by Allen Eskens
When Sylvie confronted Lila in the hallway, her eyes were red from crying but alive with rage. She walked up to Lila, spat in her face, and said, “When they called you Nasty Nash, I stood up for you.” Then Sylvie walked away and never spoke another word to Lila.
A great many bad things had happened to Lila in her lifetime, but what she did to Sylvie—she had been the one to commit that sin.
As Lila lay beside Joe, remembering what she had done to Sylvie, tears began to etch their way down her face. She eased out of bed and went to the living room to sit on the couch, wiping her tears and her nose on the sleeve of her T-shirt, the words of Niki Vang echoing in her ears. We need to talk to someone who knew John back then. If anybody would know about John’s friends—one with a lisp—it would be Sylvie.
But to ask her those questions, Lila may as well just come out and accuse John of rape. It wasn’t hard for Lila to see that side of him, but Sylvie’s walls would be thick, especially now that they were married. She would be protective and vicious.
Lila dreaded facing her old friend, but she could no longer turn away from where this path led. How could she? As a prosecutor, she would ask others to make this kind of sacrifice. Sadie Vauk fought her way out of a river and was willing to face Gavin Spencer, laying herself bare before twelve strangers and a judge. How could Lila ask that of Sadie if she wasn’t willing to face her own ghosts?
Lila yearned for the comfort of her bed and Joe’s arms. She longed to have her mother’s talent for ignoring the ugly parts of life. She wanted to look into her broken mirror and see only those fragments that pleased her—ignoring the shards with blood on them—but she knew that she didn’t have that right anymore.
Chapter 34
It had been four years since they found Virginia Mercotti floating in the Mississippi River, but unlike Eleanora Abrams, Virginia hadn’t been seen with any suspicious men in the hours before she went missing. She had been nineteen years old, and the investigators could only say that she had left her night class at Minneapolis Community College around nine p.m. and never made it back to her home in northeast Minneapolis.
She lived with her brother, Arnold Mercotti, and his wife, Lisa, in a house that used to belong to her parents. Arnold had been eighteen when their parents died in a car accident. He dropped out of school to raise his twelve-year-old sister.
Virginia’s file was thinner than Eleanora’s but mirrored it in that Virginia’s body was also found in the river, fully clothed, with no ligature marks or defensive wounds, and with extensive postmortem injuries. She showed signs of sexual trauma and had inconclusive levels of GHB in her system.
Niki had called ahead before driving to the Mercotti home, and was greeted at the door by a plain woman in her midtwenties who wore a melancholy smile—Arnold Mercotti’s wife.
“Arnold’s upstairs, washing,” the woman said as a way of inviting Niki in.
The house was clean—a childless clean—no toys shoved in the corners, no sippy cups by the sink—and the only ambient sound came from the pipes. The woman led Niki to a kitchen table and offered her a seat.
“Can I get you something to drink? Water? Juice?”
“I’m fine,” Niki said, sitting down and laying her notepad on the table. The sound of running water stopped and heavy footsteps moved across the floor above them before coming down the stairs.
Arnold was a big man, not muscular or fat, but large. He wore a Vikings jersey, blue jeans, and work boots, the entire ensemble splashed with patches of black asphalt. Niki knew from the file that he worked on a road crew, having passed up a junior college football scholarship so he could raise Virginia.
When he saw Niki, Arnold paused at the door to the kitchen and said, “Are you here to tell me that Gavin Spencer killed my sister?” He walked to the table, turned a chair around backward, and plopped down, his eyes on Niki the whole time.
Niki choked back her surprise and said, “I’m here to look into your sister’s case.” She slid her business card across the table to Arnold. “Tell me about Gavin Spencer.”
“A couple weeks ago I read about some asshole who threw a woman in the river. I was only half paying attention and didn’t think much of it at the time, but then I get your call today. I think to myself, It’s been four years since Ginny’s death—why would a detective be coming out here? That’s when I remembered the story about the asshole. I looked it up and read it again—and it clicked. I’ve met Gavin Spencer.”
