Disturbance

TWENTY-TWO

The conference room was closer to the lobby than my office was, but it took a while for the Enwills to make the short trip. He was walking with a cane, making determined progress, his right side seeming to drag the left half of his body along with it. The counterpoint to this slouched figure was Andrea Enwill, a tall blonde who walked behind him carrying a canvas backpack, her chin up, spine straight. She silently willed him down the hall with a nearly tangible force.

Ethan and I shook hands with them, then Ethan pulled out a chair for Josh but didn’t offer other assistance. He looked at Ethan for a moment, then said, with painstaking care but only slightly slurring his words, “Are you the one who got hurt, up in the mountains?”

“No,” Ethan and Andrea said at the same time.

“I think you mean Ben Sheridan,” I said.

“Oh, yes, of course,” he said, ducking his head.

“We’ll go over there next,” Andrea assured him.

“As it happens,” I said, “he’s on his way here. He’s meeting us for lunch.”

Josh looked up at that. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“If you don’t mind,” Andrea said, “could we wait for him? If it won’t ruin your plans?”

“No problem,” I said.

Ethan offered beverages to each of us, then stepped out to fetch them. I could see the Enwills were ill-at-ease, so I asked them if it was their first visit to Las Piernas. Yes, their first time here. They had driven down from Bakersfield, where they had moved after Josh left the Department of Corrections. There was a world of hurt lurking behind those last few words, so I quickly mentioned that I used to live in Bakersfield and worked for the Californian, and that most of Frank’s family lived there. So we made Bakersfield small talk and they relaxed a bit. Ethan came back with the drinks-and Ben in tow.

After the next round of introductions, Andrea reached into the backpack and pulled out a notebook and a manila folder. She kept the folder, but she opened the notebook to a page with writing on it and handed it to Josh.

He positioned it with his right hand, and studied it for a moment. He looked up and said, “Excuse me. Since-since I was hurt, I have…”

He looked helplessly at Andrea.

“Short-term memory loss,” she said.

He stared at her for a moment, then laughed. “As demonstrated!”

She smiled at him. The tension in the room went down another few notches.

“Right.” He looked at the notebook again, then said, “I came to Las Piernas for three reasons. Andrea has a sister here who has been wanting us to visit. I wanted to talk to the police here. And I wanted to see Ms. Kelly and Dr. Sheridan.”

“Irene and Ben,” I said, and Ben nodded.

He wrote our names in the margins of the notebook, then said, “Okay. Irene and Ben, I want to apologize.”

“Apologize?” I said. “For what?”

“I let him get away.”

“No, you didn’t,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Irene is right,” Ben said, “neither of us blames you for his escape.”

“I should have known,” he said stubbornly. “Never should have turned my back on them.”

“Josh,” Ben said, “Irene and I were in the mountains with him when he was shackled and heavily guarded-more people guarding him than you had available. He escaped then, and he didn’t have a team to help him do it. We’re the last people who will ever believe you were responsible for his escape. We’re glad you survived.”

Enwill winced and lowered his gaze.

I felt a rush of a familiar, half-forgotten emotion-a feeling that once upon a time had nearly drowned me where I stood. I swallowed hard, failed to fight tears, and said, “It’s the hardest part, Josh. Forgiving yourself for surviving.”

He looked up at me.

“It took me a long time,” I said, “and it damned near drove me out of my head until I realized it was what I had to do. You get so busy healing-”

“At first just dealing with injuries-” Ben said and pulled up his pant leg to show his prosthesis. “Just getting through the next day. So you set aside everything else.”

“But the whole time,” I said, “it’s as if someone’s winding up this jack-in-the-box inside you. The tension mounts, and then from wherever inside you all this stuff is buried, that jack-inthe-box flies open, and brings out a memory.”

“Sometimes it plays a movie in your head,” Ben said. “The if-only-I-had movie.”

“Yeah,” Josh said. “I know that one.”

“Are you seeing a therapist?” I asked. “A good one can really help.”

