God Only Knows

by Xavier Knight

  Maybe the unwelcome interruption was actually confirmation that she didn’t need to drag Marcus into this mess. Cassie considered this possibility as she drove north on Far Hills toward downtown Dayton. After all, it had now been nearly two weeks since Whitlock had first entered her life, and so far he had done nothing but harass her with the one scrap of information he had: the fact that she and Toya were at the Christian Light homecoming game, unsupervised, on the same night when Eddie had apparently been attacked. If he had any additional evidence —if he had any evidence at all, given that all he really had was hearsay from Toya’s brother, Lenny —Cassie had come to believe that he would have presented it by now. She wasn’t even sure he knew that Julia and Terry had also been involved.

  Maybe he just wanted money, or some form of compensation. If so, he had come to the right person.

  9

  Peter Whitlock was exactly where Cassie had been told to expect him, seated at the front counter of the Golden Nugget, one of the area’s most popular breakfast establishments. When she unceremoniously cut the lengthy waiting line trailing outside the front door and eased into the seat next to his, the detective nearly choked on his forkful of corned beef hash.

  Cassie indulged in an inner celebration —a pump of the fist, a yell of “yeah!” —as her tormentor did a double take and pushed his plate back. “Mrs. Gillette?”

  “Oh, is that my name now, Detective?” Cassie looked over Whitlock’s shoulder, confirmed that the two customers to his left, one male and one female, wore city police uniforms. “You haven’t been that respectful during our recent phone conversations.”

  She had spoken just loud enough that the man to Whitlock’s left trained an inquisitive gaze first on Cassie, then on Whitlock. Clearly sensing his friend’s interest, the detective slapped the officer on the back, nodding toward Cassie. “Mrs. Cassandra Gillette, meet Officers Perkins and Jones. Two of Dayton’s finest patrol cops.”

  “He’s saying that to our faces, you see,” replied Perkins, the nosy male. “As soon as we leave, he’ll tell you what he really thinks of us.”

  “Mrs. Gillette,” Whitlock said, eyes darting between his colleagues and Cassie, “is not only an old friend of the family, she’s one of the best realtors in the Miami Valley. She’s helping me figure out how to sell my mother’s house, since Mom wants to downsize into a condo.”

  Cassie played along with a few more minutes of the small talk, simultaneously ordering a mug of decaf tea and some wheat toast. When the patrol cops had excused themselves, Whitlock continued to clean his plate, his eyes only meeting Cassie’s with the occasional peripheral glance. “Nice jump you got, catching me during my daily social hour.” The detective flashed a smile that probably looked charming from a distance. “You call yourself sending some sort of message?”

  “Just that I have sources of my own,” Cassie said, absentmindedly stirring her tea and glancing at her cooling toast. “I thought it was time to show that we each hold some cards in this situation, Detective.”

  Whitlock sighed. “Really.” His tone held the false softness of one who’d been pleasantly surprised. “Well, I guess you have me there. I mean, when it comes down to it, I don’t have a clue about what you did or didn’t do to my brother.”

  Cassie suppressed a flicker of hope at the admission. “Look, I have prayed over this, and I realized I may have seemed insensitive about your situation. I’m an only child, but I wouldn’t want to even imagine what you’ve suffered, seeing your only brother reduced to such a sad state.”

  “Not here,” Whitlock suddenly said before picking up a napkin and wiping his mouth. As he grabbed his wallet from his sport coat, he extended a hand. “Shake, and smile as if we’re parting ways. Then drive over to Carillon Park. I’ll be in the white Pontiac —”

  “Yes, I know the make and model of your car,” Cassie said, her lips flattening with a frown. “I’ve seen it sitting outside my house so often, I’ve pretty much memorized it by now.”

  Pulling into the park’s main lot, Cassie chose a space near Whitlock’s car but noted it was empty. Feeling her forehead wrinkle in concern, she kept her engine running but glanced around feverishly. A sudden knock at the passenger door startled her: Whitlock, who had seemingly materialized from the gravel lining the parking lot.

