Dead to Me

by Mary McCoy

  “No, not yet, but it’s early. They’ll find something. And then there are those pictures from the park….”

  For a moment, Jerry went somewhere else. I don’t know where it was, but from the look on his face, I guessed it was a dark, windowless, guilty place, and I doubt it was his first time visiting there.

  “Those aren’t nothing,” I said gently, and Jerry came back to himself.

  “No, they aren’t. Those alone should put Conrad away for a long while.”

  But there was a hitch in his face when he said it, a smile with more confidence than he really had. There was something he wasn’t telling me.

  “How long?” I asked.

  Jerry sighed. “The prosecutor will try for attempted murder, but Conrad’s lawyers will bargain them down to simple assault. He’ll plead guilty, but spin a completely false and terrible story about your sister in the process. Maybe he’ll say she tried to rob him in the park. Maybe he’ll come up with something worse. The judge will sentence him to three to five years, and then we won’t hear a peep out of him for about a year. His behavior in prison will be excellent, and his lawyers will begin clearing their throats to point that out. People will remember the things he said about Annie, not the crimes he committed. They’ll decide she probably deserved it somehow. They’ll remember that scene in that one movie where he kisses Lucille Ball and falls off the horse and how funny that was. They’ll forgive him. And they’ll let him out to do it all over again.”

  When Jerry finished talking, he looked like a punching bag that had all its stuffing ripped out. I probably did, too. We sat there for a minute, a couple of flopped-over and useless human beings. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. I wanted to crawl underneath the bench in the police station hallway and hide there more or less forever.

  And then, suddenly, I didn’t. Maybe Gabrielle’s word wasn’t good enough, but I knew something that would be.

  Dragging Jerry behind me, I leaped up from the bench and ran pell-mell down the hall, down the stairwell, out the central station front door, and down the street to the spot where Rex had parked Conrad’s Rolls-Royce.

  “What’s this all about?” Jerry asked, huffing to catch his breath.

  “It’s under the seat,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “Hard evidence.”

  I told him about Irma’s purse and shoes, how they’d jabbed into Gabrielle as she hid on the floorboards of the car and how she’d stuffed them underneath the seat. Conrad was careful about not being seen, careful about where he hid the body, careful to dump Irma’s clothing in a place it wouldn’t be found. But he wouldn’t have looked for her purse and shoes in the car. I bet anything he’d forgotten all about them.

  Jerry’s eyes grew to the size of saucers as he handed me a pocketful of change and a stack of reporters’ business cards.

  “Go,” he said. “Tell Ruth. But before you do that, call Amos Carey. Call as many reporters as you can. Call the Times, the Examiner, the Herald. I want someone outside the LAPD getting pictures of this.”

  I went back inside and stood in line with the drunks, streetwalkers, and juvenile delinquents to use the pay phone. After I’d made my calls, I found Ruth drinking a cup of coffee. When I told her what was in Conrad’s car, she said, “Get back out there right now, and don’t let anyone touch that car until I get there.”

  Soon, everyone began to arrive. The reporters and photographers descended upon the Rolls-Royce first, like a flock of tweedy crows. A half-dozen beat cops pressed them back, and a gasp passed my lips when I saw they were clearing a pathway for Walter Hanrahan. Gone were the high-waisted pants, the gangster’s fedora, and the blue polka-dot suspenders, exchanged for a police captain’s uniform. He was followed by two white-haired policemen and Ruth, wearing the same little breakfast Danish hat and boiled-wool jacket as the woman who’d taken my statement. Hanrahan’s face was a cipher: flat, ordinary, and official-looking. I tried to crack it, to figure out what combination of rage, astonishment, fear, and cunning lay beneath the surface as he approached the car, as his gloved hand disappeared beneath the seat and came out again.

  A gasp went up from the crowd and the light in the street went blindingly white as the photographers’ flashbulbs exploded in unison.

