Keeping Secrets

by Penny Mickelbury

  Jessica stood in the middle of the floor now, swaying gently, eyes closed, but facing Gianna. “Alex said he couldn’t live with me and the children until he discovered the truth of himself. At first I didn’t understand. I thought he wanted to live at the church, like the Catholics. But then I realized he meant to live with a man named Carlos, to live with him like he lived with me. I told him that was a sin against God but he said that God loved us no matter who we loved.” She paused to pick up her Bible, but she still looked and acted dream-like.

  Gianna wondered whether Jessica was taking her medication, then she wondered what kind of medication could sustain a person after almost twenty years of confinement to a mental institution where drugs were a daily necessity.

  “I tried to help them. I really did,” Jessica whispered.

  “You tried to help who, Jessica?” Gianna asked softly.

  “All of them, so they wouldn’t have to die. But they were like Alex. They wanted to live in sin but I made them all pray and confess their sins. God will forgive them but not you...” She trailed off and resumed her wandering around the room.

  “Jessica, why do you want to kill me?” Gianna sensed Jessica’s mood shifting and she wanted to keep her talking, to get as much of a confession as possible. She wouldn’t allow herself to worry about living long enough to tell anybody.

  “Because you’re like them. A shameless sinner.”

  “It’s not a sin to love, Jessica.”

  “You break the laws of God and man. You disrespect the sanctity of marriage and the blessings of children when you interfere with husband and wife.”

  “But I don’t have a husband, Jessica, or children. I’m not leaving anybody, and the woman I love doesn’t have a husband.”

  “You’re a liar!” Jessica snapped at her and Gianna tensed as she realized the dream-like trance had ended.

  “I’m telling you the truth—” Gianna’s head snapped back with the force of the slap but she met and held Jessica’s eyes. It was her only hope. Jessica attacked more often and hit harder when she sensed weakness. But inside Gianna fought a wave of pure terror. Jessica thought she was lying and she had no idea why.

  Finally Jessica turned away to seek the solace of her Bible, and Gianna looked toward the heavily draperied windows through which she could see nothing except darkness. It had been dark when she arrived here last night at about 10:30 and it was dark again. She’d been here not quite twenty-four hours. She watched Jessica’s lips silently move as she read her Bible, and wondered idly whether the other parts of this house were as barren as this room. She wondered how Jessica knew she was a lesbian. She wondered why Jessica called her a liar. She wondered what Eric was doing. She wondered what Mimi was doing. She wondered whether she’d live to find out. And for the first time ever she wondered whether it might truly be better for all homosexuals and lesbians to exit the closet. What had Cedric said? Keeping secrets is different from keeping privacy. If Joe and Phil and Liz and Tony and Carolyn hadn’t kept their secret they’d likely be alive. And she wouldn’t be tied to a chair facing death, worried about keeping her own secret.

  Mimi squeezed her eyes shut and massaged her temples, mad as hell and sorrier than shit that she’d voluntarily come to police headquarters to share what she’d discovered about C.Y.K.A.S. with Gianna’s second-in-command at Hate Crimes. She’d had a fierce battle with Tyler about it—he hadn’t wanted to reveal anything to the cops—but she’d been motivated by her fear for Gianna. What if the cops didn’t know what she knew, what if they didn’t find Gianna in time?

  Eric Ashby had been badgering her for almost an hour, had made her repeat over and over and over again, despite the fact that she’d given him the tape recording, the details of her call from the woman they now knew was Jessica Hendrix. He’d made her tell him again and again of her conversation with Freddy explaining C.Y.K.A.S. And he took particular joy in having her replay how she broke into the C.Y.K.A.S. office in Southwest last night— Christ, almost twenty-four hours ago— and then how she broke into the computer and deciphered enough of the C.Y.K.A.S. file to come up with an address of a house in suburban Maryland. And then he asked her again why she thought Jessica Hendrix planned to kill Gianna.

  “You heard the tape yourself. She said she’d kill her.” Mimi showed her disgust with him by turning away and studying the enlarged photographs of the murdered Carolyn Green that hung next to those of the other victims. Carolyn was the only one whose face Mimi had not memorized, the only one whose photo she did not have. She remembered what Gianna had said that night, overcome by anger and fatigue: “She looked like you, Mimi.”

