Back to looking for elephants.
I rewound the past few days, analyzing every conversation, every revelation, looking for the links.
Kyle couldn’t have lied to me. There were a whole lot of things I’d buy before I believed that. New puzzle pieces took shape, the crack in the wall fading into the background as I concentrated.
I spent my life looking for the truth. And no matter how I liked to spin it, it wasn’t just my job. Joey was a hundred percent right: it was my identity. Somewhere, back when, journalism started out as something I wanted to do. A way to meet interesting people and write for a living.
But in the nearly ten years I’d been at the Telegraph, the profession had become my life, the newsroom home, the staff my family. I knew all that. I just didn’t want to admit the first part when it was pissing Joey off, because I also didn’t want it to be different.
It was a noble pursuit. Game-changing on the best days, simply difference-making on most others. I didn’t just get to meet people, I got to help them.
The truth. An honorable thing to seek by any account.
But what if the thing I was hunting was my problem here?
The door at the end of the hallway buzzed. Clicked open.
Officer Doe Eyes appeared, skipped her gaze around the cell until she found me and nodded, putting a key in the door. “Jerri. Viv. Your friends pitched in bail money. Let’s go.”
A petite woman curled in the fetal position on the floor next to my left foot sat up, poking a lanky girl who couldn’t have been old enough to buy a legal drink, which her padded push-up bra and slinky black dress did a poor job of disguising. The girl’s eyes fluttered open.
“We’re sprung,” the older woman said. “Get up.”
They followed the deputy out, leaving a space on the floor. I sank into it before anyone else could spread that way, wrapping my arms around my knees and falling back to my thoughts.
The truth can be a subjective thing.
From a hundred uncomfortable courtroom benches, I’d listened to DonnaJo go on about that for hours on end.
But I’d never really believed her.
What if, though?
What if Kyle was telling the truth, but so was Cameron? And so was Governor Baine?
How could that be?
Pinching the bridge of my nose to fight the headache this rabbit hole was spawning, I inhaled sharply.
Any single person’s version of truth is shaped by how they see an event. The lens through which they see the whole world is shaped by their history and experiences.
Which is how two different people can see the same thing two completely different ways.
Most of the time this manifests in opinions, which are easy for me to dismiss.
But.
Backing all the way up to Friday morning, what did I have?
There was a body in the governor’s office.
Kyle said Lakshmi was the victim.
The governor’s son was missing.
Kyle said he shouldn’t have told me and actually cried as he begged me to step out of this story. I had only ever seen Kyle cry once—at his grandfather’s funeral.
What Kyle never did say after that was why.
And he never said anything else about Lakshmi.
Lakshmi, who someone was running an at least mildly sophisticated smear campaign against online.
Whose mother was morose and angry and seemingly close to shock—but had she actually said her child was dead? No. She’d been angry that the suits who came to her house were talking about finding Hamilton Baine. She said they acted like Lakshmi wasn’t important.
The governor had been focused on his son, mentioning Lakshmi only as adjacent to Hamilton.
Kyle’s disgusted, clipped tone from Friday morning bubbled through my memory.
The videos.
Advance spin control.
Oh.
My.
God.
I bolted up straight so fast I whacked my head on the iron bars behind me hard enough to see actual stars.
But for the first time, I wondered if I didn’t also see what the hell was really happening here.
And just how royally I had screwed up.
26
“She’s not dead.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth, blinking back tears I couldn’t attribute with any certainty to the head injury, what with the blinding realization that Wes Cameron was right, at least in the big picture: I got played.
My lens, shaped by a hundred other murder stories, showed me a warped version of the facts that sent me chasing after the wrong truth altogether.
Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod.
The woman sprawled on the floor in front of me turned her head, her glassy eyes still too dilated to focus properly.
“Yes, she is. I heard it from three different people last night. Word travels fast.”
I only half heard her at first, my brain stuck in a panicked loop because I was suddenly sure that everything I thought I knew about this story was 180 degrees wrong, and my entire world had just been flipped on its end.
The words filtered through eventually, though, and I looked down.
Torn fishnets, cheap spike stilettos, faux-leather pull-on skirt—topped with a satin blouse three seasons Donna Karan past and a diamond lavaliere.
I studied her face.
High cheekbones, caramel-colored hair. What slivers I could see of her pupils were bright green.
Slight lines around her eyes, just barely visible. No roots or gray in the hair.
“Who?” I asked.
“Who? Who?” She folded her arms clumsily over her bare midriff, cackling. “Are you an owl?” Her face went slack again. “My mom used to like that one. When she talked to me. So smart. She thought she was so frigging smart. Keeping it secret. Nobody on campus.” She shook her finger, the words slurring and then fading.
“Did you say someone is dead?” I leaned closer.
“Dean Tricky,” she said. “That’s what we called her. Because we turned the tricks. But she ran the show.” She laid the finger across her lips. “Don’t tell,” she whispered.
