by Jan Burke
“Yes.”
“Irene, you idiot, make him the smallest part of the story.”
I looked up at her.
“You know what Tom Cassidy’s team is doing right now?” she asked.
“Holding CNN and Channel Five away from my front door.”
“Yes, that’s true. But you know how there’s a sense of family in any police department, so he’s also got crisis counseling crews that are trying to help the LPPD cope with the deaths of six of its men.”
I looked over at Frank, who nodded.
“He’s coordinating another group at the university,” she said, “in case any of Ben’s and David’s colleagues or graduate students need to talk about what has happened.”
“How do you know about all of this?”
“A fine city desk I’d be running if I didn’t.”
“What happened to Morry, by the way?”
“He moved to Buffalo. Got a job with the Buffalo News.”
“What?”
She shrugged. “His mom lives in Kenmore — the suburb, not the brand name.”
“He left without notice?”
She smiled. “My only regret is that you weren’t here to see easygoing Morry tell Wrigley to shove it.”
I laughed. “I can’t believe it!”
She made an x over her heart. “Swear to it. After Wrigley stormed out of the room, I gave Morry a kiss for it. He turned red and kept blushing for about four hours, but he was grinning the whole time. We gave him a big send-off at Banyon’s.”
I shook my head. “Sorry I missed that. I would have liked to say good-bye.”
“Sometimes you get to say good-bye, sometimes you don’t. It’s why you have to be good to people.”
I was silent.
“Nick Parrish is going to get his glory,” she said, “even if the Express never prints his name again. He’ll get it from all those folks who have their satellite dishes pointed over your rooftop. He’ll get it from every other paper in the country.”
I knew what she was saying was true. After a moment, I said, “He chased me. Or let me believe he was chasing me.”
“I figured that was why you met me with a knife and spear,” Frank said.
I realized that I hadn’t told him much about what had happened up there. He hadn’t pressed me for details, and he probably had lots of questions. Even if he had talked to the detectives who interviewed me, given the state I was in at the time, I doubted he had a very clear picture. I resolved to have a long talk with him that evening, but for now, I said, “I was going to go after Parrish at that point. I didn’t want him to kill whoever was arriving on the helicopter.”
“What?”
“My thinking was a little muddled then — but now — I don’t think Parrish ever intended to catch me,” I said. “I didn’t realize it then — I was too out of it to put my thoughts together. Now it hits me, you know — that it was too easy. Getting away from him. Like when you’re little and the older kids tell you they want to play hide-and-go-seek, but then they go off somewhere together while you stay hiding. You’ve been ditched.”
“So Parrish wanted you to escape,” Lydia said.
“Yes, I think he wanted a reporter to survive, wanted someone to go out there and add to the legend. You know, tell the story as someone who feared his power.”
Was that all there was to it? I wanted it to be true, but I couldn’t quite believe my own sales pitch. He had said he would find me again. Julia Sayre and Kara Lane both had dark hair and blue eyes. Maybe Parrish had more than one purpose in mind after he learned I would be the reporter.
“And he singled you out,” Lydia said, startling me until I realized she was referring to my last spoken comment.
“Yes.”
“If you’re right about that,” she said, “and he’s expecting something special from you, disappoint him. You’re the only one who can really do that.”
It took me about another half hour to get started. But once I was started, everything else ceased to exist. After one mention of him by name, if I had to refer to Parrish, I called him “the prisoner.” I found I didn’t have to write about him all that much.
I wrote about the last days of Merrick, Manton, Duke, and Earl, of Bob Thompson and Flash Burden, of David. I wrote about Earl’s sense of humor, of Duke whittling a toy horse for his grandson — and remembered that I must take that carving to his family. I wrote about Flash taking photographs of wildflowers, of Merrick playing with Bingle, of Manton trying to get used to his wife’s new haircut by studying a photo. I tried to convey a sense of them that would make them more than names on a list of victims. Perhaps John or some copy editor would cut it up, or use a “search and replace” command to change “prisoner” to “Nicholas Parrish.”
It didn’t matter. I could only do what I could.
I wrote about finding Julia Sayre, then stopped to search our files for Nina Poolman.
A photo of a dark-haired, blue-eyed, forty-two-year-old woman appeared on the screen. Missing. Three years ago.
Nothing saying she was ever found.
I sat staring at her photograph, knowing that Parrish would expect me to write that he had told me her name.
“Frank?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“The victim in the second grave — do you think any of the teeth survived the explosion intact?”
“I’m not sure. Teeth are pretty tough though, so maybe. Why?”
“If they did, and you can get a hold of this woman’s dental records, I think you can close a case.”
In the story, I wrote the truth — no positive identification of the victim in the second grave had been made.
I filed the story, stood up, and said to Lydia, “Tell John that if I open the paper tomorrow and see Nick Parrish’s name all over that story, I will not be back in. Ever. Which might not be such a big loss to either one of us.”
“Will do,” she said. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head, drew a breath. “Tell John I’ve got more to write, but—”
“You’ll be happy to take it elsewhere,” she interrupted. “I think he’ll get the picture.”
