Jo wanted to tell him everything. It didn’t feel right to hide important details from Art. But she, Nessa, and Harriett had agreed to stick to the official story. “We were walking down to Danskammer Beach, and Nessa stepped off the trail to pee and found a black trash bag with a body inside.”
“Jesus Christ. Who was it?”
It was such a simple question, and one Jo had anticipated. Yet she stood there, unable to answer. The day had been such a blur that she hadn’t had time to absorb the horrible truth. “It was a girl.” It wasn’t until she heard her own cracked voice that she realized she was crying.
“Come here.” Art set the computer aside, took Jo’s arm, and pulled her down beside him on the bed.
“It was a girl,” Jo wailed into his shoulder. “Seventeen, maybe. Just a little girl, a few years older than Lucy. Naked and used up and thrown away by the side of the road.”
He held her tighter. “Oh, Jo, I’m so sorry.”
“Who would do something like that?” She’d listened to hundreds of crime podcasts. She knew there were people who hunted women, but she’d always imagined them as comic book villains or bogeymen, whose victims had only been nameless bodies.
“I can’t even imagine,” Art replied, and she knew it was true. Art Levison, for all his flaws, had never willfully harmed another human being in his life.
She rested her head on her husband’s chest. When they were younger, they had spent hours lying with their limbs entwined. Jo tried to count the years that had passed since she’d last sought comfort from Art. The warmth of his body and weight of his arms were so calming. The scent that had once driven her mad now soothed her. Her eyes felt heavy, and she might have fallen asleep if she hadn’t spotted Lucy peeking into the room.
“Do you need something?” Jo asked.
“Nope,” Lucy said. “Just making sure you haven’t killed each other.”
“Then your work here is done,” Art said. “Please resume whatever you were doing before you felt the urge to play detective.”
When Jo began to sit up, he resisted. After a two-second struggle, he set her free. “Where are you going?”
Jo wiped her eyes. “I should pop by the gym for a few minutes,” she told her husband as Lucy bounded back down to the living room.
“Can’t it wait? You’ve had a rough day. Are you sure you have to go now?”
“Yeah.” She rose from the bed and looked down at her husband. “I need to check in with Heather. She’s only been assistant manager for three weeks, and this is the first time I’ve left her on her own.”
“If that’s what you need.” Art gave in and reached for the computer beside him. When he opened it, Jo caught a glimpse of a Word document on the screen.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Just something I’ve been working on. Be careful, will you? Sounds like there could be a killer out there.”
It was seven thirty when Jo slipped behind the wheel of her car, and Furious Fitness closed at nine. Heather had texted her throughout the day, assuring Jo that everything was running smoothly. But Jo had never missed a full day of work before, and she wasn’t about to start.
She was idling at a traffic light on Main Street, across from the Mattauk police station, when someone lurched across the road in front of her car. The woman’s bottle-blond hair was slipping out of a loose bun on the top of her head, and she looked ready for bed in a spaghetti-strap top and a pair of men’s boxer shorts. There was little doubt she was drunk.
Jo watched with growing concern as the woman stomped into the center of one of the police station’s flower beds, pulled up a plant, roots and all, and hurled it at the building’s windows. Jo rolled down her window in time to hear the plant hit with a loud thud and a satisfying spray of dirt.