Never Ask Me

by Jeff Abbott

  “I’m sure,” Mike says. “You’ve had a long day. I’ll go. But…Grant cannot hear us right now.”

  She turns to him.

  “Did Kyle kill her?” Mike asks, very softly.

  Iris is silent.

  “Or is he protecting you?” Mike’s voice is still soft.

  Iris says nothing.

  “I have been so grateful for your family. It was hard when Peter and I came here—we wanted a fresh start and you welcomed us.” For a moment he stops. “I don’t want to believe it of you. Either of you. That one could kill her and the other could keep it secret.”

  Now she finds the words. “I don’t know why this is happening, but we are innocent of this.”

  “Ned. Ned brought this into our lives,” Mike says. “You think I don’t know what you and Gordon whispered about? You are trying to protect Julia and Ned. I found prescription drugs in Ned’s backpack one night. I will search it—Danielle never would. This man Julia found dead, he has some drug involvement? I heard the police talking.”

  Iris says, “I don’t know, honestly.”

  “I think you are lying to me. I think you better start telling the truth, for Grant’s sake. You know what it is to conceal evidence? To interfere in a police investigation? What happens to Grant if you go to jail, too?”

  She hears a creak on a stair; she suspects Grant is listening. “I’ve done nothing.”

  “But you say that about Kyle and Julia, too.”

  “Did Danielle ever tell…ever say to you that she had reason to be afraid of someone?”

  “You mean that someone threatened her?” His voice rose slightly.

  “Yes.”

  “No. What do you know, Iris?”

  Silence.

  “Who has come after her, Iris?”

  “Maybe the Butlers.”

  “Those two? Steve Butler is a clown.”

  “They were unhappy with her. They moved close to her. I think they’re capable of anything.” She doesn’t add that she thinks that because she saw something of herself in them: Iris is capable of far more than people think.

  Mike waits for her to say more. “Have you said anything to the police about them?”

  “No. I have no proof. Except they say they’re getting a baby from a cousin, and if that were true they wouldn’t need Danielle.”

  “Babies. You’re all so obsessed with babies.” Mike shakes his head. “Becoming a father changed a lot of my life, but it didn’t define me. You all…live through your kids too much.”

  Iris hates him for saying this but she’s exhausted, so she just says: “That’s a valid point.”

  “What will you do with Grant tomorrow? He can come over and stay with Peter. He shouldn’t be alone.”

  “That’s not appropriate, given…”

  “If Kyle killed her, Kyle can burn in hell. And if you know he did and you’re covering for him, you can burn in hell, too. But I won’t turn my back on Grant. He’s not responsible for your choices.”

  Iris doesn’t know what to say. She hears the creak of the step; Grant has left his eavesdropping post. “I didn’t kill her and neither did my husband. I appreciate your offer of help. But Grant will be just fine.”

  “If you tell me this, I’m going to believe you,” Mike says, his voice breaking. “I’ll believe you. But you really have to say it to me.”

  “We’re innocent,” she says. “We could never kill someone.”

  Mike wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. She’s never seen him cry. “OK,” he says, gruff. “You deal with your lawyers tomorrow. Grant can stay at our house if he wants.”

  “Go sleep if you can,” she says. She wants to give him a hug, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to touch anyone right now, except for her children.

  Mike leaves. From the window she watches him walk down the street in the darkness, a pale, broad figure in the moonlight.

  She goes to bed, alone, listening to the quiet. No sound from Julia’s room. No sound from Grant’s. And the other side of the bed is a new kind of empty.

  55

  Julia

  They didn’t put Julia in the regular jail where her father was, as she was a minor, but instead they placed her in a juvenile detention center in South Austin, alone in her cell, wondering where her mother was, wondering what would happen next.

  She had been seen. Her phone was by the body. The knife was from their house.

  And Julia keeps thinking and saying: No, this is wrong. It’s wrong.

