Page 37 of Missing White Woman

I needed the press conference to happen. I needed them to show that video of whatever happened when Ty was miles away from Little Street in some hotel room. I needed folks to see that whatever happened the night Janelle went missing had nothing to do with him and that they needed to focus on someone else: the person who actually did it.

“Can you text them and ask?” I said.

“Fine.”

Neither of us said much while we waited for a response. Adore stayed on the couch, munching on cold sweet-and-sour chicken like she would do the week before finals, when we were always trying to catch up on a semester of work we’d ignored. I was surprised I remembered that too.

I wasn’t the least bit hungry, so I just paced back and forth in front of the television—same as I had done back then too.

And I could tell by the way she kept glancing at me that it still annoyed her. Except now she was too afraid to say anything. I only stopped moving when her phone finally buzzed. The noise wasn’t loud yet I still jumped like some teenager in a horror film.

I came up to the couch until I was so close I could smell the remnants of her perfume. I didn’t recognize the scent, but it was also probably above my pay grade. Adore looked up at me and spoke. “It’s been pushed to eight.”

“Less than thirty minutes.”

I wondered how many comments would be posted between now and then. Just as I started to pace again, Adore stuck her hand out to block my way. “Enough time for you to shower,” Adore said. “Get out of those clothes.”

“I don’t have anything else to wear.”

“I brought some stuff over. You shower. I’ll leave it in the bedroom.” She shooed me with a chopstick.

“I smell that bad?”

“Remember that time you tried rock climbing?”

“I was nervous.”

“I could tell,” she said.

She started to laugh and I had to swallow back my own. We were pitiful. I’d only gotten about five feet up the wall. Adore hadn’t even tried.

The shower was a walk-in with one of those fancy-schmancy rain showerheads I always saw touted on my mom’s HGTV shows. It was as nice as they claimed on TV but still wasted on me. The water bounced off the tension in my shoulders like I was bulletproof.

When I got out and dried off, I finally saw what was in the bag Adore had been toting around. Clothes. In theory, as casual as the ones I’d just taken off. But when I touched the joggers, it confirmed what I’d suspected. They were terry cloth. Probably expensive. The tag indicated some brand I was too broke to know. There was no question that she’d gotten them from her closet, which meant she was more local than I’d thought. Probably lived in one of the high-rises we’d gone past, not in a studio with old pipes, surrounded by college kids.

When I emerged, Adore was still on the couch and the television was still on the local channel—the news anchor now reduced to the left side of the screen. Next to him, in a smaller box, a different camera was trained on an empty podium.

The same words ran along the bottom like it was a race: Police scheduled to have press conference about body found in Jersey City.

I took a seat as the first camera cut to another scene. I recognized the house immediately. Had woken up in it just this morning, though it felt like a lifetime ago. A police officer came out the door, closing it behind him. I wondered if the body was still inside.

The camera cut immediately back to the anchor. He spoke more muted words before his little box disappeared. The press conference was finally going to start.

I grabbed the remote and unmuted the television before Adore could even ask me to.

A portly older white guy with more hair in his beard than on his head came in first, a trail of people behind him. All white. All men. All in uniform. The first guy went straight for the podium. The rest stood behind him like an offensive line. I searched for either Calloway or her partner. They came in last, Randle barely making it into the frame. They were the only ones in suits—no time to go home and get camera-ready.

I took in a breath and waited for whatever came next. The portly one cleared his throat to begin. “Good evening. I’m Police Chief David King. At approximately ten thirty this morning, 911 received a phone call about a possible dead body at 110 Little Street in the Paulus Hook section of Jersey City. Our officers were immediately dispatched to the scene, where they confirmed a woman was deceased on the premises.”

I wanted to skip ahead to the video like in someone’s Instagram Stories.

“There were two witnesses on the scene. Neither was able to identify the deceased. Her identity remains unknown.”

I gave Adore a surprised look. She spoke. “They don’t want to identify her until they have a positive ID. It could take weeks.”

I said nothing, just continued to twirl the remote like some majorette as the police chief continued. “I will say that this was an exceptionally violent crime. The woman is unrecognizable.”

The hair. The hands. The jeans. The blood covering it all.

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