The Truth Hurts

by Nancy Pickard

  Well, damn, why not just ask him?

  It’s a startling thought.

  Despite his recent admonishment, I still haven’t addressed him directly in my “assignments.” I just couldn’t bring myself to do it this morning, so maybe I crossed a line, too. I have carefully written and submitted only what he said he wanted for the chapters. But why not try to get him into a conversation? That’s what a hostage negotiator would do. And I am definitely feeling like a hostage to one man’s desires.

  The air is smoky. I see a line of fire on the western horizon, but the road home is still open. Maybe that’s a good omen. Or maybe we’d all have been wiser and safer to linger in the Keys. If a fire up here could keep us in, it might also have been able to keep him out.

  • • •

  When I’m twenty minutes from home, I call Steve Orbach.

  “Do you want the job, Steve?”

  “Yes.” His whole life up to this point and his personality seem summarized by the way he says that single word. His bass voice, seeming to come from deep in his chest, gives him the sound of someone much older than he really is; his direct, succinct, aggressive style of speech is the way a soldier’s might be.

  “Okay, I’m heading home right now. I’ll tell you how to get there. When you arrive, you’ll see a guarded gate. I will call ahead right now to tell them to expect you. Wait there for me and I’ll lead you to my house.”

  “Should I bring anything?”

  “Yes, whatever you need to move in for a while.”

  “I’ll pack a bag.”

  “Good.”

  “You know I don’t carry a gun?”

  Which isn’t the same thing as saying he doesn’t have one. “No, I didn’t know that, but I wasn’t even thinking of guns.”

  “Just so you know.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Steve.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he says so firmly it sounds almost like a threat.

  One of the stray facts I happen to know from my book research is that the amygdala is said to be the organ both of fear and of memory in the human body. Fear is, as you may imagine, a big thing in true crime books, so it has behooved me to learn a lot about it. In one book I wrote about a killer who stole his victims’ pineal glands, I had cause to study the brain extensively, and I was fascinated by what I found out about the amygdala, which is a tiny, fleshy, almond-shaped organ deep in the skull. Scientists have discovered that in traumatized war veterans and abused children, the amygdala actually shrinks from its original size, thereby consigning episodes in their lives to oblivion. They forget about it, in other words. Or to put it in a way that is perhaps more subtly accurate, they can’t remember. This could be viewed, I suppose, as nature’s mercy, though it can pose a problem for both psychiatrists and prosecutors who want to dig out those memories.

  What this means is that when adults who were abused as children claim they can’t remember entire years of their youth, apparently they are telling the truth. As their amygdala shrunk, it acted, symbolically at least, like a tiny fist squeezing fear-soaked memories out of their brain.

  I feel as if my own amygdala is working overtime right now, pumping out fear, and I wonder how good my own memory will be of the events of this weekend? Could this be one reason why eyewitnesses do such a lousy job of remembering the traumatic events they see?

  Upon arriving at the private cul-de-sac where I live, I spot Steve’s old clunker parked by the guard gate. The sight of him doesn’t make me feel much calmer, at least not yet. He’s not a man whose presence necessarily induces serenity. But that’s okay. I feel pretty sure that just having him around will eventually help to get my heart rate back down to something closer to normal. It’s just that, first, I’ll have to get used to him.

  The guard waves me through. Steve follows close behind me.

  When I see my house, I press my garage door opener.

  I roll down my window and wave Steve around me. He pulls into the empty, second slot in my garage. I glide in beside him. When we’re both out of our cars, he walks ahead of me toward the door that leads into my kitchen, saying quietly, in his tough, bass voice, “I’ll go in first, Ms. Lightfoot.”

  He’s already in the house when I hear a woman scream.

  19

  Marie

  I rush inside my house—and discover Steve standing in the kitchen with his back to me. My assistant, Deborah, is standing in the living room, facing him and looking as if she’s going to faint on the spot.

  “Deborah!”

