The 3rd Woman

She considered the elevator but took the stairs, emerging onto the third floor to see the familiar yellow-and-black tape, barring her path to Abigail’s front door. There was no one around to enforce it, but Madison halted all the same. The door was ajar and there were voices coming from inside. Madison stared at the door frame, noticing some scarring close to the lock. Leaning in, she could see that a very small part of the surround had splintered, so that two or three painted wood shards jutted forward. Was that fresh damage or had it been done weeks earlier? She could not be sure. An initial, brief search of the apartment could not confirm any forced entry.

‘Hello?’ she called out, still on the wrong side of the police tape. The voices inside stopped. A few moments later, the door opened wider to reveal a young, fair-haired police officer bulked out by his uniform. Over his shoulder, four paces back, stood Abigail’s room-mate, Jessica. When she had first met her, whenever that was, Madison had marvelled at her bouncing hair and California Girl energy; she and Abigail looked as if they’d walked out of an orange juice commercial. But now Jessica’s shoulders were rounded and her hair was limp.

‘I’m Abigail Webb’s sister,’ Madison said, replying to the man’s unspoken question. ‘I won’t touch anything,’ she added as she lifted the tape and walked through the front door. By way of confirmation, Jessica stepped forward and opened her arms. Madison let herself be hugged, unsure whether she was receiving solace or administering it.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Jessica whispered, her cheeks wet against Maddy’s hair.

‘I’m sorry it was … I’m sorry you had to be here when …’

Once they had parted, Madison stepped back and looked at Jessica. She seemed crushed, as if the weight that had fallen on her had been physical. The police officer hovered nearby. They were still no more than a yard from the front door.

Maddy didn’t want to ask her sister’s friend to say it all over again, to make her re-live the moment of horror from several hours earlier. But she did, all the same.

Jessica started talking. ‘I walked in, put on the light and there she was. Lying on her back. She was still and she looked … so strange.’ Jessica’s voice faltered. ‘Her lips were blue. And her hair was real clammy.’

‘Did you know straight away that she was dead?’ Maddy said.

‘I wasn’t sure. At first I thought maybe she was breathing. Like tiny, faint breaths. I put my face by her mouth, to see if I could feel anything. And maybe I did. But it was just once. I waited and I didn’t feel it again. And she was so cold …’ Jessica’s chin began to tremble.

Maddy pressed on. ‘And you called the police right away?’

‘Not right away. I tried talking to her. You know, “Abigail, wake up. It’s me.” I might have slapped her, I can’t remember for sure. Her cheek was so cold.’

They talked for a moment or two longer when the police officer interrupted them. ‘Miss?’ He was looking at Jessica. ‘Do you know this gentleman?’

They both turned around to see an older man, his face covered by a smog mask, filling the door frame.

‘Daddy,’ Jessica said, moving towards him. Only then did Madison notice the overnight bag packed by the front door.

Jessica turned around and said, ‘I’m sorry, Madison. But my parents say it’ll be best for me if I leave town for a few days. They think I need to be home.’

‘Of course,’ Maddy said, attempting to smile. ‘Thanks, Jess.’ She had heard Abigail refer to her that way, but it sounded wrong coming from her. As Jessica followed her father out of the door – explaining to him that he didn’t need to wear the mask indoors – Madison called out to her once more. ‘I’m sorry it had to be you.’ Maddy knew as she said it that it could hardly have been anyone else. Certainly not her: she hadn’t been inside this apartment for months. It might even have been a year.

Once Jessica and her father had gone, the police officer turned to Madison and murmured a quiet ‘OK’, as if to say this visit had no doubt been tough but her time was nearly up.

‘I want to go into my sister’s room.’

‘I got very strict instructions, Miss. I’m not—’

‘I know about your instructions and I know the rules. I’m allowed in, so long as you’re present at all times to make sure I don’t remove anything. The place has been photographed and dusted for prints already, right?’

‘Yes, but have you checked this with—’

‘If you have any problems at all, call the Chief of Police. Tell him this is what Madison Webb has requested.’

