The Girl on the Stairs

by V. J. Chambers

  “Cancel whatever it is,” said Petra. “You need to be working hard on that book. Get it to me as soon as you can. This is going to be big, Sam. We’re talking a big tour, guest spots on TV. Depending on what you get out of Lola, Oprah might be interested.”

  Sam’s throat constricted. “Oprah?” he said in a strangled voice.

  “This could be huge, Sam. You were a kid eleven years ago, so maybe you don’t remember how much media attention this case got, but it was a lot. People were polarized about Lola. Some people thought she was a victim. Some people thought she was the devil incarnate. She’s the Caril Ann Fugate of our time. It’s like a real life Natural Born Killers, you know? And an exclusive book telling her side of the story? People will eat this up. Forget how well Stolen did. This is going to be three times as big.”

  “Three times?” Sam still couldn’t get his voice to sound normal.

  “I guarantee it.” He could tell Petra was grinning. You could hear smiles over the phone. “I could kiss you for bringing this to me. With tongue.” She waited for him to laugh.

  He didn’t. Petra was a lesbian, so it was sort of funny for her to say she’d kiss a man, but Sam wasn’t finding this funny at all.

  He sputtered. “Daphne told me that if I drop the book, we might be able to get back together.”

  Petra was quiet.

  “I told her I would.” His voice still sounded unnatural, like it was coming through a tinny speaker system.

  Petra cleared her throat. “Wow, Sam.”

  “I know.”

  “So you want me to call and say that you can’t do this book either? If I do that, I’m not going in without a check for the advance money from you.”

  He coughed.

  “Do you want my advice?” Petra asked.

  “No, I’m calling to tell you… why? What’s your advice?”

  “My advice is that you’re young, and you’re attractive, and after you write this book, you’ll be rich. And it won’t be that hard to find someone else.”

  “You’re seriously saying that?”

  “Do you have any idea what thirty percent of these royalties are going to be, Sam? You’re not the only one who’s going to be getting rich here. I’m not going to do too badly myself.”

  “I’m in love with Daphne.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Petra. “If you were in love with her, you wouldn’t have had an affair. Trust me, I know. When I first moved to the city, I had a long-distance relationship with a girl back home. I thought I would love her until the end of time. But it was really more of a case of out of sight, out of mind. I only thought I loved her. I didn’t even understand love back then.”

  Funny. That was what Daphne had yelled at him back in the parking lot.

  “If you give up the book for her, you’ll resent her forever,” said Petra. “When things get bad, and they will get bad, you’ll remember that she forced you to give this up for her. You’ll never forgive her for it.”

  He still didn’t respond.

  Petra sighed. “You want me to call MacphersonConnell?”

  He swallowed. He took a breath, ready to tell her yes, that he would give up everything for love. But what came out was, “No. You’re right. I have to write this book.”

  “That’s my boy.” She was smiling again.

  *

  After Sam hung up with Petra, he couldn’t call Daphne back. Instead, he got in his car, went to the convenience store, and bought another pack of cigarettes.

  He shivered on the porch as he smoked not one but two of them.

  He hated himself.

  Dropping the book was the right thing to do. Choosing Daphne was the right thing to do. If he had an ounce of decency in him, he would have the courage to do the right thing.

  But what Petra had said about resentment had really gotten to him. He was fairly sure that she was right. What Daphne was asking him to do was too much. She was asking him to give up his calling. Deep down, he was a writer. It wasn’t just a job to him. It was a passion. Daphne didn’t know what she was asking.

  And she wasn’t even guaranteeing anything. She wasn’t saying, “Don’t write the book, we’ll be together.” She was only saying they’d try.

  So, in the end, he could wind up losing the book and Daphne. Having nothing.

  He was still a piece of shit.

  He spat smoke into the air, wishing that it was easier to do the right thing. Easier to be in love. Easier not to be such an asshole.

  After he finished his second cigarette, he went back into his office and picked up the phone.

