Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

It was surprisingly easy to find the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s website, which included a helpful dashboard to search the state’s criminal-record database. All she had to do was type in her sister’s name, age, date of birth, sex, and race. She left blank the spaces for Social Security numbers and aliases.

There was a price for all this efficiency, she discovered—a twenty-five-dollar processing fee, payable only by credit card. She chewed on her bottom lip as she debated the problem. She had Tanya’s American Express card, but didn’t dare use it. Finally, she fished her billfold from her bag and extracted the Visa debit card she’d bought at a nearby convenience store. She typed the credit card information into the payment field using the address of one of the units she’d managed for Evan, and hit SUBMIT.

The speed of the search took her breath away. In an instant the phone screen lit up with the damning details.

Letty looked away from the phone. She got up, bent over the bed and listened to Maya’s steady breath, kissed the damp ringlets at the base of her neck, then pulled the sheet up over her shoulders.

Then she went back to the official State of Florida Criminal Records report. She didn’t want to know. But she needed to know, if not for herself, then for Maya.

Tanya Michelle Carnahan, age twenty-five, a.k.a. Tanya Cole, a.k.a. Michelle Carnahan, a.k.a. Tanya Rooney, had been arrested in Pinellas County, Florida, in February 2015, on charges of criminal fraud, theft by taking, and operating without a business license. There was an official-looking stamp on the document. CHARGES DISMISSED.

Letty scrolled down the report until she was staring at the booking photo. She hardly recognized her sister. This woman had wild red hair that fell past her shoulders and hollow eyes that glared sullenly back at the camera. She touched the phone screen with a trembling finger, this image of a stranger who was her sister, yet not her sister, a chameleon with a talent for transforming herself into whatever the occasion demanded.

And that was it. There were no other details. For twenty-five dollars, Letty thought ruefully, she hadn’t gotten very much, except for the unwelcome affirmation that this time Tanya had apparently gotten in over her head.

And yet, once again, she’d managed to walk away relatively unscathed. CHARGES DISMISSED. Joe said that Ava’s ex-boyfriend and Declan Rooney had escaped, and that his accomplice had worked out a deal to avoid prosecution.

AFTER SHE’D ANSWERED her sister’s distress call, Letty tried pumping Tanya for details about her relationship with this Rooney, but her sister had been maddeningly vague about the man.

On one of her first nights in the city, they’d stayed in and binge-watched True Blood. Tanya was fascinated with vampires.

Tanya was wearing a pair of jeans and a new sweater Letty had bought her—“an early birthday gift,” because Tanya had few clothes of her own, and because she’d been living down south in Atlanta, and certainly owned nothing warm enough for February in New York. And Letty had loaned her the money to visit an expensive hair salon and get her hair cut and colored back to her natural blond.

“Tell me again what happened with this guy Rooney?” Letty had prompted.

“He just … left. Ripped me off. Everything I owned was in that condo. I went to the store and when I came back an hour later, he was gone.”

“Did you report him to the police?” Letty asked.

“Call the cops on Rooney?” Tanya scoffed. “What were they gonna do? Make him come back, hand over my clothes and stuff, and the money I loaned him?”

“I don’t understand how you keep getting mixed up with creeps like this,” Letty had said.

“He didn’t seem like a creep when we met,” Tanya said. “He had the most gorgeous eyes, this amazing deep blue, like a mountain lake you just wanted to dive naked into, and long, dark black eyelashes. He reminded me a lot of a young Pierce Brosnan. And oh my God, was he funny. He’d tell these hilarious stories, in that Irish accent of his, and you never knew if they were true or not, but it didn’t matter, because that was Rooney.”

“Where’d you meet him?”

“I don’t really remember,” Tanya said airily. “He was just around. And one day, he asked if he could buy me a drink and I said yes, and the next thing I knew, we were a couple.”

“Did he have a job? Friends? Other people you knew in common?” Letty pressed.

“Yes, he had a job,” Tanya said, clearly pissed off. “God! Do we have to talk about this right now? I came up here to forget about Rooney, and it doesn’t help when you want to interrogate me like I’m on a witness stand or something.”

Looking back on it now, Letty realized, someone—the cops, maybe even Joe DeCurtis—really had interrogated Tanya, and once again, she’d managed to talk her way out of a jam.

For as long as Letty could remember, her sister had gotten into what their mother affectionately termed “youthful scrapes”—shoplifting a tube of mascara from the drugstore, getting kicked out of school for selling diet pills stolen from a friend’s mother, and once “borrowing” an elderly neighbor’s Buick for a weekend-long drunken joyride with her boyfriend that had ended when she’d smashed the car into a telephone pole. But Tanya had always walked away from those youthful misdemeanors by batting her eyelashes and placing the blame solidly on someone else’s shoulders.

What, Letty wondered, was the truth about Tanya and Declan Rooney? The date on her arrest record showed that she’d been right here, at the Murmuring Surf, ripping off old ladies when she claimed to be living in Atlanta and working as a model. Obviously she’d lied. Were they really married?

Once again, she was grateful for Florida’s “sunshine law,” which made public records so readily available. This time, she found what she was looking for on the state’s Bureau of Vital Statistics website. She typed in Tanya’s name and Declan’s name and waited a moment, holding her breath as she waited for results.

She finally exhaled when the red letters appeared on screen. NO RECORD FOUND.

Letty thought about it. This didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t married. Tanya had been using an alias at the time of her arrest, so maybe Declan Rooney had one, too?

The lies, she thought. So many, many lies. And why? She downed the rest of the wine in her glass. She was ashamed of how gullible she’d been, at how easily she’d bought into Tanya’s tale of woe.

“No, no, no!” She looked over to see Maya, batting her arms wildly in the air, although her eyes were still tightly closed. “Nooooo!”

Letty pulled back the covers and climbed into bed with the little girl, snugging her close against her chest, inhaling the sweet scent of baby shampoo.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m here. Go to sleep, baby,” Letty said, stroking her back and smoothing the hair from her damp forehead.

“Letty?” Maya sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes. “I got a bad dream.”

Not again, Letty thought. They’d had three good nights in a row without the night terrors.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Letty asked.

“The bad man came,” Maya said tearfully. “He tried to get me.”

“That was just a dream, sweetie. There is no bad man here. I would not let a bad man come in here. Okay? I promise you. Never, ever will I let that happen.”

Maya snuffled and buried her nose in Letty’s shirt. “Okay.” She looked up at her aunt. “Will you do the bunny song?”

Letty rolled her eyes but began to sing, letting her fingertips trail along Maya’s back. “Little Bunny Foo Foo, hoppin’ through the forest, scoopin’ up the field mice and boppin’ ’em on the head…”