“I know.”
“You know?” Bianca says.
“Sometimes you have to do things that are . . . inconceivable. To protect yourself.”
Bianca nods hard. Karen assumes she has been in therapy, which is good, and the medication must be helping. Despite the fact that she is lying around watching TV in the middle of the day, she is doing pretty well for someone who stabbed her boss in the throat.
“And Siphon?” Karen says. “Are they helping?”
“They’re still paying my salary, benefits, and everything. My lawyer says it’s because they don’t want me to sue.”
Her lawyer is right. She has a hell of a case against them after being attacked at work. But Karen isn’t here to talk about that. She leans down and removes a Ziploc bag from her work tote.
“This was taken as evidence,” she says. “Now that the case is closed, I thought you might want it back.”
Bianca snatches it out of her hand. She removes the Russian doll set from the bag and, one by one, opens them up.
Mentally, Karen keeps her fingers crossed. These are not Bianca’s Russian dolls, though they look the same and cost only $12.99 on Etsy. Karen had checked out the original set quite thoroughly, and removed the smallest one to make sure the sets matched. The only thing she didn’t do was add the blood splatter.
She watches Bianca put them all back together and place the large doll on the coffee table.
“Thank you,” Bianca says.
“You’re welcome. It seemed like something that was personal. A gift, maybe?”
“I collect them.”
“They’re beautiful. I had one when I was a kid and used to hide pieces of candy in it. My brother never figured it out.” Karen smiles, like this false memory makes her happy.
“Yeah, they’re pretty good for that,” Bianca says.
“If you get rid of the smallest ones.”
“Obviously.”
“You know, I noticed all the dolls were open that night. What did you put in there?”
“A flash drive,” Bianca says. “I keep a backup of the schedules on it, just in case. I got it out to compare what I had with Wes’s schedule on his computer. That’s why I was in his office.” The same story she gave to Louis Knox. Bianca speaks robotically, like she’s repeated those words a hundred times. Karen doesn’t believe a word of it.
“Wes,” Karen says. “He’s an interesting one.”
Bianca sits up a little. “That’s why you’re here? To talk about Wes?”
“I just wanted to get your thoughts about him, given that you worked together,” Karen says. “I’ve been looking into him on another matter. Nothing to do with what happened to you.”
“I never had a problem with Wes,” Bianca says. “But, then, I never had a problem with Tanner, either. Until I did.”
“Funny how that works.”
“Did Wes do something wrong?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Karen shifts in her seat, recrossing her legs, while trying to decide how much to tell Bianca. And how much she might repeat to someone else. But Bianca isn’t about to contact the police—not after they decided against charging her. She won’t invite more attention from them.
Karen is also so far outside the scope of her job that one more step doesn’t mean much. As long as she doesn’t fall over the edge.
“Do you remember Joey Fisher?” Karen asks.
Bianca blinks. “Joey Fisher?”
“It was years ago, so you were probably very young. Joey was sleeping in the back of his car when someone crashed into it and killed him.”
Bianca stares at Karen, waiting for more. Maybe waiting for the point.
“I’ve discovered some information that possibly links Wes to the accident,” Karen says. “Obviously, I want to chase down every lead. I don’t have a complete picture yet, so I’m looking for anything that could help me sort this out.”
“I’ll try to help,” Bianca says, picking at a thread on the couch. “If I can.”
* * *
—
After Karen leaves, Bianca locks her door. She stands there for a minute, not moving, trying to process everything the detective said. She knew it. She knew there was something about Wes and Joey.
Her intuition hasn’t been wrong yet.
Bianca picks up the Russian dolls and opens them, returning the Siphon master key to its original place. She still has it; the key had been in her pocket when Tanner attacked her. No one ever figured out that she had it. And she wasn’t about to tell Karen or any other cop, so she made up the story about the flash drive.
Bianca puts the dolls on her bookshelf, where all her others are lined up. The collection started when she received one as a birthday gift. She has nine of them now. Eventually, she’ll find her tenth.
She returns to her couch and pulls her laptop out from under it. Her work laptop. Siphon either forgot about it or doesn’t have the courage to ask her to return it.
Online is where she spends most of her time these days, mostly on forums for assault survivors. Before getting started, she goes to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator for the twentieth time today. So much food inside.
She pulls out a chicken-and-black-bean casserole and nukes a giant slab of it. Her mom has been bringing food over every day since she returned to her own apartment, and Bianca has been eating it. Her new medication makes her want to shove all the food in her mouth.
It also relaxes her. Lets her sleep without waking up screaming. She spends a lot of time sleeping because it makes everything else disappear.
Bianca turns on the TV and skims through all the streaming networks, looking for something to watch. She’s already seen everything that looks interesting or halfway entertaining. The inevitable result of not leaving her apartment.
Well, that’s not completely true. She did go out once, for a walk, to try and get some sun. Her online therapist said it was important.
Everything was going fine until she started having flashbacks to the moment Tanner attacked her. She started becoming suspicious of everyone she saw, crossing the street to avoid them, finally hustling back to her place. She hasn’t gone out since.
Her therapist told her this sometimes happens to people who have been assaulted.
“It’s quite common to have flashbacks of the attack,” she had said. “And to imagine it happening to you again.”
Luckily, Bianca lives in a world where she doesn’t have to go out. Everything can be ordered online, from food to toilet paper, and her only moments of stress are when the delivery drivers come to the door.
Bianca doesn’t miss going out. For now, she is content to sit down at her computer and check in on her coworkers. Former coworkers. Whatever. She can’t log in to her own email; Siphon changed that password quick. Her files, her messages, they all belong to Abigail now.
But that was the only password that changed. She can still log in to all the others she had access to. Their passwords are the same.
She has been messing with Wes’s schedule for the past week, at least the part of it she can access. Changing his meetings, making him a little late—nothing too bad, just enough to make her laugh. Something to do while she continues to read his new emails.