Laura stepped off the old bus with a small grimace. She was definitely back in a city again. The smell was familiar and yet altogether unwelcome after her stay at Rick’s place. Cars and people, too many of them crammed together. That was what it smelled like.

She asked a lady working in the bus terminal about how best to get to the nearest city library and received a clipped yet professional response. It was only a short ride away on the city bus. Perfect.

She walked around the corner to the bus stop. It was kind of jarring to be surrounded by so many people again. For a short time she kept expecting someone to recognize her, to shout “Murderer!” and point. She knew it was silly. Even if she hadn’t changed her hair, it was unlikely many people in Chicago had even heard of her brother’s murder. Hell, most people in New York probably hadn’t. What was one more violent death in a city that saw hundreds every year? Something that you’d find buried in the middle of a newspaper, she suspected.

No, the faces surrounding her at the bus stop paid her no more than a glance as she joined them. Just one of them, another person living at the bottom, taking public transportation to get around. Invisible.

She waited for the right bus and boarded with a few others, dropping the fare money in as she entered. The bus was crowded, people of every color and description accounted for. Every color, description, and odor, that was.

The ride was blessedly short, however, and soon she was stepping off. Across the street from her was the library, a brownstone building with huge windows. That was her destination, but not just yet.

She turned and began following the street away from the library. She walked for a good twenty minutes before she found what she was looking for, a payphone set back from the street with no cameras around. No visible ones, anyway.

She walked into the booth and removed a roll of quarters from her backpack. It was a call she knew she had to make, but she knew there was a fair chance that the police could be monitoring Joyce’s phone calls in their hunt for Laura.

Though, if she was being honest, Laura had to admit that she really didn’t know if the police could or would get a wiretap for her family, but it was surely a possibility. Rick had suggested making the call some distance from the library where she would spend the day, just in case. It seemed like a prudent precaution.

Her heart began to beat quicker as she started pumping quarters into the phone. What if Joyce didn’t believe her version of events? What if the only family she had left was lost to her just as surely as her brother was?

She forced her fingers to punch in Joyce’s number, pretty much the only phone number that she still remembered off the top of her head. Joyce had kept the same number since Laura was a child, a time before smartphones and ubiquitous contact lists.

The automated voice asked for another dollar twenty five to start the call, which she put in with a grumble. The phone began ringing and it was all Laura could do to stop herself from hanging up. She had to talk to Joyce. She had to tell her it wasn’t true.

The line was picked up then, and her ear was filled by a reedy voice she knew almost as well as her own. “Hello?”

Laura paused for a second, then forced herself to start speaking. “Aunt Joyce? It’s me, Laura.”

“Laura?! Are you okay honey?”

A small sob escaped her before she could stop it. “I’m alright, but Craig…”

“I heard honey, I’m so sorry. Those cocksuckers from the state police showed up here looking for you last week. Said you killed him, talked about witnesses and proof and some other nonsense I can’t remember. I told them to stick it straight up their asses. My Laura would never hurt her brother, I told them.”

She would have laughed at any other time. Her aunt had always had a… colorful… way of speaking, to say the least. But right now, she couldn’t even begin to hold back the sobs. “He got into a gambling debt he couldn’t get out of and they killed him. They killed him, Joyce!” Tears streamed down her face as she gave Joyce a bare bones accounting of what had happened, only leaving out Rick. It was finished more quickly than she would have imagined. In her head it seemed like this had been going on forever, but in reality it had only a few days of substance, with a couple weeks of waiting.

When she finished there was a pause on the line. “God honey I’m so sorry. But don’t you go sayin’ where you’re staying or anything, ‘cause those jackasses from the police department might be listenin’ in. Are you okay? Do you have a safe place to stay?

“Yeah, I’m fine Joyce, and I have somewhere to stay.” The relief at Joyce’s easy acceptance of her innocence was palpable. “But there’s something you need to know. You can’t go back to your cabin for a while. I hid out there at first, but the goons from New York came back. It might not be safe for you to be there this year.”

“Oh, don’t you worry yourself about me hun. I’m too big a mouthful for those dirty murderin’ bastards, believe you me.” Laura was surprised to hear anger in Joyce’s voice. It might be one of the only times in her life she’d heard Joyce angry.

“Seriously Joyce, you can’t go back there. At least not before next summer.” Laura couldn’t let her put herself in danger too. Joyce was all she had left for family, and while she was a tough cookie, she was no superhero.

Or a shifter, she thought wryly.

“Oh alright hunny.” Joyce muttered, clearly displeased at being denied a confrontation with Craig’s killers. “If you insist. And if you need anything at all, find a way to contact me. Not on this line though!”

“I’ll be alright. You just make sure you stay out of this. This is my mess to clean up.”

“Oh no it isn’t, Craig was family to both of us! And don’t you go getting yourself killed in some cockamamie scheme. You’re all an old woman has left.” To Laura’s amazement, it sounded like Joyce was tearing up. Joyce never cried.

“I won’t, I promise,” she said, ashamed at her cluelessness. Of course Joyce would be grieving Craig’s death and terrified for her. “But I won’t let him get away with it. Craig deserves more than this.”

“I know, hunny, I know. Just be careful.”

“I will. I love you Joyce.” It sounded too final to Laura’s ears, but that was the only thing that felt right to say at this moment.

“I love you too, Laura.”

She hung up then, afraid that Joyce’s tears would sway her from her path. How stupid of her to not consider what her aunt had to be going through. To whatever extent Laura had lost a big piece of her family, so had Joyce. And now Joyce had to deal with the reality that her niece would be in danger and there was nothing she could do about it. Not at all unlike how Laura had felt when she had first left New York to give Craig space to work things out.

