by David Bell
“I’m going to wait for the lawyer.”
“Suit yourself.”
Bowman leaves and makes me sit here and stare into space until that happens. During that time, my despair grows, and I begin to imagine myself on trial, in a jail cell, shipped off to prison. It’s bad enough to live with the guilt over not calling 911 that late-summer night when I saw Sophia fighting with her husband. To imagine a life in prison for a crime I didn’t commit . . .
I’m ready to tell Bowman the truth about the book. Everything hinges on that. If I simply admit I didn’t write it, then they lose their main reason to suspect me of Sophia’s murder. I’d lose just about everything else, but I’d have my freedom. And I’ve already lost everything once before. It can’t be any worse.
Nothing ever could be.
But Preston told me to keep my mouth shut until the lawyer arrived. He emphasized that. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t even ask to use the bathroom.
I listen to him. I don’t speak. And Bowman seems to know what’s going on because she doesn’t say a word to me either. She comes back with a laptop and clicks and taps away, the two of us in the same room, each acting like the other isn’t there.
Then the lawyer arrives—Diana Lukas. And once she’s there, it’s all out of my hands. She looks to be a few years younger than I am and wears a dark overcoat, her large hoop earrings glittering in the harsh light. She talks to Bowman like she knows her well, like the two of them are bickering, rivalrous siblings. I feel like I’m watching a performance they’ve both given more than once.
“Alicia, what are you trying to pull here?” Diana asks, not even bothering to say hello. Not even bothering to introduce herself to me. She has a large purse on her shoulder and holds an iPhone in her hand. “Do I have to remind you about the concept of due process?”
“Can we discuss this in the other room, Diana?” Bowman says, standing up. “I’m sure you have all kinds of crazy notions you want to throw at me. And maybe one or two of them will actually be connected to reality.”
“Ah, yes. I’m the crazy woman disconnected from reality, right? If a male lawyer came in here, you’d be shaking his hand, telling him what a good old boy he is.”
Bowman laughs. “You’re trying to paint me as a big bad part of the big bad system? You know I’m a woman married to a woman in Kentucky, right?”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re part of the system by virtue of that badge you tote. The fact that you’re married to a woman doesn’t change that. But have it your way.” She steps aside and makes a sweeping motion toward the door. Once Bowman goes out ahead of her, she turns to me and places her finger over her lips. “Not a solitary word, and I’ll have you home in an hour or so.”
“I have to pee.”
“Cross your legs.”
It takes longer than an hour. Seventy-five minutes later, Diana comes back into the conference room alone, closes the door, and tells me I’m free to go.
I have to pee so bad, my eyeballs are probably turning yellow. I’m not sure I understand what she’s saying. I must look at her like I’m a visitor to a country where I don’t understand the language.
“You can go home,” she says slowly. “Bowman is getting the release form ready now. You didn’t say anything important to her, did you?”
“I told the truth.”
“Interesting strategy. These cops think they can pull off this bullshit and get you to give up DNA and fingerprints without a court order. Around here they fit you for the noose and build the gallows before they even know your name.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“No problem. Of course, you can’t leave town without telling the police. And if you can bring me your passport tomorrow, that would really help.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She reaches over and squeezes my arm. “Damn right. We’ll have to talk in more detail soon. But it’s getting late, and my husband is in charge of putting our kids to bed since I’m not there.” She shudders and rolls her eyes. “I love that man, but he’s hopeless sometimes. Last time I was out this late, the kids ate ice cream for dinner and Popsicles for dessert.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet, so we’ll hold off on naming the courthouse after me for a few more days.”
Bowman comes in without knocking and hands Diana a piece of paper. She doesn’t even look at me, just turns and goes.
“They hate it when their plans go awry,” Diana says.
“Plans?”
“Her plans for the evening,” she says. “She really hoped she could have you in a jail cell before the night was out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Diana leads me out the front door of the station, and as if by magic, a car I recognize pulls up as we emerge into the bitter cold.
Diana turns to me, her dark coat open, and extends her hand. “Here’s your ride, Connor. We’ll be in touch.”
I thank her, but she’s already hustling away, and my words float off along with the puffs of my breath.
The driver’s-side window of the car in front of me rolls down, and Preston leans out. “Get in, dummy. It’s cold.”
And I’m all too happy to do it. He pulls away while I’m buckling my seat belt.
“Thank you,” I say. “For finding Diana and for picking me up. I could have called an Uber. I know it’s after ten, and you have your family.”
“I don’t mind,” he says. “I wanted to see how you were doing. What the fuck is going on? All this cloak-and-dagger shit.”
The streets are dark and quiet. Everything feels hushed by the bitter cold. I ask him about the murder of Sophia Greenfield.
“Do you even remember that?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “She was strangled in her car. I thought it was the husband. It usually is.”
“Maybe not this time. The cops haven’t arrested him.”
