“Someone set them up,” I said, smiling as the details came back to me. “The guy left a box on his front steps and he set up some kind of temporary camera.”
Alfred nodded as though I was his prize student who had just gotten all the test answers right. “That camera sent images to the man’s phone and stored them in the cloud.”
“And how does that help us?” Liz asked.
“Those cameras were very popular,” Mr. P. said. “You could even rent them. A lot of people did that. In January they took them back. But unless they closed their account and deleted the images that were stored in the cloud, it’s all still there. As I said, a long shot.”
“Like Liz said, a long shot is better than no shot,” I said.
He nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Charlotte left with Liz and Avery. Rose and Mr. P. rode with Elvis and me. They spent the drive making a list of the neighbors in the immediate vicinity of the Pearson house. It seems Denise had mentioned the names of several of them when Rose and Alfred had talked to her about the fire.
I unlocked the apartment door, set my things inside and put Elvis on the floor. He stretched and headed for the bedroom. I followed him. He made his way over to my new running shoes, which were sitting by the bottom of the bed. He nudged one shoe with his nose, knocking it over onto its side. Then he looked at me.
“How did you know what I was thinking?” I asked.
“Merow,” he said.
Jia Allison had mentioned she ran the hills loop, an almost-six-mile circuit with some easy-grade uphill work. I’d been thinking of running the route on the off chance that she might be out there herself.
I crouched down, leaned my face in close to Elvis and gave the top of his head a scratch. “Sometimes you’re just a little bit spooky,” I said. He murped in agreement and licked my chin.
I changed into my running gear while Elvis nosed around in the closet. “We’ll have supper when I get back,” I said. “Unless you were planning on cooking.”
He yawned. I was pretty sure that meant no.
It was a good time for a run. There was very little traffic for some reason. Usually at this time of day I’d see other runners but I was the only one hitting the pavement. There was no sign of Jia Allison.
I was past the halfway point of the loop when I caught sight of someone running ahead of me. I spotted short, dark hair under a baseball cap, but it wasn’t until the street curved that I knew for sure it was Jia. I upped my speed, pushing myself to catch her, which wasn’t easy because her training pace was faster than mine. But I did manage to close the distance between us.
“Jia,” I called when I judged I was close enough for her to hear me.
She looked back over her shoulder. I saw a flash of recognition and she slowed her pace. I closed the rest of the distance between us.
“Hi,” she said. “You training for the Half Shore 10K too?”
“Actually I was looking for you,” I said as I kept pace beside her. It helped that she hadn’t speeded back up.
“Let me guess: You have more questions about Gina Pearson. I already told you everything there is to tell.” Her eyes didn’t quite meet mine.
I studied her for a moment, tried to imagine her in a dark coat and a red and blue ball cap. In the dark and the snow could Judge Halloran have mistaken her for Mike Pearson? It was possible. “You saw her before the fire, didn’t you?”
It was a guess but I had a gut feeling I was right.
She pressed her lips together for a moment. “It was bad enough that she drove drunk and ran my daughter down. She also had her own child in the car. Did you know that?”
“You mean Greg.”
Jia nodded. She was wearing a gray and yellow half-zip running shirt. It was inside out and something was hanging from the upper arm. A fabric softener sheet. I reached over and grabbed it. Jia started and pulled away from me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, holding up my hand. “You just had a dryer sheet stuck to your shirt.”
She glanced at her arm. “And my damn shirt is on inside out.” She closed her eyes, her chin dropped to her chest and she stopped in her tracks. Her whole body sagged.
“Are you all right?” I said.
Jia shook her head. “No. I’m not. I know Hannah is better—better than we could have hoped for. And I’m grateful every single day but sometimes I have these moments where I panic that it’s all going to be taken away again. I keep . . . I keep trying to run past the feeling, but I’m not doing a very good job of it.” She looked at me then, shaking her head.
“We should walk,” I said. “Your legs are going to cramp.” We started moving and I watched for any sign that she was light-headed.
We walked in silence for maybe half a minute, Jia looking straight ahead. “I did see her,” she suddenly said.
I realized she was talking about Gina.
“In fact, it was the day of the fire. I was at the grocery store. She tried to apologize again. I just . . . I pushed her aside and just walked away from her. I was afraid if I stayed there I’d hit her.” She looked at me then, anguish etched on her face. “I keep thinking what if that was the one thing that pushed her over the edge, what if I drove her to kill herself because I wouldn’t let her apologize?”
I was shaking my head before she finished talking. “You are not responsible for Gina Pearson’s death,” I said emphatically. I wished I could tell her that Gina had been murdered, that she hadn’t killed herself. “It’s . . . it’s more complicated than that, but it’s not your fault in any way. It’s not.”
She nodded but I wasn’t sure I’d convinced her. “I told you that I was out for a run that night,” she said.
I nodded. “I remember.”
“That night and all the other times I was supposed to be training, I was really just running as far as the lookout and then just sitting there on a bench and crying.” Her mouth twisted to one side. “How dumb is that?”
I put a hand on her arm and this time she didn’t flinch. “It’s not dumb. I can’t even imagine what it was like for you when your daughter was hurt. I think that now it’s okay if you take care of yourself. You don’t need to hold up everyone’s world.”
Jia gave me a small smile. “That’s what it feels like some days. Like I’m holding up the world.”
“Promise me when you get home you’ll talk to your husband?”
It took a moment but then she nodded. “Okay.”
“And I’m going to call you if that’s okay?” I said.
The smile got a tiny bit bigger. “It’s okay.”
We ran the rest of the loop, albeit at a much slower pace.
“That’s my house, right there.” She pointed at a gray saltbox with a fire-engine-red front door. She glanced down at her feet for a moment then looked up at me. “Thanks for listening.”
“Hey, anytime,” I said. “Maybe we could go for a run sometime.”
“I’d like that,” she said. She took a couple of steps toward the house and then stopped, looking back over her shoulder. “You’re going to watch me until I get to the door, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “I am. And I am going to call you.” I shrugged. “I spend a lot of time with a bunch of nosy, bossy, opinionated—wonderful—seniors. You met two of them the other day. I’ve picked up some of their behaviors.”
Jia smiled. “I’ll talk to you soon then,” she said. She headed down the sidewalk, stopping to raise one hand before she opened the red door and went inside. I turned then and headed home.
When I got there, Liz was just getting out of her car parked at the curb.
“Hi, what are you doing here?” I said.
“I came to talk to John, to see if there’s anything else he remembers about those projects that never happened.” She eyed my running gear. “Did you talk to the Allison woman?”
“I did,” I said, pulling the elastic out of my hair.
“It’s not her, is it?”
We headed up the walkway. “I don’t think so. She did see Gina the day of the fire. And she’s carrying a lot of guilt because she just walked away from her. I just don’t think she would have admitted that if she’d killed Gina.”