You Only Die Twice by Edna Buchanan

Author:Edna Buchanan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

12

I drove away on streets as dark and shadowy as the past. The woman I had so identified with was dead. I had seen her corpse. Why had I been so elated when for a moment Amy led me to believe that Kaithlin might still be alive? Utter madness or wishful thinking? At least I’d learned one of her secrets. Perhaps now the others would follow. If I could understand her and her demons, perhaps I could understand myself.

Miami’s population, huge and uncountable, is swollen by tourists, fugitives, and undocumented illegal aliens. Yet Kaithlin and I had to have crossed paths many times. When we were growing up, those of us born and raised here, who lived in Miami year round, had not yet become lost in vast urban sprawl and dense downtown development. People our age frequented the same movie theaters, shopping centers, and skating rinks. I had shopped at Jordan’s, a local institution, and my mother worked there. I nearly joined her one year for a summer job, opting instead to intern at a small weekly, on the recommendation of my journalism teacher.

Kaithlin and I had surely seen each other, perhaps even spoken. We shared so much in common; both fatherless, raised under difficult circumstances by working mothers, we were both conflicted by love and work. But how could she walk away from family, friends, and career and simply disappear? Could I do that? I wondered.

Instead of taking the downtown exit, I accelerated, driving north to the old apartment house in North Miami, hoping she wasn’t asleep.

“Mrs. Lewis,” I said into the squawk box, when she answered the bell, “it’s Britt, from the News. I need to see you for a moment.”

She wore a tatty bathrobe and slippers, her thinning hair in plastic curlers.

“Did you bring back the picture?” she asked, blinking.

“No, sorry. It’s on my desk. I’ll mail it when I get back to the office.”

I answered the question in her eyes.

“I’m here to ask you about Kaithlin’s baby.”

She grimaced and limped to the stove to light the burner under the ever-present teakettle. “What about him?” she asked brusquely.

“You knew?”

“Of course. I was Reva’s best friend.”

“You didn’t tell me when we talked.”

“I didn’t know you knew.”

Was everybody in Miami suddenly practicing Don’t ask, don’t tell?

“I wish you had said something,” I told her, exasperated.

She faced me, the burnt-out match still clutched between arthritic fingers. “Reva asked me not to tell anyone.”

“But she’s dead; so is Kaithlin.”

She looked startled. “Death doesn’t mean you don’t keep a secret. A promise is a promise.”

“But that information might have some bearing on the case,” I protested.

“It doesn’t.”

“How do you know?” I said.

“It was too long ago,” she said, with a wave of derision. “It couldn’t.”

“Knowledge is power,” I countered. “It helps to have all the facts.”

“Helps who? Your newspaper?” she challenged.

“When I was young, journalism was all about the five double-yews: Where, When, Why, What, and Who. Today it’s about the gees: Garbage and Gossip.”

“You may be right to a degree,” I acknowledged bleakly, “a large degree.

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