The Prettiest One: A Thriller (11 page)

Caitlin stepped past Bix into the bedroom and Josh followed, still keeping his eyes off the bed. He watched Caitlin study the room. She turned to a set of sliding closet doors.

“May I?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” Bix said. “It’s your closet.”

“It
was
her closet,” Josh said.

Caitlin slid a door open and saw men’s clothes. Then she slid the doors to the other side, revealing a good deal of women’s clothing. For a moment, she just looked at it all.

“Anything familiar?” Josh asked.

Caitlin shook her head. She poked through women’s tops, a few blouses, some sweaters. From where Josh stood, they didn’t look like the kinds of things Caitlin would wear. The clothes in her closet at home were quite a bit more conservative. To his admittedly untrained eye, these clothes seemed to be stylish enough but a bit showier than she was used to. Caitlin may have been thinking the same thing because she turned to Bix and asked, “These are really mine?”

“Sure are,” he said. He leaned forward and touched the sleeve of a low-cut V-neck shirt. “You’re wearing this one in that shot,” he said, pointing to a single photo in a frame on the nightstand. Josh looked over and saw that, indeed, Caitlin was wearing the same shirt, which was indeed cut low, revealing the tops of her shapely breasts. Thankfully, Bix wasn’t in the photo with her this time, though the way she was grinning, the way her eyes seemed to be sparkling as she looked right into the lens, Josh had to wonder if Bix had been the one behind the camera.

God, this is hard
, Josh thought. He wanted it to be over. He wanted to forget all about this guy, and he wanted Caitlin to do the same. He wanted her to learn enough to move on with her life, but nothing that would change the way she felt about him and the life they once shared together.

“I don’t remember any of this,” she said.

They had now completed the tour of the entire apartment, which hadn’t taken long—just the living room, eat-in kitchen, two bathrooms, a spare room—which Bix had announced belonged to Pedro, a seven-year-old boy Caitlin and he had adopted last month, before admitting that he was only joking—and finally, the bedroom. Caitlin said she couldn’t recall any of it. Yet Bix had shown them Caitlin’s things—her pajamas, makeup, the books she was reading, which, from their titles, didn’t seem to be the kinds of things Bix would read. He’d shown them notes she had jotted on various pads of paper—a grocery list in a kitchen drawer, a message by the telephone in the living room . . . even a note pinned to the door of the fridge with a magnet in the shape of a pineapple, which read simply,
Love you lots
. That one was a kick in the gut for Josh.

Each of the notes was written in handwriting Josh recognized at once as Caitlin’s. Finally, there were the photos, the existence of which Josh couldn’t deny, despite his overwhelming desire to not only deny their existence but to shred them all and wipe the memory of them forever from his mind. He’d have paid good money for just a small touch of Caitlin’s amnesia just then. If it hadn’t been for the pictures and maybe the handwriting, Josh might have thought that Bix had cooked up some sort of scam, that
he
was the one who had somehow slipped Caitlin the hypothetical industrial-strength roofie. But the photos did exist, as did the notes Caitlin clearly had written in her own hand, including the one saying that she loved Bix “lots.” Josh couldn’t deny those things, so he could no longer deny that Caitlin had lived here with Bix . . . and that she had perhaps loved him to some degree.

Caitlin’s eyes met his, and he knew that she had come to the same conclusion. She turned toward Bix and said, “I think we need your help. You know things we probably can’t learn anywhere else.”

Bix said nothing.

“You can’t imagine how hard it is not to remember anything from the past seven months,” Caitlin added. “I just want to know what I was doing, what I did. I want . . . no, I
need
to
remember
.”

