Influence

Chapter 14

The thing about guilt was that the nicer of a person you were, the more of it you experienced. Good people felt bad if they accidentally forgot to hold the door open for someone. Evil people could swerve to hit a dog on the side of the road and experience no remorse at all.

Shay stood within a growing throng outside the alleyway behind Goldie's apartment building late into the night. The people around her seemed more curious than sad. Sometimes they acted upset, but it was because they were supposed to feel that way in a situation like this rather than that they truly were.

Shay contemplated the nature of guilt again as she stood within a different throng—this one consisting mainly of reporters and camera crew—on the sidewalk outside a police precinct five blocks from Bacall Tower.

Even with the exhaustion of the night weighing on her, she'd been too upset to sleep. Her roommate asked her what was wrong as Shay sat at the kitchen table in predawn darkness, an uneaten bowl of paleo granola with hemp milk—Goldie's favorite breakfast—in front of her. "Check social media. Check the news. I can't talk about it, Deirdre. I'm not ready."

Five seconds later, Deirdre gasped. The blue light from her phone lit up the left side of her face as she stared at her screen. "Oh my God, this is awful. I didn't even like her the way you did and it still..." She tottered over to Shay, swaying as she walked. "Are you going to be all right?"

Shay sloshed the granola around its bowl with her spoon. "She's just a celebrity. There are plenty more out there."

Deirdre slid down in the chair next to her. "You're in the denial stage of grief. Nobody is just a celebrity, or anything else, for that matter. She's a person. And you loved her. You have the right to grieve."

"Can you let me sit here not eating breakfast in peace then? I do my grieving alone."

"Have you posted about this yet?"

"See for yourself. Preferably in another room."

Deirdre took her phone and went into the living room. From her sad little corner, Shay listened to her own voice as her roommate played the live feed from last night. She'd waited to record, naturally. The other Goldie Girls and Guys didn't need to know when she'd arrived at Bacall Tower, only that she'd gotten word of what happened and had gone there, despite the horror of the situation, so that Goldie's fans could be made aware of what happened.

Her voice sounded tinny and high-pitched, like she was part machine, part scared chipmunk.

"I can't believe this," Shay from last night sputtered. "They're saying it's her. You guys, it can't be, right? It can't be Goldie, but..." Her voice cut out. In the background more voices converged. Lower. They layered on top of each other so that it was impossible to grasp meaning from the cacophony. "It is. Goldie, our beautiful, talented Goldie. She's dead!"

She'd stopped recording then. Her hands were shaking so much, she'd dropped her phone. As she reached for it, inspecting it for damage, Jasper DeAngelis crossed in front of her. He'd been there a while already, and by the looks of it, he was handling the news with the expected lack of grace.

She stayed crouched so he wouldn't see her. Not that it would make much of a difference if he had. She wasn't anything to him. And so, she watched from the shadows. Watched as Tam approached him. Those two. Something passed between them. Hatred, sadness, fear, she couldn't tell what it was. When Tam left with the police, Shay stayed. Not close. She crossed the street, stationed herself under the awning of an Italian bistro. She stayed longer than the gawkers, longer than the reporters, far longer than Goldie, whose body was carried out shrouded in white as people held vigil, their phones like cold candlelight.

The only person who stayed as long as Shay was Jasper. Shay felt a pain of jealousy. Maybe she hadn't been Goldie's number one fan after all.

After Jasper walked away, so did Shay. She'd come home and now she couldn't eat, couldn't decide how to feel. Her next steps seemed pointless, but she stood up anyways and took them. The sweet smell of hemp milk and blueberries made her stomach twist. She carried her bowl out to Deirdre. Her friend sat with her knees tucked to her chest, cheeks streaked with tears. Shay set the bowl on the coffee table. "You want this? I can't eat it."

Her phone buzzed. An unknown number. She went to her room to read the text in solitude.

Two hours later, she found herself contemplating the nature of guilt while staring at the reflective windows of the precinct building where the cops assigned to Goldie's case worked. A reporter jostled past her for a place near the front of the crowd. Shay didn't want to be at the front. It was better to be where she was. In the middle of the pack, blending in with several other fans, there only as part of the grieving process. No good would come from being too obvious.

The identity of the woman who would be emerging from those doors was clear to Shay. Or possibly, she would not emerge, if the police wanted to wrap this up quickly. No, that wasn't likely. Her death hadn't even been listed as a homicide. Not officially. Surely the police knew and were simply waiting for the right time to announce it. There was a press conference schedule for early afternoon. That's when everyone would hear. Yes, Goldie Finch is dead. Yes, we believe she was murdered. No, we haven't made an arrest yet. Or maybe, yes, we've made an arrest. Her name is...

Tam Martin.

Shay eyed Tam as she made her way outside. Her dark chin length hair stuck up at odd angles and dark circles shadowed the skin under her eyes, but she carried herself upright. Defiantly.

Defiance.

That was the antithesis to guilt. A refusal to accept blame. Shay's spine tingled. Her hands tightened into fists. Goldie's sad and angry fans were all over Shay's social media demanding to know who had stripped their world of it sun. "I'll handle this," she said to the Goldie Girls and Guys sobbing around her. They stared at Shay with sunken eyes and blotchy, red cheeks.

She pushed her way through the crowd until she was only a few feet from Tam and then she let loose her question. "Did you kill her?"

The woman kept her head down, but Shay saw it, saw her jaw move back and forth. Her brow, no doubt, was furrowed under that hoodie. She blended back into the throng as Tam disappeared into a waiting car, reporters shouting after her until it pulled away from the curb and joined the traffic heading north. Given what the reporters were shouting, they wanted the same thing Goldie's fans did.

Shay smiled for the first time since yesterday at the park. The tension in her hands eased and she lifted her phone out of her pocket. There were hundreds of notifications from fellow Goldie Girls but she ignored them. Instead, she reread the text she'd received early that morning. Maybe it was from a Goldie Girl, or a Goldie Guy. Maybe it was from some obsessed person with no respect for what Shay did or maybe it was from an admirer. Whatever the case, the words gave Shay a course of action. A direction.

You were at Bacall Tower last night. So was Tam Martin. Are you Guilty? One of you is.

Guilt. One could only imagine how it drained a person, like wearing an iron shackle around one's neck. Tam had seemed innocent when Goldie introduced her in one of her live feeds, but Shay always suspected there was more to the young, unassuming assistant than that. No one stayed innocent for long, something Tam had proved in the last EpiGold. And now here she was, coming out of a cop shop, where she'd probably been interrogated for hours and hours, acting like she was a princess who was about to be crowned queen. As though Goldie dying gave Tam a reason to claim the spotlight.

She read the second text, which had shown up a minute after the first.

You or Tam. Chose.

Smiling, she locked her phone and placed it back in her pocket. As easy a choice as there could be. She didn't even need to feel guilty about it.

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Who is texting Shay? What is their endgame? What is Shay's endgame?

So. Many. Questions.

Thanks so much for reading the latest update!