Conflict of Interest

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  Tom turned and headed toward the back gate.

  “Get your ass back here,” Gary yelled. “Don’t make me shoot you. I had to kill Ian. You don’t want to go to prison any more than I do. Because you’re such a wimp, I always end up doing the dirty work.”

  Tom dropped his head and broke into a run. He heard the gunshot, then dropped to the ground, covering his head with his hands. “Please, God, help me,” he prayed. “I’ll never do anything wrong again.” He heard the roar of an engine. A cloud of dirt struck his face. When he looked up, he saw Gary in the driver’s seat of the Chrysler.

  “Get in the car,” his brother said, pointing the decoy gun at him. “I had to lift Ian myself. I should kill you just for that.”

  Tom had no choice. He either did what his brother said, or Gary would shoot him. He walked over and climbed into the passenger seat. He looked in the backseat, then realized Ian’s body must be in the trunk. He was numb. Gary had killed Ian. Now they were murderers. He was shocked at how calm his brother was, as if he shot people every day. “What are we going to do if the police stop us?”

  Gary had already sped out of the storage lot and was driving in the direction of the freeway. “We don’t have any drugs on us,” he said. “I smoked what was left of the pot last night. The police can’t look in the trunk without a search warrant. After we dump Ian, we’ll come back and get a clean car.”

  Tom was nauseous. He stuck his head out the window, hoping the fresh air would help. He noticed that they were on the 101 Freeway on the outskirts of Los Angeles. He had no idea where Gary was going. Suddenly he heard a banging noise. “There’s something wrong with the car,” he told his brother, settling back into his seat. “Listen, don’t you hear it?”

  “I hear it,” Gary said, steering the Chrysler toward the nearest exit.

  Ian’s eyes sprang open. All he could see was a sliver of light. His body was wracked with pain, crammed into a tight space. The last thing he remembered was Gary yelling at him, something about his uncle and the office. He gasped for air, certain he was in a coffin. He frantically kicked out with his feet, connecting with a solid surface. His ankles ached. He cried for his mother. She’d always known when he was in trouble. He opened his mouth to call out her name, but nothing came out but a raspy whisper.

  They couldn’t have buried him yet, Ian reasoned, or there would be no light whatsoever. He prepared himself to die. Another dagger of pain entered his lower back, and his body contracted in a spasm. He touched the area with his hand. His clothes were soaked with warm liquid. Blood…it had to be blood. He recalled a loud noise before he lost consciousness. Either Gary or Tom must have shot him. He placed his palms against the top of the trunk and pushed with all his might. He was too weak. He had to preserve whatever air was left. Once they buried him, it would be over.

  Trudy’s lovely face appeared in front of him. He smelled her perfume. The panic was replaced with a feeling of euphoria. Trudy extended her hand to him, smiling just before she led him into the bedroom. He was transported back to the night they had made love. The searing pain was made bearable by memories of their lovemaking. She was there with him, snuggling up beside him on his bed. Just as he reached out to touch her beautiful hair, he felt himself being sucked into a dark tunnel.

  “It’s okay, Ian,” Trudy said, the softness of her voice reassuring him. “I’m just going to the bathroom. I’ll be back before you can count to ten.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Saturday, February 17, 2001, 1:05 A.M.

  JOANNE BOLTED upright in bed. Leah was calling for her. Tossing on her robe, she hurried down the narrow hallway to her daughter’s bedroom. The room was dark and she could barely see the outline of Leah’s body under the covers. “Did you have a bad dream, sweetheart?”

  “No,” Leah said, clasping her mother’s hand, “something’s wrong.”

  Leah’s hand was clammy and cold. Joanne turned on the lamp. Her daughter had thrown the covers off. The bedding beneath her was soaked in blood. Leah’s skin was pasty white, and her eyelids fluttered. “Oh my God!” Joanne exclaimed, cupping her hand over her mouth. “My poor baby”

  Leah tried to sit up, then fell back on the pillow. “I started my period last night. The cramps were really bad. I took some Tylenol. The pain kept getting worse. I bled through all the pads.” She managed to hold her head up long enough to see the bloodstained sheets. “I changed the sheets about an hour ago. What’s happening? Why am I bleeding so much? Am I going to die?”

