Catch up on the previous chapters here
Ben had never actually thought to look up FBI offices in Michigan. He supposed that, in the back of his mind, he figured there was one in Lansing, and that was it. This wasn’t the time to Google it and educate himself, since first the agents waited for him to get ready—what was a man supposed to do to get ready, ye gods?—and then brunet, oh so friendly, offered to ride shotgun so he’d know where to go.
Brunet was named Tyler. “Because of the novel,” he confided—appeared to confide—as he buckled in. “Not the movie. I’m not that young.”
An FBI agent younger than Fight Club. Was that even possible? Besides, the movie was only three years behind the book, so if this agent—this kid—thought that three years made that much of a difference, he was that young. Maybe younger. Ben grunted to show he’d heard, but this wasn’t a junior high sleepover, and they weren’t seventh grade girls. If Tyler wanted to keep up a one-sided truth or dare and keep picking truth, that was on him.
“You know the main character doesn’t even have a name?” Tyler shook his head a little. “Most people don’t realize that. They remember Tyler Durden, which is how it’s supposed to go, but then they all stop and get a weird look and ask hey, do you remember the name of the character Edward Norton plays? Except nobody does, because he doesn’t have one.”
He really preferred Tyler around Jack, because at least that Tyler wasn’t babbling.
“I just think it’s interesting. Naming. I mean, I know it’s not the same,” he continued with a deep nod, either not looking at Ben at all or pretending not to. “My wife and I are trying for kids, so the name thing’s come up a lot. And that’s just one—you had to name a whole book of characters.”
Right. He did. Did FBI agents routinely read books? And not just books—advance reader copies. Someone had to have gotten their hands on one of them, the stuff they sent to bloggers and big names, not FBI agents. BookTokers, not G-men. Why were Feds called G-men?
“I suppose it’s easier,” Tyler mused, because he wouldn’t shut up, “when you start with a template. All the names—you didn’t change them much.”
He took a slow breath and concentrated on checking his mirrors. “I wasn’t ever going to mention it. Thom knows.” And he was sure they knew who Thom was. “If anybody asked about it, the similarities, I’d say yeah, sure, I was here when the murders happened, but … look, the thing is, some authors use movie stars. Others just Google it—blonde woman in her twenties, guy with black hair in his forties, whatever. You find a picture, and it starts off being a picture of someone else, but the more you work on it …” He was saying you too much. He sounded like a nervous first-time speaker trying to remember all the lines he was supposed to parrot. Maybe that was okay. “Years ago, when I started working on this, they were Kelsey and Ashleigh and Heidi, sort of. Maybe even mostly. But they were the newspaper versions, and the people I shifted them to be in my head … they’re my characters, because they’re not anything like the real people. You know?”
“Can’t say I do,” Tyler said pleasantly.
Shit, it was just a nervous tick.
“Sounds like the sort of writing process talk they’d eat up on campus.”
He wasn’t sure if it was a smile that flicked over his face because he quashed it so fast. “I’m not the kind of guy they invite to college campuses.”
“Maybe we need more books by guys like you.”
This was not like any male bonding he’d ever negotiated before. “You read it?”
“I did, yeah. My wife’s totally green. Man, if she knew C. J. O’Connell’s a local … Turn left here.”
Honestly it felt like taking his driver’s test again: check the mirror, flick the blinker, and keep an egg between his foot and the brake pedal.
“Cal, though,” Tyler said abruptly, almost making Ben flinch as he waited for a gap in the traffic. “You made him up completely.”
There was no good response to that. At this point, he was just lucky he wasn’t sweating. Yet.
“I read a review … I think it was on Goodreads … someone said Rosie’s the main character of the story, but you can’t tell it from her point of view, because … hell, I’ll have to find it again. Something about the mystique, maybe, so Cal’s the narrator. Sort of like how Nick narrates Gatsby.”
He tried not to clear his throat. “Nick narrates Gatsby because Gatsby dies.”
