Tell Me No Secrets (13 page)

Jess was about to answer, then stopped, swallowing her words before they could leave her mouth. She recalled the sight of Connie DeVuono in her office the previous week, how frightened she’d been, how adamant that she wouldn’t testify. Jess had convinced her otherwise. Persuaded her to go against her better judgment, to challenge her tormentor in a court of law.

Jess had to admit at least the possibility that Connie might have changed her mind again, decided she couldn’t go through with testifying, that the risks were too great.
She could easily have felt too embarrassed to inform Jess of her change of heart, too afraid Jess might be able to convince her otherwise, too guilty for being such a coward. So strange, Jess thought, how often it was the innocent who suffered the most guilt.

“She wouldn’t leave her son,” Jess said quietly, the words half out of her mouth before she realized she was speaking.

“She probably just needs time to clear her head.”

“She wouldn’t leave her son.”

“She’s probably in a hotel somewhere. In a day or two, when she’s calmed down, had a bit of a rest, decided what she wants to do, she’ll call.”

“You’re not hearing me.” Jess walked toward the window, stared out onto the street. Patches of snow lay across the grass and sidewalks, like torn doilies.

Don came up behind her, massaged the back of her neck with his strong hands. Suddenly he stopped, resting his palms on her shoulders. Jess could feel him thinking, formulating the words he wanted to say. “Jess,” he began, speaking in slow, measured tones, “not everyone who doesn’t show up on time disappears forever.”

Neither moved. In the background, Jess’s canary hopped from perch to perch to the beat of an old Beatles melody. Jess tried to speak, couldn’t for the sudden constriction in her chest. She finally managed to force the words out.

“This isn’t about my mother,” she told him carefully.

Another silence.

“Isn’t it?”

Jess maneuvered her body away from him, coming around to the front of the sofa, dropping lifelessly into its soft pillows, burying her face in her hands. Only her right
foot betrayed her anxiety, twitching restlessly beneath her. She looked up only when she felt the cushion sag beside her, felt Don take her hands in his own.

“It’s all my fault,” she began.

“Jess …”

“No, please don’t try to tell me otherwise. It
is
my fault. I know it. I accept it. I’m the one who convinced her she had to testify when she really didn’t want to; I’m the one who pressured her, who promised her everything would be all right. ‘Who will look after my son?’ she asked me, and I made some silly joke, but she was serious. She knew that Rick Ferguson meant what he said.”

“Jess …”

“She knew he’d kill her if she didn’t drop the charges.”

“Jess, you’re really jumping the gun here. The woman’s been missing less than six hours. We don’t know that she’s dead, for God’s sake.”

“I was so proud of myself, too. So proud of my ability to turn things around, to convince this poor frightened woman that she had to testify, that she’d only be safe
if
she testified. Oh yes, I was very proud of myself. It’s a big case for me, after all. Another potential winner for my files.”

“Jess, you did what anybody would do.”

“I did what any
prosecutor
would do! If I’d had an ounce of real compassion for that woman, I’d have told her to drop the charges and run. Jesus!” Jess jumped to her feet, though she had nowhere to go. “I talked to that animal! I stood there in the lobby of the Administration Building and I warned him to keep away from Connie. And that bastard told me, told me right out, though I was too full of myself to really hear him, he told me that people who
annoyed him had a way of disappearing. And I assumed it was me he was threatening! Who else would he be threatening? Doesn’t the universe revolve around Jess Koster?” She laughed, a harsh, cold sound that stuck in the air. “Only it
wasn’t
me he was talking about. It was Connie. And now she’s gone. Disappeared. Just like he threatened.”

“Jess …”

“So don’t you dare sit there and try to tell me that your client had nothing to do with her disappearance! Don’t you dare try to convince me that Connie would leave her son, even for a day or two, because I know she wouldn’t. We both know that Rick Ferguson is responsible for whatever happened to Connie DeVuono. And we both know that, barring a miracle, she’s already dead.”

“Jess …”

“Don’t we both know that, Don? Don’t we both know she’s dead? We do. We know that. And we have to find her, Don.” Involuntary tears traced the length of Jess’s cheeks. She wiped the back of her hand across her face, trying to rub them away, but the tears only came faster.

