The Deviant

by Adam Sommers

Chapter 32

  Finding Arnold Lawrence McNeill took Eric all of thirty minutes. He had worked at the Baltimore paper for seven years, leaving five years ago for undisclosed reasons. Around the same time, Jayne Grayman was elevated from senior managing editor to executive editor, one step below the big chair.

  There were five Arnold McNeills in Washington, two in the surrounding Maryland counties, and six in Virginia within a hundred miles of Washington. But Eric did not need to trouble himself about making calls to random people. Newspaper people are a gabby bunch, none more so than the people who answer the phones.

  When he called the Baltimore Mirror to inquire about Arnold, the receptionist said McNeill had not been there for several years, which, of course, Eric already knew.

  “Oh, crap,” Eric told the peppy sounding lady on the phone. “I was one of his police sources when he was writing here. I have something that might interest him. Do you know where he went? Where I might look?”

  “Think he moved to Virginia. That’s what I heard.”

  “Oh, great. That is a huge help. I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name?”

  “Oh, me? Michelle.”

  “Well, thank you, Michelle. Do you happen to know whereabouts in Virginia? It’s a big old state, isn’t it?”

  Michelle the receptionist giggled. “I’m not sure, but he left a forwarding phone number.”

  “Awesome,” said Officer Berger.

  Five minutes later:

  “Hi, Mr. McNeill, you don’t know me, but I am a friend. My name is Eric Berger and I’d like to talk to you about the Baltimore Mirror.”

  “What about it?” asked McNeill coldly, making no effort to hide his displeasure or suspicion.

  “I’m hoping we can get together. What I want to talk about is a little sensitive and I’d rather not over the phone.”

  Expecting that the next sounds he heard would be a click and a dial tone, Eric was surprised when, after a few seconds of silence, McNeill curtly said, “That’s fine. You can come to my house.”

  They spent the next few minutes making arrangements to meet two days later, but the whole time they were on the phone it sounded to Eric like Arnold was being tortured, pulled in two directions—dying to talk, horrified at the thought of doing so.

  Chapter 33

  Returning that night from the funeral in Florida, Jayne found that it was probably too late to head into the office. At seven-thirty, the first edition was just wrapping up and she could not possibly catch up to the day’s news in time to offer anything helpful. She’d let John Williams do as he pleased. She trusted him as far as his news judgment and attention to detail.

  Her private plane taxied to the hangar, where her Mercedes was waiting. She drove straight to her nanny’s house to pick up the girl, a chore she generally hated since she did not particularly like to be alone with Brielle. The nanny handed her the baby in the car seat as instructed. Jayne buckled her in and was about to zoom off, as usual. When she looked down to make sure everything was okay, rather than the familiar surge of resentment she expected, there was something else, a thought she did not recognize. The kid’s pretty, thought Jayne, and softly touched her cheek. It shocked her because she’d never thought that before. From the beginning, she’d seen Brielle as an unwanted intrusion in her life. Now she looked at her child and had the crazy urge to pick her up and hold her.

  Jayne unbuckled Brielle from the seat and put her in the crook of her arm, touching the soft skin of her chin and lips. This was the longest she’d ever held the baby since she was a newborn. Shifting in her seat, Jayne put Brielle over her shoulder and was going to reach for a bottle when she felt something hot and wet on the back of her neck. “Auuuch!” she yelled into the car and practically threw Brielle back into her car seat.

  Pulling off her suit jacket, Jayne grabbed a baby cloth from the bag and wiped her neck furiously as Brielle howled in distress. In two minutes Jayne had herself cleaned up and was flying down the highway to her home, where Hester, the in-house maid, could take care of the girl.

  The baby puke brought back all the emotions she had when she was pregnant, how much she had hated that. This big bulge, the weight, the looks of people who smiled at her. Despite herself, she smiled back because that’s what pregnant women are supposed to do, isn it? Feeling the life wiggling inside her made her think it was some kind of a parasite. How could people stand it? she thought.

  Jayne had not broadcast her pregnancy to her family, but there was a sister and brother who were notified just a few weeks before the birth. They asked if they were needed. Jayne said they were not. She’d give them the updates when something happened. Her mom found out through her siblings and called, furious, from Boston.

  “I don’t even want it, Mom,” Jayne tried to explain honestly. But that only caused poor Ethyl Grayman more anguish. “It’s my grandchild. I have rights. I’ll raise it if you want. The baby can live here,” she said, weeping bitterly.

  Jayne thought about that for a few seconds. The idea was not unappealing. Have the baby, leave it with Mom, or, more accurately, the nannies and nurses Mother would hire. The child would have everything it wanted except an actual mother or father. “That’s not necessary, Mom,” Jayne soothed. “I’m capable of hiring my own attendants. Plus, the real problem is the father wants to be all involved. So we’ll have to see how that pans out.”

  Then she braced herself for what was destined to come.

  “What’s his name? The father.”

