Never Ask Me

by Jeff Abbott

  Garcia: Which was what?

  Francie: Well. On our first trip, a couple of times, Danielle didn’t show up to go to meetings with us. I mean, I know she has other adoptions she’s working, but hey, we’re her only clients right there in Russia, put the focus on us. She would apologize, say she got pulled into another meeting. And she didn’t have to be there with us, the process moved forward, but then why was she in Russia if not to help us? On the second trip, the morning of our hearing, you know, we don’t want to be late, and there’s no sign of her in the hotel lobby, where we’re supposed to meet. My husband, Hugh, is frantic, and I think maybe she’s just out on the street, waiting for the driver. And I see her, but she’s walking away from the hotel. And I’m thinking: What the hell? She’s too far away to hear me yell, but I can see it’s her. Leaving, ten minutes before we’re supposed to be heading to the adoption hearing. Can you imagine what I’m thinking? I’m thinking something’s gone horribly wrong and she’s leaving so she doesn’t have to tell us, or she’s having to go find a new driver, which, I mean, we could just take a taxi—I’m not thinking logically at all.

  Then I see a man get out of a car. A really nice car, like a Mercedes SUV, and he speaks to her. He’s in a really expensive suit—you don’t necessarily see a lot of those in Russia. Dark hair. She hands him something, and he hands her something. They talk for maybe fifteen seconds. Then she walks on.

  I’m wondering what the hell is going on.

  Then I see her go to a park, and she walks by a trash container and drops what she’s carrying into it. She turns; I’m hanging back at this point, glancing at my watch. We’re five minutes from the hotel. I follow her back. I don’t want to look behind me now. I’ve seen movies where someone dumps something for pickup. I don’t want to see someone maybe pulling that package she tossed into the trash after the man gave it to her.

  I don’t want to know.

  When the hotel is in sight, I catch up with Danielle.

  “Hey, Danielle,” I say, and she turns and looks at me and says, “Hey.” Like, you know, we’re not in Russia and we’ve just bumped into each other at the grocery store.

  I say, “What…what were you doing?”

  “Some bribes you don’t need to know about,” she says. I’m sure you’ve heard, well, bribery is an ugly word, but it’s important to give lots of gifts to everyone you encounter in Russia in the adoption chain.

  I’m thinking…that was a bribe? I know I must have had an odd expression on my face, and she was starting to figure out that I’d followed her, and she says: “Francie. You want these babies, yes? Both of them?”

  I nod.

  “Then keep your mouth shut and don’t tell anyone what you saw today and everything will be fine. You can do that for your babies, yes?”

  I say then: “I was worried you were taking off right before we have to leave for the hearing. That’s all.” I keep my mouth shut because if this odd behavior was making the adoption happen, then I was for it, and if it was a problem, it was hers and not mine. I was so anxious about the hearing, I didn’t think straight. And the hearing was really long, because they were giving us two babies, so the judge seemed twice as bitter about Russia losing two future citizens, and it was only really when we were on the plane that I thought: Well, it couldn’t have been a bribe. Hugh and I are paying the money for all the bribes, and she didn’t ask us for money. And she threw it away. A bribe, being passed on. But I had a son and now two babies to take care of, and what did I care what Danielle had been up to? She asked me not to mention it and so I didn’t. Until I told Iris a few years ago, and now.

  Garcia: What was Iris’s reaction to this story?

  (Long pause)

  Garcia: Francie?

  Francie: She asked me about the man and the car. I tried to describe them as much as I remembered. But why would she ask, unless she’d seen them, too? There was no reason to ask. And then she asked me if anyone had ever tried to…warn us off the adoption. Like, you know, someone approaching us in Russia and saying, “Go home.”

  Garcia: Did that happen to you?

  Francie: No, it didn’t. I asked her if that had happened to her and she said, “Yes, just a crazy lady; it was nothing.” But I wondered how a crazy lady would know that they were Americans there to adopt. I didn’t ask again, though. You can tell when a question is a bad idea.

