Page 83 of I Will Ruin You

A black Audi had barreled up the street and was riding along right beside her. Then, with a squeal and a large thump, it jumped the curb, aiming for Marta.

“Shit!” she cried, and moved sharply to the right. She’d been running so quickly she lost her balance and fell, thinking, in the two seconds it took to hit the sidewalk: Not your head. Don’t hit your fucking head.

The car kept going until it reached the woman, screeched to a stop long enough for the woman to leap in, then sped off, burning rubber.

Before Marta slowly got to her feet, she looked at the car, hoping she’d be able to get a glimpse of the plate, but it was already too far away.

She limped her way back to the hospital and went straight for the reception desk.

“What did that woman want?” she asked, struggling to catch her breath.

The woman at the desk said, “She wanted to deliver some flowers.”

“To who?”

“A woman who works in the cafete—”

“Who?”

“Lucy Finster.”

Marta was continuing to catch her breath, trying to absorb the significance of what she’d just been told. The woman who’d sold Cherise Fowler fentanyl, who’d knocked Marta out, who had stolen her goddamn shoes, was looking for the wife of the guy who’d been murdered the night before.

Her cell phone rang. Marta got it out, tapped the screen, and managed to say, “Harper.”

“Got a hit back on that plate and car description,” a man at the other end of the line said.

Still shaken from nearly being hit by the car, it took a moment for Marta to figure out what this was about. That plate number one of the officers had come up with after talking to the Finsters’ neighbors. “Right,” she said finally. “Hang on a second.”

She snapped her fingers at the receptionist. “Pen. Paper.”

The woman quickly handed her something to write with and a pad.

“Shoot,” Marta said into her phone.

The caller read her the information. Marta looked at what she’d scribbled, and blinked. She said, “That can’t be right.”

“That’s what came back.”

“Check it again. I’ll wait.”

Marta heard the clicking of keys in the background. The man came back on a few seconds later and said, “Yep, that’s it.”

Marta ended the call without so much as a thank-you, stared at the notepad, and said, “Fuck me.”

Thirty-Nine

Richard

I’d been struggling to compose some notes for what I would say that evening to the parents concerned about what I was having the kids read, but was having a difficult time pulling my thoughts together.

I’d opened up the laptop on my desk intending to see what others in the trenches fighting book banning and censorship had said, but instead of entering that subject into the search field, I typed in “Billy Finster” and then refined that to “William Finster” and right away my screen was filled with stories from the last twelve hours.

There was a short news item in the New Haven paper.

Milford Police homicide detectives are investigating the suspicious death of a man whose body was found late last night.

Police said the deceased, William Finster, 25, of Wooster St., was discovered after officers in a passing patrol car investigated a garage door that had been left open. The garage, a separate building behind the Finster residence, was where Mr. Finster had been restoring an old Camaro.