  This was her first time inside the Think Tank and she absorbed every detail of the room, imagining Gianna at work here, willing every one of her senses call up Gianna, to place her in the here and now. Gianna, who’d disappeared twenty-four hours ago, whom Jessica Hendrix had threatened to kill less than twelve hours ago. Was that just this morning? Mimi was weak from lack of sleep of food, was kept alert by fear. Suppose Jessica had already...

  The door opened and Tyler, whom she’d forgotten about, came in, followed by the chief of police. Eric scowled but Mimi brightened immediately. “Listen, Chief,” she began.

  Eric lost it. “Goddammit! The chief’s not conducting this interview, I am!”

  “I know it, Detective,” Mimi said wearily. “But you seem to have trouble hearing. I’ve answered those same questions in exactly the same way more times than I can count.”

  “And by God you’ll keep answering if I keep asking!”

  Tyler cleared his throat. “No, Detective, she won’t. We’re here voluntarily. We have turned over confidential notes to you, we have given you a tape recording...”

  “Which you illegally obtained,” Eric snarled.

  “The fact is, Detective, it’s more than you had. And now we’ve told you where Jessica Hendrix is most likely holding your lieutenant and your response is to threaten my reporter? Well, Sir, try this on for size: As of this moment, Miss Patterson will say not another word to you. She will not answer another question. And if I leave this room again it will be to call the company lawyers and by the time they finish filing motions it’ll take you a week to dig yourself from under the paper. Do I make myself clear?”

  Mimi had never heard Tyler icy and she was impressed. She also liked it that he called her ‘his’ reporter. She must be more exhausted than she knew, but she was now also angry, thanks to Tyler’s timely intervention.

  “Listen, Ashby, you little shit. I don’t care what you think about me. Right now your boss’s life is in jeopardy and I’d think you’d care more about saving her than wasting time hassling me.”

  The chief cleared his throat and gave her a hard look. “We really appreciate your cooperation, Miss Patterson,” he said more rapid-fire than usual and rocking on his toes, “but for the record, nobody wastes time around here. I’m on my way to Montgomery County. Care to join me for a chopper ride?”

  The blue jump-suited, flack-jacketed Montgomery County SWAT Team scurried under the shrubbery and between the houses and behind the cars like so many rats, now visible, now the merest hint of a shadow, now gone. Mimi sat inside an FBI car with Tyler and his friend Don. At the moment, she was thoroughly disgusted with the D.C. police. But she could see Eric Ashby’s red hair bristling in the darkness, the tension in him crackling like electricity. He obviously was not accustomed to inaction, to hanging back waiting for other cops to act, but for the moment, Gianna belonged to the Montgomery County SWAT Team, not to Eric and the Hate Crimes team, and all they could do—all any of them could do—was wait.

  Mimi knew from experience that cops exude a different energy when one of their own is in danger. Not that they don’t exert themselves in defense of the ordinary citizenry; but one cop in danger imperils them all and they respond as if failure to save their comrade signals their collective inability to save themselves. The same tension that she could see in Eric, in the Chief, she could see
and feel in Don inside the car. Then she heard before she saw anything the simultaneous explosion of splintering wood and shattering glass as SWAT team members crashed through doors and windows and into the house. Then there was a moment of pure silence then screams then shots and everything within Mimi broke, collapsed, and she jumped out of the car and ran toward the house before Tyler and Don could stop her. She ran, her insides boiling with fear and pain, and when Don and Eric grabbed her she fought them, struggling blindly, in vain, until Tyler put his arms around her and held her with more power than she would have believed he possessed. Then he was yelling for her to look! Look! And she saw Gianna being led, being half- carried from the house by two huge SWAT-ters and the three of them safely surrounded by half a dozen others. Weak, exhausted, injured somehow though Mimi didn’t know exactly how, but alive and not shot.

  “Tyler, please let me go.”

  “You can’t, Mimi, not now. You know they won’t let you get close to her.”

  “But I just want to see her.”

  “She’s okay, Mimi. She’s fine. She’s walking...see?”

