My phone was buzzing inside my purse during the entire ride to Cynthia Holloway’s apartment, but I was afraid to look at it. I ditched Sam while he was stuck in traffic and never told him why—he had to be freaking out. After I get out of Cynthia’s apartment, I finally dare to pull my phone out of my purse. Unsurprisingly, there are six missed calls from my husband, as well as several screens full of text messages:
Where are you?
Abby, where are you??
Can you tell me where you are?????
You jumped out of a moving car. Can you at least let me know you’re okay???????
It wasn’t a moving car. We were stopped at a light, for God’s sake.
I bring up Sam’s number on the screen. I’m itching to hit the green button to place the call, but something stops me. If I tell Sam what I’m up to, he’ll think it’s nuts. Just like he thought it was nuts when I accused Monica of spiking my coffee. He’ll say, “So what if Monica had a couple of roommates who didn’t like her?” And he wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
That’s why I’ve got to get more information. The fact that Monica didn’t want me to talk to her parents is a good sign they’ve got plenty of juicy details to clue me in on. I have a feeling Mom and Dad Johnson are the key to everything.
The Johnsons live all the way uptown, which means I need to hop in another taxi to get there. I can’t call them and give any sort of warning I’m coming, but that could be a good thing. I’m sure they’re not going to love me showing up to tell them I think their daughter is a murderer. Especially since it sounds like from what Cynthia and Ellie said, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
The Johnsons’ building is a modest-looking apartment building with a green awning and a doorman at the entrance. The lobby is dotted with marble tables and tacky bright red sofas. I smooth out the blouse I put on this morning for my visit with Frisch, and put on my best, professional smile.
“Excuse me,” I say, using the same confident voice as I do with our clients. “I’m looking for the Johnsons.”
I must look important because the doorman doesn’t seem at all suspicious of me. “They’re in 6B. May I ask your name?”
“Abigail Adler,” I say. “Please tell them I’m their daughter’s boss.”
I had been debating in the taxi ride over what I should say. Ultimately, I decided to stick with something close to the truth. I have no idea how much Monica tells her parents. If her old roommates are to be believed, she may be very close with her mother. But I suspect most people would allow their daughter’s boss upstairs, especially if she looks respectable.
I hold my breath, waiting for the doorman to call upstairs. Even if my story is solid, it’s the middle of the afternoon—Monica’s parents aren’t even necessarily home. This could all be for nothing.
But fortunately, the doorman gets through to someone on the other line. He repeats what I told him, listens for a moment, then smiles and waves me upstairs.
This time there’s an elevator, at least, but my stomach is doing somersaults the entire time I’m riding upstairs. I have no idea what to expect. Monica’s parents could be anything from completely normal to batshit crazy. For all I know, Mrs. Johnson is going to pull a knife on me at the door. Probably not, but who knows?
So I’m not feeling great about the whole thing by the time I knock on the door to 6B. My knees are weak and I feel queasy.
Mrs. Johnson is the one who opens the door for me. She’s an inch or two taller than I am, with plain brown hair swept back from her face into a simple ponytail and rimless glasses. She appears to be roughly in her fifties based on the patterns of lines on her face. She looks…
Very normal.
When she sees me, a weary look comes over her face. She peers at me over her half-moon spectacles. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Abigail Adler,” I say. “Monica works for me at an advertising agency.”
She thrusts out her hand in my direction. Her handshake is firm. “Louise Johnson.”
Just as I had suspected—Jean Johnson was another piece of fiction. “So,” Mrs. Johnson sighs, “what has Monica done this time?”
Her words catch me off-guard. Somehow I thought she’d be more defensive about Monica. “Um, could I come in?” I ask.
Mrs. Johnson lets out another sigh and waves me into the small apartment. It’s modest—the living room is smaller than our own, and the furniture looks worn. I settle down on a threadbare sofa, and Mrs. Johnson sits about two feet from me. She doesn’t offer me a beverage.
“Things had been going so well.” Mrs. Johnson pulls off her glasses and rubs her eyes. “I hadn’t heard anything about Monica in over a year. I thought…well, maybe the bad period was over.” Bad period? “But I knew in my heart it was just a matter of time. People don’t change.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“So tell me,” Mrs. Johnson says, “what has she done? What do you need?”
I hesitate, debating how much to say. It’s very clear from speaking to Monica’s mother that she has no idea about the arrangement we have together. “When is the last time you spoke to Monica?”
“Like I said, over a year.” She shakes her head. “These days, my husband and I only intervene when it’s required. Not like when she was younger.”
“There have been some thefts at work,” I say. Better not to mention the murder. I don’t want to put this woman on high alert. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“Monica’s always at the bottom of it,” she sighs. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But it gets to the point where you just get exhausted by it all. Ever since she was a teenager…”
Mrs. Johnson stops, clearly realizing it would be in her daughter’s best interest not to go on.
“Mrs. Johnson,” I say, in my most professional voice. “I like Monica very much. She’s an excellent employee. I want to help her. And it would help me to know what she’s going through, because… well, it’s all going to come out soon anyway.”
I hold my breath, waiting to see if the woman will believe my lies. She narrows her eyes.
“An excellent employee?” Mrs. Johnson snorts. “That’s hard to believe.”
“It’s true. She’s very skilled and organized and—”
“Yes, but she’s crazy!” The woman’s brown eyes are wide, and for a moment, she looks a bit crazy herself. “I’m sorry if this hurts Monica, but it’s probably in your best interest to let her go. Before she does even more damage. Take it from someone who knows.”
“What do you mean?” I ask carefully.
“It’s not entirely her fault, you understand.” Mrs. Johnson’s shoulders sag. “I think she tries to do the right thing. Well, sometimes, at least. But she’s… well, the psychiatrists have disagreed on the diagnosis a bit…” Psychiatrists? “Most of them agree she has severe borderline personality disorder.”
