Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (35 page)

“See you tomorrow at three.”

Twenty-four hours, I thought as I set my cell phone on the table. I just needed to keep Flannery from doing an about-face for twenty-four hours.

And then what? What if Brenda Donohue didn’t get herself straight in thirty days? We could all do our part to get Flannery on the road to healing, but I couldn’t
adopt
her. I didn’t even
have
a pile for
that
thought.

I thought about getting up, pacing the kitchen, dragging my hand through my hair, that whole thing, but I forced myself to sit there and breathe and get out of my own way.

Okay. Liz. She would have answers, now that I could officially consult her.

As soon as she answered the phone I knew I had caught her running somewhere. No surprise: she was always running somewhere, which meant I had to fill her in fast.

When I did she said, “This is great. Perfect, in fact. One thing, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t say anything about the stuff on the website during the interview.”

“What web … oh. Yikes, I forgot all about that.”

“You really need to look at it, Allison. Without Flannery even in the house, or Desmond either.”

Her tone made me stop dangling my leg.

“What the Sam Hill is it, Liz?”

“You’ll see. Just brace yourself. I’ve got to dash, but maybe we could talk more tomorrow? You mind if I join you and Hank at Sacred Grounds?”

“Please do,” I said.

After I set the phone down, I went back to swinging my leg until my knee ached. The laptop was on my desk in the corner, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it, much less click on the link Liz had sent me. Every pounding thought in my head told me I was going to be sickened by what I saw. Maybe I’d told Flannery wrong; maybe I did know what was going to happen. Because when I finally retrieved the computer and found Liz’s email and clicked myself to the link, I had to wrap my arms around my torso and rock. It was beyond sickening.

The images were stationary, but my eyes rendered them a blur as I jerked from one to the other, unable to stay on any for longer than a repulsive second.

Barely pubescent girls who should have been begging for iPads from their fathers beckoned instead for sex from the slavering creatures who logged on.

Sordid descriptions of the pleasures in store by simply leaving an email message for Topaz.

Names that no woman had given her child.

Tiger Cub. Succulent. Tricksy.

Tango.

Foxy.

My fingers cramped, which was the only thing keeping me from taking the cursor right to INTERESTED? and scalding Elgin “Topaz” Wedgewood with an email. That and the gripping fear that he would find me, find Flannery and bury her in the living grave he’d dug for her, for all of them.

I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. But even after I clicked it away and erased the history and turned off the computer, I could still feel it creeping under my skin and twisting my gut until I leaned over the trash can and lost everything but the memory of those tender body parts, displayed for any sick, demented predator with a laptop.

I went to the sink and splashed water into my mouth, although I knew the taste might never go away. That really was the worst thing about it, the fact that anyone could see it. Including the police.

“God,” I said into the sink. “How do you expect us to live in this world?”

I folded, my forehead against the porcelain, and sobbed, so loud and so hard I knew Miz Vernell would soon be dialing 911. But even in the wails I couldn’t control, I heard the whisper.

With love, Allison.
You live in it with love.

I reached for it. But right then, all I could feel was hate.

I managed to hold it together with the kids that night, which might have been easier if I could have at least talked to Chief, but I still hadn’t heard from him. I couldn’t decide whether it was pride or straight-up fear that kept me from calling him. By the time I got Desmond to school the next morning, in the van because the rain was coming down sideways, and sent Flannery up to Second Chances swallowed in my motorcycle rain gear, I was frayed to my last thread. Hank would be waiting for me at a table inside Sacred Grounds, and I knew she would keep me from snapping completely.

When I saw Gigi was with her, I almost did. Really? One
more
thing?

“Hey, Miss Angel!” Gigi said as I took myself, dripping, to the table back in the corner. “Miss Hank says all you’ll drink is a latte, but Imma try to talk you into something better than that.”

She pulled a pad from her pocket and poised a pen over it.

“Somebody want to tell me what’s going on?” I said.

“Patrice said she could use some help, with business picking up,” Hank said, “and I thought of Gi. Didn’t think you’d object. I told you she’s a natural in the kitchen.”

“No, I think it’s … great. Go Gigi, huh?”

Gigi gave me her bug-eyed smile and waggled the pad at me.

“But I still only want a latte,” I said. And if I could keep that down, it would be the first thing since before yesterday’s sweet tea.

“You’re looking rough, Al,” Hank said when Gigi had gone behind the counter and I’d dropped into the chair across from her.

“I’m
feeling
rough.” I leaned in and touched the hand she was about to use to butter a bran muffin. “I think I might be in over my head, Hank.”

“Hold that thought,” she said. “Here comes Liz.”

I was actually grateful. When Liz leaned over to “hug my neck,” as she always put it, I hung on for a second longer than I usually did. When she sat down next to me, her eyes were still scoping me out.

“You saw the website,” she said.

I nodded.

“I told you to brace yourself. But you needed to see it.”

“Why? I can’t get it out of my head. Or my stomach.”

“I assume we’re talking about a porn site,” Hank said.

“Worse than that,” I said.

Hank closed her eyes and nodded. “Got it.”

Liz put a rain-damp hand on my arm. “I wanted you to have a clear picture of what Flannery’s been through. Just in case she tries to soft-pedal it in the interview today.”

