“That was me.” Overbey cocks his head in the direction of the Rayburn house. “Your very helpful neighbors across the street told me you and your girlfriend had gone for a walk. ‘As usual,’ they said. Does your girlfriend know Joe?”
“You called my cell?” I’ll avoid his girlfriend reference. “Where’d you get my number?”
“From Mr. Rissinelli’s phone, ma’am,” Overbey says. “Your name showed up in the contacts. And your address is listed. Just like Law & Order.”
“Sorry. Of course.” I’m an idiot. And somehow nervous. But that means this visit has nothing to do with developments or new evidence in the Tasha case. Not directly. “This is so disturbing. What do you think happened?”
“So.” Overbey smiles, so very pleasant, so very patient. “He’s a what? Friend? Colleague? Something else? I didn’t tell his wife we were coming to see you. Or that her husband did. Yet.”
He pauses, as if to let that semi-threat sink in. What does he think I’ve done?
“He’s nothing,” I say, “I mean, he’s a colleague.” I almost say ‘was,’ which proves how disquieting police questioning can be. “And I heard…” Oops. Dumb, Mercer.
“Yeah?”
“I heard he’s getting a divorce.” Of course I can’t say who told me that, so I backfill, hoping he already knows this. “Just through the grapevine.”
“Yeah. So any idea where he might be? His wife says he took both their passports. And some of her jewelry. That jog your memory? Why he hasn’t been home for three days?”
“No.” I widen my eyes, wondering why telling the truth is coming out like it’s not the truth. “He’s a freelance reporter, so he gets assignments, all over the world I guess, maybe he’s on one of those? Did he post on Twitter? He uses that a lot. But there’s no reason for him to tell me anything. We only worked together, sort of, informally, covering the Ashlyn Bryant trial,” I explain.
If he asks me how that started, or why, I’ll have to say I called him. But it was for the book, so there’s nothing sinister about that. After this morning, though, seems like Ashlyn knew about it. She destroys everyone’s life she touches. How many times have I thought that?
“I see,” Overbey says. He still has his notebook out, purses his lips at the still-blank pages. “Did you attend the trial?”
“Ah, no. I watched on TV. That’s how I knew who you were,” I explain. “I was—am—writing a book about it.”
Overbey nods. “And Mr. Rissinelli was ‘helping’ you? What was your relationship with him?”
I can’t gauge whether his questions are straightforward, or if he’s laying some kind of trap that I don’t recognize. This may be a cop trick, to ask a sincere-sounding question, then lower the boom after the answer. Whatever he thinks the boom is in this case.
“Nothing,” I say. “We talked about the trial. We had pizza. I haven’t seen him, or heard from him, since”—I calculate—“since the jury went out.”
“I see.” Overbey stands, takes a business card from a flap in his notebook. Hands it to me. “All right, then. Call me if you hear anything. I mean—anything. I’m scheduled dayside, Wednesday through Sunday, eight to four. In the Schroeder building. Show this card if you want to talk in person. But call me anytime. I mean—any time.”
He eyes the front door, and I feel a ridiculous sense of relief as he heads toward it. I try to remember what I’ve written about him. I know he’s a veteran cop with an impressive conviction rate. Ashlyn Bryant’s case did not help his numbers. I bet he’s not Ashlyn’s biggest fan.
“Detective?” I am pushing my luck here, following him to the door, but I can’t help it. He’s a major player in a murder trial. I’m the jury now. “For the book I’m writing? I saw your testimony. That must have been so disturbing, seeing Tasha Nicole at Castle Island.”
He turns to me. Looks me up and down. Puts his hand on the doorknob. Doesn’t answer.
“Detective?” I’m going for it. And crossing fingers Ashlyn isn’t eavesdropping. “Even given the not-guilty verdict. Is there a possibility someone other than Ashlyn Bryant killed Tasha?”
Silence. But he takes his hand off the doorknob.
“I can’t talk about that. Ma’am.”
He doesn’t move. Okay, I’ll try another tack. “Do you know who Tasha’s father is? Where he is? Was?”
