A blessing, yes. And maybe a terrible invitation.
She logged off the computer, picked up the case file, and left the library, then walked back down to the harbor and stood about five hundred yards from the Tahoe. She pretended to stare at the sea, but she was really looking for people watching the car. There was no obvious sign of interest in the vehicle, but right now everyone felt like a watcher. Paranoia was growing. She forced her eyes away from the parking lot and looked out across the water. The wind was rising, northeasterly breezes throwing up nickel-colored clouds, as if the morning’s sunshine had been a mistake and now the wind was working hastily to conceal evidence of the error.
Abby knew that making contact with Tara Beckley’s family would be a suicidal move. They’d rush to the police, bring more attention, and, quite possibly, kill whatever faint hope she had of trading the phone in her pocket for evidence that exonerated her in Hank’s death and for the chance to send his murderer to prison. It was too early to reach out; she’d be better off walking into the police station.
Unless the family believes you.
Unless that, yes.
She watched the ferry head out from Rockland toward Vinalhaven, and she thought of the way Tara’s eyes had flicked up at the doctor’s questions, the responsive motion so clear, so undeniable, and then she thought of the countless tests Luke had failed. Then she withdrew the working cell phone from her pocket, the one she’d promised herself she wouldn’t use again. Just by turning it on, she was broadcasting her location.
But she had to try.
She opened the case file she’d taken into the library and flipped through it in search of another number. Not Oltamu’s this time. Shannon Beckley’s. She dialed.
Shannon answered immediately. “Hello?” A single word that conveyed both her confidence in herself and her distrust of others. She wouldn’t have recognized the number, so she was probably already suspicious.
“This is Abby Kaplan and it is very important that you do not hang up. You need to listen to me, please. You’ve got to listen to me for Tara’s sake.”
She got the words out in a hurry. She had to keep the conversation short on this phone.
“Sure,” Shannon said. “Sure, I remember you.” Her voice was strained, and Abby heard people talking in the background and then the sound of a door opening and she understood that Shannon was leaving a crowded room. She was at least giving Abby the chance to speak.
“Have they told you I killed Hank Bauer yet?” Abby asked.
“They have.” She spoke lightly, as if trying not to draw concern or attention, and Abby heard her footsteps loud on the tiled floor of the hospital. She was walking away from listeners.
“It’s a lie. We were both supposed to die and I made it out.”
“That’s different than what I’ve heard.”
“I’m sure it is. If I could explain it, I’d have gone right to the police. But Hank is dead because whoever killed Oltamu — and Ramirez, there are three of them now, all of them dead...” Her words were running away from her and she stopped and took a breath, forcing herself to slow down. “Whoever did that wants a phone. Not your sister’s, and not Oltamu’s real phone. One that he had with him, maybe. I’m not sure it’s actually a phone; it might just be a camera designed to look like one. But I’ve got it.”
“What does—”
“Hang on, listen to me. I just read a post from your mother’s Facebook page that claims Tara is alert. I saw the video. That needs to come down.”
“What? Why?”
Abby looked at how long she’d been on the call — twenty-five seconds. “I’ve got to hurry,” she said, “and I don’t have all the answers you’re going to want, but you have to limit access to Tara. And you have to limit the questions she’s asked. Because if she remembers what happened that night, then she’s a threat to somebody. Three people are already dead, and that’s just the ones I know of. I was supposed to be the fourth.”
Shannon Beckley didn’t speak. Abby wanted to be patient, but she couldn’t. Not on this line.
“If you think I’m crazy, fine, but I’m trying to give you a chance,” she said. “Trying to give her a chance.”
Shannon’s voice was low when she said, “I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“Thank you.”
“But I can’t limit access to her,” she said. “There are too many doctors involved, and they’re not going to let me call the shots. If you think she’s at risk of being... killed, then who am I supposed to tell? Who do I call?”
The wind gusted off the water, peeled leaves off the trees, and scattered them over the pavement, plastering one to Abby’s leg. She stared at the bloodred leaf, then looked over to where the Tahoe was parked. A man in an L. L. Bean windbreaker walked by it without giving it so much as a passing glance, but still Abby scrutinized him.
“I don’t know who you call,” she said finally. “If I knew, I’d call them myself. Maybe you can trust the police.”
“You’re not sure of that, though?”
“I’m...” She’d started to say she was sure, but she couldn’t. All she could think of was the way the kid had smiled when he’d spoken of friends in cells and friends in uniforms. “I’m not sure,” Abby finished. “Sorry. There has to be someone to call, but I don’t know who the right person is, because I don’t know who I’m dealing with. I don’t know what Tara saw, what she heard.”
She faced the hard, cutting wind and paused again, aware that she was letting the call go on too long but no longer caring as much because an idea was forming.
“Can you ask her the first round of questions?” she said. “Without doctors around, or at least without many of them. Can you handle that?”
“Questions about what happened that night?”
“Yes. You need to do that. But they have to be the right questions. They have to... they need to be my questions.”
“What are those?”
“I’m not positive yet. I mean, I know some, but... let me think.”
“You have to tell me what to ask!”
Abby squinted into the cold wind and watched the ferry churn toward the island, its wake foaming white against the gray sea, and then she said, “Ask her if he took a picture of her. I definitely need to know that. And if he did, then ask if she gave him another name.”
“Another name? What do you mean, another name?”
“I’m not sure. If she called herself Tara or Miss Beckley or whatever. Ask what he knew her by. That’s really important. What would he have called her?”
“She would have been just Tara. That’s it,” Shannon said, her voice rising, but then she lowered it abruptly, as if she’d realized she might be overheard, and said, “Why does this matter? What do you know?”
“People are killing each other to get to a phone that was in her car,” Abby said. “I have it now. It was in the box I brought down to you. I don’t know what in the hell is on it, but it looks like he took her picture. It’s on the lock screen now, and it wants her name. But her name doesn’t—”
The phone beeped in her ear then, and her first thought was the battery was low, but when she glanced at the display, she saw an incoming call, the number blocked.
The wind off the water died down, but the chill within her spread.
“Hang on,” she told Shannon Beckley, and then she ignored her objection and switched over to answer the incoming call. “Hello?”
“Hello, Abby.”
It was the kid.