Harm's Reach

64

Janine and Ren walked into the interview room. Ingrid Prince sat at the table, washed-out, beautiful, erect, even after waiting for three hours. Her hands, chained and cuffed, were on the table in front of her. Ren blinked and got a flash of the sunny Hamptons beach, the casual beauty of the expectant mother. She refocused. Ingrid was staring at her. Ren could feel herself go cold.

How did I not see this before?

Was I blinded by beauty... maternity... wealth?

I have never been blinded by beauty or maternity or wealth; we are all equal.

Ren blinked. Ingrid did not.

But I was blinded.

Ren thought of the orange bottle of mood stabilizers in her bathroom cabinet.

Not blinded... numbed.

Ren was suddenly acutely aware of Janine beside her. They turned to each other. A slight frown came and went on Janine’s face, as if she had been reading Ren’s mind.

Unlike the previous interview with Ingrid Prince, there was a lawyer seated beside Ingrid; she no longer needed to pretend that she had nothing to hide. The veneer had cracked.

The lawyer looked to be in her late fifties, a plain, heavy, jowly woman, no doubt as groomed as she could be without caving in to society’s expectations of how a woman should present herself: neat bun, tidy but thick eyebrows, smooth skin, no facial hair, but no makeup, no adornments, nothing to draw the attention away from the fierce set of her face, the just-try-me eyes. Ingrid Prince’s message was clear: there is no beauty in this, this is serious. My serious, non-frivolous, law-loving lawyer believes in me — shouldn’t you?

Ingrid Prince, your downfall will be your belief that the surface can make things right.

Janine talked everyone through the formalities. Ingrid refused to answer every question put to her. Her lawyer was dazzling.

As if we expected anything less.

Ren and Janine stood up. ‘We’re going to take a short break.’

Ren and Janine returned to the interview room fifteen minutes later. Ren set down the records to Jesse Coombes’ cell phone. The phone number of the rental in Golden was highlighted.

Janine began. ‘We have confirmed that Conor Gorman made calls from Jesse Coombes’ cell phone to you at the following times: Saturday, May 12th, nine p.m.... after Laura Flynn called Conor Gorman to arrange to meet him; Monday, May 14th, one p.m.... after Conor Gorman shot the only person who ever truly loved him, your “dear friend”, Laura Flynn.’

‘Here, also,’ said Ren, ‘are the admission records for The Darned Heart Ranch: Conor Gorman ran away on January 8th — the night he was picked up for fighting at the Ace-Hi Tavern in Golden. It appears from these records that he didn’t show up at the ranch until the following morning. Romantic night?’

Baby-making night?

Not a flicker.

‘And here,’ said Janine, ‘is the sworn testimony of a man called Nicky McMullen, aka Janey Mac. We discovered that Laura Flynn reached out to Frankie Gorman in Stateville, sent him a letter we now realize was a coded way of getting Frankie to send Janey Mac to meet her at her hotel. You found this out too. And Janey Mac says you paid him twenty-five thousand dollars to kill Laura Flynn before she got back to Colorado. But when he met poor Laura, who looked so like her sister, Saoirse, who Janey Mac once loved so dearly, he was a little spooked. He didn’t do it. But he followed her. And he couldn’t stop thinking that she was pregnant and that he shouldn’t be doing this. But he kept going. And... well, when it came to the crunch, he just didn’t have the heart. He fired a few shots, pretended to you that she sped away before he had a chance to fire again. Detective Hooks here works with a marvelous lab in the UK that got his print from the shell casing that flew into Laura’s car.’

Ingrid almost smirked.

Goosebumps.

Ren could sense Janine stiffen.

‘This just in,’ said Ren, ‘an account from one of your neighbors of an altercation outside your apartment in SoHo between you and a former model by the name of Sunny Soto. We spoke with Sunny Soto. You were weeks away from signing a joint cosmetics campaign back in the Nineties. It was the first time a company had chosen two models to feature in each shot. That contract was worth many, many millions. But, Sunny Soto got pregnant. Yes, she was only nineteen, but she was very happy about the pregnancy, the father was her high-school boyfriend, she loved him, he’s now her husband. But you, apparently, were not happy. You wouldn’t have been hired...’

Nothing.

‘You spiked her food with an abortion drug,’ said Ren. ‘She lost her baby. She found out years later when Sandro Cera, the photographer — in a drugged-up stupor — told her. And you retaliated, selling stories about him and his drug use to destroy him. You promised you’d do the same to her, so she kept quiet. I was wondering why Laura Flynn was so desperate to run when she did. Sunny Soto showed up on your doorstep that week. She had read the gossip piece that you were pregnant and it pushed her over the edge; you who hated children, thought she was pathetic for ever wanting a child, that she was ruining her life, but when it suited you with your multi-millionaire husband, you want one. She showed up roaring and screaming and you fought. What you didn’t know was that Laura Flynn ran down the steps after Sunny Soto when you went back inside. She heard the story. She told Sunny Soto to find the courage to report it, but she didn’t... until now. Laura Flynn knew what you were capable of, didn’t she? She knew you would stop at nothing. Laura had said no to the abortion already, but she realized you would never give up until you got your own way.’

‘What do you think of Robert Prince?’ said Ingrid.

What the fuck?

‘My husband,’ said Ingrid, drawing the word out long enough to turn it into something grotesque. Her lawyer laid her hand on Ingrid’s forearm. Ingrid brushed her away.

‘Do you think he’s a catch?’ said Ingrid. ‘Do you?’

Ren and Janine stayed silent.

‘I bet you do!’ said Ingrid. ‘I bet you do!’

Still, Ren and Janine remained silent.

‘Robert Prince, handsome millionaire, great catch, lucky me, lucky all the beautiful women,’ said Ingrid. She leaned forward in her seat. ‘He’s a monster!’

‘You tried to convince us of that before,’ said Ren. ‘We know that your husband is not a monster. He is a kind and a charitable man.’ I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

‘He’s a monster!’ said Ingrid, her voice rising into a shriek. ‘He is! Do you want to know who his father is? A horrible man, a creep, a liar, a coward, a—’

‘Desmond Lamb was a war hero,’ said Ren.

Ingrid laughed, mocking and cruel. ‘I got the badge, you idiots! I got the army badge. Don’t you get it? Desmond Lamb was gone in 1957, the entire year Robert was conceived. It’s impossible Desmond Lamb was his father.’

Ren’s stomach tightened.

‘You get it now!’ said Ingrid. ‘You get it now.’ Her face was contorted, making her more ugly than anyone would ever have believed possible. ‘Walter Prince is his father! I got a DNA test, plucked a hair from Robert’s head in the throes of passion! Know what I heard from the lab? “Evidence of consanguinity.”’ She leaned in again, her eyes wild. ‘His grandfather fucked his own daughter and out came Robert Prince! What kind of catch is he? The kind you throw back in the ocean. The kind that is weak and damaged and obscene. Why else would I want the baby dead? I was expecting genetic gold.’

Ingrid Prince closed her eyes.

Click flash click flash click flash.

I am a victim. I am a victim. I am a victim.