He doesn’t say a word. But doesn’t leave. I take this as the go-ahead to keep pushing. Maybe he’s waiting until I come up with the question he wants to answer.
“Did you ever see the surveillance video? The video of Ashlyn and her daughter arriving in Boston? Why wasn’t that used at trial?” I take the tiniest step closer to him, don’t want to crowd him, but I need to keep my voice low. No way to tell if Ashlyn is listening. The guest room is not that far away. She’d have to be right up against the wall to hear—but I still turn my back to the hallway. “Wouldn’t it have proved they were both in Boston? Together?”
Silence again. I open my mouth to try another question. But he speaks first.
“Off the record?” he says.
I probably look as surprised as I feel. It’s truly unlikely that he would talk to me. Maybe he has an agenda of his own.
“Sure,” I agree.
“It got lost. The thumb drive with the video. By a Dayton cop. Just a screwup, he didn’t download it, shit happens—sorry, things happen. He seems to be an okay guy.”
I rewind my brain. “Rogowicz? Wadleigh Rogowicz.”
“Yup. Maybe you should ask him about that,” Overbey says. “The newsstand didn’t keep a copy, they tape over every month or whatever. Huge snafu. So”—he shrugs—“the judge decided to keep out testimony about it. Rogowicz said you couldn’t be certain who it was, anyway. Still. So the cookie crumbles.”
“Are you looking for some other killer, though?” I regret the words the moment they come out. It’s a cliché, after the O. J. trial. I try to undo. “I mean—are you investigating now? The case would still be open, right, if you think she didn’t do it? Or not?”
At this, Overbey’s hand goes back onto the doorknob. “Ma’am? You know anything about what defense attorneys do?”
I do, in fact. They marry you and be wonderful and then get killed in car accidents.
“A little,” I say out loud.
“Then you’ll have noted, as any good defense attorney would, how often Royal Spofford said ‘only Ashlyn.’ Remember that?” He scratches his head, fingernails at one temple of his graying hair. “If they charge someone else, it’ll be damn tough for a different DA to say to a new jury—‘well, on the other hand, ladies and gents, maybe it wasn’t Only Ashlyn.’ Spofford created instant reasonable doubt, Miz Hennessey. This sucker is closed, no matter what the verdict.”
I nod, seeing his point. Ashlyn’s only a few yards away. Is she hearing this?
“Do I think she’s guilty?” Overbey takes one step out the door. Turns back to me. Over his shoulder, I can see his cruiser now has someone in the front seat. “Guilty as hell. From day one. Not that it matters.”
He adjusts the collar of his jacket, rolls a shoulder. “She’s bad news,” he says. “That woman wrecks everything she touches. And now I’ve gotta go find Mr. Rissinelli.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“Let’s get out of the house,” Ashlyn insists. “Go into the backyard.”
I’d told her what Overbey said, not the part about her being guilty, but about Joe being missing. The wife, the passport, the phone call. Now she’s tense, frowning, fussing with the couch.
“And turn on some music,” she says, over her shoulder. After lifting each white cushion, patting and examining, she’s stacked them on the living room floor. She runs her hand along the back edge of the couch frame, as if she’s looking for lost change. “I don’t like that the cop was in here. Did he go into any other rooms? And where was his partner? She’s the bitch who my mother let hide in her kitchen, you know. He could have left a bug. And now they’re listening to eve
rything we say.”
While I try to decide how to deal with that—in a way that doesn’t include laughter or the suggestion of Prozac—she shoves the cushions back into place, then yanks open the sliding glass door to the backyard. I follow her, baffled.
The picnic table is still there. The grass is still green, and smells just-cut, thanks to the monthly yard guy, but seeing the deserted white-fenced enclosure, you might think no one lives here. Dex was the gardener. He said deadheading the daisies and killing weeds made him feel as if he had some control over the universe. Wrong. Now the daisies are dead, too. Sophie used to play out here while her father battled Mother Nature, but when spring arrived this year, I had her redwood swing set carted away. That left a rectangle of holes in the ground, signifying where something used to be. Right.