Jiminy Choos.
“What’re you doing, talking to her?” The words were almost shrill, the voice high.
I looked up to find the spandex-clad girl, still splotched with vomit that sent waves of stench rolling off her, leaning over the side of the cot with her hand outstretched. “I told you not to tell anyone that!”
“Who’s she going to tell?” Pupils waved a hand at me. “Look at her. She’s not our kind of people.”
My eyes shot between the two of them, both about the same age, which I would peg as younger than me, and then to the older one in the fake fur sitting against the other wall.
“Were you two students at RAU?” I asked Pupils, ignoring Vomity Spandex for the moment. “Are you talking about Angela Baker?”
Her head lolled up and down, her eyes drifting closed to reveal masterful smoky shadow and liquid liner.
I raised my eyes to Spandex. “Is Angela dead?”
She rolled to face the wall.
Shit.
I swallowed hard, the stench in the air fading as my own stomach turned itself inside out.
She’d told me she was afraid. And I was at least close to the last person on the registered list of folks she’d talked to.
Bonus: thanks to possibly the dumbest thing I had ever done, I was a sitting. Damn. Duck.
I had to get out of here. Had to get to Bob. Had to apologize to the governor.
And I had no way to do any of it.
I steepled my fingers under my chin. “What have I done?”
I didn’t need anyone else to answer that. I got cocky. I trusted the wrong source, all right, but it turned out the wrong source was me.
Kyle said “victim,” and I assumed murder. That one bitty little snap choice changed my lens, colored the way I’d heard every word people had said since, the way I followed every lead, and the w
orst decision I’d ever made.
I had to make this right.
The buzzer sounded again, the door at the end of the hallway clicking open.
“Clarke?”
I didn’t look up until I heard my name. Deputy Doe Eyes had company.
A large gentleman in a boxy gray suit with an ugly brown tie I’d seen twice already on similarly built men this weekend.
I shot to my feet.
She unlocked the door. “You’re free to go.” She nodded to the suit.
My fingers closed around the bar behind me, my eyes looking for something I couldn’t find with his sunglasses still in place.
I pulled in a deep breath. Regretted it when my stomach recoiled from the holding-cell stench.
He scooched the shades down the bridge of his nose. “You coming or staying?” His voice was deep, his eyes flat and unreadable.
I shuffled forward.
Stepping out, I looked back at the girls in the cell, then up at the muscles in the suit, who had settled his shades back in place. We were in the basement.
Frying pan, or fire?
I chose the fire.
Given my gut’s record of late, I wasn’t sure it was safer, but at least it smelled better.
Suit didn’t speak again until we were outside.
“Over here.” He turned for a black Ford sedan. Didn’t wait to see if I was following. Stopping at the passenger door, he opened it and nodded to me.
I paused a few steps back, studying the mountain of barrel-chested man in front of me. He could probably crush my skull like a walnut without straining a tricep. And I didn’t miss the slight gun bulge beneath the jacket under his left arm, either.
I tipped my head to one side.
“Why did you come get me? And why is Cameron letting me go?”
“Probably because I didn’t ask him,” he said, his face keeping its stony blank expression. “You are a difficult woman to get in touch with.”
Difficult . . . I blinked. The weird repetitive calls?
“Agent Chaudry?”
He nodded. Just the once.
“You know your phone shows up with an Ohio area code? And voicemail is a thing for a reason.”
The words drifted out on autopilot, my brain trying to change this gear and figure out what the hell the Secret Service had to do with any of this.
“I wanted to schedule a meeting with you in person. You’ve made that difficult.”
I slid into the car, shaking my head. “If this is about my background check, I’m afraid you’ve wasted a trip, but I’m thankful for the Get Out of Jail Free card.”
Same blank expression as he shut my door and rounded the front of the car. Was he training for the guard at Buckingham Palace or something?
He slid behind the wheel and pressed the button to start the engine. “Your background check is done and filed. I wouldn’t be here about a background check.” He flipped the turn signal up and took a right at the corner. “But since you brought it up, I gotta say: you have made your share of enemies in the past few years, but your background is about as clean as it gets. You could practically have your own superhero slogan. Truth, justice, and exclusive news.” He glanced at my floorboard. “Or something about the shoes, maybe? You spend a lot of money on shoes for someone who earns what you do. NewsGirl: Truth, justice, and good shoes.” He sort of smiled at his own joke. It looked like he was in pain.
Not anymore. I didn’t say that out loud.
“There’s been a lot going on here, Agent. I’m running on very little sleep and even less caffeine. You’re going to have to just tell me why you want to talk to me.”
He stopped at a light.
“What do you know about Lakshmi Drake, Miss Clarke?”
Sweet cartwheeling Jesus.
“Honestly? Right now I have not the first clue.”
“Now who’s not being straight with who? You splashed her name and photo all over the front page this morning.”
