It took a few moments, but she found the way to open it. Inside was a ball of tissue and a plastic object, perhaps two inches long by a half inch wide. Jessica put her flashlight beam on it.
It was a USB flash drive, the kind that plugs into a port on a computer. It was not labeled or marked in any way. Jessica saw the print powder on the cube, so she knew someone at CSU had touched this. She looked inside the cube again. The flash drive had been wrapped in the tissue. Jessica understood. Eve had hidden it in there and put in the tissue so it would not rattle. She had done this for the possibility of a moment just such as this.
Against her better judgment-in fact, against all the judgment she had-she slipped the flash drive into her pocket, and clicked off her flashlight.
Five minutes later, leaving the apartment virtually the way she had found it, she headed home.
An hour later Jessica sat in the bathtub.
It was Saturday. Vincent had two days off. He had taken Sophie to visit his parents. They would be back Sunday afternoon.
The house had been ghostly quiet, so she had taken her iPod into the tub. When she'd gotten home she'd plugged Eve's flash drive into her desktop computer, and found that there were a few dozen mp3s on it, mostly songs by artists of whom Jessica had never heard. She added some them to her iTunes library.
Her Glock sat on the edge of the sink, right next to the tumbler containing three inches of Wild Turkey.
Jessica turned the hot water on again. It was already almost scalding in the tub, but she couldn't seem to get it hot enough. She wanted the memory of Katja Dovic, and Monica Renzi, and Caitlin O'Riordan to wash off. She felt as if she would never be clean again.
Eve Galvez's music was a mix of pop, salsa, tejano, danzon-a sort of old-time formal Cuban dance music-and something called huayno. Good stuff. New stuff. Different stuff. Jessica listened to a few songs by someone named Marisa Monte. She decided to add the rest of the songs to her iPod.
She got out of the tub, threw on her big fluffy robe and went into the small room off the kitchen they used as a computer room. And it was small. Room enough for a table, chair, and a G5 computer. She poured herself another inch, sat down, selected the flash drive. It was then that she noticed a folder she hadn't seen, a folder labeled vademe- cum. She double-clicked it.
A few moments later, the screen displayed more than two hundred files. These were not system files, nor were they music files. They were Eve Galvez's personal files. Jessica looked at the extensions. All of them were.jpg files. Graphics.
None of the files were named, just numbered, starting with one hundred.
Jessica clicked on the first file. She found that she was holding her breath as the hard drive turned, launching Preview, the default graphic display program she used on her computer. This was, after all, a picture of some kind, and she wasn't all that sure it was something she wanted to see. Or should see.
A moment later, when the graphic showed up the screen, it was probably the last thing Jessica expected. It was the scanned image of a piece of paper, a yellowed, three-holed piece of notebook paper with blue lines, something akin to a leaf from a child's school composition book. On it was a young woman's back-slanted, loopy handwriting.
Jessica scrolled to the top of the file. When she saw the handwritten date, her heart began to race.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1988.
It was Eve Galvez's diary.
FORTY-NINE
SEPTEMBER 3, 1988
I hide.
I hide because I know his anger. I hide because it took more than six months to heal the last time I saw this much rage in his eyes. The bones in my right arm, even now, tell me of a coming rainstorm. I hide because my mother cannot help me, not with her pills and her lovers; nor can my brother, my sweet brother who once stood up to him and paid so dearly. I hide because, not to hide, could very easily mean the end of me, the final punctuation of my short story.
I hear him in the foyer of the house, now, his huge boots on the quarry tile. He does not know about this secret place, this rabbit hole which has been my salvation so many times, this dusty sanctuary beneath the stairs. He does not know about this diary. If he ever found these words, I don't know what he would do.
The drink has taken over his mind, and made it a house of red mirrors where he cannot see me. He can only see himself, his own monstrous face in the glass, reflected a thousand times over like some uncontrollable army.
I hear him walking up the stairs, just above me, calling my name. It won't be long until he finds me. No secret can remain so forever.
I am afraid. I am afraid of Arturo Emmanuel Galvez. My father.
I may never make another entry in this journal.
And, dearest diary, if I do not, if I never speak to you again, I just wanted you to know why I do what I do.
I hide.
AUGUST 1, 1990
There is a place I go, a place that exists only behind my eyes. It all started when I was ten years old. A light in the heavens. More like a yellow moon, perhaps, a soft yellow moon in an aluminum sky. Heaven's porch light. Soon the moon becomes a face. A devil's face.
JANUARY 22, 1992
I left yesterday. I hitchhiked along Frankford Avenue for awhile, caught a few good rides. One guy wanted to take me to Florida with him. If he hadn't looked like Freddy Krueger I might have considered it. Even still I considered it. Anything to get away from Dad.
I am sitting on the steps at the art museum. It is hard to believe that I have lived in Philadelphia most of my life, and I have never been here. It is another world.
Enrique will be in this place one day. He will paint pictures that will make the world laugh and think and cry. He will be famous.
JULY 23, 1995
I still hide. I hide from my life, my obligations. I watch from afar. Those tiny fingers. Those dark eyes. These are my days of grace.
MAY 3, 2006
Nobody who is truly happy is an alcoholic or a drug addict. These things are mutually exclusive. Drugs are what you do instead of loving someone.
JUNE 2, 2008
I walk the Badlands. The nights here are made of broken glass, broken people. I carry two firearms now-one is my service weapon, a Glock 17. Full mag, plus a round in the chamber. There is no safety. I carry it in a holster on my hip.
