Dead to Me (24 page)

“Let’s see what we have,” he said, holding the negatives up to the light.

We all gathered in close and studied them, one image after another. None of us lasted more than a few seconds. Cy gasped. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand. Jerry looked away.

The pictures were dark and hard to make out, but then I guessed that whoever took them hadn’t dared use a flash. In the first, Conrad Donahue punched my sister in the face. In the second,
Rex swung a baseball bat at her. Her back arched from the force of the blow, her arms lifted out to the sides as if she was about to take flight. In the third, Conrad kicked Annie in the stomach
while she lay huddled on the ground.

“Thank god we found these first,” Jerry said, his voice hardly above a whisper.

“How did you get them?” Cy asked.

I wondered myself. Jerry had never seen Millie’s
Open If I Am Dead or Missing
letter, so I wondered how he’d known to look under the floorboards.

“Annie told me about that hiding spot in Irma’s apartment a long time ago. She just happened to mention it in conversation—she thought it was neat,” Jerry said.
“The way Millie was watching that apartment like a hawk—when she should have been getting out of town—made me think there was something up there she didn’t want me getting
my hands on.”

Jerry continued. “Better me than Conrad, though. I think even Millie would agree with that.”

“What about the pictures?” I asked. “Who took them?”

“My guess is Millie. If Annie didn’t trust the meeting enough to bring Gabrielle, maybe she thought something was going to go bad. Maybe this was her insurance.”

Stunned, I took the negatives from him and held them up to the light again.

“Why wouldn’t she just call the police?”

“Annie was supposed to be
meeting
the police. I didn’t know it was a setup,” Jerry said quietly. “I never told anyone except the cop she was supposed to meet. But
maybe there’s really nobody left in the department we can trust anymore. I didn’t even know Walter Hanrahan was dirty until I saw him shoot a man in cold blood this morning.”

“Who’s Walter Hanrahan?” I asked.

Jerry cleared his throat, and I remembered that I could narrow down the number of police officers who had shot a man in cold blood that morning to exactly one.

Hanrahan.
So that was his name. I’d wanted to trust him last night in the hills, taken his polka-dot suspenders as some sign of genial goodwill. Of course I had. He was my friendly
neighborhood police officer. Looking trustworthy was his business.

Jerry rapped his knuckles on the desk. “I say if we can’t go to the police, we go to the papers. The pictures nail Conrad and Rex for what they did to Annie. It’ll be safe for
Gabrielle then. She won’t have to hide anymore.”

“She won’t be safe. She’ll be in more danger than ever if we turn over those pictures,” Cy said, shaking his head. “Jerry, has it occurred to you that maybe the
reason you haven’t found Gabrielle by now is that she doesn’t want to be found?”

Jerry looked baffled. “Don’t you want justice for Irma and Annie?”

“I’d rather get Gabrielle out of town in one piece.”

They continued to argue, but their voices became indistinct and turned to white noise in my ears. They were talking about a future where Gabrielle could come out of hiding or get out of town,
but it didn’t change the fact that we needed to find her first. She wasn’t safe yet, and what Ruth had told me a few hours before was more true than ever—Gabrielle was running out
of places to hide.

I wondered where Annie told her to go if things went bad. If Gabrielle was really desperate, where would she turn? Jerry? Cy? Me?

“I need someone to take me to the hospital,” I said, interrupting Jerry and Cy’s argument in midsentence.

It hit me all at once where Gabrielle had been headed when she climbed down the fire escape. If things got this bad, if she had nowhere else to turn, if everyone she knew to trust was gone,
there was only one option.

Gabrielle would go to Annie.

“Are you okay?” Jerry asked.

Millie had been hiding Gabrielle, too, and she knew Annie was in the hospital. If the girl had asked, I was sure Millie would have told her where my sister was—maybe even what had happened
to her.

“I-I think that’s where she is.”

It sounded so possible when it was only in my head. Once the words were out of my mouth, though, I didn’t feel half so sure of them.

