The Double Bind

CHAPTER TWENTY -SEVEN

LAUREL KNEW they were looking for her. She knew they were all looking for her. She finally had to shut off her cell phone when she wasn’t calling the prison or the Department of Crime Victim Services, because it never ceased ringing. Eventually, they would stop trying her and they would phone her mother. That was clear. And that would be fine, because her mother was in Italy. But would they finally try to reach her sister? Talia certainly might. And if her roommate reached Carol, they would all realize that she had lied to them, and they would grow convinced beyond doubt-her family, too-that she was losing her grip. Without even meaning to assist Pamela Marshfield, they would help the old crone. They would find her and they would confiscate the photographs. Bobbie’s photographs. Her photographs. They would give them to the woman.

And so she understood how little time she had. Consequently, she checked into a motel outside of Burlington, where she showered and washed her hair for the first time in days. She bought a new blouse and new slacks. She wore perfume. She donned sunglasses so no one could see she’d been crying. Again.

Then she was back in her car, shuttling between the different bureaucracies in Burlington and Waterbury to expedite her hearing with Dan Corbett. She had been told at first that it would take days to set it up-perhaps even weeks-but she was persistent, and then she got lucky. She got a surprise. It seemed that Corbett had written her a letter of apology. He had begun the mandatory sex offender counseling program the year before, and as a part of his victim empathy group he was required to pen a note to the person he had injured that expressed his remorse. Usually, the victims never saw these letters, because they wanted nothing to do with their assailants. But here was Laurel, so desperate to see him that she wanted to come to the prison in person. And she would read whatever it was he had written.

Why not? she thought. She already knew better than anyone what had occurred up in Underhill. Perhaps his note would reveal something about his childhood. Whether he had ever had a father in his life. How he had wound up on that dirt road seven years ago. How Bobbie Crocker had.

Perhaps, she told Dan Corbett’s prison therapist on the phone, her willingness to receive this letter would help the man with his own healing. His own recovery. His own eventual return to the world.

She didn’t quite believe that, of course.

Moreover, she never wanted Dan Corbett returned to the world: She wanted him kept right where he was.

But she was going to say what she needed to expedite that hearing. Nothing else mattered with the clock ticking ever more quickly, and ever more people behind her.

MONDAY AFTERNOON, Whit heard the sounds of a small crowd gathering in the apartment across the hall. It was a little before three. He opened the door, and there was Talia talking to a pair of women older than either of them in the hallway.

“Hello, Whit,” Talia said sarcastically. “Care to help me dissuade these two lovely ladies from ransacking my apartment?”

One of the women shot Whit a dart with her eyes, and quickly he extended his hand to her. Talia introduced her as a city attorney named Chris. The second woman, Katherine, was Laurel ’s boss at the shelter. Talia said the two of them were hoping that Laurel had left the prints she had made from Bobbie Crocker’s negatives behind in the apartment.

“I told them,” Talia was saying, “there’s no way they’re here. We went through this place just a few hours ago. And after Laurel ’s little episode on Saturday, I’m quite sure she’s hidden them somewhere. I said we might find some lingerie that will leave us all a little embarrassed. But we won’t find the photos.”

“Talia, we don’t want to ransack your apartment,” said Katherine. “You know that. But how do you know for sure the photos aren’t here? I’ve seen them, I know what we’re looking for.”

“So do I. And it seems to me you’re more worried about those photos than you are about Laurel.”

“You know that’s not true. Of course I’m worried about Laurel. We all are.”

The attorney nodded earnestly and then said, “But those photos are worth an enormous sum of money to BEDS right now. We can’t let anything happen to them. That’s the reason we’re here. What if Laurel…”

This was too much for Whit: “What if Laurel what?”

The woman rolled her head on her shoulders and made a wide-eyed, eyebrows arched, you-never-know sort of face.

“You really don’t get it,” he said. “ Laurel would never do anything to those photos. They’re her life right now.”

Katherine placed her fingers gently on his elbow to pacify him. He restrained himself from shaking them off. “I love Laurel. She’s like a daughter to me. Someday I hope she’s running the shelter. That’s how much I care for her and respect her and trust her. But she’s in trouble right now. Something about this mad dash home doesn’t quite ring true. At the same time, I have a woman willing to make a humongous donation to the shelter if we give her the photos-almost enough to cover what we’re going to lose in government support this year. That is one hell of a nice Band-Aid.”

“You mean all you have to do is turn over a person’s life’s work,” Talia said mordantly.

“First of all, it isn’t his life’s work. It’s a few hundred images, tops. Bobbie would probably want us to hand it over given the money we’ve been offered. Bobbie loved what the shelter stood for and what we did. He would want to make sure it remained solvent.”

“And what of Laurel?” asked Whit. “What of the work she’s put in?”

“They’re not her photographs. She has no right to them. Besides,” she said, and here she paused for a moment, as if trying to find the correct words. Finally: “Besides, if I’d known she would take this all so…so seriously, I would never have let her near them.”

“Still, don’t you think this is an awfully scary quid pro quo? A very bad precedent?” he continued.

“Here’s what I see. I have a friend who is losing her grip over some photos she probably shouldn’t have, and I have a benefactor who wants them badly. A hundred thousand dollars badly. I’m sorry, Whit. I’m sorry, Talia. But this is a no-brainer.”

Talia shrugged and motioned the two women inside the apartment. “Go ahead,” she said. “But you won’t find them.”

And she was right.