THEN
ELLIE
Just over two years ago, January 13. Vancouver, BC.
“The elevator? You have got to be kidding me.”
I shook my head.
“Crap, Ellie.”
“I know. Most risqué thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Dana laughed and raised her glass. “Cheers to that!”
We’d opened a second bottle of wine and were sitting on my new balcony in our down jackets under an outdoor heater, our Ugg-covered feet up on the railing. Beyond the deck cover, rain fell softly in the January darkness. I’d told her about meeting Martin, and that I’d googled him, and he looked legit.
“He sounds too good to be true,” she said.
“Yeah. I know.”
“Maybe he is—I mean, too good to be true.”
I gave a shrug. “Might come to nothing anyway. I hate myself for calling, though. I feel cheap. Stupid for thinking he might have actually wanted to hear from me again.” I sipped my wine. “I knew better, it’s just . . . hoping, you know? That there was actually some spark, something special.”
“Hey, you’re doing great. Maybe there’s a valid reason he hasn’t returned your calls, and even if he doesn’t call, just having done this was a big step.”
“You think?”
She pulled a weird mouth, as if she wasn’t so sure. “Uh . . . yeah. I think so.”
We laughed and got happily drunk. We ordered pizza as the night wore on, and just as Dana was about to leave, my phone rang. I froze. My heart hammered. My gaze shot to her.
“Answer it!”
I reached for my phone. Unknown number on caller ID. I cleared my throat. “Hello?”
It went dead.
I stared at the phone. “What the—?”
We waited for a moment, but it didn’t ring again.
After Dana left I sat in the dark for a long time, just fingering the engraved letters in the smooth gold of his cuff link.
He’d be checking out of the hotel tomorrow.
This cuff link was expensive. A personalized accessory. One of a pair. Maybe he was upset he’d lost it. How would it look that I’d kept it? I had to return it. Surely? A normal person without hang-ups would return an expensive piece of jewelry. I’d drop it off at the hotel tomorrow morning. Early. Before he checked out. If I happened to run into him in the lobby, I could say that was why I’d tried to phone him—to return his cuff link.
I felt better already.
THEN
ELLIE
Just over two years ago, January 14. Vancouver, BC.
“Ms. Tyler, good to see you,” said the manager of the Hartley Plaza Hotel as I approached the hotel reception desk in the lobby. I’d taken extra care. Blow-dried my hair. It hung long and shiny down my back, my bangs thick over my eyes. I’d selected a nice cranberry-red wool coat. Boots. Scarf. Black-lace underwear. I told myself the underwear was for me—just to make me feel good. I was not desperate. This was my narrative. I was a woman who wore sexy underwear. I was just returning an item with possible sentimental value to the owner.
“What can we do for you?” He was fawning. I was Sterling Hartley’s daughter. This was his hotel. I was used to this behavior.
“I have something that belongs to one of your guests. I’d like to return it before he checks out.”
“Leave it with me and we’ll see that it gets to—”
“I’d rather hand it to him myself. Can you tell me if he’s still here?”
He hesitated. The two employees behind the check-in desk exchanged a glance. It was against protocol. But I was also Sterling Hartley’s daughter.
“I’ll handle this,” the manager said to one of the employees. He took over her computer station and asked, “What is the guest’s name, Ms. Tyler?”
“Martin,” I said. “Martin Cresswell-Smith.”
He tapped at the keyboard. “No one of that name is registered with us.”
“He’s checked out already?”
He frowned and tapped at the computer keyboard again. “We’ve had no one of that name in our system.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m certain.”
“Maybe you spelled it wrong.” I scribbled Martin’s name down on a hotel notepad using the spelling from the paper napkin, which was the same as the spelling I’d googled. I gave it to the manager.
“That’s how I spelled it.”
“Could you try again?”
He held my gaze for a moment.
“Please.”
He humored me. I scanned the lobby, hoping to catch a glimpse of Martin wheeling his luggage through.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Tyler.”
