Forget Me Not

by A. M. Taylor

  I could practically hear the doors slamming shut on Nate’s innocence. But instead of feeling angry at him for putting me in this position, I was scared for him. Because how fearful must he have been to lie like that.

  There was silence for a while as the agents contemplated me. I think I’d given them the information they expected all along; Nate had no alibi for the night Elle was killed, and this was just another box to be checked in the case against him.

  “Well, thank you for coming in, Maddie,” Gutierrez said, “we really appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, of course. There’s something else though, while I’m here,” I said, unable to stop myself.

  “Yes?” Gutierrez said.

  “I-I logged into Nora’s email account last night, and there were messages from Bright that indicate he slept with her a couple of nights before she went missing.”

  Agent Lee pushed himself off from the wall he’d been leaning against and walked towards the table. “Officer Brightman, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maddie, as we told you before, we’re not actually investigating Nora’s case. If you have anymore information about Noelle’s case, then of course we’d like to hear it, but this isn’t within our purview at the moment.”

  There was something about Gutierrez’s tone that made me feel like a nuisance, like a child telling her mother her sister was being annoying only to make an annoyance of herself in the process. I wanted to mention the messages Noelle had received from “John Smith” too, but that seemed likely to go down just as well as Nora’s messages had done; besides, I thought, surely Leo would have told them about the messages by now, so I just nodded and left the room, leaving my barely touched cup of coffee behind.

  Agent Lee caught up with me just as I was passing through the waiting room. “Hey,” he said, a little breathless, “do you think I could buy you a drink later?”

  I looked at him, my vision swimming a little so that I saw two sets of dark eyes and two smiles that were trying incredibly hard to look sheepish, and failing.

  “Why?” I asked, and his eyes widened a little as he let out a bark of laughter.

  “I’d like to talk to you about those emails,” he said more seriously, once he realized I was actually waiting for an answer.

  “So, why didn’t you in there?” I nodded my head in the direction we’d both come from.

  “This wouldn’t be official. I’m just interested.”

  I stuffed my hands into my coat pockets and clenched my fists. “Fine,” I said. “See you at seven at Cool’s?” He nodded and we left it at that, Lee returning to his partner in that airless interrogation room.

  Across the room I could see Bright, large shoulders hunched over his too-small desk, working on something or other. He looked up, catching my eye, and I must have stayed staring at him a little too long because he stood up and walked over to me, something like concern sketched over his face.

  “Maddie, what are you doing here? Everything okay?”

  It took a second before I could speak, and even then I sputtered my way through the sentence. “I was just talking to the agents about something.”

  He turned to look back at the hallway Lee had disappeared down, and I watched him carefully, trying make sense of him, trying to make sense of him and Nora, trying to make sense of someone living a lie for so long that it almost became the truth.

  “You slept with Nora,” I said suddenly, unable to hold it in, and his entire body stilled, still looking off down the hallway, before he slowly turned to look at me.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about how a week before she went missing, you and Nora slept together.”

  Bright didn’t move, as unmovable and unreadable as ever. “Serena finally told you?”

  It took me a while to answer; I hadn’t expected him to admit it so readily. “No. I found your emails to Nora from ten years ago,”

  “What? You went through her emails? From ten years ago?” It was the most animated I’d ever seen him.

  “Yeah, and you were emailing her right up until she disappeared.”

  “Maddie, you need to stop right there. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Forty-five minutes before her last call to me, that’s when you were still emailing her, still trying to track her down. Did you?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Of course you’d say that.”

  “Because it’s the truth, Mads.” Bright raised his eyes to the ceiling, searching for wisdom perhaps. “You’re acting a little crazy, you know that, right? What are you doing going through Nora’s emails? Logging into Noelle’s Facebook? None of this is normal, Maddie. You need to take a step back. Go home, go back to Madison, look after yourself.”

  “Does anyone else know?” I asked, “apart from me and Serena?” and he shook his head at me, in disbelief and despair. In disgust maybe.

  “Yes, actually they do. I went straight to the Chief with it when Nora disappeared. I couldn’t have that coming up when they searched her emails and social media, which I knew they were going to do. I didn’t hurt her, okay, Mads? I made a mistake, a fucking huge one, but I didn’t kill her.”

  “And that’s it?” I asked, my voice beginning to strain, fray at the edges. “You came forward like a good little boy and they just believed you? No further investigations?”

  “Well, I did also have an alibi, remember?” He was starting to get frustrated; I’d never actually seen Bright lose his temper—wasn’t sure that he had one—but I could see it, the beginnings of it at least.

  “Oh, that’s right. You and Louden were just chilling out together, weren’t you? You really expect me to believe that now? That you were just casually hanging out with the person whose girlfriend you’d just slept with? Please, Bright. Give me some credit.”

