by Alina Adams
So, to recap: One down, seventy-eight million details to go.
Bex needed confirmation. Of what didn't even particularly matter at this point. The fact was, over the last few days, she'd heard a lot of different stories from a lot of different people. And not a single one matched up exactly against another. If Bex could only get one person to agree with another's account, she would at least (she hoped) know what direction to continue digging in. As it was, she didn't know who to believe or where to turn.
She supposed she could call Toni again and get her take. But, how many times was Toni supposed to remind Bex that she really didn't know Robby, Rachel, and especially Craig? (Heck, Toni didn't even recognize the latter when he was right in front of her face every day for five years. Obviously, they weren't that close.) What Bex needed was a neutral, U.N.-type observer, who saw all fourteen years ago, yet was far enough removed from the situation to remain unbiased.
Bex looked back over her list of suspects. And, with a sigh, realized that, at this point, the person who seemed most likely not to be harboring a present day agenda was Felicia Tufts. After all, she appeared to have come out from the fracas the most unscathed (wife-battering aside). She wasn't living in hiding like Rachel and Craig. She hadn't served a prison term like Robby. Heck, she had the nicest apartment of them all. By New York real estate laws, obviously that meant she was the happiest. Plus, she really did have the weakest reason for killing Rachel. It was one thing to carry a grudge. But to act on it, out of the blue, fourteen years later was just weird. (And, yes, Bex was aware that it might not be "out of the blue" if one factored in Bex's recent opening of old wounds. But one did not care to do that sort of factoring right now, thank you.)
So, while waiting for brilliant inspiration to strike re: what she should do about Jeremy, Bex decided to bite the bullet of rudeness and give Felicia another call. After all, she couldn't strike out any worse this time than she had initially.
Except that, this time, when Bex called, Felicia didn't seem to be home.
Would that, technically, be a strikeout, Bex wondered?
No, she decided, it was more of a draw.
Although it did make it clear to Bex that she was now officially out of stalling options. She picked up her purse, locked her office door and headed for the 24/7 parking garage. To gamble that her ancient car had one more trip up to the Poconos in it.
This time, Bex did not park in the Hunts' driveway. She wanted to be free to make a quick getaway. And she was too chicken to let Craig see her before she was ready.
And so, for about fifteen minutes, Bex sat in her car.
A most productive use of her time, to be sure. She passed it by doing some calculations: If 24/7 were paying her by the hour (which, God forbid, it would ever do; they liked their employees indentured... oops, sorry, salaried—Freudian slip), then how much money was her procrastination costing Gil? The thought of his losing even pennies due to her cowardice made Bex feel a smidge better about herself. But then she remembered that the said pennies (quickly turning into quarters as she sat) would be coming out of her own pocket unless Bex came up with a viable story for the Nationals broadcast.
It was amazing how quickly her self-esteem shrank in direct proportion with her bank account. And how immediately parsimony overruled fear.
Bex got out of the car. She walked up the stairs to Rachel and Craig's house. She rang the bell before her brain had time to, self-protectively, snatch away her finger. Her determination caused Bex to push the button so hard that she bent her nail back in the wrong direction. She yelped and stuck it in her mouth to soothe the pain.
Which was naturally what she was doing when Craig opened the door.
Someday, after this was all over and Bex was a legendary murder-solving hero, and she and Craig (assuming he wasn't the murderer whose killing spree made her legendary) had a chance to sit down for a nice, long chat, Bex would love to find out what he thought of her, considering that, every time they'd met up so far, she'd been either banging her nose on his mail slot or sucking her finger on his porch. Classy, no?
"Go to hell," Craig said immediately upon seeing her.
All right. So, at this juncture, Bex could extrapolate that his current opinion of her wasn't particularly high. And it probably didn't even have everything to do with the nose bumping and finger sucking.
"Please," she said, not sure what exactly might come out her mouth, but deciding civility was as good of a place to start as any.
