Page 12 of This Stays Between Us

Claire

Now

“All signs point to overdose.”

The EMT who arrives to take Hari away is a no-nonsense woman in her forties who looks like she’s seen enough to last five lifetimes.

“There was a syringe on her nightstand and track marks running up her arms. Unfortunate, but fairly standard. We’ve been seeing them more and more in this neighborhood. ”

We’re standing outside Hari’s apartment building, the shock of finding her body only just beginning to fade, the image of her lying prone on her bed still camped decisively behind my eyelids.

The rest of the group is silent, and I watch them as I try to take it in.

Hari’s death is fairly standard . I can’t stop picturing her as she was years ago: full of life, always jumping at an opportunity to introduce us to something uniquely Australian.

The first one to crack a joke to relieve an awkward moment, always walking around barefoot, however inappropriate that was given the venue.

The only person I ever met who could make Nick Gould laugh.

And now she’s gone.

There was nothing back then to indicate a fondness for drugs, nothing to suggest her life would eventually take this path. I mean she drank quite a bit, but didn’t we all? No matter how hard I try, I can’t make it fit, how she ended up here, sticking a needle in her arm, her dreams long forgotten.

“What time did she die?” Declan asks.

“Hard to tell without an autopsy,” the EMT muses. “If I had to guess, based on the state of the body, I would say sometime yesterday. Afternoon or evening. But I’m no coroner.”

She loads the covered stretcher into the back of the ambulance, its siren and lights dormant. “We’ll take her in and alert the next of kin.”

“That’s it?” Ellery asks. “Shouldn’t we wait for the police?”

The EMT shakes her head. “They don’t come out for overdoses anymore, especially if there are no suspicious circumstances.

We ran the address through our database, and it looks like we came out here for the deceased on several different occasions, all for previous overdoses.

Only those times we caught it early enough.

” She doesn’t bother trying to keep the disdain from her tone.

She shuts the door, and the ambulance pulls away, quickly merging into traffic.

“So, that’s it, then,” Ellery says, her voice breaking.

Declan rests a hand on her shoulder, and I drape an arm around the other side.

“We should go back up there,” I say, feeling as though I’m listening to someone else speaking. “Make sure the door is closed and see if there’s a way to lock it so no one breaks in.”

The others agree, and Kyan insists on having all of us go together. I’m grateful; the last thing I want is to be alone right now.

Moments later, we’re back in Hari’s apartment.

“It doesn’t make sense to me.” This comes from Adrien, who’s standing in the living room, staring down the hallway towards Hari’s bedroom. Despite the stricken look on her face, her tone is analytical. “Why would she have injected herself when she was planning to meet us?”

“For addicts, it doesn’t matter what they have planned or what they intend to do,” Ellery says from where she’s rifling through a kitchen drawer in search of an extra apartment key we can use to lock the door behind us. “They’ll get a hit in any circumstances they can.”

Declan looks at Ellery inquisitively.

“I used to volunteer at the Veteran Affairs Canada,” she explains. “I worked with quite a few addicts.”

Kyan shrugs, having taken a seat on the couch.

“But I saw her a week ago and she was completely fine. We met for coffee, and she was saying how she had just hit two years clean. And she was really excited to see everyone again. I even texted with her yesterday morning. She was confirming what time she should come over.”

I think about this from where I stand in the entryway to the kitchen. It is weird, but then again, Ellery has a point. Maybe something happened that made Hari lose her resolve before she left for Kyan’s.

“Wow. Guys, look at this.” Ellery is holding a printed photo in her hands, which she evidently just pulled out of Hari’s junk drawer. “This is a blast from the past.”

Ellery hands the photo to Declan, whose eyes widen before passing it to me. I feel a rush when his hand brushes against mine, and I internally scold myself. This is certainly not the place or time for that.

I look at the photo in my hand. Hari stares up at me, her face older than it was the last time I saw her, her hair more neutral, no pink stripes in sight.

A man nearly double her size stands next to her, his massive arm looped around her small shoulder.

He’s not smiling and is instead looking at the camera as if it offended him. I would recognize that look anywhere.

“Nick Gould,” I breathe out.

