And She Was

by Alison Gaylin

  “That sucks,” Maya said.

  “Sure does.” She drank more water, forced a smile. “Like your grandma says, ‘Beware of men who can string words together like pearls.’ ”

  Maya nodded slowly. “You know what Miles told me?”

  “What?”

  “He said even our first names are a perfect fit.”

  “God help you.”

  “And he said they should call us M&M—because we’re so sweet together.” Maya rolled her eyes. Then she started to cry. Brenna moved around the table and took her daughter in her arms, and Maya let her—not quite hugging back, but resting her head on her shoulder, allowing Brenna to comfort her and that was enough . . .

  “Why did you have to give me a name that starts with M?” Maya said.

  Brenna smiled. “You can change it if you want.” But then the smile froze and died. She saw the letter M in her mind, typewritten on a page, the letter taking her back to October 23, 1998, meeting Lydia Neff for the first and last time at the Waterside Condominiums, then driving to the Skyline Diner in White Plains for the appointment with Errol Ludlow and hoping with her whole mind that no one would be watching, no one would see . . . The Skyline lot is nearly empty. She parks and walks up to the front door, the envelope in her hand . . . She can’t yank the image out of her mind—an image of herself, walking through the door, as viewed through the scope of a telephoto lens . . .

  “Mom?”

  The diner door is heavy and she pushes it open and her eyes go right to him—Errol Ludlow, third booth from the back, and peering up at her over black half glasses, smiling like a friend. Errol Ludlow with his oversized head and his tree-trunk limbs and oven mitt hands, too big for the booth, too big for the diner, and smiling at her, six-foot-eight-inches of unadulterated bullshit. Errol Ludlow, meaty hands resting on a manila folder—the Neff police report, Brenna knows—and the cuts on her face sting, each bruise aches . . . the sight of him pulling at her wounds, waking them up. I could leave now, she thinks. I could turn around and leave.

  “Hello? Mom?”

  Brenna approaches the table. “Here.” She places the envelope in front of him.

  “Nice gree-ting af-ter four years.” Errol overenunciates. He doesn’t speak so much as spit words, syl-la-ble by syl-la-ble. He’s always done that. It drives Brenna nuts. She goes for the folder. “Ea-sy now. Don’t grab. You’ll get your po-lice re-port after I make sure these pho-tos are clear . . .”

  “Mom. Are you . . . Are you remembering something?”

  Brenna could hear the hurt in Maya’s voice. “No, honey,” she said. “I’m here.” But she could still feel Errol’s oily gaze on her, could still smell the green tea on his breath, in the cream-colored cup in front of him.

  “Nice pho-tos,” Errol says. “Not that I’m surprised. You’ve always been good at your job.” She moves into the seat facing him. He slides the manila folder across the table . . .

  Maya said, “You know what’s weird?”

  Brenna looks into the eyes, flat like black olives, guilt heating up the backs of her ears, but still she slips the papers out of the folder, her hands shaking.

  “What you’ll be in-ter-ested in,” Errol says, “is the Q and A with ‘M.’ ”

  “You know what’s weird, Mom?” Maya was standing up now, her dish in her hands.

  “What . . . what’s weird?”

  “In order to get your full attention, you have to be something that happened in the past.”

  “Honey, that isn’t true,” Brenna said, with the Skyline Diner still in her brain, Errol’s gaze on her, his thin lips pursing together to make that letter . . . M. Brenna said it again, but Maya was bringing her plate to the sink. Then she walked out of the kitchen, back to her room, and closed the door. Brenna knew her well enough not to follow, much as she wanted to, much as she didn’t want to admit that Maya was right.

  The Q&A with M was on page 18 of the police report. Brenna had a feeling she would have remembered that, even without hyperthymesia. Alone at her desk, with Maya now asleep in her room, Brenna opened the beige file. Strange how blurred the type now seemed on the Xeroxed page—type that was forever fresh in her mind.

  Brenna started to turn to page 18, when a Post-it sailed out and onto the floor—Graeme Klavel written in what she now recognized as Carol Wentz’s neat handwriting, plus a phone number with a Westchester County area code.