"Please what?"
Oh, sure, put her on the spot, why don't you?
Bex hesitated. She hesitated for a number of reasons. Not the least of which was the fact that Craig Hunt most certainly didn't look good. And not in the way he hadn't looked good the day before. The day before, Craig had merely looked like he'd slept in his clothes, hadn't shaved for a while, and had been ripping hair out of his head more frequently than was probably recommended by the president-and-also-a-customer of The Hair Club for Men. Which, under the my-wife-has-been-killed circumstances, was a perfectly reasonable state to be in.
Today, though, Craig looked like not only had his clothes served another night as de facto pajamas, but also as if he'd attempted to shave but somewhere along the way had lost the ability. Both cheeks, and a horizontal line right under his left cheekbone, were scraped and starting to scab. Dried blood caked his lower lip from where he'd dug in his teeth and opened two raw gashes. His hands didn't so much shake as twitch, the fists seemingly opening and closing of their own accord.
"What?" he asked, emphasizing every letter of every word as if doing anything less would cause him to lose his grip on the sentence. And on anything else currently dangling by a slender thread. "Do you want?"
Nothing. Now more than ever, Bex thought, would be a good time to say nothing, turn tail and flee. And maybe whip out her pepper spray for good measure.
But then she took a second look at Craig's battered face. And she wondered if the slashes across his skin were really caused by a shaving razor. Or by a pair of hands clawing desperately to defend themselves?
"Where's Jeremy?" Bex demanded, drawing melodrama-type courage from the fact that she was finally acting in someone else's best interests for a change, instead of her own.
"It's none of your business."
"He called me last night," Bex said.
"He what? Last night? What did he say?" Craig took a step toward her, as if he needed the answer so quickly, only shaking it out of Bex could get it to him fast enough.
"He said he needed to talk to me."
"About what?"
"About you."
"Me?" Craig appeared so genuinely stunned by her reply that Bex had to wonder what he'd been expecting her to say.
"Yes." She looked around the living room, which, unlike Craig, actually looked relatively tidy. Either father and son hadn't been spending much time there, or else he'd recently cleaned up. To cover up an activity that could only be described as nefarious. "So, may I see him, please?"
"He isn't here."
"Where is he?"
"I—It's none of your business."
"I just told you, Jeremy called me last night. That makes it my business."
"Prove it," Craig said.
Bex considered suggesting they call into her voicemail so Craig and she could listen to Jeremy's desperate message together. But then she realized that standing next to a ready-to-snap Craig Hunt as he heard his son whisper, "Ms. Levy, this is Jeremy Hunt I really need to talk to you. It's about my dad killing my mom," just might fall under the category of activities that could prove dangerous to children and other living things.
"I need to speak to Jeremy, Mr. Hunt" Bex heard herself getting all official, and decided it must be to cover up her fear. She hoped her self-preservation instincts knew what they were doing, because she certainly no longer did. "I'm afraid that if you keep hindering me, I'll be forced to—"
"You'll be forced to what? What? Stalk me, again? Try to break into my house
, nose first—again? Turn my life upside down? Get my wife murdered? Kidnap my son? Because you know what? About that last one? Sorry, but I've got you there, Bex. You're too late. Jeremy's already gone!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Gone?” Bex repeated. It was a trick she picked up from zoning out in high school. If you repeated the last word you'd just heard, it might give your wandering brain opportunity to run after and capture the previously missed sentence in its entirety. This, in turn, would buy you enough time to come up with a clever answer before the asker even realized you were stalling. At least, that was the theory, anyway. "What do you mean Jeremy is gone?"
"It means, Bex, that I have no idea, at this moment, where my thirteen-year-old son might be, who he's with, or what's happening to him. Are you happy now? You tried so desperately to turn him into a missing person and, voila! You got your wish!" Under the circumstances, Craig's taunting of her might have seemed grossly inappropriate or callous. If it weren't for the fact that it also looked like, any minute now, the grown man might sit down on his living room floor, cover his face with his hands, and burst into tears.