“I had no idea they were still in touch,” Kyan says when the photo reaches him. “God, he was quite a character wasn’t he? Remember when he totally went off at that worker in the rest area we stopped at on the way to the Outback?”

Kyan continues, the others joining in on the memory, eager to think of anything besides the body of our friend we found one room over. But my mind drifts. Reliving how I entered Hari’s bedroom, the moment my skin made contact with hers. The stiff coldness of her flesh.

And then I see them.

I noticed them before, but I didn’t have any reason to find them important. But now…they don’t fit. I take a step closer to the counter, my mind processing.

“Why does she have two water glasses set out?” I think aloud.

I feel the others’ heads turn in my direction before taking in the two glasses set out on the counter. One has a lipstick stain on the rim—the same shade Hari was wearing, a pink that looked garish against her pale skin. But the other is clean.

“You think she had someone over?” Declan asks.

I don’t answer, but my mind is already jumping to conclusions.

“The door was unlocked,” Ellery says, her voice almost a whisper. “This isn’t the type of place where you keep your door open.”

“Wait,” Kyan says, as if he’s catching up. “You don’t think that she…that someone… killed her?”

I want to laugh it away, to blame my paranoia on Inspector Villanueva’s not-so-veiled threats earlier. I mean, it’s Hari. Who would want to kill her?

Declan jumps in. “It fits with what you were saying earlier, Ky. It does seem like quite strange timing for her to fall off the wagon, especially given how excited she was about the reunion.”

“But why?” Adrien considers.

Ellery takes this one. “Maybe drugs. A debt she didn’t repay or something. Or…” The alternative dangles there between us for a second. “Maybe it has something to do with Phoebe.”

My attention snaps towards her at this.

Ellery picks up steam. “I’m just thinking, Villanueva said someone from the Australian Abroad program likely killed Phoebe. And it seems odd that Hari would die from a suspicious overdose on the exact day we were all meant to be getting back together.”

“So you think one of us killed her because Hari knew we were Phoebe’s murderer?” Adrien says it facetiously, but it rings true. Anxiety rushes through me.

“That’s ridiculous,” Kyan says. “We were all at my house last night. None of us could have drugged Hari.”

“Everyone went to bed fairly early, though,” Ellery says tentatively.

“Someone could have snuck out last night and done it,” I add, building on Ellery’s thought.

“Or even gone to her house earlier in the day, before we got to Kyan’s, if the EMT is correct about the time Hari died.

” My memory flicks back to earlier this morning.

The whispers I overheard from down the hall.

The others’ eyes dart around the room. No one can bring themselves to make eye contact. Am I really standing in this room with a murderer?

Another murderer, a cruel voice in my head reminds me.

“Come on,” Kyan says, forcing out a laugh. “None of us killed Hari, obviously. This is just what Villanueva was saying earlier, screwing with our heads. We should go back to the house. I, for one, could use a cocktail.”

We mumble our agreement as we trail behind Kyan out of the apartment, Ellery using the key she finally found in Hari’s junk drawer to lock the front door.

I breathe in the air when we get outside, thankful to be out of that confined space. Darkness has fallen, and the harsh squeak of bats comes from nearby. Shadows fall across the others’ faces, making them look suddenly unfamiliar.

“It could have been someone else in our group,” Declan proposes weakly as we reach the street.

Adrien scoffs. “I’m pretty sure neither Tomas nor Phoebe killed Hari.”

Declan shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean, of course.”

“And Josh isn’t even here,” Kyan says.

“No,” Declan concedes, “but there was another person.”

I think back to the face staring out at me from the photo I held minutes ago. The sharp line of his mouth, the unexplained anger in his eyes. And despite the night’s heat, I shiver as I say his name.

“Nick Gould.”

***

“Does this happen to you often? People camping out in front of your gate?” Adrien asks as we pull up in front of Kyan’s house. It’s the first time any of us have spoken during the ride back from Hari’s, everyone lost in their thoughts.

I’ve considered calling the police, telling Villanueva my suspicions, having them run a fingerprint or DNA test on the second glass in Hari’s apartment to find out who it belonged to, but I keep thinking back to the EMT’s reaction.

Fairly standard. Hari was an addict—they won’t waste precious public funds on her.

Plus, it’s not like Villanueva trusts any of us. She’s made that much clear.