  Jayne ground her back teeth and pursed her lips tight. She did not want to tell her mother about Warren Zalinsky. It would automatically elevate his status in her life, which is something she was trying to avoid. What she wanted was Warren Zalinsky on her terms and her terms alone. She liked him, his square shoulders and lovely blue eyes. And, the sex aside, she liked being with him probably because he was the only person she knew who genuinely liked her at anything like an emotional level. It was also, ironically, this precise fact that made her detest him so bitterly and humiliate him so often. What was worse is that he sensed it. No, more than sensed it. He knew it, he knew at the very least she liked him—despite doing everything in her power to make it seem like it was not so.

  Her mother would eventually find out about him. She might even sense the way—even bad mothers can—that he wasn’t just some one-night stand. What the hell, she thought, let’s get it over with. “His name’s Warren, Mom, Warren Zalinsky. Someone I work with.”

  She winced and waited.

  “Will you two get married?” Ethyl Grayman asked.

  THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY that will ever happen, Jayne wanted to scream, amazed that after all this time her mother knew her hardly at all. “Maybe, but not right away,” she told her mother. There was no reason to upset her more than she already was.

  “Oh, you should do it. Do you love him?”

  Now Jayne wanted to rip her mother’s throat out. “Love has nothing to do with it,” she said as coldly as she could, hoping it would be enough for her mother to drop the line of questioning.

  “I will never understand your generation,” was all Ethyl said back, and Jayne breathed an enormous sigh of relief.

  Chapter 34

  Whatever it was that was making Mr. McNeill angry, it was not lack of money. He apparently had plenty. The former Baltimore reporter had invited Eric to his home in the Virginia countryside, not far from Charlottesville, but not so close that he had to deal with crowds or traffic. His spread was a former horse farm, which still had a big barn, a lovely stand of oak and a brook running the length of the back property.

  The home was a bit of a stunner for Eric, because McNeill had been a reporter and they were not known for making a lot of money. Arnold came to the door and looked down on Eric suspiciously; part of that, Eric guessed, might have been racial. Eric was white and McNeill black. He was taller than Eric, had pencil thin legs, a
pot belly, and narrow shoulders.

  “Thanks for having me,” Eric began.

  “Glad to,” said Arnold McNeill without meaning it. He offered Eric a handshake as he ushered him into the home. “Want a beer or something to eat?” Again, just being civil—and sounding strained.

  “Maybe in a bit.” Eric could have used a beer, but wanted to see how the meeting went first.

  “Okay, let me know.” As they moved through the entryway into a wide open living room and then onto a back deck, McNeill asked, “You wanted to talk about the Mirror?”

  “Er, well, sort of,” Eric stammered. “I wanted to ask about Jayne Grayman.”

  McNeill stiffened as if he’d been hit with a board. “I see,” he said. “You could have been a little more honest on the phone. I don’t like being deceived.”

  “My apologies for that,” Eric said earnestly. “But you’d have hung up on me if I came right out with it.”

  “Probably true,” Arnold conceded. “Still…”

  “You can always tell me to piss off, and I’ll leave, no hard feelings. I’ll totally understand and never bother you again.”

  Arnold seriously considered this for a second, then dismissed it.

  “No, it’s okay if you stay, but regarding that person you mentioned I have a gag order. I can’t talk about it.”

  Bullshit, thought Eric. If Arnold McNeill hadn’t wanted to talk about Jayne Grayman, he never would have had Eric over. If he had thought better of it in the two days since their phone conversation he’d have called Eric back to cancel. Even now, Eric got the feeling Arnold had little ability to stop himself from talking about Jayne, so Eric offered a helpful nudge. “And what happens if you break this gag order?”

  “I am not sure. Come to think of it, no one has ever said specifically.”

  “And what happens if I never write a word about this, which I don’t have any intention of doing anyway, and no one ever knows we talked?”

  The corners of Arnold McNeill’s mouth went down sharply in an expression that said, “I guess that could work.” Then he shrugged his boy-like shoulders and offered Eric a seat on a white-cloth-covered deck chair. He pushed a button on the wall and spoke into an intercom: “Thomas, can you get us some drinks?”

  “What would you like, Eric?”

  “Whatever, I’m not picky.”

  Arnold’s drink of choice was vodka on the rocks.

  “Cheers,” said Arnold and took a long sip draining about half the glass.

  “This is all her money, you know?” He indicated the entire back deck, the sprawling yard down to the babbling brook and by extension the whole rest of the house.

  “Grayman’s?”

  “Jayne Penelope Grayman’s.”

  “Penelope? No shit?”

  “Yes, Penelope.”

  “Jesus,” Eric whistled. “Anyway, I guess I’ll go first?”

  Arnold McNeill was about to say something, but nodded instead. “Sure. What happened?”

  “She came at me in her office a couple of weeks ago.”

  Arnold did not react, except that the muscles in his face tightened for a fraction of a second.

  “I thought she wanted to talk about this story I was working on. She says come up. I don’t know shit from shinola. I’m only at the paper about three months. So I went upstairs, and she’s sitting next to me on the couch and in two seconds she has her hand on my leg and then grabs for my cock. I literally had to fight her off while she’s telling me not to be such a baby. I sort of shove her away and run out the door. Pretty much been expecting to get axed every day since.”

  “You won’t get fired, Eric.” He said it gravely. “That’s not her thing. She fires you, she loses all control, all hope of control.”

