That plan did have a few complications, morality for one. And the law. And the unlikelihood of murder being the most reasonable solution to save a person I didn’t even know.
“You know, Clarissa,” I finally said. “I’m not really an actuary.”
“Oh?” She seemed infinitely uninterested in that. Apparently not being an actuary is just as boring as being one.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m actually, well, what my staff calls a fixer.”
“I see,” she said, which from her tone I was obviously supposed to translate to I don’t care. Then she did. “Why did you tell me about—do you really have a daughter?”
I took another deep breath, spooled it out. “I’m so embarrassed. No. That was a lie.”
I went on, not looking at her, but we were both observing the random walks of the passengers, who now reminded me of those zombie movies, faceless pale creatures in tattered clothing, lurching through the forest on the determined hunt for brains. Or in this case, trains.
“I’m actually a public relations person, someone who can help harried executives when they have a particularly thorny issue in their office, something they’d like to get accomplished without letting the public know they had a hand in it. All very confidential, of course, but sometimes, things being how they are, there needs to be a fine hand making sure things go as they…should.”
Oh, so now she was interested. Tentatively, carefully, interested, just a quarter turn toward me.
“I see,” she said.
The lights on the train all came back on with a flare and a loud hum of power. The crowd cheered, inspired to delight by the promise of bathrooms and light and shoes, and maybe a massive glass of wine. Of cell service, and internet, and normalcy.
And the light dimmed again, and the crowd sighed, as one, and stood staring at the train, as if their collective longing would power it up again.
I pursed my lips, seeming to make a momentous decision, even though it was almost too dark to see each other clearly. “So, Clarissa, I’m embarrassed to tell you this. But—here we are, and it doesn’t seem fair if I keep this a secret.” I added some optimistic enthusiasm to my voice. “And maybe this is all for the best. If not for this apparently false alarm, we’d probably never have met.”
“You’ve lost me,” she said. She looked at the screen of her phone, still an opaque black rectangle, then stashed it into the waistband of her yoga pants.
“Clarissa? Full disclosure. My roomette is next to yours, and apparently you were on the phone this evening. Tonight? Before the alarm?”
Oh, yeah. Now I had her full attention.
“And?”
“And I heard every word.”
“You listened to—”
“It was impossible not to, I’m afraid. The walls must be—well, who knows, but yes. ‘The board doesn’t know’? And ‘he’s a lush,’ and well.” I shrugged. “‘Shayla.’”
It would have been funny, really, if it hadn’t been the middle of the night in the woods outside of wherever Pennsylvania, with a massive broken train in front of us and a scatter of zombies loitering around us. I guess it was still funny.
Her chin came up, and even in the gloom I could see her wheels turning.
“I can help you,” I said. “As a professional, I can tell you it’s silly, and even—and this is just between us, trust me—misguided for you to take matters into your own hands. Whatever the matters are. Why get your hands dirty? Tell me the situation. I’ll make it all work. And you, with a clear conscience, can go on with your life. Without Shayla in the way.”
Her eyes got wide, then narrow. Strange to watch her think, in the random half-light of the emergency lighting and the occasional bloom of moonlight from behind the drifting clouds.
“Do I sound melodramatic? I apologize,” I said. “It’s not like you’re planning, you know,” I paused. “To actually harm her. Physically.”
“Of course not,” she said.
“Okay, then. You’d simply like her to do whatever she does, shall we say, somewhere else. Just guessing here. She’s good at it, maybe too good?”
Clarissa nodded.
“And— to give you deniability, don’t say anything—it doesn’t appear that whoever is protecting her—the lush? Has any inclination to change the situation himself.”
She nodded again.
I shifted on the blanket. My socks were damp from standing in the same place. I chose a drier spot. “So here’s the thing. I could tell from the call—”
“I still can’t believe you heard all that.”
“Oh, I’m certain not all of it,” I reassured her. “But I assume you’re a busy woman, who only has the best of intentions, maybe…” I paused. “Fundraising for the school? Perhaps higher salaries for administrators like you, more perks, more recognition, a bit more prominence, some changes in the—”
“Yes.” She cut me off. “Exactly.”
“And this Shayla…wants your job? And you’re thinking there might be a way to—embarrass? Or—”
“Can we not go into that?” She shook her head, as if shaking off cobwebs of temptation. “You eavesdropped, that’s unacceptable. Shall we just pretend this never happened?”
“Of course.” I agreed instantly. That’s how you reel in a fish, let them think they’re off the hook. I laughed. “My entire business model is ‘this never happened.’”
She nodded. Looked down at the soggy blanket. The hum of the crowd surrounded us, and from time to time a clanging of train doors, or a random night bird. I waited. Public relations, I’d reminded myself, was all about helping whoever needed help. Not about sentimentality or Lifetime movies or damsels in distress. My clients were not always paragons of moral virtue, but they always needed me. Sometimes I had to allow them to realize that.
“It’s like three in the morning,” I said, looking at my Fitbit. “Wow.”
“Her name is Shayla Miller,” Clarissa said. “But you know that.”
I nodded.
