Lie Still (29 page)

“Yes,” I said. “I can swing that. I’d like you to consider giving me the names of the other four girls. I only have first names. I want to contact them.”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

“You might be after you talk to me. Could you check your old notes in advance of our meeting? I ask that fully realizing that you’re regretting that you even picked up the phone when you saw a strange number on your caller ID.”

“I pick up all strange numbers. My best stories arrive that way. And I don’t need to check my notes.”

What did that mean exactly? Was I still a story to him? Was he really refusing to look at his notes out of ethical concerns? Or were our names branded in his memory?

“This is nice of you,” I said cautiously. “To meet me.”

“I figure I owe you something, I trust anybody Lucy Blaize would send my way, and I’m curious why you’re finally calling me back after thirteen years. It’s a little late to give me a quote.” I heard voices in the background. “Gotta go. The egos are descending. I’ll text you my flight info in a few hours and we can arrange a place to meet.”

A few hours
. Could this be because he hadn’t even bought a ticket yet?

As I hung up the phone, I thought that time is not at all the big pink eraser people say it is.

Thirteen years was nothing.

For Brad. For me.

Thirteen years was a blink.

T
he voice was female, nasally and one hundred percent Brooklyn.

“I’m trying to reach Ms. Emily Page.”

I gripped the receiver, head still planted on the pillow, clinging to fragments of an illusive dream starring Caroline Warwick in a Victoria’s Secret underwear commercial.

“Yes. That’s me.” My voice was froggy with sleep.

“I’m Latisha Johnson, representing the New York State Parole Board. You asked for phone notification of the Luke Cummings decision, correct?”

Oh my God, was that today? Was it already morning? What time was it? I glanced at the clock. Could it really be 10 a.m.?

That made it 11 a.m. New York time. I was going to be late to meet Brad if I didn’t hurry. But I was frozen in place, immediately nauseous. Good news or bad news? In my experience, it always seemed like a 50-50 shot.

“Ma’am, are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here. Yes, that’s correct. I want to know.”

“The board has unanimously decided that Luke Cummings will be paroled one week from today. I’m sorry.”

“No, no, that’s great news.” And it was. The relief surging through my veins was the kind I rarely experienced, a no-holds-barred euphoria that usually followed a five-mile run or a generous dose of Percocet or a baby born perfect.

“Good girl. I been at this job a long time and holding on to all that hate is a mistake. God bless and have a beautiful day.”

I’m sure Latisha wasn’t supposed to drop the G word, but G bless her back.

A few seconds after we hung up, the phone rang again. Latisha must have forgotten something.

But no.

It was him.

Silent, as usual.

By now, his silence was as recognizable as Latisha’s nasally voice.

I
walked into Terminal B dripping wet, pissed off, and wanting to shoot dead the architects of the whirling dervish of roads that made up Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Get over. Exit. Whoops, no, don’t get over. What are you doing? Turn!

That’s what the signs said. Well, that’s what it
felt
like the signs said.

Add to that the aggressive redneck personalities of the Texas drivers scurrying around me for the last forty-five minutes. I learned fast that if you’re in a black pickup truck, you get a free pass to signal
after
you slide into another lane. I vaguely remembered a Jerry Seinfeld riff on “polite” Texas drivers. They weren’t going to
stop
you from getting over, but they weren’t going to help you, either. You were on your own, baby.

It’s not that they were any worse than New York drivers. I just expected more.

Mike didn’t know where I was, a good thing. He had been back on the job since 3 a.m., when a motorcycle wreck jerked him out of bed. The bike flipped on a highway exit ramp into Clairmont. It was the first fatality for the young deputy who responded, and he was a mess, throwing up at the scene.

To add just a little more suck to Mike’s life, the computer system continued to freeze,
Time
and
USA Today
were requesting interviews about Caroline’s case, and Harry Dunn was bugging Mike to drop a DUI for a friend. There wasn’t enough personnel for Mike to keep assigning a cop to the house, so, starting today, he’d parked an empty cruiser in the driveway. He wasn’t happy with this as a permanent solution and mentioned that “something else was in the works.”

My pocket vibrated, making me jump. Had Bradley already landed?

I tugged out my phone.

No.

Lucy.

“Hey, what’s up?” I could hear in her tone that Lucy knew very well what was up.

“Why did you lie to me?” Hurt.

“I’m sorry, Luce. It’s a … long story.”

“Brad called to confirm that I knew you. He said you wanted information on the murder of a guy you dated at Windsor. That you ended up getting screwed by a story he wrote. He wanted to know if you were the type to indulge in revenge fantasies.”

Inside, I was thinking:
He didn’t tell Lucy about the rape or this would be a completely different conversation. Maybe he doesn’t know
.

“I’m at the airport now,” I said. “We’re meeting in about ten minutes.”

“He told me. Emily, I really didn’t call to ask you why you didn’t tell me the truth. It just came out. I called to warn you that Bradley sounded a little too interested. And with a journalist like Bradley or me, that generally isn’t a good thing.”

M
y iPhone recommended Tip o’the Hat as the best place for meeting a stranger on a plane in Terminal B. The “Irish-Texas
pub” was squeezed beside Bobo China’s Express Waffle Buffet. I couldn’t decide which was a weirder marriage, but the leprechaun doffing his cowboy hat on the neon bar sign might be tipping things in his favor.

No matter, both places were doing a rockin’ business at high noon on an August day at DFW airport, while a long line for security snaked less than a hundred yards away. According to the TV screens, Bradley’s flight from LaGuardia had landed six minutes ago.

My eyes roamed the dim bar, while Lucy’s warning roamed my head. How crazy was I to meet a guy who had, in his own words, “screwed” me? Maybe he wasn’t the Bradley who accosted me on the steps all those years ago, but he could have sent the twerp who did. There was no reason to believe he wasn’t involved.