  I saw the picture in the papers the next day. Hanrahan is holding Irma’s purse in one hand, her shoes in the other, smiling so triumphantly you’d think he solved the crime himself.

  Ruth stands by his side, and even though her face is smaller than a dime, it’s the face of a woman who knows too much, knows she’s in danger, knows the life she built for herself is over.

  I wondered whether she thought it was worth it.

  “What about Gabrielle?” I asked as we wove through the gathering crowd. “We can’t just leave her back there.”

  Jerry doubled his pace, and I had to trot along to keep up with him. I thought he must not have heard me, so I asked again.

  The Plymouth coupe was parked near the Los Angeles Times building, and the big clock on the side told me it was later than I’d originally guessed. It had been hours and hours since Ruth had dropped Gabrielle and me off with the police matrons. How long had I been asleep? Two hours? Maybe three? Gabrielle should have been sitting on that bench with Jerry when I woke up.

  I put myself between Jerry and the Plymouth and stuck him in the chest with my forefinger.

  “Where is she?”

  He didn’t seem surprised that I’d figured out something was wrong, only sad that he’d have to be the one to break the news.

  “Alice, they wouldn’t turn Gabrielle over to me. She’s been transferred to the Juvenile Hall while they look for her parents. And if they can’t turn them up, they’ve petitioned to make her a ward of the court so they can hold her there until Conrad’s trial.”

  Jerry opened the car door for me. I got in, gripping the dashboard as the information sunk in. The Plymouth gave a feeble cough and a sputter before agreeing to start, and Jerry pulled away from the curb, out of downtown.

  Neither of us spoke until I asked, “What about after Conrad’s trial?”

  “I don’t know what happens to her after that.”

  It was all I could do to keep from flinging myself into Jerry and beating him with my fists. This was what he and Annie did, what they were supposed to be good at—telling the girls who should go home from the ones who shouldn’t. Gabrielle had said almost nothing about where she came from, nothing about the circumstances that had driven her away, and even I knew which kind of girl she was. Jerry should have known it, too.

  “You shouldn’t have let them take her,” I said. “You should have stopped it.”

  “I tried,” he said.

  “You didn’t try hard enough.”

  Jerry clenched the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

  “Alice, you have no idea how sorry I am,” he said.

  I knew he was sorry. I knew he cared what happened to Gabrielle, that what had happened was an accident, an oversight. He’d taken his eyes off her for a minute, and she was gone. And yet, the whole thing was so sloppy and careless. If Annie had been there in his place, there was no doubt in my mind that Gabrielle would be sitting in the car with us.

  Instead, she was locked away in a cell where no one knew her and no one would be looking out for her. It would be easy for Hanrahan to get to her, and they’d have a powerful bargaining chip to hold over her: Say what we want you to say, or else we start looking for your parents. When Conrad threatened her, Gabrielle had agreed to turn on Annie. Who knew what kinds of things she might agree to say if one of Hanrahan’s goons came to visit her in Juvenile Hall?

  Jerry turned onto Vermont, and I realized that in a few minutes, I would see my sister, alive and awake. After all this time, I was finally going to get the thing I wanted most in the world. It should have made me the happiest girl in the world. It should have at least cheered me up.

  But all I could do was worry about Gabrielle.


  The police outside Annie’s room were gone, all of them either dispatched to hold off the reporters in the lobby or downtown with Ruth and Walter Hanrahan.

  When Jerry and I got there, Cassie was drawing back the curtains so everyone could watch the smoggy Los Angeles sunset, and Annie was sitting up in bed, sipping from a cup that our mother held to her lips. One of her eyes was swollen shut, but the other was wide and clear, and it crinkled at the corner when she saw me.

  The smile disappeared when she saw that Jerry and I were alone.

  “Where is she?” she asked. “Tell me she’s with you—tell me she’s all right.”

  Even through broken teeth and a wad of cotton packing, it was the beautiful, musical voice I remembered. She peered over our shoulders as though Gabrielle might be hiding behind us or dawdling in the hallway. Jerry bit his lip and almost imperceptibly shook his head. Annie’s face sagged, gray and emptied out. I could almost feel the frustration radiating off her, the impotent rage that she’d gotten hurt, and that the people she’d left behind to take care of things in her absence had completely and utterly failed her. Maybe Jerry was right when he’d said that I didn’t know my sister anymore, but I knew what she was thinking at that moment.

  “You let them take her,” she said finally.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing the words weren’t enough. I could barely look at her.

  “Alice, it’s not your fault,” Jerry said.

  “I know it’s not her fault,” Annie said icily. “Of course it’s not her fault.”

  Jerry flinched, and angry as I was with him, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pity.

  “Annie, she’s alive. And you are, too,” Jerry said. “And Alice is here.”

  I hung back behind Jerry, like a shy child being introduced to a roomful of strangers. My mother was the one who finally broke the ice, patting a spot on the bed and saying, “Alice, come here. Let me see my girls together.”

  I went, feeling grateful for her permission to approach.

  “My two brave little girls,” she said, and her eyes filled up with tears as she took our hands.

  “Mother, please don’t,” Annie said, recoiling from her touch. “Not now.”

  Cassie hadn’t spoken since Jerry and I arrived, and as what should have been our happy family reunion dissolved into bickering and blame, she’d retreated to a corner. Still, when Annie snapped at our mother, Cassie stepped forward and sat down in the chair next to her, good as her word. Watching the way my mother sat there, nervously touching her face, playing with her jewelry, and looking very much in need of a drink, I was glad she’d had Cassie there to look out for her.

  Meanwhile, Annie had turned her wrath back on Jerry. “What were you thinking, dragging Alice into this?”

  Jerry opened his mouth to explain, then thought better of it and sat with a hangdog expression on his face.

  “You lose Gabrielle, you put Alice in all kinds of danger. What was she doing anywhere near Conrad? If I’d been there, it would all be over by now. Gabrielle would be safe; Alice would have been spared all of this.”

  Spared. I would have been spared.

  Spared knowing that any of it had ever happened, what my sister did and how much she risked and how brave she was. I’d be exactly where I’d been for the past four years—nowhere near her life. And apparently, that was what she would have preferred.

  “You have no idea how lucky you are to be alive, Alice,” she said. “How did you even get involved in this?”

  I bristled. What did she mean, how did I get involved?

  “You had a picture of me in your shoe. What did you think I’d do when the hospital called?”

  Annie shook her head, one hand pressed tight to her mouth.

  “Oh, Alice, that’s not what I meant to happen at all.”

  It struck me all at once and harder than any fist. It was so obvious, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it before. When Annie had gone to the park that night, she’d known she was in danger. It’d probably occurred to her that the whole thing could be a setup, and if that had been the case…

  She hadn’t put that phone number in her shoe because she’d expected to end up in a coma. She’d expected to save Gabrielle or die trying.

  Either way, she had never intended to see me again.

  If Annie had known me at all, maybe what I did wouldn’t have surprised her. But of course she didn’t. She knew a twelve-year-old kid who loved puzzles and followed her big sister around like a devoted puppy. And yet, how could she not know me? How could she expect to find me just the way she’d left me?

  “I’m sorry, Alice. I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Sorry you stayed away, I wondered, or sorry you came back?

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to dwell long on that question, because at that moment, my new friend Amos Carey from the Los Angeles Herald burst into the room.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said to me, before turning around and registering the battered girl and the silence that hung in the air heavy as summer smog and twice as combustible. “Sorry if I’m interrupting something.”

  “Not at all,” Cassie said. I think we were all grateful for an interruption right about then.

  “I just got back from downtown. The evening editions are out, and Conrad’s picture is on the cover of every one. The police are going to arrest him any minute now. I thought you all might want to be there to see it.”

