You Will Never Know

by You Will Never Know (retail) (epub)

  He turned off the shower, wiped his face again, ran his hands across his upper arms and chest. Some good definition there, showing the results of workouts in his basement gym, and those muscles were going to open some good fucking doors in the months ahead. About a half-dozen colleges and universities were already offering him full scholarships, even though Pop could spring for tuition, room, and board without breaking a sweat. It was nice to be noticed.

  He grinned. Fuck, it was good to be him.

  Later he came out from his bedroom dressed in Topsiders, chinos, and a warner wrestling polo shirt, and up on the second-floor landing was Brock Palmer, one of his best buds. He was dressed the same way. They slapped skin. Downstairs there was shouting, laughter; a door slammed. There was pounding at the door, swearing.

  Sam said, “What the fuck was that?”

  “Some guy came by to raise hell,” Brock said.

  “Another guy? What is this, a fucking convention? Who was it?”

  Brock shrugged. “Dunno. Some dad was pissed about something. Wanted to get in. Hank asked him for his invite, the dad didn’t have one, so Hank and Larry took care of it.”

  Sam headed to the stairs. “All right. Let’s keep on eye on things, okay?”

  “Got it, Cap,” Brock said, and as always Sam got a tingle of joy hearing that title. Cap. Captain of the Warner High School Wrestling Team, and captain of everything he saw.

  He went downstairs, saw the party was going well, Imagine Dragons playing hard from the living room speakers, some kids jumping and dancing in the center, some couples making out in chairs and on the couches, and nothing seemed to be a mess yet.

  A girl he didn’t know stumbled up to him, eyes glassy. Holding a red Solo cup, she threw him a hug, giving him a good squeeze with her free arm so he could feel her boobies. Then she kissed his cheek. “Oh, Sam, so glad I made it, so glad! What a great party!”

  He slapped her on the butt, gently pushed her away. “Only great ’cause of girls like you!”

  She laughed and stumbled back, and then fell on her ass on the plastic sheet covering the living room rug, and he maneuvered his way into the kitchen, pushing by his partygoers, his friends, his tribe.

  Sam led his life by rules, from the food he ate to the workouts he maintained, and one rule was to run a great party without getting his ass in a sling. That in turn meant a lot of subrules. Like, nobody got in without an invite signed by him. No exceptions. No friends of friends, or neighbors, or anybody else who hadn’t been vetted.

  Another rule was no bottles or cans of booze on site. Solo cups were allowed, but that was because if trouble came, it was easy enough to dump the contents down toilets or sinks or out the windows. Beer and other booze was hidden either in cars or in the nearby town forest, named after one of his worthless ancestors. That way, if one of the neighbors in this high-priced development with three-acre lots and three-story homes ever called the cops, the only thing they’d find once they came up the four-hundred-foot driveway would be a group of happy and drunk teenagers with little evidence to arrest anyone.

  Trash cans with plastic bags were placed on the first floor and in the furnished basement, and plastic sheets covered the pricy rugs that Mum had imported from Afghanistan or Kazakhstan or one of those other shithole “stans” out there. And when the party was done in a few hours, two members of the freshmen wrestling team would go through the house and clean everything up and get two free beers at the end as pay, as well as the email addresses of a couple of skanks who’d do a lot to get aboard with the wrestling team.

  And if anybody bumped into something or made a mess or puked on the floor, Sam and a couple of his buds would tune him up and dump him in the woods.

  In the kitchen now, with Kenny Blake and Larry Pond. He went up to Larry, caught his attention, and said, “So what the hell was going on there with that dad?”

  Larry grinned. “Some guy came by, half in the bag, wanting to talk to you about the way you treat his boy.”

  “Let me guess, he was pissed.”

  “Yeah, and now he’s even more pissed. We pushed him away and he fell into the drainage ditch just below the garage. Now he’s wet and pissed.”

  Sam laughed along with Larry and Kenny. The kitchen was packed with laughing, happy, great kids, and they all looked to him as the one who got them together to have fun, get high or drunk, do some fooling around and maybe get laid, make great memories that you could look back on when you got to college and later.

