Richard Aleas - Little Girl Lost

“Wayne had two choices,” she went on. “He could go to Khachadurian, explain what had happened, and beg for mercy, in which case the best he could hope for was that maybe they’d just kill him instead of cutting out his eyes first, or he could agree to help me. And let’s not forget that if he helped me, he also got half the money. And he got me. All he had to do was identify her body as mine and then let me stay at his apartment until the heat died down.”

That wasn’t quite true. He could identify Jocelyn’s body as Miranda’s, but the word of a two-time convict might not be enough for the police. And while expanding shells pumped into the back of a person’s head could do a lot to interfere with either a visual or a dental identification, they couldn’t change one person’s DNA into another’s. If the police picked up anything at Miranda’s apartment for a comparison, Miranda needed to know they’d get trace amounts of Jocelyn’s hair and skin, not hers. Even a drop-out pre-med would know that.

Meanwhile, Miranda needed to have clothing to wear while she was in hiding, but she couldn’t empty her apartment without making the police suspicious. Fortunately, there was a simple solution to both problems: the afternoon of the murder, Miranda could take Jocelyn out on the town, and while they were away from both apartments, Lenz could come down to Avenue D, fill a big, rolling suitcase with Jocelyn’s clothing, hairbrush, toothbrush, and so forth, and then go to Miranda’s apartment and swap the contents of the suitcase for the things Miranda needed. That’s how Jocelyn’s baseball cap had ended up hanging on the inside of Miranda’s door. The clothing in Miranda’s dresser had been Jocelyn’s, too, or at least the things on the top of each drawer had been. The luggage cart had never had money in it – just Jocelyn’s things on the way in and Miranda’s on the way out.

And the paper band behind the dresser? Maybe it really had fallen there by accident, and just gone unnoticed by everyone until Little Murco turned it up.

“You’re lucky,” I said. “Once everyone thought you were dead, it would have been simple for Lenz to kill you for real and just keep all the money for himself.”

“Sure,” she said, “if he’d known where the money was.”

“How could you keep it hidden while you were staying at his apartment?”

“Oh, John, come on, I’m not that stupid,” she said. “I didn’t keep it at the apartment. I put it in a safe deposit box. Or I should say Jessie Masters did, since that’s who the bank thought it was renting to.”

And that explained why she hadn’t left the city after killing Lenz – the murder had taken place on Friday night, and a bank wouldn’t let her get into her safe deposit box until Monday morning. Yes, all the pieces fit now. It had all been constructed so carefully, right from the start. I thought back to what Susan had said that first night at the Derby about how Miranda had told her in the dressing room that she was afraid that Murco was going to kill her. It was a perfect way to set the stage for her apparent death the next day. There might be some dispute later about who’d killed Miranda, but not about whether it had actually been Miranda who’d died. She’d put it all together masterfully.

“You really thought of every angle.”

“A girl’s got to take care of herself,” she said. “Jocelyn taught me that.”

A girl’s got to take care of herself – even if doing so meant killing. It had meant killing Lenz when it had looked like he might talk. It had meant killing Susan, or trying to, presumably because she was making too many calls to too many people, asking too many questions, getting too close. And now did it mean killing me? I imagined it had to, despite what she’d said about not wanting to.

“What happens now?” I said.

“You tell me, baby,” she said. “I’m not going to go to jail. Not after everything I’ve been through. And I’m certainly not going to let you hand me over to Khachadurian. I don’t want to kill you, John, I swear to God I don’t, but it’s kind of up to you, isn’t it?”

She reached between the cushions of the couch and came up with a knife. It was a simple steak knife, the same sort as the one she’d left by the sink, probably the same sort she’d used on Susan. Maybe the same one, washed clean and ready for another use. She wasn’t holding it in a threatening manner, not yet, but she was pointing it in my general direction. Her eyes had a question in them. I stood up.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t pretend you’re giving me a choice. Do me that one favor, Miranda. Don’t treat me like you treated the others. I’m sure you told them it was up to them, too, that as long as they worked with you, you’d be on their side. That you loved them. It lasted just as long as you needed them, and then when you didn’t any more, when it was more convenient to you for them to be dead, all the sweet talk went out the window.”

“It’s not the same,” she said. “It’s not. Wayne Lenz was a disgusting man. It made me sick to touch him. And you know what Jocelyn did to me? After nine years, after I followed her across the whole goddamn country, after I gave up everything for her, she takes one look at this… at this… woman, and I don’t matter any more. After nine years, John. You can’t imagine what it’s like.” She stood up and came toward me. The knife was between us. “I’ve never had anyone, John, not since you. That’s the truth. No one I could trust.” I saw tears forming in her eyes. “You were always good to me. If you said you’d leave me alone, if you swore that you wouldn’t tell anyone, I know you’d keep your word. You’ve changed, but you haven’t changed that much.”

Now the point of the knife pressed against my shirt, and through my shirt, against my chest. “But I have to know. I can’t let you out of here otherwise. I can’t.”

I saw her in front of me, holding the knife to my chest, but I also saw her as she had been at age eighteen. Where along the way had Miranda turned into the person she was today? How had it happened? Was there any trace of my Miranda still in there somewhere? Or was there only the murderer, the betrayer, the woman who deserved the sort of punishment I’d imagined in the cab on the way downtown? I wanted to believe there was more. I wanted to desperately.

I reached out, touched her wrist gently. “You can put the knife away,” I said. “I won’t hurt you, Miranda. I could never hurt you.”

“Swear it,” she said.

“I swear.”

“On your life. On your mother’s life.”

“I swear,” I said. “On everything I love, on everything I care about. On your life, Miranda. I swear. Now put the knife away.”

“I want to believe you,” she said.

“I may be many things, Miranda, but I’m not a liar. Put the knife away.”

“Just give me a few days,” she said. “I’m realistic, I’m not asking for forever. But don’t tell anyone for a week, okay? I can get far away in a week.”

“Okay,” I said. “One week.”

The knife lowered. It was by her side, and then her fingers opened and it dropped to the floor. She was crying freely now, tears streaming down her cheeks. I took her in my arms and realized that I was crying, too, for her, for both of us. How had we ended up here, in a filthy tenement with a knife on the floor between us, she a killer and I – and I I stroked her hair back behind her ear with a thumb, and tried not to think about anything, tried only to feel her in my arms, to burn this fragile instant into my memory.

I let her go. I lifted her chin and pressed my lips against her forehead. “Goodbye, Miranda.”

“One week,” she said.

“One week,” I said. “I promise.”