Sacred Trust

by Meg O'Brien

“Don’t make a scene.”

  “A scene? You haven’t seen anything till you’ve seen—”

  Dammit it to hell, I’m losing it. My face feels hot and my hands are shaking.

  “Unless you have a warrant for my arrest, I’m not going anywhere with you,” I say, steadying my voice till it’s quiet yet firm.

  “Dale?” he calls out to Hillars, who’s sitting in the Volvo. “Come help me with this, will you? We’re taking Ms. Northrup for a little talk.”

  “You can’t do this,” I protest as Hillars joins us. But to no avail. Mauro reaches in, turns off the engine and shoves my keys under the mat. I am pulled from the car and handcuffed faster than I can blink.

  I have never been so afraid in my life.

  They don’t take me to the Carmel P.D., but to a hotel room at the Embassy Suites in Seaside. They take me up back stairs so that no one can see us. There is no one else in the room but the three of us, and they sit me in a chair at an oversize table. My hands are cuffed in front of me now, and there is a glass of water on the table, which I am allowed to drink from.

  We have been here over two hours, and I get it now. These two have a mission, and they’ve been given carte blanche to carry it out. They are more dangerous than rogue cops; they have the power and they don’t give a damn about rules.

  If I thought I was afraid before, I am deep-down frightened now.

  “Let’s go over this again,” Mauro says, pacing. “Tell us about your husband.”

  “What about him? If you’d tell me what you’re after—”

  “Where is he?” Mauro interrupts.

  “I told you, I don’t know. Jeffrey goes away all the time. He seldom tells me where.”

  “If your marriage is that troubled, why haven’t you divorced?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “It’s our business if it would give us some insight as to why he’s disappeared.”

  “Aren’t you being a bit melodramatic? Jeffrey is probably just off on one of his usual business trips. For that matter, he may be with your boss.”

  Mauro gives me a look.

  “The president?” I say. “The man who sent you here?”

  “Why would your husband be with President Chase?” he asks.

  “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you don’t know they’re thick as thieves, you’ll pardon the expression. Jeffrey’s the man behind the man.”

  Mauro’s eyes narrow. “What exactly are you saying, Ms. Northrup?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Jeffrey’s a mover and shaker. The power behind the throne. When Jeffrey says jump, Chase jumps.”

  Mauro looks at Hillars, who shakes his head. Whether what I’ve said is news to them or not, this is clearly not territory they want to travel.

  “There’s one thing you told us the other day that doesn’t fit,” Mauro says.

  “Only one?”

  Mauro frowns, and for a brief moment I think he might like to strangle me. I catch Hillars watching him, and wonder if his main job here is as a restraint or balance for his younger and testier partner.

  “You told us you don’t know who Justin Ryan’s biological father is,” Mauro says. “If you and Marti Bright were as close as we know you were, you must at least have some clue.”

  “Well, I don’t. She showed up at my house in labor. I never met the man.”

  “She would have had to file a birth certificate,” Mauro insists. “And you were with her at the hospital.”

  Again, I am amazed at how much he knows. However, he apparently hasn’t been able to find the birth certificate, doesn’t know to look for it under “Maria Gonzalez,” the phony name Marti used in the hospital.

  Score one for our team, whatever good it does.

  “As I remember, she listed the father as ‘Unknown,’” I say truthfully. “She said he was someone she met while she was traveling, and she didn’t want him involved. Look, why is this so important?”

  “It’s important if the father found out he had a son by Marti Bright and saw her silence about the boy as betrayal. If he was a bit off in the first place, that might have sent him over the edge. He might then have kidnapped the boy, and if this is the case, he might then have murdered Marti Bright in some sort of blind rage.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs and thens, Agent Mauro.”

  “We have to consider all the angles, Ms. Northrup.”

  My patience, and fear, are wearing thin. I slap my hands down on the table. The handcuffs jangle on the dark wood.

