God Only Knows (8 page)

The detective’s eyebrows arched and he shot a wary glance before opening the binder to reveal the first page. As his eyes
focused on the paper, which was a page from the Dayton Area Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service (MLS) site, Cassie
began to narrate for him. “What you’re looking at is information on several homes that I own as an investor. I bought three
of these from clients after they proved hard to sell. In every case, I knew enough about the neighborhoods in question to
know that things were in the works —local plant expansions, the establishment of a new Wal-Mart, and so on —to eventually
drive up house values in these areas. I invested a little money into each property so it would be in more competitive shape,
and since then, I’ve been renting them out profitably. When I sense the market in each area has peaked, I’ll sell each one
for a significant profit.”

“Must be nice to have that sort of cash laying around,” Whitlock replied, his eyes dancing from one sheet to the next with
curiosity. “My salary barely covers my rent and my ex’s, along with child support for our son.”

Cassie wondered if this man was reading her mind. “What if I told you that you don’t need any cash to make this type of investment?”

His blue eyes narrowed, Whitlock turned toward Cassie. “Keep talking.”

“Although I don’t appreciate the way you first came at me, threatening my son and all,” Cassie said, “the Lord has spoken
to me. I understand that you and your mother suffered great pain behind Eddie’s fate. Now, I can’t help you understand why
Toya’s brother tried to finger all of us as if we had something to do with it. As you know, Lenny was a crackhead in debt
to three or four loan sharks, so I wouldn’t think his word qualifies as gospel.” When Whitlock frowned intensely, Cassie was
surprised to find herself placing a hand to his shoulder. “Pete, I honestly don’t know why Lenny misled you, but I can do
one thing about all of this. As one who grew up with your brother, I can offer financial assistance for the costs associated
with Eddie’s care. You said your mother went into unbelievable levels of debt for Eddie’s treatment and care, right?”

Whitlock’s posture had softened, but he stared out his window as he replied, “You think?”

“I’m offering,” Cassie said, “to sell you three of these properties for a nominal investment, say a thousand dollars each.
You’ll instantly have a couple hundred thousand dollars in equity relative to market value, plus rental income from the tenants.”
Nearly collapsing with relief, Cassie opened her arms, her palms facing up. “Your mother could be debt-free before you know
it.”

Whitlock sat now, with a bowed head, eyes boring into the MLS profiles as he flipped from one page to the next. Content to
leave her in suspense, he was silent for a while before moving a finger over to the control panel on the passenger door. “Hope
you don’t mind,” he said, lowering his window without asking permission, “I’m gonna need a smoke to respond to this.”

Cassie fiddled with her hands, let her gaze wander out toward the grove of trees blowing in the wind. “Take your time.”

Cassie fought a dry heave as fumes from Whitlock’s lit cigarette invaded the pores of her car. Insisting on keeping her cool,
she rested a hand in her lap as the detective finally spoke. “Do you think I’m in this for money, Mrs. Gillette?”

“I think,” Cassie said, “that you’re probably still sorting out your motives. I don’t think you went out looking for evidence
that there’s more to what happened with your brother than met the eye. I think Lenny Parks had fallen on hard times, and thought
he could get a break by pretending to have answers to the mystery you’ve suffered over for years.”

Whitlock stared hard at her now, his features growing brittle with tension. “So answer my question. Do you really think I’m
in this for the money?”

“I’m offering you a token of goodwill,” Cassie said, her hands rising defensively, though she didn’t feel physically threatened.
At least not yet. “I’ve told you, Detective. My friends and I, and all of our classmates for that matter, spent the rest of
our junior high and high-school years praying for Eddie’s healing. Your pain is real to me.”

Whitlock took another pull on his cigarette, intently exhaling toward Cassie’s twitching nose. “Well, that was a case of wasted
prayers, wasn’t it?”

“My point is, we cared. We really did.” More than ever, Cassie found herself wishing that she could just tell the painful
truth. Through much prayer and meditation, she had wrestled with God, asking how she could possibly expose herself and, more
important, her family to the potential consequences of an honest confession. Why, of all people, did Eddie Walker’s brother
have to be this humanistic, vengeful policeman, one so clearly willing to abuse his authority?