Tyler laughed, and it might have been real. A surprise reaction instead of one that was carefully calculated. “Don’t let my wife hear you. That’s what she calls a half-points answer: technically true, but barely on the dart board. Nick’s the narrator because he’s just enough on the outside to be fascinated with Gatsby, hear all the truth about him, and ignore it anyway.”
“Yeah? Is that what you wrote in your own paper in high school?”
This chortle was Tyler fully under control. “In high school, I wrote papers that sounded a lot like SparkNotes.”
SparkNotes. Were SparkNotes even around when Ben was in high school? Cliffs Notes, sure, but SparkNotes felt new.
And Tyler was positioning himself: not the expert, but married to the expert. Whom he was trying to impregnate. Hopeful family man who didn’t know the first thing about writing and would listen wide-eyed to Ben describe his whole process. Anything to keep him talking.
“Yeah, my wife gives me the same look.”
Maybe Tyler didn’t even have a wife. Maybe she got assigned whatever occupation would help him most in the moment. Maybe he wasn’t even married. Maybe he was gay. What was the worst-case scenario here?
“But the thing is, I read Gatsby again recently, and I have to say, you’ve got a lot of the same vibe. They didn’t host those giant parties, maybe, but that apartment was still a hub. Cal meets her casually, he’s still kind of peripheral … there are all these people around her, this whole network, but it doesn’t seem like anyone really knows her. Right?”
He nodded. That was the safest answer, especially when he wasn’t entirely sure of the truth.
“And he’s … well. The thing is …” Tyler shifted for the first time, like he’d suddenly realized the seat wasn’t entirely comfortable. “Cal never actually confesses his feelings for Rosie. He’s not really clear on them. Nick, now … he never says anything to Gatsby, because he’s too passive. You know? Everyone’s cheating, Nick doesn’t try to stop any of it … so he’s not going to tell another man what he’s thinking, right? 1920s, that’s not going to happen. But then!” He held up a finger. “Chapter Seven plays out, someone’s dead, and Nick’s got to confront who Gatsby really is.”
“Gatsby didn’t kill Myrtle.” Except Tyler was trying to draw comparisons between Gatsby and Rosie, so which character was he defending?
“No, but he was willing to say he did, to cover for Daisy.” The agent shook his head slowly. “He was blinded by his obsession, and Nick?”
Ben managed to keep his lips from opening. Cal’s not obsessed didn’t escape.
“I guess what I’m wondering is—turn in here—if Cal maybe doesn’t commit to telling Rosie he loves her because he’s got some suspicions. You know? If you tapped into that, and you know …”
That was complete and utter bullshit. “I’m sorry, man, but it really sounds like you guys are grasping at straws.”
Tyler chuckled his dangerous chuckle again. “Or maybe you missed your true calling and should’ve been a profiler. Any spot up here.”
He licked his lips before he caught himself. “I thought profilers only worked serial killers.”
“The three girls, right?” Tyler shrugged as he unclipped his seatbelt. “That’s enough, even without the other two.”
Shit. A ball of ice replaced his stomach. “… other two?” Was that hesitation too long?
The agent nodded. “Yeah, the bus driver and the neighbor. They’re not in your files?”
“The …” Solved. Those were solved. It was the bus driver’s boyfriend, who was a druggie loser, and the neighbor borrowed money from the wrong people who took his life when they couldn’t get it back.
“Yeah. It’s amazing, really.” Tyler opened the door and looked over at him before he got out. “You zoomed right in on them. Connected them right back to Rosie. The subconscious …” He shook his head in admiration. “Yours is working overtime.”
Okay, and the subtext? He fumbled for his own seatbelt and nearly lost his footing on the dry pavement, and he clicked the fob twice because he couldn’t remember if he’d locked the doors, causing the horn to honk and tell the world he’d hit it twice. Did they honestly think he was brilliant, some sort of self-trained Will Graham, and Rosie was a murderer?
Jack held the door for them, looking around and almost twitching, like someone put a spider down his collar and was ready to send a snake after it. “He’s not supposed to be in today,” he said cryptically as Tyler went to the elevator and pressed a button.