“Her phone number is—” She pulled out her phone, saw it was still a brick, put it back. She told me a number. “Can you remember that? And her email is at Rotherwood dot edu. You won’t find her on the website. She’s just moved to Boston.”
“Got it,” I said. And I did.
“I don’t want to know,” Clarissa said. “What’ll happen and when.”
“Goes without saying.”
“You’re not going to hurt her? I mean—physically? I want to be clear about—you’re not going to k—”
“Please.” I put up both palms, stopping her. “This isn’t the movies. This is business. Civilized business.”
“And—if it’s not indelicate…” She glanced around. We were as alone as we could be.
“How will I pay you?”
I shrugged, as if it wasn’t about the money. Which, I realized, it wasn’t. It was about the balance of power. “Invite me to some event at Rotherwood, we’ll talk. After it’s over. And let me reassure you again, this is absolutely confidential. I will never ever say we’d worked together. Never. I’ll never say I’ve talked to you, or know you. No matter what the circumstances.”
“But what if—”
I gestured to our surroundings. “There’s no what-if. There’s no one who can put us together, not it any way. Maybe the pothead kid with the hat,” I dismissed him with a flip of my hand. “Otherwise, you and I never met.”
She laced her fingers together, put them under her chin. “I’m so—relieved. We were going to—”
I smiled, approving, letting her know we were comrades. And that she should continue.
“We were going to send emails from her computer,” she went on. “With certain pretty compromising pictures we were having made, and then it would all get out, and she’d have to resign, and then we’d be back on track. The headmaster, well, he does drink a bit. But that makes our lives so much easier.”
I frowned, emphatically so she could see, even in the gloom, how serious I
was. “Can of worms,” I said. “IP addresses, email chains, metadata, back and forths, the forensics people can find absolutely anything anywhere. You cannot send emails, Clarissa, it’s like putting a spotlight on yourself. No, seriously, you leave Shayla alone. Pull way back. Let go. You were—and forgive me—saying something about walking across the stage?”
“Awards ceremony,” Clarissa said. “She getting some national honor for—”
“Let her accept it,” I said. “You join in the celebration. Encourage her, befriend her. Applaud her. The key is, you can’t know when I’m going to do what I’m going to do. You have to be genuinely surprised. In a way, you know, your idea is perfect, subtle but devastating. But it has to be done the right way. I know how to hide the tracks, and no one will ever know, and think of how much easier your life will be.”
“No violence.” She held up a finger.
“Never,” I said. “There are other ways to end people’s lives; professional lives, at least. After we’re back on board? Have a glass of wine, go to sleep, forget about this. It never happened.”
A piercing whistle cut through the night, so surprising I clutched at my bathrobe. Clarissa, startled, grabbed my arm. All the lights in the train flared into brightness, and a rumble sounded from the massive locomotive on the tracks across the blanketed grass.
A blue-uniformed conductor climbed the three metal steps to the now-open doorway where many of us had disembarked more than an hour ago. “Ladies and gentlemen?” He called out again, and once again we all surged forward to hear him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are so sorry, this was a false alarm. We have gone through our checklist, and checked again, and our fire crew has discovered there was apparently someone smoking in the café car restroom, and they failed to extinguish their smoking materials before they were placed in the trash bin. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, smoking on the train is prohibited by law.”
The crowd grumbled, a murmur of disapproval for this flouting of the social contract.
“Idiot,” Clarissa whispered.
“But we certainly appreciate your patience,” the conductor went on from above us, “and your cooperation, so we’ll be offering each passenger a voucher for future travel on the Lake Shore Limited, or any trains in our system. And now, with your continued cooperation, we’ll be underway as soon as the engineer signals.”
As we clambered back aboard, I let Clarissa go first, leaving at least ten people buffering between us, making sure no one ever connected us, or could put us in the same place. Sure, if someone really delved into it, for some reason, they might find we’d been on the same train, but who would get that far?
Her door was already closed by the time I got to my roomette. Without even closing mine, I scurried to the listening spot. She was already on the phone.
“You won’t believe what happened, sweetie,” she said. “But I’ve been thinking. Let’s let it go. We’re bigger than this, are we not? We’ll rise above it, and simply put our conversations down to a few too many glasses of wine. I’m out, sweetie. Let’s let Shayla be. And let the chips fall where they may.”
I got out my own phone, draped my earbuds around my neck, all of a sudden not feeling one bit tired. Now that we were back on the train’s wi-fi, I had three internet bars, but I wasn’t naïve enough to google Clarissa’s name. Or her headshots. Which I would ask Hadley, in due time, to attach to various kinky clothing-free bodies, thereby creating certain gasp-worthy photos that might not make our Clarissa too happy. I mean, it wasn’t my idea. But if it was good enough for Clarissa to do to Shayla, it was good enough for me to do to Clarissa.
But no one would know where the compromising photos came from. As I’d said, I knew what I was doing.
And maybe, if Clarissa Madison kept her part of the leave-Shayla-alone bargain, I wouldn’t have to do anything at all.