It was a gamble, but a low-risk one. She had met Doug Jarrett a few times, though he was hardly a contact: he’d been appointed to the top job just as she was leaving the crime beat. For all that, she reckoned her name was well-enough known around the LAPD that had this officer called her bluff and telephoned headquarters – which he wouldn’t – she’d be OK.

He dipped his head in assent and she led the way, passing the living area and kitchen until she pushed open the door to the room that belonged to Abigail.

She stepped inside and was hit instantly by a wave of love and nostalgia that almost floored her. In just a few seconds, she was flooded by all things Abigail. On the bed were a couple of ethnic-style cushions Abigail had picked up on a trip to Santa Fe during her sophomore year. In the corner, the guitar she had taken up as a wannabe hippie in the eighth grade: Maddy only had to glance at it to hear again the sound of her sister strumming, out of time, to ‘Nowhere Man’. On the wall, the familiar collage of postcards of recent art exhibitions. On the night table, a copy of the latest novel by the young Nigerian literary sensation whom Maddy had heard interviewed on NPR in the middle of the night. The book was opened and face down, suggesting that Abigail – unlike all the journalist bullshitters Maddy knew – was actually reading it. The bed was rumpled, each crease a reminder that not long ago a living, breathing person had slept in it.

The room too was messy, a pile of exercise clothes and underwear in one corner. On the desk was a pile of children’s exercise books: all yellow, each one methodically laminated by hand. She opened one to see an infant’s scrawl.

E is for England. England has a Queen. It rains a lot. They call soccer football.

And below it, Abigail’s unmistakable hand in bright red.

Good job, Oscar! You’ve made E Week really fun.

Next to it, she had drawn a smiley face.

How strange that those children saw Abigail as their teacher; to Madison she was barely more than a child herself. She could see her younger sister in the tiny bathroom of their house in Beverlywood, an eleven-year-old girl styling her long fair hair with a pink hairbrush, trying, she said, to look like Maddy.

With effort, she could picture Abigail as a student, sweeping her hair back before heading out for a run round Circle Park: Abigail had gone through a phase of running barefoot, her hair trailing behind her. And Maddy remembered Abigail chewing on a plastic pen top, moving the hair away from her temple in concentration.

But the image that bobbed up again and again was the one she tried to push deep below the surface.

Madison looked at the framed mirror above the desk. She ignored her own reflection and looked instead at everything tucked into the edges, all the way around the border. More arty postcards – a Klimt and a Sargent – the odd note and several photographs. One in particular pulled her up short.

It was a picture of a man Maddy had not seen in years. So long, in fact, that she had almost forgotten his face. But there he was, broad-faced, his hair dark brown with only the odd strand of grey, his jaw strong, coming forward just enough to suggest a fighter: her father, a man so patriotic he had named his three daughters after American presidents. (Abigail was the closest he could get to Abe Lincoln.)

On the opposite side of the glass was a picture of similar vintage of their mother, young and kitted out in the fashion of the times: leggings, T-shirt slipping off the shoulder, big hair. Above it, two more. One of Quincy and Abigail together, at Abigail’s graduation. The other a picture Maddy had not seen, though she instantly remembered the occasion: Thanksgiving at their mother’s house five years earlier, Abigail and Maddy caught in a moment of genuinely unstoppable laughter, their faces hurting with the pleasure of it. Their mother must have taken the photograph; Quincy was in it, looking on and smiling but not caught up in the delirium.

There were other pictures. One with Jessica in college; another with Greg, a boyfriend of that era. And there, at the top right, something she had very nearly overlooked: a scribbled note. Only now did she realize that the scribble was her own.

Abigail, you have nothing to fear. You are smart, capable, energetic and light up any room just by walking into it. That school will be SO lucky to have you. Knock ’em dead. Maddy x

Madison stared at the note for far longer than it took to read it. She could scarcely remember writing it, though it could only have been ahead of Abigail’s interview at the elementary school, which made it about three years old. Harder to absorb was that Abigail had kept it. It had been dashed off, the work of a few seconds. It was, Madison could see now, written on a Post-it. And yet Abigail had treasured it all this time.