“Not yet,” he said and glanced at Andrea.

“He did have a few visits from a social worker at the hospital, but most of that was about dealing with the consequences of a head injury. Can you recommend someone?”

“Yes,” Ben and I said in unison, and I wrote down the information.

“If you can’t stay long enough in Las Piernas to work with her, maybe she’ll recommend someone to you in your area.”

“Thanks. I think we could both use it,” Andrea said.

“In the meantime, Josh,” Ben said, “please understand this-we don’t hold you at all responsible for Parrish’s escape.”

“You hear that, Josh?” Andrea said. She moved nearer and took the notebook, wrote what Ben had said in it. “I’m going to put that on a dozen Post-it notes and plaster them all over the house.”

“Thanks,” Josh said to us, and for a moment seemed unable to speak.

Andrea studied him, then said, “We had a kind of rough morning with the police. Bunch of assholes-”

Ethan and Ben glanced at me but read my look. They kept their mouths shut about Frank.

“Nah,” Josh said, “most of them were okay. Just that last guy we met with, and who could blame him?”

“Who was he?” Ben asked.

Josh looked through his notes. “Detective Vincent Adams.” He looked up. “But don’t blame him or anyone else there. I wasn’t all that helpful.”

“Why did you visit the police?” I asked.

He leaned back and rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair. “I can’t really remember the escape at all. I remember them loading Parrish into the ambulance, and Stan…” His voice trailed off, then he took a deep breath and went on. “And Stan getting into the cab, and me sitting down in the back. But after that? It’s like a tape has been erased. The doctors tell me it’s not unusual with a head injury, but that doesn’t keep me from thinking that I should remember it.”

He fell silent.

Andrea said, “That’s been bothering Josh a lot, understandably. Some of the investigators thought if they could question him enough times, hint at things, it would come back to him. The doctors finally told them the memories probably never would return and to stop pestering Josh. A couple of the investigators thought Josh might be in on it, because he lived. So they pawed through his background-and mine-but that didn’t pan out, either.”

“If anything,” he said, “this has ruined us.”

“No,” she said. “We’ll be fine. It was hard at first, because they were holding off on paying his bills, and he couldn’t work, and I had to quit my job to take care of him. But we got a good lawyer, an amazing guy who has helped us out, so we sued. We had to sell our house in the meantime, but now that they’ve settled, we’ll be fine. Moving, and the changes and the stress-it’s all been hard on us, especially Josh. But as you can probably tell, my husband isn’t the kind who gives up.”

“And neither are you,” I said.

“I’ve had the easy part,” she said, a statement I didn’t wholly believe, “but no, I don’t give up, either. Which is part of why we have another reason to talk to you today. You’re a reporter, so maybe you can help us with the problem with the police.”

“I should mention to you that I’m married to a homicide detective in Vince’s department.”

She shrugged. “I married someone in law enforcement, too. No problem.” She turned to her husband. “You okay with me going ahead with my plan to tell her about the photo you saw?”

“Yes,” Josh said.

“Like he said, Josh couldn’t remember the journey from the prison, but he did remember loading Parrish in the ambulance. He vaguely remembered the guy who was there in the back of the ambulance with him, the one who probably attacked him while the other one attacked Stan.”

“A nerd,” Josh said. “Red hair, big glasses.”

“They checked, but the ambulance company had never hired anyone who looked like that. So Josh and I have been trying to think of other ways to find him. I know a bit about computers-”

“She’s a nerd, too,” Josh said with a lopsided smile.

“Yes,” she agreed, smiling back at him. “Lucky thing, huh?”

“Yes.”

“So, I’ve been keeping track of the stories about Parrish, listening to your station, and reading the stories about the Moths. You know the stories you had online when you were trying to find people who had known Lisa King?”

“Yes.”

“There was one taken at a park, a concert.” She opened the folder and pulled out a print made from one of the photos one of our listeners had posted when we asked them to send in any pictures they had of Lisa King. When those went up, the Las Piernas Police Department had been visiting our site more than usual.

