Say No More

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “Glad you came,” Elaine was saying. “Here, take my stool. And there’re some people here you should meet, if you’re interested. Okay?”

  “Thanks,” Isabel said. What was she supposed to do? She knew Elaine’s “people” were other victims, Jane had explained that, but—

  She turned, needing Jane. But all at once the colors of the room changed. The music turned to white noise. And the floor shifted, shifted, and it wasn’t from the music and it wasn’t from the lights, it was—it was him. Standing under the archway.

  A room away, a hundred people between them, and she saw only a sliver of his smile, then a sliver of his shoulder, and then the top of that sandy hair, he was always a little taller, and a little bigger and—but it didn’t matter, she didn’t need to see any more, there he was, he was here and she was here, and she’d seen him, exactly as she had tried to stop herself from imagining, the worst possible thing, the worst, and she had to sit, no, she had to run, she had to get out of here, get OUT—

  JAKE BROGAN

  “Holy shit,” Jake said.

  “Yeah,” D said.

  They stood just inside the front door of the Spotted Owl, instantly deafened and sent into sensory overload. They’d entered, unquestioned, past the slacker so-called bouncer at the entrance. Now Jake couldn’t resist calculating the occupancy rate in this multi-roomed crush of college students.

  “Fire code,” Jake said.

  “Big time,” D answered.

  “Underage drinking.” Jake sniffed. “And dope.”

  DeLuca eyed the crowd, assessing. “Indecent exposure, too. Somebody oughta call the cops.”

  “Want to see the photo one more time?” Jake took out the picture they’d copied from the yearbook, unfolded it, compared faces. “I don’t see him out there now, do you? There’s a back room, though.”

  “Don’t see him,” D said.

  They stood, keeping to the door’s lee shadow, assessing and dismissing one face after another. “You think those kids meant he was already here, or on the way here, or coming here later?”

  “Who knows,” D replied. “Nobody’s paying attention to us, anyway, so we can stand here, stake it out, see what we see. Listen to this great so-called music. Maybe get a beer, so we don’t look outta place. Even have some popcorn.”

  “Right,” Jake said. He’d love a beer, but duty was duty. “Speaking of popcorn. What’s up with the dog?”

  “Bureaucrats,” D said, making it sound like an obscenity. “Animal Control made us sign some kind of foster bullshit, paperwork, so we shall see. But you know Kat. She’s all like, Oh, poor doggy. She changed its name to Rocco—dumb dog already answers to it. I’d have dumped the yapper.”

  Jake took his eyes off the crowd just long enough to sneer at his partner. “Liar,” he said.

  “As some have often noted,” D said. “Usually they’re assholes, though.”

  “D,” Jake said.

  “I didn’t call you an asshole,” D said. “I was merely—”

  “Nine o’clock.” Jake clocked his chin to the left. “Couple of feet from the archway to the back. By the Sam Adams sign.”

  D narrowed his eyes. “Ah…”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jake said. “Gotcha.”

  44

  JANE RYLAND

  “Isabel?” Jane felt the girl’s body stiffen, watched her sink onto the bar stool Elaine offered, then stand again.

  Her eyes had widened, then closed, and now she stood, a statue, hands at her sides. Jane watched them curl into fists, then open, as if choosing an emotion, anger or fear. Fee had disappeared, maybe gone to the bathroom, maybe off getting more pictures.

  “Isabel?” Elaine was saying, greeting some new arrivals. “I want you to meet Man—”

  “I have to leave,” Isabel whispered to the space in front of her. Her fingers found Jane’s arm, clutched it. “Right now.”

  “Sure,” Jane said. But this was a situation. A tough one. They’d come here to get video. Jane and Fiola were working journalists, shooting their documentary. They needed to be here. But Jane had promised Isabel she’d stick with her—and with that one vow had probably stepped over the reporter line.

  Where the heck was Fee? Elaine turned to welcome some other women, apparently unaware of Isabel’s apparent distress.

  “But, Isabel? Can you tell me why? Maybe that’ll help?” Jane signaled the bartender, a ponytailed blonde in a black apron. “Can you get my friend some water?”