  At some point after midnight she falls asleep, and for one awful, delicious moment when she wakes up, she thinks she is in her bed, snug at home, with her books and her photos of her friends acting goofy and the key Ned gave her tucked under her pillow where she’d put it so she’d feel close to him during this horrible time. But the light in the room is too bright, and she can hear sobbing and arguing from strange voices, nor far away.

  This isn’t home. This is a nightmare.

  She lies curled up on the bed, waiting for the tears to come, but trying to think now that sleep had wiped away the shock.

  Marland is dead.

  She thinks it through, because this is real and she has to deal with the reality, find the proof that she couldn’t have killed this man. Whoever killed him had killed him in a matter of moments—very quickly. Five stab wounds, she remembers seeing. Done quickly. Which meant…the murderer was in the house already when she and Marland arrived.

  And Marland either knew and trusted that person, or Marland didn’t know he or she was in the house.

  But Marland had not cried out. Marland had faced this person and gotten knifed. Or had been grabbed from behind and knifed, although to Julia, well versed in crime shows on streaming channels, that seemed a harder sell.

  Marland knew his killer. He had not been surprised to see him. Maybe they had planned together to get the phone from Julia and then kill her. But the killer turned on Marland and left Julia holding the knife…

  …which had been in her family’s kitchen. A fancy black blade, not silver-colored like most blades. They’d had the knives for a few years. But that meant that whoever got the knife had had access to their house. It would take only a second to hide the knife, and if it wasn’t in the rack, one would assume it was in the dishwasher. It wouldn’t be missed right away.

  Who’d been there?

  Ned. Gordon. Mike. Peter. Any of the neighbors who had brought food or comfort.

  Her parents. Grant.

  Even Danielle.

  But the world was full of knives. You only took one from a house when you wanted to frame someone. So someone had known she was talking with Marland, knew she would talk again with him, and knew she had access to the abandoned house.

  That was Ned. No one else knew, except her mom.

  And Gordon. If Ned had told him everything.

  What would Gordon do to protect his son? Kill the man who could link his son to the drug ring? Blame the girl who stood on the edge of it? Marland had been pressuring her to join; was that the only reason?

  Had Gordon put Marland up to this and then killed him, solving two problems with one blow?

  The door to her room opens. A woman she hasn’t seen before enters. Pretty, in her thirties, Julia guesses. She wears a paramedic uniform.

  “Hello,” the woman says. She smiles, checks a clipboard. “Julia Pollitt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hi. They have you listed for…a mild sedative.” She has a slight, odd accent.

  “Who does? I haven’t seen a doctor.”

  “It was ordered, sweetie. You want left arm or right arm?”

  “I don’t want it at all. I want to see my mom.”

  “She’ll be here later.” The paramedic steps forward; she already holds the syringe. “Left or right arm?”

  “I don’t want it!” Now Julia’s voice rises.

  “I understand,” the paramedic says. “If you refuse it and I have to call the guards to hold you down, you get a di
sciplinary mark. Loss of privileges.”

  For a moment Julia thinks a shot to make her sleepy sounds great—numb this awful experience. But the thought passes. “I want my lawyer here. I do not want to be medicated.”

  The woman shuts the door. She flicks the needle guard off the syringe with her thumb. She rushes forward, dropping the clipboard. Julia cries out, but the needle is through her sleeve and in her arm before she can stop the woman. She tries to twist away as the woman’s thumb gropes for the plunger. Her other hand clamps over Julia’s mouth.

  The chemical wave hits her like a tsunami. Numbness, then a feeling like she can’t move.

  “It’s just enough,” the woman says.

  Julia falls back on the floor. She can’t move. Her hands, her feet, feel like anchors. She tries to make a sound.

  The woman starts to hum as she works quickly, gathering up the sheet from the cot, twisting it tight, shaping it into a rope, smiling at her.

  The woman ties one end into a noose and slips it over Julia’s head.

  “It won’t hurt,” the woman says softly in her breathy accent.