  “If you don’t believe me, fine. But I’d think twice before running your mouth about it all over town, because I’m pretty sure, when it comes down to it, people will be more likely to believe me than you.” His voice was scathing, his face, normally so placid and immobile and impossible to read, was suddenly twisted and tortured, disfigured by anger and something else even uglier, even darker.

  I took a step back, suddenly aware of how close he was standing, how easy it would be for him to reach out and grab me, hurt me. Would he dare do that in the middle of a police station, or would his uniform and the presence of his colleagues embolden him even further? Because he was right, wasn’t he? Who would believe me over him?

  Maybe it was that that made me realize there was something there. That I hadn’t stumbled upon an open grave only to find it empty; there was something more here, I knew, something under all those years of lies, something to be dug out and dug up and finally held up to the light. I think maybe I’d known it all along; that I was the one who had to do it, who had to finally get her hands dirty, to keep digging until my arms ached and my hands shook and I could finally lay Nora to rest.

  We were already a beer in when Agent Lee finally deigned to talk to me about the emails I’d found from Bright. He’d bought us a pitcher of beer again and was pouring me a glass as he said: “So I took a look at the case file from Nora’s disappearance after you left the station. Officer Brightman told the investigating officers about the emails and their contents the day she disappeared.”

  “He did?” I asked, a little deflated but still unable to shake the feeling that someone, somewhere, had to be lying.

  “Yeah,” he said, wiping a little froth from the top of his mouth as he did so.

  I looked at him, trying to get a handle on him and failing. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, your partner made it pretty clear that you guys have no interest in investigating Elle’s murder in conjunction with Nora’s disappearance. So why did you look at the file; why are you even here, talking to me about it all?”

  “Look, I can’t get
into it with you, but it’s not as if we came here with the intention of not reopening Nora’s case. We all want to find out what happened to Nora, okay? I mean, for Christ’s sake, if I can be involved in solving one of the most famous cases in the state, I’m going to be,” he ended with a guffaw.

  “Because it will help your career?”

  Lee kind of tipped his head at me and pursed his lips a little. “Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I don’t also want to find out what happened to your friend. It’s a win-win for me.”

  “A win-win,” I repeated, unable to meet his eye.

  “I realize that must sound a little callous.”

  “No, it’s fine. You’re just doing your job, right?”

  “Right,” he said after a while, and then: “so, you had no idea about any of it? That they’d slept together?”

  I shook my head. “No idea.”

  “And you’re thinking either Bright killed your friend to stop her from telling her boyfriend, or the boyfriend killed her once she told him, is that it?”

  “Well, it is a little convenient that the two people who had the most obvious motive to kill Nora were also each other’s alibis, isn’t it?” I said, swallowing down the taste of bile that had suddenly coated my mouth.

  Lee raised both his eyebrows. “It does send up a few red flags, yes.”

  “So, what can we do about it?” I said, before amending it to: “What can you do about it?” when his eyebrows began to rise even higher.

  “Well, nothing officially. The case hasn’t been reopened yet.”

  I tightened my grip on my glass. “So, then what was the point of this? If you can’t do anything about it? Or won’t?”

  “Calm down, Maddie. I understand you must be frustrated—”

  “Frustrated? You think I’m frustrated? It’s been ten years, Steven, I’m more than fucking frustrated.”

  He held up his hands. “I understand, I’m sorry. I spoke out of turn. But what I was about to say was that we’ve found some suspicious messages on Noelle’s Facebook profile that indicated she may have been watched in the months leading up to her murder.”

  “John Smith,” I said without thinking.

  Lee almost choked on the beer he was drinking. “John Smith? How do you?—you logged into Noelle’s Facebook as well as Nora’s email?”

  I looked at him. “Yeah. I was the one who told Leo about him, about the messages. Isn’t that how you know?”

  “You mean Officer Moody?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s not how we got hold of the messages.”

  “So, he didn’t tell you about them?”

  “Not as far as I’m aware. We started monitoring Noelle’s social media accounts as soon as we got here. But that’s really beside the point. You can’t just log into other people’s private Facebook and email accounts, Maddie.”

  “So, what are you going to do? Arrest me?”

  “Jesus Christ.” He looked down into the bottom of his almost-empty glass, letting out a bark of frustrated laughter. “I think I need something stronger. And you need to stop trying to do our jobs for us. Or you really will get arrested.”

  He got up as if to leave, and I reached across the sticky beer-splashed table to grab his arm, pulling him back into his seat. “Can you just tell me about John Smith, please? About the messages?”

  Lee sighed, his face morphing into a picture of unease. “I can’t discuss any of this with you, Maddie, not really. It’s an ongoing investigation. But if there’s a connection between those messages and these emails, then I promise we’ll find it. Despite what you may think, we’ve been trying to find a reason to reopen Nora’s case since we got here. Now, I’m going to go get myself a whisky. Can I get you anything?”

