by Barry Lyga
“Is your middle name Kathleen or something like that?” Elayah pressed.
Lisa batted away the questions. “I can’t believe you, just marching in here and asking personal—”
“I don’t give a damn about your personal anything!” Elayah roared, shocking not only Lisa but also the friends arrayed around her. “Someone came into my house and cut me open in my bed, and that person knows your son, so start talking!”
The room vibrated with her anger. Lisa De Nardo’s jaw dropped and hung there.
“We sorta can’t control her,” Liam said conversationally. “Ask your son.”
Lisa’s jaw finally found its proper alignment again, and her lips pressed together in mute, impotent anger. “I can’t believe I’m telling you.…”
“Just do it,” Elayah said.
“Rip the Band-Aid off,” Jorja advised.
“Not her dad,” Lisa said, waggling a hand at Jorja. “Someone else.”
“Who?” Elayah asked.
“Martin Chisholm,” Lisa said.
She said the name as though it meant something. As though she’d said Barack Obama or Brett Kavanaugh.
Martin Chisholm.
“Wait,” Jorja said, suddenly standing very, very upright. “Martin Chisholm? The guy on TV? Running for the General Assembly? The school superintendent?”
“Yes.”
“I… I don’t understand. Why would he be after the—”
“He did…” Were those tears in Lisa’s eyes? Damn it, Elayah did not want to feel sympathy for this woman, this woman who was just fine with being grabbed by the pussy. Elayah thought of the #MAGA 2024 and how much she disliked this woman, of her hungry eyes on Liam, of Liam’s appraisal of her.
“He was my science teacher. And… we did something we weren’t supposed to… back then.”
Cold, invisible mummy rags wrapped around Elayah from every direction.
“We, uh…”
Elayah didn’t need the next word. She didn’t have to hear it, and it didn’t even matter what the word was.
“… dated,” Lisa finished.
Oh, hell no. The word did matter, it turned out.
“What accent is that?” Elayah asked, struggling to keep her voice from breaking into lethal shards of anger. “When you say raped, it sounds like dated.”
“He didn’t rape me, little girl. I’m not a victim. It was completely consensual.” At the suggestion that she was a victim, Lisa had regained her composure, her strength, and her snotty attitude. “It was a different time. It was barely even a secret. We went out in public together sometimes. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“I understand you were a minor and he wasn’t.”
“Never mind.” She waved her hands. “Forget it. Forget it all. And forget I gave you his name. Now get out of my house. I can still call the police for trespassing.”
On the way back to the car, Liam kicked the #MAGA 2024 sign, splintering its wooden stake and knocking it off-kilter.
“So now that makes sense,” Jorja said. “He got his son to try to recover the evidence. Because you wouldn’t trust someone you hired, but you’d trust your own son, right?”
Elayah had a thought. After the second break-in, the police had boxed up and carted away the stuff in the garage, leaving the empty tarp in a heap on the floor, but objects didn’t exist only in physical space any longer. They were digital as well. Elayah had taken a lot of photographs of the time capsule’s contents.
Including the envelope. The blue one she’d noticed on that first day, jam-packed with arousal. Elayah had photographed the outside and each page of the letter.
Sure enough, when she pinch-zoomed the last page, it was signed “L” in a flowery script.
As they got into Liam’s car, she read the letter out loud to them. The temperature in the car climbed, and she found herself idly considering Liam. Damn, that boy!
“Well, that’s it,” Marcie said. “We’ve got him.”
The police arrested Martin Chisholm the next day at his campaign headquarters. In his late fifties, he had the robust appearance of a man much younger, his hair still thick and insouciant, his jawline firm beneath a full beard. He made for excellent photos and videos as he was marched down the steps of his headquarters in handcuffs, guided by the sheriff and a deputy to a waiting cruiser.