Arnold nodded to his wife. “Lisa, you wanna grab those pictures?” Lisa left the kitchen and Arnold turned his attention back to Niki. “You read Ginny’s file, right?”
“I did.”
“So you know that I raised my sister after our folks got blindsided by a truck.”
Lisa walked back into the kitchen and set down a small stack of four-by-six photographs, one in a frame.
“I think I did a pretty fair job, for the most part,” he said. “Ginny was an easy kid—smart and funny as hell. And we were close. We were like a team, Ginny and me. And then Lisa came along.”
Arnold put his hand on his wife’s and gave a small squeeze. “We started dating, and I worried that Ginny might feel left out, like a third wheel or something. But no, she loved Lisa almost as much as I did—like they were sisters. The three of us…we were a family, as close as any, I ’spect. I always planned on asking Lisa to marry me, but I thought I’d wait till Ginny finished college.”
Arnold paused to smile at the memory before he continued. “Then one day, Ginny and me were watching TV—Lisa was out somewhere—and Ginny just up and asks me why I hadn’t proposed. I said I didn’t have a good reason for it, so I told Ginny I’d do it just as soon as Lisa got home. Well, Ginny called me a lunk-head and took over the operation. She planned my proposal so that I’d do it right. It was her idea to take Lisa to the park down at Minnehaha Falls. That’s where Lisa and me had our first kiss. Ginny said I should propose in that same spot, so that’s what I did.”
Arnold picked up the photos and held them tightly in his thick hands, as something dark and cold filled the air around him. He looked at the pictures and swallowed hard.
“It was her idea to hire Gavin Spencer. He was supposed to walk behind Lisa and me, like he was just another tourist. There’s this rise in the path, just before you get to the falls. I was gonna stop there and get down on one knee, and Spencer would take the picture.”
Arnold handed Niki the picture on the top of the stack. Crooked and slightly out of focus, it showed Arnold kneeling down, a tiny box in his hand. Both he and Lisa faced the camera—Arnold looking angry and Lisa confused.
Niki turned the picture over. GVS Photography.
“He screwed it up. Right as I got down on my knee, the dumbass tripped and fell. Not only that, but when he fell, he yelled, ‘Fuck!’ You believe that? Ginny hired him to capture a magical moment, and he hollers ‘Fuck.’ He was on his side when he took that. I hadn’t even asked Lisa to marry me yet. I had the ring out, and here we are looking at that asshole lying on the ground behind us.”
Arnold handed Niki the picture that was in the frame. It was a shot from a vantage point above the falls looking down on Arnold and Lisa. This one was taken the very second that she saw the ring. Lisa’s hands were moving up to her face as if in surprise. Even from that distance the photographer had caught Arnold’s nervous smile.
“Ginny was waiting on the bridge above the falls with a picnic basket and champagne—that was part of her plan. She took that picture with her phone, snapped it a split second before that dumbass fell on the ground.”
“How long after the day in the park did Virginia go missing?”
“About a week and a half. When the cops asked if I knew anyone who might want to hurt her, it never occurred to me. I mean, sure, Ginny was mad. She showed him the picture she took with her phone and told him she wasn’t gonna pay him.”
“If it’s all right with you, I’m going to take these with me.”
Ar
nold pointed at the shot Ginny took from the bridge. “Can I get that one back when it’s all done? That picture means a lot to me.”
“I’ll get a copy made for you,” Niki said as she slipped the picture out of its frame.
Arnold looked at Niki’s card, then at her. “Detective Vang, this man—Spencer—he took something important from us. At my folks’ funeral, I knelt down beside their caskets and made a promise.” Arnold folded his hands together to stop them from trembling. “I told my mom and dad that I’d take care of Ginny. I swore I’d protect her. She was a good kid. She was beautiful and kind and…”
A tear left his eye and traced a ragged path down the big man’s cheek. “She didn’t deserve what he’d done to her.”
