CLEO

Cleo

FORTY-FIVE HOURS GONE

The woman seated at a desk behind the counter in the Yale registrar's office peers at me over her reading glasses, eyebrows lifted. I've worked myself into tears, a play for sympathy. She does not appear the least bit moved.

Thanks to Rose, I have a name for the tutor: Reed Harding. But that's all I have. I'm probably chasing a dead end. But if I go home now, I'm going to have to face the fact that what Detective Wilson said is true: When bad things like this happen, it's almost always someone close to the victim who is responsible. Someone with a motive, like money or an affair.

The woman in the registrar's office stands reluctantly, then lopes her way over. She folds her hands in front of her on the counter that separates us.

"And how can I help you?"

"I'm sorry," I say, wiping at my eyes. "My mom is missing."

She leans against the counter. "The security office is out the front door and on the left. They can help you."

"No, that's not—" My voice cuts out. I take a breath. "She didn't disappear from here. We live in New York."

"Uh-huh …" She draws it out.

"But I need help finding a student who went here a long time ago. He knows something and we need his help. I thought you'd have an address in your alumni files. His name is Reed—"

"No, no, no."

"But it's a—"

"No." She wags a finger in my face. "I can't even tell you if he went to school here," she says. "That's all private information. Legally. And these days people take all that legality very seriously. I can't go around giving out people's home addresses."

"But my mom—"

"And I'm sorry for you. That sounds real upsetting." She walks away from the counter and returns to her desk. "If I were you, I'd go to the police. If the police tell me I've got to give you that info, then I'll hand it right over. But I won't be breaking the law in the meantime."

The Yale campus is beautiful, not only because of the Gothic architecture but also because, unlike NYU, it's so green. The students even look more relaxed. I sit for a while on the grass, facing a huge library. I think of the last time I was in the NYU library. The smug look on Kyle's face when he told me he'd gotten the money I'd left for him in his gym locker. That we were square. And then he'd gone and sent Geoff anyway. What a waste of time.

My phone buzzes. I see the message first. I'm sorry. I feel a sharp pang of relief: my dad, trying to make things right. But the apology isn't from my dad; it's from Will. I darken the screen. And I feel annoyed. I'm not even sure exactly why. When I look out instead across campus, I notice several people stopping to simultaneously take random selfies. These days, it's a familiar sight. UNow photos being taken in the precise two-minute window and paired with a curated song. Vivienne. Maybe I'm not at a dead end after all.

To my surprise, Vivienne picks up right away. "Did you find her?" she asks without saying hello.

"No. But now I also need to find someone else." I feel a twinge of guilt. This is the kind of call I could be making to Wilson. Except I know she'd refuse to help me freelance this way. In fact, she might even send someone to get me. "He might know something about what happened to my mom. Can you get into Yale's alumni records? I know he went there like thirty years ago. I need a current address, so I can try to talk to him."

"Yale? Please, in my sleep. Give me his name and a five-year window of his graduation. Shouldn't take long."

Vivienne calls me back in less than ten minutes. "They don't have any current records on this guy. He didn't graduate, never came back after the holidays his sophomore year. From what I could see in his academic file, there wasn't any obvious reason. Good grades, no disciplinary issues, tuition paid in full. You want his last address in New Haven? It was off campus. Maybe they know something there. But, I mean, this was thirty years ago …"

"I'll take it—thanks."

Half an hour later, I'm standing across the street from a run-down house about a mile east of the campus. It's small and cream-colored, with a sloped front porch that gives the impression that the house is slowly melting into the ground. The neighborhood is deserted, the house next door boarded up, another one nearby partially destroyed by fire.

I jump when a dog barks behind me, hurling its enormous, angry, white-spotted body against the flimsy chain-link fence separating us.

"Jesus," I mutter as I run across the street. The front stairs are so lopsided, I lose my footing, and the railing nearly gives way when I grab on to it to steady myself.

"Who the fuck's there?" There's a huge bald man standing at one of the porch windows. I can't see his face through the torn screen, but it's clear he's not happy.

I dig out one of the twenties I specifically brought for this pur pose and wave it in the air, like a dog treat. I already have the sense I am doing this wrong.

"I'm trying to find somebody who used to live here."

"Who?" he shouts, but his tone has softened the tiniest bit. It's got to be the money.

"Reed Harding? It was, um, a long time ago. Maybe before you—"

"I've lived in this house my whole life and I was born in '81. Before that, my parents lived here, and before that, my grandparents."

The man disappears for a minute, and I think maybe I've lost him. But then he appears at the front door. He's even bigger than I realized. He motions me to approach with his massive mittlike hands. I inch closer. Not near enough that he could easily grab me, but still way too close for comfort.

"Yes?" I do a pretty good job keeping my voice steady.

"Give me the damn money," he says, like I'm the total idiot I appear to be.