  “You’ll be fine,” Joanne told her, trying to remain calm. “I think you’re hemorrhaging, though. You need to go to the hospital.”

  “Mother,” the girl whispered. “I have to tell you something.”

  Joanne sat down on the edge of the bed, tenderly brushing Leah’s hair off her forehead. “We can talk later,” she told her. “I need to call an ambulance. You’re losing too much blood.” She was reaching for the phone next to the bed when Leah tugged on the sleeve of her robe.

  “Please,” Leah said, “don’t call yet. I’m pregnant. I was going to have an abortion.”

  “Did you do something to yourself?” Joanne asked, even more horrified than before. Disregarding Leah’s plea, she dialed 911 for an ambulance. Turning back to her daughter, she said, “Were you trying to get rid of the baby? Whatever you did, I have to know. This is serious, Leah.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Leah told her. “I even went to a doctor yesterday. That’s why I was late coming home. I wanted to make certain I was really pregnant.”

  Joanne was shattered. No wonder Leah had been acting strangely. “Why didn’t you come to me, tell me? I’m your mother. No matter what the problem is, I’m here to help you.”

  “I didn’t want you to know,” Leah said, her breath catching in her throat. “I know you think I’m like Dad, that I tell lies and do bad things. I want to be perfect like you. I try, but I keep messing up. I want you to love me. Dad used to love me.”

  Joanne cradled her in her arms. “I love you more than anything in the world,” she told her. “How could you possibly believe I don’t care for you, that I look down on you? I’ve been hurting too, Leah. Every time I try to get close to you, you push me away”

  “Dad said you didn’t want us,” Leah said. “Were you really in love with another man?”

  “No,” Joanne said. “Even if I had been in love with another man, I would have never abandoned you. All I’ve ever asked is that you believe me. The two years you were gone were the worst years of my life. I cried myself to sleep every night. I didn’t know for sure that you were with your father. You could have been dead. What your father did to me was cruel, Leah.”

  “I still love my dad,” Leah told her. “I know he broke the law. He was always good to me, though. Maybe that’s why I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted someone to pay attention to me, hold me, tell me that I’m special.”

  “You are special,” Joanne said. “You’re beautiful, bright, sensitive.” She stopped and wiped a tear horn her eye. “I’m far from perfect, Leah. I make mistakes every day of my life. I guess I was wrong not taking you to see your father in jail. As soon as you’re better, I’ll make arrangements for you and Mike to visit him.”

  Joanne helped Leah walk to the bathroom. Dampening a washcloth with warm water, Joanne wiped the blood off the lower half of her daughter’s body before she dressed her in a clean nightgown. Leah was shivering and looked down at her feet and saw another pool of blood. “Why am I bleeding so much?”

  “You must be having a miscarriage,” Joanne told her. “How far along were you?”

  “The doctor said ten weeks,” Leah said. “I promise. Mom, I’ve never had sex before. This was the first time.”

  “It doesn’t matter, honey,” Joanne said, holding her in her arms. “The ambulance should be here any minute.” She picked up the blanket from the floor and wrapped it around Leah. “I had a miscarriage once. You’re going to be fine.”

  “When did you ha
ve a miscarriage?” Leah asked. “You never mentioned anything like that.”

  “You were nine months old,” Joanne told her, finding it hard to believe that the chubby little baby she pictured in her mind was now old enough to engage in such a conversation. “You never told me you had a boyfriend. Is it Nathan?”

  “Nathan is one of the most popular boys at school. I thought if I could get him to have sex with me, then he’d make me his steady girlfriend. I drank a bunch of booze at this party and pushed myself on him.”

  “What party?”

  “The night I told you I was spending the night with Gabby,” Leah said, pulling the blanket tighter around her chest. “After her parents went to sleep, Cabby and I snuck out and went to this party at Trent’s house. Trent goes to my school. Every time his parents leave town, he throws a party. His dad’s a big boozer. He drinks vodka and buys it by the case. Trent pours out half of two bottles of vodka and mixes it with juice in this big punch bowl. Then he fills his dad’s vodka bottles back up with water. Trent says his dad doesn’t know the difference. He says he’s doing his dad a favor because he’s keeping him from becoming an alcoholic.”

