Lie Still

29

Letty had delivered the rape report to my doorstep. Letty. The revelation opened a yawning space in my brain. My ears hummed and the baby somersaulted while Letty’s mouth moved and her blue face cracked in front of me like dry land in a drought. I wondered if it was going to explode and send bits of plaster into my eyes.

Letty delivered the package, just that one, at least that’s what she said when I asked her, in a very faraway voice, about cigars and phone hang-ups. And what kind of person would voluntarily admit the one crazy thing and not the others?

She shrugged it off in the way only Letty could.

“I don’t know what phone hang-ups you’re talking about,” she said. “It’s rude to suggest it. And I don’t smoke. Pageant girls don’t. It makes your lips look like a horse’s butt-hole. I was just doing my job for Harry as head of the background search committee for the new chief of police. It was a lot of work. Ten applicants.

Harry asked me to check out wives, kids, relatives, friends. Turns out, I had a real knack for it.”

Gretchen and I watched, speechless, as Letty blathered on, oblivious to the effect on her audience. I wondered if she’d been born with a slice of her soul missing and if she stored bloody knives with her Little Debbie cakes.

“I checked out all your college records.” She studiously examined a chipped hot-pink nail. “You went to a bunch. I figured you for some kind of a cheater who had to move around. But your transcripts didn’t bear that out. Sweetie, you don’t need to look so shocked about all this. A little money opens lots of doors, always has, always will, even at those Ivy League, stick-up-their-butt schools. I lucked into some student temp at Windsor University’s police department, who was more than happy to help me. Called me back three days later. I guess it took some digging in the basement files to find your name. We agreed that I’d send her a hundred-dollar Urban Outfitters gift card and she’d mail me a copy.”

My secrets in exchange for a pair of skinny jeans.

Dry crumbs from Letty’s face fell like blue dust onto the couch. “Those scholarship kids are always quick to take a dime. Did you just make up the rape? That’s sure what it sounded like.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Why would you do this, Letty?” Gretchen asked in a strained voice.

“Why the hell do you think? So Harry would have leverage with the new chief if he ever needed it. I was going to hold on to it in case it was ever useful. Small-town politics is a bitch. But then I got pissed when Emily arrived, all snotty and New Yorky, strutting around like a pregnant Demi, at least from the waist down. Not to be downright mean or anything, Emily, but your boobs wouldn’t pass pageant muster. Anyway, it was like we weren’t good enough for you. I thought it would be worth it to take you down a peg. She said I shouldn’t do it, but Caroline wasn’t always right about everything. Look what happened to her. Planted like a crocus bulb in her own backyard.”

“Caroline knew about the report?” I stammered.

“Yep. I showed her the day it arrived because she liked to keep track of things herself. She said it wasn’t important. That we should feel sorry for you. I believe her exact words were, Men are filthy pigs.” Letty sat back on her own little haunches.

“I have to go,” I said.

Juanita appeared with a plastic garbage bag stuffed with my wet clothes. She held out my Manolo Blahniks, which didn’t appear all that worse for taking a dip in Letty’s saltwater pool.

“Keep them,” I said.

“Are you OK?” Gretchen walked beside me to the door, any tension between us erased by Letty’s bizarre confession. She draped her arm around my shoulders, but I could barely feel it.

“I have to go,” I repeated.

Jesse’s headlights chased me all the way home.

When I arrived at the house, Mike was preoccupied in a way I was all too familiar with when it came to his big, ugly cases. Distracted, when I told him that Letty admitted delivering the rape report to our door.

“That’s good,” he said absently, as if it was something to be crossed off a list. He barely glanced up at my disheveled appearance.

A copy of Caroline’s autopsy report was spread out to all four corners of the kitchen table. I had to turn away from the pictures. Gray, red, surreal. Mike made no effort to hide them. He pressed his palms on either side of his head like a vise. “No forensic evidence. No hairs. No blood. No semen. She was drugged with Vicodin, half a bottle of Tylenol PM, and high-proof whiskey. Then he cut her. For four to five days, he toyed with her. There were plenty of wounds before he struck her heart. He stripped her naked and washed her in something that left traces of citric acid and non-fat dry milk. Then he stored her somewhere for a week.”