  And at that moment Gianna saw Mimi, they saw each other, and Mimi broke from Tyler and ran toward her only to be intercepted by Eric who warned her that the SWAT Team was still on full alert and would probably shoot her if she got too close. But then Gianna smiled at her, or tried to, and Mimi ceased her struggle with Eric. “You can let me go now, Detective. I won’t do anything.”

  Mimi’s eyes stayed glued to Gianna, who was led—half carried—by the two bulky SWAT team members to an ambulance, where two paramedics gently lowered her onto a stretcher and immediately began to check her. Mimi’s eyes never wavered as the chief hurried to Gianna, leaned over her, said something that made Gianna attempt a smile and Mimi could tell by the way the smile stopped in the middle that something was wrong with Gianna’s face. The chief tousled Gianna’s hair like she was a wayward child and the tears sprang to Mimi’s eyes and she allowed them to fall as the chief hustled away and the paramedics lifted the stretcher and enclosed Gianna inside the ambulance.

  And that’s when Mimi became aware of the second ambulance and the second team of paramedics and the second stretcher— the one being rolled, with no sense of urgency. up the walkway to the recently liberated house. Mimi sought out Tyler, saw him sprinting toward her, knew what he wanted from her.

  “You have your camera?” he panted.

  She patted her pocket, hauled out the small camera, and quickly followed him to the house, checking the camera’s settings en route. As her reporter’s brain began functioning again, she realized the meaning of all the gunfire: If Gianna and all the SWAT team members were still alive, Jessica was not. She readied the camera though she knew it could be a while before the body was removed.

  “Miss Patterson?” She turned to see Eric Ashby.

  “Will you answer one question for me?”

  Mimi shrugged. “Depends on the question.”

  “Who’s Dorothea?” he asked.

  “Dorothea is a bleeping idiot,” Mimi said, with feeling.

  They worked in a small, sparsely furnished room in the basement of Montgomery County General Hospital. Mimi didn’t want to think about why the room smelled vaguely of formaldehyde because she was having trouble enough keeping her mind on the task at hand. The room was private and it was quiet and that’s what she needed. Tyler tapped away at the keys of the laptop computer as Mimi dictated the story to him in a fierce jumble of words that sometimes made sense and sometimes did not. Tyler, a reporter for more years than editor, would know instinctively when and how to organize, correct, add to, delete from, the tale Mimi spun of how and why Jessica Hendrix murdered five people and would have made Police Lieutenant Maglione her sixth victim if not for the swift and precise action of the Montgomery County SWAT Team.

  Since Tyler occupied the only chair, Mimi paced. She nibbled at an apple she’d gotten from the cafeteria; Tyler had practically inhaled the burger and fries she’d brought him and was eyeing her banana greedily. She didn’t care. She was forcing the apple down only because she knew she should. The harsh fluorescence of the overhead light hurt her eyes. She had a monstrous headache. And she wanted to see Gianna who was somewhere in this building.

  “How do we deal with the fact that a police lieutenant almost became a victim when all the others were gay?” Tyler asked.

  “Because she was getting too close, Tyler, and that’s the truth. She knew that Jessica Hendrix was the killer and was closing in on her.”

  “But that’s only half the truth, Mimi.”

  “I will not expose her Tyler, and that’s final.”

  “You’re obligated to report the entire story.”

  “Then I’m also obligated report the assistance and involvement of my gay editor and his gay FBI agent boyfriend who just happens to have a wife and two kids. Right, Tyler?”

  He muttered something under his breath that Mimi didn’t hear but could well imagine and typed rapidly for several minutes without speaking. He stilled his fingers long enough to peel the banana. “You and Gianna stumbled on to the Hendrix woman independent of each other?” he asked chewing. Mimi nodded assent and was startled when Tyler said testily, “Well? I’m waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?” She was remembering how and why it happened that she and Gianna had ended up on divergent courses of investigation, ended up away and apart from each other and with Gianna in danger.

  “For you to tell me how you learned that Jessica Hendrix was the killer,” he said in a tone that suggested she was the one who’d spent the last twenty years in St. Elizabeth’s.