  56

  From Iris Pollitt’s “From Russia with Love” Adoption Journal

  2002

  Grant is ours, and no one can take him away from us.

  The judge congratulated us and signed documents and we signed the final papers that needed to be signed. Danielle looked nearly faint with relief. Pavel smiled at us, shook our hands.

  “Let’s go get your boy,” Danielle said.

  I nodded, feeling stunned. Kyle was silent though. I hadn’t told him I might say what I was going to say. I didn’t think he was angry with me, maybe just shocked that I had broken the main rule laid down to us when we started this journey.

  “Kyle?” I said. I took his hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “You’re a fighter,” he said. “I don’t know that I ever knew what a fighter you were. Even when Julia got diagnosed, this was something different from that. She was ours; we were just making sure she got what she needed. This was you fighting to have him.” He swallowed.

  “I didn’t know I’d go quite that far.”

  “You read the room. I’m glad she was a fan.”

  “We have him. Despite everything. We have him.”

  We were so happy. We put our foreheads together, moved closer, kissed and hugged.

  Today our driver was a woman named Tatiana, early forties, kind smile. She told us her sister worked at Volkov as a caretaker and she was always happy of a chance to visit. Pavel sat in the front with her, and the three of us sat in the back. Maria was in her own car and would meet us at the orphanage. On the drive, I thought Kyle was going to crush my hand.

  We had a son.

  Forget you, warning woman. Thank you, Anya. I hope you find some peace and happiness.

  At Volkov, they stripped Grant of his orphanage-issued clothes—even his diaper, which was still clean. We had clothes and a fresh diaper ready for him. It was as if he were shedding the skin of his old life and putting on his American life. My hands shook a little bit as I dressed him. He was fussy, having been woken from a nap, and I just kept saying “Mommy and Daddy are here. We love you and everything is going to be OK.” I thought: You went to sleep as Alexander Stepurin and you’ve woken up as Grant Pollitt. Welcome to your new life.

  His new onesie had a little Texan flag on it, and maybe that was gauche, but he was going to be an American child now. I put him in his coat and a warm hat; the snow still came down outside. I really, really wanted to be gone from this place and never look back at it.

  The goodbyes were short and fueled by Maria ensuring that we had all the paperwork, double-checking we had his Russian-issued passport. I wanted to say, “Any other paperwork we haven’t signed, you can scan and email to us or fax to us,” but I didn’t. Everything checked.

  We said a thankful goodbye to Pavel, who was staying on at the orphanage to help another family whose translator had canceled at the last moment. He shook our hands and wished us well.

  The snow came down like a curtain; I was really getting anxious about the weather. Danielle, Kyle, and I trudged through the snow to the parking lot, where Tatiana and the car waited, and opened the doors. I had already set up your baby seat in the back because I didn’t want to fiddle with it as we were leaving the orphanage. Get in and go. I settled you in, and Kyle and I shut the doors and buckled up and I felt the weight of a stare. I looked up to meet eyes in the rearview mirror and realized the woman in the driver’s seat in Tatiana’s coat and hat wasn’t Tatiana.

  It was Anya.

  Danielle, in the front seat, was staring at her and not moving.

  “Anya,” I said.

  “She has a gun,” Danielle said, very calmly. “Aimed at me.”

  “You are not taking my baby,” Anya said. “Danielle, you drive. Get out of the car and come around to driver’s seat while I slide over. If you run, if you yell, I will shoot both of these Americans.”

  Her English had improved.

  “You wouldn’t. Not in front of the baby,” I said.

  “I will,” she said, and I believed her.

  “You would hurt his ears with a gunshot,” Kyle said calmly.

  “Then don’t make me shoot,” she said.

  Danielle got out of the car, Anya slid over while keeping the gun aimed at Kyle, and Danielle got back in the car. She was sweating despite the cold.

