You Will Never Know

by You Will Never Know (retail) (epub)

  “Look, give it a day, okay?”

  “What’s a day going to do?”

  She took a step toward him. “I’m over at Kate’s, okay? And I heard her dad talking about a couple of cops coming into the hardware store. They were blabbing when they shouldn’t have been blabbing, and they said the detective is also looking into the house party at Sam’s last Saturday.”

  Craig looked like he was going to start bawling. “Ah, shit, no.”

  “Ah, shit, yes,” she said, “but don’t worry. It’s not about me, and it’s not about you. It’s about something else that happened there.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like somebody’s dad came up to the house, drunk, pissed off, and he wanted to go in and meet up with Sam, and he got the shit beat out of him.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “It’s a big house, big yard. I don’t remember that either.”

  And in a flash the fuzzy details of what she remembered from last Saturday night made her stomach whirl. Enough, she thought, enough.

  Emma said, “I guess a couple of Sam’s pals grabbed the guy before he could make a fuss, beat him up some, and dumped him in a drainage ditch.”

  “So?”

  Emma was getting more and more exasperated with her older stepbrother. “Don’t you see? That’s another suspect. A guy who came to the party telling everybody that he wanted to hurt Sam. The cops will start looking at him, and the case against your dad will go away.”

  Craig kept his mouth shut.

  Emma saw her opportunity. “One more day,” she said. “Maybe two. Don’t go to the cops, Craig. It’ll just . . . confuse things. Raise a lot of questions. Get you into trouble, me into trouble.”

  Craig nodded. Then he suddenly knelt down, lifted up his knapsack, and showed Emma what was inside.

  Jesus Christ!

  “Craig, I told you! I told you to get rid of it!”

  “So I don’t do everything you tell me,” he said, zipping the bag shut, slinging it over his right shoulder. “And I tell you this—my dad gets out tomorrow, one way or another, or I’m going to the cops. No matter what. Okay?”

  Craig wondered if he had gone too far, and then Emma sighed, pulled her blond hair free from the dark-pink wool cap, and let it fall over her shoulders.

  “Craig . . . you’re upset. I’m sorry,” she said softly, stepping so close he could smell her fresh-soap scent, whatever it was that girls of her age wore on their skin or in the hair. “It’s been so rough, and you’ve been a real man about it. And I know I owe you big-time. What I promised, to make it right for you, to help you? I intend to do it. In fact, I was just talking about you to Kate. She . . . she told me she would love to go out with you. She’s just kinda shy.”

  Then her hands were on his jeans belt, and Craig’s legs started trembling. He knew he was a geek, a nerd, someone to be teased at school, but my God, this was the first time a girl had ever taken hold of his belt. And started undoing it.

  “You were very brave, getting me into that house party when everybody else on the track team was invited and I wasn’t,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “I couldn’t let that happen. Those bitches . . . they would eventually vote me out as team captain if they saw I was weak. And then, when . . . when . . .”

  Craig saw her eyes seem to well up and heard her voice choke. “And when they roofied me and Sam was taking advantage of me, you manned up and came to rescue me.”

  The shaking in Craig’s legs increased. How did any guy with a steady girlfriend get through the day, through school, knowing that at any time his girl could—and would!—touch him like this!

  His belt was undone. Her soft hands were unzipping his jeans. The sound of the zipper being pulled down by a girl was the most wonderful thing he had ever heard in his life.

  Emma’s voice lowered some more. “And more brave . . . when Sam threatened to blackmail me with that video, you said you would help me. No matter how dangerous, you said you wouldn’t let Sam hurt me. You said that . . . and I said I would reward you. Remember? Make it right after they hurt you. I told you I’d set you up with Kate. And Kate—you put a beer into her, Craig, and she’ll do anything you like. Hear me? Anything you like.”

  Craig was humiliated and wanted to say something, but all he could do was let out a soft sigh. In this part of the bandstand they were hidden by a rectangular stone monument honoring Warner veterans, and by bushes and saplings.

  Hidden. They were hidden.

