Truth Be Told

15

“Game freakin’ over,” DeLuca whispered.

Jake nodded. DeLuca was right. They were both watching Elliot Sandoval confer with the man who’d just arrived.

Rumpled hair, rumpled jacket, briefcase, and big-shot attitude. Smart of the Sandovals to get a lawyer.

Still at the doorway they whispered, heads almost touching, Sandoval pointing to him and D. The lawyer shook his head, slowly, clearly unhappy. The wife sat on the couch, chewing gum, watching.

The new arrival was the same man who’d shown up at the cop shop to see Gordon Thorley. Dispatch had sent Jake and D to Waverly Road, and when they got back to HQ, a snarling Bing Sherrey told them of Thorley’s release. By then, Jake was focusing on their current murder, not the twenty-year-old one. But this guy had been in the interrogation room, no question.

Lawyer. Not the best news. But not necessarily game over.

“I’m Peter Hardesty, gentlemen.” The man turned to them. “Detectives, I should say. Which makes it all the more essential for you to understand that Mr. Sandoval here is my client. Correct, Elliot?”

Sandoval nodded, ruining Jake’s day. Even more.

“Fancy meeting you here.” DeLuca rolled his eyes, not even attempting to disguise it.

“Fancy?” Hardesty seemed confused. “Here?”

“Nothing,” Jake said. He gave D a “shut up” look. Hardesty had no idea they’d been watching and listening, through the one-way glass, during the Thorley interrogation. No need to let this guy in on that bit of intel right now. If they were destined to meet on the Confessor case as well, they could all cross that legal bridge when they came to it.

“However,” Jake continued, by-the-book, “your client is not under arrest in the forty-two Waverly Road homicide. Mr. Sandoval, is there a reason you need a lawyer?”

“If you got nothing to hide,” DeLuca added, “no reason to shell out big bucks for a high-priced-”

“If I’m not a suspect?” Elliot Sandoval took a step forward, a bluster of red starting at his thick neck, the color creeping up his jaw and blotching his cheeks. Even the scalp under his close-cut hair was turning red. “Why are you here?”

The AC kicked on, a dim mechanical roar. From down the hallway, a voice called out. “Who’s here?”

“Nobody, Sis,” Sandoval called back. He opened the front door, and the air conditioner rattled again. “You hear me? Because-”

“Mr. Sandoval?” Hardesty was shaking his head in earnest now. “I must advise you not to say anything.”

“Honey?” MaryLou Sandoval reached out a hand as if her additional protest could stop her husband’s voice. It couldn’t.

“I wanna know,” her husband persisted. “Why are you here?”

“Good question, sir,” Jake said. If they could get this guy talking, maybe they could elicit some information before this interloper lawyer killed the deal. “Let me ask you-”

“We’re done here, Detectives,” Hardesty said. “You know your way to the door.”

“It’s so dark inside. Are you sure we should go in?” Lizzie peered through the open front door into the gloom, seeing an entryway, a breakfront maybe, and a kitchen in the distance.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Aaron closed the door behind her, nudging her out of the way. He touched her, so carefully, so tenderly, it seemed she could feel the outline of his hand on her back, escorting her inside.

Oh-kay. She could handle herself perfectly fine, thank you very much, even after two glasses of rosé. Or was it three? She was overthinking again, making too much of it. She turned to him, trying out a brave and adventurous smile.

He was tucking a ring of keys into his pocket, its jangling the only sound in the stillness of the empty house on Hardamore Road. She’d never heard of this address, but she only handled the pending foreclosures, not the past ones. It was still furnished, in a haphazardly random way, like someone had to leave in a hurry. Which, she suspected, they did. A shame she couldn’t have given the owners another way out. The Liz treatment.

“I’m working late, right? That shows how diligent I am, right?” Aaron was saying. “This is my REO, the bank owns it, and I’m only checking whether it’s ready for the next step.”