He was talking more to himself than to me, so I just walked away. He was still at it, making another batch of coffee, when my head hit the pillow. I wondered whether we were finally falling apart. Intellectually, I knew that solving this case was the best way he could love me. But right now, all I wanted were his arms around my baby.

I slept hard and woke up about seven the next morning to an unexpectedly cool, lazy breeze drifting through the screen. The wind rustled the leaves of the forty-year-old live oak outside the window, encouraging me to sink deeper under the birds. I knew that Jesse was on the job out front, so I let nature lull me in and out of a fitful consciousness until mid-morning.

I restlessly piddled around after that. People wonder why women stalked by boyfriends or husbands or strange creeps don’t run. It’s because there is nowhere to run. There’s not enough money to run. Electronic trails everywhere. The only escape is death. His or yours.

Come and get us, jerk, said the little voice in my head, bravely. We’re ready.

This time, I listened.

I slipped my gun out from under a pile of silk panties in my underwear drawer, where I had carelessly hidden it from Mike. I set it on the dresser while I unpacked a small box of jewelry and hooked earrings into place on a little plastic tree. I placed it on the kitchen counter while I washed Mike’s cereal bowl and juice glass. I rested it on top of the dryer while I threw Letty’s tracksuit into the washer. I eventually landed on the stool in front of the computer. I stuck the gun into one of the cubbyholes of Mrs. Drury’s desk and called up my email.

Brook Everheart Marcum added you as a friend on Facebook…

Did it matter anymore? Mike would say no, that I should just leave it alone.

I clicked the link. Brook had 796 friends. Brook Everheart Marcum, bless her heart, was a friend to all.

Brook networked in Miami and Chicago. She was a stay-at-home mom, married, with two children. Her profile picture displayed her on a yacht with a broad grin and healthy cleavage. Arms outstretched, Titanic-style.

I scrolled down her wall.

Brook last recorded her status four hours and twenty minutes ago.

I just used a neti pot for the first time and it’s totally gross but I HIGHLY recommend it.

Three hours later, one of her friends had replied with a link to a story about brain-killing amoebas lurking in neti pots-53 likes.

Brook updated her status an average of three times a day. Yesterday, Brook made the best macaroni and cheese EVER. She provided a recipe link to Pinterest and a picture that looked like a plate of yellow crawling worms. In response, a friend posted a Pinterest link to a dog bed made out of her grandmother’s old suitcase and a pillow. I moved on down.

In the space of twenty-four hours, Brook threw her iPhone out the car window, joined the group Chi-O-My alums, complained that half the PTA’s Silent Auction committee made “crap jam baskets” to sell, and was highly disturbed because she had finally gotten around to watching the DVD of Slumdog Millionaire and not one of her 796 friends had warned her that a kid got blinded by acid.

Ambient awareness. That’s what social scientists say we create when we relate the most insignificant details of our lives to 796 people. I sat in a room for ten minutes with Brook Everheart thirteen years ago because we were raped by the same man and now I was suddenly aware of the current activity inside her mucus membranes.

Used to be, only mothers cared for this kind of detail, probably because they microscopically examined the texture and color of our baby poop for signs of crisis. But while one detail on its own is meaningless, all those details together builds an interesting picture. I knew this because of Mike, the master profiler. And, as a whole, six screens of Brook’s wall, a mundane peek into the last ten days of her life, was revealing enough for my purposes.

If she was testing out neti pots and operating on her mucus only a few hours ago, then making it public, it was a pretty good guess she wasn’t worried about a stalker.

I returned to my inbox.

An email from Brad.

Subject line: Keebler Elf.

One terse sentence: Does the name Avery Crane mean anything to you?

I typed a terse No, and sent it away just as the doorbell rang.

I glanced out the kitchen window. A FedEx van parked across the street. I wasn’t expecting anything. Maybe a baby gift? How many more $60 infant pajamas could I fit in the drawers if I ever bothered to put anything in drawers?

When I cracked open the door, Jesse stood on the stoop with the delivery guy, flashing a badge, asking him to slowly lower a large envelope to the stoop.

