CHAPTER 36
Twenty-five minutes after hanging up with Jonah, I’m in Central Park, rushing through the Baroque tunnel that leads to Bethesda Terrace. I spot him through the ornate arches at the tunnel’s end, seated at the fountain’s edge. Pink shirt, blue pants, gray sport coat. Towering above him is the Angel of the Waters, a flock of pigeons resting on her outstretched wings.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say, sitting beside him.
Jonah sniffs. “Whoa,” he says.
I, too, can smell myself. I wanted to take a shower in the hotel but there was no hot water left. I had to make do with a few well-placed splashes from the sink before putting on the clothes I’ve been wearing since the day before.
While dressing, I thought about how many miles these clothes have traveled in the past twenty-four hours. From Chicago to Muncie and back again. From Chicago to New York to that Spartan closet of shame. Now they’ve made their way into Central Park, stinking and sweat-stained. After today, I think I’ll burn them.
“Walk of shame?” Jonah asks.
“Save it,” I say. “Where’s my coffee?”
Two cups sit by his feet. Beside them is a messenger bag, filled with what I hope is enough information about Sam to force her out of my life. If not, I’d settle for getting her out of my apartment.
“Pick your poison,” Jonah says, raising the cups. “Black or cream and sugar?”
“Cream and sugar. Preferably intravenously.”
He hands me a cup marked with an X. I gulp down half of its contents before coming up for air.
“Thank you,” I say. “No matter how many good deeds you perform today, nothing will top this.”
“You’ll be rethinking that in a minute,” Jonah says as he reaches for the messenger bag.
“What did you find?”
He unzips the bag and pulls out a beige folder. “A bombshell.”
Inside the folder are dozens of loose pages. Jonah rifles through them, fingers nimble, allowing me only brief glimpses of photocopied news articles and files printed from the Internet.
“A search of Samantha Boyd turns up all the usual information about The Nightlight Inn,” he says. “She’s the lone survivor. A Final Girl. Went off the grid eight years ago and was never seen or heard from again until a few days ago.”
“I already know that,” I say.
“Tina Stone is a different story.” Jonah finally stops flipping through the folder, landing on a news clipping. He hands it to me. “This is from the Hazleton Eagle. Twelve years ago.”
My heart thumps loud in my chest when I look at the clipping. I recognize it. The same one was at Lisa’s house.
HAZLETON, Pa. — A man was found stabbed to death yesterday inside the home he shared with his wife and stepdaughter. Responding to emergency calls, Hazleton police found Earl Potash, 46, dead in the kitchen of his Pine Street duplex, the victim of multiple stab wounds to the chest and stomach. Authorities have ruled the incident a homicide. The investigation is continuing.
“How did you find this?”
“Through a Lexus Nexus search on Tina Stone,” Jonah says.
“But what does this have to do with her?”
“According to the newspaper, Earl Potash’s stepdaughter confessed to killing him, citing years of sexual abuse. Because she was a minor, and because sexual assault was a factor, her name is shielded in court records.”
Now I know why Lisa had the article.
“It was her,” I say. “Tina Stone. She killed her stepfather.”
Jonah gives a firm nod. “Afraid so.”
I gulp down more coffee, hoping it will chase away the headache that’s again blooming in my skull. At that moment, I would likely kill for a Xanax.
“I still don’t understand,” I say. “Why would Sam change her name to be the same as a woman who murdered her stepdad?”
“That’s the strange thing,” Jonah says. “I’m not sure she actually did.”
Out of the folder come several pages of medical records. At the top is the name Tina Stone.
“Aren’t medical records also supposed to be classified?” I ask.
“Clearly you’ve underestimated my powers,” Jonah says. “Bribes are a great motivator.”
“You’re despicable.”
I flip through the records, which begin with last year and go backwards. Tina Stone went to the doctor sporadically, always in the case of an emergency and usually without health insurance. I see a broken wrist four years ago, the result of a motorcycle accident. A mammogram a year earlier after she found a lump that ended up being benign. An overdose of anitrophylin eight years ago. That one gives me pause.
There’s a second overdose attempt one page and two years before that. I look at the date. Three weeks after Pine Cottage.
“This can’t be Sam,” I say. “The dates don’t match up. She told me she didn’t change her name until a few years after Pine Cottage.”
The realization, when it comes, almost sends me reeling backwards into the fountain. I drop the folder, its pages scattering, forcing Jonah to scramble for them before they can blow away.
I remain motionless when he returns to my side, folder tucked under his arm. “You get it now, right?”
“Tina Stone and Samantha Boyd,” I say. “They’re not the same person.”
“Which begs the question, which one is in your apartment?”
“I have no idea.”
But I need to find out. Immediately. I stand, legs wobbly, prepared to leave.
Jonah stops me, an apologetic look pinching his face as he says, “Unfortunately, there’s more.”
He opens the folder, flips to a page in the back. “There’s an incident where she OD’d.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s from before the alleged name change.”
“You might want to look at where she overdosed.”
Jonah points to the name of the facility where Tina Stone was treated.
Blackthorn Psychiatric Hospital, located just on the other side of the woods from Pine Cottage.
Looking at it makes me instantly woozy. Worse than when I woke up that morning. Almost worse than the moment I realized I had beaten Ricardo Ruiz to within an inch of his life.
Tina Stone was a patient at Blackthorn.
The same time He was.
The exact same time He went to Pine Cottage and gutted my world.