My mouth falls open. We checked out Monica’s medical records so thoroughly. How did we miss a major psychiatric disorder?
“Borderline personality disorder?”
She nods. “Like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? That movie where she murdered the rabbit?”
Oh great. I picked a rabbit-murdering psychopath to be the mother of my child.
“The doctors have tried so many medications to try to help her,” she goes on. Medications? Like, plural? “But none of them have worked. Sometimes they help a little, but not enough to matter.”
I flash back to Dr. Wong’s office, when she asked Monica if she was on any medications. Monica said no. Of course she wouldn’t be. She’s pregnant.
“What makes her dangerous though,” Mrs. Johnson says, “is her intelligence. She has a genius-level IQ on testing. Did you know that?”
“I… I’m not surprised.”
“A math genius.” I see a twinge of pride for the first time. “If she could focus, I bet she could win a Nobel Prize. But… well, that’s out of the question now.”
There’s no Nobel Prize in math—a fact I know thanks to Sam. Instead, there’s a Field’s Medal, which is only given every four years and rarely given to mathematicians over the age of forty. Sam is realistic about his chances of winning one, especially now that he’s thirty-eight, although he admits he was never a true contender. I think my Field’s Medal is out the window, he sometimes jokes.
“You said she’s dangerous.” My heart speeds up in my chest. “Dangerous in what way? She seems perfectly normal.”
“Oh, she’s good at playing the part.” She lets out a joyless laugh. “But don’t be fooled. My husband and I started locking our doors at night, if you know what I mean.”
I stare at her. “You did?”
“Oh yes.” She stares off into the distance. “I knew she had problems but I never thought she was dangerous until her sophomore year of high school. She and her best friend Sandy were fighting over the same boy. Silly stuff, you know? But girls are so emotional at that age, and they had a falling out, and then…”
I get a horrible sinking feeling in my chest. I don’t know if I want to hear the end of this story, but how can I not hear it? “Then what?”
She shuts her eyes for a moment. “Sandy went missing.”
I squeeze my knees so tightly, my fingers hurt. I can’t believe I invited this crazy person into my life. How could I have been so stupid? “Maybe she just ran away? Girls do that.”
“No, she didn’t run away.” Mrs. Johnson’s eyes grow distant, staring off into nothing. “They found her floating in the Charles River a week later.”
I clasp my hand over my mouth. I think I’m going to be ill. I really do. “Mrs. Johnson, can you… can you tell me where the bathroom is?”
She points a long, skeletal finger down the hallway, and I grab my purse and run. I make it to the toilet in time, but all I can manage is a dry heave. I skipped lunch because I was so anxious about my appointment with Frisch, so there’s nothing in my stomach.
My head spins as I straighten up and look in the mirror. My face is deathly pale and my black hair is disheveled. I run my fingers through my hair and splash water on my face, but none of it helps. I consider freshening up my makeup, but what’s the point?
When I come out of the bathroom, Mrs. Johnson is fiddling with her phone. She looks up when she sees me, her expression flat. “I brought up an article about Sandy if you’d like to see it.”
I hold up a hand. “No, uh… that’s fine.”
She raises her eyebrows at me. “Are you all right, Ms. Adler?”
I nod, attempting a weak smile as I sit back down on the sofa. “Yes. Of course.”
She shrugs and puts her phone down on the table. “The murder was quite a big deal, as you’d imagine. And most everyone believed Monica had something to do with it, even though they could never prove it. That’s why we left Boston and moved here.”
A chill goes through me. Monica killed someone as a teenager and got away with it. Not only is Monica a killer, but she’s apparently good at it. She was good at it when she was a teenager, so she must be great at it by now.
Mrs. Johnson leans back against the couch. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you all this. I should be advocating for Monica—I know. I used to see a therapist myself, and all we’d talk about would be Monica. Monica, Monica, Monica…”
Sounds like what I’d be talking about if I had a therapist. “Can I ask you a question, Mrs. Johnson?” I say.
She nods. “Of course.”
“How did you lose touch with Monica?”
“Oh.” She shakes her head. “We started fighting over the affair. That was about three years ago. And things just deteriorated from there.”
“Affair?”
She rolls her eyes. “She started having what I thought was a quite ill- advised affair with her math professor in college. I told her so, but she didn’t want to hear it.”
Her words make me freeze up. “Math professor?”
“Oh, yes.” She nods. “Well, you should have seen the guy. He was very attractive—I almost couldn’t blame her. But of course, he was quite a bit older than her. And married, of course.”
“Married…?” I swallow a lump in my throat. “Where did Monica go to college again?”
When Mrs. Johnson names the university where my husband teaches, it’s like a punch in the gut. No. No. It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be.
“The professor was clearly taking advantage of a very young girl,” she goes on. “But Monica didn’t see it that way. She was absolutely in love, and she took all my criticisms of him as a personal attack.”
I bunch up my skirt with my sweaty fists. “You don’t… do you remember his name?”
“Steve,” she says thoughtfully. She frowns. “No, that’s not right.
Simon? No…”
“Sam?” I squeak.
She snaps her fingers. “Right. Sam. That was it. I’d never seen her so infatuated with a man before. Apparently, they were in love. Can you imagine?”
I can’t even pretend she’s not talking about my husband. A math professor named Sam? There’s no way this is a coincidence.
“Do… do you know what happened with them?”
She shakes her head. “As I said, our relationship deteriorated after that. I have no idea what she’s been up to. I imagine she moved on when she couldn’t get him to leave his wife. Or else maybe she got him fired. It would serve him right.”
Or maybe…
Maybe the two of them figured out a way to finally be together.
