Graveland: A Novel

by Alan Glynn

  “Oh.” Flicker of insecurity, standard issue. “And?”

  She gives it to him straight—largely positive, one or two things she’s not sold on, one or two editorial suggestions. But her most enthusiastic comments she saves for last. The closing section of the book, she tells him, is fantastic, an absolute bombshell of a thing. She quizzes him for a few minutes on his methods, how and where he managed to dig up this material and how confident he would be about defending it.

  Completely, he says. The ironic thing is that Vaughan’s subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to sabotage the project effectively drove it underground, causing a shift in focus, and steering Jimmy’s gaze ever deeper into the past—so that instead of trying to research and interview contemporaries of Vaughan’s, he ended up bunkering down in various basement libraries and trawling through, for the most part, old newspaper archives.

  They then discuss the killing of Craig Howley and all the publicity surrounding it, but Jimmy guesses that for most publishers the link with Vaughan and his family history would still be too tenuous to justify acquiring the book and putting it out there. Vaughan really needs to stick his head above the parapet, Jimmy says, and that’s pretty unlikely at this stage.

  But he’s fine with it.

  The relief of getting the book finished has been liberating, and he’s looking forward to moving on.

  “Okay,” Ellen says, “but you’re not giving up, right?”

  “No. Certainly not. The way I see it, you know … it’s a long game.”

  Yeah, Ellen thinks, as she’s putting the phone down a few moments later, you can say that again.

  * * *

  “Can I make another call?”

  His first one, last night, at Central Booking, was to Deb. Not to apologize exactly, or even to explain, it was just to connect. And he has to give Deb her due, she let him. After the initial shock, she didn’t launch into an attack or go off on a rant or anything. In fact, she spent most of the time trying to persuade him to let Lloyd bring in a partner from the law firm to represent him.

  Seymour Collins. Here now in the cell.

  “Yeah,” he says, “we can arrange that. Who to?”

  Collins is businesslike, very direct, no bullshit. He’s mid-fifties, well fed, well dressed, well groomed, but he clearly knows what he’s doing, knows his way around the system, and talks everyone’s language. At the arraignment this morning, even though he must have known it wouldn’t be granted, he made very convincing arguments for bail. When the judge then ordered that Frank be transferred to Rikers Island for his pretrial detention period, Collins successfully argued that given the high-profile nature of the crime his client should at least be granted protective custody.

  Which means that Frank is being kept in the West Facility and away from the prison’s general population.

  So again, thank fuck for Lloyd.

  But as for who Frank wants to call? Well, Collins has just spent the last hour telling him about what’s in the papers today and what’s being said about him on TV and online. Frank Bishop, domestic terrorist, sick ideologue … epic fuckup as a father, epic fail as a man. Can’t even hold down a shitty job in retail. If this guy doesn’t plead insanity, one blogger wrote, then he’s obviously insane. Now, while one part of Frank agrees with all of this, and wholeheartedly, another part doesn’t—the same part that insisted on entering a plea of not guilty at the arraignment. That’s the position he’s taking. He’s prepared to admit that he shot and killed Craig Howley, but not that he’s guilty. This is why he’s being kept on remand, and why there’s going to be a trial, and why—given the nature of the coverage—he’s going to need an ally, someone to tell his side of the story.

  “Ellen Dorsey,” he says.

  Collins does a double take. “The journalist?”

  “Yes.”

  Frank has no real reason to trust Ellen Dorsey. But he has no reason to distrust her either. All he has to go on is his instincts.

  “You sure that’s a good idea, Frank? I think maybe you ought to let—”

  “No. Believe me, it’s a good idea.”

  Actually, what Frank isn’t sure of right now is how long Seymour Collins might want to stick around. Because who knows, for a firm like Pierson Hackler this whole thing could very easily turn into a PR nightmare. Deb’s initial impulse to help could become a liability. They could lose clients.

