by Hy Conrad
“He has – had – a decent apartment in Hyde Park.”
“Was he married?”
“No. Never been.”
“That’s good. He caused enough pain.”
“Until a year ago, he worked for a security company, installing cameras and other equipment. After that, he had no employment record, so we assume the sugar daddy scam began around then.”
“How many others?”
“If you mean, how many other murders; none that we know of. No unsolved homicides of young women in that demographic, not in the Austin area.” State reached into his jacket and removed his trusty notepad. “If you’re asking how many other scam victims, we’re not sure. There have been five police reports from young women describing a man like Gavin. Others may have been robbed and not come forward. That’s fairly common. Briana didn’t come forward.”
Callie opened her eyes. “Did you find any connection between Gavin and Mr. You-know-who?”
It was a subject that had provoked her brother several times before. “None,” he said evenly. “I was actually hoping you might have some insight. Did Gavin say anything?”
She thought back to that nightmarish moment in the living room when Will, as she knew him then, had confessed to murder. “I asked him if he had any friends or accomplices. He said I should stop asking stupid questions.”
“So, he didn’t answer one way or the other.” State turned to a blank page and made a note. “We’ll need to do a cross-check of Gavin and Mr. You-know-who. Also another interview, if his lawyers are amenable.”
“If his lawyers…? It’s their choice?”
“It is. We have no arrest record.”
“Thanks to our beloved father.”
“Plus we have a confession from a dead killer, which covers all the bases. Okay, except for that base.”
“Which is a big base. Like home plate.”
“No, no,” he scoffed. “More like second or third. Gavin is home plate.”
Callie sighed. The pain was returning to her skull. “When am I getting out of here?”
State checked his watch. “Well, it’s almost one p.m.”
“One p.m.?” She was shocked.
“Yes, sleepy head. They’ll probably keep you overnight for observation.”
“Okay,” she said, thinking through the ramifications. “Make sure they keep Dad overnight, too.”
He chuckled. “Wow, the two of you are becoming joined at the hip, aren’t you? That’s sweet.”
Callie reached out for his arm and lowered her voice again. “If I’m spending the night, I’m going to need my meds. They’re in my medicine cabinet. Just bring the bottles. Ambien and Xanax.”
State frowned. “When did you start taking those?”
“None of your business. Just bring them.”
“Shouldn’t we check with the hospital? In case of interactions?”
“No,” she insisted. “They’re going to want to talk to me and examine me and supply their own pills. It could take a day. Just stick them in your pocket on your next visit.”
“Well, I wasn’t necessarily going to make a next visit.”
“State, please. I’ve been taking them for a while. I have prescriptions.”
“All right,” he allowed. “You tracked down a murderer. You deserve a little contraband. Just don’t die.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll be in deep shit if you die.”
It was only a few minutes after State left that Callie had another visitor. She was just dozing off when she heard a soft knock, followed a few seconds later by a more insistent knock. “No one home,” she croaked, more to herself than the knocker.
When she opened her eyes, Oliver Chesney was staring down at her, studying her. “Are you okay? There are guards on the floor. They say no one but family.”
“How did you get in?” It was only then that she noticed the light blue surgical scrubs and the mask hanging from his neck. She smiled. “Are you a law-breaker, Mr. Chesney?” she asked. “Have I turned you into a felon?”
“No, I did not waylay a doctor and knock him out. I tried the supply closets, but most of them are locked. I left the hospital and went to a uniform supply store, but they said I needed medical I.D. I wound up going to a costume shop. By the way, there are very few costume shops open this time of year. I had to drive all the way to…”
“You bought a doctor’s costume?” Callie started to laugh but the pain stopped her. “You’re impersonating a doctor?”
“Don’t laugh at me. I needed to get in. Are you okay?”
“Yes, doctor, I’m fine.” She wasn’t really. Fine would have involved a hairbrush, a mirror and just a little warning, for God’s sake.
“You don’t look fine.” He leaned in to examine the purple welts across her throat. Self-consciously, she turned her head, accidentally exposing the left side of her skull, where Gavin Hollister had struck her twice with her laptop. Oliver seemed to be counting the stitches.
Callie turned back to face him. “Tell me it’s not that bad.”
“It’s not that…” Oliver groaned and gave up. “Oh, hell, it looks terrible. Who did this?”
“I asked my brother to call you. At least I think I did.”
“I had to find out from my newsfeed. They say you were attacked by an intruder at your family home. It couldn’t have been Blackburn because – Well, no offense, but that would have been the headline: Keagan Blackburn killed by security guard. Subhead: He was attacking Buddy McFee’s daughter.”
Callie had forgotten how little she had kept Oliver informed. She felt bad. “It was Briana’s sugar daddy. The second one, not the first. We went out on a couple of dates. Last night’s date didn’t go particularly well.”
“Why on earth did he attack you?”
“Because he knew that I knew that he killed Briana.”
“He killed…” Oliver shook his head, overwhelmed. “Wait. You dated Briana’s killer?”
“Okay. Use that tone and you can make anything sound bad.”
