Influenced Eva Robinson (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📖

“Ah, yes,” said Michael. “The single person in the Boston area with a Red Sox cap.” He really needed to tone down his sarcasm.

“Not sure I like your tone.”

“Sorry. Even I have one, and I’ve literally never watched a baseball game. You might be one of twelve people in New England without one. It’s like saying, ‘She was wearing a Green Monster T-shirt.’”

She stared at him like he’d just sprouted a new head. “What’s a green monster? What are you even talking about?”

Michael studied her. “You can list three hundred facts off the top of your head about Puritan cemeteries and executions, but you’ve never noticed the Green Monster T-shirts?”

She frowned. “Is it a cartoon thing? I don’t watch cartoons.”

“It’s the name your people have for the giant green wall at Fenway.”

“It’s a wall. They have a name for a wall? Okay. I don’t really understand sports, and I particularly don’t understand why a sports-related wall would be worth celebrating with T-shirts and its own celebrity status. But yes, I concede that many people have the hats. It’s just the video…”

Michael nodded at the screen. She was stuck on it—and he of all people knew what it was like to be stuck on something. “You need to stop staring at the video. You’re not getting anything else out of that bloody video. I think we need to interview them all again. Stella, Daniel, Rowan, Hannah—just keep interviewing them until one of them gives something away, until we catch an inconsistency. If someone gets nervous enough, they’ll slip up and try to save themselves.”

“True. You’re right. But they’ve just all got this ‘I was too drunk’ story. Any inconsistencies can be explained away by alcohol. ‘Maybe I did say that, but like I said, it’s all hazy.’”

“Stella says she was sober.”

Ciara went quiet at the mention of Stella. In fact, now that he thought about it, she’d been oddly silent at the interview with her too.

“Ciara? You okay?” said Michael.

She nodded. “Yeah. Stella just… reminds me of someone I know. It kept throwing me during the interview.” Ciara turned away from him and rewound the video again, stopping at a still of the woman in the cap. “I know you said to stop looking at it, but I just want to take a screen grab. I want to look more closely at the sweater.”

“You need to ease up on the coffee.”

“If I don’t drink it constantly, I get headaches.”

“That’s a really bad situation.”

She leaned back in her chair. “There’s something we’re not getting, and I won’t be able to stop thinking about it, because if we don’t figure this out soon, we’ll find another dead academic. And we still have no idea what the hell is happening. I hate being confused.”

“I’ll make you another cup in a bit. I know where Quezada keeps a hidden stash.”

“I love you.” He caught her cheeks flaming red. “I mean, for getting me coffee. Not actually.”

Michael watched as she opened the still image of the Red Sox woman and magnified it. She grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil and started to sketch the logo on the sweater.

“What are you doing?” asked Michael.

“Following my instincts. It’s blurry, but with the two gaping eye sockets, the narrow skull chin…”

“Are you really sure they’re ‘gaping eye sockets’? You do have a tendency to be morbid.”

She paused and frowned at the image. There was something above the skull shape…

“Hang on…” She looked from the image to Michael. “I missed it before. But with the picture blown up, I can see it now.” She pointed at the blocky, pixelated image. Above the cartoon head, the pixels formed something like faint triangles.

Ciara drew them onto her pad of paper, more clearly than what appeared on the screen. Then she drew a neater version—the round head, large, dark eyes, the triangle nose. The two little triangles above the skull—

“Michael, it’s a cat. It’s a cat sweater. It’s not a skull. Of course I saw it as a skull. Where have I seen a cat sweater recently? This is an oversized sweater with cats all over it. It’s odd.”

He frowned at the image on her paper, and then a spark of recognition lit in his mind. “Oh! The picture on Hannah’s wall. The father of her child. He was wearing a cat sweater. I remembered thinking it seemed… quirky. Do you think Hannah could be wearing his sweater in that video?”

“It could be. It’s large, like it was a husband or boyfriend’s shirt. Do you remember his name?”

“Luke, I think.” He opened his notebook. “Luke Kerr. I wanted to talk to him, actually, since he swung by the night Peter went missing. I wanted to check his story against Hannah’s.”

Already, Michael was searching his name. “Luke Kerr. Harvard.” He turned to Ciara. “Psychology department. Hang on… He’s in the same department Arabella worked in. He works in the William James building.” His blood started pounding. Finally they were getting somewhere.

“Maybe he left his sweater behind with Hannah?” said Ciara.

Michael clicked his pen a few times, then pulled out his phone and started dialing. “If he worked with Arabella, Adam might know him.” He held the phone to his ear.

Adam picked up after a few rings. “Hello?”

“Hi. It’s Detective Stewart. No updates yet, I’m afraid. I just wanted to run a name by you to see if you recognized it. Luke Kerr.”

“Luke Kerr? Yeah, I know him. He was in Arabella’s department.”

Michael’s pulse started racing. “Did they work closely at all?”

“Well, she published a paper with him, as the second author. He works with Theo Leigh, the professor of moral psychology. He was on Oprah. They’re both a big deal, I guess, in their world. Which is odd, because it’s not exactly a real science.”

Michael cleared his throat. “Right. And what was their relationship like?”

“Arabella really wanted to impress him. She was very worried about what he thought. I remember because—at that party at Stella’s house, the night