  “Sorry if I surprised you there,” he said once she had let him inside. “Not always a pleasant feeling, is it?” He settled back against the passenger seat’s plush leather. “You want to tell me who your inside contacts with the police are, who knew the details of my daily schedule?”

  “I’ll let you use your detecting skills to figure that out,” Cassie shot back, her arms crossed now, despite herself. She had prayed over exactly what to say to Whitlock, as well as how to say it, but now that he was in her face, she felt nearly overcome by a pulsing, defensive anger.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Whitlock responded, waving a hand dismissively and looking out his window. “Trust me, no one on the force is going to hassle me for following up promising leads on a cold case involving my brother.”

  Cassie drew her shoulders up. “They won’t let you break the law, though, not the way you’ve already done by threatening my son.”

  “Oh, okay,” he replied, a grim chuckle escaping. “If you say so, Cassie, then it must be true. I’m sorry,” he said, a sarcastic look of shame on his face. “Please don’t tell on me.”

  “I came to find you,” Cassie said, reaching for words she had practiced several times the past twenty-four hours, “because I want to end all the threats and the nastiness, Detective. We’re both children of God, and I believe we can resolve your concerns while respecting one another.” She reached into the well on her driver’s-side door and placed the slim three-ring binder she’d retrieved into Whitlock’s lap. “There. Open it, please.”

  The detective’s eyebrows arched and he shot a wary glance before opening the binder to reveal the first page. As his eyes focused on the paper, which was a page from the Dayton Area Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service (MLS) site, Cassie began to narrate for him. “What you’re looking at is information on several homes that I own as an investor. I bought three of these from clients after they proved hard to sell. In every case, I knew enough about the neighborhoods in question to know that things were in the works —local plant expansions, the establishment of a new Wal-Mart, and so on —to eventually drive up house values in these areas. I invested a little money into each property so it would be in more competitive shape, and since then, I’ve been renting them out profitably. When I sense the market in each area has peaked, I’ll sell each one for a significant profit.”

  “Must be nice to have that sort of cash laying around,” Whitlock replied, his eyes dancing from one sheet to the next with curiosity. “My salary barely covers my rent and my ex’s, along with child support for our son.”

  Cassie wondered if this man was reading her mind. “What if I told you that you don’t need any cash to make this type of investment?”

  His blue eyes narrowed, Whitlock turned toward Cassie. “Keep talking.”

  “Although I don’t appreciate the way you first came at me, threatening my son and all,” Cassie said, “the Lord has spoken to me. I understand that you and your mother suffered great pain behind Eddie’s fate. Now, I can’t help you understand why Toya’s brother tried to finger all of us as if we had something to do with it. As you know, Lenny was a crackhead in debt to three or four loan sharks, so I wouldn’t think his word qualifies as gospel.” When Whitlock frowned intensely, Cassie was surprised to find herself placing a hand to his shoulder. “Pete, I honestly don’t know why Lenny misled you, but I can do one thing about all of this. As one who grew up with your brother, I can offer financial assistance for the costs associated with Eddie’s care. You said your mother went into unbelievable levels of debt for Eddie’s treatment and care, right?”

  Whitlock’s posture had softened, but he stared out his window as he replied, “
You think?”

  “I’m offering,” Cassie said, “to sell you three of these properties for a nominal investment, say a thousand dollars each. You’ll instantly have a couple hundred thousand dollars in equity relative to market value, plus rental income from the tenants.” Nearly collapsing with relief, Cassie opened her arms, her palms facing up. “Your mother could be debt-free before you know it.”

  Whitlock sat now, with a bowed head, eyes boring into the MLS profiles as he flipped from one page to the next. Content to leave her in suspense, he was silent for a while before moving a finger over to the control panel on the passenger door. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said, lowering his window without asking permission, “I’m gonna need a smoke to respond to this.”

  Cassie fiddled with her hands, let her gaze wander out toward the grove of trees blowing in the wind. “Take your time.”

