“So if that’s what Axel was going to tell me, why would he be inside the Deep Lake building?”
Another shrug. “How do I know? Why did Axel do anything?”
“How seriously were you dating him?”
She started walking again. “Who says we were dating?”
“I got the impression that was what you wanted.”
“We got together a couple times. That’s all.”
“Got together?”
“Axel…he wasn’t really the dating kind.”
“Were you supposed to, um, get together with him the night he died?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“Well…I heard he had a box of condoms on him.” She froze, looking so wounded I could practically see the outline of my knee in her gut. “Some people seemed to think he was hoping to, er…”
“To get laid.”
“Right, but…I’ve been thinking about it, and I wondered if maybe he had a date later.” At least, I damn well hope so.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“You don’t know who he was seeing?”
She started sniffling again. “No.”
“Look, Dorrie, I know it’s probably none of my business, but I’m really not sure Axel Robinette is worth crying over. He obviously wasn’t very nice to you. And, I mean, come on—he may even have been the one who sold the drugs that killed your friends.”
She went from morose to irate in a heartbeat.
“No way. You don’t know anything. There’s no way he would’ve done that. Axel was… He was just really special, okay? He was gonna be, like, a big star someday. He was gonna go out to L.A. and get a record deal and everything. So just shut up about Axel, okay? Just shut up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
She pulled another cigarette out of the pack, her hands shaking as she lit up. We kept walking, in not-so-companionable silence.
“Dorrie,” I said finally, “why do you think someone would want to kill them?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’ve been thinking about this a long time,” I went on, “and I’m pretty sure Tom and Shaun and Billy didn’t just die randomly. I think somebody killed them on purpose, and I think maybe you know why.”
She stopped short. “Are you crazy?”
“Probably. But all the same, that’s what I think.”
“Yeah, well, think whatever you want.”
“Was there somebody in school, maybe somebody they did something to, either accidentally or on purpose? I mean, kids don’t always think before they do things. Maybe someone just flew off the—”
“Stop it. Just stop it, okay?”
“And what about Alan? There were four tabs of that acid out there, Dorrie. Four. What are the odds that the last one wasn’t intended for him?” I grabbed her by the shoulder to get her to stop walking and face me. “So why didn’t he take it? Was it really meant for someone else? Was Alan in on it all along?”
That’s when she slapped me across the face.
Honestly, it was like something out of a bloody soap opera. She just hauled off and smacked me. And although it didn’t actually hurt that much, it made a hell of a noise, echoing through the woods like a rifle shot. She stood there for a minute like she couldn’t quite believe what she’d done, then turned around and sprinted down the path back toward the school.
Apparently, Dorrie Benson had spent some time on the J.V. track team; at any rate, it was obvious there was no way I could catch up to her. So I walked back to JHS and, to no great surprise, found that there was only one red Beetle left in the parking lot.
I checked my face in the rearview mirror as I drove back to the paper, tracking the development of the red welt that was rising on my cheek. This exercise in vanity must have made me blow through a stop sign or something, because the next thing I knew there was a G.P.D. squad car flashing its lights and hooting its siren at me. I pulled over, hoping that whoever it was behind the wheel was familiar with the banana bread I regularly send to the station house with Cody.
No luck; the cop looked vaguely familiar—okay, they all did—but he didn’t seem particularly friendly. “Alexandra Bernier?”
“Um, yeah. …What’s the problem, Officer?”
“Would you step out of the car, please?”
“Are you serious?”
“Just step out the car, ma’am. Do it slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Is this some kind of joke? Because if Cody put you up to this, I’m going to—”
“Ma’am, just do as you’re told and step out of the car.”
The guy sounded like a parody of a drill sergeant. If he was putting me on, he was doing a hell of a job of it.
I followed his orders—not that I had much choice. When I got out of the car, I noticed another police cruiser had parked across the street.
“Listen,” I said, “can you please just tell me what’s going on?”
“Ma’am, are there any illegal drugs in your vehicle?”
“What?”
“Are there any illegal drugs in your vehicle?”
“Of course not.”
“Would you consent to a search of your vehicle?”
“Is this for real?” No response. “Fine, go ahead. Look wherever you want. For chrissake, there’s nothing in there.”
Now, at this point in the story, I have to pause to apologize to my mother. The woman is a defense lawyer—and a damn good one. And as such, she is deeply ashamed that her offspring would be so stupid as to toss out her constitutional rights like a goddamn gum wrapper.
But give me a break; I knew there was nothing incriminating in my car, right? I knew for sure I was innocent, which means I also knew I had nothing to worry about.
This sentiment proved to be highly inaccurate.
The second I gave him the go-ahead the first cop went rooting around in my car; the other two kept an eye on me like I might make a break for it. The guy looked in the glove compartment, inside the trunk, and under the seats. Meanwhile, I stood there anticipating the delicious moment when they’d have to apologize for acting like fascist morons.
Then he pulled out a bag of white powder the size of a regulation softball.
I really, really hoped it was Sweet’n Low.
