Matter of Trust (32 page)

‘It's just . . .' he began.

‘Just what?' asked Chris, grabbing a chair and turning it around so he could mimic Mike's position. ‘We're buds, DC. No secrets, remember?'

David nodded, finally grabbing his own chair and collapsing into it as he looked at his two now curious friends.

‘It's Rebecca.'

‘
What about her?' asked an eager Mike.

‘
Shit,' said Chris, his expression half fascinated, half freaked out. ‘You
like
her?' Rebecca was an odd addition to their little group, and as much as they accepted her as part of the bargain, none of them had ever expressed any sexual interest in her – it just wasn't like that with Rebecca, she was more like a little cousin who stuck to them like glue.

‘No,' said David emphatically
. ‘Jesus,
no. I mean, I like her okay, but I don't, you know . . .' He was struggling to find the words.

Mike raised his arm to devour the dregs of his drink, but he stopped mid lift, instead banging the can on the table so the sticky fizzy liquid shot out of the top. ‘Rebecca likes
you,'
he said. ‘She came on to
you!'

Chris just about choked as his soda entered his windpipe and ended up dribbling down his chin. ‘Get the fuck out of here,' he said.

But David nodded. ‘She came around here. Last Friday night. Luckily my mom and dad were out, and Sean was upstairs with his new girlfriend Teresa, and Lisa was in her room listening to the Top 40, so you know, it was kind of like we were alone.'

‘So, what did she say?' asked a now captivated Mike. He enjoyed living vicariously through other people's love lives – probably because anyone's was more interesting than his own.

‘She didn't say anything. She just came in the back door wearing this overcoat and then . . . I had no idea why she was here on her own so I offered her a drink and went to the fridge and when I turned around she'd taken off the overcoat, and she had nothing on underneath.'

‘Shit!' said Mike.

‘Double shit!' said Chris.

‘So then she said not to say anything, but that she was a virgin and she was sick of waiting and that everyone was doing it – including you and Marilyn.' David pointed toward Chris. ‘And that there was no way she was going to do it with Mike, so . . .'

‘Jesus, what a bitch,' said Mike. ‘Why the fuck wouldn't she want to do it with me?'

‘I have no idea,' said David. ‘It's not like I gave her any encouragement. She just decided her options were limited and that I was available and . . .'

He tailed off into silence, as each of the three pairs of eyes sought some sort of reaction from the other. Eventually, Chris started to smile.

‘It's not funny,' said David, as a second stream of brown soda shot from Chris's mouth.

‘The fuck it's not,' said Chris.

Mike, not one to be left out, proceeded to piss himself laughing as well.

‘You guys suck,' said David.

‘We're sorry,' said Chris, his eyes now watering. ‘DC, seriously, we're not laughing at you. It's just that . . . Go on, please, tell us what happened next.'

‘Nothing happened,' said David. ‘I just said that I was sorry but that I think of her like a sister or something. So then she gets all embarrassed and says something like, “Oh, right, sure.” And then she starts panicking, like she's just noticed that she's naked and she bends over to get her coat and . . .'

‘She bends over?' repeated Mike.

‘She was embarrassed, okay,' said David. ‘I felt like – really horrible, and she felt worse and then she grabs her coat and says something about seeing me at the movie and that everything is cool. And then she just turns around and runs out the kitchen door and I'm left wondering how I'm meant to act
around her the next time I see her, which was meant to be tonight, which was why I bailed on the movie and . . .'

‘Fuck,' said Chris.

‘Yeah,' said David, and the three of them sat in silence again, the visuals of David's tale now playing out in cine-screen in their sixteen-year-old minds.

‘Don't worry, DC,' said Chris eventually. ‘She'll get over it. Rebecca looks like a mouse but Marilyn reckons she's a tough little bitch.'

‘Bitch is right,' said Mike, obviously still not over his sexual snub.

‘Just act normal,' said Chris. ‘You know, like you always do.'

David nodded.

‘So are you doing it with Marilyn?' asked Mike of Chris then, David knowing he would get around to it – considering the nature of the conversation at hand.

‘Yes,' said Chris, just like that, and David could have sworn he saw the slightest trace of sadness in Mike's wide blue eyes.