Josh truly wondered what Bix would say. Would he just tell them to leave? He’d had the plug pulled on his life with Caitlin. Who could blame him, now that he had answered so many of her questions, if he just wanted them gone? And as much as they needed to know whatever he knew, a big part of Josh hoped he would tell them both to go to hell. Josh watched Bix’s eyes move slowly around the room, then come to rest on the picture of Caitlin, the one by the bed, in which she was alone, smiling at the lens. He looked back at her and said, “What can I do?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THEY DECIDED THAT IT MIGHT jog Caitlin’s memory to visit specific places around the city, places with which Caitlin was familiar . . . well, with which she had been familiar when she was Katie. At almost six in the evening, it was close to dinnertime, so they drove from Bix’s neighborhood into the city proper, their general destination being an area known locally, though not officially, as the West End, where a higher concentration of restaurants could be found than in other parts of Smithfield. The first stop on the Caitlin memory tour was the Fish Place, which, according to Bix, was the pub where they had first met, and also happened to be her favorite place to eat. Also according to Bix, the place didn’t serve any fish but rather was named after Ted Fisher, the owner. At the Fish Place, you ordered steak or chicken that came with sides of potatoes. In addition to no fish, there was also a complete lack of pasta on the menu. There was salad for those who insisted on it, but the servers were reluctant to give you one unless you also ordered something that had at least a decent chance of clogging an artery somewhere down the line.

Stepping into the restaurant, Caitlin was disappointed to find that the Fish Place wasn’t the least bit familiar to her. It smelled great, though, despite giving her the feeling that she was putting on weight merely by breathing the air in here. But though she remembered reading one time that smells were possibly the most powerful memory triggers—and the aromas here were certainly powerful—it felt as though she were visiting this restaurant for the first time. Rough wood floor, a bar along one wall, booths along the other, tables in between, and two pool tables in back where Bix said he had first laid eyes on Caitlin. There were light fixtures hanging from the ceiling and a long string of Christmas lights running around the perimeter of the place, even though it was October. They probably stayed up year-round. She recalled none of it.

A smiling young woman walked toward them, menus in hand. She wore a pale blue T-shirt with a white graphic of a smiling fish head on it. “Hey, you two,” she said with what seemed to Caitlin like familiarity. “Got a friend with you for dinner tonight, I see.”

“If you say so, Candace,” Bix replied.

The woman laughed in the way that people do when they’re pretending they understand a joke that they weren’t actually in on. “This way,” she bubbled, heading toward an empty table, of which there were several, given that it was still a bit early for most folks outside of Florida to be eating dinner.

On the way there, the bartender called out to them, “What do you say, Bix? What’s up, Katie?” Bix responded and urged Caitlin to wave, which she did, and to smile, which she tried her best to do.

They arrived at their table and Candace said, “Here you go,” as she placed menus in front of three chairs. She leaned toward Caitlin and, tipping her head theatrically in Josh’s direction, said in a faux stage whisper plenty loud enough for all to hear, “So who’s the cute guy, Katie?”

They had decided that Caitlin should pretend to know everyone she would be expected to know, so as not to attract unwanted attention, but she had no idea how to answer the hostess’s question. She knew she couldn’t say, “He’s my husband,” though that’s how Josh would want her to answer, because this woman thought Caitlin and Bix were a couple. So instead, she just laughed and sat down. Candace seemed to understand pretty quickly that she wouldn’t be receiving a response to her question, and if she were disappointed, she didn’t show it. She said, “Tim will be serving you guys again tonight. He’ll be right over to take your drink orders.”

Candace left their table and Bix said, “I think she likes you, Josh. Hey, Katie, why don’t you put in a good word for Josh with Candace?”

“She knew my name,” Caitlin said, ignoring him.

“Not
your
name, Caitlin,” Josh said. “The name you were using for a while, remember?”

“That’s right,” Caitlin said. “That’s what I meant.”

“No shit, she did,” Bix said. “I told you we’re regulars here. Your favorite is the steak tips on toast, by the way.”

“They’re good here?”

Josh let slip an exasperated sound.

“Sorry,” Caitlin said, “but I’m hungry.” She generally wasn’t much of a carnivore, eating red meat infrequently, but it sounded good tonight.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bix smiling. Out of the corner of her other eye, she saw Josh frowning. No, scowling. She reached over under the table and found his knee. A moment later, his hand found hers and held it.

A skinny, redheaded college-age kid in another smiling-fish-head shirt walked up to the table and said, “Hey, guys,” in that same familiar tone Candace had used. His name tag read Tim. “Are we starting with drinks?”

