She finally arrived, exhausted and disheveled, at the gate of Salt and Light, a religious outreach that her uncle had founded twenty years before. Her uncle had died suddenly of a brain aneurysm a year earlier, but Alex knew the woman who had taken over the work, Marta Gonzales. She rang the bell.
After a few minutes, Marta herself came to the gate. Salt and Light was a little bit of everything: orphanage, school, homeless shelter, and Marta herself was part schoolteacher, part counselor, part mother. She was short and overweight, but stern, and she carried a presence about her that commanded politeness and respect from anyone who came through her gates.
She peered out at Alex, and Alex was struck by how the lines in her face seemed more deeply drawn than the last time she had seen her. “Alex Kelley?” she said.
Alex shrugged. “It’s me. I need some help, Marta.”
“That you do,” Marta said. She unlocked the gate and swung it open. She ushered Alex inside, up a stained staircase, and down a narrow hallway. The walls were covered with bulletin boards with photographs pinned to them in a haphazard array, the newer ones obscuring the older. Marta found a large cardboard box at the end of the hall and rifled through it, eventually emerging with a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. “Can’t help you with the underwear, honey, but these are dry, which is more than you’ve got.”
She opened a bathroom door and practically pushed Alex into it. “Just hang your wet stuff in there. When you’re dry and dressed again, we’ll talk.”
Alex did as she was told. When she came out again, she followed the light to Marta’s cramped office.
“It’s so quiet,” she said.
Marta looked up from a paper she was reading. She took off her glasses and set them on the table. “It’s after curfew. Everyone’s in bed. Now, what’s your trouble?”
Alex told her. When she tried to talk about the technology at the demo, Marta shook her head. “Cut to the chase, honey.”
“A man was killed. They think I did it. I can’t reach my dad, and anyway, I don’t want to involve—”
“Enough said.” Marta stood. “You need a bed to sleep in and a plan for the near future. The bed we can do tonight; the plan will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Alex said, her eyes filling with tears. She had known Marta would help her, but at the same time, she had still half-expected to be turned away. Marta led her up to another floor, down another hallway, and opened a door. The room contained a small bed, made up neatly with white sheets, and a battered dresser.
“Thank you,” Alex said.
“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” Marta said.
Alex stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. When she turned around again, Ryan Oronzi was sitting on her bed.
“Are you done playing games now?” he asked.
CHAPTER 11
Halfway through their quesadillas, Messinger’s phone rang. She made a terse reply, and hung up. “We’ve got to go.”
“What is it?”
“They found your sister’s car.” Messinger stood. “Are you coming?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Not as a cop,” Messinger qualified.
Sandra frowned. “If I’m a suspect, you can’t hold me. You can’t make me go anywhere.”
“I’m not making you,” Messinger said. “I’m asking you to come, as an expert witness, to help with the investigation.”
“Okay,” Sandra said. “I’m in.”
They abandoned the rest of their meal and got back into the cruiser. It had grown dark outside while they were eating. Sandra thought Messinger might just leave her, or else drop her at the station first, but she turned south instead. Messinger was choosing to trust her. It meant that she believed her story, at least to a point.
They stopped outside a Dunkin’ Donuts that was already crawling with cops. The CSI van was there, and cops were routing traffic away from the block. Sandra’s stomach turned over. What if Alex was dead? Messinger hadn’t said very much on the drive. What if she had brought her here to identify Alex’s body?
They approached the car. There were floodlights on it from several angles, and a man was laser scanning the steering wheel for fingerprints.
“Does this belong to your sister?” Messinger asked.
Sandra nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Finally, she asked, “Is she dead?”
Messinger looked up, confused. “What? Oh—no. At least, not that I know of. We haven’t found a body.”
Sandra felt a rush of relief, and at the same time, a flood of pure anger at Alex for putting her through this. What on earth had she been thinking, to help reproduce the same technology that had nearly killed them before?
“Were there any cameras?” Sandra asked.
Messinger made a sour face. “No. The cameras in the Dunkin’ Donuts are just fakes to deter thieves. We’re tracking credit cards to find customers who may have been here at the time, to see if they have viewfeeds, or just remember seeing something. Anyone paying in cash will be practically impossible to track down.”
Sandra thought about the route her sister would have taken driving here from the NJSC. She would have crossed over to Pennsylvania on either the Walt Whitman bridge or the Commodore Barry bridge, either one of which would have brought her to I-95. She could have been heading home to their parents’ house, but that wouldn’t have required getting off at this exit. It seemed unlikely she would have stopped just for a doughnut.
“She was meeting someone,” Sandra said.
“What makes you say that?”
“She ditched her car here. If she wanted public transportation, she could have gotten off at the airport instead. It would have taken us a lot longer to find the car, and she could have taken a bus, train, or taxi practically anywhere. There’s no public transportation here, so either she’s on foot in a poor neighborhood where she knows no one, or else she left in someone else’s car.”
Messinger nodded. “Can you think of any friends for whom this would be a likely meeting place?”
“Not at all. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Sandra peered into the back seat of the car, careful not to touch anything. It was pristine, without a receipt or gum wrapper or discarded grocery bag in sight. That was typical Alex, neat to a fault. For a moment, Sandra’s vision swam. She could still see the car in front of her, but at the same time, she saw a stern woman, short and overweight, peering through a gate. She recognized her: Marta Gonzales.
The sensation of having seen Marta was strong. Years ago, before the two copies of her father had resolved into one person again, each of his selves had seen glimpses of what the other was seeing. Was that what was happening? Was she seeing through Alex’s eyes?
The thought was terrifying. It was an unwelcome reminder of the fact that she and Alex were two versions of the same person and might someday resolve again into a single individual. No satisfactory explanation had ever been made as to why their probability wave had never resolved, and that meant there was no reason she knew of why it might not collapse at any moment.
Neither of them knew exactly what would happen if their wave collapsed. Their father had spent weeks split into two people, and when they combined again, he retained many of the memories from both versions, but not all. The real problem was not just the memories, however, but the personality, the sense of identity, the sense of self. Sandra was not Alex, and she didn’t want to become her, not even a little bit. It was part of what had prompted her to spend less time around Alex, to minimize the overlap in their experiences.
But the vision had been clear, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t just her imagination. It made sense, now that she thought about it. Alex wouldn’t have wanted to leave her car at the mission, because the police would be looking for it. From here, it was a long walk to Salt and Light, but it was doable. And Marta would certainly take her in.