  As Isabel stayed silent, Jane took the opportunity—hoping it wasn’t the last—to angle her camera into the room. She panned it, left to right and then back again, then zoomed in for close-ups of the drink-lined bar. They’d blur faces, and add special effects to hide the club’s identity. The footage would illustrate the packed-together bodies, the free-flowing alcohol, and the disturbing impossibility of knowing who might put something in a drink, or exchange one for another. The crowd ballooned, changing shape with the rhythm of the music and the surging current of the new arrivals.

  “Isabel?” The water arrived, iced and lemoned in a highball glass wrapped in a black napkin. “Are you okay?”

  The girl took it, but clutched the glass, without drinking. She stared toward the entrance to the back room, a lofty archway separating where they stood from the main bar area. Following her gaze, Jane could see nothing untoward—

  Jake? Jane, startled, tried to regroup. Stood tall as she could, peering over tops of heads. Jake? In the Spotted Owl? Why? She definitely had not told him the party was here. Definitely. Not. Had he followed her? Last night he’d warned her, as always, against going undercover, and she’d reassured him, as always, that she’d be fine. But if he thought she needed to be supervised, or monitored, that was … well, it was silly. Was she overreacting? Maybe it showed he loved her, and he was concerned about her? He was in her life. Maybe she needed to embrace that.

  But wait. There was DeLuca, too. And they were moving from the entrance of the Spotted Owl toward her. Coming her way? This ought to be interesting. She felt a mischievous smile. How would she handle these two?

  She’d almost forgotten her mission. “Isabel?”

  “Hang on,” Isabel said.

  Jane tucked herself behind Isabel’s stool, camera lens still pointing toward the dance floor, watching Jake and D make their way.

  They stopped, one of them on each side of a young man, sandy-haired and flannel-shirted, tall, with confident shoulders. Looked like a student, holding a beer bottle. Jake seemed to ask the kid a question. Funny, seeing it from this angle. Reading Jake’s body language and stance, she decided that this was not a personal encounter. Though Jake and D were both smiling, pleasant expressions on their faces, Jane could tell something unpleasant was under way.

  A new song blasted through the enormous ceiling-mounted speakers, throbbing, and as the crowd parted, a random moment allowed Jane’s camera a clear view of the three men. The student-guy was nodding, at first apparently agreeing, then he frowned and retreated, but Jake and D did not move from his side. Whatever was happening, Jane had it on camera.

  The three of them turned, Jake’s arm over the kid’s back. Beer bottle still in the student’s hand, they walked toward the exit. Three buddies, to any other observer. Jane suspected otherwise.

  And out the front door. Okay, bizarre. Jake and DeLuca hadn’t looked for her, since they easily could have found her, so their visit to the party wasn’t about her. She’d find out more tonight. Maybe even taunt Jake with her video, since it proved how very proficient she was at going undercover. So skilled he hadn’t even noticed her. Maybe she’d ask where he was first, just to see if he told the truth.

  Were they always telling the truth to each other, though? She hadn’t told him about the “SAY NO MORE” note—though why should she have? It would have just worried him, made him even more overprotective. She hadn’t told Jake the truth about her recognizing Clooney Sholto, either, because McCusker had sworn her to secrecy. So much for thei
r deal about sharing their lives.

  She felt Isabel let out a sigh. Turned as the girl took a sip of water.

  “I’m okay now,” she said. “He’s gone.”

  “‘He’?” Jane said.

  JAKE BROGAN

  Any minute now, the kid could ask for a lawyer, and this questioning session would all be over. But Theodore Winston Welliver, age twenty-one, was an adult. He could make his own decisions, and, given the rolling papers and lighter Jake had noted but left unmentioned, maybe “lawyer” wasn’t tops in this kid’s vocabulary. What Jake and D were trying to figure out right now, in the unthreatening ambience of the “victim room,” was whether that semi-anonymous tip T’shombe Pereira had forwarded contained any level of veracity. If it did, Welliver was toast.

  The ever-generous Boston Police Department had provided Mr. Welliver with a Pepsi and a bag of Doritos, though Trey, as he was called, clearly would have preferred a blunt, or something even more illegal. Not the brightest bulb on the planet. Which, sadly, might serve the path to justice. With one wrong word in the next half hour or so, Trey Welliver, student, could become Trey Welliver, murder suspect. All they needed was one glittering gem of probable cause.

