Say No More

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  An imaginary conversation began in his head as he squinted into the morning sunshine, the irritating red light at Regatta Road slowing his progress. Did you kill Avery Morgan? some cop might ask. He could feel his blood pressure rising as he contemplated the audacity of that question. But the answer was no, he hadn’t killed her. And that was the truth.

  Next question: Did you know anything about it? The light changed as he measured out his answer to that one. No, he didn’t, he’d say, and that was probably true. It might have been a vagrant, or a hophead, some dope dealer. Or some sob-story-telling stray, some random roustabout who bighearted Avery had allowed inside. Or hell, it might have been the next freaking Boston Strangler.

  This chaos, and the inevitable questioning to come, threatened to upset Tarrant’s personal applecart beyond repair. Unintended consequences. He’d brandished that phrase to so many of his students. What you do has consequences, and I’m the one who will tell you what they are. He smiled, even now, remembering their anxious expressions and dawning understanding.

  And there it was, the Morgan House, a block away now. Red brick, with black wrought-iron fencing, knee high, around its patch of green lawn. Tarrant’s office paid for that damn lawn. The yellow crime scene tape, festooned like a macabre holiday decoration, looped through the curved iron and draped across the front door. A barrier to keep out intruders.

  But he wasn’t an intruder. He was the landlord. And possibly the best defense was a good offense. Should he approach the cops? Calculating, he adjusted his tie, loosening the paisley silk, feeling his starched shirt collar fail in a puff of August heat.

  A sound behind him, and as he stepped into the shade of a Reserve elm, a white Crown Vic slid by, as obvious a cop car as any he’d ever seen, two figures in the front seat, windows closed. The car eased by him, slowed, pulled to the curb across from the Morgan House. The doors remained closed.

  Do you know Avery Morgan’s password? He felt his expression change to reflect his infinite skepticism as he mentally practiced his response. No, he’d answer, certainly not. And that would be a lie, but an unprovable lie. The cops could never know he’d guessed it.

  If they took her computer, though, he might be screwed. Might be better for him to go back and take another look. Only Mack had seen him the night before. Mack, who’d respectfully tipped his ball cap to Tarrant, then continued his security rounds. Edward hadn’t even needed to try out his excuses. Mack had simply accepted he was where he should be. After all, Mack hadn’t known Avery was dead. Just another evening at Adams Bay.

  Edward had been so spooked, though, he’d bolted from the room, controlling every muscle to keep himself walking at a leisurely pace, not giving in to his instinct to sprint back to his office as fast as he could.

  He knew exactly what he was afraid of. What he was looking for. The video he’d taken down from YouTube but couldn’t bear to destroy. Who else had a copy? Could be anyone. Could be no one.

  Did that video also live on Avery’s computer? Had she also kept it as a souvenir? Of … him?

  Edward’s skin had tingled as he’d clicked open one set of his own files last night, then another one, going deeper into his computer. He’d been an idiot to keep it, a sentimental fool, but how did he know it would ever matter? Maybe it wouldn’t. But if the police found it, it could certainly put the lie to “We were simply colleagues” and “We never socialized.” Before the cops asked him, he definitely had to decide how he’d characterize their relationship.

  Behind his locked door and back in the darkened privacy of his office, heart rate down to semi-normal, he’d clicked the “play” triangle before he had a chance to second-guess himself. He needed to look at the video through a cop’s eyes, not his own, and see what someone else would see. He was a pro, he could do that, he knew what they’d be looking for.

  The music on the video blasted, so loud it had banged off the walls of his office. He stabbed the mouse to mute the sound, then eased the volume up to bare-whisper level. The lighting at the party was tantalizingly random, he remembered as the scene unfolded, fat candles flickering shadows on the round poolside tables, a scattering of paper lanterns dangling from the trees in Avery’s—the Morgan House’s—backyard. A few heads bobbed from the shallow end of the pool. Slashes of underwater lighting proved they were wearing bathing suits. Beer bottles, wineglasses, heads thrown back in laughter. He tried to see the summer gathering without the filter of death, without the filter of what had happened—how? why?—in that very same pool.