"What happened?" Bex asked softly, realizing that Craig Hunt was at the end of his rope. That fourteen years of impeccable control had just shattered in the space of three unbelievably unbearable days. And that she, if not solely responsible for the breakdown, was also in way too deep to pretend that her involvement could even be limited to the Supporting Actress category.
"I don't know," he said. "I have no idea. I went out this morning…. I knew I should have taken Jeremy with me, but he was sleeping and he's been so... I wanted him to get some rest."
"Where did you go?" Bex couldn't help it. Who, what, where, when, why, and how was tattooed on her consciousness like some people knew their ABCs and multiplication tables.
Craig looked at Bex as if he wished he could strangle her. For most people, this would have probably been disconcerting. Luckily, Bex worked in television. People looked like they wanted to strangle her rather often. It was one of those fringe benefits of working with Gil Cahill. Ergo, she barely flinched.
"I went to the morgue." Craig snapped his words, rather than Bex's neck. This was a good thing. "Is that okay with you? They released Rachel's body this morning and I had some papers to sign. I didn't really think Jeremy needed to be a part of that."
Bex nodded sympathetically. And made a mental note to check out his story.
"When I got home, Jeremy was gone."
"Just gone? Just like that?"
"You know another definition of gone that I'm not aware of?"
"Did he take anything with him? Like his clothes or... his skates?"
"You think Jeremy ran away to join an ice show?"
Actually, the thought hadn't crossed Bex's mind. She was just trying to be thorough. But, Craig did have a good point. Whether he'd initially meant it sarcastically or not. Bex asked, "Do you think Jeremy might have run away from home?"
"Why would he do that?"
Because his mother was dead and he'd called a more-or-less total stranger to implicate his father in the crime? That sure did sound like a good enough reason to Bex. Of course, once again, this wasn't really info she thought might be prudent to share with Craig at this particular time. So she improvised. "Maybe... maybe ... maybe he did it because he really wanted to go to Nationals!"
Oh, boy, that was a good one! And so thematic, too. Almost like a Lifetime movie! After all, hadn't this all started because Jeremy wanted to go to Nationals, and Craig wouldn't let him?
"Are you out of your mind?" Craig asked. And this time, it didn't even sound like an insult. It sounded like he really and truly, once and for all, wanted to know. "You think, after everything, Jeremy is still thinking about Nationals?"
"He loves to skate," Bex said simply. "You said it yourself, skating makes him happier than anything in the world. Maybe, with everything that's been going on, he just needed something solid to hold on to. Something he could focus on that wasn't his mother." Or what you did to her.
Craig shook his head, either refusing to listen, or desperately trying to wrench her obvious logic out of his brain.
"Are his skates gone, too?" Bex asked.
"I don't..." He nervously rubbed the gash on the left side of his cheek, opening it up again and leaving a streak of blood on the back of his hand. "I don't know. I didn't check."
"Can I check?"
This time, the "Are you out of your mind?" was simply implied by the look in Craig's eyes.
"It might help us to figure out—"
"Us? When did any of this become a scavenger hunt for us? I know what you're after, Bex. Jeremy is just a story to you."
"I'm trying to help."
"I think you've been helpful enough already, thanks."
"Did Jeremy leave a note or anything?" Bex pressed on. Craig was the one out of his mind if he thought mere sarcasm would be enough to derail her. Once again, thank you, Gil Cahill.
"No," Craig said. "Nothing."
But he stuffed his hands in his pockets as he said it. And he wouldn't look Bex in the eye.
"No message of any kind?"
"I said, he didn't leave a note." This time, Craig raised his head and held Bex's gaze for an extra long time. Like a kid in a staring contest.
