The Necklace

by Matt Witten

  Susan winced. But she liked how Hodgman was getting straight to the point with no screwing around. It seemed like good strategy.

  Jansen winced too. What an actor, Susan thought angrily. Then he spoke. “Like I said, I was pissed off, hung over, and tired. I was trying to give Pappas whatever he wanted so he’d let me go to sleep.”

  “So the answer’s yes?”

  Jansen shifted in his seat. “I just wanted to go to sleep. When you’re that tired and somebody’s shouting at you for ten hours straight, it’s like a million times crazier than being stoned.”

  “So that’s a yes.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Jansen said, irritated. Then he took a deep breath, obviously trying to calm himself in front of the jury. “Look, I lied. It was a lie.”

  “You sure you’re not lying now?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Did you say, ‘I took her necklace so I could jerk off later’?”

  Jansen’s face reddened. “You don’t understand. This FBI agent was putting words in my mouth.”

  “Agent Pappas told you to say, ‘I took her necklace so I could jerk off later’?”

  “He wanted details,” Jansen said. He turned to the jury, pleading for them to understand. “He wouldn’t let me go to sleep until I said exactly what I did—or supposedly did. So I’d say, ‘Yeah, I raped her, whatever,’ and he’d say, ‘You’ll feel better if you tell us the whole truth.’ So I go, ‘I don’t remember,’ and he’d say, ‘Don’t lie to me.’ So finally I made up all kinds of shit just to get him off my back. And yeah, it’s disgusting, but I wanted to make it extra disgusting ’cause I was mad at him. I wanted to gross him out.”

  What bullshit! Susan thought. The jury can see that, can’t they?

  “So these details all came out of your own imagination.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “You have a pretty interesting imagination, don’t you?”

  Jansen wiped sweat off his forehead. “Look, I’m not proud of anything I might’ve said that night.”

  Hodgman moved closer to Jansen. “Did you say, ‘She screamed when I put my dick in’?”

  Jansen looked at the jury and his voice turned desperate. “I would never do that to any woman and certainly not a girl.”

  Hodgman said sharply, “Did you say, ‘She screamed when I—’”

  Jansen snapped his head back at Hodgman and said loudly, “Yeah, I said it!”

  “Did you say, ‘It felt so good, squeezing that tiny neck ’til her pulse stopped’?”

  Jansen stood up and shouted, furious, “I just wanted to go to sleep!”

  Hodgman stayed quiet, letting the jurors observe Jansen. His face was bright red, a big vein pulsed on his forehead, and when he breathed, it made rasping sounds. He looked about to jump off the witness stand and attack somebody—Hodgman, the judge, the jury, whoever, it didn’t matter. Three marshals stepped closer so they’d be ready to stop him.

  Hodgman said softly, “You have a little trouble controlling your temper, don’t you, Mr. Jansen?”

  Jansen didn’t answer. Everybody in the courtroom listened to his breathing. Finally, he sat back down. But the damage was done. The jury had seen the rage inside him.

  Whatever chance he had of winning the case, he had just lost it.

  Danny leaned over to Susan and whispered, “He’s dead meat.” The two middle-aged women in the jury nodded to Susan. The two young women smiled at her.

  The next day, it only took the jury forty-eight minutes to find the Monster guilty on all counts.

  The day after that, Susan demanded the death penalty, and the judge obliged.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, PRESENT DAY

  BEHIND HER, DANNY said, “Is there anything else?”

  It was lucky Susan’s back was to him, so he couldn’t see the utter shock on her face as she stared at the necklace Emily was wearing in her picture.

  I’m not imagining this, am I?

  She started to lean in toward Emily’s picture so she could examine it more closely. The purple dolphin, the pink duck … But then she stopped. She tilted her face away from the photo, so Danny wouldn’t realize what she was staring at.

  What in God’s name was she thinking? That isn’t Amy’s necklace. It can’t be!

  Or if it is, there must be some—

  From behind his desk, Danny said, “Susan?” in a puzzled, irritated voice.

  She turned back around and looked at him. Her mouth was so dry she could barely make words come out.

  “Goodbye,” she said. Then she walked out the door.

  As she made her way toward the front of the real estate office, she looked back through the glass window at him.

  He was sitting there shaking his head at her flightiness, watching her go.

  She struggled to stay upright and act normal as she walked past the two realtors. It was obvious they were both curious as hell.

  “Have a nice day,” the redhead said. “I hope you got what you needed.”

  Susan managed a nod and picked up her suitcase. She opened the front door, stepped out onto Main Street, and reeled half-blind past the picture of Danny on the window.

  Two men in suits came toward her from the other direction and she almost crashed into them. She took the first side street and staggered toward a wooden bench half a block away.

  As she sat down, her fingers fumbled in her purse for her wallet. She took out a small photo of Amy—the same faded photo that had been blown up and displayed at the Crow Bar. It showed cute, gap-toothed Amy wearing the necklace.

  There was no question. It looked the exact same.

  “No,” Susan said to herself, breathing heavily. “No. Jesus, Susan, come on.”