Once they had each obtained college degrees —Marcus earned his four years after high school from the University of Dayton;
she earned hers two years later from Wright State —Cassie had tried to talk her husband into moving as far away from Ohio
as possible. From the time M.J. was eight until he was eleven, Cassie searched want ads in major newspapers, like the
Washington Post,
and visited Web sites of publications across the nation, hoping to find openings that would grab Marcus’s attention. When
Marcus finally insisted that he had no interest in leaving Dayton, given that the management of the
Daily News
was allowing him opportunities he might not get anywhere else, she ultimately abandoned her efforts. It wasn’t as if she
could come out and tell him the real reason she wanted to get away; the lingering fear that Eddie Walker would rise from his
hospital bed and seek his revenge.

Cassie eventually had relented from her attempt to leave Dayton and convinced herself she should stop living in fear. God
knew her heart, and, for that matter, the hearts of Toya, Julia, and Terry. The events of the night were a tragedy for all
of them; the tragedies were just most dramatic for Eddie. Cassie had carried on with life by trusting that if God ever saw
fit for her and her old friends to relive that night, it would be through a reasonable vessel —perhaps Eddie’s mother or another
family member with a strong Christ-centered faith, one seeking closure, not revenge.

Instead, God had placed before her Peter Whitlock, and she had no confidence right now that a confession would result in anything
but direct harm to her and her family. And what ensured that he would stop there? Julia, Terry, and Toya, along with their
respective loved ones, would be in harm’s way too.

Whitlock flung his used cigarette out the passenger-side window, then returned to staring her down. “I think I told you shortly
after we first met,” he said, “that I wouldn’t let up on you until I was convinced you had told me everything you knew about
what happened to Eddie. Do you recall that?”

“I’ve heard every word you’ve said, loud and clear,” Cassie replied, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in her own ears.
“Don’t respond in anger,”
something told her.
“You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“I am telling you that I don’t know how Eddie wound up in front of that truck. I can’t solve that for you. What I can do,”
she said, feeling like a broken record as she pointed toward the notebook in his lap, “is help erase some of your family’s
debt so that your mother can enjoy her senior years and still take care of your brother.”

A newly lit cigarette dangling from between his lips, Whitlock shook his head slowly. “You’ve failed a very crucial test,
Cassie.” Sighing, he looked toward the floor of the car before whipping his gaze back to hers. “An early, simple lesson you
learn as a detective is to spoon-feed your information to a suspect. The more you tell them, the more raw material they have
to work with as they build their lies. The less raw material they have, the more they wind up hanging themselves with their
own words.”

“Okay, fine.” Cassie reached over, grabbed the notebook unevenly, and jerked it into her lap. “You’re clearly intent on doing
nothing but antagonizing —”

Whitlock quickly snared Cassie’s hand in one of his. “You think all I’ve got on you is Lenny Parks’s word that you and his
sister were hanging out at the game the same night Eddie was attacked?” Holding fast even as Cassie tried to wriggle away,
the detective yanked her face to within an inch of his. “Lenny told me himself, ‘You ain’t got to trust me, Detective. Toya
wrote it all down.’ That’s right,” he continued, smiling wide as Cassie’s eyes turned to slits. “Toya, if no one else, had
a conscience about what you did to my brother. She wrote a confession letter to Lenny, even though she waited to give it to
him just as she was leaving the country a few years back.”

Cassie knew she should keep her mouth shut, but she was no hardened criminal. “I don’t believe you. Toya would never do that.”

“The letter is handwritten, just waiting for me to subject it to an analysis to confirm the author.” Whitlock’s confidence
was a bubble permeating Cassie’s car. “She didn’t tell
everything,
Cassie, just enough to admit you all had something to do with it. How you all got into a name-calling match with him and
decided to teach him a lesson for using the ‘N word.’ I’m working on a lot more than a hunch here.”

Cassie was stunned enough that she felt as if her heart were in free fall. She wasn’t sure how to respond to what she’d just
heard. She still couldn’t afford to confess —not to this vengeful, likely crooked cop —as they sat in a nearly empty parking
lot with no onlookers. The best she could manage, as she finally broke free of Whitlock’s grip, was a tepid “Why haven’t you
tested the handwriting yet, then?”