  Larry, next to the stainless steel refrigerator, gestured to him, leaned over, and said, “She’s all set.”

  “My bedroom?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “She ready?”

  Larry gave him a wide smile. “Oh, shit, she’s ready all right.”

  Sam slapped him on his muscular shoulder. “Great. You be a good boy, you’ll get sloppy seconds.”

  He moved out of the kitchen, music still thumping along, and saw some kid from Concord dragging a puff. When the kid spotted Sam, he hauled ass outside and slammed the door behind him. Yeah, more rules. No smoking of anything in the house. Mum and Pop hated smoke like you wouldn’t believe, and both had the noses of bloodhounds, able to trace even the smallest molecule of tobacco or weed.

  There was another kid there, that goofy brainy Craig who had once helped him with his algebra and geometry homework, before he wanted more and before Sam got tired of the bleating little shit. Craig was sitting by himself in the corner, staring at his Solo cup, and Sam knew that if he had been built differently he would feel sorry for the weird shit.

  He got to the stairs, where Brock was standing guard at the bottom.

  Brock sipped from his Solo cup. Two girls were sitting on the last stair, looking up at him with delight, until they caught Sam’s eye and switched their loving gazes to him.

  Brock said, “All set.”

  “Great.” He gently pushed back the two girls and went upstairs.

  Biggest rule of all: nobody except him got to be upstairs at this time of the night.

  At his bedroom he opened the door and walked in. All the lights were off save one small one on his desk, which gave the bedroom a soft glow. There were framed photos of his victories up on the walls, along with shelves of trophies and other mementos, and photos of his team during the past two winning seasons. He worked hard to keep everything up there in its place, because Mum and Pop loved bringing their friends up here to show off what their special boy was accomplishing.

  So what? That’s not why he was here, to check out his “Look at Me” wall. Nope, he was looking at something else as his heart thumped right along and his hands got moist and his Johnson was tenting his slacks.

  She was laid out on the bed, waiting for him.

  “Fuck, yeah,” he whispered.

  He got his iPhone out, set it up on a little tripod, and then placed it on top of his bureau, right where he had earlier laid out a strip of masking tape to mark the perfect spot. He swiped on the Record button and then knelt on the bed.

  Emma Thornton was pretty zoned out. How zoned?

  He tugged at her ear, pulled at a lip, said, “Hey, Emma, you ready for a good time?”

  She just sighed and moved around on his bed.

  Yep, things were cool. One of his best buds, Barry Zahn, had a cousin who lived in one of the projects up in Lawrence, and that cousin had a source for good-quality roofies—not the shit that killed you or made you sleep for two days straight—and sprinkle some of that in a drink . . . well, this was what happened. Sweet little piece started yawning, started tripping over stuff, and two of his buds did the right thing and brought her up to Sam’s bedroom so she could sleep it off.

  Sure.

  He moved around the bed, checked her out, his cock so hard it practically hurt. Damn sweet girl had a pretty face, even though she was starting to drool. He touched her throat, let his fingers go down to her chest. She had on a nice white tank top and he tugged it down, revealing a flimsy beige bra with
lace on the cups. Her tits were small, just a handful, but Sam was pretty cool with their size. Buds of his went on and on about tit size, the bigger the better, but Sam was broad-minded when it came to stuff like that.

  He squeezed one and then the other, and then let his fingers play around the center of each tit until the nipple popped up.

  Nice.

  He moved carefully down, knowing that his iPhone was recording everything, knowing from experience that he didn’t want to block his shot.

  There.

  Emma had on a pair of loose light gray pants, loose enough that he could slide a hand down the front, past the panties, down to her crotch. He felt around, learned she wasn’t fully shaved but had a cute well-trimmed landing strip there.

  He fingered her.

  Dry. As if that mattered.

  He brought his finger up, gave it a sniff and a quick taste, and then stepped back and stripped off his clothes. His hard cock nearly slapped his belly when he got everything off, and he felt alive, hot, sexy, with his well-toned body and trimmed pubes and hard-as-rock Johnson sticking out.