  He’d pressed his fingertips into his forehead, watching the students singing into their beer bottles. Then Avery herself, in a white dress, her hair held back with a pink ribbon, sipping from a yellow plastic cup. Someone’s shadow moved across her shoulders. Someone who’d stepped away as the camera moved closer. His shadow. His.

  He watched as the camera zoomed in on Avery, her eyes shining, candlelight softening her face. She turned to smile at him. He’d seen it on video a hundred times, knew the camera never really included him, but still felt his throat tighten every time he watched, absurdly fearing the student using the camera would somehow move it, just enough to reveal him next to her.

  The same student who then posted it on YouTube. Edward had called him in, “asked” him—the word with infinite subtext—to take it down, to protect the school’s reputation, and Ms. Morgan’s, and, more pointedly, the student’s own. The student, wisely, agreed to delete it. Edward had asked for the original, too. Couldn’t be too careful. And no student was going to refuse Edward Tarrant. Especially not Trey Welliver.

  Edward had made his own private copy before Trey deleted it. Had Avery made one, too? Had Trey? Had anyone else? The video ended, snapped to black.

  Edward had started it again from the beginning, scouring for anything he might have missed. And trying to memorize it. Because, certainly he’d have to delete it. Soon.

  But he didn’t. Couldn’t. Not the night of her death. This last memory of her? Of what they had? She’d embraced it, he’d seen it in her eyes.

  And now, standing a block from the Morgan House in the next morning’s light, watching two obvious detectives get out of their Crown Vic, he pivoted and, again using every bit of his willpower not to run, headed back to his office.

  19

  JANE RYLAND

  “Do you know what they called it? How they slugged the story?” Jane asked Fiola, who was behind her as they headed down the station’s cheerless back stairway. Jane had realized they didn’t need the cops’ report to get the scoop on the Melnea Cass Boulevard crash. All they had to do was screen the footage in the station’s video computer. Take that, Karen Warseck in PR.

  She stopped, hand clenching the rusting metal banister. Felt the weight of what they might be about to witness. “We’re the only ones who’ll see both accidents, you know? And we might be able to tell if it’s the same guy.”

  Fiola nodded, silently for once, and Jane imagined her producer’s brain doing the same calculations as her own. They’d first seen the delivery guy about this time yesterday morning. With a banged-up van, a cut on his forehead, indignant and unhappy. This time, what if he’d died?

  Or maybe it was someone else, another victim. Which would mean … “SAY NO MORE,” that stupid note had warned. About this? Or something else? Or nothing?

  They yanked open the glass door to ENG Receive. “ENG” for electronic news-gathering, “Receive” because that’s where the breaking news video feeds came in.

  Jane didn’t bother to sit. She leaned over, planted her fingers on the grimy keyboard, and typed in her password, then narrowed the search to the past twelve hours. Fiola hovered next to her.

  “Think the slug is hit-and-run?” Jane typed those words into the search window as she spoke them. Blank screen. “Melnea Cass Boulevard.” Nothing found. She typed “Cass car accident.” Nothing.

  “Car ax?” Jane typed, trying the newsroom shorthand.

  The computer pulled up the vide
o, and the first frame appeared. Night, which made it harder to see, and also easier. Harder, because everything in the background was dark. Easier, because whatever the camera lights hit blossomed into bright colors and sharp focus. The video swayed and jounced as the running photographer approached the action.

  Police had already arrived, the swoop of their wigwagging blue lights and powerful flashlights illuminating the demolished Gormay van. The van had smashed into the metal lane divider, the hood crunched against the unyieldingly thick steel pole of a highway marker. The front end was crumpled almost flat, air bags exploded, headlights shattered, the camera’s powerful spotlights reflecting some sort of liquid leaking onto the dark pavement. Smoke from the engine, or steam.

  “No EMTs yet,” Jane said. “That means the victim is still in the front seat.”

  “Yeah,” Fiola said. “Apparently the overnight stringer heard it on the police radio and was like, right there. Got lucky.”

