Exposure (12 page)

Read Exposure Online

Authors: Therese Fowler

BOOK: Exposure
5.65Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

“Non, je ne sais pas où elle est,”
he said, trying to shake off his anxiety by indulging in this practice they had, of his working to become fluent. In his pre-Amelia days, he and his mother had made plans to spend his graduation summer in France. Lately, he’d been trying to talk her into including Amelia, whose French was far better than his. “Did I get that right?”

“You don’t know where she is,” his mother said, nodding.

“I haven’t heard from her since she went home to get her computer.”

“Maybe she had an appointment and forgot to tell you.”

“Peut-être,”
he said, though he knew better.

“Do you work tonight?”

“Yeah—but not till five.”

“I have yoga, so I guess I’ll see you later. Oh—there’s leftover tuna salad, if you want to take it with you for dinner.”

“Maybe,” he said again, this time in English. “So, okay, see you.” At the doorway, he turned and added, “If you hear anything—you know, about Amelia—let me know.”

“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation, and you’ll laugh about it later. I can’t tell you how many times that’s been true for me worrying about you.”

He nodded, recalling some of those times—most of them when he’d been out riding dirt bikes or bridge-jumping into Falls Lake with friends a couple years older than himself, friends whose mothers were, then, at the stage his mother was now. Acceptance, or maybe resignation. Bad things rarely happened, and Anthony and his friends were old enough to manage them when they did.

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” He waved. “See you.”

“Je t’aime.”

“Love you, too.”

As he approached his old Mini sitting in the emptied student lot, he dialed Cameron, hoping she’d have heard something. She hadn’t, and was worried, too. He dialed three more friends, and none knew anything. He tried Amelia’s phone yet again, and this time the line didn’t ring, it went straight to voice mail.

Anthony pounded the car’s roof once, then got in and headed home. He drove with little conscious awareness of the drive itself; his mind kept turning over the ways he might go to Amelia’s house before work, go see her, or see about her, without risking discovery. He could do as he usually did: park some distance away and then walk or jog through the woods, but the odds of him being seen by one of the neighbors whose property he’d be crossing were much higher in daylight, and he didn’t want some freaked-out old lady calling the police about a prowler. Or … maybe he’d try driving directly to Amelia’s house, telling the guard at the neighborhood’s entrance that he was dropping off homework. That should work as a onetime deal.
Good, okay
, he thought. He’d do that. That would at least get him there … and he could pull the same act with her mom, if she happened to be home.

What he hoped was that for some yet-to-be-revealed good reason, Amelia had neglected to tell him she was going to stay home and take a nap. He hoped he’d ring the doorbell and after a minute she’d pad to the front door and greet him with a sleepy smile. He’d seen that smile once, when she’d slept over at Cameron’s house and he’d come by first thing in the morning, to join them for breakfast. He wanted more than anything to see that smile every morning, and he mentally marked, again, that he would be able to beginning about two hundred and ten days from now.

On his street, he was nearly at his house before he noticed the Raleigh Police car stationed a hundred feet or so away. He pulled up to the curb and parked, thinking this was another case of a concerned neighbor requesting them to do some speed-limit enforcement. People tended to drive too fast on through-streets like theirs, endangering the kids who played outside on bikes and skateboards and scooters. He went inside and took the stairs two at a time, swung into his room, and booted up his computer to check his email. If for some reason Amelia’s phone had stopped working, she might have contacted him this way. He pulled off his navy V-neck sweater and sat at the table that served as a desk, waiting, tapping a pen against his palm. “Where
are
you?” He knew that only some crazy sequence of truths would lead to her being away from any kind of phone but at the same time near a computer, hers or any, but at this point, even crazy sequences of truths were worth hoping for.

The hope didn’t last long.
“Merde,”
he said, when he saw that none of his new messages had come from her.

When the doorbell rang a minute later, Anthony still had not connected the police presence to his own life. Expecting his grandmother, who often dropped in unannounced, he went downstairs and pulled open the door to find two blue-shirted cops waiting there. “Anthony Winter?”