  Her hands were soft on his belly, and her hands moved down, down, down—

  And Emma suddenly pulled up his T-shirt and said, “And if you screw this up, Craig, this”—and she slapped his belly where the humiliating FAG marking still was, no matter how many times he had scrubbed and scrubbed—“will be put on flyers and dropped all over the school. And Kate Romer will never go out with you. Got it?”

  She stood up, wiped her hands on her jacket as if they were soiled, and strode away. Craig, sobbing, quickly zipped up his pants and fastened his belt with shaking hands.

  Jessica slowly woke up, the bed shaking underneath her. She wondered where she was, and it was the scent that keyed her off that she was in Emma’s room. She felt embarrassed, wondering what would happen if Emma came in, seeing that disappointed look on her face. She hated that look.

  The shaking increased, and at first she wondered, An earthquake? But now there was the faint whistle of a freight train moving through Warner, and it was the old clapboards and beams of the house that were quivering from the passing train. Nothing more.

  She lay awake in Emma’s bed. Thought about earthquakes. It was strange, she knew, but there were times she wished she and Emma lived in California. There was something appealing to her about living in a place where natural events struck without warning. Landslides. Wildfires. Earthquakes. Here in Massachusetts, the danger came at you with plenty of warning. Hurricanes. Sleet storms. Heavy snow.

  The shaking of the bed eased off.

  But sometimes the warning provided opportunities.

  She remembered.

  School had been canceled the day of a wet, heavy snowstorm that downed lots of trees in their Haverhill neighborhood. Mom worked for the tax assessor’s office at City Hall, and Dad was a salesman for Hewlett-Packard out of Andover, and some months he made lots of sales, but lately the sales were starting to dry up. Once she had heard Dad, getting drunk and mean one night, tell Mom, “It’s starting to fall apart. I don’t know why, but HP’s in trouble. Those fancy TV commercials and newspaper ads, they’re all shit. We’re gonna miss our projections and it’s gonna be announced this month.”

  And there was more drinking, and some arguing, and some smacks she could hear in her bedroom, and in the morning, as always, Mom left with heavy foundation makeup on her swollen cheeks to try to hide the marks.

  On that day Jessica Brown stayed home and hid in her bedroom while Mom went to work at City Hall and Dad called in to Andover and said he would work some leads from home. Which was all crap. On those days that Dad stayed home to “work leads,” he worked on his thirst instead. He started in the morning with screwdrivers, then switched to shots of bourbon once the clock chimed noon, and he’d stretch out on the couch and watch movies on TV and doze, wake up, and drink some more.

  But today was different. He was his usual angry self and looked out at their small, fenced-in backyard and said, “Jesus effin’ Christ, look at what the Sinclairs’ trees did to our yard.”

  Jessica thought it was funny that Dad would blame something not human like the trees, but she had long ago learned not to tease him. Out in the yard was a covered gas grill, a small stone patio, and a picnic table. At the very rear was the Sinclairs’ house, with three large pine trees stretched above the stockade fence. The heavy snow overnight had broken off four large branches that were heavily draped over the picnic table.

  “Fuck,” Dad said, heading to get his boots and coat. “Guess I’m gonna clean up that mess,
and you know what I’m gonna do?”

  “What’s that, Dad?” she asked, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to go outside. It was warm and safe inside her bedroom, with a new Harry Potter book, and she dreaded the thought of having to go out in the cold, hauling branches with sticky sap, getting snow down her back and down her boots.

  He laughed, but she had never liked her dad’s laugh. It was fun on the surface, but underneath there was a lot of anger and hate.

  “I’m gonna take those branches and toss ’em over the fence, dump ’em in his yard. Let him take care of it.”

  Dad went outside without asking for her help. She went up to her bedroom, sat on the bed, and dove into Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and soon got lost into the details of a Triwizard Tournament being hosted by Hogwarts Academy.

  Pages flipped by. Chapters. Big chunks flew by.

  She looked at the digital clock and was stunned at how much time had passed. Where was Dad?

