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Quincy pictured it, the moment superimposed over the image of the two detectives beside her bed. Officer Cooper’s surprise when he noticed a flash of white fabric at her knees, realizing how her dress had been dyed red with blood. Her stumbling toward him, gurgling those words that continually echoed through her pill-stuffed brain.
They’re dead. They’re all dead. And he’s still out here.
Then her latching onto him, pressing herself hard against him, smearing the blood—her blood, Janelle’s blood, everyone’s blood—all over the front of his uniform. They both heard a noise. A rustling in the brush several yards to their left.
Him.
Breaking through the branches, arms flapping, skinny legs churning. Coop drew his Glock. Aimed. Fired.
It took three shots to take Him down. Two in the chest, their impact making His arms flail even more, like a marionette in the act of being abandoned by his puppeteer. Yet He kept coming. His glasses had slipped off one ear, the frames slanted across His face, magnifying only one surprised eye as Coop fired the third shot into His forehead.
“And before that?” Freemont said. “What happened then?”
Quincy’s headache expanded, filling her skull like a balloon about to pop. “I truly, honestly can’t remember.”
“But you have to,” Freemont said, pissed off at her for something she had no control over.
“Why?”
“Because certain things about that night don’t add up.”
The headache kept growing. Quincy shut her eyes and winced. “What things?”
“To be blunt,” Freemont said, “we can’t understand why you lived when all the others died.”
That’s when Quincy finally heard it—the accusation hiding in his voice, peeking out suspiciously between his words.
“Can you tell us why?” he asked.
Just then, something inside of Quincy snapped. An angry shudder vibrated in her chest, followed by a surge of agitation. The balloon in her skull burst, tossing out words she never intended to say. Ones she regretted as soon as they took flight off her tongue.
“Maybe,” she said, her voice like steel, “I’m just tougher than they were.”
21.
Detective Hernandez is one of those women you can’t help but admire even as you envy them. Everything about her is precisely put together, from the maroon blouse beneath a black blazer to the impeccably tailored slacks and boots with just a hint of a heel. Her hair is the color of dark chocolate, pulled back to display the perfect bone structure of her face. When she shakes my hand, it’s both firm and friendly. She makes a point of pretending not to notice my battered knuckles.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” she says. “I promise this will only take a few minutes.”
I breathe. I try to keep calm. Just the way Sam instructed after she picked me up off the kitchen floor.
“I’m happy to help,” I say.
Hernandez smiles. It doesn’t appear strained. “Fantastic.”
We’re in the Central Park Precinct. The same place from which Jeff and I fetched Sam days earlier, although now it feels like years. The detective leads me up the same set of steps I climbed that long-ago, not-long-ago-at-all night. I’m then guided to her desk, which is free of clutter, save for a framed photograph of her, two kids, and a barrel-chested man I can only assume is her husband.
There’s also a purse.
Placed on the center of the desk, it’s the same purse Sam and I left in the park. Its presence isn’t a surprise. We suspected it was the reason for the call and spent the walk to the precinct constructing an excuseas to why it—and we—were in the park last night. Yet my body freezes at the sight of it.
Hernandez notices.
“Do you recognize it?” she asks.
I have to clear my throat before answering, dislodging the words stuck there like an accidentally swallowed chicken bone.
“Yes. We lost it in the park last night.”