Lisa Unger - Sliver Of Truth

“Did you tell this to the people investigating her disappearance?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered, with a shrug. “They didn’t seem to think much of it.”

“Do you know anything about that site? What it means?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know much about computers,” she said, casting her blue eyes down.

I put my coffee cup on the table and rubbed my forehead. I was getting the feeling that she didn’t know any more than I did about any of this. I wondered again why she had wanted to meet with me. This time I asked her as much.

“I want to help her. I feel like if I’d been more curious, the way she wanted me to be, then I might have been able to tell the police more. They might have been able to find her. I thought you might know something,” she said plaintively. After a moment’s pause: “Do you?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“You said weird things have been happening to you. Like what?”

The warning in the text message came back to me. I’d already confided in Ace; for all I knew, that had been a mistake. I looked at this girl and wondered what could be accomplished by telling her anything, if there was more potential for gain than for risk. Finally I slid the matchbook across the table at her. She picked it up and held it close to her face, squinting and wrinkling up her nose. She took glasses from her pocket, placed them on her face, and gazed at it a while longer. She opened it and read the note inside. She handed it back to me with a shrug.

“I’m sorry,” she said. There was something odd on her face.

“It doesn’t mean anything to you?” I said.

She was rummaging through her bag then. She placed five dollars on the table and got up quickly. “I have to go,” she said. “I don’t think we can help each other. You should-” I noticed she was looking over my head at something behind me. I turned to follow her eyes but I didn’t see what she was seeing.

“You should,” she repeated, “be careful.”

“Careful of what?” I said, turning back to her.

She moved out of the booth and headed quickly for the door. I put another five on the table and followed. On the street, she had broken into a light jog.

“Sarah!” I called, picking up my pace. “Please wait.”

She stopped abruptly then, almost as if something had startled her. She stood still for a second as I moved closer. Then she reached her hand behind her, as if she was trying to scratch an itch on her back she couldn’t quite reach. She jerked again. By the time I caught up with her, she was on her knees and all the street noise around us seemed to go deathly silent. I dropped to my knees beside her. Her face was a mask of pain, her skin so pale it was nearly blue. She opened her mouth to say something and a rivulet of blood traveled down her chin and onto the pink collar of her shirt. People around us started to notice something was wrong and cleared a path; someone screamed.

“Help me. I need an ambulance,” I said, holding on to her as she sagged into me. Soon I was supporting her full weight. A young man stopped beside us and used his cell phone to dial 911, dropping his briefcase on the sidewalk.

“What’s wrong with her?” he said.

I didn’t answer him; I didn’t know. He lifted her off of me and laid her on the ground, opened her coat, moved the strap of the messenger bag she wore slung across her body. Her hair fell around her like a halo. Two bloodred blossoms marred the front of her shirt. She looked like a broken angel lying there on the concrete.

He looked at me, incredulous. “She’s been shot.”

I stared at him, then past him. In the crowd of people gathering around us, a man in black moved slowly away. He wore a long dark coat and a black felt hat. He seemed to glide, to be swallowed by the crowd. I heard the wail of sirens.

“Hey!” I yelled.

The young guy kneeling over Sarah turned to look at me, his face flushed. “What is it?”

But I was already up and running, pushing my way through the throng.

“You can’t leave!” I heard him call after me. “Don’t you know her?”

My eyes locked on the man in black as he moved quickly up the crowded street. I kept losing and regaining sight of him as he got farther away. He was moving west, impossibly fast. By the time we’d crossed Eighth Avenue, I was breathless. At Ninth, I lost him completely. I stood on the corner and looked up and down the avenue.

A homeless guy lying on a cardboard mat gazed at me with interest. He looked as relaxed and comfortable as if he were lying on a couch in his own living room. He held a quivering Chihuahua in his right arm, a sign in his left hand. It read DON’T IGNORE ME. THIS COULD BE YOU ONE DAY. I ignored him.

“For five bucks, I’ll tell you where he went,” he said after a minute.

I regarded his dirty face and matted blond beard, his ripped Rangers team shirt, his mismatched shoes. He didn’t look that bad for someone who was lying on the street on a piece of cardboard. I pulled a five from my pocket and handed it to him. He pointed south.

“He dropped something in those trash cans, hailed a cab.”

“He hailed a cab?” I said, dismay and annoyance creeping into my voice.

He shrugged. The little dog yipped at me nastily.

I walked over to the trash cans he had pointed out; there were three gathered together at the curb. The smell was awful. “Which one?”

“That one,” he said, pointing to the right. I hesitated.

“Pretty girl doesn’t want to get her hands dirty,” he said to his little dog, giving me an amused grin. “Welcome to my world.”

I gave him a dirty look, grabbed the lid, and lifted it up. I was assailed by the odor and by what I saw inside. On top of the white trash bag lay a handgun with a silencer on its muzzle. I don’t know if it was the smell or the gun, but I felt as if I might vomit. In spite of that, I reached in and picked it up, more to convince myself it was real than anything else. It was real. I stared at it in disbelief. I’d watched a girl get shot on the street, chased her assailant, and found his gun with a silencer. I felt a weight on my chest; my hands started to shake. I’m not sure how long I stood like that.

“Put the gun down. Put your hands in the air.”

I froze and lifted my eyes from the object in my hand. I was surrounded by cops. Four uniformed officers stood around me. Two patrol cars pulled up next to us. The homeless guy was gone.

DEPRESSION IS NOT dramatic, but it is total. It’s sneaky-you almost don’t notice it at first. Like a cat burglar, it comes in through an open window while you’re sleeping. It takes little things at first: your appetite, your desire to return phone calls. Then it comes back for the big stuff, like your will to live.

The next thing you know, your legs are filled with sand. The thought of brushing your teeth fills you with dread, it seems like such an impossible task. Suddenly you’re living your life in black and white-nothing is bright, nothing is pretty anymore. Music sounds tinny and distant. Things you found funny seem dull and off-key.

I was sinking into that hole as I was questioned by homicide detectives at the Midtown North Precinct. I told my half-truth to them, over and over in as many different ways as they wanted me to: I was returning a call from Myra Lyall and found out about her disappearance from Sarah. Sarah asked to meet me. There was a misunderstanding; she thought I could help her find out what happened to Myra. She left the diner when she realized I didn’t know any more than she did. I went after her, feeling bad. I watched her fall to the street. By the time I got to her, she had two gunshot wounds in her chest and was dead. I saw the man who I thought might have shot her running away. I gave chase and found his gun.