Elayah had given Indira a heads-up the night before, alerting her to Chisholm’s guilt and begging her to be discreet. Indira promised she would be and was as good as her word: She just happened to be at Chisholm’s headquarters when the police arrived and was first on the scene to record his protestations and denials.
The denials didn’t last long. Presented with the envelope containing Lisa’s love letter, Martin Chisholm confessed.
The full story came out months later, at trial, but Liam’s dad took pity on Elayah and drove over to her house to fill her in shortly after Chisholm had been booked and locked up pending trial. He brought with him a large cardboard box filled with the contents of the time capsule. Except for the blue envelope, of course.
He sat across from her at the kitchen table, her parents flanking her, and explained that the statute of limitations for statutory rape had expired long ago. But they could and would prosecute him for breaking and entering, as well as threatening and attacking Elayah.
Chisholm had seen the report in the Loco about the time capsule. And the pictures. Including the blue envelope, which would have been familiar to him, even after so much time had passed.
And then when the follow-up story hit, with Elayah claiming, “We know what you did.…”
He snapped. He saw his political career, his entire life going up in flames. He’d gone to her house, figuring that if he could retrieve the envelope and destroy it, maybe he could still rescue himself and preserve his viability.…
Something tickled at the back of Elayah’s mind, something that felt as obvious as the sheriff’s hat, resting on the table between them. Something she should have known already.
But Liam’s dad kept talking. Lisa De Nardo was already inundated with press requests. Elayah felt bad that she’d brought the wrath of the fourth estate down on her, Trumpy or not, but there was nothing she could do about it.
“So,” Liam’s dad finished with a quirk of lips that was almost but not quite a smile, “I’m not happy that you went off and got involved, but I am happy that we can put it all behind us now.”
Yes. Mystery solved. After thirty-five years.
Except…
“The knife,” she said as the sheriff stood and plucked his hat from the table.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.
“The knife. I…” She licked her lips. It had just clicked for her, and she felt like an idiot for not realizing sooner. “There’s still the issue of the knife, right? It wasn’t in the photos that the Loco posted online. Because you already had it by then.”
Her dad had risen to walk the sheriff to the door. He turned back to the table now, then glanced over at the sheriff. “Dean?”
“I don’t see where you’re headed with this,” the sheriff said.
“Don’t you get it?” Elayah’s frustration at her own stupidity bubbled out, her voice taking on an aggravated tone. “We thought the guy who broke in was looking for the knife. But Chisholm couldn’t have been—he didn’t see a picture of it. When he… right before he… he said to me, Where is it? I know you… I saw it. Where did you put it? He was talking about the envelope. Because he couldn’t have known about the knife.”
The sheriff’s expression was that of a man who has stumbled home, exhausted, only to find that a pipe has burst right over his bed.
“El, the knife is… seriously, like I told you from the beginning, the knife is nothing. It’s a gag or a fluke. But this, this Chisholm case—that’s real. And I’m grateful we got the guy.”
“Never did like him much,” Dad said.
“We know there’s human blood on it, though,” Elayah pressed. “But i
t can’t have anything to do with Chisholm. So…”
Liam’s dad nodded wearily. “Look, the man who tried to hurt you is locked up. Get some sleep. At last.” He turned to her parents. “Marcus. Dinah.”
And then he was gone. And it was just her and her parents and a safety that felt hard-earned and fragile.
LIAM
Liam sat on the sofa, channel surfing without actually seeing anything on the TV. It was just a rapid-fire slideshow of colors and patterns to him. All he could think about was El and Martin Chisholm and the envelope that had changed everything.
He thought of Lisa De Nardo. A nice-enough lady, for a lunatic. Pretty hot. And apparently molested by her teacher a thousand years ago. Who knew?
Dad burst through the front door, his face suffused with outrage in the instant he spied Liam. Before Liam could offer up something witty and deflective, Dad jabbed an accusatory finger at him. “You read my email!”
