by J P Tompkins
Then it happens again. Without warning, without working up to it in any way. Just as it happened with Cole, Neil and Dr. Benson: I picture Roger standing there with electrical cord.
I know I’m imagining it, I know it’s not true, but still I take a quick step back toward my house. “Sorry, I have something on the stove,” I lie.
I finally turn my head away from him, focusing on the front door.
◆◆◆
My phone is ringing as I get back inside my house. It’s on the coffee table and as I pick it up I see Paul’s name on the screen. For the first time ever, I don’t hesitate to answer it.
“I know they’re going to come after me,” Paul says, “and there’s something I want to say to you. I know you’ve never liked me and I know why. I shouldn’t have done what I did that night at the bar. I’m sorry. I wish I could blame it on the alcohol, but I can’t. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t.”
His words seem sincere and his tone matches, but I can’t help thinking this is self-serving. Why apologize now, after all this time? I remain silent to see if there’s anything else he wants to say and there is.
“I know Erin probably told you everything about why she left me and God knows what else she said. I’m not perfect. I’ve screwed up lots in my life. But I did not hurt her. I would never hurt her. I didn’t do this. You do know that, right?”
There’s a long silence on the line. It’s uncomfortable for me, but it has to be worse for Paul.
“Say something. Please,” he says.
“I think the best thing you can do for yourself now is talk to a lawyer.”
He hangs up.
Chapter 34
Neil calls the next morning, just minutes after I wake up, while I’m trying to adjust to the new reality: the killer is caught; the case is over.
But it’s not over, not really, and that’s why he’s on the phone.
“You’re going to the arraignment, right?”
“Can’t you send someone else?” I say, my voice thick with sleep. Real sleep this time. Not the kind that I got from the pill. So there’s no medication hangover, no fog on my brain.
“You’re not giving up on it now, are you?”
I yawn. “It’s a formality. Anyone can do this part.”
“Probably, but I want you to do it.”
I don’t say anything. Right after watching the Greer interrogation, I had started to plan on how to get an interview with him. Now, though, I have no interest in his case. It’s all about Erin to me now.
“Look.” Neil stops there, as if he’s gathering his thoughts, trying to work up a pep talk. “You’ve come this far. Plus, this is going to be your last story for a while.”
I sit up, coming fully awake now, getting the blood flowing. “What?”
“You’re taking time off, like we talked about a few months ago. No arguments. You’ll come back, you’ll be fresh.”
“But this isn’t over. Erin—”
“Kate, let the police do their jobs on that one. You’re too close to it, anyway.
“I don’t need time off,” I insist.
“Fine. I need you to take some time off. I’m sick of worrying about you.” He pauses, then: “If you tell me you can’t go to the arraignment, can’t be in the same room with him, I’ll understand. But give it some thought. I’m asking you.”
◆◆◆
A door on the left side of the courtroom opens and two deputies walk out, followed by Nathan Greer, then two more deputies. I’ve been to countless arraignments and other court proceedings before, but I’ve never seen that kind of force around a defendant. Not even when Kevin Lee Harper entered his guilty plea. I wasn’t there, but I saw the pictures in the paper.
Greer shuffles across the floor. His orange jumpsuit is at least two sizes too big. Chains around his ankles, waist and wrists jangle as he moves toward the defense table and sits down.
I stare at the flat, matted hair on the back of his head, my extremities tingling, numb.
He turns his head as much as he can over his right shoulder to look at the people gathered here to cover the proceedings. He scans the room and it’s obvious he’s not simply taking note of how many people are here; he’s looking for something and that something is me.
I’m in the fourth row, directly behind him. I could duck behind one of the people in front of me to stay out of his line of sight, but I don’t. I stare straight ahead, watching his head move slowly as he searches. He turns in his seat a little, trying to get a better position to see those behind him.
I want him to see me. I want to make eye contact with him, just to see what he’ll do.
But one of the guards stops him from shifting in his chair and the judge enters the courtroom.
Greer’s initial appearance takes just minutes. Long enough for the DA to read the charges, for the judge to ask him if he has counsel. At that moment, a young woman stands and introduces herself as being from the Public Defender’s Office and says she’ll be representing Greer at this hearing.
Despite knowing for hours that he’s been caught, it’s just now that I can feel the stress of the case easing up, leaving my body, less like a valve being opened than a dam bursting. It flows out of me so quickly, I feel drained, my muscles warm, my limbs loose.
Greer is denied bail. The next court appearance is set for one month from now. And just like that, it’s over. He is shuffled back out of the courtroom, through that side door, and people start filing out of the courtroom.
It’s only now that I recognize some faces in the courtroom. Kristi Stroup’s parents are here. So are Payton Donnelly’s. There was a time I would have approached them and asked them for comments about the arrest of the man who killed their daughters. But they’re standing together, the four of them, arms around each other. They’re praying. I leave them alone.
I walk through the double wooden doors, turn right and find Hogle and Roark standing there talking.