  He tried to convince himself to call Daphne.

  Instead, he looked at his list of interviewees and selected someone off of it. He dialed.

  “Hello?” Someone had picked up.

  “Hi there. May I speak to Patrick Winslow?” Sam asked. He was pleased that his voice had returned to its normal professional quality, not the weird canned way it had sounded when he was talking to Petra.

  “You got him,” said Patrick.

  “Hi there, Patrick, my name is Samson Black. I’m working on a book about the Lola Ward-Nicholas Todd case, and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

  There was no immediate reply, just the sound of Patrick’s breath. “Uh… why are you calling me about that?”

  “You were friends with Nicholas Todd, weren’t you?”

  “Well… I knew him. Kind of. I wouldn’t say we were close or anything.”

  Sam flipped through the notepad he’d used when he was taking notes with Todd. “He describes you as his best friend.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just to ask questions, that’s all.”

  “I don’t know if I want to talk about that stuff.”

  Sam jiggled the mouse on his computer. He had a document with a bunch of notes in it that was open somewhere. He minimized Spotify. Minimized Chrome. There it was.

  “You didn’t have a problem talking at some point, because I’ve got three websites with quotes from you about Lola. You said you knew her back then. Said you saw her and Todd together.”

  Patrick sighed.

  “I’m only trying to confirm some facts. If you and Todd were friends, and you knew that he and Lola were involved, why didn’t you testify to that at the trial?”

  “I didn’t testify at all.”

  “I’m aware of that. How come?”

  “No one asked me.”

  “But you would have, had you been asked?”

  “This all happened a long time ago,” said Patrick. “I don’t see why you’re digging it up.”

  “I’m telling Lola’s side of the story,” said Sam. “She contacted me.”

  “What?” said Patrick. “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. I think she wants to set the record straight. I think she wants vindication. I think she hid her relationship with Todd back then because she was afraid and traumatized. But now, I think—”

  “Traumatized?” Patrick snorted. “Oh, she’s really got you wrapped around her little finger, doesn’t she?”

  Sam was intrigued. “Why would you say that?”

  “Nothing traumatized that girl,” said Patrick. “She was a cold fish.”

  “Really?” See, this was good. This was juicy. He was getting deeper into it, and things were getting more complicated.

  Or maybe he was falling back into the virgin/whore trap. Lola made him uncomfortable. Maybe he wanted her to be guilty. Maybe that actually made things simpler.

  “You really writing a book?” asked Patrick.

  “I really am.”

  “Like a real book? A hardcover with a dust jacket and everything. Or just one of those e-book things? Because I got a friend who just copies shit off of Wikipedia and publishes it on that Kindle thing. He says it’s going to make him rich, but so far, it’s not doing anything.”

  “A real book,” said Sam. “I’m sure it’ll be an e-book too. My last book had an audiobook
as well.”

  “So you wrote other books?”

  “Yep.”

  “Anything I might have heard of?”

  This was always bad. Even though his book had topped the New York Times best seller list for three weeks in a row, lots of people had still never heard of it. People didn’t read much these days. “Stolen: The True Story of Daphne Perry?”

  “Oh?” said Patrick. “Oh yeah? The one about that chick whose dead friend’s father kidnapped her?”

  “The very one.” Sam felt a nice flood of satisfaction at having his book recognized.

  “Huh,” said Patrick. “So, you’re writing about Lola, then.”

  “I am.”

  “Hope you don’t want me to say nice things about her.”

  “I want you to tell me the truth about her.”

  “The truth?” said Patrick. “I think she ruined my friend. She turned Nick into a killer. She changed him.”

  “How so?”

  “If you’re really a writer of a real book, then you could come here, right? Come to Keyser?”

  “I could,” said Sam. He hadn’t really done much traveling for research on his books before, but it might be kind of fun.

  “You should come here,” said Patrick. “I could find you other people to talk to. I’d tell you anything you want to know. And you could see the house. It’s abandoned now. No one wanted to live there.”

