Page 57 of Missing White Woman

“Look.” Katherine whips the camera back to the beach in the distance. A third figure has joined the two cops. They’ve abandoned their search and are all speed-walking back to the gap in the trees toward the bird sanctuary’s entrance. “Dad, what’s going on?”

Ernie still doesn’t turn to the camera. “They found something.”

SEVENTEEN

It had been a late night—Adore and I pulling a mid-nighter like we were back at Morgan. She sent me to the hotel in an Uber around 1 a.m. Luckily, my driver wasn’t chatty.

I woke up to round two of the “It could be 5 a.m. or 5 p.m., thanks to these blackout curtains” game. The room was pitch-black, the only hint of color the red emanating from the alarm clock on the nightstand to my left that the housekeeper had plugged back in. My head hurt despite the Tylenol I’d dry-swallowed before falling into bed, so tired I hadn’t bothered to put on my bonnet.

It took a sec, but my eyes finally focused: 12:34 p.m. I’d slept almost twelve hours yet still somehow felt like shit. I just lay there, willing my head to stop pounding. And just when it did, someone pounded on the front door.

Adore.

I got out of bed and bobbed and weaved to the bedroom door. Midday hit me so hard I stumbled back. It was bright in the living room. Too bright. Like walking-into-the-light bright. I protectively placed my arm over my eyes and tentatively made my way to the front door, praying I didn’t stub a toe.

I didn’t use the peephole. Just flung the door open and spoke as I immediately turned back around. I needed coffee. “Please tell me you’re just as hungover as I am or I will be back to hating your very existence.”

There was a pause. “I’m not.”

I always said Adore knocked like the police. This time I was wrong. I turned back, moving my arm from my eyes to my braless shirt. “Detective Calloway. What’s going on?”

She didn’t ask to come in and I didn’t object when she did. She didn’t answer my question either, just walked past me. “I would’ve brought you coffee if I’d known you’d need it,” she said.

I slowly followed behind her. “What’s going on?” I said again.

“McKinley told me you wanted to head back to Maryland.”

I said nothing, just swallowed, my impatience growing with each passing breath. I wasn’t naive. I knew why she was here. Kind of. “Where did you find him?”

Ty had been gone for days at this point. Plenty of time to disappear—unless you were the number-four trending topic online. His photo had been retweeted, shared, hashtagged. The only thing that was surprising was it had taken this long. They could’ve caught him anywhere—even Boston.

Calloway swallowed. “Someone called in a tip about Caven Point last night. It’s our bird sanctuary. Closed this time of year.”

Ty was still in Jersey City? Why? If he hadn’t left town right after he killed Janelle, maybe he’d realized it was too late.

“We sent a team,” Calloway said. “They found a body this morning. Drowned in one of the tidal pools.”

She didn’t elaborate. I wouldn’t have heard her if she did because all sound ceased to exist. Like we’d been teleported to outer space—or at least my heart had. Ty being found dead shouldn’t have surprised me. It had been one of my first thoughts when he didn’t turn up. But that had been a lifetime ago, when he was still nothing more than the first decent guy I’d dated in a decade.

I heard another voice then, but it wasn’t Calloway. It was Ty. His last audio message.

I’ve wanted to tell you: I love you so much.

Emotions aren’t like light bulbs, as much as we all want them to be. They aren’t something you can turn on and turn off—dim or brighten depending on your mood. And despite everything that had happened, all the things I’d been through and learned since Monday, I still loved him. And it was just like I had said to Adore last night: there was nothing worse than never being able to resolve things with people you love.

“And it’s him?” I finally said.

“Black male matching his description. He was fully clothed, but there was no license or cell phone on him. We don’t have a positive ID yet.”

So it was the same as with Janelle. “It was suicide?” I said.

Calloway hesitated. “You know I can’t tell you the circumstances of his death, but I will say there was alcohol in his system and water in his lungs. He definitely was alive when he went into the water.”

If I had any last doubts that he’d killed Janelle, Ty killing himself erased them. And in a weird way, also made me less mad at him. Like at least he’d felt guilty about it.

“When will you make the ID official?” I said.

Calloway stared at me until I met her gaze. Then she wouldn’t look away. “After we get someone reliable to identify the body.”

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