  Cassie fought a dry heave as fumes from Whitlock’s lit cigarette invaded the pores of her car. Insisting on keeping her cool, she rested a hand in her lap as the detective finally spoke. “Do you think I’m in this for money, Mrs. Gillette?”

  “I think,” Cassie said, “that you’re probably still sorting out your motives. I don’t think you went out looking for evidence that there’s more to what happened with your brother than met the eye. I think Lenny Parks had fallen on hard times, and thought he could get a break by pretending to have answers to the mystery you’ve suffered over for years.”

  Whitlock stared hard at her now, his features growing brittle with tension. “So answer my question. Do you really think I’m in this for the money?”

  “I’m offering you a token of goodwill,” Cassie said, her hands rising defensively, though she didn’t feel physically threatened. At least not yet. “I’ve told you, Detective. My friends and I, and all of our classmates for that matter, spent the rest of our junior high and high-school years praying for Eddie’s healing. Your pain is real to me.”

  Whitlock took another pull on his cigarette, intently exhaling toward Cassie’s twitching nose. “Well, that was a case of wasted prayers, wasn’t it?”

  “My point is, we cared. We really did.” More than ever, Cassie found herself wishing that she could just tell the painful truth. Through much prayer and meditation, she had wrestled with God, asking how she could possibly expose herself and, more important, her family to the potential consequences of an honest confession. Why, of all people, did Eddie Walker’s brother have to be this humanistic, vengeful policeman, one so clearly willing to abuse his authority?

  Once they had each obtained college degrees —Marcus earned his four years after high school from the University of Dayton; she earned hers two years later from Wright State —Cassie had tried to talk her husband into moving as far away from Ohio as possible. From the time M.J. was eight until he was eleven, Cassie searched want ads in major newspapers, like the Washington Post, and visited Web sites of publications across the nation, hoping to find openings that would grab Marcus’s attention. When Marcus finally insisted that he had no interest in leaving Dayton, given that the management of the Daily News was allowing him opportunities he might not get anywhere else, she ultimately abandoned her efforts. It wasn’t as if she could come out and tell him the real reason she wanted to get away; the lingering fear that Eddie Walker would rise from his hospital bed and seek his revenge.

  Cassie eventually had relented from her attempt to leave Dayton and convinced herself she should stop living in fear. God knew her heart, and, for that matter, the hearts of Toya, Julia, and Terry. The events of the night were a tragedy for all of them; the tragedies were just most dramatic for Eddie. Cassie had carried on with life by trusting that if God ever saw fit for her and her old friends to relive that night, it would be through a reasonable vessel —perhaps Eddie’s mother or another family member with a strong Christ-centered faith, one seeking closure, not revenge.

  Instead, God had placed before her Peter Whitlock, and she had no confidence right now that a confession would result in anything but direct harm to her and her family. And what ensured that he would stop there? Julia, Terry, and Toya, along with their respective loved ones, would be in harm’s way too.

  Whitlock flung his used cigarette out the passenger-side window, then returned to staring her down. “I think I told you shortly after we first met,” he said, “that I wouldn’t let up on you until I was convinced you had told me everything you knew about what happened to Eddie. Do you recall that?”

  “I’ve heard every word you’ve said, loud and clear,” Cassie replied, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in her own ears. “Don’t respond in anger,” something told her. “You don’t know what he’s capable of.” “I am telling you that I don’t know how Eddie wound up in front of that truck. I can’t solve that for you. What I can do,” she said, feeling like a broken record as she pointed toward the notebook in his lap, “is help erase some of your family’s debt so that your mother can enjoy her senior years and still take care of your brother.”

  A newly lit cigarette dangling from between his lips, Whitlock shook his head slowly. “You’ve failed a very crucial test, Cassie.” Sighing, he looked toward the floor of the car before whipping his gaze back to hers. “An early, simple lesson you learn as a detective is to spoon-feed your information to a suspect. The more you tell them, the more raw material they have to work with as they build their lies. The less raw material they have, the more they wind up hanging themselves with their own words.”