Jerry wasn’t convinced, either.

“You need sleep, Alice. You’re not making any sense,” Jerry said. “Even if Gabrielle decided to go to the hospital, how would she know which one?”

“I’ll take you,” Cy interjected, but Jerry wasn’t finished.

“And even if she did find her, what good would it do? Your sister isn’t in any position to help her now.”

Cy and I both turned on him, our eyes narrowed.

“Do you have any better ideas?” Cy asked.

“Are you saying we
shouldn’t
look for her?” I asked.

Jerry threw up his hands.

“Look for her,” he said. “By all means, look. You should. Maybe your luck will be better than mine.”

“Do you want to go with us?” I asked.

Jerry shook his head. “I’m going to stay here and make prints of these negatives for the newspapers. I know you don’t like it, Cy, but I still think it’s the best chance
we have.”

Cy shifted his feet, a thoughtful look on his face as he considered his next words.

“No, I get it,” he said. “If you go to the papers with dirt like this on Conrad Donahue, there’s going to be blowback. Just make sure you’re ready for
it.”

“I have to go,” I told Jerry, feeling disloyal for leaving him here. “I have to look for her.”

“I know you do,” he said. “Just don’t…I don’t know…try not to get your hopes up.”

“Give me one of those business cards for keeps,” I said.

“What for?” he asked, but reached into his pocket and handed me one. It was bent at the corner and smudged with a thumbprint.

“So I can call you when I find her,” I said.

Cy and I went down the steps and out the back door, squinting in the too-bright sun. Cy led me around the corner and down the alley, where we found his car stashed by the loading platform of a
store that looked like it had gone out of business long ago.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” he asked, opening the door for me. “You look terrible.”

“I know I do,” I said. I didn’t need Cy to tell me about it. I’d had two hours of sleep in as many days, my clothes were wet and stained, and I knew that wasn’t
even the worst of it.

After I climbed into the car, Cy went around to the driver’s side and slid into the seat next to me.

“I’m sorry,” Cy said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I mean, you do look terrible, but there are extenuating circumstances. I get the feeling that most of the time,
you look very nice.”

“Cy, it’s not important,” I said, oddly touched that he’d try to make me feel better about the state of my face at a time like this.

“Okay, better than very nice,” he said, starting the car. “I could go as far as ‘pretty.’ ‘Pretty’ would not be an exaggeration.”

I couldn’t help smiling at that.

“Are you coming to the hospital with me?” I asked.

“I thought maybe we’d split up,” he said. “Jerry had a point about Gabrielle not knowing which one to go to. If she got her information from Millie, she might have gone
to County Hospital instead.”

“Should we go there first?” I asked.

He pulled out of the alley and turned onto Wilshire Boulevard.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “You should get to Cedars anyway. You were supposed to be there hours ago.”

“Okay,” I said, already dreading what my mother would have to say when she saw me.

“I’ll meet you at the hospital as soon as I can,” he said. “Maybe by then Jerry will have his pictures to take to the newspapers, and one of us will have
Gabrielle.”

“I hope so,” I said, and put my hand on his shoulder. The cotton shirt he wore had been washed so many times that the fabric was thin and soft as a petal.

We drove like that for a while, Cy’s eyes fixed straight ahead, my hand resting on his shoulder, and with every block, I felt another muscle unclench. When we got to Vermont Avenue, he
said at last, “I just want all of this to be over.”

“It can be over,” I said, so insistent that I squeezed his arm without meaning to. “You and Jerry and Millie and Gabrielle and me. We tell them everything we’ve seen,
show them the pictures. How can they not believe that?”

He brushed my hand away. “The word of an ex-cop? People like Millie and me? You’d be amazed how much they won’t believe us.”

“What do you mean, an ex-cop?” I asked.

Cy pursed his lips and downshifted as he turned onto Vermont.

“I guess Jerry didn’t tell you. Well, he was, and from what I hear, it wasn’t the most amicable parting of ways.”

“Is that why Millie doesn’t trust him?”