  Sam was sold. The idea of exploring an abandoned house, the scene of a murder, appealed to him in a breathless, dangerous way. “All right, Patrick. I’ll come to Keyser.”

  *

  “I have to write this book,” Sam murmured into the phone. “I’m sorry.”

  Daphne was on the other end, but she didn’t say anything. He hadn’t wanted to call her, hadn’t wanted to tell her this. But he was already an asshole for not choosing her. He wasn’t going to be a worse asshole by avoiding her. He wasn’t going to be a coward. He was facing the music, giving it to her straight.

  “I’m going to go to Keyser,” he said. “I’ll get some interviews with people who knew Lola. It won’t take too long. I’ll be back soon. I’ll finish the book. When it’s over, maybe—”

  “No,” said Daphne. “Because by the time it’s over, you’ll be fucking her.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “She’s not like… She’s not like you. Hell, I’m not convinced she didn’t do it. I got a guy I’m going to interview who says she was cold. He said she ruined Nicholas Todd. And when I talked to Todd… I don’t know. The guy didn’t seem crazy exactly. This is a different kind of book, Daphne. You have to believe me.”

  She sighed. “I don’t have to believe anything, Sam. Not anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I know I’m an ass.”

  She laughed a little. “I knew you wouldn’t really give up the book.”

  “Then why’d you ask me to?”

  “I…” She let out a long, slow breath. “I guess I wanted to see if you’d try to be Prince Charming for me again.”

  He hated himself again. He’d made a promise to her. Maybe it was never out loud, but it was a promise all the same. When she’d first told him all about what had happened to her, locked up in that cabin, fearing for her life, she’d opened herself to him. He’d seen her naked fear, the darkest, most vulnerable part of her. And he’d wrapped his arms around her, held her, and the promise was in the air. As long as he was around, Daphne was never supposed to have to feel that way again.

  He was supposed to keep her safe.

  But all he’d done was hurt her.

  And when it came down to it, he didn’t even pick her.

  “You never were that, were you?” said Daphne.

  “No, baby, that’s not true. I love you. I always—”

  “It was always about your book. The minute the damned thing was published, you started pulling away from me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I’m not real to you, Sam. Not unless you’re writing about me. You loved me as long as I inspired you. But once you squeezed all the story out of me, you didn’t want me anymore.”

  “Damn it, that is not what happened at all. It wasn’t about you. It was me. I fucked up.”

  “I know,” she said. “You couldn’t help yourself.” She laughed bitterly. “Do whatever you want, Sam. Just leave me out of it, okay? I’ll see a lawyer to get the papers drawn up.”

  “Daphne—”

  She hung up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Patrick Winslow gestured at the two other men with him. “This is Curt and Jeremy.”

  Sam reached out to shake both of their hands. They were in Denver’s, a small bar in what passed for downtown Keyser, West Virginia. As a town, Keyser wasn’t much to look at. Though there was a Walmart on the outskirts, the main street wasn’t full of bustling shops. There was a new high school out behind the Walmart. The old high school, now rented out to a telemarketing company, loomed over the town. It was as if Keyser was moving out of Keyser. As if the town was vomiting itself up.

  Sam had driven down earlier that day. The drive hadn’t been too bad. Maybe a three-hour trip from Harpers Ferry. Though both towns were in West Virginia, the straightest shot between them was through Maryland.

  The three men were in their early thirties, just like Todd. They looked respectable enough now, but Sam could see hints of the teenagers they had been. Curt’s earlobes had been stretched out at one point, but they no longer held jewelry. Instead, they hung deformed and elongated. Jeremy had tattoos peering out from under his shirt. Skulls and spiders danced down his forearms. And Sam wasn’t sure, but he thought that Patrick might still be wearing a touch of eyeliner.