As implausible as it was, Anthony’s first thought was that they’d come to tell him Amelia had been hurt or killed. His breath caught and he choked out, “Yeah?”

“We’d like to ask you some questions. Can we come in?”

He stepped back and let them in. The three of them stood in the small foyer for a moment, and then one of the officers took out a notebook and said, “Would you confirm that you live at this address?”

Anthony nodded. “What’s going on? Is this about Amelia? Is she okay?”

The two exchanged a glance, then one cleared his throat and said, “We’ve had a complaint. What do you know about Amelia Wilkes being in possession of a number of photographs that feature you without … that is, in an unclothed state?”

Anthony blinked, and blinked again. “Sorry?” He had not seen this coming, not at all, not in any way. Christ. How could the cops possibly—?

Then the pieces tumbled into place. The forgotten computer. And … maybe Amelia’s mom hadn’t gotten delayed at all. Maybe she’d tricked Amelia into coming back home, where she could then confront her. And, apparently, sic the cops on him.

The officer said, “Miss Wilkes has photos, and she has given us an account of their origin, but we’d like to get your side of the story.”

Miss Wilkes has photos
. His relief over knowing she wasn’t sick or hurt was quickly giving way, replaced by dread over what she must have endured in order for this pair, these boys in blue whose smug expressions told him they’d seen everything he had to offer a woman, to now be at his door. No way had she given up the info voluntarily.

He said, “Even if it was me, how would this be, you know, something involving the police?”

The dark-haired officer said, “Right now, it’s important that you answer the question. Do you know how Miss Wilkes came to have these photos?”

Though Anthony was wary of saying too much, he wanted to deflect any responsibility from Amelia, so he said, “I sent them to her just, you know, for fun. She didn’t have anything to do with it. Why?”

“So she didn’t invite you to take and send the photos?”

This made him pause. If she’d told them she asked him to send them, would it be better to back up her account, or contradict it? And either way, he didn’t see why the police were getting involved—maybe as a favor to Harlan Wilkes? Had Wilkes set this up in order to scare him?

Anthony said, “She’s seventeen, you know. Eighteen in February. The age of consent—not that
that
is what this is about, but, you know, where sexual stuff is concerned—is sixteen.”

The blond officer said, “We’re aware of the law—and it’s good to know that you are, too. All we need to know is whether what Miss Wilkes said is accurate. You’re not accused of anything related to sexual … er, relations.”

“Okay. Because, you know, not that I’m saying we’ve had ‘relations,’ but if we had, she’s old enough to decide to have them.” He wiped his clammy palms on his pants.

“The photos?” the dark-haired officer prompted.

Anthony weighed the matter as best he could with the two cops staring at him, and decided he should back up Amelia’s statement so she couldn’t be accused of lying. And maybe there was a way to lessen the trouble, make her look innocent just the same.

He said, “Well, now that I think about it, maybe she did ask me. Yeah, I think that’s how it went. I think she was intending to use them for an art project, something like that. Did she say?”

The officer made some notes. “Did you send the photos using email?”

What difference did that make? He thought of the various ways she’d gotten the photos. Her phone, his phone, his camera, hers, email, text message. Email seemed no better or worse than the others, so he said, “Um, yeah. I think so.”

“All right. Your account is pretty much what we heard from Miss Wilkes. As of now, we’re going to file our report, but we’ll need you to remain available this afternoon, in case we have any further questions.”

“I have to work.” He told them where, and they took down his cellphone and work phone numbers. Then they put their hats on and left the house.