“Sure,” Bix said.

“The usual for you two?” he asked, looking first at Caitlin, then at Bix.

“Sounds good to me,” Bix said. “Katie?”

Caitlin started to order a glass of wine, which Josh no doubt was expecting her to do, but instead she decided to see what her “usual” was. “The usual for me, too.”

Josh ordered whatever they had on tap even though he rarely drank beer and almost never did so with dinner.

While they waited for their drinks, Josh looked at the menu. Caitlin didn’t bother—the steak tips sounded good, and Bix said she loved them—so she was free to let her eyes roam around the restaurant. It still didn’t look familiar, so she started scanning the faces of the two dozen or so people in the place. No little bells sounded in her head.

“Do I know anyone here?” she asked Bix.

Bix’s menu remained closed on the table in front of him. Apparently he had a favorite, too. “Well, Tim serves us pretty often. Recognize him?”

She shook her head. Bix looked around for a few seconds, then tipped his head toward a very old man sitting alone in a booth.

“How about Sam over there? Widower. Eats here every night. Every once in a while you invite him to join us. He insists on paying every time you do. He calls you his little cutie when he sees you. ‘Hey, there’s my little cutie,’ he always says. Anything?”

Caitlin watched the old man raise a quivering forkful of pie to his mouth. It was like she was seeing him for the first time in her life. She shook her head.

“And you don’t remember the bartender, I assume?”

“Nope.”

He looked around. “That’s it for now. Sorry.”

So was she.

Tim brought over their drinks. A glass of some kind of beer for Josh, a bottle of Harpoon IPA for Bix, and a Corona Light with a slice of lime for Caitlin. Josh glanced away from her beer and took a sip of his own. She gave his hand a little squeeze under the table and was pleased to feel him squeeze back. He wasn’t enjoying any of this, but he was handling it as well as could be expected given the circumstances.

Tim took their orders—steak tips for Caitlin, steak sandwich for Bix, and a chicken club for Josh. Soon enough, Tim was back with their food. Bix was right; Caitlin liked the steak tips.

They talked during dinner, Caitlin and Bix playing “What Else Doesn’t Caitlin Remember?” throughout. Josh spent most of the meal on his tablet, which he’d brought into the restaurant. He said he was doing research. Every now and then he muttered something like “hmm” or “ah.” After they finished their meals, they ordered another round of beers.

“Pool table’s free,” Bix said. “Want to shoot a game?”

“Not really,” Josh replied civilly, “but thanks.”

“No offense, Josh—I mean it—but I wasn’t asking you. Sorry, brother.”

“Caitlin doesn’t play pool.”

“Oh,” Bix said, nodding and smiling good-naturedly. “How about you, then?”

“There are some things I want to talk to Caitlin about.” He turned to her. “Listen, I found some interesting stuff online. I think I might have—”

“You don’t play pool, either, I guess,” Bix said, shrugging in a way that made it clear that the information didn’t surprise him.

Josh seemed to consider it for a moment, then stood. “I guess we can talk about it after a game or two.”

“Now you’re talking, pal,” Bix said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Bring your beer. Come on, Katie . . . I mean, Caitlin.”

Hunnsaker took a bite of her veggie wrap and stared at the photographs taped to a whiteboard. She and Padilla had commandeered an interview room, rolled in a whiteboard, and started filling it with information. Some detectives could work by flipping through files and stacks of paper and photos, but Hunnsaker liked to see everything at once, all laid out in front of her. So she taped photos of Vic Warehouse taken at the crime scene in the center of the whiteboard—a close-up of his face, complete with bullet hole, and shots of his body from four different angles. To the right of those pictures, she had taped mug shots of Dominick Bruno, their potential squatter, and Kenneth “Stick Man” Kahanahanukahalenahuli, a known associate of Bruno’s. On the far right side of the big board, Hunnsaker had put photos of the scene itself—pictures of the warehouse’s exterior, shots from various angles inside, a photo of the closet in the back, along with close-ups of each of the items found inside it. Each photo had a small typed description taped beside it.