Preston is shaking his head and not saying much. His hands grip the steering wheel tightly as the heat blows through the vents at our feet. I think he’s angry at the injustice of it all.
“I’d still be there if it weren’t for Diana. And you. I didn’t want to have to call my sister in Michigan and tell her I was in jail.”
He remains quiet as he makes the last turn, the one onto my street. I study his profile, watch his jaw clench tight.
He pulls into my driveway, stopping next to my car.
“What do you think?” I ask. “You haven’t really said much.”
He leaves the car on. The headlights shine against the garage door.
“It’s a problem,” he says through pressed lips.
“I know that.”
“No,” he says. “It’s a problem at work. On campus. When you called me from the station, and after I got ahold of Diana, I checked in with Paul Armstrong in Human Resources.”
“What for?”
He turns to face me. “Connor, we’re kind of through the looking glass here. I’ve never had a member of the department become part of a murder probe before. I had to know what to do.”
“What is there to do?” I ask. “What are you getting at?”
He sighs through his nose, his lips pursed tighter. “Connor, do you remember what we talked about this morning? About the changing attitudes on campus? They just can’t have someone working there, going to classes and interacting with the students, who might be guilty of a murder.”
“No one’s charged me with anything. They were trying to rattle my cage with a lot of bullshit.”
Preston’s voice goes up. His voice never goes up. He never seems to lose his cool, but I can tell he’s pissed right now. “And everyone’s going to make that fine distinction when the news breaks about this? Right? That’s what we all do so well these days as a culture—make fine distinctions when we hea
r something on the news.”
“Are you firing me?”
“No. No one’s firing anybody.” He pauses, collecting his thoughts. “This isn’t corporate America, where you can just run someone out of the building if you want. But you’re being placed on administrative leave. Until we know how all of this is going to shake out, that’s your status. With pay. But you can’t come into Goodlaw, and you can’t go near a classroom.”
I smack my fist against the dashboard. “Are you kidding me?”
“Calm down, Connor. It’s out of my hands. Paul made the call. And he talked to the president about it just to make sure.”
“The president?”
“Yes. The university doesn’t want any black eyes. Not now. Not with a capital fund-raising campaign under way.”
The curtain has really been lifted now. And I see what’s happening behind it. “Oh, a capital campaign? Fund-raising? I thought it was all about the students.”
“It is. Of course. But it’s about money too. You know that. We’re practically begging the legislature in Frankfort to send us more, but all they’ve done is cut. To the bone. Do you think we need a bunch of politicians getting up and saying, ‘Why should we give more money to higher ed when the professors murder people?’ ”
“That’s insane.”
“And it’s about the reputation of our department and the work everyone is doing. We’ve all busted our butts to have the department in the right place. We can’t lose that. You’ll be hearing from Human Resources. They’ll make you sign some forms.”
I fumble for the door latch with my right hand. “I thought you’d go to bat for me.”
Preston must have overridden the locks, because I can’t get out. “Now hold it. Don’t run off. You need to listen to me.”
“I have been. And it hasn’t helped.”
But I stop trying to open the door—a fruitless gesture anyway. And since I’m trapped in the car, I decide to listen. I don’t have a lot of allies, and it sounds like I might need more in the future.
“I have stuck my neck out for you,” he says. “And you know that. Going all the way back to when Emily and Jake died.”
I remain silent, a grudging admission that he’s right.
“And if you want me to continue to do that, if you want me to try to go to the administration and go to bat for you, I have to know everything. And I mean everything. I need to know that nothing else is going to surprise me.”
“I didn’t kill Sophia Greenfield,” I say. “I didn’t even know her—” But I can’t get those words all the way out of my mouth. I did know her. Or I thought I did. And I’d created a story for her, the way any author would. My story turned out to be wrong. Very, very wrong. “I mean, I didn’t even know her name. I didn’t really know who she was.”
“What about Madeline?”
“What about her?”
“Is there anything with her that’s going to bite me in the ass?” he asks.
“It’s weird the way you bring that up.”
“No, it’s not weird that I want to keep all of us out of trouble. And run a department smoothly. How do you think the rest of the university will respond when they find out you might have killed a woman? How do you think the female faculty will respond? They’ve felt like their concerns have been taking a backseat for years. They have a stronger voice now. And I’m glad. We have a female provost now, in case you haven’t noticed. The first time in the history of the university. It’s a new world, and you don’t want to be in the crosshairs.”
“I didn’t do anything. Why am I in the crosshairs?”
I’m shaking my head, disgusted. But my disgust is served with a heaping side of hypocrisy. I know a giant secret about Madeline, and in the confined space of the car, with the night getting late and the cold wind blowing outside, I almost tell Preston all of it. The book I stole and Madeline’s reappearance. I desperately need a friend. . . .
But I can’t blow everything up.
So I give him a piece of the puzzle.
“You know I might have been the last person to see her alive,” I say.
“Sure.”
“I don’t really know what happened that night. I was drunk at Dubliners. And she walked me home. Part of the way or the whole way, I can’t be sure.”