  News-lucky, Jane thought. Only reporters could get away with calling a possibly fatal accident “lucky.”

  The cops had blocked off traffic as the photog swung around to get an establishing shot behind him—the lengthening row of glaring headlights, impatient drivers already honking. The yellow numbers of the video’s electronic time-of-day code ticked by in the screen’s upper left: 23:22:03.

  Swish pan, back to the scene. Two officers, uniforms, at the open driver’s-side door of the van. The passenger door was open, too, and the camera moved to show a cop’s body extending into the front seat.

  “They don’t know if he’s dead yet,” Jane said.

  The photog held his shot steady, waiting. Jane had to give him props—a sweltering night, a heavy camera, all to tape an incident that could turn out to be nothing.

  It didn’t look like nothing.

  “Hear that? Sirens,” Fiola said.

  In seconds the whirling red lights of the ambulance appeared, brighter and brighter, speeding the wrong way on the highway and pulling up to the car. A scramble of running EMTs, cops, a stretcher. More lights. The siren unrelenting, horns in the background. Traffic coming the opposite direction slowed, gawking at the glare and chaos.

  “Jerks,” Jane said. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. At this point, in video-time, the police hadn’t known the condition of the driver. So Jane and Fiola were watching with knowledge that those who’d actually participated didn’t have.

  “They say people are riveted by car accidents because it reminds them they’re safe. It wasn’t me, they think.” Jane shook her head. “But we put it on TV. Unless there’s a bigger point, like drunk driving, or texting, I’ve never understood that.”

  “Can you tell? If it’s the same person?” Fiola’s shoulder touched hers as they stared at the screen.

  “Hang on. I’ll pause it when—” Jane clicked the mouse as the victim’s face came into view. All movement stopped, a freeze-frame of disaster. The man’s face obscured by red, dark murky red in the artificial incandescence of the camera spotlight. EMTs stopped mid-motion, arms reaching out, stretcher in midair, one uniformed young man’s expression—fear, or concern or doubt—captured in that single instant. When Jane pushed “play,” the commotion would start again. Strange to remember that at the time this was shot, reality was unfolding, with cops and medics trying to save a life and control traffic and figure out what happened. Now she and Fiola could stop time.

  “Can you tell?” Fiola repeated her question, this time in a whisper.

  “Yeah,” Jane said.

  JAKE BROGAN

  “You never know what’s going to matter,” Jake said as he shut the cruiser door behind him. So yeah, he’d taken a resident-only parking spot on Alcott Street. The Reserve residents should be happy he and D were making sure no serial killer was loose in their neighborhood.

  He’d left Jane this morning, quietly as he could, still asleep with that cat curled up on her back. Ten o’clock now, so she was probably at work. He’d text soon. Maybe call, hear her voice.

  But first, the victim. If she was a victim.

  That text he’d gotten in the SafeHouse office was from Kat McMahan, informing him and D that water in Avery Morgan’s lungs proved she was alive when she hit the water, and she’d drowned. But why?

  “Know what I mean?” Jake went on as D approached. “Even though that piece-of-work alarm company had no video, we still got—”

  “Buncha crap.” D joined Jake at the curb.

  “Hey. We know there’s no video for us to screen. And we got her password. If we’re lucky that’ll be her password for everything.”

  Jake scanned the sunlit street, the lofty elms making shadowy patches on the sidewalks. Some guy a block away stood at the striped crosswalk, staring at them. People were relentlessly curious. He and Jane had discussed it, how onlookers—like TV viewers—were fascinated by the disasters of others. But the man turned, sauntered away. Okay, then.

  The crime scene tape still marked the Morgan House, the plastic sagging as it always did with the weight of morning dew and pestering breezes. And snooping neighbors. Sometimes people tried to steal the yellow tape, use it for decorations in their kids’ rooms. Jake shook his head. Death as entertainment.

  “Speaking of her password,” Jake said as they crossed the deserted street. “How’s the dog? If we can’t find relatives, we’re going to have to call the shelter at some point.”

  ”What dog?” DeLuca said.