  Brenna called the number. A machine picked up after one ring: “You’ve reached the offices of Klavel Investigations and the home of Graeme Klavel . . .”

  Another PI. “Hi, Mr. Klavel, my name is Brenna Spector. I’m an investigator from New York City, and I’m looking into the death of Carol Wentz. I don’t want to interfere with the police investigation, but if you could just let me know if you had any dealings with her, I’d appreciate it.”

  Next, she put in a call to Morasco. When she got his voice mail, too, she left a message asking if he’d come across a PI named Graeme Klavel and telling him she had some papers to show him. Then, she let herself turn to page 18 and read the Q&A with M. The questioner, back then, was Detective Nick Morasco. M was a three-and-a-half-year-old girl. Brenna’s gaze slid down the yellowed page, and she recalled how she’d felt the first time she’d skipped to it, reading it quickly on Errol’s dubious advice, thinking, An interview with a preschooler. Yet another example of Ludlow’s stellar sense of humor . . . until she’d reached the middle of the page, and then she understood.

  M: Iris left with Santa. They drove away.

  NM: What did Santa’s car look like?

  M: It was blue.

  The car, as remembered by M, was “happy,” because it “had round eyes and a smile.” It “looked like a toy,” therefore M was “pretty sure elves had made it.” Santa and Iris looked happy, too, and after they both had gotten into the car, it flew away, “up to the North Pole.” When Brenna had finished page 18 ten years ago, she’d thought, That’s one hell of a bad lead all right. But this time, she found herself struck more by Morasco’s questioning technique—the patience and respect he showed this little girl.

  NM: Did Santa scare you?

  M: Nobody’s scared of Santa.

  NM: Good point. Now, would you say he was taller or shorter than your dad?

  M: Rudolph wasn’t there.

  NM: No Rudolph? Really? I bet Santa missed that big red nose.

  M: You’re funny.

  Morasco talked like a dad. A good one. It made Brenna wonder if he really did have kids, and if so why he hadn’t mentioned that on the phone today—after all, he’d asked with such interest if she was a mom. It might be time to do a little research of my own.

  But as she flipped to the next page and then the next, her current thoughts dimmed, the back of her neck began to sweat. She was nearing page 22, and soon, Brenna knew, she would be reading that same page again in her mind, reading it for the first time in her old apartment on Fourteenth Street . . . She would be cross-legged on the soft, pale red couch Jim had inherited from his parents, with Maya’s deep sleep-breathing floating out of her room and Brenna’s face still throbbing slightly from the previous night’s cheating husband and the black standing lamp shining down on her like an accusation, a judgment, the light bouncing off the page, hurting her eyes.

  Brenna muttered the Pledge of Allegiance and then the lyrics to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and then a few lines of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop”—anything to stop her mind from going there.

  Page 22 of the police report was another interview, a brief one between Ray Griffin, the police chief at the time, and a friend of Lydia Neff’s, a man who went by the name of John Doe.

  Nothing remarkable, really. What got Brenna was not the interview itself, but what had happened when she was reading it.

  Brenna is reading the words “TAPE ENDS” when she hears Jim’s voice. Her stomach drops. She doesn’t know when Jim got in or how long he’s been standing over her, but his tone shakes her. The hollowness.

>   “I just got back from Ludlow’s office. I know what you did last night.”

  “Errol, wait, I—”

  “Errol. You just called me Errol. I can’t believe this.”

  “Jim, I just needed the police report. It was a one-time job. I’ll never speak to him again, I promise.”

  “What good is a promise from you, Brenna? What the hell good is a promise from you?”

  Brenna was holding her breath, her eyes closed tight, Jim’s words echoing in her head. “You worked for Ludlow. You put yourself in danger. You put Maya in danger . . .”

  “I didn’t put Maya in danger.”

  “I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive you.”

  Holding her breath always worked. Always chased the memories away because breathing was something you needed to do in the present. No getting around breathing, no matter how powerful the memory . . . Brenna gasped. Good . . . good. She turned the page and opened her eyes.

  Page 22 was gone.

  What she was looking at—the interview with Theresa Koppelson about the events leading up to Iris’s disappearance—had been pages 24 and 25 of the previous police report. In this version, it was 22 and 23, the two final pages.

  Brenna turned on her computer, opened up a blank Word document. She saw the time in the lower right of the screen—11:14 P.M. Later than she’d thought, and close to the same time it had been on October 23, 1998, when she’d read the missing page. Her mind didn’t want to go back there, but she pushed it—and within seconds she was back on the red couch, alone in the room, assuming Jim was working late, not knowing what was about to happen . . . She read the interview in her mind, then came out of it and typed the words on screen:

  INTERVIEW WITH “JOHN DOE” CONDUCTED BY CHIEF RAY GRIFFIN

  RG: How were you acquainted with Lydia Neff?

  JD: We have done some work together. I would sometimes see her on the train.

  RG: When you spoke, did she ever mention being frightened of anyone—anyone close to her who might want to harm her daughter?

  JD: No . . . We didn’t speak very much.

  RG: It appears you did, sir.

  JD: What, uh, what do you mean?

  RG: In Ms. Neff’s phone records, there are three calls to your home phone during the week of September 1, all late night.

  JD: I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know why she called. I barely knew Lydia Neff.

  RG: This call, on September 3 at midnight. It lasts twenty-five minutes. And it came from you.

  JD: I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t, uh, remember any such call.

  RG: You don’t remember what was said.

  JD: I don’t remember any such call.

  RG How well did you know Lydia Neff?

  JD: I, uh, already told you. Enough to say hi. That’s all.

  RG: How well did you know her daughter?

  (TAPE ENDS)

  Why would someone remove that page? Brenna tried to think, but then the rest of the night came rushing at her again too fast and soon she was sobbing, the pain so fresh and raw again, tearing at her.

  Brenna’s screen beeped. She looked up to see an IM from Jim: How did the Chrysalis chat room treat u? The words blurred thick.

  She typed: Speak of the devil.

  Huh?

  Nothing. I was just having a memory.

  A good one, I hope.

  Brenna drew a long, ragged breath. “You could have forgiven me,” she whispered. “You just didn’t want to.”

  Hello?

  Brenna typed: Gotta go. She turned off the computer before he could ask for an explanation. Then she walked to Maya’s room—softly, because Maya was a light sleeper. She cracked open the door, listened to that whistling snore, the room dark and warm with it, her daughter’s breathing. She stood there for quite a while, thinking about Jim and forgiveness until she was finally able to make herself stop. Then her mind shifted to missing things—tools, pages from police reports, women like Carol Wentz . . . Trust, too. So many things, you noticed only after they disappeared.

  Chapter 15

  The Wentz house was an entirely different animal the following day—and not a cuddly one, either. Driving here this morning at the request of Nelson, who’d left a message on her voice mail, Brenna had expected more or less the same as what she’d seen here the previous night—a few shreds of crime scene tape, maybe a persistent reporter or two, and at most a handful of murder fans—the dwindling remnants of local tragedy.

  What she saw instead was a media circus that rivaled June 17, 1994—okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but still . . . The number of news vans and cameras seemed to have tripled from the previous day, which Brenna couldn’t figure out at all. Carol’s body was gone. The police had left. What more could be gained from a few yards of yellow tape and an empty garage?

  Brenna scanned the crowd for Trent. He was supposed to meet her here with Carol’s credit card info, the age-enhanced photo of Iris Neff, and anything else he’d been able to pull together, but it was hard to pick out anyone in this melee—even a tangerine-skinned vision in sleeveless mesh and hair care product who routinely barked, “Yo” at the top of his lungs.

  Brenna parked her van a block up the cross street behind a thick line of cars, some double-parked—she half expected a tailgate party—then headed back toward the melee, eyes peeled for Trent the whole time. As she got nearer, she saw them all setting up their cameras and testing their microphones and jockeying for the best positions, shoving into one another like this was a subway platform at rush hour. Brenna’s stomach dropped. He didn’t. He did not. Nelson did not . . .