“You guys want to give me a quote for my story?”
They both turn to look at me. They are not happy to see me, as usual. Hogle, especially.
“No comment,” he says.
“Nothing about the gym theory?” I ask.
This taunting is something I shouldn’t be doing, I know. But after months of being dismissed, combined with how I’m feeling almost high from the relief of the stress of the case, I just can’t help myself. Plus, since this is my last story on the case, this is the last time I’ll have to deal with these two.
Roark’s phone rings. He answers it and turns away from us.
I look at Hogle, who checks his watch and then looks straight ahead, out the large windows that overlook the town.
Roark turns back toward us. Toward Hogle, actually, not even a full turn toward me. “Ten minutes.”
Hogle acknowledges Roark and they both walk away.
“Can I quote you, Detective Hogle?” I say. My sarcasm doesn’t even cause him to look over his shoulder.
◆◆◆
I sit in my car outside the courthouse and write up the story, email it to Neil, then drive to the paper. Neil isn’t in his office and, now that I think about it, I didn’t look for his car when I parked.
I go back to the reception area and ask Lisa if he’s here.
“Guess where,” she says.
“Ah, got it.”
I walk through the newsroom again and head for the exit at the back of the office, then around the corner of the building. Neil is there, looking at his phone, smoking a cigarette.
“The story is done,” I say, taking a step in his direction.
He looks up, surprised, and drops the cigarette.
“We all know you smoke, you know. You don’t have to hide it.”
He smiles. “Maybe I just like my alone time.”
I’m standing next to him now. “Sure. Anyway, the story’s done.”
He lifts the phone. “I was just reading it. Good work. I’m glad you went.”
I nod.
“Now go take care of yourself. If I see or hear from you before two weeks, you’re fired.”
I say nothing.
“Come on, Kate. That wasn’t worth even a little laugh?”
“Thanks for looking out for me,” I tell him, but still don’t give him a little laugh.
“Don’t thank me yet. I may use this to guilt you into staying when you decide you’re done here.”
“What?”
“Don’t kid yourself,” he says. “Offers are going to start coming in. Everybody leaves this paper for something bigger and better. Can’t say I blame them. And when the time comes, I won’t blame you, either.”
It’s something I haven’t thought about since the early days of this story. The idea that covering this case could propel me to a bigger paper somewhere in a bigger market was there at first, but faded after the first few weeks, right about the time I found myself completely consumed by the case.
“See, you’re thinking about it,” Neil says.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him, and I mean it.
I like my job. I like where I work. I like who I work for.
“You’re going somewhere now. And you don’t have a choice.”
I just look at him. I wonder how long he’s been out here. His face is red, especially his forehead, which has little beads of sweat on it.
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone.”
This gets my interest.
He leans against the wall and slides his phone into his pocket, then looks away from me, at the back of an old abandoned building.
“The last crime story I covered, before I came here and took this job, was the one that did me in. I know now that it had been a while coming, with all the other stuff I had seen, but this was the story that pushed me over the edge.”
I watch him bite his bottom lip, like he’s trying to decide where to start or how much to tell. I give him his space.
“A couple of kids were found in a garbage bag. They were brothers. Six and seven years old. A boater found them in the river. I covered that story for five months straight, no other stories. I don’t know how many times I talked to the family. It was just a mother and the boys’ older sister. The anguish I saw on their faces every time…I don’t know, it was impossible to imagine. I’d covered other tough stories like that, lots of them, but this was different. Anyway, the police had nothing and the city was in a panic, thinking someone was out there hunting and killing little boys. The mayor resigned, the police chief resigned. Just a mess. Long story short, the mother and sister did it. They killed the two boys. The mother said she couldn’t afford them, didn’t have any family to help. She even told me, when I interviewed her in jail, that she still thought it was the best way to handle it. Insane. And the daughter was totally brainwashed by the mother. She spent a few years in juvenile detention, but her life’s ruined, for sure. I wish my editor had made me take time off. Hell, I wish she had made me get counseling.”
I had always known about Neil’s burnout, but I never imagined it was that bad. His concern for me is rooted in his own pain, the damage done to him by covering that horror. It’s real.
And so he’s right. Some time off would be good for me, allow me to regroup, recharge, whatever other terms people use when they’ve run themselves ragged and need some time to themselves.
I thank him for doing what his editor should have done and tell him I’ll leave him to have another smoke.
“Get out of here,” he says, forcing a smile on his face.
As I drive home, I think about how disappointed he’ll be if he finds out I have no intention of taking any kind of a break. I would have taken his advice—his order, actually—if all of this was really over.
But it’s not. Not with Erin’s killer still out there.
Chapter 35
I’ve come to the restaurant where Erin worked. The woman waiting on my table tells me her name is Claire. She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt with the restaurant’s logo emblazoned across the front and back—the same outfit I saw Erin in so many times. Maybe she’ll be able to give me something helpful about Erin. Maybe they hit it off, had something in common aside from working here. It’s worth a try.