Anthony followed them onto the porch, watched them get into the cruiser without either of them saying a word, and watched them drive away. He could only imagine the conversation they must be having right now: rich girl who lives in a mansion surrounded by forest, a girl so lovely that none of them (himself included) could possibly rate a real chance with her, keeps provocative, show-all photographs of guy who lives in little row house with a single tree growing on its pitiful square of lawn. Rich, lovely girl gets busted by mother—who would without a doubt be extremely pissed, so complaint gets filed with the cops. What a joke it must be to them, doing the bidding of people like the Wilkeses. He could just see them placating Sheri Wilkes by agreeing to question him and file a report. Placating Harlan, too—she’d probably gotten him to come help with the crisis—with their questions and their notebooks and their serious yes-ma’am, yes-sir faces. And coming here, questioning him, the poor SOB in the photos, who was probably going to get a real ass-kicking from the girl’s father … they had to be having a good laugh about that.

A warm breeze stirred the big maple tree, which was half shaded by the house. He looked up at it, and saw that the top leaves glowed as if set afire.

He was still there on the porch a half hour later when the cruiser reappeared, this time pulling into the driveway. “Mr. Winter,” the blond officer said as he stepped out of the car, “We’re going to need you to come with us.”

“What the hell?” The handcuffs were icy, and far heavier than Anthony would have imagined, the weight and position pulling his shoulders back uncomfortably and straining the buttons of his white oxford shirt. Quickly, though, the officers escorted him outside and folded him into the backseat of the cruiser, and then his discomfort increased tenfold.

“The DA is issuing a warrant for your arrest.”

“What’s the charge?” Anthony said. The door thumped shut and the officers got into the front seats without answering. “This can’t be legal,” he told them through the vertical bars that separated the backseat from the front. No response. “And how about a seat belt?” he said as the car pulled away from the curb and a pair of curious neighbors watched them go.

There was nothing in the back of the patrol car except Anthony himself. No belts, no latches, no knobs, no handles, no mats on the floor. No way to brace himself, except awkwardly, with his elbows and feet. Bars on the door windows, bars dividing front from back. No way to get free or get out. “Can’t you tell me anything?”

The blond officer didn’t even turn around as he said, “The magistrate will spell it all out for you.” Then he closed a plastic panel that separated the front and back compartments even farther, presumably to mute the arrestee’s outraged, angry, or annoying outbursts, or to prevent being spat on.

“Magistrate?” Anthony said, raising his voice. What or who the hell was the magistrate? Wasn’t that a British term? Right, he thought—British, for basically a judge. He was going to see a
judge
? “What do you mean by magistrate?” he tried again. No answer. “Yo! Officer! Why am I going to see a judge?”

They continued to ignore him, and he was tempted to kick the seat, not that it was likely to do any good. “Fuck all,” he said, slumping down in the seat. A magistrate, okay, fine. Who would tell him what, exactly?

Arrested, shit. Arrested, and then what? If he was going to see a sort-of-judge, when was he supposed to get to talk to a lawyer? Did he even need a lawyer? This was all some kind of screwup in the first place, had to be, because how could sending some photos at the request of an over-sixteen-year-old girl be a crime?

The drive to wherever he was being taken seemed to last for hours as they moved through the stop-and-go flow of late afternoon Capital Boulevard traffic. His cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He twisted his arms around to his side, touched the edge of his pocket with his fingers, but couldn’t reach into it.
Amelia
. He was sure, or he wanted to be sure, that it was Amelia trying to call him, somehow, finally. Did she know he was going to be hauled in? Was she calling, thinking there was time to warn him?

Anthony had no idea where the police station was located, and was surprised when they wound their way into downtown Raleigh and then pulled into a parking garage that, after the brightness of the afternoon, was suffocatingly dark.

Other books

Long Shot by Kayti McGee
A Scandalous Secret by Beth Andrews
To Catch a Billionaire by Stone, Dana
Save Me (Taken Series Book 1) by Cannavina, Whitney
The Last Templar by Michael Jecks
The Smithfield Bargain by Jo Ann Ferguson
Bouquet of Lies by Smith, Roberta
Prince of Power by Elisabeth Staab
The Trap (Agent Dallas 3) by Sellers, L. J.