  “Surprise,” she says in a weak voice when she sees me. Her knees give way and she sinks onto my living room couch. “Oh, my God, Marie. I thought it was him. I thought it was Paulie Barnes, come to kill you, and he was going to get me first! I was just coming out of your office and all of a sudden there was this huge man walking in the door and I didn’t realize it was Steve—Hi, Steve—and I think I’m going to faint—”

  “Don’t you dare pass out.” I hurry around Steve to get to her. “I’m sorry we frightened you, but what the hell are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here!”

  “I know, I know.” She looks up at me, trembly, near tears, and quite obviously scared of my reaction, now that she’s over her initial terror of Steve. She’s literally wringing her hands, not the first time I’ve ever seen that cliché come to life. The mothers of murder victims do that, too. “I know I’m not supposed to be here.”

  I set down my luggage that I’ve brought in with me.

  “Then why are you?” I demand while Steve moves around me and then on toward the rest of my house. I sense that he’s going to scout it out, make sure we’re all alone, just the three of us.

  “I had to check on something,” Deb tells me miserably. “Oh, Marie, I think I’ve done something terrible.”

  “Yeah, we have to get you out of here—”

  “No, not that. Oh, God, Marie. I’m the reason that awful man knows so much about you. I think it’s all my fault.”

  “What? How can that be, Deb?”

  She starts to cry for real, just stands there in front of me shaking and crying. Of course, I give her a hug and pat her back until she can get her tears under control enough to speak again.

  “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”

  “Forget that, sweetie, just tell me what you think you’ve done.”

  She gulps. “Have you looked at your Web site lately?”

  It’s not a question I expected. “My Web site? Well, no, that’s why I have you, so I don’t have to deal with things like that.” I smile at her. “Why? Is there some reason I should have looked at it?”

  “You’d better come see, Marie.”

  But just as she turns around to lead me into the back of the house, Steve is descending the stairs from my bedroom and startles her again. Deborah flinches, and lets out a tiny scream.

  “It’s just me,” he says, calmly.

  “Oh, God, Steve, I’m really sorry I screamed at you.”

  He actually smiles, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do before. Although it doesn’t exactly transform his aged, hard face into that of a young man again, it does reach his eyes. Steve Orbach may be less than thirty years old, but he has spent about half of that in prisons of one kind or another. He is heavily muscled, and tonight he’s wearing loose jeans with a white T-shirt that shows off his physique, and running shoes. He wears his hair in a very short buzz cut, adding to the general impression of toughness inside and out. Steve has the kind of tight skin and facial bones that give his skull the look of sculpture. He’s not good-looking, his eyes are too close together for that and his nose is too large, but he’s not bad-looking, either.

  “Hi, Ms. Dancer,” he says, with a warmth that doesn’t really surprise me.

  He is, if anything, even more devoted to Deborah than he is to me, because it was her initiative that resulted in his freedom. When we met him, we tried to get him to call us by our first names, but he wouldn’t do it and apparently isn’t about
to start doing it now.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he says to her. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Where’s your car?” I ask her. “It wasn’t outside.”

  “I had a friend drop me off,” she says miserably, “so nobody’d know I was here.”

  “I’d say that worked,” I remark, dryly.

  Steve looks over her head, at me. “Everything’s clear upstairs, Ms. Lightfoot. Where do you want me to put my stuff?”

  “You can camp in here, or you can have the guest room on this floor.”

  “I’ll take this couch. More central.”

  “Good. I need to talk to Deb right now, Steve. Then you.”

  “I’ll be outside,” he says. “Checking things out.”