Ben frowned.
“Boyfriend’s dad,” Tyler supplied, gesturing for him to get on the elevator first.
“Wait, he …?”
“Still works here?” Jack finished with a deep nod. “Nothing’s proved, right? Except for the fact that, any time this comes up, he shuts it down. Sweeps it back under the rug.”
He nodded slowly, trying not to retreat into his own head, but, what, she had a long-distance boyfriend, and it was his dad who turned out to be their handler? So it wasn’t witness protection, after all? It was a kidnapping disguised as a favor?
The FBI didn’t know where she was, either. Maybe it was even worse than he’d imagined.
To: MathyMart
From: LidaRoseElizabeth
Sent: February 22, 2019 9:21AM
I’m not sure they should’ve canceled classes today. I know why they did, but that means we’re just separated and drifting. Callie texted to tell me the line for the counselors is ridiculously long, and everybody’s crying, so even if I wanted to talk to someone I’d have to wait, and cry in front of them, and I know it’s not the pity Olympics, but Kelsey and I go back to first grade. Even the other two from our high school didn’t know her that long.
She’s the one who grew up on a llama farm before they moved and who puked on the blocks and whose mom was all gung-ho about Brownies and survival stuff. There was one winter camping weekend thing we did where Mrs. Morgan found a pile of snow, stuck wooden dowels all over it, and had us dig out the middle as a snow cave. All the other grownups are like oh, no, don’t go digging tunnels and stuff in the snowbanks because they’ll cave in on you, and she’s all psh, you have to dig smart. The dowels showed you how far to hollow it out so it’d stay standing.
Neither of us kept up with scouts, but we had classes together. We were in band. And then we ended up here, not really together but I still see her more than Kate and Jessie. And now …
I keep going over how it doesn’t make any sense, because it doesn’t. Kelsey still lives on campus. She’s still trapped in the K bubble. If I hadn’t ended up with Heidi, then I probably would’ve taken her up on the offer for sharing a double. But she’s got that single, and she doesn’t even have a car on campus because parking’s such a pain. That’s why I’d pick her up for Meijer runs: shopping, but also just to get her off campus.
So it makes no. Freaking. Sense. That she was out Wednesday night. There’s no angle to make it work unless she was lured or kidnapped, but there’s no security camera footage of anything, and they also said she was drunk. Kelsey, who never drinks. Some of the others tease her about it, but I think it’s family-related. Her mom knew the cool outdoor survival stuff, but there was always a distance with her dad.
I’m doing the same thing the papers are: speculating. Except they don’t know her, so they think they’ve got it all figured out. Of course it was a stupid drunk college student, out in the bad part of town, looking for a drug deal. It makes so much sense that way, and then of course it’s Kelsey’s fault.
She wouldn’t do this. There’s no way she’d do this, except I’m just being difficult, because clearly she did, and the police are already annoyed with me for making it more of an issue than it already is. They just tell me they’re on it, and they won’t give me updates if I call because I’m not family.
It’s supposed to be comforting, I think, that it didn’t happen on campus. “One of us” died, but it wasn’t “one of us” who killed her. I keep hearing people mention oh, have you ever looked at that one memorial bench near the chapel? It’s for Maggie Wardle, whose name I didn’t even know until now, because her ex-boyfriend killed her on campus in a murder-suicide. So. We’re supposed to be grateful Kelsey’s not that.
This isn’t what senior year’s supposed to be, is it? I know yours wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, but it wasn’t this.
I should try to do some homework. God, that feels like such a joke. Gran’s trying to convince me not to come home this weekend, but I don’t know if that’s the right choice.
To: LidaRoseElizabeth
From: MathyMart
Sent: February 22, 2019 12:03 PM
Babe: hop in your car. You’ve got a key. I’ll see you at my apartment after work. If you want to come home, then come on home.
Chapter Fifteen – coming January 15
Rebecca Frost 
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