  “How’s this for an angle, then? Marti traveled with a lot of people that year. One of them was a young congressman named Gary Chase. Why don’t you ask him if he’s Justin’s father, and if that’s why he really sent you here to look for Justin? Ask Mr. Squeaky-Clean if he went into a rage on the campaign trail and kidnapped his illegitimate child, then crucified his mother on that goddamned hill!”

  I can see I’ve hit a nerve. Hillars pales, and Mauro stops in his tracks.

  Is this something they haven’t considered? I myself haven’t considered it seriously till now—though I must confess I’ve wondered. It was something I heard on television once, when Chase was on vacation—that he’d gone to his “cabin in Maine.”

  Marti spent the last three months of her pregnancy in a cabin in Maine. When I heard on television that Chase had such a cabin, I wondered if he was the “friend” who had loaned it to her. Marti did travel on press junkets with Chase back then, when he was still a congressman.

  Good God. Could he have been Justin’s father? He was married at that time—not available, as Marti said. He wouldn’t have been able to help her raise her child.

  And if he is Justin’s father, and Marti revealed that to him, it might explain why he sent his Secret Service agents to help her find Justin. He wouldn’t just leave an investigation like that to the FBI or local investigators. He’d send the best he had.

  Does Jeffrey know about Marti’s baby, then? And is this what he’s afraid of? That Chase’s secret might come out, creating a scandal just before the election?

  Mauro clearly doesn’t know what to say. Jamming his hands into the pockets of his dark suit he stares at the ceiling, clears his throat. When he begins again, his voice is under control. The subject has changed.

  “Ms. Northrup, this trip to the Ryan house today. I understand it’s not your first. You’ve done this before—often, in fact.”

  “I have never spoken to the Ryans,” I say.

  “That’s not the point. You’ve sat outside their house and spied on them.”

  “I have not spied on them. I’ve been making sure Justin was all right.”

  “In fact, you’ve been making sure he was all right quite often, haven’t you? Once a month or so for the past fifteen years. Ms. Northrup, you’ve never had a child of your own, have you? How do you explain this obsession with Justin Ryan?”

  Obsession. The word hits me between the eyes.

  You’re obsessed with wanting a child, Jeffrey has accused me of, more than once. Obsessed with wanting to adopt. Get over it, for God’s sake, it’s not healthy. It’s an obsession.

  It is not an obsession, I have argued. It’s the healthiest desire in the world, wanting a child.

  But what do I tell these men, who have no concept of how I got to this place in my life, and wouldn’t care if they did?

  “Ms. Northrup, I asked you a question. You have not had children of your own, have you?”

  “I need some food,” I say, holding out my trembling hand. “I’ve got hypoglycemia, low blood sugar. You can’t keep me here without food. I could go into shock, and you’d have to haul me off to the hospital. They’d ask questions. Is that what you want?”

  Mauro sends me a look that tells me he doesn’t really believe me about the blood sugar. Still, I will be out of here, eventually—I hope—and I could talk about abusive treatment at the hands of the Secret Service.

  Sighing, he shoves back his chair and goes to the phone, calling room s
ervice. “We need three turkey sandwiches,” he says, looking at me.

  “And coffee,” I say.

  “Coffee,” he adds. “Send up a pot.”

  When he’s finished, he motions to Hillars, who stands and joins him at the window. They whisper to each other, now and then looking at me. I close my eyes and rest my head in my hands, thinking about that word again, obsession.

  When I met Jeffrey sixteen years ago, I was twenty-three. I’d just gotten a good career rolling as a staff reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle and had latched on to a story that, as Tommy said, almost won me the Pulitzer. Then I came down here that fateful day and met Jeffrey. A few months later we married, and I “retired” to Carmel to live out my childhood dream to be a housewife and mother. I was young—and, about relationships, incredibly dumb.

  Jeffrey and I never talked, beforehand, about children. When I became pregnant three months after the wedding, he was livid. I thought he just needed some time to get used to it. I realize now, however, that he wanted to be the only child in the family. When I was four months pregnant, Jeffrey took me out on the sailboat he owned, assuring me the water was calm enough even though we’d just had a major storm. “This is the best time to go out,” he argued. “It’s so wild and dramatic after a storm, Abby. You’ll love it.”