“What do you think, that it’s going to explode?” It was pretty heavy-duty sarcasm from a glorified mailman in Dockers shorts. “That terrorists are striking Clairmont? You cops need to get your ass over to Iraq and see some real action.” He pronounced it I-rack.

Jesse didn’t take the bait. He wore the same pleasant expression he always did. “Don’t drop it. Slow. That’s it. Just set it right there. Ms. Page, please step outside and walk to the cruiser. Parker is going to sniff this one out.”

He nodded toward the car. Parker’s head was poking out the back window, black ears standing up like pert triangles.

“Whoa, I am frickin’ outta here. I don’t do cops. And I don’t do dogs.” The FedEx man lit off across the lawn, his Dockers sliding down a few obscene inches.

“Come on out, ma’am.” Jesse reached out a hand. “Please.”

I hesitated, thinking that my wardrobe wasn’t really appropriate for a public walk across the lawn. Mike’s old gray pajama pants and a too tight navy sports bra from the B cup era. Bare feet. Bare stomach area. A silver peace-sign toe ring, a going-away gift from Lucy, that I’d just found on the bedroom floor. “I’m not really dressed…”

“It’s all right, ma’am. I got sisters. Just head on down the walk with me and get in the passenger side of the car.”

“OK. Do you really think there’s a bomb in there?” Pebbles bit into my heels on the stone walk as he urged me forward.

“Your husband’s orders, ma’am. Examine all packages that arrive, human or otherwise. Parker here is a sniffer who worked in Iraq with a soldier friend of mine.”

“He seems like… a great dog.”

“They don’t get better. Parker got a little screwed up after his master died in sniper fire. Survivor’s guilt. He couldn’t have prevented the shot that took Leonard. They say I couldn’t have, either. But neither of us really believe that, so that’s our bond. Parker was glued to Leonard’s body until the medics dragged him off.”

“Mike told me about your leg. Is that when… it happened?”

“Yep, same damn sniper. They let me bring Parker home, and he’s worth a lot more than my foot.” He grinned and lifted up the shoe that housed his prosthetic. “Just can’t run the mile in 6:52 anymore.”

I wasn’t fooled. Keeping up the patter to distract me. Good guy. Smart guy.

“Parker’s not official these days because of his breakdown, but I’d count on him more than a posse of ten Clairmont cops.” His face reddened. “No offense to your husband, ma’am. He wouldn’t be one of the ten I’m referring to.”

“No offense taken.”

I moved around to the passenger side while Jesse opened Parker’s door. The dog bounded out, straight for the porch. I slid onto the seat, immediately aware that the interior of Jesse’s 1992 Hyundai was military pristine. Not a speck of dust on the dashboard. No fast-food wrappers or newspapers or books to entertain him. Jesse’s focus was one hundred percent me.

At the door of the house, Parker was sniffing the package. As if it could protect me, I closed my eyes tight, and when I opened them, Parker had already run back to Jesse, who was feeding him a treat.

“Is that good or bad?” I yelled it out, leaning over to the driver’s window.

“Good. You can get out. Parker won’t move from the package if there’s a problem. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to open it.”

I had no problem with that. My knees wobbled. I ventured back up the walk, sitting awkwardly on the bottom porch step while Jesse stood about fifty feet away in the side yard turning over the package in his hands.

“It’s got a little rattle,” he said. “The return address is a church.” He slit open the envelope with a pocketknife and pulled out a wad of white tissue paper with the end of a chain dangling from it. I noticed that Jesse was wearing latex gloves.

“Sorry, ma’am, for the interference. This appears to be personal.” He walked closer, handed me the tissue and a small piece of white stationery, and whistled for Parker, who was now doing his business on my crepe myrtle. The two moved together in perfect rhythm toward the car, like the last scene of an old movie right before the credits roll.

I read the note first. Three scribbled names, because I already knew hers, and I knew mine.

Margaret Smith.

Brook Everheart.

Lisa Connors.

Add the two of us and you got Pierce’s damaged little sorority of five.

At the bottom Renata had scribbled a short note.

I think you need this more than I do. God bless, R.

It fell into my palm like a trickle of cool water.

I knew without counting that there were exactly fifty-nine amethyst beads.

Renata had sent me her grandmother’s rosary.