Andrea passed the photo to me, and Ethan and Ben peered at it over my shoulders. One of the faces in the photo had been circled. It was not that of Lisa or any of the people close to her, whose faces were turned with rapt attention on the performers, a band not seen in the photo. The face circled was that of a young man in the background, who at the moment the photo was taken was watching not the band but Lisa and the people around her.

He did not have red hair. He was not wearing glasses. He didn’t look especially nerdy, whatever that actually is.

“That’s him,” Josh said, and as if he had read my thoughts, added, “I realized that the thing that made me say he was nerdy was how he acted, not really what he looked like.”

All three of us looked up at him, the same question on our faces.

“I’m certain,” he said.

“Josh-” Ben began but was interrupted.

“Show him the other one, Andrea.”

She pulled a second print from the folder. She had used software to alter the image, so that the person in the photo now resembled the description Josh had given earlier-red hair, glasses.

“You could do that to a photo of anyone,” Ben countered.

“She didn’t mess with the structure of his face. She only added the glasses and hair color.”

“Well,” I said, “since we posted that photo on the Web site, we’ve learned more about it. The concert took place around the date Lisa King’s family last heard from her. It was at Weissman Park, and the band was Needlesmith. The band contacted us when one of their members saw the photo, and they’ve offered to help in any way they can. They have a fan mailing list. Maybe they can put the word out for other photos from the day.”

Ben frowned and said, “Irene-be reasonable. Surely you can understand why Vince was skeptical.”

“Yes, but I don’t have the limitations set on me that Vince does.”

“What do you mean?” Andrea asked.

“The police have to be concerned with convincing judges who sign warrants, district attorneys who worry about conviction rates, and ultimately, juries who will question the way they obtained evidence. That said, Vince might have tried to get you to lower your expectations, but don’t assume he’s refusing to think about what you told him-did he keep copies of your printouts?”

“Yes.”

“Which means you should keep your nose out of it,” Ben said to me, “and not interfere with his work.”

I ignored that. “Josh, you’re hoping we can find out who he is, right? You’re not looking for vigilante justice?”

“No, and even if I was, I’m in no shape to deliver it. We just want to keep him from ruining anybody else’s life. And besides, I think he killed that girl.” He consulted his notes. “Lisa King.”

“Andrea, do you have spare copies of these printouts? May we keep a set here?”

“Sure,” she said, “keep those.”

“Would you mind e-mailing the JPGs to me?” Ethan asked, handing over his business card.

“I’ll give you a copy right now,” she said. She said she had hoped he would ask for them and had prepared a CD. She handed it to Ethan. We asked for phone contact information, and she gave us her cell phone number and her sister’s number.

Ben wrote their numbers down, too, and put a lid on his protests-two facts that told me he was seeing possibilities. Good.

“One other thing,” Ethan said. “Josh and Andrea, you’ve already had a long day, but if you don’t mind, I’d like you to let Irene record an interview with you. I think it will help us.”

We made it a two-part story. In the first segment, our listeners heard what had happened to the surviving guard. It upped our traffic enough so that the second segment-carefully vetted by our legal team-had a wide audience. We talked about elusive and sometimes unreliable memories, gave the unaltered concert photo a prominent place on our Web site, and asked our audience-especially those who might have been at the Needle-smith concert in Weissman Park four years ago-to help us find information that might lead nowhere or might be vital to a murder investigation: could they identify any of the people who were pictured with Lisa King?

I wasn’t too surprised that one of the first of the many calls we received was from Vince Adams, who tried to give me grief. I held the phone away from my ear so that Ethan could hear him yelling. Ethan’s grin reflected my own. As soon as Vince took a breath, I told him get the knot out of his tighty whities and call me back when he could be polite. I then hung up on him-which wasn’t polite on my part, and, in truth, it was unfair to Vince. But damn it felt good.