Twist of Faith

by Ellen J Green

  “And you think I’d tell you, if I knew?” Marie shifted in her chair.

  “You’ve run out of friends. And your family has apparently turned on you. Have they even gotten you a lawyer?”

  Marie was staring at a spot behind Joanne and seemed to be in a trance. “My mother doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “But your sister does?” Joanne threw it out there, watching Marie’s face carefully. Her expression barely moved. “She’s alive? I’m pretty sure I saw her.” Marie said nothing. “Help me a little and I’ll call your mother. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Marie leaned closer to Joanne, and she couldn’t help but notice the body odor, the breath. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to reach Anais. I’ve been trying for the past couple of weeks.”

  “So you’re fine taking the fall for all of this. The dead man in Claire’s house, Ava’s death, then there’s the string of Polaroid murders. Should I go on? You’re looking at life, no parole.” There was silence from the other end of the table. “They’re not getting you a lawyer—Anais and Claire. So best of luck with a public defender.” Joanne started to stand.

  Marie became slightly agitated, shifting in the chair. “Look. I need you to go to the airport before it’s too late.”

  “For what? Where at the airport?”

  “I’d start with the international terminal, because she’s headed for Paris.”

  “Claire?”

  Marie kept her head down so Joanne couldn’t read her expression. “She’s meeting Anais there tomorrow morning, so I assume it’s an overnight flight.”

  Joanne waved her hand at her. “Back up. I need to ask you some questions.”

  Marie folded her arms across her chest, holding the smock closed. She seemed to be thinking. “I’ll give you a few minutes, but only because she deserves whatever she gets.”

  Ten minutes later Joanne raced down the hallway to the elevator bank, expecting that when she reached the lobby Russell would still be waiting there for her, but the lobby was empty. She spun in a circle, looking, and headed for the doorway.

  “Ms. Watkins? We need your visitor’s badge,” the officer said.

  She threw it on the counter and took her driver’s license.

  “Did you have a phone? Don’t forget it in the lockers.”

  Joanne raced to the booth—the locker key was shoved into the pass-through. Her mind was racing, her fingers fumbling to get the lock open. “Shit,” she muttered.

  She grabbed her phone, tossed the key back into the slot, and ran for the door. “Russell, where are you?”

  Once outside, she turned on her phone and watched the apple appear on-screen. “Come on. Come on.” She scanned the sidewalk while she waited for her phone to load. No sign of Russell. She dialed.

  “Russell, where are you? Doesn’t matter. Get your ass to the airport,” she said.

  “I’m in my car now,” he responded. “I came back to get a bottle of water while I waited for you. Come on.”

  “I’m not coming with you. To the airport. I can’t.”

  “Yes you are. I’ll pull onto Federal Street—”

  “No, Russell. I’ll Uber it home. Just listen to me for two minutes and you’ll understand.” She spilled her conversation with Marie and ended the call with “Hurry up. I’ll see you at my house. Keep your phone on.”

  CHAPTER 68

  The times before all this happened, before all the photographs, the murders, before Ava disappeared, seemed so long ago. The normalcy of having a beer at happy hour at the Victor and then stopping by Cooper on his way home to see Juliette seemed hazy and distant. He felt like Dorothy swooped up by a cyclone and plopped down in Oz.

  He tried to remember what his relationship with Ava was like before. When he just knew her first name. She’d walk the halls with a folder under her arm, or wait for the elevator, head down, tapping a pen against her thigh. She never seemed to belong, but he couldn’t say why. Taciturn, cold, distant, those were the words used to describe her, but she wasn’t any of those things to him. She was more like a set of blinds with slats that would open or close abruptly and apparently for no reason. She’d brighten, the green eyes laughing, and it was normal. But then those slats would twist shut, cutting her off from everyone. Bright and dismal, sweet and sour—whatever the description, it left her an enigma, ethereal.