Madison looked around, conscious of the policeman watching her, knowing his patience could expire at any moment. On the desk was a box spilling over with costume jewellery, alongside some loose items of make-up. It was no tidier than Abigail’s childhood bedroom.

Something about the disorder hit Madison hard. It was the disorder of day-to-day life, of objects grabbed and put down in a hurry, of the random rush of someone alive. Yet here they were now: as still and silent as exhibits in a museum, never to be moved or used again. They were lifeless because they belonged to someone now dead. Madison felt as if a thick, toxic cloud were growing and spreading through her chest.

She took a last look around, seeing more confirmation of Abigail’s deadness in every item: shoes tucked under the bed, a small shelf of novels, a hair-scrunchy next to the lamp. Each glimpse despatched a sharp stab of pain. She would quickly check the closet and leave.

Inside were more clothes than she was expecting; so many hangers on the rail that she could barely move them along. There were a couple of skirts she guessed Abigail wore for school, but the rest was strictly for going out: a succession of sparkling tops, different pairs of pants, including at least two pairs in leather, sheath dresses and skirts that were more micro than mini.

She thought of Quincy, blaming Madison for introducing Abigail to – what had she called it? – an ‘urban lifestyle’ and reflected it was true in a way. Just after Abigail had graduated college, she had stayed with Maddy for a few months while she found a job and somewhere to live. They had gone out together, Maddy introducing her younger sister to her crowd at the Times. Madison had had to expend a lot of energy that summer, diverting the attentions of reporters far too old, unattractive or married for her baby sister.

Abigail had not dressed like this then, neither of them had. Madison pulled out one hanger at random: a jacket with a high-end European label she recognized only from the fashion pages. She brought it closer to her eyes, to check it was genuine rather than one of the knock-offs you could pick up in Santee Alley. The stitching was usually the giveaway. Judging by that standard, this one was real. She put it back and saw another: equally expensive, equally authentic.

Quincy’s voice was back inside her head. You don’t always know everything. Not even about Abigail.

‘Is there something you’re looking for, Miss? Remember, there’ll be some effects returned to you by the coroner’s office.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, opening and closing drawers, hesitant to rifle through her sister’s underwear. ‘I’m nearly done.’ She took a last look around, aware that everything in this room had once touched the skin of her young, beautiful sister – and that it never would again.

But what made her head throb was the puzzle she had just glimpsed, the puzzle her sister had left behind.

Chapter 6

Back in her apartment, she all but had to push Jeff out of the door. He had been waiting for her, sitting in his parked car, for God knows how long. He wanted to see how she was doing, he said, make sure she was OK. She allowed him to come up, accepted his offer of coffee, bought not made, and allowed him to place a portion of youtiao on the table, the sticks of fried bread which he knew she liked. But she would not let him comfort her any longer. She told him she needed to rest. He raised a sceptical eyebrow at that, which she ignored. She hoped he would believe that grief would succeed where meditation, Temazepam and the latest supposedly cure-all import from Shanghai, the saliva of a swallow, had all failed.

Once the door was closed, she cleared the desk, which meant lifting the piles of transcripts and documents about LA’s secret warren of sweatshops off the table and putting them under it, where they could not distract her. She paused as she remembered Jane Goldstein’s parting request for a follow-up story. Then she took a sip of coffee and powered up her trusted Lenovo laptop.

There, lodged in the corner of the screen, was the outline of her Day Two piece, drafted during the long stretch of sleepless nights when she worked at the sweatshop. Of course it was insane for her to think of her job now. Her inner Quincy was adamant: Don’t tell me you’re going to work. Easy coming from Quincy, who identified herself as an ‘SAHM’ on that hideously smug mothers’ website: Stay at Home Mom. Besides, this story was almost written. It made no sense to leave it sitting here on the machine. All it required was a quick read-through. If she sent it over now, that would buy her time with Howard and Jane: she could then spend the next day or two undisturbed, getting on with what really mattered. She’d give it half an hour, no more.