  She put the book down on her bed, carefully crept downstairs. If Dad was back in the house, maybe he was snoring on the couch. If so, good; let him be. She could make herself lunch and go back up to her bedroom, not disturb him. It was never a good thing to disturb him.

  The living room was empty. So was the kitchen. The bathroom. And with her parents’ bedroom across from her own, she knew he wasn’t there.

  Jessica stood up on her tiptoes and looked out the kitchen window at the backyard. There was a shape in the snow, covered by a tree branch.

  It was as cold as she had feared, and she slogged through the knee-deep snow to the rear of the yard. Dad was on his back, with a thick pine branch over his chest. His blue down coat was open, and his jeans were soaked through from the snow. One of his boots had slipped off. His bare foot was white and wrinkled.

  Dad’s eyes were wide with pain and his face was as gray as an old sock. He was breathing hard.

  “Jess . . . Jess . . .”

  “Dad.”

  He groaned, a deep sound she had never heard from him before. “I . . . my chest is hurting something awful. I think . . . I think . . . it might be my heart.” Another deep groan. “Run back to the house, okay?” He bit his lower lip, his eyes filling with tears. “Call 911. I need an ambulance. Hurry!”

  She turned and slogged through the snow back to the house.

  Even as cold as it was, the sun was high up and the sky was clear, a very fresh blue.

  Inside she kicked off her boots, tossed off her jacket, and went into the kitchen. The phone was on the near wall, next to the calendar and a little bulletin board that held thumbtacked doctor and dentist appointment cards along with that week’s grocery list. A pencil dangled from a string tacked to the board.

  She walked further into the kitchen. Looked out the window.

  Dad was still.

  Jessica made herself a peanut butter sandwich, poured a glass of milk, and sliced up a Granny Smith apple. Back upstairs in her bedroom, she read two more chapters, ate her lunch, and then went back downstairs and carefully washed her dishes and put them away.

  What now?

  She got dressed again and, very slowly and carefully, went out to where Dad was lying on his back, calling out, “Dad? Dad?”

  No answer. His eyes were closed. His chest wasn’t moving up and down. His face was a deeper shade of gray.

  “Dad?”

  Jessica turned and went back to the house, making sure her boots slid into the prints from before, and when she got into the house, she undressed in a mad scramble, tossing boots and coat aside, and then ran to the phone and dialed 911. By the time the Haverhill police operator answered, she had worked up a good head of tears and anguish.

  “Please, I need an ambulance! I think my daddy is dead!”

  Jessica finally got up from Emma’s bed and went downstairs to grab something to eat, take a shower. As she puttered around in the kitchen, her biggest memory of her dad’s funeral was of being hugged by Mom as her three aunts gathered around her, and Mom whispering into her ear. “Now,” she said, “now we can have a safe life together. I think God helped us.”

  And Jessica just thought back then, as ever: You will never know, Mom.

  You will never know.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  On Monday morning Jessica made two phone calls, the first being to Warner Savings Bank. She chewed on her thumb, wondering who was going to answer and how convincing she could be in lying and saying that she was sick. The truth was, she didn’t want to see anyone at work today. For the time being, she just wanted to stay home and vegetate.

  “Warner Savings Bank,” came a male voice. “How can I help you?”

  Percy Prescott.

  “Ah, hi, Percy, it’s Jessica. I’m sorry, I won’t be coming in today.”

  “Don’t blame you,” he said. “I’ll let the Ice Queen know when she comes in. Anything else?”

  Damn, that was a question. And her curiosity took control.

  “Percy, everything okay with you?”

  “Me?” A low laugh. “I guess so. You’re probably asking about my encounter the other day with Warner’s finest.”

  “Ah . . .” Now she wished she had kept her mouth shut. Jessica felt trapped.

  Another laugh. “Don’t worry. I was in a grumpy mood and that detective wanted to ask me lots of questions about something I didn’t give a shit about. Eventually I said something to the effect that it was funny that one bunch of paid goons was trying to help out another bunch of goons—was there a union or something? The detective didn’t like it and took me down to the station for the proverbial grilling.”

