Sidney squinted. On the back of the shirt was a dirt mark in a horseshoe pattern. The smudge was faint and cut off by the bottom of the shirt.
“It says the body was in the ocean all night. I bet this stain was diluted by the salt water.”
Sidney remembered her trip to Sugar Beach when she climbed to Soufriere Bluff and stared down at Pitons Bay, where Julian’s body had been discovered by two kayakers on their anniversary. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d made that initial trip to St. Lucia. So much had happened to her career since she asked the island to tell her its story. Part of her wished she’d never listened.
“Here.” Gus removed his reading glasses and hovered them over the photo to act as a magnifying glass.
Sidney peered through them at the enlarged image that captured the mark on the back of Julian’s shirt.
“I don’t know,” she said. “What is it? A shoeprint?”
“Half a shoeprint,” Gus said.
He paged through the file until he found the photo of Julian’s shorts. They were also drawn out across the staging table. He pointed to an area on the back of the shorts. The blemish on the seat of the shorts was even fainter than the one on the shirt. Gus folded the pictures so the bottom of the shirt aligned with the shorts. The two smudges came together to form a nearly invisible, full shoeprint.
“I’ll be damned,” Sidney said.
“I’d love to know whose foot produced this.”
Sidney leaned closer to get a better look.
“Me too.”
* * *
It was past 10:00 p.m. when Sidney and Gus packed up the Julian Crist file, which they had spread across the table and around the bed. Gus still had some contacts inside the New York Police Department, and offered to have them take a look at the print on Julian Crist’s shirt and shorts. His guys, Gus promised, could confirm that it was indeed a shoeprint, and also run an analysis on the make of the shoe if they were able to get details from the tread.
“I don’t want to put you out,” Sidney said.
“Are you kidding me?” Gus said. “I haven’t felt this alive in years. The last couple of hours were the first time I actually forgot that they took my leg. Please,” he said, “let me help.”
Sidney nodded her head. “Thanks. Let me know what you find.”
“I’ll make some calls first thing tomorrow.” Gus packed the last of the Crist file. “What’s this?” he asked, holding up an envelope.
“Oh,” Sidney said, taking her father’s letter from him. Inside were the fingernail clippings he had sent months ago for DNA analysis. Sidney had nearly forgotten about them. “It has to do with another case.”
“Anything interesting?”
Sidney smiled. “It’s a long story.”
“I barely sleep at night,” Gus said. “I could use a good story to pass the hours.”
“Maybe another time. This is a story best told over a couple of proper drinks.”
“Now you’re just teasing me. I haven’t had a drop in months, and this far removed I’m not sure I can go back to the hard stuff. How about we compromise with coffee? I’ll buy.”
Sidney got the feeling he didn’t want to be alone. The hallways had darkened, and the floor was quiet. “I saw a coffee machine down the hall.”
“Now you’re talking,” Gus said.
She returned a few minutes later with two steaming cups, and sat back down in the bedside chair.
“You really want to hear this story?” Sidney asked, holding up her father’s letter.
“No doubt,” Gus said.
“Stop me when it gets too bizarre.”
“I was a Homicide detective for twenty years. You won’t be able to shock me.”
As the rehab facility shut down for the night, Sidney sat next to a stranger and for the first time in her life told the story of her father’s conviction.
CHAPTER 50
Thursday, July 20, 2017
EARLY THURSDAY MORNING, WITH HER VOICE MAIL FILLED WITH MES SAGES and unanswered texts blinking on her phone, Sidney emerged from the elevator to find her office floor empty, too early yet for staff to be present. She walked in and sat behind her desk, immediately assaulted by a barrage of yellow sticky notes pasted to her computer, her desk, her phone, and any flat surface available.
Where are you?
Are you alive?
Corporate needs edits today!
Left you several messages, I’m pissed!
They were all written in Leslie’s familiar handwriting.
