Page 90 of Long Way Down

“I don’t have a crush on the guy,” she said. “And I’m seeing someone, anyway.”

His brows went up. “Aw, you making it official with your Dalmatian?”

“Shut up.” She glanced down at her phone screen, where the webpage had finally loaded. “Look. Here’s Daniel Loraine, dated the night of the rape.”

“Whose rape? Lana’s or Lynn’s?”

“Lana’s. He posted on Facebook at the time of Lynn’s…it says ‘Shots, Shots, Shots, yeah booooooi.’” She read in monotone. “Because apparently he’s a college student in 2009.”

Contreras snorted. “Damn. I was hoping it was him.”

Melissa smiled, surprised, but glad to know she wasn’t the only one with that line of thought.

~*~

Dana Brown had been a nursing student a decade before, when David Osborn targeted her. The photos attached to her file showed a leggy, platinum blonde with a sweet, girl-next-door face and a flair for inexpensive, but tasteful fashion. Her family was from upstate, and though she’d gotten scholarship offers all over New York, she’d had a heart for philanthropy and thought she could make the biggest difference in the beating heart of Manhattan. Bright, unsullied, beaming in all her pictures, it was easy to see how she’d stood out like a beacon amidst the head-down, mind-their-business locals. She and a fellow student had rented a shit-box two-bedroom with faulty wiring, and that was how she’d crossed paths with Osborn.

When Melissa and Contreras approached her now, it was in the women’s department at Macy’s, where she was helping an older woman try on coats.

They stood back and waited a moment, allowing Dana to finish with the customer – “The brown brings out your eyes, I think,” she was saying, hand on hip, gaze pinned to the woman’s reflection in the three-sided mirror – and Melissa noted, with a pang of sadness, that Dana no longer resembled the bright, ready-for-the-world girl in her photos. Still tall and long-legged, her face had a puffiness about it that spoke of the wine bottle, and she’d cropped her platinum hair to a shapeless cap that she wore gelled tight to her head. Her clothes were professional, but drab, an uninspired navy dress and jacket in need of tailoring. She smiled at her customer – “Ready for me to ring you up?” – but her eyes were dull and hollow beneath the overhead tubes.

She caught Melissa’s gaze and held up a finger, brows furrowing. Melissa nodded, and she and Contreras stood in front of a display of brown leather jackets while Dana escorted the customer to the register.

“She didn’t finish nursing school?” Melissa asked in a whisper.

“No,” he whispered back. “She was really shook up after the assault.”

“Understandably.”

“Yeah. But, apparently, she missed so much class that she was going to have to retake the whole semester, and the bills had built up in the meantime. She got a job waiting tables and I don’t think she ever went back to school.”

“That’s a shame.”

Dana smiled at the customer right up until she turned her back, and then her expression fell, which emphasized the deep, shadowed bags beneath her eyes. She let out a breath through pursed lips and smoothed her hair, dabbed at the mascara clumps that had formed on her lashes. She ran both hands down the front of her jacket, and then walked to meet them, Floor Manager smile firmly affixed.

“We can talk in my office. I’m on break for the next fifteen minutes.”

Her office, such as it was, consisted of an eight-by-eight box of a windowless closet, jackets and sweaters hung on wall pegs beside a generic mountain vista calendar. Dana dragged a chair from the hallway in and, when attempts to drag the second one proved fruitless thanks to overcrowding, Contreras held up a hand and said, “It’s cool, I’m fine to stand. Thanks for agreeing to speak to us today, Ms. Brown.”

“You’re not here to tell me you’re releasing the bastard, are you?” she asked as she sank down behind her narrow desk with a Diet Coke. The light here was dimmer, but no less harsh in highlighting the puffy state of her face, the stress lines, the eye bags, the pouchiness along her jaw. She had the look of a woman who did more worrying that sleeping.

“No, definitely not,” Melissa said, taking the chair opposite when Contreras motioned her into it. She noted something sticky on the edge of the desk in front of her, residue of a spilled liquid. “But we are working a new case and thought you might be able to help us.”

Dana’s frown deepened. “I don’t see how. Unless…” Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “Oh God, is this about what happened in August?”

“We’re not sure,” Contreras said. “What happened in August?”

“Shit,” Dana muttered, and her hand trembled as she reached for her Diet Coke. “Ben said I was being paranoid, but Iknew…” She took a sip, made a face, and said, “Somebody broke into my apartment.”

Melissa glanced toward Contreras and noted the same look of surprise she felt forming on her own face. Neither of them had expected much of this interview.

She made a mental note to contact the precinct that served Dana’s address. “Was a suspect apprehended?”

“That’s the thing,” Dana said with a frown. “No. Ben – my boyfriend – finally convinced me that I’d imagined the whole thing, but now you’re here and I don’t…” She bit her lip and flicked the tab of her Coke with an anxious thumbnail.Ping, ping, ping.

“Why don’t you walk us through it?” Contreras said. “It was in August?”

“It started before that, though. My mail started going missing. I don’t know how much of it, really; I didn’t notice until I got late notices on my bills and realized I hadn’t gotten the statements like I normally do. I thought it was just the mail being the mail, you know? Decided I wasn’t gonna chip in to the Christmas bonus my building gives the letter carrier this year.

---