“Next step?” It felt like trespassing. But if Aaron had the keys, she supposed he was correct, it was okay. She shook off her dumb unease. Funny kind of date. But this was their profession. Something in common. Something they already shared.

“Property removal,” Aaron said. “Maybe a call to the deputies to get rid of this abandoned stuff. Maybe a lock change. But someone’s gotta look at it firsthand, right? Take responsibility? Can’t let these things just sit here. Ever since that girl got killed, trying to get inside a foreclosed house last week. You hear about that? The press went crazy.”

Lizzie remembered that, for sure. She’d crossed her fingers it wasn’t an A &A foreclosure. The bank grapevine soon reported some lawyer was already suing the bank, calling the empty house an “attractive nuisance,” charging it hadn’t been properly secured and had led to that poor girl’s death. It was a mess, a potentially expensive mess. But, at least, not A &A’s mess.

“Sure, of course I heard.” Lizzie stood in the sweltering entryway as Aaron paced off the living room, opening drawers and the glass doors of the breakfront. She realized she’d crossed her bare arms, as if she had a chill. Silly. No air conditioning, and the thick air weighed heavy in the half-light. It was after nine, she knew, and even though the electricity was on-Aaron had flipped the lights, and a few fixtures still had bulbs-it was still disturbing. Haunting. The vacant living room, abandoned, half-empty, with only the things people had left behind. Tweed couch, cushions sprung and askew, a scatter of pillows, mismatched armchairs. A discolored rectangle on the hardwood floor-someone had taken the television.

“Kitchen,” Aaron said. “Back in one minute.”

The place reeked of sadness. And loss, and defeat. She tried to reassure herself, get tough, thinking about what was on her computer. This is why she did what she did. This shouldn’t be happening. She would do her best, her little part, to stop it. Not enough to change the whole world, that was impossible, but enough to change some people’s worlds. She couldn’t do too much, she couldn’t help everyone; at some point the numbers would not support her. But she could do something.

“Wanna wait for me in the living room?” Aaron said, reappearing. “I have to go upstairs and check the windows, then look in the basement, make sure no assho-sorry, I mean, jerks-have ripped out the copper pipes.” He waved toward the couch. “Have a seat.”

“Oh, no thanks, I’m fine standing here,” Lizzie said. She was part of this, in a way. Her bank now owned this house. Her bank had taken money every month from whoever once lived here, until the money ran out and they realized that for some reason-a disaster, or a firing, a calamitous health issue, or some horrible miscalculation-they couldn’t pay anymore. They’d signed a contract, a legal document. To the bank, it was a binary issue. You could pay, or you couldn’t. If not, thank you so much and good-bye.

Too late for her to help whoever had lived here, whatever struggling family had lost at life roulette.

Real estate, Aaron called it. This was the real part she didn’t like.

“Suit yourself,” Aaron said. “Two seconds.”

He grabbed the banisters, one hand on each side, and took the stairs two at a time. Upstairs? She imagined two bedrooms, maybe three, and a bath or two. All the ghosts of whoever lived here seemed to taunt her. All the memories, wisps lurking around every corner. Kids taking first steps, and bringing finger paintings home from school, and birthday parties, and prom snapshots in front of that fireplace.

Family. That was why she’d gone into banking. To please the father who’d never read her homework, never put her drawings on the fridge, never seemed to care if she was happy. She’d inhabited an emotional black hole after her mother died. And now she-well, she’d grown up, despite it all. Future so bright-

“Hey, Lizzie!” Aaron’s voice from upstairs. “Come up here!”

Aaron. Two glasses of wine, the heat, the empty house. This afternoon in her office at the bank, the real life of the regular Lizzie, seemed far away.

Aaron appeared at the top of the stairs, trotted halfway down, held out a hand.

“Lizzie?”

He wasn’t wearing his jacket anymore. He’d loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves.

It was hot in here. And, she had to admit, there was no one handsomer than Aaron Gianelli.

“Lizzie,” he was saying. He took another stair step down, closer to her. “Come on. Come up here. With me.”