  I can’t prove my husband tried to kill our baby. In fact, over time I managed to convince myself that the entire thing had been an accident. That’s how badly I wanted to hang on to my marriage back then.

  The way I remember it is that Jeffrey swerved sharply and unexpectedly—to avoid a giant piece of driftwood, he told the Coast Guard later, part of the Carmel beach stairs that was dragged all the way to Santa Cruz by the storm’s tide. A twenty-foot swell caught us at that moment. I tried to grab on to the rail, but was caught off guard. I went in, and the struggle to stay afloat in the swells and fend off other pieces of driftwood was too much. Eventually, Jeffrey pulled me out, reaching over the rail for my hand. I ended up in the hospital with broken bones, internal injuries and a miscarriage. I was told I’d never have another child.

  Marti gave birth to Justin shortly after that, and the space in my heart that would have been filled by a child of my own was filled by Justin, by my promise to look after him always. I saw this as a sacred trust, one I would never break.

  I doubt Marti meant for me to make her son a monthly quest. It simply happened that way—one of those day-by-day, month-by-month habits that develops. In this case it grew into a steady stream of years.

  And now Justin is gone, disappeared into thin air—just like my child.

  I am older and wiser than when I miscarried that first year of my marriage. With the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, it does not escape me that the reason Mauro and Hillars are so interested in questioning Jeffrey is because they think he might have had a hand in Justin’s kidnapping.

  But why would Jeffrey have done such a thing?

  It would have to be because a connection could be made between Justin and Chase. Everything Jeffrey does lately is either wrapped up in, affected by or affects Chase’s reelection.

  “Ms. Northrup? I asked you a question.”

  I come back from my thoughts and look at Mauro, who has taken a seat across from me again. Hillars is on the phone.

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  “I asked you to tell me everything you can about Helen Asback.”

  “You mean Sister Helen?”

  “I suppose she might still hold that title.”

  “Still hold it? I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t know that Sister Helen, as you know her, has left her order?”

  This stuns me. “You mean she changed orders,” I argue, though that would still be unbelievable.

  “No, I mean she dropped out. Sometime in the eighties. You didn’t know this?”

  I shake my head, bewildered and still shocked. “No. I told you, I haven’t had contact with her in years.”

  “Exactly how many years?”

  “At least twenty. Since Marti and I left the Joseph and Mary Motherhouse.”

  “But Ms. Bright did have contact with her?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she might have, but if so, she never told me.”

  I still can’t quite believe it. Sister Helen no longer a nun? One might as well say the moon no longer comes up, or the sun has burned itself out.

  “How do you know all this?” I ask. “Have you talked with her?”

  “Helen Asback?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ms. Northrup,” Mauro says with exaggerated patience, “she’s the one who sent us to you. Ms. Asback agrees with Ned Bright that you might have had a hand in Marti Bright’s murder.”

  “That’s ridiculous! I don’t believe it! She was angry with me for leaving the convent, but that was years ago. And why would she say a thing like that? Marti and I were best friends.”

  “Not according to Helen Asback,” Mauro says. “According to her, Marti Bright no longer trusted you. And Marti Bright’s brother confirms this.”

  I feel as if I’m in some Kafkaesque drama where nothing makes sense. Marti no longer trusted me? That can’t be true.

  Hillars hangs up the phone and comes over to Mauro. They whisper again. Mauro makes a gesture of protest, but Hillars waves a hand as if to settle him down.

  Mauro sighs, stands and comes over to me. He takes out a key and unlocks the cuffs.

  “I’m afraid you’ll miss lunch,” he says. “We have to leave.”

  “And I was so looking forward to it,” I say.

  Standing, I flex my stiff knees and rub my wrists. Glancing at my watch, I add, “On the other hand, there’s still time to see my lawyer about suing you both for false arrest.”

