The Changeling by Victor LaValle

Author:Victor LaValle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-06-13T04:00:00+00:00

APOLLO WATCHED A ghost on Patrice Green’s computer screen. Three months since he’d last seen her alive, and now here she was.

The ghost of Emma Valentine walked freely down some Manhattan avenue. Hard to say exactly where, much farther downtown than Washington Heights, in the valley of skyscrapers, close to Wall Street. She moved amid the foot traffic. If people saw her, they didn’t act like it. They moved around her as if she was a cloud of bad atmosphere. Apollo could see people actually turning away as she moved by them. Looking anywhere but at her. People pulled out their phones rather than putting their eyes on her. Was this purposeful or just some natural allergy to Emma’s haunted presence? In this way she walked unseen.

She wore a long winter jacket that came all the way down to her ankles. It really looked as though she glided down the sidewalks, across the streets.

Was it the same day that she’d killed Brian?

When one camera lost her, another kicked in, from a new angle, farther down the block. This wasn’t a continuous shot but a series of them, cut together by William Wheeler and his hundred friends. At times Emma had just left the shot, at times she hadn’t quite entered. This gave the feeling that Apollo was stalking after her now. Like she might be walking this route, in downtown New York City, right this minute. Only the time stamp in the corner of the screen reminded him this was old news.

The skyscrapers fell away as Emma approached open water. Now Apollo knew where she was. South Street Seaport. She walked to Pier 16, location of the New York Water Taxi. The location of their last date night as a happy couple. Apollo had been the one to take her there. Was this how she’d known where to find it, and how late at night it still ran? He felt punched in the throat. This was how she had escaped Manhattan Island? For the cost of an access pass? Thirty dollars to disappear.

But where would she even get the money? When she slammed a hammer into the side of his face, she hadn’t seemed in the right mind to remember her wallet.

Emma waited on the pier. A mass of others, tourists, kids in their twenties, crowded the line for the next trip. And from out of the crowd appeared one woman. This woman walked up to Emma directly and put her arms around her, though Emma remained stiff in the embrace. When the water taxi arrived, the woman let go of Emma and led her to the end of the long line. They waited patiently until they reached the taxi. The woman flashed two passes, and then the pair climbed on board.

Apollo watched in awed humiliation as the water taxi pulled away from the pier.

Of course, he’d recognized the woman who helped Emma escape. He’d just been with her in Chinatown. That morning he’d given her a check for ten thousand dollars.

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