Laura was tired of it.
She was being used, set up to play some kind of godless patsy in whatever twisted game Michael and Diane Edwards were trying to run, and she didn’t like it. Laura Carrillo was nobody’s patsy. Not even God’s. She had tried reasoning with Elliott and everyone else and gotten nowhere. She wasn’t going to plead for their faith and understanding anymore.
It was time to talk to Adrian.
* * *
“I don’t want him to go.”
“He has to go.”
“No. He doesn’t,” Diane said.
But she knew Michael was right. Keeping Adrian home from school today would be only the beginning, a concession to fear that would likely be repeated again and again. Her son hadn’t been returned to her to be hidden underwing. He had come back to reoccupy the life he’d once known. Diane had the sense he was somehow at risk, that if she let him an inch too far off his leash he would evaporate like smoke, but Michael pointed out that both he and Diane were probably going to feel that way about their son for the rest of their lives. If they never learned to deal with the worry better than this, they’d go mad.
Still, it was hard to let Adrian go.
“He’s going to be okay,” Michael said as they kissed good-bye at the door. Adrian was already in the car, lunchbox in his lap.
Diane nodded and smiled, resigned to the inevitable.
She watched her husband get in the car, waved at their son as the Acura retreated from the driveway and vanished down the street.
Last night, Michael had seemed as frightened as she was. Morning, however, had brought him to a different place. If he wasn’t exactly invigorated, he certainly appeared less inclined to expect the worst.
Diane wondered where such renewed confidence had come from.
* * *
Michael had decided the reporter was the key. Allison Hope.
Adrian’s teacher would do what she was going to do; he and Diane were powerless to stop her. But that was all right because no one considered her a credible witness, and at the rate she was going—showing up at people’s doors unannounced with her boyfriend in tow, ranting and raving—no one ever would.
And Milton Weisman—Michael had concluded the man could probably be trusted. They’d had only the few minutes in the burger restaurant to talk, but that had been enough. Weisman’s heart hadn’t been that hard to read. Michael had seen the look on the old man’s face when Adrian shook his hand; Weisman had been filled with relief. This was a second chance for him, too, and to hold on to it, Weisman would surely heed Michael’s warning and keep silent. And what would happen if he failed? What words would he find to tell others about Adrian that would cohere into a comprehensible whole? Even if he could articulate it all, who would hear it and not say it sounded like the first signs of an old man slipping into dementia?
Between the two of them, deliberately or otherwise, Weisman and Carrillo could make a fair amount of trouble for Michael and Diane. They might turn unwanted attention toward Adrian and force them to answer questions they didn’t want to be asked. Carrillo, in particular, could hound and pester, maybe even stalk. But beyond possibly making life difficult for Michael’s family for a while, she and Weisman had no potential to do them any long-term harm.
The writer, on the other hand, was not so easily dismissed.
Hope seemed harmless enough, but by virtue of her profession alone, she was dangerous. Once upon a time, a story from a freelancer went only as far as the reach of a local newspaper or the monthly circulation of a magazine. Now, however, online articles and blog posts traveled the world in seconds, regardless of their merit, and all it took for an item to become an international phenomenon was the interest of a single reader with the right social networking connections. Playing dumb for a small audience of skeptics and believers, coming at them only a few at a time, seemed to Michael a manageable task, but a rush of such people coming at he and Diane in waves?
They would have no chance.
So it was Hope’s silence that mattered most. If she could be persuaded to kill the story she was writing about Laura Carrillo, the feeling Michael and Diane had that the return of their son was unraveling might remain only that: a feeling. Michael had no doubt that appealing to the reporter’s conscience would hardly do the trick. Journalists with ambition didn’t sit on a story simply to spare people its consequences.
To win Hope’s silence, Michael would have to buy it.
He had just over sixty thousand dollars in his IRA account. It was nobody’s idea of a fortune, but neither was it a pittance. Hope would at least have to think about taking it. He hadn’t told Diane what he was going to do, because he was sure he could never go through with it with both his doubts and hers weighing on his mind.
He dropped Adrian off at school, drawing out the ritual of saying good-bye longer than necessary, then pulled into the lot of a nearby grocery store to use his cell. He’d kept the business card Hope had given to Weisman at the restaurant the night before. His intention had been to toss it the minute he took it from the old man’s hands, but somehow he’d never made the effort.
The phone rang in his ear three times before Hope picked up.
* * *
“Hello?”
Her voice had cracked and she didn’t care. Allison just wanted it to be Flo. The number wasn’t Flo’s but Allison didn’t give a damn.
Please, God, let it be Flo.
“Ms. Hope?”
Allison didn’t recognize the voice. It was familiar, but at the end of the longest night in her life, she was in no condition to hear, see, or think straight, and she had little desire to try. It didn’t matter who the man was, in any case. He wasn’t Flo.
She hung up.