It was the last thing Liam expected to hear. Dad had been off to assure El and her family that Chisholm was in custody and not getting out anytime soon. For a half second, Liam was prepared to deny the charge—reflexively, hotly—but then he remembered: Oh yeah. I totally did that.
“She knew there was human blood on the knife!” Dad went on stomping into the living room, the handcuffs on his gun belt jingling in a very not-jolly way. “There’s only one way she could have found out: You! You hacked my email.”
Liam didn’t want to tell him that it hadn’t even required hacking. And being on the defensive with Dad rarely worked. “You told me it was inconclusive! Deer blood!” he shouted, rising from the sofa. “You lied to me!”
“You’re damn right I lied to you!” Dad shouted right back. “Because I didn’t think I could trust you with the information, and holy hell, Liam, I was right!”
Neither of his fathers had ever struck him, but Liam knew in that moment what it would feel like if one of them had. The sting of it. The red moment of surprise.
“This isn’t new for you!” Dad went on, in a rage. “You’ve been told since you were little that I do things that are confidential and important, that you can’t go poking around, that you have to know when to keep your mouth shut. And you still went ahead and told Elayah and God knows who else a piece of information that is very, very important and needs to be kept quiet!”
“Why?” Liam demanded.
“You don’t get to ask that question!” Dad thundered. “This has nothing to do with you. This is my job, not a game for you and your friends!”
Liam clenched his fists and unclenched them. For a blistering moment, they stared at each other. And then Dad uttered a wordless cry of frustration, slapped the wall with one hand, and spun around to stalk off into the kitchen.
Think it through. Think it through. Don’t go off half-cocked. What should you do next?
He had no answers, so he stomped into the kitchen. Not really sure why or what he hoped to accomplish, but he wanted to stay on the offensive.
In the kitchen, Dad stood at the fridge, his head bowed so that his forehead rested on the stainless steel door. All the anger and fury had drained out of him, and if that fridge hadn’t been holding him up, Liam suspected his father might have collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Damn. Sheriff was never supposed to be this kind of gig.
“Hey, Dad?”
Dad slowly turned to Liam, his eyes wide, blank, and questing. His voice was slow and shaky. “I’m doing my best, Liam. I swear to God. It’s all… it’s all too much.”
“Oh.” Liam was not prepared for this. Not at all. Pop showed vulnerability, sure. Not Dad. Dad knew about body armor. Dad had a gun. Dad solved other people’s problems all day long.
With a heavy sigh, Dad wandered over to the table and slumped into a chair, pinching the bridge of his nose as though he could chase away a headache that way. “I’m sorry I yelled. That’s not who I want to be. Just… this case… I’m trying.”
“I know.” Liam slid into a chair opposite his father. They didn’t have the kind of relationship where Liam would take his dad’s hand in a moment like this. “I’m sorry I looked at your email. It’s El, Dad. I was kinda desperate. But you’ve never even known what desperate feels like.”
Dad snorted. “I know this will come as a shock to you, but I had a life before you came along.”
Liam let his jaw drop as far as it would go. “What? Wait, are you saying I’m not the center of the universe? You’ve been lying to me all these years?”
“’Fraid so, buddy. But don’t blame me—it was Pop’s idea.”
Dad chuckled hollowly, then scrubbed his hands down his face. Staring down at the table, he opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, then started again.
“This is going to sound horrible, but… when you were born, I told Pop that I prayed you would be straight.”
Liam grinned. “Hey, prayers do get answered!”
Dad shook his head. “It’s not funny. It was awful. Why should I have to pray for something like that? But it’s been hard.… It is hard. Still. Even now. And I thought, Even with two accepting parents to show him the way, his life will just be so much easier if he likes girls.”
Abashed, Liam said nothing. It was the kind of statement that felt like a soft, hot lump of clay in his throat.
