“Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Is there something wrong?”
He still had not returned her many messages, but her brother had somehow found time to drop by Art’s. It hardly seemed to matter now how he had known about their father’s company-he always had found his identity through Dad’s work more than she had-but she was still worried that he was using again. He had a way of avoiding her when that was the case.
“No. Just haven’t seen him for a while, is all. Should I take that thumb drive home with me, or do you need it here?”
“Better let me hang on to it for now. The harder we make it for them to connect you to those pictures, the better.”
The unspoken implication was obvious. Despite his reassurances, Art was already thinking forward to a day when the police would show up at her door, arrest warrant in hand.
Chapter Forty-One
“H oly shit, you actually picked up your phone.”
After a mere two rings, Ben finally demonstrated signs of life and answered his cell.
“Sorry. It’s been a little busy.”
“The sound business is
Ben’s work in sound engineering was not exactly nine-to-five employment, but she was pretty sure that he’d experienced longer dry spells between gigs than she had suffered after the museum layoff, and yet he never referred to himself as unemployed.
“Just a lot of stuff going on, that’s all.”
She held her free ear shut with her index finger, struggling to hear over the traffic outside Cronin’s building. Ben’s voice sounded flat. In someone else, she might attribute the tone to worry or distraction. In her brother, three or four controlled substances came to mind.
“I’m worried about you, Ben.”
“Isn’t that always the case with the Humphreys? Everyone worries about Ben. Everyone assumes the worst.”
“You
“Jesus Christ. I told you, it was a little weed. I’m fine.”
Whenever she was tempted to write her brother off as a total fuckup, she forced herself to remember that, although siblings, they really did not have the same parents. Ben was close to five years older than she. Their father had stopped drinking when she was eleven, but Ben was already in high school by then. He remembered more. And their parents had always expected less of him as a result.
“Art said you stopped by his office yesterday. What’s that about?”
“He’s our godfather. Do we need a reason to see each other?”
“I’m starting to wish you hadn’t picked up the phone. Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Look, I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to him. That’s all.”
“Was it about ITH?”
Ben was silent.
“When I was at your apartment, you said that ITH was incorporated a long time ago, but I never told you about the incorporation. And I didn’t know about Dad’s connection until Jeff dug up those documents with the state. But
“I thought I remembered hearing Art and Dad talk about ITH when I was in high school. I dropped by Art’s office yesterday to see if he could shed some light on who might’ve used the name to start the gallery. That’s all.”
“When you were at my apartment, you told me you’d never heard of the company.”
“I didn’t think I had. Then after I left, it sort of rang a bell. Are we done with the cross-examination?”
“I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of a nightmare, and I can’t wake up. I already talked to Dad and Art about it, but when I brought ITH up with you, I sensed you were holding something back. And, frankly, Ben, you’re not always a hundred percent honest when you’re using.”
“You know what, perfect little sister? I was trying to help you out by going to Art. I was making sure that he and Dad weren’t the ones being selective with their information. But fuck it. Just go to hell.”
By the time Ben hung up on her (and refused to answer her four consecutive redials) she was already a third of the way home from midtown. Despite the cold, she continued on foot toward her apartment.
She told herself she needed the forty-five-minute walk as exercise, but she knew precisely why she’d opted for foot travel over subway: the squandering of time. Forty-five minutes of her boots against concrete meant forty-five fewer minutes in her apartment, struggling futilely to read a book or watch a television show without thinking about Highline Gallery, Drew Campbell, or those horrible photographs. The walk gave her one less hour in the day to tie her head into knots about the trail of evidence that even she had to admit led directly to her. The walk allowed her to believe that the argument with Ben had been just another sibling tiff, and that she and her brother would be patched back to normal by nightfall.
She felt herself slow her pace as she passed Tenth Street, only two blocks from her apartment building. She usually ran past the corner on Twelfth because of all the construction noise from the new condo development that would seemingly never be completed, but today she managed to tune out the eardrum-shattering sounds of the jackhammers.
Even though she wasn’t hungry, she stopped at the counter in Veselka for pierogies to go. She savored the warm pillows of dough-wrapped potato while standing, chewing slowly, buying more time.
She had finally resigned herself to a fate of sitting in her apartment, accompanied only by her worries, when she saw the green Camry roll through the intersection at St. Mark’s. She caught the last three digits of the license plate. They matched the car she’d spotted twice the day before. She tried to remember now if she had seen the Camry while she’d been walking south on Second Avenue. Had the man been following her? Or was the Camry simply a car from the neighborhood that she’d never had reason to notice?
She pulled her phone from her pocket and started to dial 911, but then remembered Cronin’s warnings. She dialed his number instead. His secretary cheerfully reported Mr. Cronin was unavailable but that she was happy to take a message.
She understood Cronin’s point about strategy, but the third Camry sighting in two days raised concerns that went beyond her legal situation. Someone had killed the man she’d known as Drew Campbell. She still did not know his true name, but she had seen his body and felt the stickiness of his blood on the floor.
She dialed 911.
“So… I’m sorry, miss, but you say you do know the man was following you, or you don’t?”
The uniformed officer was polite, but she could tell from the way he smiled reassuringly at gawking passersby that she sounded like a woman who was one missed med away from screaming at the pigeons about an impending alien takeover. She tried to explain once again that she had seen the Camry twice yesterday and again today but did not know who was driving it.
“And what makes you think the man is, um, stalking you or whatever? Did he make threats toward you? Or try to follow you into your building? Or act inappropriately in some manner?”
She was tempted to say all of the above just to appear less insane. “No. It’s just-I know it sounds crazy, but I’m a witness in a homicide investigation. I-I discovered a man’s body four days ago and they haven’t found the person who did it. So when I saw the same car three times in twenty-four hours-”
The officer was nodding quickly. She couldn’t tell if that was a sign he believed her or was buying time before calling the nice men with a spacious van and butterfly nets. “Well, the car doesn’t appear to be here any longer. You say you’ve got the license plate number. What I’d suggest is that I forward my report to the detectives in charge of that pending homicide. They can decide the best strategy going forward. Run the plate. See how this guy fits in, if at all.”
“Can’t you just run it now? Maybe we’ll find out the guy lives around the corner, and it’s all just a