I hesitate to say more.
But Preston pushes me. “Go on. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what happened to her after that. She disappeared.”
“Jesus, Connor.”
“I know. I’m sick about it, Preston. I’ve thought about that night a lot over the last two years. If I was the last person to see her, then maybe I could have helped prevent whatever happened. I blew it.”
“It’s bad,” he says.
“I know. I told you this so you wouldn’t be blindsided. That’s everything about her disappearance.”
“I don’t know what to say, Connor. Really.”
“I’m trying to get this out in the open here. You know I need my job. You know it’s the only real stability I have in my life. What would I do if I couldn’t teach?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I need the money and the benefits.”
“What about the book?” he asks. “You should have plenty of money.”
“What is this with everybody thinking the damn book made me rich. It didn’t, okay? It’s not The Da Vinci Code.”
Preston lets out another sigh, this one longer. And he turns away, looks at the dashboard display like he really needs to know how much gas is in the tank. “I’ve got to get home.”
“So what are you going to do at work?” I ask. “Are you going to talk to Paul?”
“I’ll do what I can tomorrow,” he says, still not really looking at me. “But you stay away, you hear? Just lie low. And don’t talk to anybody on campus. Especially students.”
I push the door open, feel the blast of cold wind. I pull my coat tighter around me and reach back, extending my hand to Preston before I shut the door. “Thanks.”
He mumbles his reply. “Sure.” But he doesn’t reach for my hand.
I shut the car door, and he backs out, the headlights sweeping over me in the driveway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Grendel greets me with a series of barks.
I still step inside cautiously, like I think the place is laced with land mines. For all I know, Madeline is back, waiting for me. Ready to deal with me in whatever way she sees fit.
Maybe the same way she killed Sophia Greenfield.
I go through the house, moving quickly, checking every room and closet. I even go into the bathroom and pull the shower curtain back, but find nothing except grime. I let out a breath.
And I remind myself to get a dead bolt installed on that basement lock.
It feels like it’s been three years since Bowman came to the door and started asking me about the book, but it was just that morning. I go back out to the kitchen, Grendel at my feet, sniffing my shoes and trying to make sense of the unfamiliar scents on me.
“That’s what jail smells like,” I say.
I haven’t even taken my coat off. I’m hungry and tired, worn-out from being questioned by friend and foe alike. The bottle of Rowan’s Creek remains on the counter. I never put it away after the night of the book launch. Its presence makes it just too easy.
I pour a healthy shot. I hope it will calm me.
I lift the glass toward Grendel, toasting him. “Buddy, I think you’re my closest friend these days. Here’s to you.”
My soulful confession doesn’t seem to move him, so I throw the shot back, enjoying the burn as it goes down. The warmth passes through me, and I take my coat off and hang it over a kitchen chair. Grendel yawns and shuffles back out to his perch in the living room.
No one like
s to drink alone, but it appears I have no choice. I swallow another shot, and as that one burns through me with less intensity, I try to look ahead. Without the possibility of going to campus to teach, the days stretch ahead of me like a desert. It’s true that in the days and weeks and months after Emily and Jake died, I did a horrible job as a professor. I showed up unprepared. I turned assignments back late or not at all. I took up space in the classroom but wasn’t actually there.
But having someplace to go, having a routine and a purpose in my life, might have saved me. I shudder to think what I would have been doing with my time if I hadn’t had a job to go to.
Those dark days nearly swallowed me up. Every day, just waking up felt like an ascent out of the depths of a deep, slippery pit. If I slid back in there again, I’m not sure I’d ever pull myself out. I study the floor, the cabinets, the familiar space. Everything menaces me. The bottle that could be turned into jagged, cutting shards. The knives in their block. The gas oven.
“No,” I say. “No, no. Not that.”
I summon willpower and push the bottle of Rowan’s back across the counter into the corner. I grab a dish towel and drape it over the bottle.
“Okay,” I say. “Eat something. Act like a normal human being and eat something.”
I find some ham in the refrigerator. It smells okay, so I make a sandwich. My hands shake while I spread mayonnaise on the bread, but the act also feels reassuring. A normal thing in an abnormal time.
Before I can take a bite, someone knocks on the back door. I nearly jump out of my skin. And Grendel barks like we’re being invaded by zombies.
I think about not answering. It’s ten thirty. The curtains are drawn. Maybe they don’t know I’m inside. Maybe it’s all a mistake. Wrong house.
But I’m acting the fool. Someone coming to the back door knows me. Preston?
I’m happy to toss the sandwich aside and go over and part the curtains on the window. My initial reaction is to say, “Shit.”
It’s Madeline, her arms crossed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as she tries to stay warm. She looks small, like a child coming in from playing outside. Sometimes I see all my students this way. Small, young, vulnerable. Jake would be a college student now, and I feel the knife gouge in my heart just thinking about him and the future he’ll never have.