  Back on the bed now.

  “Emma,” Sam whispered. “It’s sucky-sucky time.”

  His erect cock dangled over her face, and then he lowered it. Started rubbing. The eyes. The smooth cheeks. The lips.

  Into the mouth.

  He moaned with pleasure, again making sure he wasn’t blocking the shot.

  Out and over her lips.

  Breathing hard. His strong wrestling legs trembling with excitement.

  “Sucky-sucky,” he whispered again.

  Her teeth were shut, so he stuck in a finger, forced her mouth open, got into position, and—

  Somebody was yelling outside his room.

  “Hey, you can’t go up there!”

  Sam turned his head.

  More shouting.

  Then the thump-thump-thump of someone running up the stairs. Turning the doorknob.

  His finger slipped deeper into her mouth.

  Emma coughed, choked, and then sat up and puked all over him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Out of the horror that had rampaged into Jessica’s life during the last eighteen hours, the one saving grace that she had never expected had been a text sent to her phone from her usually ice-cold boss, Ellen Nickerson:

  Just heard the news. Take tomorrow off. Nickerson, WSB

  Now, this Sunday, she was in a small conference room in the law offices of Kahn, Trotter, and Pease, where George Kahn handled Ted’s real estate business and where she was with Helen Wray, the criminal defense lawyer George had recommended when Detective Rafferty had come to the house to seize Ted’s shotgun.

  That shocking, unbelievable moment now seemed as innocent as attending a child’s birthday party compared to what had happened to her and Ted.

  Helen was about ten years older than Jessica, dressed fine and sharp in a dark red skirt-and-jacket suit, and Jessica wondered whether her brash and confident attitude came from birth, schooling, or training. Her hair was dark brown, swept back in a bun, and she had a set of what looked to be real small pearls around her tanned neck. She had a stack of paperwork on the polished wood of the desk, with a yellow legal pad nearby and what looked to be a fountain pen in her manicured right hand.

  Helen said, “Okay, Jessica, let’s get a few things out of the way, okay? First things first—how are you doing?”

  Jessica had a tissue clasped hard in her folded hands underneath the table. “Awful,” she said. “The phones were ringing last night, there were reporters knocking on the door, and shit, the Boston TV stations, they were doing live broadcasts in front of our house! At eleven o’clock last night! And this morning!”

  Helen nodded. “Nosy little bastards, aren’t they? Two kids were gunned down in Dorchester yesterday, and it merited two paragraphs in the Boston Globe and one sentence in the local TV news coverage last night. Sorry to say, this is what they call a sexy story. Wrestling team captain in a prestigious Massachusetts community is murdered and a local realtor is arrested.”

  Jessica felt her chin tremble. She just nodded.

  Helen started scribbling. “Don’t worry,” she said. “After a day or two, they’ll leave you alone until something new develops, there’s a bail hearing, or some other spicy story comes up.”

  “Do you . . . do you think we have a chance?” Jessica asked, hating how weak her voice sounded.

  “Oh, we’ve got lots of things going for us,” Helen said. “Don’t you worry.” Then the lawyer stopped and stared at Jessica long and hard, without saying a word.

  Jessica couldn’t stand it. “Yes?” she asked.

  Helen said, “Right from the start, you need to know that I’m going to be an advocate for your husband. I’m representing him. I’m not representing you. So I need to make it plain and simple: do you think you need an attorney as well, Mrs. Thornton?”

  Jessica felt her stomach do a dive and flop. To throw up now, to be so frightened in front of this self-assured woman—what kind of message would that send?

  “I . . . I . . .”

  Helen said, “I want to make myself as clear as possible. If during my preparation for your husband’s defense I come across evidence that is exculpatory toward him and raises serious questions and concerns about you, Mrs. Thornton, I won’t hesitate to use it. Again, Ted Donovan is my client. Not you.”