  But something tells Frank that with Ellen Dorsey it’ll be different, that she’s just too fucking stubborn to turn her back on this, and that consequently any chance of a fair hearing in the media lies with her. And he means a fair hearing not just for himself—maybe not even for himself at all, in fact—but for Lizzie. Because really, that’s what he wants to see, something written about her that’s honest and that tries to make sense of what happened without resorting to lies and hysteria.

  “How well do you know this person? Can you trust her?”

  This person.

  He and Ellen drove down from Atherton together. A week later they sat in a diner for about an hour. They’ve spoken briefly a couple of times since. It’s not much—but not much is all he’s got left.

  “Yes, I can.”

  Collins paces back and forth. The cell isn’t very big. “Okay, so what do you have in mind?”

  Frank explains. He keeps it simple. The idea is to enlist the support of someone with a bit of integrity who can set the record straight.

  Can’t hurt, can it?

  “Very well,” Collins says. “Be careful what you say, though. The call will be recorded.”

  A while later, as Frank is being escorted to where the phones are in the recreation area, he wonders what he really meant when he used the phrase set the record straight.

  Because Lizzie was involved in two murders.

  And he carried out a third.

  What could be straighter than that? All the rest is noise, and will soon be forgotten.

  Just like he’ll soon be forgotten.

  And this is a thought that occurs to him now with clockwork regularity. It’s like a new heartbeat, dull, thudding, relentless. Prison is all he will know for the rest of his life—damp walls like these, and awful smells, and shitty food, and restricted access to everything, and constant, gnawing fear. He’ll never again make eye contact with that Asian woman who works at the Walgreens, never again experience that frisson of excitement as a possible future opens up before him.

  Never be free of self-pity, either.

  The guard escorting him indicates which phone Frank should use. He goes to it, picks it up, and huddles in.

  This is potentially something, though, isn’t it? A chance to talk, to remember, to put it all down for posterity.

  A link with the past, a link with the future.

  He has Ellen’s number written on a piece of paper. He punches it out, and waits.

  * * *

  Thursday is Vaughan’s first day in a month without this new medication. He took the last pill yesterday, and spent a good part of the morning walking in Central Park and most of the afternoon sorting through some old archives. But his irritation at not being able to contact Arnie Tisch—who has apparently been transferred, or has had himself transferred, to Eiben’s main office in Beijing—is mitigated slightly by a determination not to let himself be ruled by this.

  It’s only a stupid pill, after all.

  He’s James Vaughan.

  But he’s not giving up on it, either. If he has to, he’ll go straight to Paul Blanford, Eiben’s CEO, and find some way to scare the living daylights out of him. Because what’s the big deal? It’s not like they’re conducting illegal clinical trials in some third-world hellhole and are afraid of getting caught. He’s volunteering to take it. You’d think they’d be happy to get the feedback.

  By ten o’clock, however, and despite his determination to brave it out, Vaughan has to admit that he’s feeling pretty lousy. Energy levels are noticeably down on recent days, and all of a sudden he’s aware, as he hasn’
t been for ages, of various bodily aches and pains.

  And he’s not doing anything, apart from shuffling aimlessly around the apartment. He doesn’t want to panic, though, so he makes a real effort to engage. He goes into his study and sits at his desk. He places a call to Paul Blanford. After a few moments, he’s informed that Mr. Blanford is unavailable. Wheezing a little now, suppressing a cough, he just about stops himself from barking Do you know who I am? into the phone. What he does say is that it’s imperative Mr. Blanford gets back to him.

  Then, feeling a bit sick, he goes in search of Meredith.

  He finds her, as he does most days now, sitting at the counter in the kitchen, drinking either coffee or a soda and staring up at live coverage of the Connie Carillo murder trial on the wall-mounted TV. Sometimes Mrs. R is around, sometimes not. Today she’s not, and Mer is alone, in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, hunched forward over the counter, can of soda next to the remote.

  It all seems to have become a little obsessive of late.

  Vaughan doesn’t say anything. He just stands in the doorway—watching her, then watching the TV for a bit, alternating between the two, in a sort of daze himself.

  Mrs. Sanchez is still on the stand, and Ray Whitestone is continuing the very thorough and forensic dissection of the housekeeper’s cleaning regimen that he began yesterday. Vaughan read about it online earlier this morning, how jury members had been shown a selection of cleaning solvents taken from the kitchen of the Park Avenue apartment, and had then been treated to detailed readings from their labels. Whitestone argued that the presence of one product in particular, Erodon 10, a highly unusual and industrial-strength cleaning solvent, was inconsistent with the defense counsel’s claim that Mrs. Sanchez was scrupulous in regard to safety. No one seems to know where this is going, and Judge Roberts hasn’t shown any inclination to intervene.

  Unbelievably, Whitestone is still chiseling away at the same point this morning.

  “Mrs. Sanchez,” he’s saying, “is it not true that Erodon 10 is a singularly inappropriate substance to use in an everyday domestic setting?”

  “Objection, leading.”

  “Overruled.”

  “Mrs. Sanchez?”

  “Yes, normally. I suppose.”

  “And yet you had it there, under the sink, in among the washing powders and grease-stain removers?”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  “Mrs. Sanchez, are you aware that Erodon 10 is used in heavy industry, and that it is even used by the military?”

  She pauses, obviously irritated by the line of questioning. “No, sir.”

  Vaughan looks at Meredith. She is engrossed, mesmerized.

  “So you are not aware that it is essentially a commercial by-product of a chemical weapons R&D program?”

  “Objection.”

  “Mr. Whitestone?”

  “Bear with me, Your Honor.”

  Judge Roberts exhales, waves him on.

  “Mrs. Sanchez, did you never once read the safety warnings on the label?”

  “Yes, I did, but if I could—”

  “So despite the alarming nature of those warnings, as we saw here yesterday, you saw fit to keep a container of the stuff in the defendant’s kitchen?”

  “I had—”

  “Mrs. Sanchez, please, you must answer the question. Did you consider it appropriate to keep a container of Erodon 10 in an ordinary domestic setting? Yes or no?”

  Mrs. Sanchez rolls her eyes. She hesitates, sighs, seems to be looking for a way out.

  “Mrs. Sanchez, did you consider it appropriate?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. May we ask why?”

  “Why? You want to know why?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Sanchez.”

  She leans forward in the box, clearly agitated now. “Because of Mr. Meeker’s girlfriend, that’s why, she kept spilling her stupid cherry soda—”

  The courtroom erupts.

  “—it was that Dr. something, diet cherry, and I don’t know how many times she spilt it on the kitchen floor, on the tiles, and nothing gets that stuff out, nothing, believe me, I’ve tried—”

  The defense counsel jumps to his feet. “Mrs. Sanchez!”

  “—then someone told me about this Erodon 10,” she goes on, “that it was good for getting out tough stains, but without damaging the tiles, because you know with terra-cotta—”

  “Mrs. Sanchez, please.”

  Judge Roberts calls for order.

  “—because you have to…” She is looking around now, obviously bewildered by the reaction. “… you have to be careful…”

  With the commotion continuing in the courtroom, Vaughan turns, as though in a dream, and looks at Meredith. She is leaning back from the counter now, her mouth open in shock. She raises a hand to cover it. “Oh my God,” she whispers—it’s just about audible—and then turns in Vaughan’s direction.

  Their eyes meet.

  A wave of exhaustion washes over him. He’s confused, but also suddenly quite focused.

  Meredith shakes her head, and then, slowly, they both look down at the counter, and at the can of soda in front of Meredith.

  It’s the one she always drinks, the one that anyone who knows her knows she drinks.

  It’s Dr. Thurston’s Diet Cherry Cola.

  * * *

  The word she’s seeing most is frenzy—as in “media frenzy” or “frenzy of speculation.” Because everyone is asking the same question. Who is she? Who is Howard Meeker’s quote unquote girlfriend?

  “Please tell us,” one blogger writes, “because we gots to know…”

  On the train back from Atherton, Ellen has just put away her notes and taken out her phone. And it’s all over Twitter—this first serving of real drama in the Carillo murder trial. Mrs. Sanchez is trending, Ray Whitestone is trending, #mysterygirlfriend is trending.

  Ellen checks a couple of news sites to get the lowdown. It seems that Whitestone’s laborious and painstaking technique of intense engagement followed by sudden deflection has paid off, providing the trial with something it has conspicuously lacked up to now, a motive.

  She watches a clip of a panel discussion on MSNBC. The studio backdrop is a graphic depicting the scales of justice superimposed on a photo-montage of Salome’s veils, the Dow Jones logo, and a dead fish wrapped in newspapers.

  “Yes,” one of the panelists is saying, “we now have a motive, and it appears to be sexual jealousy.”

  “Which, of course,” another panelist says, “is quite in keeping with the operatic dimensions of this whole case.”

  “Indeed. But who is this other woman? The only thing we know about her is that she drinks some kind of … diet soda.”

  “And appears to be a little clumsy.”

  This prompts a laugh.

  “We’re also getting reports in that Mildred Sanchez is now claiming she doesn’t know who the girlfriend is, or at least doesn’t know her by name, but that this person was a frequent visitor to the apartment, especially when Connie was away on tour.”

  “And now the hunt is on to find her.”

  “Extraordinary. An absolutely extraordinary development in court today.”

  They then show the relevant exchange.

  And it is extraordinary.

  But how many times, Ellen wonders, will they be rerunning it in the coming days and weeks?

  She puts her phone away, leans back, and gazes out the window, pondering the extraordinary development there has been in her own circumstances.

  The call on Tuesday from Frank Bishop came as a real surprise, but when he made his proposal she didn’t hesitate for a second. Because it all seemed to make sense now. She was no longer racing against the clock to crack a story that kept getting ahead of her. The story was already there, and she was being given the chance to tell it, comprehensively and more or less from the inside. When she got off the phone with Frank, she called Max, and they worked out a strategy right there and then—three parts over three month
s, once the trial was out of the way.

  Ellen got on the case without delay by going through all of her notes. She then took the train up to Atherton College to reestablish some of the contacts she’d made first time around, and to make a few new ones. She stayed until this morning so she could interview as many people as possible.

  Traveling back this afternoon, she feels energized, her head brimming with ideas on how to approach this. From Penn Station she takes an A train uptown, but instead of going straight home she decides to stop off at Flannery’s first for a quiet drink.

  Settled at the bar, one beer in, she looks up and sees Charlie approaching.

  “Hey, Ellen.” He takes the stool next to her. “You been following it, right? Please tell me you’ve been following it.”

  “Carillo? Not exactly.” She plays with her phone, twirling it slowly on the bar. “I’ve been working. I heard, though.”

  “Something else, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, the mystery girlfriend. You couldn’t make it up.”

  Charlie rears back. “What? You’re behind the curve, sweetheart. Mystery’s been solved.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, things are moving pretty fast. Someone squealed, apparently, about an hour ago. On Twitter. Of course. And now it’s everywhere.”

  “Oh.” She takes a sip from her glass. “So who’s the little charmer?”

  Charlie catches the barman’s eye and orders a drink. He turns back. “Who is it? Well, her name is Meredith Vaughan. Seems she’s married to some much older—”

  Ellen’s jaw drops.

  Charlie looks at her. “What?”

  “Meredith Vaughan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy shit.”

  She slides off the stool, simultaneously grabbing her phone from the bar.

  “What? Ellen. Jesus.”

  “Give me two minutes, Charlie.”

  She heads for the door, moving quickly, phone held up in front of her, looking for Jimmy Gilroy’s number.

  Outside, there is a warmth in the late-afternoon air, a sort of thickening.

  “Hi, Ellen.”

  She feels excited.

  “Have you heard?”

  “Meredith? Yeah. It’s just unbelievable. The whole thing has ignited. I’m online right now, and one of the questions people are asking is, who is James Vaughan? It’s like … it’s…”