Dead to Me (31 page)

Not until later. And not until later did I realize that a person who would do that would never leave her best friend’s body to rot in a shallow mountain grave. A person like that would
look.

The call to the sheriff’s department was anonymous, but I knew who had placed it immediately. No matter how they tried, Conrad and his dirty cops couldn’t control everything. Annie
wasn’t the only person out there who cared about justice. I wasn’t, either.

“What they need now is evidence,” Jerry said. “Something beyond Gabrielle’s word that puts the three of them at the beach that night.”

“Beyond her word?” I asked. Really, it was more like yelling than asking. “Didn’t about fifty people see them leave that party together? Would
their
word be good
enough? Does someone famous have to give a statement before they do something?”

Jerry caught one of my angrily flailing hands in his and said, “Hard evidence, Alice. Something beyond words and who saw what. They believe Gabrielle. But they know Conrad will have
lawyers. Good ones. It’s for Gabrielle’s own good—and yours and Annie’s, too—that they do this the right way.”

“Have they found anything yet?” I asked.

“No, not yet, but it’s early. They’ll find something. And then there are those pictures from the park….”

For a moment, Jerry went somewhere else. I don’t know where it was, but from the look on his face, I guessed it was a dark, windowless, guilty place, and I doubt it was his first time
visiting there.

“Those aren’t nothing,” I said gently, and Jerry came back to himself.

“No, they aren’t. Those alone should put Conrad away for a long while.”

But there was a hitch in his face when he said it, a smile with more confidence than he really had. There was something he wasn’t telling me.

“How long?” I asked.

Jerry sighed. “The prosecutor will try for attempted murder, but Conrad’s lawyers will bargain them down to simple assault. He’ll plead guilty, but spin a completely false and
terrible story about your sister in the process. Maybe he’ll say she tried to rob him in the park. Maybe he’ll come up with something worse. The judge will sentence him to three to five
years, and then we won’t hear a peep out of him for about a year. His behavior in prison will be excellent, and his lawyers will begin clearing their throats to point that out. People will
remember the things he said about Annie, not the crimes he committed. They’ll decide she probably deserved it somehow. They’ll remember that scene in that one movie where he kisses
Lucille Ball and falls off the horse and how funny that was. They’ll forgive him. And they’ll let him out to do it all over again.”

When Jerry finished talking, he looked like a punching bag that had all its stuffing ripped out. I probably did, too. We sat there for a minute, a couple of flopped-over and useless human
beings. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. I wanted to crawl underneath the bench in the police station hallway and hide there more or less forever.

And then, suddenly, I didn’t. Maybe Gabrielle’s word wasn’t good enough, but I knew something that would be.

Dragging Jerry behind me, I leaped up from the bench and ran pell-mell down the hall, down the stairwell, out the central station front door, and down the street to the spot where Rex had parked
Conrad’s Rolls-Royce.

“What’s this all about?” Jerry asked, huffing to catch his breath.

“It’s under the seat,” I said.

“What is?”

“Hard evidence.”

I told him about Irma’s purse and shoes, how they’d jabbed into Gabrielle as she hid on the floorboards of the car and how she’d stuffed them underneath the seat. Conrad was
careful about not being seen, careful about where he hid the body, careful to dump Irma’s clothing in a place it wouldn’t be found. But he wouldn’t have looked for her purse and
shoes in the car. I bet anything he’d forgotten all about them.

Jerry’s eyes grew to the size of saucers as he handed me a pocketful of change and a stack of reporters’ business cards.

“Go,” he said. “Tell Ruth. But before you do that, call Amos Carey. Call as many reporters as you can. Call the
Times
, the
Examiner
, the
Herald
. I want
someone outside the LAPD getting pictures of this.”

I went back inside and stood in line with the drunks, streetwalkers, and juvenile delinquents to use the pay phone. After I’d made my calls, I found Ruth drinking a cup of coffee. When I
told her what was in Conrad’s car, she said, “Get back out there right now, and don’t let anyone touch that car until I get there.”

Soon, everyone began to arrive. The reporters and photographers descended upon the Rolls-Royce first, like a flock of tweedy crows. A half-dozen beat cops pressed them back, and a gasp passed my
lips when I saw they were clearing a pathway for Walter Hanrahan. Gone were the high-waisted pants, the gangster’s fedora, and the blue polka-dot suspenders, exchanged for a police
captain’s uniform. He was followed by two white-haired policemen and Ruth, wearing the same little breakfast Danish hat and boiled-wool jacket as the woman who’d taken my statement.
Hanrahan’s face was a cipher: flat, ordinary, and official-looking. I tried to crack it, to figure out what combination of rage, astonishment, fear, and cunning lay beneath the surface as he
approached the car, as his gloved hand disappeared beneath the seat and came out again.

A gasp went up from the crowd and the light in the street went blindingly white as the photographers’ flashbulbs exploded in unison.

I saw the picture in the papers the next day. Hanrahan is holding Irma’s purse in one hand, her shoes in the other, smiling so triumphantly you’d think he solved the crime
himself.

Ruth stands by his side, and even though her face is smaller than a dime, it’s the face of a woman who knows too much, knows she’s in danger, knows the life she built for herself is
over.

I wondered whether she thought it was worth it.

“W
hat about Gabrielle?” I asked as we wove through the gathering crowd. “We can’t just leave her back there.”

Jerry doubled his pace, and I had to trot along to keep up with him. I thought he must not have heard me, so I asked again.

The Plymouth coupe was parked near the
Los Angeles Times
building, and the big clock on the side told me it was later than I’d originally guessed. It had been hours and hours since
Ruth had dropped Gabrielle and me off with the police matrons. How long had I been asleep? Two hours? Maybe three? Gabrielle should have been sitting on that bench with Jerry when I woke up.