  Before she could even finish the thought, she recognized Jim’s wife, Faith Gordon-Rappaport, anchor of the popular morning news show Sunrise Manhattan, and she knew. Brenna knew. No way would Faith show up anywhere unless she’d been invited. Oh, Nelson. What were you thinking?

  Faith was talking to her cameraman—skinny and serious in a vintage green and black plaid shirt and one of those huge scraggly beards that guys in their teens and twenties were suddenly sporting—the latest hipster look, along with those god-awful cereal bowl haircuts, guaranteed to make their wearer at least eighty percent less attractive.

  Quite a foul night this cameraman was, next to the sunny day that was Faith. Brenna couldn’t help but wonder how they got along, but then Faith got along with everybody. Brenna approached Jim’s wife, coifed and shiny from the back in a cream wool suit, her gold hair pulled into a matching clip. If this were a soap opera, Brenna would have hated Faith for stealing the heart of a man whom she could literally never forget—or at the very least for being a former Miss Georgia whose suits always matched her hairclips.

  But the truth was, Faith was a genuinely nice person. She was a great stepmom, and so considerate of Brenna, handling every drop-off and pickup of Maya for the past seven years—ever since she and Jim had gotten married—because she’d understood Brenna’s condition, understood how painful it was for her to look Jim in the eye without ten years rolling back like tide, without her heart aching and shattering all over again. It was quite a skill, having such an obvious advantage but not rubbing it in. And judging from Faith’s life, from the whole upward trajectory of it, it was a skill she’d honed via plenty of practice.

  Brenna tapped Faith on the shoulder, and she turned, her whole face erupting into a smile. “Brenna!” she said in her soft Southern accent. “Not the first person I’d expect to see at one of these! What brings you here?”

  “By one of these,” Brenna said, “you mean a press conference, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  Brenna sighed. “Damn.”

  “Is Nelson Wentz a friend?”

  Brenna shook her head. “A client,” she said, “who doesn’t seem to know how to listen to advice.”

  “Oh my.”

  “Took the words right out of my mouth—minus a few expletives.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, who’d he hire you to find?�
��

  “Carol,” Brenna said.

  “Oh my.”

  Brenna nodded. “He called me last night, said to come to his place because he wanted me to see something—I didn’t know that something would be this.”

  “I’m sure he’ll do fine.”

  “Said like a true, bloodthirsty TV reporter.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “This is all off the record, by the way,” Brenna said. “Except the bloodthirsty reporter part.”

  Faith smiled, but just for a second. She took a quick glance in the cameraman’s direction and moved closer. “Listen,” she said quietly, “I’m sorry I let Maya spend the night at her friend Larissa’s the other night.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “No,” she said. “No, it really isn’t. Jim reminded me you’d just come back from your Vegas assignment and probably missed Maya more than usual. He said it was thoughtless of me.”

  She looked at her. “He said that?”

  “Yes, and he was absolutely right. It was thoughtless. I didn’t think at all.”

  “Faith,” Brenna said. “No one is perfect.”

  Faith started to say more, but then a mumbling erupted from the group of reporters, and a push forward, and sure enough, there was Nelson leaving his house in a plain gray suit, accompanied by a stooped, ancient gentleman with a thin parcel of white hair—one of the few living men who could make Nelson seem robust by comparison.

  The reporters rushed toward the duo—who probably weighed less than 250 pounds cumulatively—their cameras switching on, microphones jumping out from the ends of rigid, insistent arms. It made Brenna uncomfortable, this feeding frenzy with such a paltry, frail catch. She moved closer so Nelson could see her.

  The old man stepped forward. Carefully, he removed a sheet of white paper from the pocket of his black suit coat, as well as a pair of super-thick Ben Franklin–style reading glasses that Faith’s cameraman no doubt coveted. It took him more than a full two minutes to accomplish this task, and watching was agonizing.

  “I am Malcolm Fischbein,” the old man read, in exactly the voice you’d expect to come out of him—a sort of extended, rattling gasp. “Mr. Wentz’s attorney.” Shocked stage-whispering from the reporters. Brenna could pick out the words “retirement” and “fossil.” She heard Faith’s cameraman mutter, “You’ve got to be kidding me,” and she thought, At least Fischbein knows how to shave.