I can be a real idiot sometimes. She shook her head as she exited the phone booth. How could she not have realized what Joyce would be going through? Her only defense was that Craig’s death had been so raw a wound that it hadn’t left room to consider anyone else’s feelings. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

Wiping the beginnings of a tear from her eye, Laura started back up the street towards the library. She needed some answers, and it was finally time to get them.

 

By an hour and a half later at least some of that initial optimism had passed. The library was nicer than she had expected and the staff had been, if not friendly, at least not unpleasant. She had spent a few minutes wandering through the rows of books before finding the small computer section she had been directed to.

It had been a little bit odd walking through the library, she reflected. Reading had been something she had enjoyed as a child, but as an adult she had never had much time for it. It had been something she had always promised herself she would get back into, though. It had always been something for later, after that next deadline, as soon as the workload lightened up, that kind of thing. Joke had been on her, it seemed, since apparently for career focused people the workload never lightened up. She probably would have been making the same promises to herself twenty years from now if Craig’s murder hadn’t jarred her loose.

She sat down at one of the few free computers and set to work. First she pulled up news stories about the murder from various different outlets. The stories seemed almost carbon copies of each other, stating that two men had been murdered in an apartment in New York. The suspects, Laura Hamilton and a possible accomplice, remained at large. Police were asking anyone with any information to come forward.

Yada yada yada.

She combed through all the stories she could find, yet none mentioned anything about gambling debts or gangsters. She supposed it wasn’t that surprising. The people Craig had owed money to would hardly advertise those things to the media, and short of that it was hard to expect them to figure it out.

One story had a quote from her boss. She knew what he was doing, and agreed with the reasoning behind it, yet it still hurt a little bit to read. Laura Hamilton was a former employee at our firm. She hasn’t been heard from since the murder of her brother. We urge her in the strongest possible terms to turn herself in to the police.

It didn’t matter that Laura had worked there for years, the company had to distance itself from her. An advertising agency that looks bad in the press looks like an advertising agency that’s bad at its job. There was no getting around it. Of course, that didn’t mean she had to like it. Still, something about it seemed dirty to her.

Maybe Rick is starting to rub off on me.

It appeared there was nothing to be found in the various articles that would help them. None mentioned anything about where she might be hiding, though if the police had some clue they surely wouldn’t tell anyone in the media. Nothing about any gambling debts. It appeared like any other murder you might hear about on the news, which in turn made her wonder how many of those actually had stories as complicated as hers.

The next order of business was to try to find out anything she could about Dominic Vascenti. There was a lot to dig through, as he appeared to be a fairly prominent figure in New York.

She first searched for business listings. He was the registered owner of a number of high profile nightclubs and restaurants in the city, the kinds of places that had waiting lists for the general public. She brought up the site for one of the restaurants and the prices made her eyebrows shoot up. They were absurd, even by New York standards.

So his businesses catered to upscale clientele. Very upscale. There was no trace of anything like what she had imagined. If he was running illegal gambling rooms it was hard to understand why. A guy who owned these businesses didn’t need the extra money or risk.

She did an image search for Dominic Vascenti, curious what would come up. The results made her heart sink and a groan slip out of her lips. One of the first pictures was of Vascenti shaking hands with the current mayor of New York. A few over there was one of him having dinner with a famous actor. Yet another of him attending an art exhibition in the company of a US senator she recognized from TV.

To say he was well connected seemed like an understatement. She was happier than ever that Rick and herself had fled New York after Craig’s death. If they had been arrested and this man had used his influence to exert pressure on the police, they may not have gotten out of prison until they were both old and grey.

Do shifters age normally? She’d have to ask Rick.

Any notions of going to the police to give her side of the story had vanished. America wasn’t supposed to be this way, but in a he said she said contest a lot of weight would be given to precisely who he and she were. Without some kind of hard proof there was no way the police would be of help to her. Hell, even with evidence she would have to be very careful about going to the authorities. If he actually did run a gambling ring along with who knew what else, it was entirely likely that he had friends in the police force.

She spent the rest of the afternoon searching anywhere and everywhere on the internet for anything that might help her, but came up mostly empty. The closest thing to useful information she found was an address on a small poker forum for someplace the author called V’s spot. Someplace you could find action any time of the day. It certainly sounded like it could be the place where Craig had been playing poker, but then again maybe it was run by someone named Victoria.

She wasn’t sure if it would be useful or not, but jotted down the address anyways. Hours of digging hadn’t revealed anything else.

Laura suddenly felt foolish. What had she thought she would find here? A yellow page listing for ‘Dominic Vascenti’s Illegal Gambling Hall’? A YouTube clip of him admitting it was his men that had killed Craig? This whole trip was starting to feel pretty pointless.

She leaned back in her seat and sighed. As weak as it made her feel to admit it, she needed Rick’s simple reassurances right now. He always seemed so unflappable, like he could work his way through any problem by sheer force of will. She needed some of that confidence.

Packing up her things, Laura headed back to the front desk and enquired about where she could find a cheap motel for the night. The older woman behind the desk shifted her owl rimmed glasses around a bit as she gave her directions to a place she said was ‘cheap, but not hourly cheap’.

That sounded fine to Laura.

 

That evening as she lay awake in bed, Laura started to realize something. The anger that had been living inside her since Craig’s death didn’t seem as vast as it had before. And in some small corner of her soul something else had taken root. It took her a while to figure out what it was.

Hopelessness.