I put myself between Jerry and the Plymouth and stuck him in the chest with my forefinger.

“Where is she?”

He didn’t seem surprised that I’d figured out something was wrong, only sad that he’d have to be the one to break the news.

“Alice, they wouldn’t turn Gabrielle over to me. She’s been transferred to the Juvenile Hall while they look for her parents. And if they can’t turn them up,
they’ve petitioned to make her a ward of the court so they can hold her there until Conrad’s trial.”

Jerry opened the car door for me. I got in, gripping the dashboard as the information sunk in. The Plymouth gave a feeble cough and a sputter before agreeing to start, and Jerry pulled away from
the curb, out of downtown.

Neither of us spoke until I asked, “What about after Conrad’s trial?”

“I don’t know what happens to her after that.”

It was all I could do to keep from flinging myself into Jerry and beating him with my fists. This was what he and Annie did, what they were supposed to be good at—telling the girls who
should go home from the ones who shouldn’t. Gabrielle had said almost nothing about where she came from, nothing about the circumstances that had driven her away, and even I knew which kind
of girl she was. Jerry should have known it, too.

“You shouldn’t have let them take her,” I said. “You should have stopped it.”

“I tried,” he said.

“You didn’t try hard enough.”

Jerry clenched the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

“Alice, you have no idea how sorry I am,” he said.

I knew he was sorry. I knew he cared what happened to Gabrielle, that what had happened was an accident, an oversight. He’d taken his eyes off her for a minute, and she was gone. And yet,
the whole thing was so sloppy and careless. If Annie had been there in his place, there was no doubt in my mind that Gabrielle would be sitting in the car with us.

Instead, she was locked away in a cell where no one knew her and no one would be looking out for her. It would be easy for Hanrahan to get to her, and they’d have a powerful bargaining
chip to hold over her:
Say what we want you to say, or else we start looking for your parents.
When Conrad threatened her, Gabrielle had agreed to turn on Annie. Who knew what kinds of
things she might agree to say if one of Hanrahan’s goons came to visit her in Juvenile Hall?

Jerry turned onto Vermont, and I realized that in a few minutes, I would see my sister, alive and awake. After all this time, I was finally going to get the thing I wanted most in the world. It
should have made me the happiest girl in the world. It should have at least cheered me up.

But all I could do was worry about Gabrielle.

The police outside Annie’s room were gone, all of them either dispatched to hold off the reporters in the lobby or downtown with Ruth and Walter Hanrahan.

When Jerry and I got there, Cassie was drawing back the curtains so everyone could watch the smoggy Los Angeles sunset, and Annie was sitting up in bed, sipping from a cup that our mother held
to her lips. One of her eyes was swollen shut, but the other was wide and clear, and it crinkled at the corner when she saw me.

The smile disappeared when she saw that Jerry and I were alone.

“Where is she?” she asked. “Tell me she’s with you—tell me she’s all right.”

Even through broken teeth and a wad of cotton packing, it was the beautiful, musical voice I remembered. She peered over our shoulders as though Gabrielle might be hiding behind us or dawdling
in the hallway. Jerry bit his lip and almost imperceptibly shook his head. Annie’s face sagged, gray and emptied out. I could almost feel the frustration radiating off her, the impotent rage
that she’d gotten hurt, and that the people she’d left behind to take care of things in her absence had completely and utterly failed her. Maybe Jerry was right when he’d said
that I didn’t know my sister anymore, but I knew what she was thinking at that moment.

“You let them take her,” she said finally.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing the words weren’t enough. I could barely look at her.

“Alice, it’s not your fault,” Jerry said.

“I know it’s not her fault,” Annie said icily. “Of course it’s not her fault.”

Jerry flinched, and angry as I was with him, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pity.

“Annie, she’s alive. And you are, too,” Jerry said. “And Alice is here.”

I hung back behind Jerry, like a shy child being introduced to a roomful of strangers. My mother was the one who finally broke the ice, patting a spot on the bed and saying, “Alice, come
here. Let me see my girls together.”

I went, feeling grateful for her permission to approach.

“My two brave little girls,” she said, and her eyes filled up with tears as she took our hands.

“Mother, please don’t,” Annie said, recoiling from her touch. “Not now.”

Cassie hadn’t spoken since Jerry and I arrived, and as what should have been our happy family reunion dissolved into bickering and blame, she’d retreated to a corner. Still, when
Annie snapped at our mother, Cassie stepped forward and sat down in the chair next to her, good as her word. Watching the way my mother sat there, nervously touching her face, playing with her
jewelry, and looking very much in need of a drink, I was glad she’d had Cassie there to look out for her.

Meanwhile, Annie had turned her wrath back on Jerry. “What were you thinking, dragging Alice into this?”

Jerry opened his mouth to explain, then thought better of it and sat with a hangdog expression on his face.

“You lose Gabrielle, you put Alice in all kinds of danger. What was she doing anywhere near Conrad? If I’d been there, it would all be over by now. Gabrielle would be safe; Alice
would have been spared all of this.”

Spared. I would have been spared.

Spared knowing that any of it had ever happened, what my sister did and how much she risked and how brave she was. I’d be exactly where I’d been for the past four years—nowhere
near her life. And apparently, that was what she would have preferred.

“You have no idea how lucky you are to be alive, Alice,” she said. “How did you even get involved in this?”

I bristled. What did she mean, how did I get involved?

“You had a picture of me in your shoe. What did you think I’d do when the hospital called?”

Annie shook her head, one hand pressed tight to her mouth.

“Oh, Alice, that’s not what I meant to happen at all.”

It struck me all at once and harder than any fist. It was so obvious, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it before. When Annie had gone to the park that night, she’d known
she was in danger. It’d probably occurred to her that the whole thing could be a setup, and if that had been the case…