“And then are you going to erase my memory?” I shook my head at both of them. “Why is this worse than almost everything I’ve seen with the Sisters put together?”

“Because this is about children,” Hank said.

“Speaking of which …” Liz shuffled through the inevitable nest of papers in her gaping bag and pulled out several that were clipped together. “I found out about Tango.”

“How bad is it?” I said.

“She was picked up by the police September sixteenth, but I didn’t get notice until early this morning.” Her eyes rolled. “Took them five days to figure out that she was underage.”

“We were a lot faster than that,” Hank said.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Okay, that was a Sunday, right?”

Liz turned to the second sheet in the collection. “Right. Around six p.m. This is weird.”

“What?”

“They picked her up on Valencia Street. Not exactly the part of town where you’d expect somebody to be soliciting.”

“Can I see that?” I said, and then virtually tore it out of her hand.

“Sure,” Liz said. I could feel her giving Hank a look.

Gigi came with the coffee and proudly pulled out her pad again to take Liz’s drink order. That gave me a chance to find the arrest report. The suspect, I read, had been apprehended for assaulting a teenage boy in the Flagler College parking lot on Valencia Street, one block from Sevilla. Suspect, who had no identification and refused to give her name, resisted police and had to be restrained.

I didn’t doubt that.

There was more as I skimmed down. Her victim told police he only knew her as Tango and that he had been out for a walk when she “came out of nowhere” and “kicked him in the nuts.”

Didn’t doubt that either. What I did wonder about was why the police happened to be cruising by just then. Like Liz said, that wasn’t exactly a part of town known for suspicious activity. The only people I knew who were aware of the Hot Spot were the Chattinghams, but Christine told me they went out there to feed the kids pizza. Did
they
call the cops?

“I’m going to need that back, Allison,” Liz said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I think she means in one piece, Al,” Hank said.

I looked down and realized my fingers were digging into the pages. I handed them back to Liz.

“So what happens to her now?” I said.

“She’ll go before Judge Atwell, and he’ll make a determination.” Liz put her hand on my arm again. I wondered which one of us she was trying to calm. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to pass this information along to Flannery before the interview.”

“Good call.” I set aside the latte, which was probably cool by now anyway. “One woman at a time, right?”

“That’s right.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “So I’ll see you at three at the police station.”

“Police station. I have a lot of catching up to do,” Hank said to me as Liz turned toward the door, and then turned back.

“Oh, I almost forgot. Bonner wanted me to tell you that he hasn’t been able to locate Maharry Nelson in any of the nursing homes or assisted living facilities in the St. Augustine area. Strange, huh?”

When she was gone, I turned to Hank. “What isn’t?” I said.

When we gathered in a well-lit conference room at the station that afternoon, Flannery, Nick, Liz, Kade, and I, with a woman from the district attorney’s office watching from the other side of a two-way mirror, Flannery told her story with her chin high and her vocabulary in fourth gear. Using words like
exploited
and
coerced
, she related everything she’d told us at Sacrament House eight days before and all of what Brenda Donohue had shared with me. I hadn’t heard the part where Elgin had sex with her in her home for six months, but I had, sadly, already filled that in. There was only one surprise.

“I don’t want anybody blaming my mom for this,” Flannery said, straight at the mirror that wasn’t fooling her. “She didn’t know what he was doing to me because she was always at work. And I couldn’t tell her or he would have made it so she went to prison.”

I opened my mouth, but Liz was quick with the hand on my arm.

“How’s that?” Nick said.

“I visited Elgin’s grandfather in the nursing home with him almost every time he went,” Flannery said. “Mr. Wedgewood—senior—liked me so we talked a lot, even when Elgin was off flirting with my mother. She was working there. That’s how they met.”

Pieces fell into place so fast I gave up keeping track.

“He wasn’t even close to dying. He just couldn’t take care of himself any more, but there was no way he died—
boom
—just like that. Elgin did it to him.”

Nick frowned. “That’s a serious accusation.”

“I know he did it because Elgin told my mother he would accuse
her
of doing it. He set it up so that if anybody ever questioned it, there was evidence that would prove she killed him.”

So that was the power he had over Brenda. I felt myself going cold. Even as much as I’d seen already, I had still underestimated this man’s capacity for evil.

“She was afraid the police would believe him and she didn’t want to go to prison and leave me.” Flannery looked at the mirror again. “She didn’t know I knew. I just heard him threatening her, and then he used it to threaten
me
later.”

Nick glanced at his notepad. “So that’s why you let him take you: because you didn’t want your mother to go to prison.”

“For something she didn’t do.” Flannery poked her finger at the pad. “Put that in there.”

We were all silent as Nick wrote. Flannery watched him, and then she looked at me, eyes large.

“I just figured something out,” she said.

“What’s that, Flan?” I said.

“The only reason he was ever nice to his grandfather was because he thought he was going to get all his money. I already knew that, but he really did get the money he came looking for.” She tightened her lips. “He got me.”

I could see that it was taking all that was left of her old tough shell to hold back the tears. My arms ached to reach out for her, but I could hear Ms. Willa saying,
You can’t do all the work for her.
This was strength I was seeing, not toughness.