  A child of abuse or trauma? he wondered. Maybe mildly physically abused by Claire, a slap there, a pinch here, but then emotionally abused on top of it. Had her life been torment, growing up? All that moving from town to town, never fitting in? Never having one person to count on? Except Anais. She’d spoken so beautifully about her grandmother. One day they’d shared a bench outside at lunch and talked about Cherbourg. He’d listened and watched her face. It genuinely lit up. Her grandmother was that light that kept her moving forward, and Claire had been abject darkness that trapped her in silence.

  Claire. Smart. Chic. Capable. Why had she never married? She was attractive, from what he’d seen. She was also educated and independent. Her life seemed odd the way it had played out. Ava had called her a bitch, and he was sure that was true. But was she a bitch to everyone? To Marie too? He had no information to go on. The little Ava had told him suggested the sisters got along, or at least cooperated with one another to a certain point. A complicated family, filled with lies, secrets, sabotage, and mental illness.

  He slid into a short-term parking spot and jumped out of his car. When he entered the terminal at the Philadelphia International Airport, most of the people were collecting near the British Airways kiosk. No one stood out. He wandered from one end to the other, casting an eye over the queues. His heart was jumping; he knew his time was dwindling. Qatar Airways had only two people waiting to check in for a flight to God knows where. He had no choice but to buy a ticket to get through security, so he fished through his wallet for a credit card.

  “Hong Kong is our next flight out,” the woman said. “You have a little under an hour, so you need to hurry. Flexible fare, two thousand three hundred forty dollars.” She took his credit card. “But do you need flexible if you’re here? I mean, it’s costing you almost a thousand dollars more.”

  “Yes, flexible. I might change my mind in the next hour.”

  “A man who isn’t sure what he wants but travels light getting there?” She was mildly flirting with him. When she saw his confused expression she added, “No luggage?”

  “No. No luggage.” His eyes weren’t on her. He hadn’t stopped looking through the lines for a familiar face.

  He knew, once he’d passed security, to look in British Airways, Lufthansa, or Delta gates. Marie had said she’d be headed to Paris. But for all he knew, she might detour to Milwaukee first to throw everyone off. And he knew that international flights also departed from other terminals. The futility of it made him almost stop in his tracks and give up.

  He flopped down in a chair at an empty gate. His eyes were glued to the people as they passed. She’s here somewhere. Keep walking. He was so absorbed in his task he almost didn’t hear his name being called over the loudspeaker. His flight to Hong Kong had boarded and he wasn’t on it. Crap. It just announced his presence—and if she were smart, she’d recognize it and hide. Could this get any worse? He pushed himself up when he saw the bar across the aisle. A small nothing bar with a large counter and a few tables in the back. A win-win. If she wasn’t there, he could get a drink, keep an eye on passersby, and figure out step two hundred.

  He ordered a Sam Adams and took a seat at the counter, turned slightly toward the entrance so he could watch people come and go. He was reaching for his phone to call Joanne when he saw a woman with dark hair seated at a table, almost out of sight. When she turned slightly he saw her face.

  The waiter was at her table. “Another whiskey neat, please, and a glass of water,” she said.

  “Water for me too, please.” Russell slid into the seat next to her. “Going somewhere so soon? And without Marie?”<
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  She smoothed her hair and tucked a piece behind her ear. She tried to contain her shock but didn’t succeed. “What?” Her face burned red.

  “Surprised I found you?”

  The waiter brought their drinks and walked away. “You’re a detective,” she commented. “I should have figured you would put it together.” She glanced around. “But you’re alone? No entourage to arrest me?”

  He wrapped his hand around the beer bottle and ignored her question. “Tell me why you did all this. I need to hear it from you.”

  “Which part do you want to hear? Why the chase? Why the killing? Why am I not dead?” The loudspeaker announced his name again. Last call for flight to Hong Kong. She smiled. “That’s you? Hong Kong. Go.”

  “I’ll pass. You were saying?”