“And he’s dead? You solved the whole case? And her killer is dead?”
Either this conversation was giving her a headache or the painkillers were wearing off. Callie pointed to the plastic cup with the bendy straw. “Can I have some more water? With ice?”
Oliver got the ice from the mini-fridge and the water from the bathroom sink. When Callie was a little less thirsty and had settled in again, she told him everything, from the passcode on the back of Briana’s laptop to the ‘meet-and-eat’ messages to the first and second dates and Gavin’s request for her banking information. She began to describe last night’s life and death fight on the driveway, but then decided to downplay it. Oliver was being very sweet, but enough was enough. He didn’t need to get any more worked up.
Oliver listened, his scowl growing, until she finally finished. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were up to? I thought we were a team.”
“You’re going to yell at me now? Really?” After all the talking, her voice was raspy, still a long way from recovery.
“I’m not yelling,” he said, his voice raised to an almost-yell. “I’m just… surprised. I knew absolutely nothing.”
She smiled, open-mouthed, hoping her breath didn’t stink too much. “I’ll try to do better next time.”
“My newsfeed said ‘unidentified man’. It didn’t mention his name or his connection to Briana. The police obviously know all this. Why haven’t they released it?”
“I’ve thought about that,” Callie said. “I think someone’s trying to protect me, at least for the moment. It’s State or my dad or Gil or all three. I’m sure they don’t want the family name associated with a sugar daddy killer.”
“Or…” Oliver had another theory. “Or they want to protect your story. I mean, give the guys some credit.”
“You think?” It was a much sweeter theory.
“It makes sense.” Oliver took the empty plastic cup from her hands and put it on the
side table. “You tracked the guy down. You put yourself in danger. You almost got killed. The idea of some other reporter running with this story while you’re lying unconscious in the hospital … That must have occurred to someone, no?”
“Maybe it did.” The throbbing in head was definitely getting worse. But she found she wasn’t minding it as much.
CHAPTER 29
They were released the next day. Policy mandated that all discharged patients be wheeled out, but Buddy wasn’t about to be photographed and videoed and interviewed while seated in a wheelchair. A negotiation ensued with the administrator and a compromise reached. Calista McFee would leave the hospital in a wheelchair. Lawrence “Buddy” McFee would walk behind, holding onto the handles just in case he needed support. Callie knew better than to argue, and the optics, of course, were perfect. The strong, caring father wheeling out his injured, estranged daughter. Buddy didn’t have time to answer questions right now, he explained to the cameras. His family was more important.
By now, Gavin Hollister’s name and photo had been released and the press had more questions than before. Had Callie been involved with her handsome attacker? What was Buddy’s part in the story? Was there any connection between the attack at the McFee ranch and the fire? Callie’s feelings about the public’s right to know had suddenly become more nuanced, and she appreciated the patrol car that was once again stationed in front of the property.
The McFees spent the rest of the day by themselves, giving Sarah another day off. With Briana’s killer dead, Callie had one of her better nights, waking up only twice and getting by on her usual dose of Ambien and only .5 milligrams of Xanax, plus two glasses of wine with dinner. It felt like an achievement, even though a month ago it would have felt excessive.
In the morning, Callie sat down at her dressing table and experimented. Luckily, she still had a crayon concealer, dating back to her last bout with acne in college. She applied this to her neck, under her foundation, and the result was passable. People would still be able to tell she’d been strangled, but might not be as distracted by it. The hair took more work. In the back of a dressing table drawer, she found a few of her mother’s old bobby pins. For half an hour, she tried pinning her hair to drape over the shaved spot but only succeeded in accentuating it. At the end, she resorted to a baseball cap.
As soon as Sarah arrived, Callie left, driving into the office well after rush-hour. Oliver had set up a workspace for her in his office, on an old TV tray they’d found in a storage closet. With the door closed, they worked out the structure of “A Death in Westlake, Part Two.”
It was an exciting process and Callie forgot to take her next dose of Extra Strength Tylenol until they stopped for a break and the soreness – head and neck, and her scraped knees from crawling on the gravel – came flooding back.
Callie would have the sole byline for part two, they decided, telling the story in first person and changing enough details to keep her father and brother out of the picture. According to part two, for example, she first met the Crawleys when they came to the Free Press looking for answers and not when she and State were catching up on old times at the morgue.
The focus would be on the MySugar site and Callie’s undercover role as a sugar baby facing a charming, cold-blooded killer. They found a way not to identify Dr. Sam Paget, Briana’s first daddy, but could not find a way to keep Briana’s sideline out of the story. It was, in fact, at the very center and provided a cautionary tale for girls who could be victimized by men shielding themselves behind a slimy website and modern technology.
Story details, powerful phrases, rearranged time-lines and transitional paragraphs all flew back and forth as the beast took shape. At one point, Oliver looked up from his computer. “By the way, you should delete your profile from the site.”
“Already done,” Callie said. “So, if you want to hook up with Heather, you’re out of luck.”
“That’s okay. I probably couldn’t afford her.”
“You most certainly couldn’t.”
