“O—kay,” Mary Ellen replies.
Meanwhile, her mother remains silent. She has a look of utter confusion on her face, but otherwise she is motionless and mute during the proceedings.
“These things can get out of hand very quickly,” the lawyer, Schnell, continues. “Therefore, it is necessary that we all be proactive in these matters, and my—our—clients are prepared to testify in the upcoming trial, if there is to be one.”
“Good,” Mary Ellen says, feeling like a mechanical version of herself.
“They—each of them—is willing to state that they engaged in these activities under duress and fear of reprisal from you, one Mary Ellen Hanneford.”
Her heart skips a beat.
She looks first up at her mother, who seems to be somewhere else right now, and then to her left—where her lawyer should be—before letting out an exasperated sound.
“That’s—that’s not true. That’s not the way it happened.”
She can’t get the words out fast enough, and they seem to get lost behind her rage and sputtering anger.
The lawyer, Mr. Schnell, smiles that alligator smile of his, all teeth and eyes. “I’m afraid you might be in some trouble there,” he says.
Out of a folder in front of him, Schnell retrieves several typed sheets of paper, and he places them on the table in front of him, careful not to let them get too close to Mary Ellen.
“These,” he says, tapping one index finger on the pages, “are signed, sworn affidavits from our clients, stating in no uncertain terms not just your complicity in these matters but also your role as the leader in them.”
She glances from Gillian to Audrey, and then her eyes settle on Madeline, who smirks at her from across the table.
This is the first moment she sees the details of the long con.
She was meant to be on this side of the table the entire time.
“And because they are sensitive to the suffering on all sides of this issue, they are prepared to take care of any legal costs incurred during the whole of your...situation.”
“But that’s not—”
“In addition,” he continues, cutting her off, “they would donate a sizable amount of money to the family of the deceased, as a means of offsetting any potential liability stemming from your prank.”
Liability? Is that how they see the life and death of Everett Coughlin, as some risk that needs to be dealt with? She can barely contain herself, and she feels the heat boiling over deep inside herself, in the place where she tries to shove all of her sadness.
“I see how you’re reacting. It’s written plainly on your face. However, I’d caution you against saying—or doing—anything you regret at this point. Indeed, it would behoove you to check yourself. A family in your position could do with a quiet settlement from—”
Finally, she erupts. “I don’t want your goddamned money,” she says. “I’m not looking for a payday. I was under the impression that we’d all face this together, because we were all involved in equal parts.”
“And if you want that to be true,” the lawyer replies, “then you will have to convince someone else—perhaps a judge or jury—of what occurred that fateful night. The statements issued by our clients are...ironclad. Think, maybe, of what your father would suggest you do in this situation.”
That’s it. The final straw, yanked free and snapped in two.
“I might as well be dead,” Mary Ellen says, through choked tears, as she stands up and exits the room without looking back.
But then again, she doesn’t need to.
Look back, that is.
She can feel her ex-friend’s eyes burning a hole in the back of her cheap blouse.
“You’re dead to me,” Madeline St. Clair says from somewhere behind her, and it is the last thing she hears before she slams the door. She doesn’t need to see her to know the Bitch of Belle Meade is actually smiling at all of this.
21
NOW
The next morning, before the sun’s faded rays pour through the bars in the windows, a squat woman with the beginnings of a mustache opens my cell and informs me to gather my belongings. I want to protest, but my joy is so great I cannot. Instead, I allow myself to be escorted from station to station in the jail, as various documents are signed, and I get closer and closer to freedom.
Instead of being released, however, I get escorted to a small room with a table, two chairs, and a window. It’s an interrogation room, but so far as I know, I’m on the verge of being cut loose, so I bring it up to the female guard.
“I think this might be a mistake,” I say, but I’m met with an equal and opposite reaction.
“I’m only doing what I’m told,” the mustachioed female guard says before slamming the door behind her.
I take a seat, and a few minutes later, Detective Ciccotelli ambles in and retrieves the chair across from me.
He lets go of a long and disquieting sigh. “I think you are owed an apology,” he says, his eyes flicking from the glare on the table to me.
It’s not something he wants to say, but he does anyway, and he doesn’t shy away. I am struck by the fact that this man has delivered about as much miserable news to the people of Nashville as anybody alive.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I got something wrong. One of my hunches backfired.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“You are cleared, for the time being. It seems your friend, Mrs. Winstead—”
“She’s alive?”
He nods. “And in a state, to be sure. She’s going to be unwell for a very long time, but one of the first things she did upon waking was identify the person she claims is responsible for all of this. So, yeah. You’re going to be walking out of here in a matter of moments. I just wanted to make sure I pulled you for a formal apology.”
“Well, that’s—I don’t need anything. But I do need to know...”
His eyes drop, and he breaks his gaze for the first time. He sniffs—an affectation—and then says, “Timothy—”
“Allred.”
He nods. “That’s right.”