Allison flung herself back onto the motel room bed and closed her eyes, cell phone still in hand. An empty wine bottle lay pinned under her left thigh, green glass cool to the skin, and another bottle on its way to empty sat atop the cheap bedside table next to her head. To her amazement, she hadn’t once tried to call her partner—she was far from ready to stop calling Flo her “partner”—since leaving Flo’s home almost ten hours ago, preferring the agony of waiting for Flo to take the initiative over the humiliation of the reverse. But Allison’s pride was no more intact. Flo’s silence had proven to be as degrading as any simpering plea Allison could have made over the phone, or on bended knee at Flo’s feet.
Just as she began to cry again, her cell phone rang once more.
Allison remained still and let it ring, refusing to succumb to the temptation of answering the call and having her heart broken anew. The caller wasn’t going to be Flo this time, either.
But the possibility suddenly occurred to Allison that he might somehow be a conduit to Flo—a go-between she trusted to say things to Allison she wasn’t yet ready to say herself—and that made him someone Allison could ill afford to ignore.
She sat back up, wiped her eyes dry, and answered the call.
“Yes?”
“Ms. Hope? I’m trying to reach Allison Hope.”
“This is Allison Hope. Who is this?”
“It’s Michael Edwards. I need to talk to you right away. In person.”
Michael Edwards. Allison couldn’t believe her luck. Twelve hours ago, she would have given anything to receive this man’s call. Now, she couldn’t imagine what good it could do her to talk to him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Edwards, but I don’t think—”
“It’ll only take a minute and I’ll make it worth your while. That, I promise you. Just name a time and a place.”
Allison didn’t answer, her head pounding, her mind racing.
“Please,” Edwards said.
And that one word tipped the scales. Please. Even in her pathetic state, Allison’s professional inquisitiveness kicked in. Edwards really did need to talk to her.
“All right. One hour. Give me a few minutes to think of a place and I’ll call you back.”
* * *
“Hey, Milton. It’s Al. I was just calling—”
“To check up on me. Yes, I know.”
Milton’s son-in-law took a moment to go on, no doubt weighing the merits of denying the obvious. “So, how are you feeling this morning?”
“I feel fine. I’m okay. I keep telling your wife that, but she doesn’t want to believe me.”
“Well, you know, you had us a little worried there for a while. Some of the things you were saying. . . .”
“Sounded crazy, I know. I know, already! But I told Janet and Lisa, and now I’m telling you: I had a bad dream. I got confused and thought it was real. Haven’t you ever had a dream you thought was real?”
“Well, yes, I suppose—”
“Of course you have. It happens to everybody. It doesn’t mean a man’s crazy. It doesn’t mean he’s getting senile or has gone back to drinking again. It just means he got confused. I got confused for a while and now I’m not. What more do I have to say to get that through to you people?”
“I’m sorry, Milton. None of us means to be disrespectful. But we all love you and care about you and want to make sure you’re all right.”
“Well, I am all right.” Milton sensed his temper rising, realized he was sending all the wrong messages. And neither Alan nor his daughters were guilty of anything except worrying about Milton too much.
“I appreciate your concern. Sure I do. And I know what I must have sounded like, talking about car accidents that never happened and dead children who aren’t dead. If I were in your shoes, I would have thought I was drunk or crazy, too. Who wouldn’t? But I’m okay now, I promise you. It was all just a mistake, a big mistake. You have to help me make Janet believe that, Alan. Please. If all of you don’t stop smothering me like this, I will start drinking again, I swear it.”
Reacting to either the sincerity or the sheer desperation in Milton’s voice, Alan said, “Okay, Milton. I hear you. I’ll talk to Janet tonight and convince her to lay off. Or at least I’ll try. You know how stubborn she can be.”
“Yes. I do.”
“As for Lisa, I’m afraid you’re on your own there. One Weisman daughter is about all any one man can handle.”
He laughed, and Milton forced himself to do likewise, taking care to offer his son-in-law all the proper responses to avoid any further suspicion.
“You’ll call us if you need us, right? For any reason, day or night.”
“I will. Thanks for calling, Al.”
Alan had more to say but Milton hung up on him before he could say it.
This was obviously how it was going to be for a while. Life under Alan and Janet’s microscope, and Lisa’s as well, until Milton could convince them all he was fine. They would watch him and test him, waiting for another word about Adrian Edwards to slip from his lips, something to give them cause to question his sanity all over again. But they would be wasting their time.
Only yesterday, Milton might have been prone to mistake. But not today. Not ever again, God willing. Last night he had slept like a rock, something he hadn’t done in months, and he woke this morning with a new resolve. Whatever or whoever was behind the change his life had undertaken, Milton wasn’t going to see it undone without a fight. He was happy for the boy and his parents, of course, but he had his own interests to protect as well. He wasn’t a child killer anymore. That yoke of shame had been lifted from his shoulders and being free of it felt like being reborn.
Yesterday, he was afraid of himself, for himself. He was certain he would not be able to go on living a lie of omission for the rest of his days, as he had promised Michael Edwards he would. But today he knew he could, and would, keep that promise.
For Adrian Edwards and the new Milton Weisman.
