Charley's Web

by Joy Fielding

  “What did Jill do then?”

  Gary shrugged. “Laughed. Said she’d never liked cats. I swear, that’s what she said. She’d never liked cats.”

  “Was that the end of your relationship with her?”

  “Pretty much. I mean, we kept seeing each other off and on. Hey, I’m not proud of it, but it’s just hard to let go when the sex is so good. But it was never really the same. That’s when she started baby-sitting pretty much every weekend. And I kind of had suspicions she was seeing somebody else.”

  “Any idea who it was?”

  “Not a clue. Except I don’t think it was a local guy. I think I would have heard about it if it was.”

  “When was the last time you saw Jill?”

  “At her trial. We done yet?”

  Charley reached over and turned off the recorder. “Can I call you if I think of any more questions?”

  Gary pushed the brochures across the table. “Only if they concern shower doors and bathroom tiles.” With that, he popped another cookie into his mouth and walked from the room.

  The flowers—a beautiful arrangement of pink roses and white daisies—arrived at exactly twelve o’clock noon. Are you free tomorrow night? the card read. Signed, Alex.

  “What do you have in mind?” Charley asked, balancing the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she filled a tall vase with water.

  “How’s dinner at Taboo sound?”

  “Sounds great. The kids are with their fathers this weekend, so you can pack a toothbrush, if you’d like.”

  “Consider it packed,” Alex said immediately.

  “The flowers are extraordinary.”

  “Last night was extraordinary.”

  Charley felt herself actually blushing. “It was pretty amazing,” she agreed.

  “What time will you get home from seeing Jill tomorrow?”

  “About five. Thanks for getting me the extra time with her.”

  “No thanks necessary. How about I pick you up at seven thirty?”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “See you tomorrow night.”

  “Bye.” Charley arranged the flowers in the vase and carried them into the living room. It was only when she caught her reflection in the living room window that she realized she was smiling from ear to ear.

  CHAPTER 25

  Jill was frowning when she walked into the interview room. “You’re late.”

  “I got held up in traffic.” Charley glanced at the fistful of papers in Jill’s hand. “There was all this construction I wasn’t expecting.”

  “You should have left your house earlier.”

  “I wasn’t at home. Are those papers for me?”

  Jill held firmly to the crumpled sheets. “Maybe.” She slid into the chair across from Charley, her lips a pout, clearly not ready to forgive Charley for being ten minutes late.

  “I’m really sorry, Jill. It won’t happen again.”

  Tears formed in Jill’s eyes, a few falling the length of her cheeks. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming, that you were mad at me about something.”

  “What would I be mad about?”

  “I don’t know. Where were you anyway?”

  “In Dania.”

  Jill’s eyes widened. “You went back to talk to Pam?”

  “No. I went to see Susan Nicholson.”

  “Who?”

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell?”

  “Should it?”

  “Apparently you broke her nose a few years back.”

  A slow smile crept into the corners of Jill’s mouth. The tears disappeared from her eyes. “Susan Nicholson. God, I’d forgotten all about her.”

  “She hasn’t forgotten you.”

  “I’ll bet. How’s her nose looking these days?”

  “Like somebody broke it in three places.”

  “Yeah, well, she deserved it. You don’t go messing with another woman’s boyfriend.”

  “The way I heard, it was the other way around.”

  “Yeah? Sounds like you’ve been talking to Gary, too.”

  Charley nodded.

  “So he told you about Susan, did he? What else?”

  “He says you put a poisonous snake in Christine Dunlap’s swimming pool.”

  Jill waved aside the accusation impatiently. “He’s full of shit. I never did that. I mean, it’s Florida, for God’s sake. There are snakes. Sometimes they slither into people’s pools. I didn’t have anything to do with that. Stupid jerk.” She slammed the papers she was holding against the desk. “I don’t know what I ever saw in him.”

  “He says he saw you torturing a kitten.”

  “Yeah, he said that on the witness stand, too.”

  “Was it true?”

  “Stupid thing scratched me. I was just trying to get it off me.”

  “By stabbing it?”

  “It worked, didn’t it? Damn thing took off running.”

  Charley pointed to the papers in Jill’s hand. “What’s that?”

  “Some stuff I wrote down.”

  “Looks like a lot.”

  “Sixty pages. I wrote it yesterday.”

  “You wrote sixty pages in one day?”

  “There’s not a whole lot else to do around here.” She released the papers, pushed them toward Charley.

  Charley straightened out the edges, began thumbing through them. They were packed tightly with Jill’s handwritten scrawl.

  “It’s pretty much everything I could remember from my childhood. Stuff I liked, stuff I didn’t. My favorite movie actors, rock stars, models, TV shows. I even rated them. You know—thumbs up, thumbs down. It was kind of fun.”

  Charley removed her tape recorder from her purse, placed the papers carefully inside. “I’ll read these later.”

  “There’s other stuff there, too. Stuff about some of the things that go on in here.”

  “You ever know a guy named Glen McLaren?” Charley asked, recalling the possible connection between Glen and Jill’s brother, Ethan.