  “The woman murdered with the priest. She was a person. Just like you or me. Murdered for no reason.” She motioned around her. “The fact that she was alone, no family, no one came for her body, makes it worse. Killed and stripped naked, humiliated—”

  “And I assume this happened to her because she stumbled in on the killing of the priest?”

  “I assume you’re right. But maybe she had a child with her. And maybe those four men were going to kill the child too—because she was a witness.” She turned to him. “Maybe they tried to kill her but one of them grabbed her—”

  Russell tilted his head to the side. “That’s why you were on the run? They were looking for the child?”

  “Quinn was, anyway. The rest, maybe not so much.” They were both quiet for a few seconds. “Do you know where the woman’s body is?” He shook his head. “In an unmarked grave, in a cemetery near Port Richmond, here in Philadelphia.”

  “So why not make her name known, if that’s what you wanted? Expose Connelly, Owens, Saunders, and Quinn. Give her a headstone. Bring flowers. Why all this?”

  She snorted. “That’s a great idea. And maybe I did go to Connelly just to talk, you know, sort it out. Get her name. I thought about going to Ross first, but he would have created a stir—calling family members. You know.”

  He sipped his water, his beer almost untouched. “And?”

  “And maybe even though Connelly was a priest—and I thought the most compassionate of all of them—he wasn’t much for repentance. No apologies. No remorse. No information. More worried about his own skin. He even threatened me.” She turned to him, her face lit with rage as if it were happening all over again. “And maybe it set something off inside me. I’m a daughter of hypocrisy and secrets. So I settled it the way I knew how.” She left the rest unspoken. “Have you found her name?” Her eyes were large and hopeful.

  He shook his head. “Not yet. I have a few leads—”

  “That you will eventually find it means everything, even if I’m not around to see it. Her family will come for her, take her back where she belongs.”

  Russell looked at her. This was all she’d wanted. Something that most people take for granted. A name. Trying to put right something she had nothing to do with twenty years ago. And no one would help her. And that set her off on a quest for information that led to at least six deaths. “Did Marie know what you’d done? Did Anais? Did—”

  She tipped her head back and swallowed her whiskey in one gulp. “I have”—she checked her watch—“two hours and twenty minutes till my flight leaves. Every story has multiple sides. Let me tell you mine, because it’s a doozy. And if, after that, you want to arrest me, I won’t resist.”

  He felt her eyes on him, but he couldn’t lift his head. The vein in his neck was throbbing, and it was everything he could do to control his anger. “You only have two hours. Start talking, Ava.”

  CHAPTER 69

  The plane touched ground at Charles de Gaulle, the wheels skidding to a stop across the tarmac. I peered out the window for any sign of policiers but only saw multiple aircraft and airport personnel working in the dismal morning gray. Anais was there somewhere, in one of those buildings, waiting for me. If I could make it through customs, and Paris, my chances of escape would be certain. I took a breath. Three more steps to freedom.

  Russell’s questioning had been methodical, predictable. And thorough—with a layer of anger and betrayal on top. I’d chosen him well that day I saw him standing at the elevator banks on the second floor of the courthouse. He’d been motionless and preoccupied when I spotted him, but I saw the seriousness in his posture and the softness around his eyes. I’d scanned him up and down until he caught my eye and then I smiled. Bingo. It only took three days for him to approach me again when I was getting coffee.

  Getting an able body—somebody capable of getting the investigative ball rolling, to ultimately put a name to my mother—that’s what I’d wanted. That’s what I’d been searching for. Years of not knowing who I was, who she was, with just threads of memory to guide me. The killing, the blood, the turmoil were vague in my mind. I’d begged Claire and Marie for the truth, but they’d never budged, insisting they knew nothing.

  I needed someone who was sympathetic to me, who would see me as a lost soul, someone who would do this for me off the record, compromising their own career in the process. That was key. A compromised career gave me leverage for blackmail.