“Shit,” Sidney said to herself. She spun her chair toward the window to look out over the city, grabbed her phone from her purse, and dialed Leslie’s number. She pressed the phone to her ear and heard a chiming ringtone behind her. When she swiveled back around, Leslie stood in the office doorway, holding the ringing phone up for Sidney to see.
“Oh,” Leslie said in an exaggerated tone, looking at Sidney’s name on the phone. “It’s my friend and coproducer calling. Since we’re under a shit storm of a deadline and I know she’s calling about said shit storm, I think I’ll let it go to voice mail.”
Sidney ended the call with a quick finger tap. The chiming stopped.
“I’m sorry, Les.”
“And then,” Leslie said, “when I see that she left a message, plus a thousand texts, I think I’ll ignore them all.”
“Got it. I’m a bitch.”
“And you’re selfish. The suits threw a fit yesterday when we missed the deadline. And since none of them could get ahold of you, they took it out on me.”
“Yep. They left me a few messages, too. None were very pleasant, if that helps at all.”
“It doesn’t.” Leslie walked into the office and stood in front of the desk. “What the hell, Sid?”
Sidney shook her head. “Look, I’m sorry I was gone yesterday, but we’ve got a major problem. Or, I don’t know, possibly a major problem.”
“Yeah. Production needed cuts for episode eight yesterday, and we didn’t deliver them. We have nothing decent to give them, and even if we did, there’s not enough time to pull an episode together by tomorrow night. So, yeah, I’d say we have a major problem.”
“Well,” Sidney considered this, “then we’ve got more than one problem, but mine’s bigger than yours.”
Leslie crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s going on?”
Sidney stared at her producing partner for a moment as yesterday’s events spun through her mind.
“I think Grace killed Julian Crist.”
CHAPTER 51
Thursday, July 20, 2017
“GOOD,” GRAHAM SAID AS HE ENTERED SIDNEY’S OFFICE. “YOU’RE here.”
“Graham, before you start—”
“Nope,” Graham said in a calm voice. “Not before I start, not after I start. I’ll talk, you’ll listen. You too,” he said to Leslie. “You are an employee of this network. I’m your boss. When I call you regarding a deadline, you call me back. Not the next day, not a week later. We have millions of dollars tied up in a project that you’re producing. None of your staff knew where you were yesterday. No one had answers to why the deadline was being missed. This is not some shit show for Netflix. This is a prime-time production for a major television network. You follow our rules, or we cut you loose. We don’t have renegades here. You want to act like some free-spirited filmmaker? Go back to the Internet. The edits were due to production yesterday for Friday’s episode. Where are they?”
“Graham.”
“Sidney. Are the edits ready?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Something’s come up.”
“Did someone in your immediate family die?”
“No.”
He pointed his index finger at her like he was throwing a dart. “You signed a contract to produce ten episodes this summer. One episode per week. You outlined that format, you pitched that format, we bought that format. We all understood it would require long hours and tight dea
dlines, and you promised you could handle it. We took a chance on you, and now we have one of the biggest audiences in television history prepared to tune in tomorrow night for an episode we’re not going to air! What the hell, Sid?”
His tie was crooked and the sleeves of his suit jacket had crept up his forearms during his rant.
“Leslie and I were just discussing our options, and we both agree we need a filler episode for tomorrow night.”
“Filler?”
“A recap,” Sidney said. “A summary episode of what’s taken place so far. It’s the perfect time for it. It’ll help reluctant viewers who don’t want to commit to streaming seven hours of television. A recap episode will bring everyone up to date and prime them for the final episodes. Ray Sandberg should love this idea. More viewers mean more money to stuff into his already-fat wallet. And instead of ten episodes, he gets eleven.”
“I don’t understand your contempt for the success of your own documentary. Yes, the network is making money. But so are you. At least, you stand to, if you don’t crap all over this thing. And you’re positioned to make much more money when Sandberg offers you a contract to produce another documentary for next summer, which he had planned to do, but hell if that’s going to happen now. And at the moment, I don’t know that I’m fully behind the idea of rehiring you for another go-round.”
