A Grave Beneath the Floorboards novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: I Believe You

Detective Burke Harrigan takes Macy's report, her bagged glass and a photo of a man's license plate, and tells her he believes her. Then a text arrives from Carly's number asking for Friday dinner, mild food this time.

I stayed in the car on Pelham Road until a man came out of the building.

He was big, with heavy shoulders and a scar that split his left eyebrow, and he carried a toolbox in one hand.

He climbed into a white pickup with a ladder rack and drove off without looking at me.

I took a picture of the license plate with my hands shaking.

The window on the third floor stayed lit for another hour.

At eight the next morning I walked into the Cincinnati police station with a zip bag in my purse and a story I didn't believe when I said it out loud.

The desk officer sent me upstairs.

The detective who came to get me was in his thirties, tall and rumpled, with a navy jacket that needed ironing and tired gray eyes.

"Burke Harrigan," he said, and shook my hand once.

He took me to a small room with a table and two chairs and set a cup of bad coffee in front of me.

"Start wherever you want," he said. "I'll listen."

I told him about the wing.

I told him about the tooth, the laugh, and the promise Carly had made me in a parking lot four years ago.

I told him about the design firm and the landlord and the man with the scar.

He didn't interrupt once, and he didn't look at his phone.

When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.

"I'll be honest with you," he said. "Most people who come in here have a friend who's changed. Moved, gotten a new boyfriend, stopped answering."

"I know how it sounds."

"But most of them don't come with a water glass."

I put the bag on the table.

He looked at it, and then at me, and something in his face shifted.

"You're a dental hygienist."

"Yes."

"So you'd know a tooth."

"I'd know that tooth in a lineup," I said. "I've looked at it every six months for six years."

He picked up the bag by one corner and held it to the light.

"Nobody's touched this but you?"

"I wore gloves."

"Good." He almost smiled.

He wrote something down, and then he asked the question I hadn't thought to ask myself.

"Who has been inside your house since March?"

I opened my mouth, and nothing came out.

"My house?"

"You said you live alone now, and that Carly used to live there."

"She did. For three years." I frowned. "She still has a key. I never asked for it back."

"Anyone else?"

"A guy fixed my back bedroom floor while I was at my sister's wedding. Carly set it up."

"The same guy?" He nodded at the photo of the plate on my phone.

"I never met him," I said. "I came home and the floor was done."

He wrote that down too, and his pen stopped for a second.

"Have you called Carly's number since Friday?"

"No."

"Don't."

"Why not?"

"Because as far as anyone knows, you bought it," he said.

I stared at him.

"You know about the text."

"You told me twenty minutes ago. Did she buy it. That means someone is watching how well she's doing."

He leaned back and rubbed his jaw.

"The prints on this glass could take a week. And if she's in a database, it'll be the first time anyone has looked her up."

"So what do I do?"

"Nothing. You go to work and you go home." He studied me. "And you don't go back to Pelham Road."

"She's wearing my best friend's face."

"I believe you," he said.

It was such a plain thing to say, and it was the first time anyone had said it.

My eyes stung, and I looked down at the table so he wouldn't see.

He pushed a box of tissues across, and he didn't say anything about it.

My phone buzzed against the wood.

We both looked at it.

The screen said Carly, with the little photo of her at the beach, and below it a message.

Hey you!! Friday again? I'll bring my appetite lol. Let's do something mild this time, my stomach is a mess.

I stared at the word mild.

Burke read it upside down, and his face didn't change at all.

"Tell her yes," he said quietly. "And Macy? Say it exactly the way Carly would."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend