Room for Doubt

by Nancy Cole Silverman

  “It’s going to be fine, Carol.” Sheri hugged me, her cool cheek bussed my own. “And if you need help, call my cell. I’ll be in the car, waiting for the all-clear.”

  Earlier Sheri and I had agreed that if things didn’t go as expected, if Chase got wise to my plan, or DJ failed to show, I would call her cell for backup. Exactly what that might be I didn’t know, but Sheri was prepared to wing it. Worst-case scenario, if Chase got to be a problem, Sheri thought she might be able to reroute him while I took care of Sally. And if DJ failed to show, Sheri said she felt certain between the two of us, we could get Sally back to Sheri’s car. And, should we need to, Sheri could accommodate Sally as a houseguest until we could come up with a more permanent solution.

  I took my cell from my bag and called Chase. Time to rock and roll. “Where are you?”

  “Just pulling into the parking lot.”

  “Good. I’ll meet you at the park entrance.” I stood up and started to walk. “One small hitch, though.”

  I explained the party tent and how I had been forced to move our meet beyond the tent and closer to the cliffs.”

  “Sexy.”

  “Stop.” I felt my heart skip a beat and looked up at the sky. I just needed to get through the night.

  “You’d prefer I say, all the easier for you to push me off the cliff?”

  “That’s not going to happen.” I started walking again.

  “Just a bit of gallows humor, Carol. Don’t take it so seriously. We’ll be fine.”

  I spotted Chase’s black SUV as he entered the parking lot. He waved to me as he passed beneath a streetlight and parked the car. I bit back a smile. Much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was attracted to Chase. I couldn’t explain it. Sheri would have summed it up as primal, strictly a physical attraction. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to let the cool night air or a full moon complicate my mission. I had too much at stake. I needed to play Sally’s kidnapping through to the end without any distractions. Besides, when this was all over, it was unlikely Chase would ever want to talk to me again.

  I had just about convinced myself I could separate my feelings of attraction from my professional responsibilities when Chase got out of the car. He was dressed in black jeans and a leather jacket. The moonlight reflected his shadow off the wet pavement like some key light in a dark noir movie. Dammit, Chase, why couldn’t you just smoke or chew tobacco or something awful like that. Why did he have to look so damn sexy?

  “I like the hair.” Chase touched the wig and smiled. “Kind of cute in a waif-like sort of way.”

  I put my hand on my head, suddenly self-conscious of the short curls around the base of my neck. I’d forgotten to tell Chase I had intended to disguise my identity.

  “It was Sheri’s idea. She thought it’d be better if I looked less like myself and more like a woman on the run.”

  “Humph.” Chase stood back, his eyes scanning me up and down. “Not bad.”

  I batted his shoulder with the palm of my hand, then turned and started into the park. He followed.

  “Nervous?” He asked.

  “Maybe.” My thin windbreaker was doing nothing for the cool night air. I felt a chill run down my back. “I’ve never kidnapped anyone before. Have you?”

  “I try not to make a habit of it.” He winked and took a sucker from inside his pocket and put it in his mouth.

  “You’re sure you want to do this, Chase?”

  “What’s happening?” Chase stopped walking and took the sucker out of his mouth. “You doubting yourself?”

  “No. It’s just I’ve been thinking. You know the cops, or some cops anyway, have been covering this up for ages. And whistleblowers, Chase, they aren’t popular. You bust this case wide open, and it may not come down as you hope.”

  “What are you? A vigilante now? I thought you were all about uncovering the truth.”

  “I was…I mean, I am. It’s just, in my mind, there’s room for doubt. Maybe some things are best left alone.”

  Chase put his hands on my shoulders and bowed his head to mine, his blue-gray eyes staring straight into my own. “Trust me, Carol. That’s not going to happen. Now, why don’t you show me to this picnic area where Jennifer and Jason are supposed to be hanging out.”

  Rather than brush his hand off my shoulder, I let him put his arm around me as I led the way to the big tree. I told myself if Mustang Sally were watching I needed to make it look real. But it felt good.

  “Right,” I said. “And to that point, I brought refreshments. Misty insisted I bring some of your favorite tea. Something to keep us warm while we wait.”

  In my hands, I had Charlie’s small insulated lunchbox he used for school. I clung to it like a security blanket. Inside were two small thermoses, one with a red cap, the other with a blue, and a couple of chocolate brownies Sheri had made.

  “Misty, huh?”

  “And Sheri too. She made some of her German chocolate brownies with sea salt, but you’re going to want to drink a lot of tea. They’re pretty salty.”

  I never thought drugging someone would be quite so simple. But that was before I had learned that when it came to food, Chase was pretty much a see-it-and-eat-it type of guy. Once I had pulled Sheri’s sea salt brownies from Charlie’s cooler, my job was half done. Chase did as I expected. He wolfed down the brownies, saying he hadn’t eaten all day long, then swigged down Misty’s tea. Or what he thought was Misty’s tea. Before we had left the house, I ground up the sleeping pill Misty gave me into powder and then blended it into her favorite Sleeping Beauty tea. I poured Chase’s tea into the red-capped thermos and filled the other with black coffee. I’d never been a fan of tea.

  We sat on the bench with our backs up against the picnic table, the ocean behind us. Chase said he wanted to be able to have a full-on view of the park.

  “Like a cop in an Italian restaurant,” he said, “you want your back up against the wall so you can see who comes in and what’s coming at you.”

  I smiled and glanced at my watch. It was almost eight o’clock. Chase yawned.

  “You tired?” I asked.

  “Must be the sea air.” Chase leaned back against the table, his arm around my shoulder. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just…”

  CHAPTER 42

  Chase was out. His eyes closed. His chin resting on his chest. I placed my hand over his heart to check his breathing. Soft and regular, as though he were purring. I wanted to push his dark curly hair away from his face, but I didn’t dare. I couldn’t risk waking him. Gently, I slipped out from beneath his arm and glanced at my watch. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock. In a few minutes, the Korean Bell of Friendship would ring. Hopefully between the pill Misty had given me and her sleepy-tea, the gentle hollow sound would not wake him. I scanned the park.

  People were beginning to emerge from the party tent. Couples and small groups, their arms around each other, wandered over to the cliffs to enjoy the night’s view. Their drunken laughter mixed with the sound of the crashing waves on the sunken city below.

  Then from within the tent, a tall and broad-shouldered image appeared. At this distance, it was difficult to tell if it was a man or a woman. I watched as whoever it was put on a hat, then turned in my direction, and paused. I could feel its eyes upon me. It was as though I were its prey and we were the only two people in the park. I stood up.

  Sally?

  As the image moved forward, I moved closer to it. In the moonlight, I recognized the long knee-length trench coat. It was the same one she had worn the night we met at the university, and then I saw the Burberry scarf wrapped around her neck. Her hands were in her pockets.

  We met halfway between the tent and the picnic table.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said.

  Without a smile or any sign of recognition, she looked over my shoulder and nodded in the direction of Chase. “That
Jason?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s wrong with him? He drunk?” Her voice was raspy.

  “Passed out,” I said.

  Sally started to move towards him. I grabbed her arm, releasing her hand from her pocket.

  “Sally, wait.” In the moonlight, I caught a glint of something silver. I gripped her wrist tight and refused to let go. In her hand, Sally held a small gun. Our eyes met.

  “It’s just a little insurance, Jennifer. You don’t need to worry. I don’t plan to use it. I won’t need to.”

  “Please, we need to talk.” I pulled her closer to me. “Put the gun away and walk with me. He’s not going anywhere.”

  Sally slid the gun back into her pocket. “He’s not going to change, Jennifer. Men like him never do.”

  “I know. I know he’s not.” I tried to sound desperate. I took Sally’s arm beneath my own and, holding it tight, started walking towards the lighthouse. “But I want to know I’m doing the right thing. I wish I felt more certain.”

  “If there were another way, Jennifer, I’d tell you. But there’s not.”

  “It’s just…I’m confused.”

  I dropped Sally’s arm and walked on ahead in silence. On my left side, lining the pathway, were a series of short concrete barriers, about two feet in height. Beyond them the cliff, jagged and unstable in appearance, and beneath it the sunken city. Yellow caution signs warned hikers of the danger. I stopped and stared out at the water.

  “Do you believe in forgiveness?” I glanced back over my shoulder at Sally. She stood stoically, her arms crossed, staring out at the sea. “Because I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive myself if I do this.”

  “I believe in justice, Jennifer. For the victims.” She stepped forward until she was standing next to me.

  “And the men? You never questioned what you were doing?” I turned to Sally, she stood motionless, staring out at the inky black water, the look in her eyes distant. Suddenly they snapped back at me. Cold and calculating.

  “I don’t think about the men. I think about the women, Jennifer. Like you, they were all abused. Stalked and tortured like animals. Terrorized. Their lives ruined. These men were never going to stop hunting them. The cops couldn’t stop them. But I could.”

  “How did you know you’d get away with it?”

  “Because we always do.”

  “We? You mean you your tribunal.”

  “And my son. At least up until recently.”

  Sally stared up at the night sky. In the moonlight, I could see tears forming in the back of her eyes. If I was going for a confession, this was everything I needed. But I stalled. I had a few more minutes before I dared head towards the other side of the lighthouse where DJ would meet us.

  “Your son?” I asked.

  “He was as much a victim as I was. Maybe worse. Brain damaged. Because I didn’t escape soon enough. It was all my fault. But he’s dead now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault. It’s passed, and I make it better knowing I can make a difference.”

  “But how? You’re here alone. Your tribunal’s frightened of being discovered. You told me so yourself that night at the university. You said they’re frightened you’ve gone too far. Spoken out too often. And now it’s just you. Maybe it’s time to stop, Sally.”

  “I can’t stop. I’ll never stop. Besides, I have you now. You’ll help me.”

  “No. No, Sally, I can’t do this.”

  “Yes, you can, dear. It’ll be over in a minute.” Sally put her arm around my shoulder and whispered in my ear. “The man’s passed out drunk, Jennifer. It’ll be easy. All we have to do is walk him to the edge of the cliff and give him a little shove. And poof.” With her free hand, she opened her fingers out to the ocean. “Just like that, he’ll be gone. Forever.”

  I pulled away. Sally was insane. I could see it. Her eyes were wide and glazed with excitement.

  “And what about the police, Sally? What if they don’t think it was a suicide?”

  “The police?” Sally laughed and reached into her pocket. My eyes glued to her hand, fearful she might take out the gun again and force me to go back with her to find Chase. She read the look on my face and smiled. “Don’t worry, dear, they’ll know because of this.” In her hand, Sally held out a small red ball. “It’s a clown’s nose. A marker. We place it on the body. The cops know what it is. Or certain cops, anyway. When they find it, the powers that be within the department find a way to record the death as a suicide.”

  “How? How do you know this?”

  “You’re surprised?”

  “Yes.” I grabbed her hands and held them in my own, staring at the red clown’s nose.

  “It was the cops who suggested it. Back when I was fearful for my life and my son’s, a detective told me if my husband was to meet with an accident, nobody would be the wiser. The detective was the one who suggested the clown’s nose. He gave it to me. I think he was looking for something, anything, that might give me confidence. The clown’s nose was probably just a coincidence. Could have been anything. He told he had recently been to the circus and was going to give it to his nephew. He thought it might serve me better. All I had to do was put it on my husband’s body, and it’d be a signal. I wouldn’t have to worry about being found out.”

  “So you murdered your husband and left the clown’s nose with his body and nobody was the wiser?”