Don was on his feet beside her, but she moved quickly out of his reach. She didn’t want to be comforted. She didn’t deserve it.

“We have to find her body, Don.” Jess continued, starting to shake. “Because if we don’t, that little boy will spend the rest of his life wondering what happened to his mother. He will spend years searching through crowds for her, thinking he sees her, wondering what he did that was so awful she went away and never came home. And even when he’s all grown up, and he rationally accepts the fact she’s dead, he’ll never quite believe it. A part of him will
always wonder. He’ll never know for sure. He’ll never be able to put it behind him, to grieve for her the way he needs to grieve for her. The way he needs to grieve for himself.” She stopped, allowed Don to take her in his arms, hold her. “There has to be a resolution, Don. There has to be.”

They stood that way for several minutes, so close their breath seemed to emanate from one body. It was Don who finally broke the stillness. “I miss her too,” he said quietly, and Jess knew he was talking about her mother.

“I thought it was supposed to get easier with time,” Jess said, allowing Don to guide her back to the sofa. She sat cradled in his arms as he gently rocked her to and fro.

“It only gets further away,” he said simply.

She smiled sadly. “I’m so tired.”

“Lay your head on my shoulder,” he said, and she did, grateful to be told what to do. “Now close your eyes. Try to sleep.”

“I can’t sleep.” She made a feeble attempt to get up. “I should really go over to Mrs. Gambala’s.”

“Mrs. Gambala will call you when she hears from Connie.” He pressed her head back against his shoulder. “Ssh. Get some sleep.”

“What about your friend?”

“Trish is a big girl. She’ll understand.”

“Yes, she’s very understanding.” Jess heard the thinness in her voice, knew she was close to losing consciousness. Her eyes fluttered closed. She forced them open again. “Probably because she works in a hospital.”

“Ssh.”

“She seemed like a very nice person.”

“She is.”

“I don’t like her,” Jess said, closing her eyes and allowing them to stay shut.

“I know you don’t.”

“I’m not a very nice person.”

“You never were,” he said, and Jess felt his smile against the side of her face.

She would have smiled in return, but she was having trouble controlling the muscles in her face. They were sinking toward her chin, giving in to the pull of gravity.

In the next second, she was asleep and a phone was ringing.

She opened her eyes to find she was in the sterile reception area of a doctor’s office. “The phone’s for you,” the doctor said, producing a plain black phone from his bag. “It’s your mother.”

Jess took the phone. “Mother, where are you?”

“There’s been an accident,” her mother told her. “I’m in the hospital.”

“The hospital?”

“The brain ward. They have me hooked up to all these machines.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Hurry. I can’t wait for long.”

Jess was suddenly in front of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, lines of angry picketers blocking her way.

“What are you protesting?” Jess asked one of the nurses, a young woman with very short blond hair and dimples so deep they all but overwhelmed her face.

“Duplicity,” the woman said simply.

“I don’t understand,” Jess muttered, transported in the next second to a busy nurses’ station. Half a dozen young
women in crisp white caps and garter belts and stockings stood behind the counter engaged in earnest conversation. No one looked her way. “I’m here to see my mother,” Jess shouted.

“You just missed her,” one of the nurses said, though no lips moved.

“Where did she go?” Jess spun around, grabbing a passing orderly by the sleeve.

Greg Oliver’s face glowered before her. “Your mother is gone,” he told her. “She disappeared.”

In the next instant, Jess was standing on the street in front of her parents’ house. A white stretch limousine was idling on the corner. Jess watched as a man opened the car door and stepped onto the sidewalk. It was dark and Jess couldn’t make out his face. But she could feel his long slow strides as he moved toward her, feel him mounting the front stairs after her, his hand reaching for her as she pulled open the door and slammed it shut. His face pressed heavily against the screen, his hideous grin seeping slowly through the wire mesh.

She screamed, her cries piercing the dimension between sleep and consciousness, waking her up with the sudden sharpness of an alarm clock. She jumped to her feet, flailing madly in the darkness. Where was she?

Don was immediately at her side. “Jess, it’s all right. It’s all right. It was just a bad dream.”

It all came back to her: the party, the wine, Trish, Mrs. Gambala, Don. “You’re still here,” she acknowledged gratefully, falling back into his arms, wiping the combination of sweat and tears from her cheeks, trying to still the frantic beating of her heart.

“Take deep breaths,” he advised, as if he could see the chaos growing inside her body. His voice was groggy, full of sleep. “That’s a girl. In, now out. Steady. That’s right. You’ve got it.”

“It was the same dream I used to have,” she whispered. “Remember? The one where Death is waiting for me.”

“You know I’d never let anyone hurt you,” he assured her, control returning to his voice. “Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”

Just like her mother, she thought, settling comfortably into his arms.

Approximately half an hour later, her head still resting on his shoulder, he led her toward her bedroom. “I think it’s time to go to bed. Will you be all right if I leave you alone?”

Jess smiled weakly as Don tucked her, fully clothed, between the covers of her double bed. Part of her wanted him to stay; part of her wanted him to go, the way it always was when they were together. Would she ever figure out what she wanted? Would she ever grow up?

Without a mother, how could she?

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, as he bent over to kiss her forehead. “Don …?”

He didn’t move.

“You’re a nice man,” she told him.

He laughed. “Think you’ll remember that a few days from now?”

She was too tired to ask what he meant.

“You bastard!” she was screaming barely forty-eight hours later. “You turd! You miserable piece of shit!”

“Jess, calm down!” Don was circling the oblong wooden table backward, trying to keep an arm’s length away from his angry ex-wife.

“I can’t believe you’d pull a stunt like this!”

“Can you at least keep your voice down?”

“You shit! You creep! You … shit!”

“Yes, point taken, Counselor. Now, do you think you can calm down so that we can discuss this like the two rational attorneys-at-law we are?”

Jess folded her arms in front of her and stared at the blood-red concrete floor. They were in a small, windowless room on the second floor of the police station that serviced Chicago’s downtown core. Recessed, high-wattage lights emanated from the dull, acoustic tile ceiling. A bench lay across one wall; a Formica table was bolted into the floor on another, several uncomfortable chairs beside it. In the next room, which was smaller and even more claustrophobic, sat Rick Ferguson, sullen and silent. He hadn’t said a word since the police had brought him in for questioning earlier that morning. When Jess had tried to question him, he’d yawned, then closed his eyes. He hadn’t opened them even after they’d manacled his hands to the wall. He’d feigned indifference, then indignation, when they asked him what he’d done with Connie DeVuono. He’d looked interested in the proceedings only when his attorney, Don Shaw, arrived, apoplectic about what he deemed the deliberate abrogation of his client’s rights, threatening to break down the door if he wasn’t allowed in to confer with his client.

“You have no right to be here,” Jess told him, keeping her voice low and steady. “I could report you to the attorney disciplinary committee.”

“If anybody’s going to report anybody to the attorney disciplinary committee,” he shot back, “it’ll be me.”

“You?” Jess was almost too flabbergasted to speak.

“You’re the one who violated the canon of ethics,” he told her.

“What?”

“You violated the canon of ethics, Jess,” Don repeated. “You had no right to arrest my client. You certainly had no right to try to question him without his attorney present.”

Jess struggled to keep her voice calm. “Your client is not under arrest.”

“I see. He’s sitting in a locked room manacled to the wall because he likes it. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything. I am perfectly within my rights here.”

“What about Rick Ferguson’s rights? Or have you decided that because you don’t like him, he doesn’t have any?”

Jess clenched, then unclenched, her fist, grabbing the back of a chair to anchor herself, give her head time to clear, her thoughts a chance to settle. She glared at her exbusband with barely concealed fury. He ignored the message in her eyes, continued his lecture.

“You have the police pick up my client at work; you don’t read, him his rights; you don’t let him call his attorney. And it’s not like you don’t know he’s got a lawyer. A lawyer who’s already advised you that his client his nothing to say, that he’s exercizing his legal right to remain silent. You already know that’s the position we’ve taken. It’s on the record. But it doesn’t stop you from embarrassing him at work, dragging him down here, handcuffing him to the wall. … Jess, for Christ’s sake, was that really necessary?”