"Oh, okay." I toss the twenty at the door and spring away.

He opens the door, picks the money up off the ground, inspects it.

"Now who is it you're looking for?"

"He was a Yale student and he—"

"Oh, you mean the apartment. We rented that out to students. Still do."

"Reed Harding was a student at Yale in 1992," I offer tentatively. "The school records say he was living here in this house and then left school around Christmas of 1992."

" Christmas of 1992?" he asks. "Wait a fucking second. I remember that asswipe. He screwed us out of half our presents, including my Reggie Jackson baseball card! I'd been waiting a hundred years for that thing."

"I need to find out where he is now. I need to talk to him."

"That's not going to happen."

"I know it was a long time—"

"He's fucking dead."

"Dead?"

"Yup—that's how he killed Christmas. The asshole bled out on our steps middle of the night on Christmas Eve. So there my mom was all freaking about that, and my dad worried about losing a tenant and the money and all that crap. Us kids were the real ones that got screwed."

"Bled out?"

"Yup. Stabbed." He gestures to the back of his neck. "There was blood fucking everywhere. I guess he tried to get himself out to a doctor. Collapsed on the steps. My mom was screaming her head off when she found him."

"What happened?"

Although I already have a theory, don't I? The same Christmas Eve my mom had some kind of explosion, the writing teacher she was a little "too close" with gets stabbed?

"Who the fuck knows." He shrugs, gestures at the street. "Believe it or not, this is a lot safer than it used to be. Anyway, an ambulance took him away. Police came later. I don't remember the details. My parents were so freaked about the whole thing, they wouldn't let any of us talk about it ever again."

It isn't until the train ride back that I text Will: Thank you for checking on me. I'm sorry, too. None of this was his fault, but I'm feeling jittery and needy again. I think I just really, really need some sleep.

Then I reread the Connecticut Magazine exposé about Haven House. There's a mention of Daitch's connections with local officials that allowed him to cover up all kinds of violations and bad behavior, exactly like Rose had said. The last thing Daitch would have wanted was for Haven House to be on the hook for a murder—and he had the means to make any evidence of such an incident vanish.

Wilson texts then—as I knew she would eventually—to ask about the screen shots I sent.

Cleo, what the hell is this? And then a second message comes through. And we need to talk about that boyfriend of yours, Cleo. It's important.

Kyle—great. I knew Wilson was going to fixate on him. But there's no way I'm answering her right now. She'll definitely ask where I am.

As I tuck my phone away, the bad thought that's been working its way to the front of my mind finally reaches its destination: What if my mom did run away? What if this person from her past was threatening to tell the world that she murdered Reed Harding, and she ran so that no one would ever find out what she'd done? Maybe finding her is the exact opposite of what she wants right now. I wonder if I love her enough to leave it at that. I'm not sure. Leaving well enough alone is a lot harder than it looks.

The four blocks from the West Fourth Street station to my dorm feel endless, as if I'm walking through wet sand. I've turned onto my street, when someone rams me from behind. I stumble sideways into the corner of my building. My head knocks against the stone and I see stars. Wow. Actual stars. Then there's a forearm against my neck. My brain tries to piece it together—a person, on me. A face jammed in front of mine.

Kyle.

There's a cut over his right eye, and the left one is purple and swollen shut. He bares his teeth at me and I can see that one of them is missing. There is a huge gap. And holy shit, does he look pissed.

"You fucking sicced the police on me?"

His arm is pressing so hard against my neck, it's hard to talk.

Wilson already went to talk to him?

"What?" I gasp.

"That fucking cop your mom brought to my apartment beat the shit out of me."

"My mom … what?"

"The cop she brought to my apartment!" Spit sprays into my eyes as he shouts.

"What cop, when?"

"Fucking months ago, before we broke up," he says. And suddenly it all makes sense, how willing he was to let me go. Not that I thought he loved me, but he sure didn't like to lose.

"I didn't know."

"Well, tonight he fucking showed up again, grabbed me out of nowhere, and did fucking this to me—said I did something to your mom. Did you tell him that?"

"No!" I'm starting to feel light-headed. "I don't even know who he is."

"Then who fucking sent him?"

"Kyle, stop." I'm going to black out.

"Hey!" An old woman smacks Kyle in the side of the head with her handbag. "You let her go, or I'll call the cops!"

And then I am free. The blows stun Kyle long enough that he releases me. "Mind your own fucking business, bitch!"

As I run toward my dorm, the security guard appears outside. Tyler—the sweet nighttime one.

"Hey, asshole!" he shouts at Kyle, heading right for him. He's nearly twice his size. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"Please don't let him come in." I realize I'm limping as I make my way to the entrance. "He tried to choke me."

Tyler nods as he continues toward Kyle. "Hey, why don't you and I have a conversation, friend?"

"This isn't over, Cleo!" Kyle shouts after me. "I'm getting my fucking phone back!"