  Garcia: Did you ever ask Danielle about this? Or about the Pollitts’ experience in Russia?

  Francie: Why would I? It’s like asking about a business trip. Iris said it all went fine, no issues. That’s what you want to hear.

  Garcia: But Danielle confided in you about Steve and Carrie Butler.

  Francie: Yes, and I feel terrible about that…like I should have told her to go to the police. She said they were just mad—heartbroken—and she said she could handle them. That was months before she died. I didn’t know they’d moved in down the street from her. I think it’s really, really odd she didn’t tell me that…but when your kids get into high school, you get so busy. I’d sometimes see her at choir functions, my middle kiddo is a year younger than Ned but also in choir. We stood together and handed out programs at the fall concert as people came into the auditorium and we didn’t have so much to say, other than how our kids were doing. And she told me she’d started dating a guy in her neighborhood, Mike, and that he was really great. She stopped coming for coffee nearly a year before she died, and c’mon, that was her fan club, her Lakehaven moms. She made most of us into moms. Why would she turn her back on us?

  49

  Grant and Iris

  It’s all going to fall apart. Nothing can be saved.

  The police have arrived to secure the scene, Ponder and Ames both there, and they are questioned. Iris says nothing about the drugs. Gordon says nothing about the drugs. They stare at each other.

  Mike says, “I think they’ve all been arguing about Kyle’s confession. There’s something going on between them about the kids, and I do not know what it is.” He looks right at Gordon and Iris both, as if his heart is breaking.

  “I’m not saying anything more and neither are my children,” Iris says. She puts her arms around her children and heads back up the trail to her house. She locks the door behind them. Julia and Grant stare at her.

  “What have you done?” Julia says. “Ned will never help us now.”

  “Ned was never, ever going to help us. We’re all on our own,” Iris says. “He used you. He used you and you let him use you, and I thought you were smarter than that.”

  “You had to have the last word, and now Dad will go to prison.”

  “Ned’s father is going to get him out of the country and to the UK or Ghana so fast your head will spin. Don’t kid yourself that Ned was about to help us.”

  “The tree. Dad wouldn’t hide that pipe in the tree,” Grant says. “Someone else has been hiding stuff there. The pipe wasn’t there before.”

  They both look at him.

  “Someone has been sending me notes. With pictures. Telling me to the go to the tree. They’ve left me money. They’ve left jewelry. It makes no sense.” He looks at them. “But they keep saying you and Dad have lied to me. And this happened right after Danielle died.”

  The three of them are silent. “Show me these emails,” Iris says.

  He gets his laptop. Opens it up and opens the emails.

  Iris stares at the first picture, of the woman in the rain. “Peter searched it. It’s a stock photo from France.”

  Iris blinks. “Show me the rest of them.”

  He shows her the cat looking out in the snow from the house. She stares at it.

  “Mom?” Julia asks. Iris seems far away.

  Grant says, “They left me money and some jewelry. Why is someone doing this?”

  “The thousand dollars in your room?” she asks. “I found it.”

  Grant nods.

  “Who else has seen this? You said Peter.”

  “He checked my laptop and
found a program planted on there. He said it’s an old kind of software the CIA once used, but that hackers might have gotten it, and that the emails come from Saint Petersburg. In Russia.”

  Iris’s face is like ice. She is utterly silent, and her children wait.

  Julia finally speaks: “Mom?”

  “I am going to need you both to do exactly what I say,” Iris says very softly. “You stay in the house. You stay off your devices. Don’t tell anyone where you are. Don’t…Don’t go anywhere. We don’t talk to the police or the press. I will handle this.”

  “Mom, what’s happening?”

  There’s a knock at the door. It’s Detective Ponder. Iris opens the door and simply says, “I’m not answering your questions. You do not have permission to interview my children.”