“What are the holes?” Ashlyn asks. “Sophie’s play house?”
“Swing set,” I say. End of topic. I slide the door closed behind me, step into the glare of sunshine and soft heat and almost-autumn swish of leaves. “Why would that detective plant a bug in my house?”
“Well, got to think he suspects you’re connected with Joe being gone. In some way.” Ashlyn peers over the fence, the end facing the sidewalk and street. She turns back to me, hands on hips. “Did he ask about me?”
Because the world is about you, even when a person is missing?
“He didn’t,” I say, not really lying. I asked him about her. But come to think of it, he never followed up on my “girlfriend” that the Rayburns reported. He’s not a dumb cop, that’s for sure.
What if he knew Ashlyn was here? And his partner Koletta was watching the house, maybe from the Rayburns’ living room. Maybe they’ve been watching ever since Ashlyn arrived. But why?
This is the problem with being a writer. It’s natural to make up the scariest possible scenario, with the most sinister plot, because that’s the best possible story. Real life is seldom as dramatic.
But Joe Rissinelli is missing. In real life. That’s why Overbey was here, not because of Ashlyn. I shade my eyes from the afternoon sun with one hand and watch her.
She seems to be walking the perimeter of the yard now, lifting her chin and standing on tiptoe to see over the top of the fence every few steps.
“So, Ashlyn? What are you looking for? Joe?” I’m kidding, hope she knows that, as I drag out one of the picnic table benches, making a semicircle gouge in the grass. The redwood is warm as I sit. “Seriously. What’s going on? Do you know anything about where Joe is?”
She gives up her reconnaissance and perches against the table, facing me, legs outstretched. Whatever Ashlyn was doing, she still hasn’t explained.
“Why would I know where he is?”
The answering a question with a question thing is annoying—an interviewer technique, in fact, but she’s not the interviewer.
“Why does Overbey’s visit upset you so much?” I ask.
“Kidding me?” She loops her hair out of its ponytail and adjusts it into a new one, her nervous tell. “There were times, sitting in that cell for a year, you know? I worried I’d never feel the sun again. And then, just as I begin to believe in the possibility of closure, just as I start hoping the book will save my life and reputation, and I’ll maybe have some sort of income, that cop rings your doorbell. That specific cop. And you know who his partner is. They’re out to get me, I can tell you that. I don’t see them out there any more, though. Jerks.”
She stands and turns away from me, hands on hips, a petulant child.
“It’s not connected to you, Ashlyn,” I say to her back. And no matter if that’s true or not, I’ve got to steer her to Tasha. I’m seriously concerned about Joe, but there’s nothing I can do. The book is due in ten days, Joe or not. As for “saving her life,” as she says, that’s hardly gonna be the result. “They’re local detectives. Joe’s a local case. They’re done with you.”
When Ashlyn turns back to me, tears are streaming down her face.
“They’ll never let me go.” She holds out her palms, entreating. “This is exactly what I was trying to explain. Why the book is so important. Why you have to make the book convincing. You have to create a story that’s true enough for people to believe.”
“Why do I ‘have to’ make something up? That’s what I don’t understand. What’s wrong with telling me what really happened?”
“I can’t let you write what really happened!” She runs her hands down her face, looks at the sky, then at me. “Because that’s the only thing worse than me being guilty. Which I am not.”
Before I can come up with a question, she points a forefinger at me.
“You have to figure something out. A story that’s like, an accident, an unavoidable accident. One that was no one’s fault. Like what happened to your daughter. Everyone believes that, right?”
“Because it’s true.”
“Because everyone believes it’s true.”
“But it is—” This is going nowhere. And it’s not about me. It’s about her.
“But I couldn’t come up with something true enough. When I”—she points to her own chest, then to me—“tried out my story on you, you almost bought it. Almost. But then you didn’t.”
Part of me wants to stand up and yell: You are a batshit lunatic. But yelling is never a good tactic. Especially with someone this volatile. And paranoid.
“Listen. The cops coming to your house?” She points one forefinger at me again, then taps it to her other one as she ticks off her examples. “Joe missing? That juror following me? Or maybe following you? I’m so sorry, but I’m starting to believe, I have to believe, that it all adds up to—listen. It means I’m in trouble. And I need you to write a story for me.”