“What the hell is that?” I said. “Hey, that’s not mine.”
The cop eyed the Ziploc bag, and though I expected him to taste it or something, he just nodded at one of his buddies. The next thing I knew, somebody was grabbing my arms behind my back.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “You don’t actually think that stuff is mine, do you? Somebody must’ve put it there. Hold on just a—”
“You’re under arrest for possession of cocaine. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right…”
“Look, this is obviously some horrible mistake. Would somebody please just call Detective Cody and—”
“…anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you desire an attorney and cannot afford one—”
“Oh, for chrissake, I know the Miranda. Now will you please just call and tell him somebody planted a bunch of drugs in his girlfriend’s car?”
That got his attention. “You’re Detective Cody’s—”
“Yeah. Now will you take these goddamn handcuffs off me?”
“I can’t.” The look on his face was, at least, vaguely regretful. “Why the hell not?”
“You may be Detective Cody’s girlfriend,” he said, “but right now, you’re still going to jail.”
• • •
I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN a rabid fan of TV cop shows, from old reruns of Barney Miller to the various incarnations of the sacred Law & Order franchise.
And it’s a good thing too, because the next couple of hours made me feel like I’d just been drop-kicked into one of them.
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First I got put into the back of a squad car, head-ducking thing and all. Then I spent the whole ride to the station house—roughly five blocks—protesting that I’d been set up.
I got photographed. I got fingerprinted. I even got to make my one bloody phone call, by which time I’d smartened up enough to swallow my pride and call my mom.
For the record, my mother isn’t admitted to the bar in New York State. Lucky for me, though, somebody she clerked with after law school is a big defense attorney in Manhattan—a lady who makes a fortune getting rich people off the hook. Normally, of course, a piddling drug case wouldn’t have crossed her radar, unless it involved the dopehead kid of one of her clients. But she and my mom used to be pretty tight; one call got me the fee-free services of a $400-an-hour lawyer.
You’re probably wondering where Cody was at a time like this. So was I.
The answer, and a damned inconvenient one too, was that he was at some stupid closed-door meeting with the F.B.I.
He finally showed up about two hours later, just as I was deciding that I’d officially gone insane from boredom. The lady officer who’d relieved me of my purse and jewelry unlocked the cell door and he came inside—officially, the most welcome sight I’d ever seen, ever.
For some reason, though, I was also furious with him.
“Son of a bitch, Cody, where the hell have you been? I’ve been rotting in here for—”
He wrapped his arms around me, so the rest of my tirade was stifled by his shoulder. He held me like that for a good long while, and when he finally let me go, I was no longer in the mood to yell at him.
“Baby,” he said, “I’m so sorry.”
“What the hell is going on? Nobody will tell me anything.”
“Apparently, somebody phoned in an anonymous tip that there was a big drug shipment coming into town today. They gave the plate and model of the car and it was …yours.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Obviously, with everything that’s been going on, the department’s pretty on edge when it comes to narcotics. And the chief and I were meeting with—”
“I heard. So what the hell’s going to happen to me?”
“They’re going to arraign you.”
“What?”
“That’s the only way they can set bail so I can get you out of here. I promise, we’ll get this thing straightened out as fast as we can, but right now we ought to get you a lawyer.”
“I’ve got one.” I told him the details. “But seriously, Cody, what in the hell is going on? How did those drugs get in my car?”
“I was just going to ask you the same thing.”
“Jesus,” I gasped at him, “don’t tell me you think I—”
“Are you crazy? Of course I don’t think that. What I meant was, how do you think they got in there?”
“Well, obviously, somebody must’ve planted them on me and then called the cops.”
“Right,” he said, “but how? And when? And most importantly… why?”
“I’ve been thinking about that, believe me—there’s not a hell of a lot else to do in here.” I motioned around the goddamn dog kennel I was cooped up in, its only furniture a metal bench welded to the floor. “And obviously, it’s got to have something to do with Melting Rock.”
“You think somebody did this to get you off the story?”
“Don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“So where does that leave me?”
“Baby, I…I’m really sorry. I wish I could just make this go away.”
“Me too.”
“It just doesn’t work that way. For now, we’ve got to go through the system. And unfortunately…I’m thinking that if anything, they’re going to be harder on you because of me.”
“What? Why?”
“The chief has to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Especially with the F.B.I. swarming around…he can’t have anybody accusing him of playing favorites.”
“Great.”
“But I swear, baby. When this is all over, your record will be clean.”
“Record? Oh, my God—”
“It’s going to be okay, I promise. I pulled some strings, and they’re going to get you arraigned in an hour or so. The bail’s probably going to be around twenty, so—”
“I don’t have that much cash on me,” I said. “And anyway, they took my purse, so—”
“Baby, I meant …twenty thousand.”
“Dollars?” He nodded. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Alex, I’m not sure you realize…Do you know how much coke they found on you?”
“I told you, nobody would tell me anything.”
“It was a little over a kilogram.”
“Is that a lot?”
“The street value is over a hundred grand.”