  “So you knew Avery Morgan, you’d been to her home,” Jake reiterated, as if simply reminding himself.

  “She was cool.” Trey took a slug of Pepsi. “You know, hip. She’d have students over for rehearsals, stuff like that. She had that little dog, went everywhere with her.”

  “Right,” D said. He checked a pinging text, held up his phone screen to Jake. “Detective? Willow’s ‘okay,’ so says the man. He’s at home, waiting for her, says ‘never mind.’”

  “Kidding me?” Jake said. Never mind “never mind.” Jake was not done with the mercurial Mr. Galt. The good news—with no California mission and no missing suburban wife, he’d see Jane tonight. Eventually. It was already after ten.

  “Good-looking, too,” D was prompting Trey. “Ms. Morgan, I mean, not the dog.”

  Trey shrugged. “I guess so. Sure. Yeah.”

  “Is there anyone you think we should talk to about what happened?” Jake tried to keep this low-key. Didn’t want to scare the guy, and no way to gauge yet what might spook him into calling a halt to the inquiry. “As we explained, we’re attempting to get a picture of what her professional life was like, as well as her personal life. Any—you know—special friends? Boyfriends? Girlfriends?”

  “Um.” Trey looked at the ceiling, maybe searching for heavenly intervention. “Huh-uh. Not really.”

  Not really. One of Jake’s favorite answers. “Not really” generally meant exactly the opposite. “Not really” meant “Really, but I don’t want to tell you.”

  Jake patted for his spiral notebook and pretended to consult it, though he knew exactly what Edward Tarrant had told him. “So, just making a time line here, how did you first find out about Avery Morgan’s death? If you remember.”

  “Uh, I was riding my bike over there. The Reserve. They get the streets paved, it’s not like regular Boston. And I saw the cop car.”

  “I see.” Jake nodded. “And someone told you there was a murder?” Unlikely.

  Trey considered this, like a test question he hadn’t studied for. “Yeah. A cop kind of told me. I mean, he was calling for backup. And he was wet. She had a pool, you know. Two plus two.”

  The new math. Which also added up to Trey’s being at the scene of the potential crime. Though not what time he’d arrived. Maybe it was Trey who told that reporter? “Okay then. Did you tell anyone else about it?”

  “Anyone at all,” D said.

  “Um.” Trey picked up the soda can, rattled it. “Is there more Pepsi?”

  “How about this. Do you remember where you were earlier that afternoon? Anyone with you? Wherever you were?”

  “Um.” Trey rattled the can again, looked like he was contemplating crushing it. “Not really.”

  “Do you remember telling Edward Tarrant?” Jake asked. “The dean at Adams Bay?”

  “Edward Tarrant?”

  “So, why would you go to Tarrant about it, Trey?” Jake put on an intrigued-but-confused face. “Do you have a relationship with him? What kind?”

  “Re—”

  “—lationship,” D said.

  “Or with Ms. Morgan?” Jake asked.

  “Tarrant?” Trey said.

  “You shot the video at that pool party in May, right?” DeLuca said. “It was clear how she looked at you, waving at the camera.”

  “She? May?” Trey asked. “Hang the frick on. You mean…”

  Jake waited, signaled to D to do the same. D pulled up a folding chair and sat, silent, watching. The kid seemed edgy now, or worried, even angry, fidgeting with his Doritos bag, stabbing out the crumbs with a forefinger. Edgy was good. Worry was often the precursor to confession, or affirmation, or revelation. Anger was often the precursor to truth.

  “Did that asshole rat me out? Shit. Yes, I played the opera music to her. It was just on the phone, for crap sake. In case she was about to talk. All those girls, going around making a big deal about ‘just say no’ and shit.” Trey’s face went red. “Geez. Tarrant. Freaking guy knows everything.”

  He stood, a wounded bull, and his motion knocked over his empty Pepsi can. It fell off the conference table and onto the floor, rolled to the closed door, and teetered to a halt. They all stared at it. “Asshole. He freaking ratted me out.”

  D stood, as if to pick up the can. Bent over. Looked at it. Stopped. “Uh, Jake?” he said.