‘Another soda?' asked David after a while, sensing this conversation was over, at least for the time being.

‘Sure,' said Chris, before three-pointing his empty can into the trash.

‘This is boring,' said Mike.

‘You got any better suggestions?' asked David.

Mike said nothing until, ‘I think it's time we called it in.' And the other two met his eye, the prospect of finally going back to retrieve what they had hidden exciting them and scaring them all at the very same time.

‘I thought we all agreed we'd wait until after Christmas – when Father Patrick has gone away,' said Chris.

‘Fuck that,' said Mike. ‘We could go down to the church, pull it from the confessional and spend the night listening to the sins of the whole fucking parish.'

‘But doesn't Father Patrick have Saturday evening mass?' asked David, looking at his watch.

‘It's only five. Mass doesn't start for another hour,' said Mike.

Chris smiled. ‘I'm in,' he said, before starting to rise from the table. ‘And we are so going to hell.'

‘Then I suggest we pull the tape,' said a now smiling Mike. ‘And figure out who is going with us.'

Boston, Massachusetts

‘T
he ID was a no-go,' said Joe.

It was a little more than forty-eight hours since their last meeting with Joe, and David had to admit he had thought of pretty much nothing else in the past two days. It was now late on Friday night and the five of them were seated in Arthur's office, four cold beers and one sweet sherry resting gratefully in their hands.

‘So the cell was definitely Marilyn's?' said David.

‘Yes.' Joe took a sip of one of Arthur's longneck Australian beers. ‘Maloney was the registered owner of that cell number – she had an account with Verizon, a pay by the month package.'

‘And the cell that sent the texts?' asked Arthur. ‘It carried a SIM card from AT&T – one of those pay as you go jobs, and the purchaser was listed as a Miss Deborah Lambert – a doctor's secretary from Brooklyn.'

‘Let me guess,' said Sara, shaking her head. ‘Miss Lambert lost her cell some time ago.'

‘Yep. I tracked her down at her surgery and she said she misplaced her cell at some Jersey City bar almost six months ago, but she didn't
bother to report it, given it was old and she was out of credits so . . .'

‘Shit,' said David.

‘Happens all the time,' said Joe. ‘Cell phones are like dollar bills these days, they swap hands faster than McDonald's changes its staff.'

Arthur nodded. ‘What about the actual texts?' he asked, standing to top up Nora Kelly's sherry. ‘Did you speak to our friend Susan?'

‘Yeah,' said Joe, ‘and she says the unscrambling should be easy. But she needs to get the cell down to Virginia, and considering this job is under the radar, she said it might take some time for her overworked friends in Computer Analysis and Response to get to it. In the meantime she said you guys might be faster fiddling around with the letter and number combinations yourselves.'

‘We've been doing that, Joe,' said David.

‘And it's not as easy as it looks.'

‘Maybe for an old geezer like you – but not for someone in the know.'

‘You gave the combinations to Joe Jnr,' smiled David.

‘He has to earn his pocket money somehow,' said Joe.

David smiled again. ‘Okay, so what about the cell phone towers?'

‘My friends from Larceny got some way with those enquiries,' answered Joe. ‘But I'm not sure how much it is going to help you.'

‘How so?' asked Sara.

‘Well,' began Joe. ‘Newark has scores of cell phone towers, and not all of them are required to be registered by the FCC.'

‘Our guy used an unregistered tower?' David was just waiting for the obstacle to challenge them.

‘No,' smiled Joe. ‘From what my guys tell me, the first two texts were triangulated through the Cellco Partnership Tower at Gateway 1.'

This did not ring a bell to anyone bar David who understood this tower probably covered parts of Downtown and the Ironbound.

‘And the last two were routed through one of the busiest towers in the city,' Joe went on, ‘the New York and Port Authority Tower, at the Newark International Airport entrance, adjacent to Tower Road.'

‘The guy was on his way to the airport?' asked Sara. ‘It doesn't make sense.'

‘Sara's right,' said Joe. ‘And it doesn't exactly help us identify the texter. The guy could be from anywhere – maybe just passing through?'

‘Or coming from somewhere?' suggested Nora.

‘Or on his way out,' Arthur chimed in.

