Читать книгу The Night Olivia Fell - Christina McDonald - Страница 17

10

ABI

november

I started to shake all over, a shocked and angry vibration that started at the very core of me and radiated out.

Why would somebody send these to Olivia? And who?

I scrolled down through the rest of the photos, but there was nothing else there. Nothing threatening, anyway.

I rested my head on the desk and thumped it softly against the edge, as if that would knock loose rational thoughts that might solve this puzzle.

‘Think, Abi. Think!’

Her phone. I bolted upright. Maybe there were more on her actual phone. I racked my mind, trying to think where I’d put it. I barely remembered what had happened since Olivia fell. It felt like I’d been sleepwalking since then.

I ran to the kitchen and grabbed Olivia’s phone from the coun ter I’d thrown it on after the detectives left. The fact that the police hadn’t even asked for or looked for Olivia’s cell was further proof they weren’t taking the investigation seriously.

I plugged the phone in to charge, and after a few seconds it chimed and burst to life.

There were two unread text messages.

The most recent was from someone Olivia had saved as K at 10:42 a.m. later the same morning Olivia was found: You ok? I’m so sorry. I seriously didn’t know. Anyway, he’s a dick. If you’re like me you’ll cut him out for good!

I brushed a hand over my face, more baffled than ever. I scrolled down and read the other text.

It was from Tyler at 11:20 p.m. the night Olivia fell.

I scrolled up to read the whole thread.

Olivia: You’re right. We need to talk. You still at bbq? Meet in 15?

Tyler: Yep. See you in a few.

I paused, letting the part of my brain that allowed me to analyze numbers so well take over. I latched on to something as my mind anchored and examined it. The thought crystallized into something cold and hard.

‘Fuck,’ I whispered out loud. Tyler had told me Olivia left at 10:45 p.m. and he hadn’t seen her after that. But according to this text, they’d met up at around 11:30 p.m. ‘Tyler lied to me.’

I scrolled back through some of Olivia’s old texts. The most recent ones were from K and a string of texts from somebody called only D. As I read, I realized they were sweet, some rather romantic, and I remembered Tyler telling me the baby wasn’t his. Perhaps this D was the baby’s father.

The shock of finding the disturbing images in Olivia’s iCloud account and the texts from Tyler had begun to dissipate, leaving behind a completely clear view.

This was the proof I needed. Somebody had hurt Olivia on purpose. I had to go to the police.

× × ×

The Portage Point Police Department was situated in a miniature antebellum-style brick building on the far side of town, nestled under tall pine trees and fronted by a series of low boxwood shrubs.

I drove too quickly up Main Street, flying past the white, steepled church, a handful of indie coffee shops, a yoga studio, and the small town square, then turned right past a children’s playground and baseball diamond. I parked outside the station, between a police SUV and an American flag flapping aggressively in the wind.

Carol-Ann, the police station receptionist, recognized me as soon as I walked in.

‘Abi!’ She came around the desk and reached for me, folding me against her massive, doughy bosom. She smelled of lavender and soap, which made me suddenly aware of how long it had been since I’d showered. When Carol-Ann pulled away, her soft brown eyes sparkled with tears.

Carol-Ann was like the police department’s built-in grandma, complete with thick glasses and permed graying hair that poufed around her face. She’d run the front office as long as I could remember, helping the town’s four police officers and two detec tives organize legal paperwork, answer the phones, and comfort victims.

‘Carol-Ann, I need to see Detective Samson or McNally. Are they here?’

I took a step toward the half-open inner door and caught a glimpse of Samson sitting in a small kitchen, a sandwich in front of her as she stared at her cell phone. The murmur of police radios floated out to me.

Carol-Ann stepped in front of me and put her hand on my elbow, gently guiding me to a chair by her desk. ‘Let me see if they’re free. I’ll be right back.’

A few minutes later she returned with Detective Samson.