“I have a little cousin named Claire,” I tell her, but it’s a lie.
A little small-talk, get someone to talk about themselves—usually people’s favorite subject—and they’re likely to loosen up before you ask what you’re really there to ask.
“That’s so funny,” she says, and I nod as if it’s funny, but it’s not.
“Did you know Erin Thorpe?” I ask.
Claire seems surprised by the sudden change of topic.
“I was wondering when the cops would show up to ask about Erin,” she says as she refills my coffee mug.
“I’m not a cop,” I say. I could have let it go, let her think I’m a cop. I’ve done it before, but there’s a chance someone else here will recognize me and blow it.
“Are you a friend of hers?” she asks.
Claire doesn’t watch the news, I guess. As much as I’ve been on TV, I thought for sure she might recognize me, especially when I brought up Erin’s name. I try to determine if she’s in high school or college, but she has one of those faces that could belong to someone who is either sixteen or twenty-four. Either way, this is a summer job, so she probably works and spends the rest of her time doing anything but watching the news, despite what’s been happening in this town.
“I’m a reporter. I’m just trying to get to know her a little bit for a story I’m writing. You know, more about her than what happened.” This is a lie, of course, but Claire isn’t going to figure it out.
“I didn’t really know her know her. I mean, just around here. It’s not like we hung out outside of work.”
“Did she ever talk about her life? Family, friends? Things like that?”
Claire leans on the side of the booth, tilts her head and bites her bottom lip. She’s thinking about it. I let her search her memory as I reach for the sugar, adding a little to my coffee.
“Not really. I mean, the only thing I remember was the guy with the motorcycle.”
I sip my coffee and put it down on the table. “Motorcycle,” I say flatly. I had never heard her talk about motorcycles, or even knowing anyone who owned one.
“Yeah.” Claire pulls a small white towel from her apron and wipes off the corner of the table. “After work one night, she left on a motorcycle. Some guy picked her up.”
“Did you see what he looked like?”
“No, he had a helmet on. And I only saw them for a few seconds. Didn’t really think anything of it, you know?”
“When was this?” I say.
“About a week…no, maybe two weeks before it happened. Before she got killed.”
“And it was just one time?”
Claire turns her head toward the door when it opens and the bell dings and then looks back at me. “Yeah, just the one time that I saw. Could have been more, though. We didn’t usually work the same shift so I really don’t know for sure.”
She excuses herself, saying she has to check on an order for another table. I finish the last of my breakfast looking out the window, picturing Erin getting on the back of some guy’s motorcycle. But who? Someone she was seeing? Or just a friend? Maybe a customer here, a regular, who was just taking her for a spin around the block because she’d never been on a motorcycle before? It could be any of those.
When Claire comes back, I ask her if anyone else here might know who the guy was.
She frowns. “I don’t think so. Erin was pretty private. I don’t think anyone knew she was engaged at one point. I didn’t, anyway. The first I heard of it was after she died.”
“You talking about Todd?” Another woman’s voice, from over my shoulder. I didn’t hear or sense her approaching and Claire didn’t seem to notice either.
“Is that who it was?” Claire asks.
I turn in my seat
to look at the woman. She’s older, much older, like she’s worked here for decades or this is a retirement job. I glance at her nametag: Anita.
She removes her glasses and rubs her eyes. “Yep. He’s harmless. Loves to show off that bike of his. I haven’t seen him in a while, come to think of it.”
“You’ve been on the bike?” Claire asks her.
Anita laughs. “No way, never. One fall off of that and all my bones would shatter.”
They both laugh and I join in too, but mine is forced. I want to know more about Todd.
“Anyway, we were all shocked at what happened to Erin,” Anita says. “We all thought she was the latest victim of that sicko. But it’s pretty obvious now that Paul did it.” She’s not simply suggesting it, not offering it up for conversation or debate; she’s sure of it.
She doesn’t ask who I am and I assume she’d been listening to more than just the last minute or so of the conversation I had with Claire. Probably heard the whole thing. She shuffles away and goes back into the kitchen.
“What do you know about Todd?” I ask Claire.
“I didn’t even know he had a motorcycle. But he’s a nice guy. Older, like maybe forty? I don’t know for sure. But he works at the marina up at the lake, I do know that.”
“Doing what?”
“Pretty sure he’s a mechanic. Works on the boats.”
I think back to Anita’s comment a few minutes ago about not remembering the last time she saw Todd. “Do you remember the last time you saw him? I mean, in here.”
Claire thinks for a moment, then says, “You know what? I think it was that night they got on the motorcycle.”
“And you said that was about two weeks before Erin was killed?”
“Yeah, right about then. Can I get you anything else?” Claire asks.
“No, thanks. I’ll just take the check.”
She reaches into one of her apron pockets and pulls out a few slips of paper, figures out which one is mine, and then places it on the table. “So, who do you think killed her?”
I shake my head. “No idea.” That’s what I’m trying to find out, I think but don’t say.