  Jessica nodded, took a deep, cleansing breath. “Okay. I see what you mean, Miss—”

  “Call me Helen, please. We’re going to be spending a lot of time with each other over the next weeks and months.”

  Her stomach seemed to be calming down. “Yes, Helen, thank you. No, I don’t need an attorney. I see where you’re coming from. I know you’re here to help Ted, not me or anybody else.”

  The attorney smiled and Jessica felt even better. “Good. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had female clients who were willing to take the fall for something—usually drug cases—and when I found out their jerk boyfriends or husbands were really the ones involved, they screamed at me to leave their men alone. Can you believe that? So loyal to the guy who was willing to keep his mouth shut to see his woman go to jail.” Helen shook her head, started scribbling. “Men.”

  Jessica said nothing, and Helen said, “I’ve gotten some information from the Warner Police Department, but not much. Eventually the county attorney will have to let me know what evidence they have against your husband for Sam Warner’s death, but that’ll be some time away.”

  “How much more time?”

  Helen said, “Oh, for a case like this, I’d be surprised if we go to trial by October or November.”

  “October or November . . .” Jessica had the searing thought of Thanksgiving alone with Emma. And Craig.

  Helen said, “Maybe even December. You’re going to have to prepare yourself. But I’m in it for the long haul, okay?”

  The lawyer gave her another bright smile. Jessica could only nod.

  “I also need to get business taken care of before we start,” she said. “I’ll need a retainer of at least six thousand dollars to begin. My rate is three hundred dollars an hour.”

  “Did you say . . .” Jessica felt like she was going to slide right off this polished chair and fall under the table.

  “I did,” Helen said, “and I can tell I just shocked the crap out of you. I understand. Look, Jessica, I know your background, know what you and Ted have. Let’s just leave the retainer for later, all right? I’ll let you and Ted talk about what the two of you might do down the road to raise the money. For now, no worries now about paying up-front. Let’s do our best to take care of Ted, and we’ll worry about the bills later.”

  Jessica sat still, not knowing what to say.

  Helen said, “Okay. Let’s start, shall we?”

  Jessica wished at this very moment she was back at Warner Savings Bank, with nothing more to worry about than ending the day, balancing out her cash drawer, and maybe catching a
n after-school meet to watch Emma win once more.

  “Yes,” she said. “Let’s start.”

  Helen opened a file folder, started looking through copies of newspaper articles. “Not surprisingly, the Warner police and the Middlesex DA aren’t giving me shit at this time,” she said. “And it—”

  “Wait,” Jessica said, hoping to find any crumb of good news. “I thought they had to give any evidence they have over to you.”

  “Eventually, yes, Mrs. Thornton, but not for a while yet.”

  “Jessica.”

  “What? Oh, sure, if you’d like. Jessica. I wish real life was like Hollywood or TV, but justice can grind along at its own pace, and sometimes the alleged good guys aren’t that good. Or aren’t that competent.”

  She felt like she had just been put in her place. Jessica could only nod.

  “All right,” Helen said. “According to the newspapers and other media and the initial Warner police news release, Sam Warner was found murdered in the Warner Town Forest this past Wednesday morning.” She looked up from the sheaf of papers. “Town of Warner, Sam Warner, Warner Town Forest—popular name around here, huh?”

  “The Warner family were some of the first settlers here, back in the 1600s.”

  “Goodie for them,” she said. “My family came over in steerage from Vilnius. So. Time of death was about twelve hours before he was discovered. And a local amateur astronomer said he thought he heard a gunshot at about ten P.M. on Tuesday evening. No other witnesses, no surveillance tape, and so far as we know, no drone footage showing your husband killing the boy.”

  Jessica’s eyes welled up at hearing that last sentence.

  “So we’ve got that going for us,” Helen said. “But what they have is a lot of circumstantial evidence. Starting with Craig, your husband’s son. I understand that he and Sam Warner got into some fights. So many that the assistant principal sent a note home to your husband, expressing the school’s concern. Unfortunately, in some folks’ minds, that’s a motive. Your husband violently reacting to someone fighting with his son.”