Forty-five minutes later the piece was done. Not as polished as she would have liked; the newsdesk would have to check some of the numbers. But it would do. She pressed ‘Send’ and hoped no one would look too closely at the time-stamp on the email or work out when, exactly, and under what circumstances she had written it. She sought to suppress the rebuke that was rising within her and whose target was herself.

Enough of this, she told herself. This navel-gazing would do Abigail no good. She had to focus on what mattered. The first thing she looked up was ‘heroin’. She read rapidly through the medical and science sites, about the physiology of an overdose, the chemical and neurological reactions. She didn’t know precisely what she was looking for – just that she needed confirmation of her iron certainty that, if Abigail did have heroin in her bloodstream, she had played no part in putting it there.

Every word she read triggered a memory of her once-beautiful sister reduced to a body on a slab, the pale skin drained of all life, her lips edged with frozen blue. She had read enough to know that a heroin overdose brought no pain, just a kind of instant, weightless bliss, but that did not stop her imagining the fear that must have gripped her hopeful younger sister as she understood that she was entering her final moments.

But had Abigail understood that? Nothing that suggested a struggle. Maddy recalled the words and, above all, the expression on the detective’s face as she had said them. How dared she imply that Abigail had been some kind of willing participant in her own death? Of course it was murder, of course it was. Madison just had to get the police to realize it. And soon: she had covered enough homicide cases to know that speed was critical. They always talked about that ‘golden hour’, the period immediately after a homicide has been discovered when detectives are able to gather the most, and the best, forensic evidence from a crime scene. Maddy feared that time had been and gone. That while they played around with their absurd sex-game theory, valuable evidence might be vanishing.

But she could not quite shake off Quincy’s words. You don’t always know everything. Quincy had insisted that Abigail did not do anything so ‘urban’ as drugs, but that did not exclude the possibility that she was daring in other ways. Did Abigail have a dark side hidden only from her, but known to the others? Maddy had always imagined it was only she who had sexual secrets, who had made countless bad choices. She had always assumed that Abigail was as wholesome as Quincy was straitlaced. But maybe she was wrong. And how to explain the high-end clothing she had seen in the closet, each item far beyond the reach of an elementary school teacher’s budget?

Her phone vibrated. She glanced down: Detective Jeff Howe again. High probability that he was merely ‘checking in’ – his phrase – making sure she was OK, even though next to no time had passed since he had last been here. But there was a chance he was calling for the reason she had asked: to convey information. She pressed the green button.

‘Hi Madison. You OK?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, hoping her terseness sounded sad rather than impatient, even though the latter was the truth.

‘I’ve seen the coroner’s report.’

‘Right. Can you—’

‘Not the whole thing. Only a summary, by the looks of things. But I’ve got the concluding section.’

‘And?’

‘There were signs of pressure on the neck, suggestive of a chokehold. And indications that she was held, with some force, by her head, around the temples. Probably from behind.’

The thought of it, the picture of it that materialized instantly, made her unsteady. A kind of queasiness rose through her, as if she were dizzy. To visualize with great clarity her sister grabbed and held by a stranger, the fear that she knew would have consumed Abigail at that moment, the word chokehold – all of it made Madison nauseous. The sensation was physical.

But she forced the sickness away, as if she were pushing bile back down her throat. She would force herself to think, not to feel, to process what she had just heard the way she imagined Barbara Miller and Howe’s fellow cops would: as information. As data: nothing more, nothing less. Judged like that, as the detectives would judge it, she told herself these latest findings were interesting and useful, but hardly destructive of the police’s rough sex hypothesis. That Abigail had been nearly strangled did not mean she had been nearly strangled by a stranger. If anything, this evidence could be held to strengthen the LAPD’s working theory of the case, confirming that the rough sex was really rough. Madison said nothing of this. Only, ‘What else?’

‘No needle retrieved from the scene.’

‘Are there pictures?’

‘None I’ve seen.’

‘Jeff, don’t spare me because you think I can’t handle it. I can—’

‘I’m not sparing you. I told you, I haven’t seen the complete report.’

‘All right, I’m sorry. Please. Go on.’

‘No needle. And just one needle mark. No others.’