“Where is he? Have you arrested him?”
“No official word just yet. We’re still sorting out the details.”
There’s Kleenex on the table, and he takes this moment to slide them across to me. I take it out of instinct, and yet I don’t feel the tears the way I probably should.
Instead, I pull a few free of the box and wipe the corners of my eyes. The shock is still settling in when Detective Ciccotelli continues.
“It appears that Allred did his time quietly, but a few days after he was discharged, he boarded a plane under an assumed name.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah,” he replies, almost sheepishly. He opens his mouth to say more, but he doesn’t quite get there. Instead, he closes it and clasps his hands on the table in front of him.
So I help jumpstart the conversation.
“And Audrey said—”
“She said a man showed up at their house, broke in, was slinking around, and then he attacked them. Shot her husband and then tied her up. Kept talking about ‘unwinding the clock.’”
The exact words Allred used once upon a time to threaten me.
He once sent a long diatribe about time that mentioned a philosopher named Heidegger, among other things. He believed it was possible, somehow, to undo the damage of the past by reclaiming the present. A pretty crazy way of framing vigilante justice, but one he was committed to.
“You all right, Ms. Hanneford? You look a little pale.”
“No, it’s just, I mean, that sounds exactly like something he would say.”
“You couldn’t apply any of that insight regarding his whereabouts, now could you?”
“Isn’t that supposed to be your job?”
“Fair enough,” he replies. “But I don’t know this guy. I don’t have a read on him at all. He’s invaded my ecosystem and is wreaking havoc on par with a Bundy or Rami
rez. Unless he’s stalking you right now, I have no clue where he might be.”
“In which case, you’re all flying blind.”
“More or less. I don’t want to give up the ghost, but if he don’t want to be found—and he doesn’t make a stupid mistake—then he can ride under the radar for some time.”
The pure horror of that statement sinks in, as I contemplate living life as a target. Then, something occurs to me.
“Has Audrey’s awakening from the coma been reported out yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“And there’s no one who would leak it to the press?”
“There’s a pretty tight lid on this thing.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. It needs to be ironclad.”
“It’s ironclad,” he responds, not unkindly.
I can’t believe I’m about to say the words that come out of my mouth. “I think I should try to lure Timothy Allred out of hiding.”
“You sure about that?”
I nod. “But first, I need to speak with an old acquaintance.”
Audrey looks like a science experiment, full of tubes and hooked up to all manner of medical equipment. Her skin is even paler than usual, and the dark roots in her highlighted mane reveal traces of gray. My own hair has faded to a dirty blonde over the years, but even with all the stress I’ve managed to stave off the beginning of middle age.
Audrey, though, has evidently been holding herself together with makeup and blowouts, because she is old well beyond her years. Perhaps it was the attack which has brought her to this point, but I’m thinking maybe not.
When she opens her eyes, she has a broken doll quality that makes me want to look away, but of course, I can’t, so I just smile and make the best of it.
“How are you doing, Aud?”
It takes her a moment to focus, but when she finally sees me—really puts her eyes on me—she begins to cry uncontrollably.
“It was horrible, M.E.,” she says. “He looked like a wild animal. I’ll never forget the way he looked at me.”
In my mind, I can see the moment I discovered him, naked and bleeding, on the floor of my apartment, having made a living metaphor of himself. Then, I try to imagine what a few years of detention in a psychiatric facility might have done to him, and I can’t help but shudder. She’s definitely lucky to be alive, even if she doesn’t quite look it right now.
“Coming out of a coma is a fucked-up thing,” she continues. “I’ve had hallucinations, you know. It’s so irrational. I know I’m here, and not back at the house, and I know—I just know—he’s not actually coming for me, but then I see him. He’s standing in the doorway, holding his gun. Right where you’re standing, as a matter of fact.”
Somehow, intangibly, I feel the outline of the man and the murderer surrounding me, and so I step aside. And then I say the thing I came here to say, the thing I’ve been thinking about since Detective Ciccotelli told me what Audrey says happened to her.
It’s the last thing I want to say, but I have to. Common decency would have me do the thing they wouldn’t back when we were in high school.
“I’m sorry,” I manage to say. “I know that this is all my fault—every single bit of it—and I’m sorry.”
“Yes, well. You couldn’t have known that the psychopath would follow you here. And I’m sure it’s difficult to live with this on your conscience. I get it. I know how hard it must be for you. And to think, you might be next.”
I try to hide my shock.
Then I remember: This is Audrey. She is the star of her own show, and she doesn’t quite possess the same sense of empathy as most human beings.
It’s not that she’s malicious. She’s just not very self-aware.
“My mom always told me that I’m a survivor,” she says.
“You are,” I reply, the bile rising to the back of my throat.
“We all are, I guess.”
She has the glazed over look of an astronaut speeding into the eye of God.
“Is there anything you...remember about the other night?” I ask. “Anything you haven’t or didn’t want to tell the police?”