  Sam was glad he’d never gone through a phase as a teenager in which he felt the need to permanently mark his body. Not that his teenage years had been easy. He sometimes felt like the smoke from that fire had gotten stuck inside him, like he hadn’t coughed it all out until his sophomore year of college.

  Still, there were no signs on his body of what he’d been through. No identifying mutilations. Even the scars left on his hands from dragging Hannah out of the fire had worn off years ago.

  “You got here quick,” said Patrick. “I didn’t think you’d come the next day, man.”

  “Well, my agent says I need to be focusing on getting this book out as quickly as possible,” said Sam. “And besides, I was intrigued by what you’d told me.” He smiled at the guys. “Can I buy a round of beer?” He could spring for it. Hell, he could keep the receipt and write it off as a work-related charge.

  Curt, Jeremy, and Patrick seemed fine with his offer of libations, so Sam ordered a pitcher, and the four of them settled in at a table in the dimly corner of the place.

  “So, you all knew Nicholas Todd?” said Sam, turning on his recorder. “He was a friend of yours?”

  Curt and Jeremy both got very interested in their beers.

  “It’s okay,” said Patrick. “We can talk to him. We got to. If we don’t, he’s going to make Lola look like some pansy-faced little girl.”

  Curt and Jeremy exchanged a glance.

  Sam furrowed his brow. “Is there some reason you wouldn’t want to talk to me about this?”

  Curt took a drink of his beer. “We thought it was a joke.”

  “You thought what was a joke?” Sam asked.

  “Nick talked about it a lot,” said Curt. “Before it happened. He was all like, ‘Yeah, Lola’s parents are jerks, and we’re gonna kill them so we can be together.’ And we’d all laugh. Because we didn’t think he was serious.” He looked at his friends for confirmation of this.

  Both Patrick and Jeremy nodded sagely.

  “We didn’t believe it,” said Curt. “Right after it happened, we thought it was some kind of sick coincidence, like it couldn’t be true.”

  “Yeah,” said Jeremy. “I talked to him the next day on the phone, after it was all over the news about the murders. I asked him if he did it, and he said, ‘No, man, it wa
sn’t me. It wasn’t us.’ We thought… we thought if we talked about it to anyone that he’d get in trouble. We were trying to protect him.”

  “And he told us not to,” said Patrick. “He told us never to say that we saw him and Lola together.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “Why would he tell you that?”

  “He thought it would make him look guilty, I guess,” said Curt. “He thought that if people knew that him and Lola were an item, they’d think that they killed her parents. He didn’t want to have a motive.”

  “But he did have a motive,” Sam said. “He did do it. You realize that now.”

  Jeremy poured himself some more beer. “I don’t know what happened. We read the papers during his trial. They quoted his testimony. But…” He shook his head. “That’s not the guy we knew.”

  “Oh, come on, Jeremy,” said Patrick. “He did it. He admitted it.”

  Jeremy took a drink. “I don’t know if he did. Maybe she did it, and she convinced him to take the fall for her.”

  “What about the rest of the murders?” Sam said. “Because it wasn’t only her parents that were killed. There were four others. The hitchhikers, the gas station clerk, the woman at the bus stop.”

  None of the guys said anything.

  “He did it,” said Patrick, looking sidelong at Jeremy. “We’re not betraying him by saying that, man. Something happened to him. Nick went nuts.”

  Jeremy leaned across the table. “You know he wasn’t that kind of guy.”

  Sam cocked his head. “What kind of guy was he?”

  “He was a good guy,” said Curt. “He was a good friend. He was, you know, loyal. He’d always have your back.”

  “That’s true,” said Patrick. “I remember this one time. This was back when we were still in high school. Anyway, we were in class, and I threw this paper airplane at Nick when the teacher’s back was turned. So, he started throwing them back at me. We were going back and forth. Must have been like ten or twelve of them on the floor. And the teacher saw Nick with one of them, and Nick got written up. The teacher and the principal tried to get him to give me up, but he wouldn’t. And I was the one who started it. He was a good friend.”