  “Huh.”

  After a quiet couple of seconds during which Arnold clinked the ice around in his glass, he continued sadly, “I guess I wanted the byline more than you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Eric, I stayed in the office.”

  “What?” Eric couldn’t believe anyone would. “You fucked her?”

  “Yes. Uh, well, actually, no. Not specifically. She…uh…did, you know, what she wanted. Let’s put it that way.”

  Eric was not all that shocked. Arnold had sued. So that meant something bad had happened. “How long did it go on for?”

  “You mean that night or do you mean…”

  “Mmmm, let’s stay away from the night in question. I think it’s more important about the relationship.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” said McNeill. “But it wasn’t what you would call a relationship, at least not a two-way relationship. She called all the shots.”

  “And she was….,” Eric struggled for a tactful way to say it. “Uh, abusive?”

  Arnold nodded. “Yes. Abusive.”

  “And you took her to court?”

  “I did.”

  “It was that bad?”

  “Yes.”

  Eric decided not to press for details. Instead, he suggested: “If she abused you, and took a swing at me, there’s got to be others?” Eric already knew there were. The sealed file was McNeill et al. v. Grayman, so he was almost certainly looking at a class-action suit. The question was how many people were in the et. al.? Was it five or five hundred?

  “You’re right. There’s more of us.”

  “Really?” Eric feigned surprise. “Like how many?”

  Ignoring the question, Arnold continued, “For a smart woman, she was pretty stupid. Or maybe it was just a beginner’s mistakes. We subpoenaed the security videos. I mean, I did, and then there were all these other guys on it. Going into her office late, coming out a wreck. It wasn’t anything concrete. People go in, an hour later they come out disheveled. But together it was enough for our lawyer to make a very strong case.”

  “And you know who the others are?” Eric came back to the important issue. “Their names?”

  “Of course. I worked with some of them.”

  “Could you provide me with the names?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Eric just raised an eyebrow looking for some explanation.

  “It violates the gag order, but more importantly, a lot of the people on that case were pretty messed up. I mean, I carry my scars, but I’m better, and getting better. Some of the others are not. And won’t.”

  “I see.”

  “The best I can do is ask some of them if they are willing. If they want to talk about it.”

  “That would be great.”

  “You’re thinking of taking action against her?”

  “More than thinking, Arnold. I’m not going to be a victim.”

  “That’s fine. I applaud you. But I have to tell you, be careful. She’s got access to unlimited money and the best lawyers in the country. She’ll fire you—or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “Worse. Like a couple of the guys who signed on to the case had accidents.”

  “You’re kidding? Like Mafia accidents?”

  “Naturally, there’s no direct connection.”

  “I see,” he said thoughtfully, not sure if he believed Arnold McNeill, but opting not to pursue it at the moment. He’d gotten quite a bit more than he had anticipated and felt like he was in danger of overstaying his welcome. The plan that was forming in his mind was this: With sealed court records the judge almost always inserts a caveat—the case stays invisible but only if the defendant stays out of trouble. If the defendant gets charged with similar offenses, the “seal” is broken, the deal is null and void and all bets are off. That’s what Eric hoped for. Go to the police, file a complaint against Jayne Grayman. Take that complaint to the judge in the Grayman class-action suit and get him to unseal the records.

  He didn’t know if she could be successful
ly prosecuted, but it would certainly enable him to write one hell of a story. Plus, he felt sure that Arnold, and maybe others, would be willing to tell their own stories about how she had not only attacked them but paid them handsomely for their silence. That, Eric figured, would be more than enough to at least get her fired.

  He thanked Arnold for his drink and his time, fished a card out of his wallet. “Call any time you want. Even just to talk. I have no other life and I’m a good listener.”

  Arnold McNeill gave a slight snort. “I have a therapist for that. But thanks.”

  Therapy? Eric hadn’t thought of the idea before, but it struck him as something he might look into. “Does it help?”

  “The therapy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s kind of like a Band-Aid. I feel okay after I come out, but it just all backs up again. Why didn’t I push her off? Why did I let it happen again? And again? Sometimes I’m a mess even before I get back here.”

  “I see,” Eric muttered as he began to think, to focus on where Arnold was in his life and how he had gotten there. “You can call me an asshole if you want, because I am a lot of times, but I would make an observation.”

  Arnold braced himself.

  “You took her down for, I’m guessing, somewhere in the low seven figures, just looking at this place.”

  Arnold did not dispute.

  “That had to feel good, didn’t it? Didn’t that help?”

  Arnold nodded, but when he didn’t leap at the lure with something like, “Hell yeah, I’m living high off that witch and loving it,” Eric made the point he was coming to. “I have to believe inside you something—some little bell—keeps ringing and saying that she’s still got her thumb on your neck. She’s still here. I mean it’s her money. You’re living in her house, in a way. Aren’t you?”

  Suddenly Arnold looked dazed, his eyes bulged and his lips trembled, then his left leg buckled at the knee and he stumbled to the left slamming his shoulder heavily against the doorjamb. Eric rushed to grab him before Arnold fell over completely. “Whoa, whoa. Easy, easy.”