  But she couldn’t stop her brain from racing. Maybe it didn’t just look the same—maybe it was the exact same!

  But how could that be? How could Danny have gotten hold of it? There was only one way she could think of. But that was insane. There was no way Danny could’ve—he was a good man! A good father!

  But then the thought came to her, irresistibly: It’s true, he never did have a good alibi—

  She shook her head violently, trying to clear it. What am I thinking? What the fuck am I thinking?! I’m not thinking that, it’s stupid! “It’s insane,” Susan said to herself out loud. “He loved Amy!”

  But that necklace—That necklace—It makes no sense—

  She heard a tapping sound on the sidewalk and quickly looked up. She felt so guilty about her thoughts, she was afraid Danny might be coming after her.

  But it was a blind woman, using her cane to walk down the sidewalk past her.

  Susan watched the woman walk by a Tamarack Library sign and realized she was sitting in front of the library. Slowly an idea formed in her mind. This is a small town. The elementary school can’t be too far. She checked her watch: 11:55. She got to her feet and hurried up the library’s front steps, lifting her suitcase.

  This place was a lot bigger than the Lake Luzerne Library. The man at the front counter was helping a mother with a toddler check out books, so Susan went up to the reference librarian, a woman in her late twenties who was busy texting. “Excuse me,” Susan said. Her voice sounded strange to her, high and nervous.

  The reference librarian looked up, annoyed at the interruption.

  Susan cleared her throat. “How many elementary schools are there in this town?” she asked, sounding a little more normal to her ears.

  “Just one.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s by the high school,” the librarian said, with an air of finality. Then she went back to her texting.

  Susan had an urge to slap this woman’s face. Instead she put a hand on top of the woman’s phone. She pulled her arm away, startled.

  Susan smiled sweetly, but she was sure the woman could see her anger underneath. “Can you tell me where that is?”

  A minute later, Susan was rolling her suitcase
several blocks toward Beekman Street, where the elementary and high schools were located across from each other. She heard a bell ring and picked up her pace, not sure which school the sound was coming from.

  She told herself that when she saw the necklace up close, she’d realize it was different. Or she’d get a chance to talk to Emily, and there’d be an innocent explanation. Some reason she could instantly forget her idiotic suspicions. She’d be able to laugh at them.

  She made it to the elementary school just as a security guard with a gun on his hip stepped out the front door. He was followed by three other grown-ups who looked like teachers or administrators, and then an avalanche of loud, excited kids.

  It was recess.

  She watched the kids pour out of the school. They immediately started running all over the place, shouting gleefully and playing tag, soccer, and four square.

  Then, in the side yard, Susan saw a bunch of kids at the handball court. One of them was Emily. She stood against the wall, waiting for her turn to play.

  From this distance, Susan couldn’t tell if Emily was wearing the necklace. That reminded her of the question that had dogged her all these years: How could Curt Jansen have seen Amy’s necklace from all the way across 9N?

  Suddenly she wondered why this question had so obsessed her. Had she always had some secret doubt about whether Jansen was really Amy’s killer?

  No. No way. She had always hated the Monster. At night she dreamed of him dying in horrible ways.

  So why was she feeling doubts now? Am I really, seriously doubting if the Monster is guilty?

  I can’t be.

  She moved closer to the handball court. Emily turned toward her, watching a classmate run after the ball.

  The necklace was right there on Emily’s neck.

  She needed to talk to this girl. But the security guard was standing in the yard, arms folded, watching.

  Susan stood her suitcase behind the trunk of an old oak. Then she reached up and smoothed her hair and straightened her back. Assuming a brisk walk, like she was a busy teacher or social worker, she headed across the street and onto the sidewalk. Then she stepped onto the playground.

  The security guard noticed her immediately. She knew the last thing she should do was make eye contact. Trying to shut down her nerves, she began checking her purse like she was looking for something important.

  When she peeked over the purse a few moments later, she saw the guard had looked away. She breathed a sigh of relief and kept going toward the side yard and the handball court.

  The ball the kids were using was as big as a dodge ball. Susan didn’t remember Amy ever playing this game. Emily still stood by the wall, waiting her turn. Susan walked up to her.

  “Hi there,” Susan said. Oh my God. Purple dolphin, pink duck, yellow, green, an orange cat … Amy and I sat at the kitchen table and strung beads just like these. “What a beautiful necklace.”

  Emily looked up at her shyly. Susan thought she saw Amy in the almond-like shape of Emily’s eyes, the tilt of her eyebrows.

  “I might buy a necklace like that for my daughter. Where did you get it?”

  Maybe Danny made it for her. He got these beads off the internet. That’s what Emily will say—

  “My daddy found it,” Emily said. Then she looked back at the handball game, watching the ball bounce back and forth.

  Susan’s mouth opened wide with shock. She was too overwhelmed to speak.

  Finally she got out, “You mean he made it?”

  “No, he found it,” Emily said without a trace of doubt.

  “Where?”

  The game ended and Emily jumped up. It was her turn to play. “I don’t know,” she said to Susan, and ran onto the court.

  Susan watched her go, her heart filling with horror.

