Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

“I got a call yesterday evening. Thought it was a job reference for you, which I thought was pretty ballsy, even for you. But it was just Kassidy putting someone in contact. Seems a colleague down in western Pennsylvania called about a Leah Stevens, last known residence of Boston, had your license and everything. A teacher, Leah? Really?”

So that was how Noah knew where I was. Someone had called him. It was beginning, the house of cards, ready to fall.

“Who was it?” I asked.

He laughed, like he knew he had me.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Really.”

“Really. So what I’m thinking, what I’m really thinking, is that I don’t owe you shit.”

“I don’t believe you. You must have said something .”

“Like hell I did. All I said was Leah Stevens? Real nice girl. Real. Nice .” He dragged out the words, laced them with something else. “ The job got to her, is what I told him. Was all I told him.”

The job got to me. I imagined who must’ve been on the other end of the line, felt my worlds colliding, felt everything in Boston too close now, as if I had summoned it here.

“Hey, Leah, were you listening? Kassidy put him in contact. Get what I’m saying?”

Kassidy, our favorite source in the police department, who knew that Noah and I were together.

“Kassidy,” I repeated.

“Yeah. So. You’re welcome. Let’s call it a draw, huh? I can only imagine the shit you’ve gotten yourself into this time if they’re calling ’round here.”

I gripped the phone tighter, spoke through my teeth. “I’ll do it, Noah. Swear to God, I’ll do it,” I said. But he must’ve been able to hear the lack of authority in my voice. I was a terrible liar.

“You know you wouldn’t win, right? If you make a stir, someone’s finally going to start asking the right questions. Paige Hampton has a case, and we all know it. You’ll lose, Leah. You and I both know there’s no source. Nobody will stand up in your defense.” And then he hung up.

Fuck you, Noah. I felt the words, felt them tightening my stomach, my grip on the phone. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

I wondered if the paper had a plan in place for if it happened. A standard operating procedure for what to do when Leah Stevens went down.

Whatever mess I was stuck in, I’d have to dig myself out now. From Emmy. I’d have to get to her past first, before they got to mine.

I thought of her old friends, tried to think of who they were. Names in bars, faces flickering past, nothing that lasted. I thought briefly of John Hickelman, but there were probably hundreds of them. I imagined searching the White Pages for Hickelman, John, calling each one up, asking, Hey, did you have mirrors on your ceiling? And do you remember sleeping with a girl named Emmy? Did you have a watch that went missing?

I remembered the name Kyle had shown me before things turned. The woman who lived in the apartment before us. Whose name was on the lease. She lived in New Hampshire now. This, I could do.

IT TOOK ONLY THREEcalls, all placed from my classroom in the twenty minutes before first period, to get the right Amelia Kent. But I could reach her only at her place of work – I didn’t have access to her cell, and she didn’t seem to have a landline. Amelia Kent, according to a simple Internet search that led to her job profile on social media, was an accountant at Berger & Co., a mom-and-pop CPA firm in the White Mountains.

Amelia was overly cheerful for the early-morning hour, answering on the first ring when I asked to be transferred to her direct line. I introduced myself in relation to the police investigation, explaining that I was looking for a woman who’d briefly used her address – that we could trace her as far back as that, but then we lost her.

“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” she said. “I left a few months before my lease was up, figured my ex took over the rent, though I’m not sure. Never got my security deposit back. And I’d paid first and last months when I moved in. Figured the owners just pocketed the rest and called it even.”

“So you didn’t move back to California? You weren’t rooming with a girl at any point?”

“No, not any girl. I told that to the detective who called earlier – Kyle?”

“Donovan,” I added, so she would see the connection, believe I was telling the truth. “That’s right. I think he mentioned a Vince?”

She paused for the first time. “Yes. Vince had been my boyfriend for two years. He’d moved in with me back in January. And I caught him with someone else in May.” She laughed bitterly. “Made me wonder what he’d really been up to all that time.”

“Who?” I asked. Her name, I needed her name.

“I don’t know. I didn’t really stick around for introductions. You can’t really explain something like that away, though he sure as hell tried.”

“How did he try?”

“Denial, of course. But she was in our bed, God.” The memory still riled her up, still thrummed through her blood.

“Can I get his last name, Amelia? Please, it’s important. He’s the only lead I have.”

A pause, and then, “Mendelson. Please don’t mention my name. Please don’t mention I’m the one who sent you.”

Amazing how something that happened so long ago can feel so fresh. How it could come back to haunt you from nowhere – the innocuous ring of a telephone, the past come to call from the other end.

Vince Mendelson was a little harder to track down. I made several calls during lunch and had finally come away with what I felt was a solid lead when I saw Kate standing in my doorway.

“Hey there, didn’t want to interrupt,” she said.

I placed the phone facedown on my desk, wondered how long she’d been standing there.

“You okay?” she asked.

This was a new game for me: How much did people know and What did they think and Why were they asking .

“Yes,” I said, and it was true. After the phone call to Amelia, I was actually feeling okay. It felt like the old days, the way one lead would spark to the next, and the next, until I had uncovered something and supported it with details that I had dug up myself.

I was in the middle of it now, but soon there would come an end. We dig until we get there.

“You heard about Cobb, right?”

I froze, tried to keep my face passive. “Heard what?”

She took a step closer. “He’s back.” My eyes must’ve widened, because she added, “Not right this second, but he’ll be coaching this afternoon, I heard. He’s been cleared.”

He’s been cleared. Which meant they were working under some other assumption now.

“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “No one else bothered.” Mitch hadn’t caught me on the way in, or cornered me in the hall, or paged me over the intercom.

The bell for end of lunch rang, and the sound of students in the halls grew – one voice, two – until the voices blended together, a buzzing hive, reduced to white noise.

AT THE END OFclass, I was ready to make some more calls but saw I had a new message on my school email. A message from the TeachingLeahStevens account for the first time since Davis Cobb was picked up by the police. No subject. I sucked in a breath, hovered the mouse over the message, clicked open.

The message itself had only two lines:

There once was a woman in red

Who took a stranger to bed

My fingers trembled over the keyboard, my reflection staring back from the screen. My pale face; the long-sleeved red sweater. I felt it scratching the skin at my collarbone. I looked down, wondered if it was a coincidence. Or if he had seen me before writing this.