I put in one earbud, ready to block out the noises the rest of the night had in store for me. It was time to sleep, peacefully sleep, knowing that starting tomorrow morning, when the Lake Shore Limited arrived in Boston, Shayla Miller’s life would be different. And she’d never know why, never know she had me as her own personal public relations fixer. All of us women, starting in our careers, need all the help we can get.
I slid under the covers again, thinking about power and justice and sisterhood.
The whistle sounded, piercing the night, doors slammed, and a grumbling under my feet announced our journey was once again about to be underway.
“All aboard!” The conductor called.
* * *
GONE FOREVER
A Lassiter/Martinez Short Story
JOSEPH BADAL
The images of the dead…the carnage, flashed like dry lightning before Detective Barbara Lassiter’s eyes. She blinked and shook her head, as though to clear her mind. Hell of a thing, she thought, a homicide detective who has a problem holding it together at the sight of dead bodies.
“You okay?” her partner Susan Martinez asked.
“Yeah.”
“You want me to take the priest?” Susan said, as Barbara watched Father Michael Doherty through the open door of his office at the back of the church in Albuquerque’s Near Northeast Heights. The man’s haggard appearance had only worsened as the hours went by. Between consoling parishioners and fielding questions from detectives, Doherty seemed to have aged ten years in a few hours. Now, at 1:00 a.m., he looked as though he might collapse.
“No, I got it. We’ll play it like we discussed. You go to Lucas Brennan’s place. We still have someone at his apartment?”
“There’s a deputy outside the place. Are you afraid he might ‘rabbit’ on us?”
Barbara remembered their initial interview with Brennan here at the church. The young man had a deer-in-the-headlights look. His eyes wide with shock. She’d thought that if he hadn’t been so distressed, he would have been uncommonly good-looking. But his blue eyes and sensual mouth seemed to have been distorted with grief and trauma.
“No,” Barbara said. “I’m more worried about his mental state. He was as distraught as any person I’ve ever seen when we questioned him earlier. I was afraid he was going to lose it. I didn’t have the heart to make him hang around here while we processed the scene.”
Susan said, “I called a grief counsellor and asked her to go to his place. I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”
Barbara took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and entered the priest’s office. He half-rose from his chair as she offered him her hand. He took it with a brief, limp, damp grip, then dropped back into his desk chair.
“I need to go to the hospital to visit those who were injured.” He swallowed hard. “And the families of those who were murdered.” His voice was high-pitched, with a barely noticeable lilt of Ireland. “My…parishioners need me.”
Barbara, at five feet nine inches tall, towered over the diminutive priest, who looked to be about sixty years old. His skin was pink but creased. His black shirt was wrinkled, and his white collar appeared to be at least two sizes too big. Earlier, she’d noticed dark spots on his shoes, which she knew was blood. She wondered if he was aware of it as she tried to make eye contact with him, but his eyes ping-ponged everywhere except at her.
“Are you up to answering more questions?”
He finally looked at her and nodded.
After placing her cell phone on the front edge of the man’s desk, she told him she planned to record their conversation, which he agreed to. Then she recited the time, his and her names, and their location. She said, “I apologize for keeping you here at such a late hour, but it’s important that we get a clear and complete picture of what happened. You being at the front of the sanctuary gave you the best view of…events.”
Barbara waited for Doherty to respond. He’d dropped his gaze to the desktop between them and covered his face with his hands. He made a sound that was both groan and whimper. She prompted him again. “Can you tell me when you first noticed the man wit
h the machete?”
He dropped his hands to his lap and raised his head. His eyes seemed to have homed in on a spot just below her chin. “Dear God, it was horrific.” The lilt of Ireland had transformed into a full-blown brogue.
Barbara gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure, Father. But the more detail you can remember, the better able we will be to proceed with our investigation.”
“What’s there to investigate, Detective? A madman came into my church with a weapon and slaughtered seven of my parishioners.” He muttered something unintelligible and then added, “Another ten are in the hospital.” A keening noise that sounded as though it came from his soul startled Barbara.
“Are you okay, Father?” she asked.
He waved away her concern. “Think of the children. They’ll never forget what they saw.”
Barbara took a moment to slow her breathing, to control her growing feeling of frustration with the priest, who didn’t seem to want to focus on her question. “Just tell me what you remember, Father. Can you do that?”
Doherty expelled an exasperated sigh, closed his eyes for a moment, then looked her straight in the eyes. “I was close to completing the service when I saw a man stand in a row near the back of the sanctuary. He shouted in what sounded like a foreign language—maybe Arabic—raised a machete, swung at the people in the row in front of him, then stepped into the center aisle. He marched up the aisle and…”
After a long beat, Barbara said, “Please go on, Father.”
“It was demonic, Detective. He moved so slowly, so methodically. Chopping to his left, then moving to the pews on his right. Then left again. Back and forth.” He swallowed, then cleared his throat. “I was paralyzed. I didn’t know what to do.”
Barbara saw a glint of shame in the man’s glistening eyes. He quickly wiped away a tear with his hand. She waited.
“I saw the man advancing.” After another pause, Doherty added, “There was…joy, yes, that’s what it was. Joy showing on his face. He smiled as though he was ecstatic as he came toward me. I remember dropping the aspergillum and—”
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