  And as Mimi explained about Freddy and Joe Murray, about Calvin Cobbs and the “funny little lady” who had haunted the Metro GALCO seminars, the story emerged of a hate-filled, calculated plan to destroy gay people who, in the mind of Jessica Hendrix, would, if permitted, destroy those who loved them.

  “I don’t understand. How’d that work, Mimi?”

  “She’d attend the out-of-the-closet classes for married people, always masquerading as a woman too afraid to open her closet door. Then she’d insinuate herself with others like herself— Liz Grayson, Phil Tancil, Joe Murray, Tony delValle, Carolyn Green— all too afraid to be publicly gay. Then, according to Freddy who says Joe Murray told him, she advocated the formation of a group dedicated to keeping their secret, to keeping their families, to keeping their jobs— in short, to having it all.”

  She stopped talking as she remembered Calvin Cobbs, persuasive, logical, rational, loving, urging the people in the seminar to reveal their secret, to come out of the closet, to tell the truth. Jessica must have been a relief to them, telling them exactly what they wanted to hear. “Can You Keep A Secret? That’s all any of them ever wanted to do. It’s really quite simple when you think of it,” she said wearily, fatigue once more descending upon her.

  “But then why kill them? What was the point?”

  “With Jessica dead, we can’t be sure, Tyler, but I think the people who died were on the verge of making a decision—a choice—and I think the choice was not to Jessica’s liking. Sources tell me Carolyn Green had already told her husband she was leaving. And don’t you dare write that!” she yelled at him as his fingers sped over the keys.

  “So if they wouldn’t keep their own secrets, she’d help them do it,” Tyler mused sadly, shaking his head. “And now everyone knows their secret anyway.” He typed quickly and silently for a few moments, leaving her to try to sort out her thoughts.

  “So, all that’s left is the background history on the Hendrix woman and a statement from the cops. And of course I’d dearly love to know the path that led your Gianna to Hendrix.”

  In a tight voice Mimi said, “The Hendrix backgrounder is in my computer at the office. The password is—”

  Tyler, in a flash of pure irritation, complained, “I don’t see why you can’t come back to the paper for just an hour.”

  “I’m not leaving her, I told you.”
Mimi snapped at him.

  “Dammit, Patterson, their debriefing of her could go on all night. And that’s after the doctors say it’s okay for them to question her. She was hurt, you saw that.”

  “Fire me, Tyler, kill me, I don’t care. I’m not leaving her!”

  His sigh of resignation coincided with the knock and the opening of the door. A drained and exhausted Eric Ashby stuck his head in, nodded at Tyler and said to Mimi in a tight, hoarse voice,

  “Can I see you for a moment, Miss Patterson?”

  Alarmed, Mimi crossed quickly to the door and followed him out. He strode down the hall to a bank of elevators and pressed the button to the one marked, Hospital Personnel Only. He turned to her as they waited.

  “First off, I owe you an apology. I didn’t realize you and Anna...the Lieutenant...that you were, ah...”

  “You don’t owe me anything. You were doing your job.”

  “It’s just that we’re very protective of her.”

  “And I’m very grateful for that,” Mimi said honestly.

  “I hope I haven’t put my foot in it, but Anna...the Lieutenant...asked me to drive her home and I told her you were here but she didn’t want to ask you...”

  “They’re not keeping her overnight?” Mimi asked quickly.

  “She refuses to stay,” Eric responded ruefully and they shared a look that almost became a smile as Mimi realized that he, as well as she, understood the stubborn nature of Lt. Maglione.

  “By the way, Detective. You look like bloody hell.”

  “I feel worse than that, Miss Patterson,” he said as they exited the elevator, this time sharing a real smile.

  Mimi followed Eric to an unmarked door which he opened with a key and then stepped aside to let her enter. It was a small room, barely large enough for the bed, chair, toilet and basin it held. Gianna was sunk back into the chair, feet outstretched, head back, eyes closed.

  Eric closed the door and Mimi heard it lock. She took several steps toward Gianna and was almost upon her when the hazel eyes opened—eyes no longer bright and clear but filled with pain and fatigue and loss and grief. A deep bruise showed purplish-black on her right cheekbone. Mimi knelt before her, put her head in her lap, and wept. Gianna stroked her hair and caressed her neck for a long moment before taking her face in her hands and raising her head.