My chin practically hit the concrete floor.
“And somebody put that in my car? What are they, nuts?”
“Even so, they did it. And do you know what that means?”
“That I’m absolutely and completely screwed?”
“It means that to whoever did this,” he said, “getting you off the story was worth a hundred thousand bucks.”
CHAPTER27
As everybody learns in civics class, a person is innocent until proven guilty. According to the criminal justice system, at least.
At the Gabriel Monitor, however, things work a little differently. Like the denizens of some banana republic, we don’t have much in the way of constitutional rights.
Which means… the minute I got out of jail, I got suspended.
The long and the short of it was that although nobody really believed that yours truly ran the Gabriel outpost of the Medellín drug cartel, it didn’t matter. Chester, our much-detested publisher, has always been obsessed with the “family newspaper” thing—and having one of his reporters get busted with a kilo of coke doesn’t make for an image of milk-fed wholesomeness, if you know what I mean.
Marilyn was very apologetic; she said she was sorry I was getting royally shafted, but her hands were tied. Until the whole mess got resolved, I wasn’t welcome anywhere near the Monitor newsroom. And I wasn’t getting paid, either.
Now, normally I would’ve been just as happy to go running home to Mom and Dad, where I could get lots of sympathy and not have to worry about grocery money. But under the terms of my bail, I didn’t get to leave the county. So there I was—stuck at home, with no desire to show my recently incarcerated face in public, and so financially freaked out I was living on Lipton’s pasta packets.
Sure, my friends stopped by after work with red wine and news-room gossip, but I felt like I was already halfway up the river. Cody called me every night, but for some reason I didn’t want to see him until this idiotic nightmare was over. I guess I was feeling like Typhoid Mary, and I didn’t want my criminal squalor to rub off on him. And to make matters worse, I was living alone—Melissa having gone straight from the hospital to visit friends in Toronto. My only company was my dog and her cat.
After a few days of this, I was ready to chew my own foot off. Although I’m a big fan of hanging around and doing nothing, I don’t much enjoy doing it against my will. And even though Cody had promised it would all be over soon—obviously, there was no way I was going to get indicted—even the remote possibility that I was going to spend my next thirty birthdays in Bedford Hills was enough to send me into one whopper of a depression.
Then I got indicted.
If that surprises you, well… imagine what a mother of a shock it was to me.
How, you may wonder, could this possibly occur? I mean, obviously, I didn’t do it; I’ve never even tried cocaine, much less sold it. So how could the system shove an innocent person such as myself one giant step closer to the hoosegow?
The answer is simple: Somebody lied. According to my lawyer—a sweet, motherly lady who proved to be a goddamn banshee in the courtroom—a guy who’d been picked up on drug charges was told he cou
ld cut a deal if he named his supplier.
He said it was me.
The guy even testified to that fact, under oath, to a grand jury. If I wasn’t entirely screwed before, I was now.
And by the way: The person who screwed me was named Robert Adam Sturdivant.
They’d picked him up at the Miami airport, where a test of some new facial-recognition software had paid off within the first two hours. Sturdivant’s ugly mug triggered a hit from the fugitive database, and the next thing he knew he was on a plane back to New York. After getting interrogated by every law-enforcement agency with jurisdiction over the Melting Rock deaths—not to mention the Gabriel cops—Sturdivant started talking.
Unfortunately, what he told them was that I was the drug queen of upstate New York.
Naturally, Sturdivant’s accusations were duly documented in the Gabriel Monitor—so in addition to being railroaded and framed, I was also intensely humiliated. My beloved colleagues even took the head shot from my movie review column and ran it on page one under the headline LOCAL REPORTER INDICTED ON COKE CHARGES. Within five minutes the Walden County D.A. was trying to convince my lawyer that I should do myself a favor and flip on my supplier in return for a reduced sentence. Overnight, I’d gone from Alex B. to goddamn Josef K.
It was all so ridiculous, it would’ve been funny. That is, if it were happening to somebody other than me.
Granted, I had a lot more going for me than most people who get shafted by the system. I had a high-priced lawyer, gratis; I had a cop boyfriend who swore up and down he was going to get me out of this, despite the fact that he’d been told to steer clear of my case or else; and I had a couple of friends (Mad and Ochoa) who pledged to defend me like some semi-inebriated Knights of the Round Table.
But I was still pretty terrified.
Finally, three days after the grand jury threw me to the wolves, something good happened. To wit: I woke up mad as hell.
It’s true; I was positively furious. After a week of wallowing in self-pity and abject fear, I finally got pissed off. Somebody wanted me out of the way—specifically, I was pretty sure they wanted me off the Melting Rock story—and so far, they were doing a damn good job of it.
Well, as far as I was concerned, that was bloody well over. If somebody didn’t want me to figure out what had really happened at Melting Rock, then that was exactly what I was going to do. Although I wasn’t officially working for the paper at the moment, I was still a goddamn reporter. And if I had to trick people into thinking I was still representing the Monitor—well… too damn bad.
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