TWENTY-NINE
LAURA COULDN’T THINK of a way to get close to Adrian that had any hope of success until she remembered Giselle Ott had yard duty Friday mornings.
Giselle was one of two kindergarten teachers at Yesler, a gentle soul and veteran of the profession, at thirty-eight, whom Laura considered a good friend. This despite the fact the older woman was an overly-affable Pollyanna. With dark brown hair that had never known a curl and a body that shared the silhouette of an unmade bed, Giselle was as unexceptional as a plastic spoon. She had always been drawn to Laura, however, and her joy in being an educator had similarly drawn Laura to her, so the two women shared a bond that made far more sense in practice than it did on paper.
Campus security was one of Yesler’s greatest weaknesses, and this would mark the first time Laura had reason to be cheered by the fact. While the administration office was positioned off the front parking lot to stand as the school’s first wall of defense against intrusion, its only window was the small, narrow panel of glass in the entry door. Edie Brown, the office clerk, did the best she could to keep an eye out for people slipping past, and woe be to those she caught trying, but she couldn’t be both an office clerk and a security guard, eight hours a day. Trespassers were bound to get by her every now and then, and they did so with more regularity than Laura had ever been comfortable with.
Today, Laura planned to be one of those trespassers.
She dared not remain on campus long. Every minute would be a flirtation with disaster. Howard Alberts patrolled the grounds at whim and could be counted on to order her off the premises on sight. And if Alberts didn’t spot her himself, Laura was confident that any teacher other than Giselle who did would feel duty-bound to make the principal aware of her presence. To reduce her risk of exposure, Laura would have to time her visit to Yesler precisely—right before morning recess—and stay no more than a few minutes.
Ten minutes would be just enough.
* * *
It was Allison’s idea to meet at Lakeridge Park. She couldn’t imagine where the inspiration had come from. Flo was crowding out every conscious thought in her head, and a merciless hangover was doing the rest to render Allison incoherent. But in the midst of rejecting the first two places Michael Edwards suggested—a coffee shop in Kubota Gardens and the Westfield Southcenter mall—she had blurted out the name of the site where Edwards’s son had allegedly died last March.
“No,” Edwards had said initially. The thought of it clearly unnerved him.
Allison hung firm, however, realizing that Edwards’s reaction had to mean something. People always found it more difficult to lie where and when they were most uncomfortable, and if Lakeridge Park made Edwards ill at ease, that was where she wanted to talk to him.
A few minutes shy of nine a.m., she paused at the park entrance to locate the playground area on a map before proceeding to it. She was the first to arrive. Michael Edwards didn’t join her until she’d found a seat on a bench atop a grassy knoll overlooking the multicolored, tubular play structure, which at this hour lay challenge to only a handful of children. Allison watched Edwards park and approach on foot, and wondered if she looked as horrid as she felt. She was sick to her stomach and on the constant edge of tears, and Edwards would have to be a blind man not to see the pain she was in.
He climbed the small hill and sat down beside her. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No worries.” She waited for him to say something. “So?”
Edwards’s eyes drifted down to the playground for a second, then came back to Allison. “I want you to kill your story, Ms. Hope.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m willing to pay you. Sixty thousand dollars. All you have to do is forget about Laura Carrillo and leave her and all the rest of us alone.”
Allison was taken aback. She had thought this might be Edwards’s purpose in calling this meeting, but this wasn’t the tack she’d expected him to take.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m offering you s
ixty thousand dollars to do nothing. Easy money. And, if you’ll forgive me for saying so”—he gave her a lingering look—”I have a feeling you could use it.”
“Is that right?”
“Forgive me if that was unkind.”
“You’re goddamned right it was unkind.” He had come here to bribe her. Not to reason or plead with her, but to bribe her. Throw her a few dollars and make her disappear, because he thought she’d take them. That’s how pathetic a creature she was in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Edwards said again, taking pains to express his sincerity. “I don’t know you. This isn’t personal. But you have to believe me when I tell you, nothing good will come from this story you’re writing if you go through with it. Nothing.”
“Well, I don’t know, Mr. Edwards. If the truth comes out of it, that’ll be good enough for me.”
“And you think the truth is what, exactly? Please tell me, I’d love to know.”
If he had given her a day to think about it, Allison might still not have had an answer. But she had to say something. “I can tell you what it isn’t. It’s not whatever lie you and your wife have managed to feed poor Milton Weisman. Your little boy did not die in a car accident last spring and then rise from the dead three days ago. Of that much, I’m fairly certain.”
“And Laura Carrillo? What about her? Have my wife and I fed her a lie, too?”
This time, having no ready answer struck Allison mute. Her head throbbed and her stomach was starting to churn again.
“Face it,” Edwards said before she could find her voice. “Anything you try to write right now would serve no purpose other than to make a public spectacle of a good, young teacher. And all you’d get out of it is a byline and a reputation for shoddy reporting.”
“You have no idea what I’d get out of it. And that’s not the question begging to be asked here anyway. That question is, what are you looking to get out of my going away?”
“Me?”
In Things Unseen Page 20