  “Glen who?” Jill asked, her shoulders stiffening almost imperceptibly.

  “McLaren.”

  Jill shook her head, stared at the wall behind Charley’s head. “Don’t think so. Who is he?”

  “He owns a couple of clubs. Your brother might know him.”

  “Yeah? I’ll be sure to ask him the next time he comes to visit.” She laughed. “My father was here a couple of days ago. Did you know that?”

  Charley fought to keep the surprise from registering on her face as she snapped the tape recorder on. “No, I didn’t. How’d that go?”

  Jill sank back in her seat, crossed one arm over the other. “Not very well.”

  “Why not?”

  “He doesn’t want me talking to you, doesn’t want me to do this book. Says it’s not good for my mother, that Ethan’s already in a shitload of trouble because of it.”

  Charley said nothing, waited for Jill to continue.

  “I told him it was too late, that I was doing it anyway.”

  “What’d he say to that?”

  “That I’m an ungrateful bitch, that it was a good thing I’m on death row, or he’d kill me himself.”

  “Charming.”

  Jill giggled. “That’s what I should have told him.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I was sorry.” She started to cry. “Can you beat that? I apologized to him!”

  “What for?”

  “For not being the daughter he wanted me to be. For hurting my mother. For embarrassing him. For bringing shame to our family.”

  “He’s not exactly blameless here, Jill.”

  “I know that.”

  “He should be apologizing to you.”

  “I know that, too. Not that he ever will.” She shook her head vehemently, her ponytail slapping against her neck. “What’s your father like?”

  Charley felt her breath catch in her throat, so that she had to push the next words out. “He’s very brilliant.
A scholar. Professor of English literature at Yale. A phenomenal lecturer. Very much in demand.”

  “Not to mention, very demanding,” Jill added, as if she knew.

  “That, too,” Charley agreed.

  “Didn’t you write in one of your columns that the two of you no longer speak to each other?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Why not?”

  “Guess I’m not exactly the daughter he wanted me to be, either.”

  Jill nodded. “Guess we have something in common.”

  “Guess we do.”

  “I think we have a lot in common.”

  “So you’ve said before,” Charley said, recalling Jill’s initial letter.

  “I don’t just mean our bra size,” Jill said. “We both carry around a lot of anger.”

  “You think I’m angry?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Are you?” Charley asked, turning the question around.

  “I asked you first.” Jill sat back in her chair, folded her arms across her chest.

  “I’m not angry.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Charley scoffed. “Why would I lie?”

  “You tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “You’re not angry with your mother for running off and leaving you when you were a little girl? You’re not angry with your father for being a brilliant scholar but a lousy human being? You’re not angry with your sisters for being less talented than you are, but way more famous and successful? You’re not mad at your brother for being a total screw-up? You’re not angry with your neighbors for, I don’t know, whatever it is that neighbors do to piss each other off? You’re not angry with your friends? Wait, I forgot. You don’t have any friends. Why? Because they make you so angry.”

  “Okay, Jill. I think you’ve made your point.”

  Jill laughed. “That’s the problem with writing the kind of column you do, Charley. People learn to read between the lines. That’s where all the good stuff is.”

  Charley nodded, pretended to be checking on the tape recorder when what she was really doing was trying to buy some time, to get her breathing back under control so that she could speak without screaming.

  “The difference between you and me,” Jill continued, “is that you have a positive outlet for all your anger. You have your writing,” she continued before Charley could ask. “You get to vent, to channel all that rage into words. I only discovered that when I started writing to you. I realized how cathartic it is to get that stuff out. Cathartic—is that the right word?”

  Charley nodded.

  “And yesterday, well, I started writing and I just couldn’t stop. The words were pouring out of me like rain. The more I wrote, the better I felt. Maybe if I’d had that kind of outlet, those poor children wouldn’t have had to die.” A fresh flood of tears began spilling from Jill’s eyes.

  Charley reached into her purse, handed Jill a tissue.

  “Thank you.” Jill dabbed at her eyes, although the tears continued to flow unabated. “I’m not a monster, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “I loved those kids.”

  “I know you did.”

  “I never meant for anything bad to happen to them. You have to believe me.”

  “I do.”

  “I never wanted them to die.”

  “What happened, Jill?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Jill began rocking back and forth in her chair.

  “Yes, you do. You do know.”

  “Jack said it was going to be fun. He promised he wouldn’t really hurt Tammy.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He used one of those stun guns on her. What do they call them—Tasers?”

  Charley nodded, unable to speak.

  “It kind of knocked her out. Then we drove out to this deserted old garage. I think it used to be a gas station or something. Tammy was starting to wake up, so Jack put a blindfold over her eyes and tied her hands behind her back. She was crying, saying she wanted to go home. Jack didn’t like that. He said we were just getting started. That’s when he told me….” She broke off.

  “Told you what?” Charley’s voice was a strained whisper.

  “He told me to take her clothes off. I said, no. I didn’t want to.”

  “But you did it,” Charley stated.