He wiped the tear away and looked hard at Niki, his anger turning his face red. “You put that evil son of a bitch away, Ms. Vang. Lock his ass in prison till he rots, because if you don’t, I’ll put him in the ground. I know you’re a cop and I shouldn’t be saying it, but if he walks, I’ll kill him.”
Chapter 35
Sylvie lived in a carbon copy of the stick house she had grown up in. Two stories, rust on the corners of the gutters, the exterior in need of both paint and elbow room—a far cry from the mansion she dreamed about as a child.
Lila remembered a sleepover back when they were still young enough to enjoy the glow-in-the-dark stars glued to Sylvie’s bedroom ceiling. They lay in Sylvie’s bed, their pajamaed bodies angled slightly so that their heads touched, and they talked about babies, and weddings, and the houses they would live in when they grew up. Lila’s house was a simple thing, but it had a big yard, and a driveway long enough that you wouldn’t be able to hear cars as they drove past. Sylvie, however, dreamed of marble floors and walk-in closets and backyard pools, a fantasy heaved upon the poor girl from birth.
It had been Sylvie’s mother who encouraged those impractical dreams. It was Sylvie’s mom who taught her to say her name with that silly French accent—Sylvie Jacqueline Dubois—when everything else Sylvie said came from the hollowed-out throat of a Scandinavian. It had been her mother who entered Sylvie into Little Miss beauty pageants only to complain when she placed no higher than a participation ribbon. And it had been her mother who sent Sylvie out every Halloween dressed as a Disney princess, Sylvie’s head filled with dreams of a glass slipper—but that slipper would never fit her foot.
Lila thought about those dreams now as she parked her car in front of Sylvie’s house, which leaned half a bubble off-plumb and had pieces of plastic taped over the upstairs windows to keep out the winter chill.
Lila hadn’t called before going there. She didn’t know what she would have said and doubted Sylvie would have taken the call anyway. Lila stayed in her car for several minutes, watching the house, waiting for some sign of life to push her to that next step. When she spotted a little boy playing in the fenced-in backyard, Lila got out of her car, walked to the door, and knocked.
Footsteps approached, the soft padding of bare feet, and Sylvie opened the door. Was it anger Lila saw on her face? Confusion? Disgust? The woman looked as though she had just bitten into a bitter seed. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Sylvie.”
Sylvie said nothing.
“Been a while, huh?”
Still no answer. Sylvie wore sweatpants and a T-shirt, the attire of a woman not expecting company. She’d cut her hair short since high school, had put on a little weight, and her face seemed older than the eight years it had been since they had last seen each other.
“I was hoping we could talk,” Lila said.
“You don’t own a phone?”
“I didn’t think you’d answer.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“Can we talk?”
“We’re talking now, aren’t we?”
“Come on, Sylvie.”
Sylvie looked over her shoulder as if to inspect the cleanliness of her house, then pointed at two camping chairs on the front porch and walked past Lila.
They sat down and Sylvie remained silent, waiting for Lila to say something. When she finally spoke, Lila looked at her feet. “I never got the chance to say I’m sorry. You have no idea how much it’s bothered me—what happened…”
“What happened? You make it sound like some kind of accident. What happened was you screwed my boyfriend—the man who is now my husband.”
Sylvie’s words burned a hole inside of Lila, who could do little more than nod in agreement.
“You hurt me,” Sylvie said. “You hurt me more than I thought anyone ever could.”
“I know, and I’m so sorry.”
“I never understood.” Anger flashed in Sylvie’s eyes as she spoke. “You had everything. You were pretty…and smart. It all came so easy for you. John was the only thing I had that was mine. He loved me, not you, but you couldn’t let that be. You had to take him, too.”
“What I did…I don’t expect that you’ll ever forgive me. But I wish you would. You were my best friend—my only friend. I was a different person back then. I was messed up in so many ways. I don’t deserve it, I know, but I’m asking for your forgiveness.”