  “When the cops find a body and the death isn’t immediately obvious, it’s usually reported as suspicious circumstances. That is until the coroner rules on the cause of death. The detective set it up so that when they passed on a body with a red clown’s nose to the coroner, he’d automatically rule the cause of death a suicide. I didn’t ask any more about it. It became our little secret.”

  “And this detective? You remember his name?”

  “I’ll never forget him. His name was Detective Riley. I’m afraid the whole business haunted him. In the end, it was eating away at him.”

  Riley? I turned my face away and stared out at the ocean. I didn’t want Sally to see the recognition of Riley’s name on my face. “You kept in touch?”

  “Not often. But when a case came up he thought I might find interesting, he’d reach out to me.”

  “How? It’s not like it’s easy to call you.”

  Sally laughed. “That’s right, you’re a modern young woman, aren’t you. We did it the old-fashioned way. I carried a beeper. When he wanted me, he beeped me, and I called him.”

  Sally started walking again. Not much farther and we’d be on the other side of the lighthouse, close to where I had instructed DJ to meet us.

  “Are you trying to tell me the cops helped you choose your victims?”

  “Victims isn’t the term I’d use. The victims, Jennifer, are you and me. Not the men we’ve murdered. The cops simply aided me in finding the women who needed my help and had nowhere else to turn. That’s why I started the Butterflies. Once I was free of my husband, I felt empowered, and I wanted to help other women do the same.”

  “But you couldn’t have killed them all.”

  “Goodness, no. I didn’t need to. Most of the women just needed counseling, and there are women on my site who do just that. Nothing more. In fact, those who didn’t qualify—who weren’t stalked by serial abusers—don’t even know about the other half of it. It’s safer that way. But for those who were, I formed my tribunal.”

  “And all this time the cops never interfered?”

  “The cops knew exactly what we were doing. In a sense, we were all working the same cases, but from different sides. In most instances, the cops had given up. What could they do beyond issuing a restraining order or court-ordered anger management classes? And the man’s family, who you’d think would do something if they knew what was happening, seldom pulled through
. In truth, the women are frequently too frightened to say anything to family or friends for fear of what might happen to them or their loved ones. Once my tribunal and I found a woman willing to leave but who couldn’t, we would simply fix the situation for her. Permanently.”

  “And you always made it look like an accident or suicide?”

  “There’re lots of ways to kill someone, Jennifer. Most are easy. But some were more sensational than others.” Sally tucked my arm beneath hers, and we kept walking. “We did one where the tabloids thought the man had been abducted by space aliens. And another killed by wild wolves, or I think the story said a chupacabra.” She stopped and patted my wrist. “Really, who’d believe such a thing?”

  I closed my eyes. I remembered the headlines. Tyler had shared them with me the night of Charlie’s party. Each of the murders more ghoulish than the next. Sally put her hands back in her pockets and stared out at the ocean.

  “I think those two were some of our better work. Truth was, the alien story about the body being dumped from a space ship was nothing more than sensationalism. Probably ’cause the man had just come from some type of space convention, and the tabloids picked it up and ran with it. It worked in our favor, though, fabulously.” Sally laughed, glanced over at me then back out at the inky black horizon.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing he didn’t deserve. We ran him down. Burned him a couple times with the tailpipe of the car, but aliens…aliens never touched him.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself and glanced down at my watch. I needed a few more minutes before we proceeded down the path to the other side of the lighthouse.

  “It sounds awful, Sally, I don’t think—”

  “Awful? Awful is what he did to his girlfriend, Jennifer. Burning her. Threatening to run her over. We used the same method to kill him that he had used to terrorize her. You want to know what he did to her? He dropped her off on a lonely road one night in the middle of nowhere. Then followed her. Bumping her with the car’s fender and burning her with the tailpipe if she didn’t move fast enough. Believe me, what we did was all very justifiable. We made the punishment fit the crime. Appropriate, don’t you think?”