  “Anya, don’t. Don’t do this. It will never work,” Danielle said. “Let them go and we’ll go talk about this.”

  “Drive. I will tell you where.”

  Danielle pulled out of the lot, tentatively, as one would driving with a gun aimed at you and with icy conditions. “Where is Tatiana?”

  “Visiting her sister. I took her coat, with the car keys in the pocket, and hat off the rack at the service entrance.” She stumbled over her English here. She risked a glance at our baby; I realized this might be the closest she’d been to him since giving birth.

  “Anya, do not do this. There is time to stop this, right now,” Kyle said. “If something happens to us, Boris will know you did it.”

  “Boris won’t care what I do now.”

  We reached the main road. “Turn left,” she ordered.

  We drove into the increasing whiteness. I held on to Grant’s hand.

  Danielle was silent. Anya was silent. Kyle tried to reason with Anya again and she said, “Shut up or I’ll shoot you in knee,” and he shut up.

  Grant fussed. His toys were in the bag, now in the trunk. “He needs something to play with,” I said.

  Anya frowned. Then she unclasped a bracelet from her wrist and tossed it to me. It was lovely, silver and small emeralds. I danged it above Grant and he thought it was a toy. The crying stopped. I could see Anya fighting back tears at the sight of this baby playing with her jewelry.

  “If you love Sasha,” I said to her, “you’ll stop this right now and let us go.”

  “Don’t try and talk love to me,” Anya said. Her English was better than when she’d asked me for help. She’d been playing on my sympathies then, but not now.

  “You could have come to the court. You didn’t. Your boyfriend is married. He’s not going to help you. This isn’t the solution.” If you had ever told me I’d be trying to talk a distraught mother into giving up her child, I would not have believed you. But here we were.

  “Give me his passport,” she said. We couldn’t take Grant out of the country without that.

  She guessed correctly that Kyle had it and gestured at him with the gun. Then she told Danielle to take the next right.

  Kyle didn’t produce the passport.

  “Now,” she said, putting the gun up to Danielle’s head, “as there will be no adoption, consultant not needed.” Danielle gave out a little shriek.

  I thought: She’ll do it.

  Kyle handed her our baby’s passport. My throat felt thick as she tucked
it into her own coat. She gave Danielle some more directions—we were off the main road now, and we pulled into a town that looked abandoned. There were signs in Russian, a bright yellow.

  How many abandoned towns have you seen outside of movies? Well, in Russia, they have them. Either because the land around them gets bought up by oligarchs or the government moves everyone or the town dies for all the reasons towns have died throughout time. For one awful second I thought, “What if this is like Chernobyl, radioactive or something?” But then I knew they wouldn’t have the orphanage close to it. It was just two streets and a dozen small houses left behind. This town appeared to have died a natural death.

  “Stop the car. Park by that car.” She pointed to a car parked farther down the street. It sat next to a cozy-looking house, where a cat peered out from the window, watching our little drama. Is this where she’d been living, with only a cat for company?

  “You walked from here,” Danielle said.

  “Yes. The roads wind, but going by the fields, it’s only a few kilometers on foot.”

  “You know this will never work. You know us taking the baby is the only way this works,” Danielle said.

  “Give me your mobile phones,” Anya said. We handed them to her.

  “Get out of the car. And you”—she looked at me—“you take out the car seat while he holds my child.”

  “He’s not yours anymore. You made your choice,” I said.

  “You are going to destroy both your lives,” Danielle said. “Stop this, and it’s forgotten. And forgiven. You can go back to your life and no one will know.”

  “I’m saving us both,” she said. “You would use us.”

  It was like there was another conversation happening and I was hearing only part of it.

  “Anya,” I said. “I didn’t lie to you. I brought him to the window. So you could see him. So you could say goodbye to him. Because your country has given him, legally, to us. Because you gave him up. You made your choice just like you made it before. He is not yours, not anymore. Please. You cannot have that gun around him and be telling me you are going to take good care of him.”