“Let’s not overreact, Graham. I missed a deadline.”
“I’m not concerned with your career today. What’s most pressing is that I need an episode for tomorrow night.”
Sidney took a deep breath. It had always been a challenge to balance her personal relationship with Graham and the reality of the professional hierarchy at the network. She wanted to call him an asshole for screaming at her like a lunatic, and for walking so abruptly out of the bar a couple of nights ago. And she would have done exactly that, had this encounter occurred anywhere but her office, with Leslie as an eyewitness and with the door wide open. Sidney was sure her entire staff was standing on tiptoes just outside her office, craning their necks to hear every syllable. Instead of calling him names, Sidney decided to bluff with the straightest face she could manage.
“Leslie and I will cut the recap episode today. We don’t have to shoot anything new besides narrative from me, maybe have the sound guys record some voice-over. All the footage will come from previous episodes. We’ll do it this morning and have it to production by this afternoon. I’ll work with them all day, and I won’t leave until the episode is polished.”
“And next week?”
“It’ll be an original episode.”
Graham ran his hand through his hair, pulled on his cuffs to bring his suit into order. “I’m meeting with Sandberg now. I’ll let him know about the recap and that I think it’s a good idea.”
Sidney felt like he wanted to say something more to her, softer, she imagined, than the tone he had taken to this point. But whatever she saw in his eyes or heard in his voice, all she got was a subtle nod before he turned and walked out of her office.
When he was gone, Leslie opened her palms. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
“That the girl I just had exonerated is guilty as sin? A few reasons. One, Sandberg would lose his mind. Two, I’d be fired, which would mean you’d get fired. Three, I wouldn’t be able to finish this thing the way I want to end it. And four, I’m not sure about a damn thing yet.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve got a week to figure it out.”
CHAPTER 52
Thursday, July 20, 2017
SHE WORKED IN THE PRODUCTION STUDIO WITHOUT BREAKS ALONGSIDE the sound engineers, writers, and the graphic techs. At 3:00 p.m., as instructed, she turned in the cuts for the recap episode. Graham Cromwell and Ray Sandberg quickly voiced their displeasures with her work and delivered a long list of changes. Sidney and Leslie slogged through them until 8:00 p.m. Production waited unhappily as the summer sun set on a Thursday night and darkness covered the city. By nine, they had the final cut of the summary episode, green-lit by the network heads and cued for Friday night’s broadcast. Sidney felt no relief. The clock had reset and had begun ticking again. She had less than one week before the next episode was due, and she had no idea what the content would be.
She left the office and dismissed her craving for a Casamigos. Grace Sebold, still stashed away in Ellie Reiser’s high-rise, was her next stop. It was a confrontation she had avoided thinking about all day, but one she could put off no longer. She took a cab to Tudor City and found Windsor Tower. Sidney gave her name and waited while the doorman called upstairs. When he gave her the okay, Sidney slid into the elevator just before the doors closed. Grace was waiting in the hallway when the car arrived.
“Hi,” Grace said.
Grace looked better than Sidney had ever seen her. Her prematurely graying hair was fashionably styled, a stark change from the matted-down prison do that Sidney had known from her visits to St. Lucia. Allowed to pamper herself with products other than prison-issued bar soap and foam shampoo, including assistance from a layer of foundation and blush that hid the pallor of her skin, the transformation was remarkable.
“Wow. You look . . . Is it cliché to say beautiful?”
Grace smiled. “I don’t care if it’s cliché, it’s the first time someone’s called me that in years. I actually feel like a person again. Come in.”
Sidney walked into the apartment. The long windows were filled with the lights of New York City.
“No Derrick?” Grace asked.
“No. We’ll get more footage later. Maybe next week. I need to talk with you about something that’s come up.”
“Sure. Whatever you need. Ellie’s not home from work yet. She was called in for a delivery.”
“Who is it?” came a voice from the other room.
