron’s words echo through my mind.
This person could very well know you. He could be watching you.
“I should go,” I say, releasing Daniel’s hand before swinging my legs out of bed. I feel exposed sliding out of the sheets, my nakedness no longer the powerful, intimate thing it was just minutes before. Now it reeks of vulnerability, of shame. I feel Daniel’s eyes watching me as I walk across the bedroom and into the bathroom, moving quickly in the dark before closing the door behind me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Cause of death was strangulation.”
I’m hovering over Lacey’s body, the pallor of her face an icy blue. The coroner stands to my left, clutching a clipboard; to my right, Detective Thomas hovers too close. I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing, my eyes flickering over the girl that I had just barely known. The girl who had wandered into my office one week ago and told me about her problems. Her problems that she had trusted me to solve.
“You can tell by the bruising, just there,” the coroner continues, pointing to her neck with a pen. “You can see the finger marks. Same size and spacing as the ones found on Aubrey. Same ligature marks on the wrists and ankles, too.”
I glance at the coroner and swallow.
“So, you’re thinking they’re related, then? It’s the same guy?”
“That’s a conversation for another time,” Detective Thomas interrupts. “Right now, we’re focusing on Lacey. Like I said, she was found in the alley behind your office. You ever go back there?”
“No,” I say, staring down at the body before me. Her blonde hair is wet from the rain, sticking to her face like a web of spider veins. Her pale skin is even paler now, somehow, making her collection of scars even more visible, those thin, red slits checkered across her arms and chest and legs. “No, I rarely go back there. It’s really just for the garbage trucks to empty the dumpster. Everyone parks out front.”
He nods, exhaling loudly. We stand in silence for a minute as he allows me to take it all in, to process the grisly sight before me. I realize, in this moment, that although I’ve been surrounded by death my entire life, this is the first time I’ve ever actually seen a dead body. The first time I’ve actually looked one in the eye. I imagine I’m supposed to be remembering right now—remembering La-cey’s face, the way it looked in my office that afternoon, the way it looked before this—but my mind is a blank slate. I can’t conjure up any images of Lacey with pink skin and twitchy fingers and tears welling in her eyes as she sits in my leather recliner, talking about her dad. All I can see is this Lacey. Dead Lacey. Lacey on a medical table being poked at by strangers.
“Does anything look different to you?” he asks finally, nudging me along. “Missing any clothes?”
“I really can’t say,” I respond, scanning her body. She’s wearing a black T-shirt and faded jean shorts, dirty Converse sneakers with doodles on the sides. I try to imagine her drawing on her shoes in school, bored, passing the time with a ballpoint pen. But I can’t. “Like I said, I wasn’t really paying attention to what she was wearing.”
“Okay,” he says. “It’s okay. Just keep trying. Take your time.”