I nodded, blowing a long breath out through flappy lips.
“I’m not so sure I was right about that.”
I ventured a sideways glance up when he didn’t answer after a few beats. He put his foot back on the gas when the light changed, and nodded.
“You are a smart woman. I knew that from reading your file.”
“What, do y’all pull SAT scores for background checks?”
I tried to keep my voice even, but it sounded too high anyway. This was the freaking United States Secret Service. He probably knew what kind of ice cream I liked best and why I’d named the dog Darcy. Which meant he also knew about my history with Kyle.
Whatever else was going to come crashing down around this, I didn’t want Kyle’s career destroyed because of me.
He chuckled, his eyes staying on the road. “Fourteen-eighty. Impressive. But I was talking about your FBI file.”
“My . . . my what?” I stumbled over the words.
“You don’t piss off powerful people without becoming more than a blip on the government’s radar,” he said, his voice still stoic and smooth. “Don’t worry. There’s nothing troubling. Well. I guess it depends on your point of view. But from yours and from mine, you’re good.”
And he seemed to still think that, having mentioned my story from this morning.
I looked out my window, the art deco buildings lining Broad Street blurring together as the car sped up when the light turned yellow.
“Where are we going?” I asked before I snapped my fingers. “Damn. My bag is still at the capitol building.”
He answered my question with a question. “Lakshmi?”
If Lakshmi was alive, but the governor couldn’t put her on TV to refute my story, Baine didn’t know where she was. Which spawned a whole herd of new questions, led by: Who did? And what did Hamilton’s disappearance have to do with it? My money was still on Ted Grayson, but I wasn’t betting the house anymore.
“I’m pretty sure she’s not dead, if that’s what you’re asking me. I know I screwed up. I’d like to try to make it right, but I’m going to need my purse and my phone and my laptop.” And a bit of luck, too, not that he needed to know that. I managed to sound confident. Controlled. Not a trace of the panicked regret churning my guts into mush came through in the words.
Small victories.
He stopped at another light, putting on his turn signal.
My brow furrowed. “Are you . . . ?” I didn’t finish the question, watching as he wound through the Fan, shaking my head when he turned onto my street.
Seriously. What the actual hell was going on?
He pulled into my driveway behind two cars I knew and one I didn’t, shutting off the engine and turning to face me in the seat. “Shall we?”
Fear didn’t override my desire for answers.
I strode to the door ahead of the agent, turned the knob, and shoved so hard it rattled on the hinges when it bounced off the baker’s rack.
Kyle and Joey looked up from their coffee, and a jeans-and-Nike-T-shirt-clad Chris Landers unburied his head from my fridge.
I stopped short.
Chaudry did not. His chest hit right between my shoulders, sending me stumbling forward. Joey shot out of his chair and put a steadying hand out that I swatted away as I caught my balance, a fiery rage settling in my chest before it erupted out of my face.
“I haven’t slept. I haven’t eaten. I was very nearly puked on, I spent the better part of the afternoon in a cell, and I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to trash my career. One of you better start spilling some guts. Now.”
27
“Calm down.” Landers put a carton of milk on the counter and closed the fridge before pulling a box of Oreos out of the cabinet overhead.
“Go on and help yourself, Detective.” The words dripped so much sarcasm they oozed through my teeth. “I don’t mind at all.”
He rolled his eyes. “I thought you might be hungry, and Miller said you like sweets when you’re upset.” He reached into the d
ishwasher and pulled out a small plate, dropping a half-dozen cookies in the center and pouring a glass of milk.
Kyle scrambled out of his chair, picking up his mug.
“Sit. Eat.”
I turned a puzzled squint on each of them as I scrubbed the jail off my hands like I was about to operate on somebody. Taking the chair as Landers put the milk and cookies in front of me, I picked up one sugary disc and dipped it, cutting my eyes to Joey.
Of everything that had happened today, walking into a room full of cops he was sitting and chatting with was the weirdest by a middle-of-nowhere backcountry mile.
Not that I could ask him about that without making it even weirder.
He reached across the table for my hand and closed his fingers over mine.
I focused on Kyle, standing next to my chair with his arms folded over his chest, his brow furrowed, and his clear blue eyes brim-full of concern.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I chewed and swallowed the cookie. “I know Lakshmi’s not dead. I’m betting you have her stashed somewhere. And that’s making me wonder if you don’t also know where the governor’s son is.” My eyes skipped from him to Landers. “What in the ever-loving hell is happening here, gentlemen? And who left the building in that body bag yesterday? I owe the governor one massive boldface front-page apology, and I want to make sure I have every fact straight before I start writing it.”
“We don’t have anybody stashed anywhere.” Landers looked between Kyle and Chaudry. “Right?”
“We do not.” Kyle didn’t look at Landers, raising an eyebrow at Chaudry. Got a nod.
Threw up his hands. “Hell, I’m not even sure where to start.”
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