“Want to know something really ironic, Liam?” Dad went on. “When I finally came out to my parents, my mom was the problem. Your grandfather just nodded his head and—I’ll never forget this—looked at me and said, ‘Just keep being a good man, Dean.’ It took Mom years to understand, to wrap her head around it. I think it was easier for Dad because he was less invested. He always kept Jenny and me at a remove. Like we were projects that were his responsibility and he took it seriously, but he had no emotional investment. Whereas Mom felt everything we felt. Mom still had this invisible umbilical connection. It was as though I’d told her I had terminal cancer. All she knew back then was AIDS and gay bashing and Matthew Shepard. And fear becomes anger so easily.”
Liam opened his mouth to speak, but in that moment, the only thoughts that crashed around in his head and became coherent were about El.
El, I have to tell you something. I know I’ve messed up. I know I’ve been a jerk sometimes. And I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. It’s because I never let my guard down around you; I never let myself be real. Because I’m so scared that if I do, you’ll know the truth: I am desperately, insanely in love with you, and I’m so scared that if you know that, you’ll laugh. Or even worse, just say, “Well, that’s nice.” I can’t imagine how I could live with that in my past, but I can’t live without the possibility of you in my future, so I’m just saying it all now, and please don’t laugh and please don’t say, “Well, that’s nice.”
Oh, God. That’s what I’m going to tell her. The next time I’m alone with her. I know it. Oh my God.
“Liam?” Dad said.
“I—”
Dad’s phone interrupted. It was the theme song to the old Superman movie from when he’d been a kid. Liam had watched it with him roughly 1.3 million times.
“Yeah?” Dad asked the phone. As Liam watched, his face drained of all color.
“Oh, crap. Okay, I’ll be right there.”
EP. 009
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS
INDIRA BHATTI-WATSON, HOST:
This is No Time Like the Present, an NPR podcast. I am Indira Bhatti-Watson, reporting from Canterstown, Maryland.
(SOUND BITE OF MUSIC)
BHATTI-WATSON:
We’re bringing you this special episode because there’s some breaking news. As we reported yesterday, the Canterstown Sheriff’s Department issued and executed an arrest warrant for Martin Gregory Chisholm, the Lowe County superintendent of schools and a candidate for the Maryland state senate. Chisholm, we learned, allegedly had an affair with an underage student that began in 1986, and evidence of that affair was concealed in the unearthed time capsule that prompted this podcast. In an attempt to re
claim that evidence, Chisholm allegedly threatened the life of seventeen-year-old Elayah Laird, slashing her throat, then allegedly returned to her house days later to break into the garage.
But now, Chisholm’s defense attorney has produced evidence that at least one of these crimes may be off the books. Video of Chisholm attending a campaign rally on the night of the garage break-in has surfaced, and it may turn out that it was impossible for Chisholm to have committed that particular crime, casting doubt on his culpability for the others.
As has been the case all along, the sheriff’s department has refused to comment on the investigation, but our sources tell us that the county attorney will still pursue charges against Chisholm for the attack on Elayah Laird, though the video may give a jury reasonable doubt.
We’ll have more in our next regular episode.
1986: DEAN
Around dinnertime, Jay picked up Dean. They sped over to Finn’s Landing and got burgers and Cokes at the Burger King drive-through. Then Jay sped back to Canterstown, not speaking, sucking at his Coke with a manic intensity as he focused on the road ahead.
“Okay if I turn on the radio?” Dean asked, just to break the silence.
Jay shrugged. Dean hit the button and was greeted with a burst of static that slowly resolved into Peter Gabriel, caught midsyllable: “—out frontiers, war without tears.” A good one. Dean relaxed in the seat and nibbled at his burger. Jay would talk when he was good and ready. Unlike Antoine, the problem wasn’t getting him started—it was getting him to shut up once he got going.
They cruised along the main road, then took a series of turns that brought them deep into a new development. Jay hunted out a discreet parking space and had been parked for less than a minute when he croaked, “Ha!”
Dean peered out the window. He thought this place looked familiar.… Yeah, he knew it from the night they’d chased the pizza guy. This was…