  “Mrs. Pollitt…”

  “Kyle didn’t kill her,” Iris says. “He may have confessed, but he didn’t kill her.”

  “So who did? I’m curious what you think.”

  The question throws her off. Why would Ponder ask? She has a confession. “I don’t know.”

  “Is he protecting you, then? Or another family member?”

  Iris doesn’t answer. Something’s wrong with Kyle’s confession. There must be holes in it. Because…he didn’t do this.

  “I have concerns about his confession,” Ponder says. “Do you know what happened, Iris?”

  “No.”

  “Help me help your husband. Why did he confess?”

  Iris shuts the door in Ponder’s face. She turns off the porch light.

  Ponder calls through the shut door. “Mrs. Pollitt, it doesn’t work this way. We have a warrant to search the premises. Open up.”

  She turns to her children. “He confessed to buy us time. Remember that. Your father is innocent. I’ll believe nothing else. But say nothing right now. Say nothing.”

  Iris opens the door and steps aside to let Ponder and the police in.

  50

  Iris

  Two hours later.

  The police have searched the house. They’ve taken Kyle’s computers, they’ve taken the clothes Kyle wore the past four days, they’ve taken his coats, and they’ve searched his car. They found the cash in Grant’s room, which Iris lies about, saying it’s emergency cash they keep on hand. They’ve given an inventory list to Iris, and she notices a Chromebook she doesn’t remember owning. It was in Kyle’s car trunk. But she says nothing, and she hands back the list.

  After the police leave, Julia tells Grant about Ned’s drug dealing and her involvement; they all need to be on the same page. Grant just looks at her like he doesn’t know her. The children have now each retreated to their rooms.

  The doorbell rings. She’s had on the news, and while there are reports an arrest has been made, they haven’t yet announced that it is Kyle or that he’s made a confession. Iris wonders what they’re waiting on.

  I have concerns about his confession, Ponder had said. What did that mean?

  She answers the door. A fortyish woman, attractive. “Mrs. Pollitt? I’m Elena Garcia. I’m a reporter with KATX.”

  “I have nothing to say.” Iris starts to shut the door.

  “I spoke to your friend Francie Neville,” Elena says. “She talked to me about some oddities of the adoption experience with Mrs. Roberts. I’m wondering if that’s an angle that should be further explored in this case.”

  Iris shakes her head. “I have nothing to say.” She closes the door.

  She leans against it in shock. What her son has shown her, what Kyle has done, what Danielle could have kept… She wonders if she will ever sleep again.

  Her phone keeps ringing. Friends, or people she thought were friends. She goes into the bathroom to wash her face. To try to order her thoughts. She doesn’t hear Julia go out the back door.

  51

  Julia

  Julia hears voices on the greenbelt trail.

  It’s that loosely organized band of neighborhood parents, and under a streetlight she hears them calling to one another, laughing.

  She thinks that as soon as news of her father’s confession breaks, this so-called patrol won’t have a reason to exist. But she can’t let them catch her or spot her. She’s arranged a meeting and she can’t miss it. She sees two of them, both fathers of girls she knows from Lakehaven High, go one way on the road, and then she sees a big redheaded man—that would be Steve Butler, who helped right after they found Danielle’s body—head off alone in another direction. The direction she intends to follow. But he’s on the street, walking, glancing around, and she sticks to the dark of the greenbelt. She doesn’t even turn on the flashlight app on her phone.

  The abandoned Carlyle house again.

  She supposes the advantage was that one could park near the greenbelt, far away from the house, and walk along the path until reaching the backyard and going into the house. There was no fence—several of the houses on the greenbelt didn’t have them. And Winding Creek didn’t use resident stickers, even though the greenbelt and the creek were the private property of the collective neighborhood, owned jointly through the home owners’ association.

  She goes through the backyard, and the back door is unlocked.

  Marland sits on the carpet, looking furious. There’s a thin glow from a lamp to light the room.