  “Stand by, okay?” Jake said. Whatever D wanted could wait one second. He turned to the kid, facing him dead on. He was clearly in full-out talk mode now, and Jake could not wait to hear what he was about to say.

  “Ratted you out?” Jake repeated. Let him talk, whatever this kid was saying.

  “Hell, yes.” The kid extended his middle finger, apparently at the universe. “He promised he wouldn’t, the asshole. Promised my dad. That was our deal. I’m gonna—”

  Trey stopped, breathing hard, narrowing his eyes, as if the effort of thinking was overpowering, as if trying to come up with the worst possible threat.

  “Ha,” he said. “I’m gonna tell my parents.”

  “Jake?” D again.

  Jake, annoyed, whirled to face him, but D wasn’t there.

  D was down. On the floor. Collapsed, one arm under him, motionless on the thin grimy carpet.

  45

  ISABEL RUSSO

  Her apartment door closed behind her, and Isabel paused, smiling, home again, but no longer a prisoner. She’d been outside. She’d done it. She’d broken the spell. Like some Rapunzel fairy-tale princess. She could think that to herself, silly but true.

  “True, Fish,” she said, tapping just the right amount of fish flakes into his bowl. “Good night, swim tight.” It was a good night. She couldn’t remember the last time she was up this late.

  Now she had plans, she had a future. She’d go to class even. Tomorrow, or the day after that for sure. Tomorrow afternoon was coffee with Elaine and the group. Last night they’d bonded over Edward Tarrant, and his perverse tactics to keep families silent. What Tarrant didn’t know: Manderley, awesome girl, had listened to every phone call. And kept notes. That disgusting man was about to get a visit he’d not soon forget. Plus, they’d told her they’d compiled what they called a “creep list.” Awesome, and Isabel couldn’t wait to add one certain name to it. Unless, perhaps, it was already there.

  And then Jane and Fiola were coming to do the first shooting of her interview. All good. She’d be in silhouette, but it was what she said that mattered, and nothing could stop her from saying it now. Not the vile Trey, not the hideous Tarrant, not her timid and unsupportive mother, not anyone. Vincerò.

  She went to the window, pulled back her striped curtains—they were so pretty, everything was pretty—and stepped out onto her balcony. The night, bejeweled with the lights of the square, twinkling stars, flashing neon, the flare
of headlights and even the traffic signals, all at once, all green. All green.

  The colors below had never been so vibrant. It was as if the world were in color again, as if someone had flipped a switch—Jane?—and given Isabel her life back.

  She wrapped her fingers around the spindly iron railing, replaying the evening. She’d seen him, Trey, coming into the Spotted Owl. Before he went away with whoever those guys were. She’d relived it, what happened in May: the revulsion, the dread, the incomprehensively unnerving gaps of memory. Her brain was clear right up to … when? Reality only pounced on her afterward, when she’d awakened, tangled in sheets, naked, sticky, alone.

  She’d told Tarrant back then. The whole thing. He’d as much as ordered her to keep quiet. Convinced her mother, too, not to say a word. It was about her reputation, Tarrant had insisted. Her future. Her mother had believed it, had even been grateful! But not her, not anymore. What she’d learned last night? She wasn’t the only one. Talk about a creep.

  She’d entered tonight in her “Someday” file. She was keeping track of Trey. Oh, yes. Maybe someday she wouldn’t have to.

  She closed her eyes briefly, making a wish, as she leaned forward on the balcony rail, pushing all bad thoughts away. She looked down, over the edge, onto the street fifteen stories below.

  WILLOW GALT

  Willow had blinked at the darkness, struggled to come out of the drug-induced fog. She was … in that hotel, right, and it was … She had tried to stand, then fell back on the chair, swimming through the uncertainty and searching for bearings. The crosswalk. The man. The sidewalk. The man. Java Jim’s. The man.

  Ten-seventeen, the time displayed in white electronic lights on the hotel’s nightstand clock. She’d slept for all that time? Maybe. She’d taken another pill. Or two. “For better or for worse,” she and Tom had made that vow, but she’d let her paranoia and panic erase it. After ten at night? He’d be frantic. It was time for the panic to be over.