  “But you haven’t been arrested,” Mauro says smoothly. “No one booked you. There’s no record anywhere of our little chat.”

  “You mean it’s my word against yours? I don’t know, Agent Mauro…with the climate of the country today, I have a feeling people will believe an innocent citizen over a couple of renegade Secret Service agents.”

  Hillars speaks in that slow, thick voice. “I must admit, you may be right about that, Ms. Northrup. However, you also might want to take into consideration the fact that Agent Mauro and I have perhaps the best chance of finding Marti Bright’s killer. If you are indeed innocent, you wouldn’t want to tie our hands in any way, would you?”

  He reaches for my arm. “Come now, let us take you back to your car.”

  Despite the friendly Southern accent, Agent Hillars makes my skin crawl. “No thanks,” I say, stepping back. “I’ll take a cab.”

  They look at each other and shrug, almost in unison, then walk to the door and hold it for me.

  As we’re leaving, room service arrives. I grab half a sandwich off the cart and stuff it into my mouth, chomping down hard and wishing it were Agent Mauro’s arm.

  7

  BEN

  This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped, Ben thinks. He sits across from Chief Peter Bridges in his private office and folds his arms. “I just don’t feel good about this, Chief. I can’t put a surveillance on Abby and not tell her about it. She’s a friend.”

  “Friend? Ben, you think we’re all blind around here? You think I don’t know what’s going on?”

  Ben shrugs. “I’ve tried to be discreet, sir.”

  “Discreet!” The Chief thumps an inch-high stack of letters on his desk. Taking one from the top, he reads. “‘Detective Ben Schaeffer was seen having dinner the other night with a woman many believe to be your chief suspect in the murder of Marti Bright. Not only that, but she writes the town’s gossip column. What’s going on?’”

  He slaps the letter down and takes up another.

  “‘Why aren’t the police arresting Abby Northrup? Everybody says she knew Marti Bright, and her name, written in the ground where Marti Bright died, points to her as the killer. What more do the Carmel police need before they arrest her
? Or is this just one more case of money greasing palms?”

  He picks up another letter, but Ben holds up a hand.

  “You don’t have to go on. I get it. But, Chief, we get letters like that all the time. Shit, Carmel’s a town where people call the police when they find kids playing in trees. And you remember when somebody called in to report two black men standing on a corner? The caller said they looked suspicious. They were our own cops, for Christ’s sake.”

  Ben leans forward. “You and I both know there isn’t any real evidence that Abby killed Marti Bright. I’m telling you, they were best friends. And Abby is not a killer.”

  Chief Bridges sighs. “Ben, you want to be chief when I leave, or not?”

  “You know I do. I very much want that.”

  “Then you’ve got to close this case. And you’ve got to beat those assholes from the Secret Service to the punch. I’ve got the city council on my back, the city manager’s office and a committee of business owners, not to mention residents up the kazoo. This damned crucifixion has hit all the papers nationwide. It’s been on Entertainment Tonight—did you see that? They’re billing it as Murder in Clint Eastwood–Land. Some are even calling it the Crucifixion Murders, like there’s a whole slew of ’em. Our own local Herald ran a headline the other day, Crucified in Carmel. Shit, Ben, every television station in the country is running this over and over in the news every day, and nobody wants to come here anymore. This damned thing is killing the tourist business, not to mention scaring Peninsula residents half to death. We’ve got to do something fast.”

  “The task force is on it,” Ben argues. “Everyone’s doing their best.”

  The chief stands, pointing a finger at him. “You’ve got to do something, Ben. You personally. You don’t want to have to stand before that board when you come up for promotion and admit you were helpless in the face of the town’s first truly gruesome murder. You don’t want the Secret Service grabbing all the glory.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the glory,” Ben argues.

  “No, I’m sure you don’t. But for Christ’s sake, man, this is a small town. You’ve got nowhere to go but into my seat. And I want you in it. You’ve done a damned good job over the years. You care about the people, and they like you. You’re smart, and you’ve built trust and respect, the two primary qualities a cop needs to survive in this town.”