  “Good one,” Jake said. They approached the front door, knocked. “Hey, Shom,” Jake said as the front door swung open. He held up the warrant, showing the officer on scene the magic key to unlocking the case.

  “Step aside, bro,” D said. “It’s open season.”

  “Anything new?” Jake asked.

  Shom explained that Crime Scene was running fingerprints, and it’d take a while. But it took five minutes, maybe less, for Jake to get into Avery Morgan’s laptop, a silver sliver of metal on the narrow desk tucked under her bedroom window. “Gotta love Popcorn,” Jake said.

  Another ten minutes, and Avery Morgan’s life was revealed, easy as scanning computer files and calendars. Once in, nothing was password-protected. Avery Morgan, age forty-six, once married, once divorced. Moved here from California, hired as adjunct professor, got use of the college-owned Morgan House as a perk. Taught performance drama and opera twice a week at Adams Bay. They read e-mails from summer students, asking for grade changes. E-mails from a movie agent, Allan Underwood in Los Angeles, telling her that the options on Callas and Pablo had expired. “We tried, sweetheart,” the e-mail said.

  He read it out loud to D. “Sweetheart?” Jake said.

  “Possible.” DeLuca had yanked out the six dresser drawers, dumping the contents onto a chair. He’d rolled the bedsheets into an oversized evidence bag and the thin quilt into a separate one. He’d flipped the mattress over. Now it balanced, not quite back in place, on the wooden slats, one corner snagged against the padded headboard.

  “Or maybe it’s just Hollywood movie crap,” Jake said. He clicked open a file labeled “Untitled,” said, “Yeah, she writes screenplays, looks like.” He scanned the opening page.

  Exterior, night, winter. A college campus, urban, unnamed. CARISSA, a beautiful young student, runs down the front steps of a vine-covered brownstone into the snow. We see she is barefoot.

  Jake clicked down farther, lowering himself into the swivel chair, skipping ahead.

  DEREK pulls CARISSA’S white T-shirt over her head. Close-up of her bare skin, DEREK’S hand caressing.

  CARISSA’S voice: “No.”

  DEREK: “You know you don’t mean that, babe. You don’t really mean no.”

  “‘Crap’ is right,” Jake muttered.

  D was pulling stacks of folded sweaters from the closet, pawing through them, adding them to the tumbled pile of clothing already on the chair. “We got nada here. No hidden notes, no secret files, no clandestine photos or love letters with freakin’ pink ribbo
ns. Nada.”

  D added a pile of white things to the mountain of possessions. “Screenplays, you said? Easier if this was the frigging movies. Been a clue, like, under the mattress or something.”

  Jake clicked the script closed and opened another screen, pulling up the contacts list on Avery Morgan’s e-mail. He searched for “Galt.” Nothing. Typed in “Willow.” Nothing.

  “Guess we could e-mail all of her contacts,” Jake thought out loud. “Or, if we had a thousand years, read everything in the computer.”

  “Only her stuff in here.” DeLuca, ignoring him, closed the closet door, surveyed his handiwork. “No men’s clothing. No weapons, anything like that. Nothing hidden behind the posters on the walls. Lemme check the bathroom, though. Medicine cabinets are my favorite. People always forget.”

  “I star-six-nined her landline,” Jake said. “Nothing there. We’ll get the records. But, hey. Adams Bay. Her e-mail address is dot e-d-u. She has an office there, dollars to doughnuts. That’s where her stuff is. Hope I-T can dry out her cell. We need to contact her last caller.”

  “Hi, who is this, please?” DeLuca pantomimed a phone call. “Thank you so much, sir. You’re under arrest.”

  “It could happen,” Jake said. “Off to school we go.”

  20

  ISABEL RUSSO

  “He’s not coming here—he couldn’t be.” Isabel Russo lowered her binoculars and said the words out loud, though no one but Fish could hear them. She whisked the pebbly rust-red pellets from her bare arms. She’d been resting her elbows on the metal rails encircling her little balcony as she focused in on the street below. Fifteen stories up, she had a perfect view, usually a bustle of students and tourists and baseball fans, the Green Line trolleys racketing by.