“But I am. I’m writing the truth.”
“No! Don’t you see? The real truth will kill me. But listen. If you don’t make this book sound true enough, if you can’t make me sound innocent enough—I don’t know, Mercer. I think you’re in trouble, too.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“What?” I stiffen my back, which hits against the redwood table as I sit up straight. Earlier today she’d said I was involved. “Ow. But—me? I’m in trouble? How the hell am I in trouble?”
“Who knows what they think you know? Right?” Ashlyn paces to the left, then back toward me, talking as she goes. Gesturing with each point she makes. “You’re the big reporter, always getting the story. I agreed to do this for—like Katherine said. To clear my name. But maybe that’s impossible. Maybe they’re just too powerful. Maybe they think I told you too much. Or I’m about to. I don’t know.” She throws her hands in the air as she whirls, lets them flop to her sides. “Maybe they don’t trust me. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe they don’t care. Or maybe it’s already too late. Maybe I should have run when I had the chance.”
How do crazy people talk? I’m trying to remember my abnormal psych classes, oh so many years ago. Some people truly believe their personal universes. “They”? Are “too powerful”? This is all good for the book, I reassure myself. Loonier the better. Except that the loony is living in my house. Do I tell her to leave? Reprise the meet-you-at-the-Holiday Inn idea? But talking can’t hurt. Talking is what I want her to do.
“Still. It’s odd. Don’t you think it’s odd? I do.” She keeps talking, jittery. Hyper-excited. Like she’s having a conversation in shorthand, mostly with herself. “This whole thing? I mean—what could it mean?”
She straddles the bench, one blue-jeaned leg stretched on the grass, the other under the table. Leans toward me. “Let me ask you. When was the time closest to before your husband died that you talked to Katherine Crafts?”
A motorcycle roars down the street, which sets some dog barking, which sets off another dog. “Rocco, hush!” someone yells. A door slams. Normal life continues, but only outside my backyard fence.
I stare past her, through the still-green leaves of the maple across the street and on past the wisps of nimbus marking the turquoise sky. I
know when it was. Exactly.
“Why?” I ask.
“Humor me,” she says. “When?”
“The day he and our daughter were killed,” I say, still looking off in space. “Katherine and I went for brunch, at Ristretto, in fact, to celebrate the new job she was getting at the publishing company. I did errands on Saturday mornings, and always took Sophie, but she’d tipped over her Cheerios, and she was supposed to go to a birthday party, it was a mess, and I was frazzled, and running late, so Dex said he’d stay with her at the party. Then Kath called and said she was running late, so we had to push it back an hour, so I wasn’t late after all.”
I stop, wondering if I can find the voice to go on. Or if I need to. I’d have to say the next thing I knew, they were dead. But I’m not sure I can form those words out loud.
Ashlyn reaches out, touches my arm, so I have to look at her. “It’s not your fault,” she says. “Though of course, I understand you must feel like it is. Could I ask—did Katherine come to the funeral?”
No. No, it wasn’t my fault. I’d imagined more than my share of murky what-if scenarios, but it was an accident. Of course, I had replayed it, over and over, if I hadn’t made that brunch date, if Sophie hadn’t spilled her cereal, if I’d been more flexible, if we’d all just stayed home. I’d give anything if only.
“The funeral? No,” I say. “Katherine was…” I shake my head. What’s the difference. She was out of town. Could it have been my fault?
“And then the next time you heard from her, right?—after I’m sure she said she was sorry a few times and sent flowers or whatever—was when I went on trial for murder. Suddenly she’s back at your door. Or did she call you? Pushing you, I bet. Convincing you. She made a big deal of how guilty I was. Right? She was trying to sway your opinion. Mold it from moment one.”
“I never thought of it that way,” I say. This is absurdly unsettling. Meaningless. Besides, Kath did call. For a while. “No. That’s not true.” I amend my answer. “She called me a bunch of times.”
Trust Me Page 21
