Page 81 of I Will Ruin You

The best Marta could get out of him was that the guy was white, in his twenties, and, after Marta showed him a picture of the deceased she’d taken from his driver’s license, definitely not Billy Finster.

“The truck?”

“An old Ford, I think. Look, I’m deep-frying wings all night. Don’t have time to take notice of anybody.”

Her next stop was the hospital in Bridgeport where Billy Finster’s wife worked. The Finsters’ neighbor had come up with that information. No one had seen Lucy since the discovery of her husband’s body, so Marta wasn’t counting on her being at her job, but it was a place to start in trying to find her.

As a courtesy, Marta went directly to the administrator’s office to explain why she was there. She wanted to speak to Lucy Finster’s coworkers. She was taken to a woman named Svetlana, who oversaw the cafeteria operation. Lucy, she said, had not shown up for her shift that morning.

“I called her but her phone went straight to message,” Svetlana said.

“She ever just not show up for work before?” Marta asked.

“Never.”

“How’s she seemed lately? Anything different? Anxious about anything?”

“Not that I have noticed. What’s going on? Does this have anything to do with Billy?”

“What makes you think that?”

“She talks about him all the time. Like, nothing specific, just, if she is acting like she is having a bad day, I will ask, and she just shakes her head and says, ‘Billy.’ Have you talked to him?”

Clearly, Svetlana had not gotten the memo, Marta thought.

“Who are Lucy’s friends here?”

Svetlana shrugged. “She does not have many. You could try Digby. I see her talking to him sometimes.”

“Digby?”

She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “She might have something going on with him, but I don’t like to start rumors.”

“Where would I find Digby?”

Digby, it turned out, was an orderly, and Marta tracked him down on the third floor, wheeling a patient back to her room from the X-ray department. When he had her settled back into her bed and was coming out of the room, Marta held up her badge and introduced herself.

“I gotta help a guy take a dump,” he said. “This important?”

“Digby’s an unusual name. First or last?”

“First name,” he said. “My parents are from Nova Scotia.”

Marta looked at him blankly, not making the connection.

“It’s a place there,” he said. “That’s where they, like, you know, conceived me, when they were on a vacation. So they named me Digby. My last name’s Wentworth.”

“You seen Lucy Finster today, Digby?”

“Who?”

“Digby, some days I have lots of time for bullshit, but I’m on a tight schedule today.”

“Oh yeah, Lucy,” Digby said. “Didn’t hear you right the first time. Haven’t seen her, no. Not sure she’s on today. You should talk to the Russian chick runs the caf.”

“She a friend?”

Digby pursed his lips. “We talk once in a while, but other than that, not really. She’s got a husband. Billy.”