  “Well,” he said. “It seems like the police have been at your house. I hope you’ve kept our deal. Otherwise video of your daddy creeping around the neighborhood hits the police servers.”

  “I’m not working for you,” she said. “And I’m wondering exactly why you’re so insistent on it. Why me?”

  “I heard the investigators are looking at your dad. I guess you’ve got a lot on your mind.” The words were like ice on her spine.

  She was scared, but she had to do this. He was underestimating her and maybe she was overestimating herself, but she had no choice.

  “You texted a threat to Danielle before she died, on the phone you gave Ned. She found out about the drug deals. She told you no. And you threatened her, and she ended up dead. If you don’t leave me and my family alone, I go to the police.”

  “That’s your theory?” He doesn’t seem rattled by her announcement. It’s not what she expected. “Listen, do you know why I want to work with you? You don’t take the pills. I’ve tried to work in Lakehaven before. You need a sober kid on the ground. Too many of them sample the merchandise. They’re unreliable.” He seems utterly unfazed by her threat.

  “No. Why don’t you go find someone who actually wants to work for you? Again: Why me?”

  He takes a step toward her. And he loosens the scarf around his throat. Maybe he was warm. Maybe he meant to hurt her.

  She takes a step back. “I found the phone in her house, while going through her stuff.”

  “Where was it?”

  “In a blazer jacket pocket in her closet.”

  He looks almost rueful and Julia realizes: he was in Danielle’s house at some point, maybe looking for the phone.

  She presses ahead before she loses her nerve. “If anything happens to me, or to Ned, or to his father, or to my family, that phone goes to the police. And I’ll tell them it’s you on the other side. Being told off by a mother who didn’t want her kid in a drug ring. Maybe you were scared she would talk or cut a deal with the cops. Protect her son from prosecution and put you in jail in trade. But I have Ned’s burner phone, and if you don’t leave me and Ned alone, that phone will still end up going to the police.”

  He takes another step toward her.

  “You’ll never find where the phone is now. Or guess who has it. But they have their instructions. You’re going to give me that video of my dad and Danielle. First.”

  He brings up the video on his phone. She knows he can have copies elsewhere, but that’s true of her and his text message, as well. He shows her the video, then trashes it. “There. Happy?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I want us to trust each other, so sure. Get me Ne
d’s phone, now.”

  She nods. She turns and goes upstairs.

  She hears Marland laugh and say, “You smart little thing. I never would have looked here.”

  She goes into the bathroom of the smallest bedroom upstairs. She shuts the door. She kneels before the sink, opens the cabinet door, and fumbles along the top surface. The key Ned gave her to this house was finally useful: she guessed Marland wouldn’t suspect she’d hide something here. She’d secured the phone here, bound with masking tape, after she’d found it, afraid to keep it in her house, and she stares at it for a moment that turns into minutes. If she gives this to him, he’ll erase the text messages and her leverage is gone. She takes a deep breath and snaps a picture of the threatening text message with her own phone’s camera. It’s better than nothing, but it also proves nothing. But if he grabs her phone and inspects it for a backup photo, he’ll see it.

  She keeps the photos. She decides it’s worth the risk. She takes a few moments to gather her courage.

  She goes to the top of the stairs.

  The lamp downstairs, with its faint glow, is off.

  “Marland?” she calls.

  No answer.

  “This isn’t funny. I’m doing what you want.” She takes a tentative step down. She puts Ned’s burner phone in her pocket and switches on the flashlight app to light her way on the stairs.

  Surely he didn’t leave. It’s a miracle no one has spotted Marland or her at the abandoned house, especially with Steve Butler’s stupid patrol working the streets. She should remind him about the patrol. He might get caught if he leaves without being careful.

  Now, at the bottom of the steps, she hears a harsh rattling noise, but in the darkness she can’t see anything. She flashes the light along the room.