  “All this deception,” Joanne said, wondering how many other things her daughter had done that she didn’t know about. Her mind raced back in time to her own childhood. She remembered throwing rolls of toilet paper at people’s houses, smoking her father’s cigarettes in the bathroom, making out in the backseat of a car with a boy she had just met. She’d also slipped out of her parents’ house on numerous occasions. Funny, she thought, how age made a person forget.

  “I wanted someone to love me,” Leah told her, “to make me feel special the way Dad did. A lot of the girls at my school have sex with their boyfriends. Some of them are younger than me. The guys buy them presents, call them all the time, do whatever they want.” She paused, her face twisted in pain. “Nathan is a nice guy He would have never done anything to hurt me. I encouraged him. I asked him to come into the bedroom with me. I took off my clothes. I got on top of him. He had sex with me because he thought that’s what I wanted.”

  Joanne pulled up a chair from Leah’s desk. “When a person does something nice in exchange for sex or any other type of favor,” she explained, “their affections are not genuine. What you’re doing is buying their love or attention, not with money but with something even more valuable—your dignity. This kind of relationship might make you feel good in the beginning, but in time, you’ll end up with nothing but regrets.”

  “I understand,” Leah said, bending over at the waist. “Believe me, I’ll never have sex again.”

  “You’ll have sex again,” her mother said, stroking her arm. “I’d like to believe that you’ll wait until you’re older, though—and that the next time you’re intimate with someone, you’ll be in a committed relationship. Love is what makes sex wonderful. The night this happened, what did you feel?”

  “Nothing,” Leah said. “I don’t even remember it.”

  “Well,” her mother said, “that’s the way it usually is when you have sex with a person you don’t love.”

  Joanne heard the doorbell ring and stood up. When she’d called, she had instructed the ambulance to turn off the siren once they passed through the security gates. She didn’t want her neighbors to start asking questions. With the amount of time the ambulance had taken to get there, Joanne thought, she could have driven Leah to the hospital herself. She started walking toward the door, then stopped and turned back around. “Remember,” she said, “no matter what kind of problem you have, I’m your best friend as well as your mother. I was wrong by keeping you from seeing your father. But please believe me, no one will ever care more for you.”

  Leah pushed herself to her feet, pulling on the terry-cloth robe her mother had placed on the back of the chair. “What are we going to do about Mike?”

  Joanne rubbed her forehead. She’d been so overwhelmed that she’d forgotten all about her son. It was fine for Leah to go to the hospital in her gown and robe, but Joanne would have to get dressed. “Mike and I will follow you in the car. I can’t leave him here alone. I’ll tell him you’re having female trouble. Perhaps he shouldn’t know the truth. Of course, that’s your decision not mine.”

  Leah looked her mother squarely in the eye. “Tell him the truth,” she said, her voice no longer that of a teenager. “I’m tired of lying.” In less than twenty-four hours, Leah had left her childhood behind.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Saturday, February 17, 2001, 5:00 A.M.

  ELI LEFT the jail at one forty-five that morning. After driving to the marina where the dinghy was stored, he rowed back to the Night-watch. He’d been fortunate that the sea was calm, as he was physically and mentally exhausted. Listening to Tom Rubinsky talk for two and a half hours had been draining.

  Eli wondered how the police would handle the case. Although risky as well as illegal, Eli was tempted to carry forth the subterfuge and have the real Detective Brown claim he was Tom Rubinsky’s late-night visitor at the jail. He’d selected that particular officer for two reasons. Marvin Brown was an African-American, and he was almost the same height and weight as Eli.

  Eli placed himself inside the mind of the younger Rubinsky Before the guard had come to get him, he’d been asleep in his cell. Once Eli played the phony tape of his brother confessing, Rubinsky probably didn’t remember anything outside of what he’d heard. In addition, it would be the word of a police officer against that of a man charged with first-degree murder. Eli doubted if the police would proceed in that direction, however. If Tom Rubinsky figured out the officer who’d come to the jail the previous evening was an imposter, the entire case could go down the toilet.