“But I know he was here.”
I saw him sign the bar tab to his room. We had sex in the elevator when we went up to his room.
“I really am sorry.”
I felt blindsided. I stared at the manager. I had been so certain of how this would work. He’d come down in the elevator. I’d give him the cuff link. He’d say he’d been trying to call me, or that he’d had back-to-back meetings, or . . . something. He’d kiss me. We’d go for lunch before he went to catch his plane.
I rummaged in my purse and took out my phone. I showed the manager the screenshot I’d saved of the photo of Martin sitting at his Toronto office desk.
“This man. Have you seen him? Perhaps he registered under another name?”
The manager regarded me oddly, then glanced at my phone. He shook his head. I showed the photo to the two employees.
One said, “Yeah, I think I saw him the other night. In the Mallard Lounge.”
“Who was on bar duty that night—do you remember?”
She frowned, glanced at her manager. He gave a shrug.
“Tony Jarecki,” said the employee. “He works the bar most nights.”
“Bald guy?”
“Yeah.”
I made straight for the Mallard. It was open for breakfast. I found Tony Jarecki sitting behind a desk in a small office off the back of the bar. He looked up from his work, startled to see me.
Without preamble I said, “Did this man come into the bar the other night?” I showed him Martin’s photo.
He studied the image, then glanced up and regarded me in silence for a moment. “Yeah.”
“Was he a hotel guest, registered here, do you know?”
Tony ran his tongue over his teeth, thinking.
“Don’t lie to me,” I said. “I can see you’re going to lie.”
He laughed in an ugly, mirthless way. It made me feel soiled. Mocked. Cheap. I noticed a monitor for a CCTV feed in the corner of the office. A hot, sick feeling suddenly slid through my gut. I wondered if they had CCTV in the elevators. Perhaps Tony and all the other employees had watched me having sex with a stranger. And they were all whispering and laughing behind my back and calling me names.
Fool, fool, fool. Slut, slut, slut.
Stupid, desperate woman opening her legs.
She stabbed her ex, do you know . . .
Hospitalized for a mental breakdown.
I suddenly needed to get out of here.
“For the record,” Tony said, his voice low, his words coming slow, “I was not planning to lie, just considering how much a patron might want to protect his, or her, privacy. I’m sure you appreciated that?”
I swallowed, my face going hot.
He angled his head, his black eyes boring into me.
I said, “If it’s money you want—”
He surged to his feet. “Please get out, Ms. Tyler. I don’t want your money.”
“Yet my father can buy you.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I saw him talking to you. I’m sure he paid you.”
“Your father was looking out for you. He’s a good man. He paid me for a service.”
I waved my phone at him. “Was this man in this photo here with another woman? Is that why you think he needs privacy?”
“I think you n
eed to leave, Ms. Tyler.”
From the look on Tony Jarecki’s face I was certain Martin Cresswell-Smith had been in the Mallard with someone else—maybe that woman who’d walked past the elevator. I glanced at the security monitor. I’d bet he was captured on camera with that woman.
“I should get back to my work,” he said.
“Yeah. Yeah, you should.”
I exited the Mallard Lounge and made my way rapidly through the lobby for the hotel exit. I felt everyone was watching me.
I stepped into the cold air and fingered the cuff link in my coat pocket.
Forget it, Ellie. Move on. You made a mistake and you’re embarrassing yourself. Face it, you were just desperate to be wanted, to be needed in that way. It’s over.
I put up my coat collar and leaned into the wind as I stepped off the curb. But even as I headed down the sidewalk with every intention to put it behind me, a deeper, darker, locked-up side of me felt it—something inside had started to go wrong.
THE MURDER TRIAL
Pretrial forensic evaluation session.
“Do you know why you are here, Ellie?”