  Over the years, I’d thought a lot about what it would be like to talk to my sister again. In my imagination, I would go to visit her in a cute stucco cottage in the Valley. We would make lemonade from lemons that grew in her yard and have a merry conversation that sparkled like sunshine on glass, and at the end of it, she’d invite me to come live with her. I knew it was a fantasy, but I’d never guessed it would be quite so far from the reality.

  The room emptied out. Cassie went with Amos Carey when he left to take up his post outside Conrad’s room. My mother excused herself to call our family’s attorney. Amos had filled her ear with the kinds of stories my father was telling down at the Hollywood precinct, and by the time he was done, her face had turned chalk white.

  “He’s trying to do the right thing,” she said, apologizing on behalf of her unhinged spouse. “If only he’d thought to try that a few years sooner.”

  I didn’t see Jerry leave. One minute he was there, wordlessly absorbing Annie’s anger and disappointment, and then he wasn’t.

  And then, it was just Annie and me. I was still sitting on the corner of her bed. I didn’t feel like I belonged there, but I couldn’t bear to leave, either.

  “Conrad didn’t…hurt you, did he?” she asked.

  I gestured to my face. “You mean besides this?”

  Annie frowned. “You know exactly what I mean.”

  Of course I knew. I looked away, ashamed at having been flippant about something so awful.

  “No,” I said.

  Annie fell back against her pillow and let out a long sigh, as though asking had sapped the rest of her energy.

  “I know about Conrad, what he did to you….” I said, still unable to meet her eyes.

  Annie cut me off with a wave of her hand. “I wish you didn’t. It was a long time ago, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Damn it, Alice, none of this is your fault. Stop apologizing.”

  I flinched at her words and clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from apologizing yet again. For a while, we sat, me staring at my hands, her out the window.

  Finally, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that I never wanted you to know. Some people, once they find out, that’s the only thing about me they can see. Some just want the details. They want to know all about how it happened. And then my favorites are the ones who want to know what I did to deserve it.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault,” I said.

  “That thought helps far less than you’d think,
” she said.

  “It’s not the only thing about you I see,” I said.

  Annie smiled. “That helps a little bit more.”

  She closed her eyes, and for a minute or two, I thought she’d fallen asleep. But then she opened them again and murmured, “How was Gabrielle? Was she okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t see her after she talked to the police.”

  “You mean after they took her.”

  “I was asleep.”

  She touched my hand and said, “I know it’s not your fault, Alice.”

  Since she’d woken up, she’d asked about Gabrielle three times, and she and I hadn’t even said hello. Maybe she sensed what I was thinking because she cocked her head to the side and studied my face for almost a full minute.

  “It’s strange,” she said. “You’re all grown up now. Just like I remember you, only…”

  I wondered what word she was searching for. There were so many ways I wasn’t the girl she knew four years ago. Four years ago, I ran everywhere I went because I was always excited to get there. I had been known to wear jumpers and shirts with puffy cap sleeves, often at the same time. I smiled more then.

  “Older,” she said at last.

  “Older?” I repeated, certain it would have been something more. Or at least something else.

  “Well, you are. You’re old.”

  “You’re older,” I shot back like I was twelve again. “You’re an adult.”

  “I’m not even twenty yet. I’m a baby.”

  She gave me a little grin and tapped the end of my nose with her fingertip, a gesture I would have found annoying coming from anyone else.

  “So, the way I hear it, my clever little sis figured everything out. Found the girl. Found enough evidence to put Conrad and Rex away for a long time. Is that about right?”

  “It was Jerry,” I said. “Until he showed up at County Hospital to see you, I didn’t know what to do.”

  “But he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without you,” she said.

  I should have felt proud, but instead, I thought I might cry. I knew I wasn’t clever. Annie had to know it, too. She knew what had happened. I’d bungled so much, made so many bad decisions.