  “He found it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SEPTEMBER–JANUARY, TWENTY YEARS AGO

  SUSAN HAD A burst of energy after the Monster was sentenced to death. She went home and cleaned the house that very night, though she left Amy’s room alone. Then she cleaned the house a second time.

  I’m going to start over. Danny’s right. Amy would want me to be happy.

  She cooked gourmet dinners every night for a week. She worked every lunch shift at Molly’s. She ran five miles on the River Road every day, until she was gasping for breath.

  I can do this. I can find a way to live with the pain.

  But then she crashed, all at once. She was in the middle of making a new blueberry tart recipe Molly had given her, and before she knew it she found herself sitting on the kitchen floor. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. She’d see Amy in her mind and everything would shut down.

  She had no idea how long she’d been there on the floor when Danny came home. She felt him carry her into bed. Then she sensed he was lying down next to her. She heard his voice but couldn’t focus on the words. She couldn’t open her eyes to look at him, and she couldn’t speak.

  She stayed in bed for what she later learned was three days, only getting up to go to the bathroom. She vaguely sensed that sometimes Danny was with her and sometimes Lenora.

  Danny wasn’t a big believer in therapy, but he drove Susan to the Glens Falls Public Health Clinic, which had therapist interns who saw patients on a sliding scale. Susan would remember nothing about the woman who saw her, but according to Danny, she was young and just barely out of social work school. When she came out to talk to him after the intake session, she looked pale and shaken. She strongly recommended that Susan be committed to the mental health wing of the Albany Public Hospital. Immediately.

  So that’s where Susan went, for the next three weeks, even though insurance only covered eighty percent. Gradually her psychotic break dissipated and she began to come back into the world. She could tell her nurses apart now, even knew some of their names, and she asked for extra salt for her French fries. When Danny came to visit, she noticed his aftershave.

  The aftershave she and Amy had given him for his birthday.

  She didn’t think much of this hospital ward she found herself in. She knew the psychiatrists and nurses meant well, but she was grieving. Including her miscarriages, she had now lost three children. How could talking help her? They diagnosed her with acute depression and prescribed Prozac, but she thought that was just stupid.

  There’s nothing wrong with me except my babies keep dying. A thousand Prozac pills won’t cure that. If I want to try and forget my pain, I’ll just drink Jack Daniels.

  Eventually, she left the hospital and lay around at home or in Molly’s back room. She told Danny she was taking her pills even though she wasn’t. She spent a lot of time looking out windows at the rain and snow. She lay in bed with Danny at night when he was sleeping and cried quietly, trying not to wake him.

  Danny started going to work seven days a week, then coming home and making dinner and watching endless basketball games on TV while Susan lay around in the bedroom. When they did talk with each other, he began to get more impatient. He would flare up and yell at her.

  It came to a head one Saturday night when he came home from work and discovered she hadn’t gotten out of bed the whole day.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you? Stop this!” he shouted.

  “Don’t yell at me.”

  “You need to get your shit together!” He leaned over the bed and grabbed her shoulders and started shaking her. Hard. It hurt her neck. She screamed with pain and shock. But that just made him shake her even harder. “Get your fucking shit together!” he yelled.

  Now she was really scared he’d do some damage to her neck. “Stop it!” she shouted. “Get off me!”

  He let go of her, mortified, and his eyes got teary. She was freaked out, seeing a side of him she’d never seen before. He had a temper, sure, especially when his job wasn’t going well and he was stressed, but in all the years they’d been together, he had never hit her or physically hurt her.

  Danny apologized for
the next hour. For the next couple weeks, he tried hard to be patient again. For years he’d gone deer hunting every November, usually not bagging a deer but still finding it restful to spend a week by himself in the woods. This year, though, he canceled his trip and stayed by Susan’s side, extra attentive.

  But they were both wary with each other.

  Then one night in January, four months after the trial, they were sitting at the kitchen table together eating another silent dinner. He put down his chicken drumstick and told Susan, “We need to talk.”

  She nodded listlessly, feeling hopeless, moving around the instant mashed potatoes with her fork.

  “I can’t keep living in this house, with Amy’s room still the way it was.”

  She shrugged. “Go ahead, get rid of her stuff. I can’t do it.”

  “I can’t keep living in this town.”

  Susan looked up from her plate. She started to realize there was something different about this conversation.

  “Everything here reminds me of Amy,” he said. “The school, when I pass it every day. The miniature golf course. Her friends, when I see them on the street.”

  She blinked. “You want to move? What about your job?”

  “I’ll find a job somewhere else.”

  “What about my mom? Our friends?”

  “I need to leave. Maybe it’s just for a while. But I need to get out of here.”

  Finally, Susan got it. “It’s me you need to leave.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I remind you of Amy.”

  “I just need a break.”

  They made love that night, their first time since back in September when the Monster had just been sentenced to death. Susan clung to him fiercely, grasping the last remainder of their life together, of the life she used to share with Danny and Amy.

  For the next two weeks she made an effort. She went back to work at Molly’s and managed to make it through her shifts without breaking into tears or dropping any dishes. She went to church both Sundays and rejoined the choir.