"Well, what do the police think?" Bex considered playing his game. She'd actually been pretty good at this back in grade school. The trick was to look not at the person, but at some fixed point in the distance. That way, you weren't tempted to blink at sudden movements. And you had to be really good at ignoring chaffed eyeballs, too.
"The police?" Craig was the first to blink. He also looked at Bex as if she'd uttered her latest question in Swahili.
"What did they say when you called? Are they treating this as a missing persons case, or as a runaway kid?"
“I haven't called the police."
"Why not? Jeremy is missing."
"And Rachel is dead. The police were so terribly helpful with that."
"They're doing their best."
"Yes, I know. Something about skipping vacations they'd promised their wives."
"You've met Gretchen."
"I try to keep our encounters to a minimum."
"I don't understand why you haven't called the police."
"Because this is none of their business. I repeat, America's finest haven't ever been exactly helpful when it came to Rachel and me."
"Did you try? Fourteen years ago, did you or Rachel even consider going to the police to press rape charges against Robby?"
"Oh, that would have gone over well. That's just what Rachel needed, to become the talk of the ever-supportive skating world. People whispering about her as she walked by, then shutting up as soon as she turned around. Skating mothers arguing over who did what to whom and who was telling the truth and who was just trying to get attention and who was secretly jealous and who, as long as they were at it, had finally proven herself to be the slut they always suspected she was. Yes, that would have been fun. And, once again, the police would have been so helpful."
"Fine. Maybe that would have happened. But, Jeremy is a totally different case. Your son is missing and you won't call the police? That's nuts." Bex was about to add, "What if the person who killed Rachel got Jeremy, too?" But then, she realized that that person might be standing right in front of her.
And that was when she got scared. Really, really scared.
This wasn't about getting a great story and/or outsmarting Craig with her razor-sharp wit and keen insights anymore. Suddenly, this had stopped being a game.
She tried to keep her feelings to herself. She struggled to keep her face neutral, her stance relaxed, her tone light.
She failed miserably.
The instant she actually believed—not just academically tossed a theory around, but really and truly believed—that Craig might have not only accidentally killed Rachel, but also deliberately done something to hurt his own son, Bex felt herself sh
utting down. Her cheeks flushed. Her breath caught. Her shoulders sunk into each other as if trying to roll into a ball and duck for cover. If there was a cliché activity to indicate shock, fear, horror, et al….she engaged in it. And Craig was no fool. He saw it all.
For a moment, he didn't say anything. He simply stared at Bex, as if trying to figure out what to do with her.
And then, wearily, he said, "Get out, Bex. Get out of my house, get out of my life. Leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone."
Bex had to do something. Because this had gotten so far out of hand, Bex couldn't even see her fingers from where she was standing. There were lives at stake now. Real, actual, people lives. Bex sometimes lost track of that. That was the problem with working in a job where real, actual, people's lives were referred to as "storylines."
As in, "What storyline should we play at this championship?"
"Well, So-and-So's mother was in a car accident a couple months ago. She's paralyzed."
"Oh, that's great. Fabulous stuff. Yeah, let's play that. What else have we got?"
When Bex's primary job consisted of ferreting out a good story and presenting it in a three-act manner—Introduction, Tragedy, followed preferably by big-time Comeback, it was hard to remember that these were real people they were talking about, and not just characters created for 24/7's benefit.
Sitting in her car, half a block away from Craig Hunt's home, Bex had to admit to herself that, up until this point, she'd still been looking at the entire situation as a great story to be told. Even Rachel's death hadn't felt real. It was more of a plot twist. To be totally honest, Bex had been more concerned about how she would get footage to support her story, than she was in how it might come out. As long as it was cinematic (and made Bex look good in front of Gil and, what the heck, the whole world), she really didn't care who actually done it.
But now, Jeremy was missing. It should have been just another great plot twist. But this was a kid, for Pete's sake. From the looks of it, a scared little kid. Who'd just lost his mother. And who wanted to tell Bex how his father was involved.