Sidney recognized the slightly slurred speech of Marshall Sebold.
“It’s Sidney,” Grace said. “He’s been more”—Grace wobbled her head back and forth as she chose a word—“outgoing since I’ve been home. My parents tell me, anyway. They said he had coiled into himself the last few years, but now he’s talking more. It’s a good thing, but with guests he can be a little over whelming.”
“Marshall and I have met before,” Sidney said. “Even before the other night. I spoke with him when I interviewed your parents originally. We actually played a game of chess.”
Grace smiled. “Of course, you did. He can sucker anyone into a game. He’s such a con man.”
They walked into the large living room, decorated with contemporary furniture and modern art. Everything was at sharp-right angles. Ellie Reiser, Sidney thought again, is doing well for herself.
“Marshall,” Grace said. “You remember Sidney, don’t you?”
Marshall sank into his wheelchair and looked down at his lap, his curled wrists and atrophied fingers slinking between his knees.
Sidney smiled. “Hi, Marshall.”
“Do you want to play chess?” Marshall asked, his voice muffled as he spoke into his chest.
“Sidney didn’t come to play chess, Marshall.”
“Just one game. Like before,” Marshall said.
Grace looked at Sidney and smiled. “Sorry. He’s a little stir-crazy locked away up here with me. As soon as we’re done shooting whatever remaining scenes you need, Marshall and I are thinking of heading up to Ellie’s lake house for a change of scenery. It’ll be good for both of us.”
“Probably a good idea.”
“Will you play?” Marshall asked again.
Sidney shrugged. “I’ll have a game, Marshall. You’ll remember that I’m not very good.”
“You’re a saint,” Grace said. She looked at Marshall. “One game. A fast one.”
Marshall took his hands from his lap and placed them on the wheels of his chair to roll himself into the den, where his chess set waited. As he passed Grace, she stuck her foot out and stopped the wheelchair’s progress.
“But only if you
walk,” she said.
Marshall looked up from his chair, took his hands from the wheels, and placed them back into his lap, his chin falling again to his chest.
“Nope,” Grace said. “That works on Mom, not on me. You either walk to the den and sit on the couch, or Sidney doesn’t play with you.”
Sidney stood quietly as she watched the interaction between the siblings, catching both an aura of friendship and the maternal nature of an older sister who likely had been the only person, besides his parents, that Marshall could rely upon.
“Do you want to play or not?” Grace asked.
Finally Marshall pushed himself up from his wheelchair and walked to the den in only a slightly altered gait, his orthotic shoes clapping as he marched. As soon as he sat on the couch and began to assemble the chess set, his curled wrists and stiff fingers magically unfolded as he gripped the pieces to place them on the board. The transformation in stature, Sidney noted, was remarkable. She remembered something similar from weeks before at the Sebolds’ home.
“He can do a lot on his own,” Grace said. “But he has to be pushed. The TBI, the brain injury, has led to progressive muscular dystrophy. If he doesn’t use his muscles, he’ll lose them. He never used to be this bad. It nearly broke my heart the first time I saw him in a wheelchair when he visited me at Bordelais. I was shocked to get home and see that it had progressed so much. My damn parents haven’t been making him help himself for years. Without motivation, he’ll just sit in that chair and let his body atrophy to the point of brittleness. He doesn’t know any better. He can’t help himself unless he’s reminded. Now that I’m around, he’s reminded often. More than he likes. I think he’s getting tired of me.”
“I doubt that,” Sidney said.
“Chess is his only interest. When he plays chess, his physical ailments disappear. His muscles loosen and he can use his hands and fingers just as well as you or me. His speech improves and the slur disappears. The doctors explain it as tapping into a small portion of his brain that he can’t access any other way than through the analytics of chess. When he utilizes this part of his mind, it supersedes his physical limitations. Essentially, when he’s playing chess, he’s his old self. Even though he doesn’t notice the change—at least, he’s never mentioned it—I think it’s why he likes playing so much.”
Don't Believe It Page 25