I e-mailed a brief note to Mark, thanking him for sticking up for me the day before, and logged off.
The phone rang.
“Kelly,” I answered.
“There’s a . . . a person here to see you,” the security guard at the front desk said.
“A person?”
“She says she has an appointment with you. Gillian Sayre.”
Four o’clock.
“I’ll be right down,” I said.
“Want me to go with you?” Frank asked.
I shook my head. “This one I think I need to handle on my own.”
31
SATURDAY, LATE AFTERNOON, MAY 20
Las Piernas News Express
“You look tired,” I said, as I gestured her into a small meeting room off the lobby.
“I didn’t sleep much last night,” she said.
Of course not, I thought, wondering if I could avoid making any other clumsy remarks over the next few minutes.
The room was quiet, save for the combined overhead hum of fluorescent lights and air-conditioning. If there’s a gray rainbow somewhere, the decor of that room — carpet, walls, chairs, and table — had tried to capture it. One color, assorted shades. It fit my mood.
When we were seated, Gillian said, “Do they know where Parrish is yet?”
“No. But I don’t think he’ll be able to stay hidden for long. I’m sorry he got away.”
“I guess he had it all planned. From what they’re saying on television, you were lucky to get out of there alive.”
With an unexpected rush of relief, I realized that I did feel lucky, damned lucky! Lucky that I wasn’t one of the ones who had been standing next to the grave, lucky that Parrish had let me go, lucky to have been spared.
These thoughts no sooner crossed my mind than I was horrified by them, ashamed t
o find myself rejoicing at all, no matter how silently, ashamed to be feeling good in any way about anything having to do with the last few days.
And worse, to think such thoughts while I sat next to a young woman whose mother had been murdered, tortured hideously by the man who had let me go. Christ, what a jerk I was to be calling that luck! Gillian must have wondered why — why her mother was dead and I was still alive. I had no children waiting for me to return. I looked down at the table, unable to meet her eyes.
She was silent for a moment, then said, “I was hoping you could tell me about finding my mother.”
Instantly, I was staring at an uncovered, decaying corpse. Its smell filled the room.
“Irene?”
The tabletop came back into view. The room smelled of lemon furniture polish, and nothing worse. I drew a deep breath, then told Gillian a highly sanitized version of events up to the moment Bingle found the grave. I could not bring myself to talk about the coyote tree or the process of uncovering the grave itself.
She listened quietly, without comment, then said, “Was she . . . was the body . . . you know . . . just bones?”
Oh, Christ.
“No,” I said unsteadily. I swallowed hard and forged ahead. “Apparently, she was buried not long after she died.”
“But I’ve heard that animals sometimes—”
“No,” I interrupted sharply. Forcing myself to speak in more even tones, I said, “No animals damaged the body.”
“I know it sounds gross and weird to even be asking,” she said, “but they haven’t released her body to us yet, so — so I can’t really deal with it. Do you know what I mean? I keep thinking about her being up there, and wondering what he did to her, but no one will tell me. Do you know?”
The Polaroids in the bag.
The hot wax. Julia’s face twisted in torment, her mouth open on a scream.
I couldn’t breathe. “Excuse me,” I managed to say. “It’s stuffy in here. I just need to open the door.”
“I need someone to be honest with me,” she said to my back, as I stood at the door, leaning on its frame, trying to get enough air. Her voice was as close to pleading as I had ever heard it. “I have to know. All along, you’ve been honest with me. You know the truth, don’t you?”
I knew exactly. But damned if I was going to tell a child — even one who was now an adult child — what I had seen in those photos. I’d lie. She might think she wanted the truth, but she wasn’t ready for it. No one was ready for that kind of truth.
It would be inhumane to hit her with all the brutal facts of the matter. That wasn’t my job. Not even as a reporter. Newspapers of good repute didn’t publish gruesome accident photos, or recount every gory detail of a murderer’s work. One showed a certain amount of respect for the dead and their families.
Respect for the dead.
Julia Sayre — would you want me to tell her? This daughter of yours, who for four years has crucified herself over a flip remark? “I wish you were dead.” Any details I gave her would only add to her guilt.
I turned to face her, saw her waiting for my answer.
Could I lie to her?
“The police and forensic scientists will know more about what happened to her after they’ve had a chance to study her remains,” I began.
“But you saw the body,” she insisted.
“It was wrapped in plastic,” I said.
“Oh.” She thought for a moment, then said, “But plastic — could you see—?”
“Nothing. It was dark green — completely opaque.”
Her brows drew together. “But they must have opened it, looked inside. Otherwise, how would they be able to say that the body was my mother’s?”
“They did open it, but . . . but they didn’t really want a reporter near the grave itself,” I said quickly.
A false picture of events, my conscience argued.
True as far as it goes, I argued back, but knew I was on shaky ground.
“The anthropologists made their determinations,” I said, “then they lifted the body, plastic and all, and put it inside a body bag.”