  “Percy, I—”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “One of my uncles is a lawyer over in Concord, got me out in less than an hour. Pretty exciting stuff, don’t you think?”

  “But what were the cops asking you? Were they asking . . .”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence, but Percy did it for her. “Were they asking if I killed our little Oberführer? Not in so many words. But they did want to know if I was at a party at his parents’ Saturday night, before he got his head removed. From what I heard, it was quite the raucous night, lots of fighting and screaming. Supposedly somebody who wasn’t a student at Warner got tuned up by a couple of the stormtroopers after he showed up and threatened to kill Sam. The detective wanted to know if that had been me.”

  Jessica kept quiet. One simple phone call, just to call in sick, and it had turned into something else.

  “You know what I said?” I said, “Fuck you, prove it. And right about then my uncle showed up.”

  “Oh, Percy. I mean—”

  “Yeah, that was some party. Ask your daughter and stepson about it when you can. Hey, look, Rhonda’s coming over here . . . Hold on, Jessica, Rhonda wants to talk to you.”

  She quickly disconnected the call. Closed her eyes quite tight. Remembering Emma telling her last Saturday night that she was going over to study with Bertie Woods.

  Detective Rafferty had said that he thought Emma had been there, that there was a witness. But nothing definite. Yet Percy seemed to suggest otherwise.

  She opened her eyes, started dialing another number just as her phone told her that a call was arriving from Warner Savings Bank. Jessica ignored it.

  At his office in Portland, Gary Talbot was on his computer, trying to figure out if he could salvage something so he could do something fun after paying his bills—maybe he could make just a good-faith deposit on a couple of them—when his phone rang. He swung around in his chair, saw that it was a Maine number, picked it up, and smiled when he heard Sarah Sundance’s voice, calling from the York County District Attorney’s Office.

  “Hey, Gary, how’s life out in the private world treating you?” she asked.

  “Like crap. Are you surprised?”

  In his mind’s eye, Gary was warmed at seeing her smile, but he didn’t feel quite as warm when she said, “Well, that’s what you get when you leave the government teat.”

 
; He didn’t say anything for a moment, then replied, “I didn’t leave of my own accord, Sarah. You know that.”

  “Yes, that’s right. I’m sorry, Gary.”

  “It’s okay.”

  It wasn’t okay, and Sarah seemed to make up for it by saying, “I wanted to see how that Thornton case is playing out for you.”

  “Thanks again for passing it on,” he said. “I’m afraid the guy’s sister isn’t going to be happy with me. Like you said, there’s no there there.”

  Sarah said, “I hope you got some good billable hours out of it.”

  About $10,000 worth, he thought, and then he said, “I’m sorry, can you say that again?”

  “I said, I’m glad you’re upsetting the man’s sister and not his widow. Whatshername. Jessica.”

  He slowly sat up straighter in his chair. “Why’s that, Sarah?”

  “I thought I had told you.”

  “If you did, I’m sorry, I forgot what you said about Jessica.”

  “Oh, I thought I’d do you an additional favor,” she said. “So I did a quick background check on her, didn’t find much in Haverhill or Warner. No big deal, right? But I did a wider search and found something that happened in Carlisle a few years back, involving both her and her daughter. Scary stuff.”

  “How scary?”

  “This scary,” Sarah said, and proceeded to tell him.

  In a poorly painted and poorly ventilated room at the Middlesex County Jail, Ted Donovan stared for long seconds at his defense attorney, Helen Wray, not wanting to believe what she had just told him.

  He just stared, then cleared his throat and said, “Paula Fawkes. Are you sure? Are you joking?”

  Helen looked like a schoolteacher who was not amused. “No, I’m not joking. When I joke, I wiggle my ears. Did you see my ears move, Ted? So let me tell you again: Paula Fawkes told me that on the night the police say Sam Warner was murdered, you and she were not together.”

  “But we were!”

  “That’s not what she’s telling me.”

  “But . . . are you sure you have the right date?”