  When he finally reached the Nightwatch, Eli collapsed in his bunk for two hours, then got up and consumed a pot of coffee and a stale doughnut before he once again boarded the dinghy. The crisp morning air was invigorating. He tried to relax as he glided over the dark waters. The only sound was the swishing of his paddles. In his stainless-steel briefcase, Eli had Tom Rubinsky’s taped confession. He’d placed it inside an envelope addressed to the Ventura Police Department’s homicide division. He had no intention of mailing the tape and taking a chance of it getting lost. As soon as he recovered Decker’s body, he would stop by the police department and hand the package to the officer at the front desk. The officer would not remember him, outside of the color of his skin and his size. He wouldn’t notice that Eli had a mole above his lip, nor would he remember the scar near his left ear.

  Eli had never understood why black men were constantly misidentified. And it wasn’t only Caucasians who seemed unable to distinguish one African-American from another. Even men and women of his own race were guilty.

  The sun burst through the clouds, vanquishing the chill in the air. He broke out in a sweat as the muscles in his arms strained to propel the rubber boat through the water. People were always asking him why he didn’t install a motor, even if only as an emergency precaution. Rowing the dinghy was his primary form of exercise. He kept a few weights on board the Nightwatch, but he seldom used them.

  The professional fishermen had already set out to sea. Eli was relieved that he didn’t have to navigate through their wakes. Once when the winds had been particularly strong, the dinghy had capsized in the choppy wake of a large fishing vessel.

  Eli checked to make certain he had all the proper equipment in his large canvas bag, then slung it over his shoulder as he walked to his Toyota truck in the parking lot. “Such a stupid mistake,” he said angrily, pulling out a computer-generated map and glancing at the circle he’d drawn. “If Gary Rubinsky hadn’t killed you,” he said, referring to Willie Crenshaw, “I might be tempted to shoot you myself.”

  Overall, however, Crenshaw had been a lightweight compared to the Rubinskys. As far as he knew, the man had never committed an act of violence. He also deserved credit for placing his neck on the line by calling Elizabeth, even if he had provided her with the wrong in
formation. He suspected that the phone call had cost Crenshaw his life. But years of smoking pot had fried the man’s brain. In the end, he’d died for nothing.

  Placing the map on the dashboard of his truck, Eli removed his sunglasses from his pocket and slipped them on, cranking the engine and roaring out of the parking lot. Now that he had the correct coordinates, he had no doubt that he would find Ian Decker’s grave.

  Elizabeth and her daughter, Pauline, exited the Chevy Blazer around six o’clock Saturday morning at the edge of a field. At twenty-four, Pauline was a pretty woman, her curly dark hair cut just below her ears. Like her mother, she had fair skin, hazel eyes, and a willowy frame. Before her illness and her son’s disappearance, Elizabeth had been extremely attractive. No one understood why she hadn’t remarried. Pauline understood. Her mother had never remarried because of her brother. A hodgepodge of events were clustered within a few years after Ian’s birth. Pauline’s father had died, leaving the family in financial straits. Her uncle Carl lost his leg in a boating accident. Pauline had slipped on one of Ian’s toys and fallen down the stairs, dislocating her collarbone. The following year, she had been hospitalized with pneumonia. It was as if her brother’s entrance into the world had created some type of cosmic event. No matter what was going on in Pauline’s life, her mother’s attention was always focused on Ian. Pauline had felt like an outsider. She’d moved back into the house to look after her mother following Elizabeth’s transplant, but her decision was also based on the fact that her brother was no longer around.

  Ian had once again stepped into the spotlight, and Pauline was more annoyed than concerned. Ian wasn’t dead, she told herself. She knew the Rubinsky brothers, and she’d heard rumors about Ian’s activities. He’d been hanging out at bars, living the wild life. Because Elizabeth had always babied him, Ian couldn’t face the reality that he might go to prison. As far as Pauline was concerned, Ian had most likely skipped out. What bothered her the most was the fact that her mother could lose her home if her brother didn’t show up in court. Ian had even stolen two cars from her mother and uncle’s business. Elizabeth preferred to blame the crime on the Rubinsky brothers, but the person who’d stolen the cars had possessed a key to the lot. Everything came down to one simple fact, a fact her mother simply refused to accept. Ian was a criminal.