“Because I’m patient,” he responded, “and because you don’t reopen a cold case without strong evidence. I want live corroboration
of what’s in the letter, and more. Tell me this, Cassie,” he continued. “Toya says in the letter that you were at the heart
of the night’s events, that everything jumped off because Eddie was so infatuated with you. Apparently, the other girls didn’t
really like you even, they just felt sorry for you.”

Despite herself, Cassie leaned against her driver’s-side door, ready to bolt from the car if she had to. “I’m not talking
about this with you anymore, not here,” she replied. “I don’t feel safe. If you want to question me,
Detective,
send an objective officer of the law to my house, where I’ll gladly undergo interrogation with my husband in the room.” Cassie
nearly stood in her seat as she raised her eyes to glare at Whitlock. “And get out of my car.”

Whitlock sat back, a smirk on his face. “Why don’t you just unburden yourself here? You’ll feel better. Afterward, we’ll get
accounts from your other partners in crime so the record can be corrected. And, yes, as part of that process, my mother and
I will be happy to bankrupt you by taking ownership of every property you own.”

“That ship has sailed,” she replied, a part of her disagreeing with the words but feeling the need to be forceful with this
potential maniac. “Get out of my car!” Even as she spoke, she grasped the driver’s-side door handle, ready to bolt for the
park’s visitor center —which she prayed was actually open by now.

Whitlock, however, opened the passenger-side door first, flooding the car with a chilly breeze. “So that’s a no.” Swinging
his feet around onto the lot’s pavement, he kept his face turned toward Cassie’s. “I understand if you need time. There’s
a lot at stake once you confess everything. I’d probably need a few weeks to get up my nerve too.”

“Why are you harassing
me
? Toya’s the one you think already confessed to something.” The honest question welled up suddenly, exploding from Cassie
with such force that it froze Whitlock in place as he stood.

A misleading smile on his face, the detective turned back around and leaned inside the car. “To be simple about it, Cassie,
of the girls I know were involved, you’re just the one who’s fair game. I mean, Toya lives in France with her big-shot executive
husband, and Terry is a welfare mom in Cleveland. Then we have you —living right here in Dayton with a picture-perfect family
and a very successful business. If you were in my shoes, who would you go after first?”

Relieved at least by the idea that he’d somehow missed Julia’s role in everything, Cassie fought a shudder and turned her
car back on. It seemed negotiation was not an option with this man —should she just beg for mercy now?

“By the way,” Whitlock said, leaning so far into the car that his lips were now inches from her right ear, “coming at me with
money will never slow me down. I want the truth.” He paused suddenly, took a hand, and ran it underneath her chin. “Well,
that’s not really all I want. Like my ex said at the divorce hearings, money’s not my weakness —it’s women.”

Not sure what to expect, Cassie just stared blankly as Whitlock continued, still leaning over her. “I think Eddie would agree
you’ve held up pretty well through the years. You’re a very beautiful woman, sort of like Will Smith’s wife with a few excess
pounds, but in all the right places.” His lips grazed Cassie’s right ear, his bacon-laced breath assaulting her. “I don’t
really know how far I could actually press charges against you. I’d probably get more joy out of experiencing what Eddie dreamed
of the day you turned him into a vegetable. You want to protect your precious son and family? Get a little more creative with
your next bribe. You have two weeks.”

When Cassie finally opened her eyes, confirming that Whitlock and his car were gone, she shook with a frightening combination
of fear and rage, still overcome by the lust in his tone and the overpowering smell of his cologne. Tears flowing, she shrieked
uncontrollably and slammed fists against her dashboard.

She hadn’t been so humiliated in decades. The horror she had felt the night that Eddie was attacked, when he arose out of
the bushes behind the soccer field, didn’t compare to the afternoon that followed a few years later —junior year —when Gil
Darby stole her virginity.

The most controversial couple in the school —even more tongue-wagging than Maxwell Simon and his string of “secret” white
girlfriends —Cassie and Gil had spent most of the preceding months together, aided by her status as a varsity cheerleader
and Gil’s starting position on Christian Light’s soccer and basketball teams. Each convinced they were untouchable, they had
skipped school together, at least one afternoon a week, to hang out at his house.