‘There's no way to tell,' said Joe.

Just then, they were interrupted by the ring of their main line which echoed from Nora's desk just outside in reception.

‘You can take it here, Nora,' said Arthur, gesturing at his office phone.

She picked up. ‘Wright and Associates. This is Nora Kelly speaking. How may I help you?'

Silence until: ‘Yes, one moment please.'

Nora pressed the hold button and looked up at David. ‘It's for you, lad. Rebecca Kincaid.'

David glanced at Sara. ‘We haven't spoken since I left Newark,' he said.

They all watched as David took the handset from Nora. ‘Rebecca,' he said.

‘Hello, David,' she replied. ‘I'm sorry to bother you. I should have called earlier – I wasn't sure if you'd still be at work, but I didn't have your home number so . . .'

This told David that Rebecca was ringing of her own accord, otherwise she would have asked her husband for David's home number.

‘How are you, Rebecca?' he asked. ‘Is everything okay?' A stupid question under the circumstances.

‘Yes . . . I mean
no
 . . . I,' she paused. ‘I don't know how else to say this, David, so I shall simply put it as plainly as I can. Chris is planning to plea, at least, his lawyer is advising him to. The trial is looming – now only a few weeks away and Chris is nervous and . . . Gloria and I . . .' She paused again. ‘I mean,
I
 . . . think this is a bad decision. Chris did not kill Marilyn, David, and he does not deserve to go to jail.'

David pondered on how to respond. ‘Did he ask you to call me?'

‘No,' she admitted.

‘He's angry that I left,' he said.

‘Not angry. He's ashamed, David. He lied to you,' Rebecca took a breath. ‘Chris and you and Mike . . .' She hesitated again as if trying to find the words. ‘Chris once told me about that night, after Lorraine's . . . accident. He told me how he and Mike got into that fight and that you broke it up, and afterwards, the three of you made certain promises to one another – a pact of friendship, honesty, commitment. It was something the three of you shared that I . . . that even Marilyn had no part of. He knows he broke
that trust David, so no, he's not angry, he's embarrassed and remorseful and worst of all, David, I fear he's given up hope.'

David kept his emotions in check. This was no time for feelings of guilt. ‘What kind of plea are they talking?' he asked.

‘Reckless manslaughter, which I believe carries a sentence of—'

‘Seven years on average,' he said.

‘Yes. Connor will have graduated from college, the girls will be teenagers, and I . . .' She took a breath. ‘Will you talk to him?' she asked.

David turned to meet the eyes of everyone in the room, people who would stick by him no matter what. And then he thought about how lonely it must have been for young Rebecca Gillies Kincaid over the years. The woman had probably never known any real sense of companionship since the day that she was born.

‘Tell him not to agree to anything until I get there,' he said, knowing there was no other decision he could make.

And he could hear the relief in her sigh. ‘You're coming back?' she asked.

‘Yes, Rebecca, I'm coming home.'

W
hen Elliott Marshall was in the sixth grade his favourite TV show was
Barnaby Jones
. He knew this did not make him popular, given the rest of his classmates spent their lunchtimes discussing the adventures of Laverne and Shirley, Jaime Sommers or that annoying Vinnie Barbarino from the ridiculously unrealistic
Welcome Back Kotter
. But he didn't give a shit, for Barnaby Jones was a legend as far as the eleven-year-old Marshall was concerned, for reasons almost too numerous to name.

First up, the actor playing Jones, Buddy Ebsen, was realistically unattractive, not like Steve Austin or Jim Rockford or one of those other too-good-looking-to-be-true investigator types. Secondly, Barnaby only drank milk, which the young Marshall saw as incredibly refreshing, and inclusive given he would always time his milk-drinking to coincide with Barnaby's. Thirdly, the detective always caught his man, and finally (and Marshall liked this part the best), the program was cut into neat pieces – Act I showing the murder, Act II having Barnaby figure out the murder, Act III revealing the plot twist, Act IV giving the resolution, and the Epilogue always featuring Barnaby's pretty daughter-in-law Betty asking Barnaby Jones how he figured it all out! In short, Marshall took comfort in the show's order and inevitability. He knew where things were going and appreciated the respect a man like Jones was shown.