  “Okay, fine.” Cassie reached over, grabbed the notebook unevenly, and jerked it into her lap. “You’re clearly intent on doing nothing but antagonizing —”

  Whitlock quickly snared Cassie’s hand in one of his. “You think all I’ve got on you is Lenny Parks’s word that you and his sister were hanging out at the game the same night Eddie was attacked?” Holding fast even as Cassie tried to wriggle away, the detective yanked her face to within an inch of his. “Lenny told me himself, ‘You ain’t got to trust me, Detective. Toya wrote it all down.’ That’s right,” he continued, smiling wide as Cassie’s eyes turned to slits. “Toya, if no one else, had a conscience about what you did to my brother. She wrote a confession letter to Lenny, even though she waited to give it to him just as she was leaving the country a few years back.”

  Cassie knew she should keep her mouth shut, but she was no hardened criminal. “I don’t believe you. Toya would never do that.”

  “The letter is handwritten, just waiting for me to subject it to an analysis to confirm the author.” Whitlock’s confidence was a bubble permeating Cassie’s car. “She didn’t tell everything, Cassie, just enough to admit you all had something to do with it. How you all got into a name-calling match with him and decided to teach him a lesson for using the ‘N word.’ I’m working on a lot more than a hunch here.”

  Cassie was stunned enough that she felt as if her heart were in free fall. She wasn’t sure how to respond to what she’d just heard. She still couldn’t afford to confess —not to this vengeful, likely crooked cop —as they sat in a nearly empty parking lot with no onlookers. The best she could manage, as she finally broke free of Whitlock’s grip, was a tepid “Why haven’t you tested the handwriting yet, then?”

  “Because I’m patient,” he responded, “and because you don’t reopen a cold case without strong evidence. I want live corroboration of what’s in the letter, and more. Tell me this, Cassie,” he continued. “Toya says in the letter that you were at the heart of the night’s events, that everything jumped off because Eddie was so infatuated with you. Apparently, the other girls didn’t really like you even, they just felt sorry for you.”

  Despite herself, Cassie leaned against her driver’s-side door, ready to bolt from the car if she had to. “I’m not talking about this with you anymore, not here,” she replied. “I don’t feel safe. If you want to question me, Detective, send an objective officer of the law to my house, where I’ll gladly undergo interrogation with my husband in the room.” Cassie nearly sto
od in her seat as she raised her eyes to glare at Whitlock. “And get out of my car.”

  Whitlock sat back, a smirk on his face. “Why don’t you just unburden yourself here? You’ll feel better. Afterward, we’ll get accounts from your other partners in crime so the record can be corrected. And, yes, as part of that process, my mother and I will be happy to bankrupt you by taking ownership of every property you own.”

  “That ship has sailed,” she replied, a part of her disagreeing with the words but feeling the need to be forceful with this potential maniac. “Get out of my car!” Even as she spoke, she grasped the driver’s-side door handle, ready to bolt for the park’s visitor center —which she prayed was actually open by now.

  Whitlock, however, opened the passenger-side door first, flooding the car with a chilly breeze. “So that’s a no.” Swinging his feet around onto the lot’s pavement, he kept his face turned toward Cassie’s. “I understand if you need time. There’s a lot at stake once you confess everything. I’d probably need a few weeks to get up my nerve too.”

  “Why are you harassing me? Toya’s the one you think already confessed to something.” The honest question welled up suddenly, exploding from Cassie with such force that it froze Whitlock in place as he stood.

  A misleading smile on his face, the detective turned back around and leaned inside the car. “To be simple about it, Cassie, of the girls I know were involved, you’re just the one who’s fair game. I mean, Toya lives in France with her big-shot executive husband, and Terry is a welfare mom in Cleveland. Then we have you —living right here in Dayton with a picture-perfect family and a very successful business. If you were in my shoes, who would you go after first?”