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“Closer!” Reese waves her inside the room with the barrel of the gun, and Holly takes a few reluctant steps forward. “I meant it when I told you I didn’t think I’d ever stop drinking. That I’d die an alcoholic. I haven’t failed at anything I’ve set my mind to. Except sobriety. I couldn’t stop failing at that. Until I found you and ketamine.”
“What does this have to do with him?” Holly whispers.
“This?” Reese grunts a laugh. “This is the culmination of some horrible luck. For all of us.”
Holly gapes at Reese, to show she’s giving her full attention, but she’s desperate to find a way to get to the pepper spray in her purse.
“I didn’t want any of this,” Reese says. “And I certainly had no idea it would spiral so wildly out of control. But when that helpless moron confused her childhood trauma with our group therapy…”
“Elaine?”
“And her bizarre fucking paranoia. How couldn’t she realize that even an apex predator wouldn’t molest someone in a room full of witnesses?” Reese scoffs. “But do you think she’d listen to reason? Even after the whole group confronted her. Selfish cow! Determined to take us all down with her. An attention-seeking activist like that! What a mess it would’ve been. And all our work… my one shot at sobriety… would’ve blown up with her.”
“So you overdosed her?” Holly says, playing along while calculating when best to make her move. “To make it look self-induced?”
“We talked about it, JJ and I. How easy it would be to make it appear as if Elaine had relapsed. Which, let’s face it, was a foregone conclusion with that hopeless mess.” Reese exhales. “JJ and I went back to see Elaine after the group intervention. To take one more stab at making her see the light. And I thought…” Her voice trails off.
If only I can get a bit closer. “Thought what?”
“That JJ knew what I was prepared to do. I told her I’d brought fentanyl.” Reese shakes her head. “Predictably, Elaine wouldn’t listen to a word of reason… Actually, it was even worse than that. She accused us of complicity in her molestation. Ridiculous! Apart from screwing the whole group over, all Elaine was ever going to accomplish with her hysterical charges was to discredit real abuse victims.”
“So you injected her with fentanyl?”
“What else was I supposed to do? To save six other lives, we had to take hers. It’s utilitarian when you think about it. You know, greatest good for the greatest number. And I thought I’d convinced JJ… but then she lost it. Acting as if overdosing Elaine wasn’t even an option, let alone the only one. I had to practically wrestle the phone out of her hand to stop her from dialing 911.”
Holly’s insides go cold hearing Reese explain the mechanics of Elaine’s murder in such a detached tone. Suddenly, Holly remembers Reese’s cool detachment when she talked about retaliating against the cousin who blabbed at school that Reese’s dad had died of alcoholism. Reese, the smart, quiet girl who became the ambitious, successful lawyer. The first of the group to admit falling off the wagon. Wise indeed to mix truth with her lies.
Holly glances down at her purse. “And that’s why you had to get rid of JJ, too?”
Reese’s eyes are glassy. “JJ was my friend! My only ally in the tribe. Someone who understood the grip of alcohol. The others?” Reese rolls her eyes. “Salvador is a man-child. Baljit, a bully. Elaine was a ‘woke’ nutbar and Liisa an uptight know-it-all—both of them lost causes. And Simon? Just an abuser who views himself as some kind of victim. Not JJ, though. She and I found sobriety together. It was as if I’d stumbled across a long-lost sister. Do you know what it’s like to be alone in the world? Really and truly alone? JJ and I did. Until we found each other, and your treatment. But she just couldn’t stop panicking about Elaine. And then your fucking husband had to accost JJ outside the museum. It made her lose her mind.”
“You didn’t really have a choice, did you?” Holly says gently, stalling for time. She scans the room again, looking for any distraction as she surreptitiously slides her other hand closer to her purse.
“Not after your fucking husband got through with her. You know, I’d expect you to have better judgment than to be with someone like him. JJ came back from that museum fundraiser absolutely convinced you already knew about us and Elaine. She was sure she had blabbed it all under ketamine, but she couldn’t remember thanks to that goddamn midazolam.” Reese takes a long, slow breath. “I didn’t go over to JJ’s intending to kill her. Christ, she picked me up and drove me there herself.”
Which explains why you weren’t seen on the lobby’s security cameras.
“We were supposed to talk things through. I tried to reassure JJ that, if necessary, we could leverage your DMT use against you. But she wouldn’t listen to reason! Her conscience was killing her, and she thought her only hope was to come clean with you.” Reese runs her free hand through her hair.
“I’m not a fool, though,” Reese continues. “I did go there prepared for other contingencies. I brought a couple bottles with me. And once it became clear I couldn’t talk her out of her plan to turn us both in… well… JJ was such a trembling, guilt-ridden, helpless mess… it was dead easy to convince her to have a drink with me. Of course, she didn’t realize I was drinking alcohol-free wine to her twenty-six ounces of pure vodka.” Her gaze falls to her lap. “JJ was so drunk that I had to prop her up just to lead her out to the balcony. It didn’t take much of a push to get her over the railing… In a way, I think it might’ve been a relief for her. You know?”
Holly swallows the lump growing in her throat. As frantic as she is to get her hand on the pepper spray, she can’t help picturing JJ’s last moments, and it’s undoing her. She doesn’t want to think about JJ’s shock or her confusion—the wind in her hair on the way down—or worse, the moment of impact.
“And Liisa?” Holly croaks.
“Liisa!” A burst of laughter. “Could that have been a bigger comedy of errors? How was I supposed to know JJ had already confided in Liisa? Behind my back, no less. JJ had turned to that sketchy psychologist to ease her own conscience. She told her about Elaine and the fentanyl. And then after, of course, Liisa suspected I had to be involved in JJ’s ‘jump,’ too.” Reese shakes her head. “But did that fucking know-it-all fraud turn me in? No. Instead, she decided to blackmail me.”
Holly closes her eyes and thinks of Liisa’s client who had accused her of extortion. It fits. As sympathetically as she can, Holly asks, “What did Liisa want from you?”
“Money. And lots of it. Oh, our Liisa liked money. Apparently, her legal fees were through the roof. And something about her daughter’s expensive medication. She just assumed that a greedy lawyer like me would have millions of dollars in disposable income lying around. But a, I don’t have those kinds of funds. And b, I’m not partial to blackmail. But I didn’t share any of that with her until she showed up to collect her blood money.”
“Where is she, Reese?”
Reese shows a tight smile. “Liisa’s in Big Sur now.”
“Dead?”
“It’s a fair assumption. Liisa wasn’t exaggerating. She can swallow a ton of Xanax, that one. They’ll probably find her car first. Not sure her body will ever surface.”
