I unzipped my jacket, took it off, pulled the sweater on over my head. Put the jacket back over it.
“Here.” She threw something else at me. I unfolded it. It was a knit cap.
“Susan—”
“Just put it on,” she growled. “And tell me what I’m going to find on my credit card bill next month.”
“Train tickets.”
“Train tickets,” she said, and threw her hands up. “You went to the fucking funeral. Why didn’t I hear about this from Mrs. Burke?”
“She didn’t see me.”
“She didn’t see you. Of course. Where were you, hiding behind a tombstone?” She lifted the hat out of my lap and fiercely pulled it onto my head. “John, does your behavior seem normal to you? I’m just asking because it does not seem anywhere near normal to me.”
“Normal? No, Susan, it’s not normal. A woman I cared about a great deal was killed. I’ve been shot at, tied up, held at knifepoint, I’ve had a man’s body left in my bed like something out of
“You stopped working for Leo because of Miranda,” Susan said. “Let’s be honest. You felt guilty.”
“Of course I felt guilty. She died because of me.”
“Yeah, and I almost died because of her. Life goes on.”
“It’s not that simple.”
She looked at me ruefully. “John. You’ve got to let it go. Miranda, and me, and Dorrie. You’re not responsible for what happened to us.”
“Not to you, no,” I said. “Not the good things, anyway.”
“Turn yourself in, John. I’ll get you a lawyer. I’ll pay for it. If you didn’t do it, we’ll be able to prove it—”
“Not till I settle this.”
“What do you mean ‘settle this’?”
“What happened to Dorrie.”
“What if you can’t?”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “We can. Between the two of us... Don’t tell me you haven’t made any progress. You’re too good. I wouldn’t believe it.”
“Yeah? You want to see the progress I’ve made?” She opened her handbag, dug out a piece of paper, a printout of a digital photograph. I looked at it. It was some kid, maybe seventeen years old. Shaggy curls, glasses, bad posture. He was standing in a hallway, knocking on a door.
“Who is this?” I said.
“That’s Robert Lee,” she said.
I looked at it again, then at her. “You’re kidding me.”
“His real name’s Micah Goodman.”
“How
“Seventeen. He’ll be eighteen next month.”
“He’s a kid!”
“He’s not just
“So he’s a rich kid—”
“A smart kid, too. He goes to Stuyvesant. And he’s a lonely kid. And what does a lonely, smart kid do when he can afford to blow $200 in an afternoon? He goes on Craigslist.”
“You’re telling me this kid hired Dorrie?”
“I’m telling you more than that. I’m telling you he was one of her regulars. Since he was sixteen.”
I took a minute to think about that. “But you don’t think he killed her.”
“Not a chance,” she said.
“Why ‘not a chance’?”
She took the photo back from me. “I shot that in the hotel where he came to meet me. I hadn’t planned on confronting our mysterious Mr. Lee, but when I saw him...let’s just say I decided I could handle him. We talked for an hour. We would’ve talked longer, but he had to get to Social Studies. He had a paper due. You get the picture? He wasn’t terrified I’d tell his wife—he was terrified I’d tell his parents.”
I was trying to make it add up in my head. “I don’t know, Susan. Terrified of his parents, lonely, a misfit— seventeen’s not too young to be a killer.”
But she was shaking her head. “He was crazy about her, John. Not crazy bad—he was...he liked her. And not, you know, obsessively. Just very, very earnestly. He was really broken up by her death.”
“Could be an act.”
“You think I can’t tell the difference? It wasn’t an act. He misses her. Like he lost his best friend.”
“He misses her so much so that he agreed to meet you at a hotel.”
“He thought I was going to blackmail him.”
“He thought you were going to give him a handjob, Susan. Big tits, remember?”
“Yes,” she said, “I remember.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry.” I lay back, stared up the sky. The clouds didn’t care. “Maybe he didn’t do it,” I said. “Maybe you’re right.”
“It does happen once in a while.”
“What about the other two?” I said. “Adams. Smith.”
“Adams I’ve heard nothing. Zero. Smith I got an auto-response saying he’s out of town, he’ll answer his messages when he gets back, which is supposed to be today. I’m going to try again later.”
“So one of them could be our man.”
“Or they could be horny seventeen-year-olds too.”
“You think so?”
“No, John,” she said. “I don’t think so. I don’t think they’re teenagers and I don’t think they’re killers. I think they’re unhappy men who sometimes pay women to make them a little happier for an hour.”
“Or not,” Susan said.
I closed my eyes. “No,” I said. “What she wrote in that letter she left with Sharon...there was something going on. Something she felt she couldn’t tell me. Something bad enough to make her decide to go on the run—only her killer got to her first.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” Susan said, “but that doesn’t make it true. Any more than when her mother does the same thing. It’s an act of faith.”
“Or maybe I’m right. That happens once in a while, too.”
She didn’t say anything. I heard her cram the sheet of paper into her bag.
“Can you do me a favor?” I said. I was almost embarrassed to ask.
“What.”
“My cell phone...it’s dead.”
I heard her rummage through her bag, then a click. A slim rectangle of plastic landed on my chest. I sat up, swapped the new battery into my phone, handed her the dead one.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I guess I should be grateful you didn’t steal it,” she said.
I started to say “I’m sorry” again but she waved my words away.
“So,” she said. “You going to stay out here all day?”
“No,” I said. “I have to keep moving.”
“But you’re going to want me to meet you here again tomorrow, right? Deliver my daily report, like a good little soldier? Or do you want to pick a different rock for tomorrow?”
“This one’ll be fine.”
“John—for your own good. Please let me get you some help.”
“I will,” I said. “I promise. But not yet.”
Despite what I’d told her, I stayed where I was. There was no better place I could think of. All I’d have