  I follow Deb into my office and then over to my desk, where she has pulled my author Web site onto the computer screen. Until Deb came to work for me, I used a portion of my publisher’s Web site as my own. One of Deb’s first jobs for me was to scout out a Web site designer to create an independent site, a place where my readers could reach me directly. After she and I both approved the design, I turned the whole shebang over to Deb. If it needs renovating, she does it. When fan mail, questions, or requests come in, she handles them. It isn’t possible for us to individualize every answer, although between Deb and me, we do a fair job of trying. I believe that people who care enough to write to me deserve an answer, but that’s only in an ideal world. In the real one, I just don’t have time. With Deb to help me, they can count on getting one. Before her arrival, I was way too deeply absorbed in research and writing to pay much attention to fan mail.

  Deb always selects a few letters to read to me each day, winnowing out mean ones that will only make me feel bad, like ones that criticize my writing in ways I can’t fix. If there’s criticism I need to hear, she reads that to me; if there are particularly sweet letters, she reads those, too. We both enjoy those, I think, and I have the impression that the nasty ones hurt her almost more than they bother me. Deb takes a proprietary interest in me now, and resents my critics and foes. I know she takes it all very personally, because she’s so young.

  So now I’m looking at my own Home Page and it’s looking exactly as I thought I remember it, except—

  “Oh,” I say, with a bit of understatement.

  Deb says, sounding miserable, “I added that a month ago.”

  “That” is a small picture of Deb, herself, at the far left-hand bottom of the page, where it says, “Ask Deb!” When I click on the photo, it opens up into a page that says “Do you have a question for Marie? Would you like to set up an appearance, a speech, or an autographing session? Do you have books you’d like her to sign for you? Whatever your questions, just ask me, Deborah Dancer! I’m Marie’s research and administrative assistant, and I’ll be delighted to answer your queries. Please contact me here, by E-mail.” There’s also our fax number and the post office box I use for fan mail.

  I like it, I think it’s a good idea, but immediately, I also see the problem.

  The same photo from the Home Page is here, too, but it’s not just her face, it’s all of her, frizzy hair and all, and she’s wearing that damned horsy sundress.

  “He saw this picture,” I say.

  “Yes,” she whispers. “And that’s not all. I think I’ve figured out who he is—”

  “What?” I stare at her, incredulous. “You have?”

  She waves her hands in front of her, to deny what I’m thinking. “No, not like that! No, I mean, I figured out who he is in the sense of which of the fans who’s been writing to me. I don’t know his real name, or anything like that, but I’m sure I know which one he is.” Deb reaches toward the printer and picks up the pages lying on top of it. “I just know this is him. Look how he tricked me!”

  There are about forty-two E-mails, which sounds like a lot, but isn’t when we’re speaking of eager fans, or of E-mail, for that matter. It’s not unusual for a fan to “e” many times in a short burst of goodwill and enthusiasm. I’d probably do the same thing if I got an E-mail back from my favorite writer, or even from her assistant. It’s fun to feel so close to fame. But as for responding, I would be happy for Deb to handle all of it for me, leaving my brain and hands free to keep writing the books that inspire those letters.

  And now, reading through the forty-two, some of them no more than two or three lines long, in the way that E-mails often are, I wish I had seen these before she did. Maybe a more experienced eye would have caught the way in which he lured her into telling him more about me—and about herself—than she should ever have revealed to a stranger.

  “I love Marie’s books,” he starts out, effusive as a teenage girl. “It must be so fascinating to work for her! If you don’t mind my asking, how does a person get a great job like yours ?” That was his first question, leading her into conversation with him. Over the time the correspondence continued, it appears that he pulled a lot of things out of her. Deb hands me a stack of her replies that she dutifully saved and filed. To that first question, she told him about her educational background, about her first job as a feature writer, and how she originally came to me part-time. He wrote back, “So, what sorts of things do you do for her—besides answer pests like me, of course!!”

  “You’re not a pest at all!” she wrote back. “Marie’s readers are the best people in the world, and it’s wonderful to get to ‘meet’ some of you this way. Well, what I do for her is—everything but write her books! Just kidding. But I do help her a little with her research (I love that!), proofreading (don’t love that! (:>), I run this Web site, run personal errands, do secretarial stuff, and generally try to make myself indispensable to Marie! She’s a great boss and I’m learning so much from her.”