“It has nothing to do with that. Alice, Jerry means well, but he’s a screwup. Millie knew where Gabrielle was, and she still didn’t tell him. She wouldn’t have trusted
Jerry Shaffer with a potted plant, much less a girl’s life.”

I didn’t like thinking that way about Jerry, but Cy wasn’t entirely wrong. It didn’t matter to me that he used to be a cop—not everyone with a badge was dirty, not even
in the LAPD. But he’d trusted the wrong person, and it had almost gotten Annie killed.

And then, this morning he’d shown up like a miracle, just at the moment I needed him the most. He’d swooped in and intercepted the camera before Conrad or his people could get to it.
He was going to get the photographs to the newspapers, and make sure Conrad paid for what he’d done.

“Maybe Millie’s wrong,” I said.

“Maybe,” Cy said with a shrug. He was quiet for a minute or two, then asked, “What do you hope happens when all of this is over? Perfect world and all that.”

I looked out the window at the billboards and sandwich shops that lined Vermont Avenue. I couldn’t imagine a time when this would ever feel like it was over.

“I want Annie to wake up,” I said. “I want Gabrielle to be safe. I want Conrad and Rex and Walter Hanrahan to go to prison for the rest of their lives.”

“I want Gabrielle to find a home. A real one,” Cy said.

“I want to crack a Nihilist cipher on the front porch with Annie.”

Cy laughed. “I want Millie to make a triumphant comeback in some smash hit, and maybe talk the director into finding a teensy part for her dear pal Cy.”

“I want to sleep for a thousand years,” I said.

“I want to know I’ll see you again.”

There was something else I’d been about to say, but Cy’s words knocked me off center, and all I could think to ask was, “Why?”

Cy’s smile deflated, and I realized how nasty and defensive I must have sounded. Only I wasn’t trying to be cruel. What I was thinking about was his eyes, how warm and kind they
were, and how I didn’t know what they saw in me.

We had pulled up in front of the hospital now, and Cy put on the parking brake and turned to face me.

He took a deep breath and said, “I want to know what you’re like when you’re not having the worst week of your life. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met before,
Alice. You’re up against the most powerful movie star in Hollywood and the LAPD, and you’re still talking like you’re going to win.”

“You think I’m naive.”

“I think you’re brave,” he said.

He leaned in toward me, his head tilted to the side, and I saw where this was going.

That’s not what I want, I thought. Not now.

Visions of the dead police officers, of Conrad kicking my sister in the ribs, and Rex hitting her with a baseball bat, still swam up before my eyes. It was all still so fresh, and I knew that if
I kissed Cy now, that’s what I’d be thinking about, that’s what I’d remember whenever I thought about what it was like to feel his lips on mine.

I didn’t want it to be that way between us, always tethered to violence and fear and the worst week of our lives.

Maybe he could tell what I was thinking, or maybe it was what he’d planned on doing all along, but before I could pull away, Cy touched my chin with his fingertips and kissed me gently on
my good cheek.

“I want to know I’ll see you again because I think you’re smart,” he said. “And determined.”

As he leaned back in his seat and went on talking, I fought the urge to touch my face in the spot where he’d kissed it.

“And pretty.”

“You said that one already,” I said.

“And not nice.”

“You said that already, too.”

Then he plucked a beautiful handkerchief from his pants pocket and handed it to me.

“Take it,” he said. “That cut is bleeding again.”

I pressed the fabric under my eye and was surprised how good it felt. I’d expected a coarse pocket square made of cambric or cotton, but there was no mistaking this was pure silk.
Something like that had to have been a gift, and now it was ruined.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling the handkerchief away from my face as though I could undo the bloodstain.

Cy shooed me away. “It’s nothing, Alice. Get that cut looked at, okay?”

“I will,” I said.

“And say you’ll think about it,” he said. “Seeing me again.”

I got out of the car, shutting the door behind me. As I walked toward the hospital, I looked back over my shoulder and smiled at him.

“I already have.”