Half of the men in this place could be Bradley, except not one of them was looking for me. Oddly, I felt safer here than in my house. Safety in numbers, right? And in anonymity. I could hear twenty conversations going on around me and not make out a word anyone was saying.

Two stools along the bar opened up. I slid into one and sat my purse on the other, just in time to prevent a woman with pancake makeup and a gold and white Jessica Simpson carry-on from wiggling her bottom there.

“I’m holding it for my husband.” I smiled sweetly and placed a hand on my stomach. “He’s in the bathroom. Do you mind?”

“You can stop milking the baby crap. I’ve had five of them.” But she didn’t put up a fight, and drifted off.

The bartender slapped down a shamrock-shaped coaster. “I’m not sure I can serve a … pregnant lady. Texas law or something.” He barely looked legal himself.

“Tonic and lime. And see that woman over there glaring at me? Put whatever she’s having on my tab.”

I fingered the curved edges of the coaster, which was printed
with some kind of bar trivia game. You were supposed to read the quote on it aloud to your drinking buddies and ask them to identify whether it was Western or Irish.

I stopped spinning the coaster long enough to read it.
THE PROBLEM WITH SOME PEOPLE IS THAT WHEN THEY AREN’T DRUNK THEY’RE SOBER
. Hmm. Maybe John Wayne. I flipped it over.

William Butler Yeats. I thought he wrote strictly about dappled grass.

The bartender plunked down another coaster and set a plastic cup of half-fizzy water on it. A grayish lime wedge floated on top.

“Thirty-six fifty,” he said.

“That’s one expensive glass of water.”

The voice was brusque, behind me. I willed myself not to flinch as a hand casually brushed my shoulder. I could smell him, of course. Exotic spices. Musk. A scent first extracted from the gland of a Himalayan deer.

When I turned, Brad was pretty much what I expected: tall, dark, handsome, with perfectly proportioned nostrils and a Louis Vuitton briefcase that he was probably vain enough to have picked out himself.

“That includes three martinis for the woman over there,” the bartender said, defensive. “She ordered in advance when she found out you were paying, lady. Are you? Paying?”

I removed my purse from the stool, and the man immediately swapped himself in. He stuck out his hand. “Emily, right? I’m Brad.” His grip was cool and firm. He held my hand a little too long.

Then he answered the question on my face.

“You’re one of two women in here. You’re pregnant in an airport bar and drinking overpriced water that you could find for half the cost in a less overpriced plastic bottle next door. Not that hard to deduce. Congratulations, by the way. I didn’t know.”

He threw down two twenties.

“Did you bring your own car?”

I nodded.

“Then let’s take a walk.”

Already, out of control.

H
e didn’t want to drive anywhere. He wanted to suck down a Coke from the vending machine and sit in my station wagon in a dark garage parking lot where no one could hear us. Hopefully, he would leave me alive.

“We’ve got about twenty minutes,” he said. “It will take at least fifteen to get through that line at security. Should I start or you?”

My hand rested on the door handle while I reconsidered whether I should be in my car with a 200-pound, extremely fit man I didn’t know who could reach across and strangle me before making his connection. Then I remembered Lucy. Yes, she warned me about him. But she said he was decent. I would cling to that, because I needed Bradley Hellenberger to be who she said he was. Who
he
said he was.

I felt like I no longer had time to waste, and plunged in. “You know that Pierce Martin was a rapist.”

Silence. “Yes, I had that general idea.”

“A few days ago, somebody left a present for me on my doorstep. A copy of a campus police report taken the night Pierce raped me.” Amazing how much easier it was getting to say. I should have tried this long ago. Maybe I wouldn’t be such a wound-up, secretive, compulsive mess who never gave myself fully to anybody except when it came to sex. In bed, I had no trouble letting go entirely. I’d asked myself more than once why I was trying so hard to prove something to a dead man.

Brad’s scent was getting to me, lighting my nerves. In the bad old days, before Mike, I would have leaned over and brushed his lips with mine. Brad’s lips were currently curling into a frown. A tell. And it was telling me he didn’t know anything about the present on my doorstep.

“I was wondering if his other … dates … got similar gifts or if this nut job is just interested in me. I’ve received hate mail about the murder for years. I always figured it was from Pierce’s mother. More recently, there have been hang-ups.” Not to mention a congratulatory cigar, a message in a mirror, and a bloodred thumbprint obliterating my face, but we only had eighteen minutes and five seconds left.

“Do you have the letters with you?”

“No. I don’t have anything with me. My husband’s a cop. He’s … keeping them.”

Brad reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a reporter’s notebook.

“No writing,” I insisted. “This isn’t an on-the-record interview. This is me seeking information from
you
. Are you going to give me the full names of the other girls or not?”

Brad moved the passenger seat back to accommodate very long legs and supple Italian loafers splotched with a few dark spots. Too bad about that puddle.

He set the notebook on his lap. “Tell me a little more.”

“All of this is off the record, agreed?”

“The reporter’s notebook … it’s just an old-fashioned habit. I practically have to special-order these now.”
Uh-huh
.

“The day the police interviewed Pierce’s girlfriends about the murder, a guy posing as the renowned Bradley Hellenberger waited for me outside a history class.”

That got his attention.

“What? I’ve never met you until today.”

“He looked nothing like you. He threatened me.”

I fumbled with my wallet and handed him the dog-eared card. “He gave me this.”

“OK, this is my card.” His voice was stony. “Well, I guess that’s a good reason why you wouldn’t return my calls. What did he look like?”

“Skinny, splotchy face, glasses, weird nose.”

The lip curled up again. “Nose like a Keebler Elf?”