That much, she seemed to handle okay. But again she asked, “How did they know it was my mother?”
“They aren’t positive yet,” I said. Seeing her growing skepticism, I added, “But there were other things that make it seem very likely that it was her. Other than the body itself.”
Splitting hairs, that nagging voice warned.
“Like what?”
“In the grave, they found a ring that matches the one she wore, and clothing that matched your description of what she had on the day she disappeared.”
She sat brooding for a moment, then said calmly, “Well, I guess I’ll just have to be patient, then.”
“Gillian, I know the past four years have been very hard on you and your family—”
“No, you don’t really know, do you?” She said it calmly.
“No,” I admitted.
“I’ve waited four years. I can wait a few more days, or weeks, or however long it takes the cops to give me some answers. Two years ago, a cop tried to tell me to give up, to quit bugging him, to face facts, he said. He said that they’d probably never find her — it was Thompson, the guy who died up there. He was wrong, wasn’t he? So, you see, I can wait.”
She started to leave, then turned back toward me. “I’m not angry with you, you know. I’m glad you’re writing about this. That’s the main thing. Maybe people will realize that when someone goes missing, it’s important to find out what happened. My mother’s death was important. You have to make everybody know that.”
I slowly made my way upstairs. Frank looked up from his book and said, “Jack just called. They’re starting to allow Ben to have visitors. Do you want to go over there?”
Ben. That’s who I needed to concentrate on now. The living, not the dead. “Yes, I just need to clear off my desk.”
He gently lifted my chin and studied my face. “Don’t push yourself too hard right now, okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, pulling back.
I’m lucky.
32
SATURDAY, EARLY EVENING, MAY 20
Las Piernas
The walk to the hospital wasn’t a long one, but it did me some good; my muscles had grown a little stiff and sore, and I was glad for the chance to stretch. We walked in companionable silence, but caused a commotion when we neared the hospital lobby, for which I was sorry.
There was a group of reporters standing just outside the hospital, smoking. One of the smokers recognized me, and she tried to quickly make her way over to us before the others saw our arrival. No luck. Rarely can one reporter move off from a group of other reporters without being seen. Anyone who has ever dropped a bag of popcorn near a flock of pigeons might have some idea of what this is like — you are not going to feed just one bird.
We made it into the lobby slightly ahead of our unwelcome entourage, only to run into a slightly larger group — restless people who had grown tired of waiting in the large room the hospital had set up for the press, and who were no doubt devising plans to get up to Ben’s room or, failing that, a chance to talk to his nurses, an orderly, or anyone who might have glimpsed him after his arrival there.
With no respect for nearby patients or their families, they started shouting questions at me, hurrying nearer.
Frank shielded me from the pushier ones, and fortunately, he was recognized by the officers who were providing the first line of security. We got through with only a little jostling, then made it into an elevator without much more trouble.
On Ben’s floor, there were guards posted outside the elevator, and along the hallways. I had seen them the night before, but I didn’t feel especially comforted by their vigilance. I realized that in some part of my mind I was now convinced that no guards would ever be able to stop Parrish — he was some combination of Houdini and the Terminator. He had escaped, and would be back. Not everyone in local law enforcement bel
ieved that Parrish would return to Las Piernas — most seemed to think that he would seek refuge where he was less well known — but there seemed to be universal agreement that Ben needed protection from the press.
Jack sat on one of a group of chairs near the nurses’ station, reading a travel magazine. He looked up as we arrived, tossed the magazine down on the low glass table in front of him and invited us to have a seat. “There are a couple of doctors in with him now,” he said.
There were a water fountain and some foam cups nearby. Frank, keeping in mind the orders I received from the doctors about fluid intake, filled a couple of cups and brought them back. “See if you can drink me under the table,” he said.
We heard the bell of the elevator and saw a young woman step out. She looked as if she was in her early twenties. She was of medium height, slender and tanned, and wore wire-rimmed glasses. Her eyes were dark brown, and she had short, straight blond hair. She was wearing jeans and carried a blue canvas daypack on her back. She spoke to the officer at the elevator, apparently identifying herself to him. She turned and studied us for a moment, frowning, then went to the nurses’ desk. There was a solemnity in her that made me wonder if one of her relatives was being cared for on this floor. Then I heard her clearly say the name “Ben Sheridan.”
The three of us glanced at one another, then watched as the nurse nodded toward us.
The woman hesitated, then walked over to where we sat. “The nurse tells me you’re waiting to see Dr. Sheridan.”
“Yes,” Frank said. “Would you like to wait with us?”
She blushed and said, “Thank you. I’m Ellen Raice. I’m one of Dr. Sheridan’s teaching assistants.”
We introduced ourselves and she said, “Oh. You were there — I mean, you rescued—”
“We were there,” I said, looking down at my hands.
We fell into an awkward silence. She looked from the floor to the ceiling to the table, hummed to herself, drummed her hands on her thighs for a few minutes, then stood up and got a cup of water.
When she came back, Jack and Frank began to make small talk with her; she told them that she had known Ben for six years.