  “You mean you even do her grocery shopping, too, like that ?” he asked then.

  He made himself sound young, impressionable, ingenuous, and Deb answered in a tone to match his.

  “Sometimes, I do! Like today, I helped Marie take her car into the shop for repair. She’s got the coolest car—”

  “You’re kidding ?! My mom drives one almost just like that! Hers is a couple of years older than that, and it’s blue instead of white, but still, that’s so cool to think she drives almost the same kind of car that Ms. Lightfoot does! Where do you guys go to get it worked on ?? My mom says it’s impossible to find a good mechanic these days, especially for cars like that.”

  All those exclamation points, all those question marks . . . how could he possibly not be sincere?

  “I thought he was about fourteen,” Deb says. “I thought he was just this sweet, lonely bookworm kid and maybe I could encourage him to become a writer.”

  She trails off, looking down at the carpet, as if she feels like a piece of dirt lodged in it.

  In the space of a few E-mails back and forth they became—or Deb thought they did—E-mail pals. The business about my car repairs is only one of several such small, intimate details of our lives that she trustingly spilled to “Ryan,” as he signed himself each time. The most recent was yesterday. My gut clenches when I see it: “Marie’s actually taking time off this weekend! Can you believe it? She’s going to Key Largo with the state attorney of Howard County and his children. He is soooo handsome, and so nice, too. They’re good friends. (:>) Ryan, one of the things you need to know about being a professional writer is that they just work all the time. Really. Forget weekends and holidays. And they hardly ever get vacations. Marie and I work constantly and I love it, but I think you might want to consider that full-time writing is, well, full-time!”

  She was indulging in a bit of bragging there, on both of us.

  “I’m so sorry, Marie. I’m such an idiot.”

  “No, you’re not, Deb. You’re young, that’s all, and you didn’t realize what was happening here. I don’t think there’s any way you could have known what he was up to, and to tell you the truth, I might not have realized it, either.”

  “Really? You wouldn’t?
”

  “Maybe not. The difference is”—I say this gently, not wanting to hurt her, but knowing it probably needs to be said—“I probably wouldn’t have gotten quite so involved in writing back to him, and I probably wouldn’t have told him so much about us.”

  “Oh,” she says, looking stricken.

  I squeeze her arm, try to smile. “But live and learn, right? And Deb, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for figuring this out and for being honest about it. This may make a huge difference in finding this guy.”

  “You wouldn’t even have to find him if I’d—”

  “We don’t know that. I suspect he would have found another way.”

  “Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

  “No, I mean it. If he’s as determined as he seems to be, he’d have found a way.”

  “So maybe you don’t hate me?”

  “Oh, Deb, of course I don’t! You have just solved many mysteries, all in one fell swoop. But I’m still concerned about your being here. I was supposed to have fired you, and you’re supposed to be gone.”

  “I know, but I had to—”

  “I understand, but now we’ve got to get you out of here and I have to think up some good excuse to tell him why you were here. At least, if he checks up on you by calling your friends or your family, they’ll verify that I fired you—”

  There’s a look on her face that fills me with new dismay.

  “Oh, no, Deb. Tell me you did what I asked you to do. You told them I fired you, right?”

  “Yes—” And then it comes out in a burst of truthfulness. “But I couldn’t stand to leave it like that! So I told them why—”

  “Oh, Deb!”

  “But I said they couldn’t let anybody know, they had to keep it a complete secret and pretend they didn’t know. . . .”

  I fan the E-mails in my hands. He’s horribly clever. It will be child’s play for him to get the truth out of Deb’s sweet mother or her young roommates. I can just imagine him calling any one of them and saying something like, “Hello. My name is Joe Blow and I’m the managing editor for the Palm Beach Post. We’re looking for a new feature writer and somebody gave me Deborah Dancer’s name. Is she available for employment at this time ?”