Her face goes blank for a moment, and I think maybe she’s having a stroke when a single tear appears on her cheek.
“I refuse to tell that one detective, what’s his name?”
“Ciccotelli.”
“Yeah, right. It seems like he’s just looking for something, and I’m afraid of what he’ll do if he finds out something he doesn’t like.”
I nod, but really, I don’t know what she’s talking about. She looks a little loopy, so maybe the drugs, or the coma, have done some damage to her.
It’s the eyes. They glisten with a new kind of intensity, and so I prompt her. “What were you going to tell me?”
She looks away. “There’s something about that night no one knows about.”
In the stillness of the room, the sound of the beeping machines and the nurses’ voices from outside are amplified. I can feel my breathing, can feel each molecule of oxygen reach its destination. I focus on it, because I’m afraid I’ll pass out.
Instead of pushing her, I let her linger there. If she doesn’t speak now, while she’s in this state, she may never get around to it. She’ll come to her senses and realize she’s doing something rash, and she’ll keep this—whatever it is—to herself.
Forever.
“After we...after you left Gillian’s house,” she begins, “we all hung out and continued saying things to him.”
“Everett Coughlin.”
She flashes a sad look at me. “Right. Yeah. He has a name. I get it.”
“Just saying,” I respond.
“Anyway, that night. After you left—”
“I was assaulted and kicked out of Gil’s house.”
“Please let me tell you. After that, you can berate me to the end of time. But for now, allow me the space to say what I need to say.”
I have to force down twenty years of anger over this point, but somehow I manage. When I nod, she continues.
“The night—that night—we went to his house.”
I feign shock.
“All three of you?”
“No, just me and Mads. We got this idea—Jesus, it sounds so cruel—that it would be...fun to watch it happen. To see him do whatever he was going to do. God, it’s just so sick.”
I nod.
“But we did it. Madeline brought Gillian’s camera, and we made this big production about filming it. But then Madeline got spooked by something, and she went home.”
“And you?”
There is a moment, just before she speaks, in which I think maybe the reel-to-reel of reality will strip away and be flung off into the darkness, and I will never find out what happened that night.
But then the moment passes, and the two of us remain.
She seems to clench the sheet, to hold tightly on it so as not to float away, and then she shakes her head. “I stayed.”
All of a sudden, I feel weak. The chair by her bed is too close for my comfort, so I pull it a few feet back and sit down, trying not to topple over onto my face.
“And that’s it?”
Another shake of the head. “I felt like I had something to prove.”
“To whom?”
“Madeline, of course,” she says. “Don’t pretend like you didn’t see how she treated me. She might have scapegoated you for the death of Everett Coughlin, but she always tied me to the whipping post. And no matter how poorly she treated me, somehow I always felt the need to get into her good graces. To win her favor. I was her dog. Her little bitch.”
“And you felt like that would be the ultimate gesture of loyalty.”
She nods. “I assumed videotaping the last moments of his life would make things different between us. I thought she and I would reach a kind of détente, and then she would respect me.”
It almost makes me smile. “Guess we were all naive back then.”
“I was more nai
ve than most,” she replies. “I craved her attention, and all she gave me in return was the back of her hand.”
“And you thought witnessing someone else’s death would somehow make that relationship less complicated?”
“I guess I figured she would see what I had done for her—for our friendship—and come around to the fact that I was her best and most loyal friend.”
“So—that night...”
“Madeline freaked out,” she replies. “It was weird, but it was the thing we had been talking about all year. Now that it was coming to fruition, Madeline...”
“Chickened out.”
She glances away. “Lucky for her.”
“Wait a minute,” I reply, thinking of the video. “Tell me you didn’t. Is that the fucking thing you left in my house? Fucking evidence?”
“I was a different person back then.”
“But that didn’t stop you from keeping it a secret all these years.”
My voice is as cold as the icicles in my guts, and God help me, all I want to do is slap her. Somehow, I manage not to, but the urge continues to circulate through me like cheap booze.
“When did you finally fess up to Madeline?” I ask.
“...Years ago.”
“And did you never, not even once, consider discussing this with the police?”
Audrey gives me a look like I just landed on this planet. “Well, no. It’s just—no! Oh my God, no. What would that accomplish, Mary Ellen?”
“It would maybe give the family some solace. Some closure.”
“Would it? To dredge this all up now?”
“Or at least clear me of some of the guilt in all of this. I went to jail for all of you.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of letting sleeping dogs lie?”
I bite my tongue. Then, I say it. “No. But there is such a thing as common decency, Audrey. It doesn’t have anything to do with who is on Instagram or how many FaceBook friends you have.”
She smiles. It’s the biggest fuck you ever. “Then you obviously don’t understand how the world works. The only thing that matters is who you are and—more importantly—who your friends are. My whole life is built around the people I know. If that suddenly went away, then I’d suddenly cease to exist.”
Suicide Blondes Page 21
