Page 23 of The Last Flight

* * *

Two hours later, I sit on the floor of the office, papers strewn around me. I’ve emptied the desk and gone through everything in it. Bank statements. Paid utility and cable bills. All of them in Eva’s name. I’d found a box in the closet containing files with more important documents. Her car registration. Her social security card. But I’m struck by what’s missing. No marriage license. No insurance paperwork you’d expect after a long illness and a death. What had been nagging me about Eva’s house yesterday returns, this time in sharp focus. There aren’t any personal touches. No photographs or sentimental pieces anywhere. There is absolutely no evidence that anyone other than Eva lived here. For someone who couldn’t bear to face all the belongings of a deceased and beloved husband, there are zero reminders of him to have left behind.

I work hard to find explanations for what’s missing. Maybe her husband had bad credit and all the bills had to be in her name. Maybe everything related to him is boxed up in the garage, too painful to even have inside the house. But these feel flimsy, half-color fabrications that are simply not true.

I pull out the last file in the box and open it. It’s escrow paperwork for an all-cash purchase of this side of the duplex, dated two years ago. At the top, her name only.Eva Marie James. And underneath it, the box next toSingleis checked.

I can still hear her voice in my mind, the way she spoke of her husband. High school sweethearts. Together for eighteen years. The emotion in her voice when she described her decision to help him die, the way it broke, the tears in her eyes.

She lied. She fuckinglied. About all of it.

Eva

Berkeley, California

August

Six Months before the Crash

Ten minutes before her scheduled meeting with Brittany, Eva parked her car in a lot at the outer edge of Tilden Park, rather than driving into the interior. She preferred to walk in and out, arrive and leave silently. Tucking the package into her coat pocket, she turned toward a path that would take her to a tiny clearing where she used to come and study, a lifetime ago.

The full trees cast a dappled shade on the path, yet a cool wind kicked up from the bay, despite it being the last month of summer. Even though the sky above was clear, Eva caught glimpses of San Francisco Bay in the distance, of the marine layer gathering over the Pacific, and knew in a few hours that would change. She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her favorite coat—army green with several zippered pockets—and felt the outline of the pills through their wrapping paper.

The trees that surrounded Eva were old friends. She recognized them individually, the shape of their trunks and the reach of their branches. She tried to place herself back in time, coming here after classes were over, spreading her books across the picnic table or on the grass if the weather was warm. Sometimes Eva caught flashes of that girl, like images from a passing train. Glimpses into a different life, with a regular job and friends, and she’d feel unsettled for days.

When she arrived at the clearing, she was relieved to see she was alone. The scarred wooden picnic table still stood beneath a giant oak tree, a concrete trash can chained to it. She wandered over to the table and sat on it, checking the time again, the familiar location drawing her mind back in time.

* * *

Fish ran the drug underworld in Berkeley and Oakland, and Dex worked for him. “Most drug dealers get picked up quickly,” Dex had warned her at the very beginning. He’d taken her to lunch at a waterfront restaurant in Sausalito, so he could explain what she’d be doing. Across the bay, San Francisco had been swathed in a deep fog, only the tops of the tallest buildings visible. She’d thought of St. Joseph’s and the nuns who’d raised her, buried under the fog and the assumption that Eva was still enrolled in school, still on track to graduate with full honors in chemistry, instead of where she was—three days post expulsion, sleeping in Dex’s spare bedroom and getting a crash course on drug selling and distribution. Eva tore her eyes away and focused back on Dex.

“What you make has a very specific market,” Dex continued. “You will only sell to people referred to you by me. This is how you’ll stay safe.”

“I’m confused,” Eva had said. “Am I making or selling?”

Dex folded his hands on top of the table. They’d finished eating, and the server had tucked the check next to Dex’s water glass and then disappeared. “Historically, Fish has struggled to keep good chemists for long. They always think they can do better on their own and then things get complicated. So we’re going to try something different with you,” he’d said. “You will produce three hundred pills a week. As compensation for this work, you will keep half and Fish will let you sell them yourself, keeping one hundred percent of those profits.”

“Who will I sell them to?” she’d asked, suddenly uncomfortable, imagining herself face-to-face with strung-out addicts. People who might grow violent. People like her mother.

Dex smiled. “You will provide an important service to a very specific clientele—students, professors, and athletes. Five pills should sell for about two hundred dollars,” Dex had told her. “You can clear $300,000 per year, easy.” He smiled at her stunned expression. “This only works if you follow the rules,” he’d warned. “If we hear you’re branching out, or selling to addicts, you put everything and everyone at risk. Understand?”

She’d nodded and cast an anxious glance toward the entrance. “What about Fish? I thought he’d be here today.”

Dex laughed and shook his head. “God, you’re green. I forget you don’t know how any of this works. If you do your job well, you’ll never meet Fish.” She must have looked confused, because he clarified. “Fish keeps things compartmentalized. It’s how he protects himself. If any one person knew too much, they’d become a target—of either a competitor or the police. I’ll be your handler, and I’ll make sure you stay safe.” Dex dropped several twenty-dollar bills onto the table and stood. Their meal was over. “If you do as I tell you, you’ll have a nice life. It’s safe as long as you follow the rules.”

“Don’t you worry about getting caught?”

“Despite what you might see on TV, the police only know the ones they catch, and they only catch the dumb ones. But Fish isn’t dumb. He’s not in this for power. He’s a businessman who thinks about long-term gains. And that means growing slowly, being selective about his clients as well as the people who work for him.”

She’d been eager to get started. It had sounded so simple. And the system worked. The only hard part was being on campus among her peers, having to live alongside the life she’d just lost. Walking past her dorm where the same people still lived. The chemistry building where her classes went on without her. The stadium where Wade continued to shine, and one year later, the graduation ceremony that should have been hers. It was as if she’d stepped through some kind of barrier, where she could watch her old life still unfold, unseen. But as the years passed, the students grew younger and soon campus was populated by all new people. The loss had faded, as all losses did, replaced by something harder. Stronger. She could see now what she couldn’t see then. All choices had consequences. It was what you did with those consequences that mattered.

* * *

Eva’s gaze tracked down the small service road that wound its way through the hundreds of acres that comprised Tilden Park. Something about this meeting felt off, and her instincts, finely tuned after so many years, were pinging. She’d give Brittany ten more minutes and then leave. Return to her car and drive home, closing the door and forgetting about this woman. Eva worked hard to stay sharp. To not grow complacent and careless. Despite how mundane the work could sometimes feel—the endless hours in the lab, the quick handoffs with Dex or a client—this job was dangerous.

Early on—it must have been some time in her first year—Dex had woken her, just before dawn, a quiet knocking on her door. “Come with me,” he’d said, and she’d pulled her coat from the hook, following him across the deserted campus, the pathways still lit by lamps.

They’d walked west without talking, past the track stadium, restaurants and bars closed and shuttered at that predawn hour. She’d seen the flashing emergency lights from a block away. Police, ambulance, yellow crime-scene tape cordoning off the sidewalk outside a cheap motor court motel, forcing them to cross the street.

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