‘Which confirms Abigail was no junkie,’ Madison said, irritated by the betraying quaver of her voice.

‘Actually,’ Jeff replied, ‘there’s a note on that. Saying needle marks can often close up within weeks.’

‘For God’s sake, Jeff, Abigail was not a drug user.’

‘I didn’t write this report, Madison. I’m just the jerk risking his job to tell you what it says.’

‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’ She swallowed, girding herself for the next and obvious question. ‘Jeff, I have to ask.’

‘Yes?’ he said, though he knew.

She closed her eyes, bracing herself for what she would have to say as much as for what she might have to hear. She sought to smother her inquiry in the language of forensics, as if that might take the edge off. ‘Was there any sign of sexual contact? Any … exchange of bodily fluids? Anything like that?’ Her voice petered out.

The policeman answered quickly. ‘No sign at all, Madison. None.’

Madison thanked Jeff again – aware of the obligation that was building between them – and hung up. Only then did she let out a long, deep exhalation, one she had not wanted him to hear. Thank God for that. For that small mercy at least, thank God. Whatever hell Abigail had endured, she had not been raped. In that instant when Jeff first told her Abigail had been found dead, that had been Madison’s starting assumption.

But that only made the horror more baffling. At least a sex crime had an obvious, if grotesque, motive. But how was she to make sense of Abigail’s death now? Perhaps the LAPD would cling to its sex-game theory all the same, but it struck Madison as a strange kind of sex that involved no contact. No, she was certain. This was no accident. It was murder. But the question remained, sharper now than ever: why would anyone want to kill her sister?

Chapter 7

The crowd was glowing in dawn sunshine, the faces turned upward. They were happy, some clutching flags bearing the stars and stripes. The faces at the centre made up the standard LA crowd: black woman, Hispanic man, Korean children, younger white woman and finally, because you had to have a white male somewhere, a white-haired, seventy-plus man, smiling a benign, grandfatherly smile. But dotted among them was a departure from the usual formula: a noticeable number of Chinese, including several young men. They were smiling too. Not wide grins, but gentle, summer-evening smiles – relaxed, content, as if marvelling at the good fortune of it all.

The music swelled, an informal, slightly ragged choir of voices that climaxed on the phrase, ‘California, You’re My Home’.

Leo Harris reached for the remote and watched it again, this time on half-speed. He wanted to examine the faces at the margins, those the viewer would not notice on the first or second airing but would process all the same, if only subliminally. He was glad to see a couple more Latinos and what he guessed was a Jewish man. An older white woman: good. More Chinese. Seated, he turned to the young woman standing by his right shoulder and said only: ‘Blacks.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘African-Americans. You’ve only got one.’ He paused the video, frozen now on the image of a beautiful black woman, her long hair in tight spirals, clutching a miniature flag. ‘She’s great, but we need more. That’s ten per cent of our vote, remember.’

‘But I thought you said—’

‘That’s true. So use a child or an older man. No one’s frightened of them. Doesn’t have to be real old. Just not young. Bit of grey in the sideburns, that’ll do it.’

He turned back to the screen, playing the rest at normal speed. He sang along to the line: ‘California, You’re My Home’. Then, as the last word faded, he intoned in a voice not quite his own, ‘“I’m Richard Berger – and I approved this message.”’

He stood up. ‘OK, where’s Susan?’

A nervous flutter passed through the room as the heads of those people relieved not to be Susan turned and looked for her. She was at the back, her head down, every few seconds swiping the page on her tablet. Leo guessed she was absorbed in poll numbers.

‘Hey, Susan. Can we talk slogan?’

She glanced up, then returned to the illuminated page before her. ‘Sure.’

‘Can you remind me what we agreed would be the theme of this spot?’ He was speaking across the room.

‘Unity, harmony, all that.’ She didn’t look up.

‘Er, yeah. That’s the theme of the campaign. I mean this particular spot.’

Now at last she lifted her head slowly, as if to say, I am a senior figure in this operation. I will not jump at your command like the rest of these candy girls in their skinny jeans and fitted tops. I will take my time if I want to. The words she spoke out loud were: ‘We can all get along.’