The psychologist’s voice is smooth. Low. He’s elegant, almost beautiful in an androgynous way. Sallow skin. Hooded eyes. Long, thin face. Long, tapered fingers. His toes are probably long and tapered, too. Lips not too thin, not too full. Soft-looking. He wears a scarf that probably comes from a market in Nepal. He probably went hiking in the Himalayas, took a side trek to visit some monks in Tibet. He has a corner office with windows that go right down to the floor and lots of natural light. Nevertheless I feel trapped, agitated.
“I’m here because you’re a forensic shrink, we’re up against a murder trial, and my legal team needs to know whether I can be put on the witness stand. Because that would be a really big gamble, right? To put someone in my position on the stand? They need to know if I might actually help the case or blow it up in their faces, especially on cross.”
“And what do you think?” the psychologist asks.
“I’m not the one being paid to think, Doctor.”
He regards me. I check my watch. I glance at the door. I’m tightening up with each second that ticks by, afraid he’s going to get inside my head, into the deep, dark spaces where my secrets live in shadows. No one is allowed in there. Not even me. I’ve learned what can happen if I open those doors. But his silence continues. And my chest grows tighter.
So I fill the space, and instantly regret opening my mouth because it’s exactly what he’s waiting for—this is not my first rodeo. I’m a veteran of therapy.
“I think,” I say slowly, “that they would like the jury to see just how much of a victim I am. They want the jury to see what Martin did to me, for them to feel sorry for me—to see why he deserved to die.”
His brow twitches upward. He moistens his lips as he takes notes. The session is also being recorded. I must be more careful. There are little chocolates in a glass bowl on the table in front of me. Each chocolate is individually wrapped in gold. He sees me looking. He leans forward, pushes the bowl closer.
But I sit back, cross my legs, and wrap my hands around my knee.
“Did he?”
“Did he what?”
“Deserve to die.”
I lurch up from the sofa, pace across the room. Stop. Look out the window. We’re on the second floor of a brick building. There are people outside on a postage stamp of lawn—mothers or nannies watching kids play on swings. I think of Chloe. I fold my arms tightly over my stomach, and I say softly, “We’re all going to die. One way or another. Some people do bad things. I think they deserve to die sooner.”
He’s silent for a moment. I hear him writing in his notebook, turning a page.
“Did your daughter also deserve to die, Ellie?”
I feel rage building inside my stomach. I’m a hairbreadth from grabbing my purse and walking out. I’m also aware of what is at stake. A guilty verdict or an innocent one. It’s not negotiable. I need to do everything I can to help my legal team win this.
“She was too young,” I say softly. “Too innocent.”
“What about your mother?”
My heartbeat slows, and I say, “My mother died when I was nine, Doctor. Her death has no bearing on this trial.”
“It has a bearing on your psyche, Ellie. Nine is a young age to lose a mother. These life events shape what we become. And what you’ve become is going to matter in court. Whatever can be used against you will be.”
Grief can become a Monster that consumes and overtakes you. I know this. I’ve been told this before.
Outside the window, down below on the patch of grass, a child falls off the swing. Her mother runs over to her, drops to her knees, gathers her child into her arms, and comforts her, stroking the girl’s hair.
My thoughts circle back to Chloe. To what we could have had. I think of what I didn’t have with my own mother. How my father neglected me before her death and even more so after. The rage swells bigger in my belly, pushing up toward my gullet.
The psychologist moves—I hear the leather of his ergonomically designed chair squeak.
“Do you want to tell me what you remember of your mother’s death, Ellie? You were at home with her, right, when she overdosed?”
I swing to face him. “Is this what they’re going to do? Find holes in my psyche? Poke at old pain? Trip me up and trick me into saying the wrong things? Just like you’re trying to do now?”
“Is that how you see life? People waiting to trick you into revealing yourself?”
But I see in his face that my reaction, my walls, my quickness to anger, have already told him much of what he needs to know.
I’m hiding secrets.
But aren’t we all?
THEN
ELLIE
Just over two years ago, January 21. Vancouver, BC.