  I stared at him a little too long and his gaze shifted from mine, looking around the bar which had grown busier while we sat there. I followed his gaze, spotting Gloria Lewis a few tables over from us with a basket of onion rings and waffle fries that she was ignoring in favor of staring at Agent Lee and me. She smiled thinly as our eyes met, and I grabbed my coat, pulling it on with stiff arms, fingers fumbling.

  “No, thanks,” I said at last, “I think I just need to get home.”

  I could feel Lee watching me as I rushed out of the bar, but it was a woman’s voice that stopped me just as I was pulling the door open.

  “Cozying up to the guy who arrested your boyfriend, huh? I’m sure Nate will be glad to hear you’re getting so close with Agent Lee,” Gloria Lewis said.

  I turned around to look down at her, desperate to leave, to just get the hell out of there, but unable to let it go. “You know, it’s incredibly sad to see a woman of your professional distinction resting on ten-year-old laurels, Gloria. You’d think you’d have moved on from all this by now, but I guess we just don’t always get the career breaks we deserve, do we?”

  “I won awards for my coverage of Nora’s disappearance,” Gloria replied with eyes narrowed.

  “Oh, I know, and we’re all so proud of you. But how many have you won since?” My arms were shaking as I pulled the door open again and walked out, this time without anyone following me.

  I paced my room, energy burning through my body in a way it hadn’t done in years. Static buzzed through me, insistent but impotent, with nowhere to go. I had to do something; I couldn’t just sit here doing nothing when Nate was in jail and somewhere out there was the truth.

  Eventually I sat down, opening up my laptop and sending Louden a Facebook message. I didn’t have his phone number, otherwise I would have called him, but I knew I had to speak to him. Had he known about Bright and Nora? And if so, what had he done about it? Or alternatively, what had Bright done to stop Nora from telling Louden?

  But I was too impatient to wait for his response—or maybe I just knew he wouldn’t respond. Louden and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms, after all—so after an hour or so of jittery waiting, of scrolling through Louden’s wall, looking for something, anything, I picked up my phone and called Hale.

  “Maddie?” she said, surprise lacing her voice.

  “Hey, Hale. Sorry for calling so late.”

  “That’s … okay. What’s going on?”

  “I’m trying to get hold of your brother. Could you give me his number?”

  Silence filled the room before a long, heavy sigh came down the line. “Why?” she asked.

  “I just really need to speak to him, okay? It’s about Nora.”

  “When is not about Nora?” Hale asked, and this time her voice was weary, tired.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly what I just said,” she said, her voice still heavy with a sigh.

  “Look,” I said, trying a new tactic, “I know we’re not exactly friends anymore—”

  “Ha!” Hale barked, surprising me. “Bit hard to stay friends when you accuse my brother of murder, isn’t it?”

  I swallowed, mind racing, trying to figure out a way to get what I wanted out of this conversation that was heading nowhere fast. “I’m sorry, Hale. Okay? I really am. I’m just trying to figure out if Louden knew about Bright and Nora sleeping together right before she went missing.”

  I had raced through my lines, getting the words out as quickly as possible before Hale hung up on me, but my sprint was met by a brick wall of silence before Hale said: “Bright slept with Nora?”

  “Yeah. That New Year’s Eve. You remember you had that party?” I said, suddenly on slightly steadier ground, appealing to a shared memory.

  “I remember,” she said.

  ***

  From far across the room I can see Nora and Louden talking to each other, or rather talking at one another. Nora is a blur of wild gesticulation, Louden more an immovable mountain. Neither of them really seem to be paying attention to what the other is saying. They’re just saying it for the sake of it. I’ve never seen a couple who scream “we’re over” more than the two of them, and yet if Nora’s actions over the past t
wo weeks are anything to go by, they’ll probably end up sleeping together tonight.

  Ange pushes her way through the crowd, too small to see until she’s almost upon me and passes me a cup of frothy beer. “They still going at it?” she asks, following my gaze to the Nora and Louden show in the corner of the room.

  “They sure are.”

  Ange groans. “Why don’t they just break up already? This is such a fucking charade.”

  “Yeah, Nora normally likes to keep all her amateur dramatics firmly on the stage.”

  “Louden’s finally unraveled her.”

  “Don’t say that, it’s too depressing.” I hate the idea of anyone being able to unravel Nora, let alone Louden Winters. I immediately notice Bright as he walks through the door. I watch as he gets himself a drink and takes a look around the room, quietly assessing the damage. No one else seems to have noticed that there’s a cop standing in a room full of underage drinkers, which is weird because Bright is six foot three and very noticeable. He catches my eye and raises both his eyebrows in recognition before heading over.

  “Hey. What’s that in your cup, Mads?”

  “Don’t do this, Bright.”

  “Do what?” He’s all innocence.

  “Don’t come to a high school party and bust our chops for drinking. It’s your own fault for coming.”

  “This isn’t a high school party, Fielder. Louden invited me, and the last I heard, he was in college.”