I jumped up, anger flaring in me. ‘Where have you been?’ I snapped. ‘I’ve left a thousand messages for you guys, and nothing! No wonder you haven’t solved Olivia’s case if you’re sitting here eating lunch and checking your phone all day!’

Samson’s ice-blue eyes flashed something I couldn’t immediately recognize. Not anger, exactly. Surprise.

She nodded at Carol-Ann, then jerked her head toward the door. ‘Please come with me.’

I followed her down the hallway past the kitchen to a characterless room painted a cold gray. There were no pictures on the walls, no decorations, nothing except a window to the hallway with half-closed blinds and a table like the kind you’d find in a cafeteria with a handful of folding chairs around it.

I pulled Olivia’s phone out of my purse, set it on the table with a loud thunk, then glared at her as she sat down.

‘You didn’t take Olivia’s phone.’

Samson crossed one leg over her knee and studied me for a long minute. ‘Didn’t Detective McNally ask you for it?’

‘No.’ I started to shake my head, then stopped. I couldn’t actually remember. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘We are pursuing a number of leads, Miss Knight.’

I gritted my teeth, knowing that was code for We haven’t found anything.

‘Olivia’s boyfriend, Tyler, he lied to me. He told me they didn’t see each other after she left the barbecue, but there’s a text here.’ I clicked into the text thread and handed the phone to her. ‘See? She says she’s going back to the barbecue. She would’ve met him at eleven thirty. And . . .’ I dug in my purse for the threatening pictures I’d printed from Olivia’s iCloud account and laid them on the table. ‘Somebody sent her these.’

Samson scrolled through the phone for a moment, then picked up the pictures, her face a cold, hard mask. She studied them for a long moment. ‘Were these on her phone?’

I shook my head. ‘No, they were in her iCloud account, which was synced with her phone. They must’ve been deleted from her phone.’

‘Any idea who sent these?’

‘No. None at all.’

Samson leaned forward and handed me her notebook and a pen. ‘Can you write down her log-in details for me?’

I did, then started to ask if she believed me now, but a knock at the door interrupted me. McNally’s head poked in, his flabby jowls stretched into what I assumed was meant to be a smile. He looked as exhausted and unkempt as usual, but this time there was something else I hadn’t noticed before: an unmistakable edge of animosity.

‘If I could just borrow Detective Samson for a minute.’

Samson carefully folded the printed pages and slipped them into her blazer pocket, along with Olivia’s phone and her notebook. The door closed with a sharp snap behind her.

I sat on one of the metal chairs and watched them through the slats of the cheap metal blinds. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. McNally was speaking forcefully to Samson. He looked angry. Samson gestured with both hands, more animated than normal. She lifted Olivia’s phone, but he shook his head and batted it away. Samson glanced at me, gave me a small tight smile, but something tilted inside of me when I saw it. I felt a sense of foreboding. Of time running out.

And right then I knew, with a dark certainty, that if I left it to them, I would never know the truth about what had happened to Olivia.

I’d spent my whole life hiding, just existing behind the walls I’d built around myself. I never got the answers I needed when my mother died. I was powerless to stop my mom killing herself. Powerless to make Olivia’s father choose me. Powerless to stop my daughter from – the pain of reality hit me in the stomach.

But I couldn’t afford to feel that way now. Self-pity was fine when you were ten, but in a few months I’d have Olivia’s baby to take care of. Wallowing was an indulgence I didn’t have. I needed answers now.

What do you do when you know something and nobody will listen? When you need answers and nobody will provide them? When you can’t trust anybody to help you?

I stood at a crossroads, half aware that my choice now would send me down a path from which there would be no turning back. The decision wasn’t a hard one. I didn’t want to be powerless anymore. I wanted answers.

I slammed the interview room door open, and Samson and McNally turned to me, eyes wide with surprise.

‘Something’s wrong,’ I said, a crazed fury surging through my body. Rage had hijacked the rational part of my brain, the part that never stood up to people, that sat back while others told me what to do. ‘I know something’s wrong. And you both know it. Whether you help me or not, I’m going to find out what happened to my daughter.’