  After I returned home from college, I’d scoured Claire’s house for information, possible only because she was sick. But all I’d found was the photograph of the house. The photograph I’d sent to Ross nearly five years earlier. What did it mean that Claire had separated it from his things and slid it in with my dress? Had she suspected the lengths I’d gone to for the truth? If she had, it had only made her hold on to what she knew more stubbornly, right up until the end.

  But I’d still made use of the photo. The inscription that referenced me was irresistible, filled with coincidence, intrigue. I knew Russell would go for it with a little push from Joanne. The meeting at the diner—mustering hurt and tears. He went for it. Deep. Maybe too deep in those weeks following. I had to play my role carefully.

  The customs line was long and thick with commotion and conversation, my ears assaulted by at least five different languages. My mind flipped back and forth, making sense of fragments of English, then French, then English again, Spanish, bits of some eastern European language. The rest of the sounds floated past me untranslated. I gripped my passport in my hand, my fingers aching. It was good, official, issued by the US government, but I wasn’t sure if it had been flagged since I’d boarded my nonstop flight from Philadelphia. Russell’s face, or, more specifically, the flickers in his eyes as I’d told my story, worried me.

  After our talk he’d walked me to the gate, his hands in his pockets, and stood near me as they called for boarding. He didn’t touch me or hug me. He kept distance between us. I wondered why he felt the need to see me get on the plane. I suspected that it had more to do with wanting to be rid of me than wishing me off with blessings. Had he chosen to accept my explanations? Maybe only because the alternative was so obviously career devastating. I would never know. His actions and demeanor never betrayed his thoughts.

  As I moved forward in the line toward French Immigration now, I was aware of officers standing in available corners, hypervigilant; the airport crackled with the tension of the possibility of untoward events. I smiled. I was the untoward event. The line crawled forward and I kept checking my watch. Anais was meeting me on the bottom level, near ground transportation. From there we were headed on a train leaving for Barcelona. Then we’d board a cruise ship that would be at sea for seventeen days, hitting ports in Spain, France, then Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, and Greece. She’d mapped it out—with multiple ports of call, I could jump off anywhere along the journey, though the Balkans were an obvious choice, and catch a flight to Vietnam. It had all been well planned, so why was I so nervous?

  “Venez ici.” The man was waving his arm to me and I stepped forward to the counter. He opened my passport and scanned the documents, his head down, concentrating. I shifted my weight, almost afraid to
breathe. His eyes flitted upward to meet mine. “Où êtes-vous née?” he asked. Where were you born? Why was he asking when it was clearly printed on my passport?

  I hesitated. United States. The forgery man had given me what he thought was a well-known French name. His idea of a little joke. How should I answer? “États-Unis,” I mumbled.

  “Marie Curie?” he asked. I was afraid he’d question it, as it was so blatantly stupid. I merely nodded. How long would I be in France and where was I going to be staying, he asked in French. “Do you need me to speak English?” he continued after several moments of silence.

  “Non, ce n’est pas nécessaire. Je vais à Barcelone en passant par la France. C’est un voyage spontané, donc je n’ai pas de dates exactes,” I blurted. He smiled. His shoulders relaxed. He seemed surprised and pleased that I didn’t need him to translate into English. I’d explained I was traveling to Barcelona but the dates I would be in France were not exact.

  He stamped my passport, waved me through, and motioned for the person behind me to move forward. One hurdle completed. I walked faster to retrieve my luggage and get out of the airport. Anais’s gray head was there, in the crowd, her carefully arranged curls around her face. Her dark coat and outrageously expensive purse flung casually over her shoulder. She smiled wide when she saw me.

  “You made it. Where’s Marie?” She kept looking behind me as if her remaining daughter would magically appear.

  “Grand-Maman, that’s another story. I will explain as we go. Let’s get a taxi.” I started to turn away.

  The old woman gripped my arm. I felt her iron fingers pressing into my flesh through three layers of clothing. “I just had this feeling something was wrong. What happened to her?”

  “She was detained, sorry to say, but that’ll all be cleared up soon, I’m sure.” I couldn’t tell her I’d set Marie up. Not yet.