He wagged his head in a ‘we’ll see’ kind of gesture.
Callie readjusted her baseball cap. “I suppose we need to think about the guy in the field.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the heart of the first installment was the suspect who was caught dragging her body through a field. You got calls from all over, demanding to know who he was. The police were denying it. What do we say?”
Oliver threw her a cagey look. “We can’t say it was Gavin? Or at least imply it?”
Callie didn’t even have to think about it. “No way. That would mean the cops had caught him red-handed and let him go. There would be internal investigations.”
“You’re right, you’re right. Dumb of me.” Oliver leaned back in his swivel chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I got it. We promise the readers a part three.”
Callie was intrigued. “Really? What does that accomplish?”
“It means we don’t have to answer all the questions. They’ll accept that.”
“But then we’ll need to write a part three.”
“And we will. We just don’t know when. Or what will be in it.” Oliver raised and lowered a shoulder. “Look, the police case is still open. There’s hope.”
“That’s true.”
“Absolute worst scenario. Blackburn gets away with whatever he did. If someone comes after us about Mr. X in the field, we’ll print a retraction saying there was no man. Our source was wrong.”
“God, I would hate to do that.”
*
The article went online the next morning and in the print edition the day after.
For two days, she made a point of not checking her newsfeed and not answering her phone, not even from Oliver and especially not from Nicole at KXAN who left four messages, pleading for an on-air interview. Callie knew it was out there, that she was a journalistic hero who’d risked her life. But she was happy to ride out the storm in their faux French mini-chateau, taking care of Buddy and dealing with Gil who was still in the burn unit. State did drop by one evening, on his own, for burgers that Buddy grilled on the Kalamazoo Hybrid. He mentioned that he had read the article all the way through, enjoyed it, and appreciated the fact that he was not mentioned once.
On the morning of the third day, Callie, with a second cup of coffee at her side, finally returned one of Helen Crawley’s calls, eleven calls spread over the previous two days, each call angrier than the last. When Helen answered the phone, her tone was different. There was more hurt than anger now.
“Frank was devastated. You know how he heard? Some reporter showed up and stuck a camera in his face. ‘This article says your daughter met her killer on a sex-for-hire website. Any comment?’ Imagine opening your front door to that? It was the first Frank heard. He almost punched the guy. I pretended not to know either, which makes me such a liar, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Helen, I’m so sorry.”
“He went right to her MySugar page and read everything. I finally had to take her computer and delete it all.”
“Helen, I had to. I had to tell her story. Either I was going to control the narrative or it was going to be someone who didn’t know anything and probably wouldn’t care.”
There was a pause at the other end. “You did write some nice things.”
“And I think it did some good. MySugar put up a new homepage, warning girls about financial scams.”
“Good,” Helen snapped. “I hope they go broke.”
“Me, too.”
“I just wish you could have found a different way. You could have called him her boyfriend. You tracked down her boyfriend.”
“Okay,” Callie allowed. “And how did I do that?”
“I don’t know,” Helen said. “Maybe through a dating website. You found him on a dating website.”
“Which one? Because whatever website I mention is going to be facing the worst P.R. They’re going to check their membership fil
es and find out that I’m lying. Then what?”
“I don’t know,” Helen said, her voice a little more modulated. “You’re the writer. I just worry that everyone’s going to blame the victim.”
“I know.” Callie had to be honest with her. “There will be blaming. People think, ‘Sure, it’s a tragedy. But it would never happen to my daughter because she’d never do that.’”
“It could be anyone’s daughter.”
“I know. But it’s true for everything: crimes, accidents, diseases. They tell you Uncle Billy died of lung cancer and your first question – was he a smoker? A guy dies in a car accident. Was he speeding? Or not using a seat belt? A girl gets attacked in a bad part of town – you think, what was she doing there at 2 a.m.? People want to put as much distance as possible between themselves and someone else’s tragedy. It’s not really blame. It’s…” She searched for the word. “Human nature.”
Helen sighed. “You make it sound almost normal.”
“It is normal. And it doesn’t change who Briana was, not to you or anyone who knew her or cared about her.”
“Okay.” Helen seemed to be processing this new point of view. “I’ll mention this to Frank, what you said. Maybe it will help. Oh.” It sounded as if she’d just remembered something. “Have the police been to his home?” She was hesitant, almost apologetic. “Did they find anything there, anything that belonged to Bri? I don’t know. It’s so stupid. Just having him dead should be enough.” It obviously wasn’t enough, not for Frank or for Helen. “Can you ask your brother to look for the necklace? You know the one.”
“The one you gave her for her birthday.”
“If they find a necklace and don’t know who it belonged to, I don’t want them just…”
“Absolutely. I have a shot of it on my phone. I’ll send it to State.”
“Not that it changes anything, or that I would ever wear it, God knows, but it would be nice to have it back.”
“Of course. I’ll ask my brother. Anything else?”
“Um…”
Apparently, there was something else. Callie wasn’t sure how much more supportive she could be, especially since Helen hadn’t said a word about Callie nearly getting killed and solving their daughter’s murder. “What is it?”