Page 121 of The Change
“Have you heard from him since?”
“No, but I wasn’t expecting to,” Chet said. “He hasn’t been using his phone for the past few days. He thinks it’s been hacked. He’s gotten too paranoid, if you ask me. I mean, I love Josh to death, but you gotta admit, he’s not the poster boy for mental health. I think all this serial killer shit has really damaged his brain.”
“Who does he think hacked his phone?” Nessa asked.
Chet shrugged again and shook his head. “You gotta ask him. He won’t tell me anything. Like I said—totally paranoid.”
A bad, bad feeling was pressing Nessa to act. “I need to talk to Josh right away. What’s the address of the new studio?”
Chet pointed down the street to an old brick factory at the end of the block. “Entrance is around the corner,” he said. “Not sure if the buzzers are working yet. There’s still a lot of construction going on.”
Nessa felt nauseous. “Thank you,” she told the kid.
“Sure thing,” he responded. “Keep up the good work!” He called out cheerfully as she hurried away.
Right before the intersection, Nessa passed a newly painted sign for Gibbon Media on the factory wall, just above a faded ad for a long-defunct funeral home. When she turned the corner, Nessa spotted a young man in dirty shorts and a baseball cap with an untrimmed beard sitting on the short set of steps that led up to the front door.
“Josh!” she shouted, and he rose. He paused for a moment at the top of the stairs as if waiting for her to catch up. Then he walked straight through the glass door and into the foyer.
“Oh Jesus,” Nessa whispered as it became clear what that meant. She’d suspected as much when she’d seen Josh in her living room, but she’d prayed all the way to Brooklyn that her suspicions were wrong.
At the top of the stairs, Nessa tried the handle and found the door unlocked. Inside the building, construction equipment clogged the entrance. She squeezed between it and hurried up the stairs to the second floor, reaching the landing just in time to see Josh vanish through a wooden door with a sign that readStudio.
This door was locked. Surprising herself, Nessa raised a foot and kicked at it. It took four tries before the wood splintered and the door flew open.
The studio was a white room with no furniture aside from a table and six chairs. Sound-absorbing panels lined the walls and a six-headed microphone crouched like a spider in the center of the table. Exposed industrial pipes crisscrossed the ceiling. Hangingfrom one of them, an electrical cord looped around his neck, was Josh Gibbon.
“No,” Nessa groaned.
She scrambled on top of the table to check for signs of life. There was no pulse and his flesh was cold. Josh had clearly been dead for hours. His ghost stood in the studio’s doorway, gazing up at the corpse as if captivated by its swollen head and blue face. Then it looked straight at the package Nessa had stuck in her purse, and she knew that was why she’d had to come to New York. She climbed down from the table and ripped it open. Inside was an unlabeled microcassette. When she looked up, the ghost was gone, and there was only one Josh left in the room.
Nessa grabbed her phone and dialed 911. As soon as the police were on the way, she started snapping pictures. She wasn’t going to let anyone rewrite history again.
As she held the camera up, a new text arrived from Josh’s phone.
Sorry I missed you,it said.I’ll catch up with you later.
The threat was clear.
Nessa got back to Mattauk at a quarter past midnight. Harriett, Jo, and Franklin were waiting for her outside her house, Jo pacing the sidewalk and Harriett sitting on the lawn smoking a joint and sipping a Chateau Lafite Rothschild. The second the car came to a stop, Jo pulled open the door and wrapped her arms around Nessa. When Jo finally let go, Harriett stepped forward and handed Nessa an empty glass, which she filled to the brim with wine.
“I’m so sorry,” Jo said. “I should never have asked you to talk to Josh on your own.”
“It’s okay.” Nessa stopped speaking to guzzle the wine. “I think I managed to take care of myself pretty well.”
“Yeah,” Jo agreed. “Speaking of which, you and Harriett arereally starting to give me a complex. If you’re both so good at protecting yourselves, what the hell am I here for?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Harriett said.
Jo spun toward her. “Is that supposed to be a joke? If not, what does it mean? If you know something, Harriett, you better tell me!”
“What I know and what you discover may not be the same thing,” Harriett said.
“Would you stop speaking in riddles? You’re an advertising executive, not a fucking Zen master.”
Nessa left them to argue and went to greet Franklin, who was waiting for her by the front door. As soon as she was within reach, he pulled her close.
“You okay?” he asked.
