“My beautiful Pearl.” Her voice was so soft, but each word was emphasized, and I felt the meaning behind every one. “Now, go eat before your food turns cold.”
I gave her a smile and went into my room.
The space had once been a small den, but she had converted it once I moved in with her. She’d had a handyman build a partition that served as a door, and she’d hung shelves above the desk that she had bought me at a garage sale. Those shelves housed the books she had given to me over the years—To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Anna Karenina. Since we didn’t live in a neighborhood where it was safe enough to play outside, I’d spent my younger years reading those classics, memorizing the lines. Gran would sew me a costume, and I’d pretend the couch was my stage and the rest of our apartment an audience. I’d act out each of the scenes, and she’d applaud at the end of every act.
I hadn’t taken private acting lessons, like most of the other students in my major, but they couldn’t recite Ophelia’s monologue by heart and convince an entire theater of how much she loved Hamlet.
I could.
I kicked off my shoes and crawled on top of my twin-size bed, taking out the textbook for Sexuality and Social Life. While I soaked a piece of bread into the tin-flavored sauce, I began to read the chapter.
But each time I skimmed a new sentence, something lodged deeper into my mind.
A set of eyes.
Ones that were the color of the sky that I would see out my window in the morning.
Three
Before
Ashe
“Let’s go get wasted,” Dylan said from the couch, his feet crossed over the coffee table, a plate of pizza resting on his chest.
“Now?” Sitting at the table on the other side of the room, I bit into my slice of pepperoni. “It’s only Tuesday.”
“So?”
I flipped the page of my Epidemiology textbook. “So … I have an exam in the morning that I’m really not ready for.”
He took the last bite of the crust. “And you think the next couple of hours are going to make a difference? You either know that shit or you don’t. And you do—you’ve been studying nonstop. Besides, you can wake up in the morning and cram for a few hours before the exam.”
I finished mine as well and grabbed one more from the box. “You mean, when I’m hungover as hell and running on no sleep?”
He took a swig of his beer and smirked. “Isn’t that how we do most of our studying?”
I shook my head and bit off the tip, a pool of pepperoni grease falling onto my tongue. “How about we negotiate and agree to only have a few drinks and make it home before midnight?”
He got up from the couch, briefly pretending my shoulder was a punching bag before he got himself another slice. “You can aim for a couple drinks and an early night.” He sat in the seat next to mine. “But we both know that’s not going to happen. Moderation isn’t something either of us is good at.”
He was right.
Hell, tonight would turn into full-on debauchery, like most of the evenings we went out. I’d wake with a raging headache and barrel my way to class, trying to keep down the greasy breakfast I’d inhaled. That was what college was supposed to be about. That was, unless you were a premed major with a course load that was kicking your ass, like me.
“Have I sold you on tomorrow’s hangover, or are you going to be a little pussy tonight?”
I took a drink of my beer and picked up the rest of the slice. “If I fail this exam, you’re fucking dead.”
He got up from his seat, chuckling. “We’re leaving in thirty. Make sure you’re ready.”
I licked the sauce off my fingers. “You don’t have any exams this week?”
He shrugged, grabbing another bottle of beer from the fridge. “Nothing I can’t finesse my way through. You know this degree is just a technicality, so when I open my own private airline one day, they can call me a fool, but they can’t call me an uneducated one.”
“Make sure you keep a position open for me. I’m probably going to need it.”
“Fuck that,” he drawled. “You’re going to be an incredible surgeon, and if anything ever happens to me, you’re going to be the one who saves me.” He smiled and pointed at the bathroom. “Now, fucking move it. You’re down to twenty-five minutes.”
We’d had these dreams since we were kids, and Dylan had been pushing me toward mine ever since. I was just as hard on him even if he didn’t care as much about his degree.
College was better because we could do it together.
I tossed my paper plate in the trash and held my beer as I walked down the hallway. “Hey,” I said to him from the doorway of the bathroom.
He was headed into his room and stopped to look at me. “Yeah?”
“You’re buying tonight, and don’t try to finesse your way out of it.”
Laughter was his only response.
Four
After
Ashe
The police headquarters was located about halfway between Back Bay and Mission Hill. It was a massive, rectangular building, the entrance shaped like the top of an octagon, the wide body covered in square panes of glass that were mirrored and tinted, making it impossible for anyone to see in.
Even at night.
A reprieve for someone who liked to come into the office in the early hours of the morning.
Like myself.
I swiped my badge at the front and took the elevator to the third floor, wandering down the dark hallway until I arrived at my desk. Files overflowed from the bins that ran along the side; empty coffee cups and sticky notes littered the back. I cleared a path large enough to fit my bag and unloaded the file of the most recent case I’d been assigned.
Lisa Mitchell, forty-seven, found shot between her shoulder blades in the bedroom of her three-million-dollar home on the 600 block of Boylston Street. Her photo was attached to the top of the folder, and I stared at her face, waiting for the missing piece of this puzzle to come to me.
For the last several days, I had been reviewing the details of her case and the results forensics had found so far.
Mitchell’s housekeeper, the only person with a key and front-door code, had found her early in the morning when she arrived at work. She had called the police, and I had been one of the first on the scene.
Never married, owner of a large marketing company, Mitchell had been a prominent member of Boston’s elite society—a social circle larger than most with connections that ran deep. Her social media accounts were full of countries she had traveled to, celebrities she had shaken hands with, and dinners that had been over five hundred a plate.
“Lisa, what the fuck happened to you?” I said, running my hand through my hair.
The sound of heels clicking on the floor filled my ears. I glanced up just as the captain approached.
“Morning,” I said to her.
“Detective Flynn, what brings you in at this hour?”
Dressed in a pressed black suit and red lipstick, she was more put together than most at four o’clock in the morning.