  “I had to. It was what Jack wanted.”

  “Then what?”

  “You know. It’s in Tammy’s autopsy report.”

  “You burned her with cigarette butts and penetrated her with a bottle?”

  “I tried to fake it. But Jack was too smart. He wouldn’t let me.”

  “Did you ever think of saying no?”

  Jill looked at Charley as if Charley had completely lost her mind. “I could never do that.”

  “But you could torture a helpless child.”

  “Tammy wasn’t so helpless.”

  “What?”

  “She could have made a run for it. I kept whispering for her to run. But she was such a stubborn little thing. She wouldn’t move. Kept crying at me to take her home. But how could I do that? Jack was standing right there, operating the camera and telling me what to do, like he was this big-shot Hollywood director or something. I told her to stop making such a fuss, but she just kept screaming. I finally had to put that plastic bag over her head to keep her quiet.”

  Charley fought back the impulse to throw up. She sat on her hands to keep from wrapping them around Jill’s neck.

  “You’re disgusted with me. I can see it on your face,” Jill said.

  “It’s not easy listening to this, Jill.”

  “I know that. Just think how hard it was for me at the time.”

  “How hard it was for you?” Charley repeated without inflection.

  “I tried to help Tammy as much as I could,” Jill said. “I made a few pricks in the plastic with my nails, so that she could breathe. But I guess they weren’t big enough. I don’t know. I tried to help her. I really did.”

  “And the Starkey twins?”

  “Double your pleasure,” Jill said, and tried to smile. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was just something Jack used to sing. Double your pleasure, double your fun…. I think it was an old jingle for some chewing gum or something. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it. It was really insensitive of me.”

  “Tell me about the Starkey twins,” Charley said, too numb to say anything else.

  “It was basically the same thing. Times two. Oh, except this time Jack suggested the twins do things to each other. You know…sexually. But they weren’t very good at it, and Jack made me show them how.”

  “This is all on videotape?”

  Jill closed her eyes. “I don’t know what Jack did with those tapes, so there’s no point in asking. I asked him to destroy them, but I don’t think he did.”

  “Who is Jack? Where can we find him?”

  Again, Jill’s eyes filled with tears. “He’s long gone.”

  “Leaving you to take the blame for everything, to rot in jail until your execution,” Charley pointed out, hoping to goad Jill into revealing her former lover’s identity.

  “Can’t come too soon for me,” Jill surprised her by saying.

  “You really want to die?”

  “I deserve it, don’t I? After what I did.”

  “You didn’t do it alone,” Charley said, when what she really wanted to say was, Yes! You deserve to die! I’ll happily pull the switch myself! “Why are you protecting him?”

  “I have no choice.”

  “I don’t understand. What could he possibly do to you now?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  Charley let out a deep breath. She didn’t want to talk about it anymore, either. The truth would come out soon enough. Every time she talked to Jill, Jill revealed more and more. She actually had a confession now, what had happened to those children in their killer’s o
wn words. In time, Jill would reveal Jack’s true identity. Charley was sure of that.

  “So, how are Franny and James?” Jill asked, as if this was the most natural of questions.

  “What?”

  “I asked how…”

  “I heard what you said.”

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Charley realized she was glaring across the table at Jill. She averted her eyes and tried to soften the set of her jaw. “I don’t want to talk about my kids.”

  “I’m just making conversation.”

  “Talk about something else.”

  “You sound really angry.”

  “I don’t want to talk about my kids,” Charley repeated forcefully.

  “Okay. Whatever. Take it easy.” Jill pushed herself away from the table, walked to the door, and knocked for the guard. “I think we’ve accomplished all we’re going to today, don’t you?”

  Charley turned off the recorder and returned it to her purse, glancing at the sixty pages of Jill’s handwritten musings inside. “I guess this should keep me occupied for a while.”

  Jill paused in the now-open doorway, the female prison guard looming over her, waiting. “Charley….”

  Charley forced her eyes to Jill’s.

  “I had no choice. Please tell me you understand. I had no choice.”

  Charley nodded. “I’ll see you next week.”

  “Holy fuck!” Charley shouted once she was safely inside her car. “Crap, shit, fuck, goddamn son of a bitch!” She slapped the steering wheel, banged on the side window, then pummeled the seat beside her. “Shit, fuck, fart!”

  Shit, fuck, fart? she thought, the words echoing throughout the small space. Charley burst out laughing. “What are you? Five years old?”

  Like James?

  Like Tammy Barnet.

  “Shit,” Charley said again, then burst into tears. “Goddamn it.” How could Jill have done such horrible things? How could she talk about them so matter-of-factly? What was the matter with her?

  She can do it because she has no conscience or empathy, Charley thought, recalling Dr. Norman’s assessment. Because the only person’s pain she can truly feel is her own. And whether she was born that way or whether that empathy had been beaten out of her as a child no longer mattered. What mattered was that three innocent children were dead. What mattered more was that the person who’d orchestrated those grisly deaths was still out there. What mattered most was that more children were at risk.