One week after humiliating myself at the Hartley Plaza, I stopped at a crosswalk in town for a red light, distracted about a meeting I’d just had about a possible job. I carried my large waterproof portfolio case by a strap hooked over my shoulder. It was late afternoon, getting dark already, and the sky was low and full of drizzle. A little girl standing at my side looked up at me. She smiled shyly and angled her head.
Chloe’s smile.
My heart stopped, then imploded. My knees almost gave out under me. Her mittened hand held tightly on to her mother’s.
She could have been mine. That mother could have been me. Chloe would be five now. If she’d lived. I might still be with Doug. In our old house. Chloe would’ve just started at the school down the road. I might be standing here right now, holding her hand, waiting to go across the street to meet Doug at his law firm, which was just a block away. We’d be meeting Daddy for his coffee break.
The pedestrian light turned green. The mother tugged the little girl, and they crossed into the street with all the other pedestrians. I couldn’t move. Time folded in on itself. It was like I’d glimpsed a parallel universe that would have been my life if I had n0t let go of Chloe’s hand in the waves that day.
I managed to step into the road, but the light had already changed. A cyclist almost hit me and veered into traffic. A car swerved for the biker and honked.
“Fucking asshole!” yelled the cyclist over his shoulder. “It’s a fucking red light!”
I stumbled backward and up onto the sidewalk, breathing hard. I clenched and unclenched my gloved hands, raw panic circling.
Focus, Ellie. Don’t do it—do not become unhinged again. It’ll pass. It was just a trigger. A PTSD trigger. Your therapist explained the mechanism of these things.
I turned and began to walk down the sidewalk in the direction from which I’d come. No plan. Just walking. Fast. Focusing on the rhythmic click of my bootheels. Trying to breathe deeply. I kept my head down, averting my eyes from the faces of others. Heat flushed my cheeks. It started to rain more heavily. I decided I’d head for a bookstore near Gastown. Sit there awhile. There was
a liquor store one block away from the bookstore. I’d stop in there afterward, buy a bottle of wine or two to take home. I had some pills left. I’d take one. Relax. Sleep it off. I’d be okay by tomorrow.
I rounded a corner. And froze.
On the sidewalk ahead of me a man moved quickly down the hill. It was the blond hair that had snared my attention. Like a beacon. Shiny and thick.
Martin?
He wore a tailored coat and carried a briefcase. People parted around him like he was a shark in a sea of dark tones of gray upon gray upon black. He strode swiftly, heading away from me.
My heart began to hammer. My mouth turned dry.
I jerked into action, pushing and shouldering through a stream of people coming off a bus. Martin turned around a building, disappearing from sight. I began to run, my portfolio bumping against me and flapping out and hitting pedestrians, who cursed at me.
I rounded the corner, panting. Then stopped. Rain drummed down, fine and steady. I glimpsed him again. He was halfway down the block, where the sidewalk was nearly empty. I hurried after him, not even considering properly why I was following him, or what I’d say when I reached him. If it was even him.
He stopped at an intersection ahead of me to wait for cars to pass. He turned and looked directly at me.
I stilled.
It was him—it was definitely him. I raised my gloved hand. But he looked straight past me, through me. His face blank.
“Martin?” I called, raising my hand higher, waving. “Martin!”
He looked over his shoulder as if to see whom I was calling to. Then he crossed the street and vanished into the entrance to an underground parking garage.
In shock, I slowly lowered my hand. It was him. I was certain it was him. Or . . . could I be wrong?
I scurried forward and stopped at the entrance to the concrete ramp that led down into the bowels of the garage. He’d gone down there. The garage exhaled a cold, damp smell. I hesitated, then started down the ramp to the first underground level. I rounded a curved concrete wall. From there I could see through a gap down to the next level. Martin. He’d stopped beside an orange Subaru Crosstrek. I was about to go farther down the ramp when the driver’s door of the Subaru swung open.
In the Deep Page 7