Sylvie stared out at the street, looking at nothing in particular, as though thinking through the steps of a dance she had all but forgotten. The seconds ticked away slowly and quietly as Lila waited for her friend to find a sliver of who they had once been, before the fall. When Sylvie finally spoke, she did so in a low, somber voice that seemed to have clawed its way up from a great depth. “We were all different people back then.”
The little boy that Lila had seen playing came running around the corner of the house, stopping when he saw Lila on his porch. He had Sylvie’s blond hair but John’s sharp features. “You have a son?” Lila acted surprised, not wanting Sylvie to know that she had been staking out the house.
“Dylan, come here,” Sylvie said. The boy, maybe five years old, stepped onto the porch, sliding a hand under his runny nose.
“Hello, Dylan,” Lila said, holding out a hand for the boy to shake. He turned into his mother’s side and buried his face in her shirt.
“He’s shy,” Sylvie said, putting a protective hand on her son’s head.
“He must get that from John,” Lila said the name before she could stop herself, and it felt wrong coming from her lips, as though she hadn’t earned the right to speak it just yet. But once it was out there, Lila decided to push on. “How is he?”
Sylvie sat up a little straighter. “Dylan, go inside and wash up.”
The little boy eyed Lila as he shuffled into the house.
“He works at the airport,” Sylvie said. “Should be home pretty soon, so you should probably go.”
That struck Lila as unfair. John had been a willing participant in every step of Lila’s treachery. He had been just as unfaithful to Sylvie as Lila had been. In fact, despite what Sylvie believed, he had been the pursuer. He had been the one to lean across the console and kiss her first.
Lila let the injustice of that memory pass as she tiptoed back to the question she needed to ask. She would have preferred a little more time to ease into it, but that didn’t seem to be in the cards. “There’s something I’ve been wondering. Do you remember anybody from high school with a speech impediment?”
The question came as an awkward shift, and Sylvie looked at Lila with the same agitated expression she wore when she’d first seen her at her door. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing, it’s just…I have this vague memory of this guy with a lisp, kind of a flashback, really.”
“Flashback?”
“It’s like I remember him but I don’t. I thought maybe you might.”
“I don’t know anyone like that.”
“I might have met him at that party in Uptown. Maybe he was a friend of John’s.”
“A friend of—” Sylvie’s eyes bloomed with understanding. “I don’t fucking believe this!” She stood up and backed a step away from Lila. “Haven’t you done en
ough?”
“What?” Lila’s half-hearted plea fell to the ground with the heavy thud of a lie.
“You bitch! You come to my home, talking about being sorry, when all you really want is to drag my husband back through that sewer. I have a family now.”
“That sewer—as you call it—is my life.”
“John had nothing to do with it.”
“I never said—” Lila stood, but kept her distance. “I just want to know what happened to me.”
“What happened is—John didn’t touch you that night. He left that party with me.”
“He told the police that he left alone. Why are you lying for him?”
“It doesn’t matter. He didn’t touch you. He didn’t rape you. Quit accusing him. Just leave us alone!”
“You were my friend. Why don’t you care?”
“I was your friend!” Her words came out like the snarl of an angry dog. “That was before you fucked my boyfriend—before you sent the cops after him for something he didn’t do.”
“How do you know he didn’t do it? Did you ever ask him? Did he ever talk about it?” Lila could feel her anger getting the best of her.
“You need to leave. Now!” Sylvie looked at Lila but pointed to the street.
Just then a silver SUV turned in to the driveway, John Aldrich behind the wheel. He parked and stepped out. “What the fuck’s she doing here?”
“Leaving,” Sylvie said, her eyes fixed hard on Lila.
Lila stepped past Sylvie, absorbing the heat of the woman’s stare, and walked down the porch steps.
John hadn’t aged well, having put on a good twenty pounds of girth while losing an inch of hairline. Lila paused at the bottom of the steps for only a second, but that was all it took for John’s face to turn red and hot. “You get the hell off my property, you bitch,” he yelled at Lila.
