And She Was

by Alison Gaylin

  “Fields better have quit since then,” Brenna said out loud as she turned left on Clements, crawling along the street until she got to 3721—the address of the police station.

  Former address. 3721 Clements was now a Talbots. Brenna turned Lee the GPS on, looked up Tarry Ridge points of interest, and found “Police.”

  The station was listed as being on 4549 Main. Brenna let Lee guide her, but when she got to the address, she stopped in front and leaned on her wheel gawking at the building and doubting for the first time her perfect, suave piece of machinery. Was her honeymoon with Lee finally over?

  But no, there was “Tarry Ridge P.D.” out in front in elegant gold letters—the same gold letters Brenna had seen eleven years ago, on the white marble slab in front of the Waterside Condos.

  God only knew what those condos were like today, if this was how Tarry Ridge was coddling its municipal buildings. The police station could have easily been a high-end art museum or a rare books library or possibly a branch of Saks. Ultra-modern, with big windows and a sparkling white paint job, it was at least three times the size of the previous station. Needless to say, it had its own parking lot now. A big one.

  Brenna was getting honked at. She pulled into visitor parking and headed for the station, and that was when she noticed the garden. A police station with landscaping. There was a row of hedges out front, and a stone path leading up to the door, white primroses and mums planted on either side, a small, neatly trimmed lawn. To the right, a small Japanese maple shaded a white wrought-iron bench, ideal for finger sandwiches and sonnet reading. The bench bore a gold plaque. Brenna moved closer in order to read it: “In Memory of Lily Teasdale.”

  Inside the station, the first thing Brenna noticed was an enormous, gold-framed oil portrait hanging over the front desk—a silver-haired matron in a high-collared black dress with a closed, Mona Lisa smile, rounded eyes, and a very high forehead. The woman’s features struck Brenna as oddly familiar. She read the brass inscription at the bottom of the painting out loud: “ ‘Lily Teasdale 1920–2000.’ ”

  The uniformed officer at the front desk turned. “What?”

  Brenna immediately recognized her. Fields. Minus the acne, the hair straightened and highlighted, the waist a bit slimmer, but still in uniform, still with that expression on her face—bored to the brink of agony. The building may be brand-new, but the desk sergeant is merely renovated.

  “Lily Teasdale,” Brenna said. “She looks like someone I know. Was she married to a police officer?”

  Fields rolled her eyes. “The Teasdales are the oldest family in Tarry Ridge.”

  “Okay, but what does that have to do with the new police station? Did the family have an interest in law enforcement, or—”

  “They built it. I don’t know.”

  A font of information. Brenna was about to drop the topic and ask for Morasco, but then the word “built” settled into her brain and took her back to 5:30 P.M. on September 18, 1998, to chopping a freshly peeled carrot into a romaine and tomato salad and Jim’s voice in the other room, competing with the sound of the TV news, ordering a large cheese pizza over the phone.

  “Extra cheese!” Maya shouts.

  “Can you make that extra cheese? Thanks.”

  Brenna hears the news announcer say, “Tarry Ridge,” and Jim calls out, “Look at this, honey! Roger Wright’s building in the suburbs, now.”

  Brenna dries off her hands on the lobster dish towel that’s hanging off the oven handle. Then she heads into the living room. “Tarry Ridge is where that little girl disappeared from,” she says, watching the image on TV. Roger Wright—ageless features, golden hair, the type of jaw people call proud. The whole of him gleams with health, as if he grew up in a magic bubble, and no harm could ever touch him.

  “The man who brought the Wright Shopping Center to Manhattan is moving to the suburbs,” the announcer says, as the camera focuses on Wright, cutting the thick red ribbon.

  The newscaster intones, “A native of Tarry Ridge, Mr. Wright says he’s thrilled to give back to his hometown.”

  “Give back,” Brenna snorts. “Like those condos are low-income housing.” Roger Wright gives the camera a thumbs-up, and Brenna glances at the woman next to him, a woman who must be his wife—wide-eyed and perfectly coifed and smiling. Smiling with her mouth closed, as if she wants to keep all her happiness inside her . . .

  The eyes, the face shape, the smile of Wright’s wife—all identical to that of Lily Teasdale. “Did Roger Wright build this station?” Brenna asked Fields, who, predictably, shrugged.

  “Was Lily Teasdale his mother-in-law?”

  “Something like that.”

  Brenna sighed heavily. A bubbling font. “I’m here to see Detective Morasco.”

  For the first time, Fields gazed directly at Brenna’s face. She cocked her head to the side and squinted. Brenna knew the look. She’d seen it a lot: Do I know you from somewhere? No, probably not. “Detective Morasco is in a meeting.”

  “I can wait.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible, ma’am. If you leave your name and number, I can have him call you.”

  “No, no,” Brenna said. “It’s absolutely possible. See?” Brenna stood there, smiling at Fields for a good ten, twenty, thirty seconds, until finally, Fields picked up her phone, tapped in an extension, and said, “Detective Morasco, it’s Sally.”

  “Sally?” said Brenna. “Your name is Sally Fields?”

  She ignored her. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but there’s a woman here to see you, and she refuses to leave.” She paused for a moment. “I didn’t get her—”

  “Brenna Spector.”

  Fields repeated Brenna’s name into the phone. “Right. Yep.” Then she hung up. “He’s coming out.”

  “Shouldn’t you be saying something like, ‘He likes you, he really likes you’?”

  Fields rolled her eyes, went back to her computer. “It’s Fields, not Field,” she muttered. “Get the name right.”

  “In the Iris Neff case, why was the blue car a bad lead?” Brenna asked Morasco. They were sitting in a Starbucks, five blocks up from the police department. They’d walked there together, making small talk about the fall weather, the new police station (which, in fact, had been standing since 2001), the effect of the recession on the Riverview Shopping Center, and the Yankees’ chances of winning the World Series, all the while Brenna’s brain working overtime, rehearsing how she was going to lead into the question, trying to figure out the best way to bring up what was obviously a sore topic without the detective closing up on her or, worse yet, walking away.

  And yet this was the best she could come up with—two seconds after they’d sat down at a table by the window with their cups of black coffee (No skinny decaf soy milk lattes for either one of them—only the basics; they’d small-talked that topic to death, too . . .), the question thrown into Morasco’s face like a gallon of ice water, no foreplay whatsoever, before he’d even so much as put his cup down on the table.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess I don’t have to ask you why you wanted to see me.”

  “Sorry. Like I told you before, I’m a blurter.”

  Morasco’s eyes filled with some emotion—she couldn’t tell whether it was caring or hurt or just the thickness of the glasses. Then he smiled a little and took a sip of his coffee, and Brenna thought, At least he isn’t getting up and leaving. “It was a bad lead,” he said, “because I was told it was a bad lead.”

  “Who told you?”

  “The chief. The chief at the time. He passed away a couple of years ago.”

  “Ray Griffin?”

  “Yes. How did you know . . . Never mind.”

  “What were his reasons?”

  Morasco shrugged. “It came from a little girl.”

  “Some of the best leads come from little girls.”

  “Not everyone feels that way.” Morasco turned his gaze out the window. He was quiet for a while, but Brenna could tell he
wanted to say more, and so she just sat there, waiting. “I got accused of McMartinizing.”

  “Of what?”

  “There was a preschool, back in the eighties, the McMartin school. The people who ran it were falsely accused of molesting the kids . . .”

  “I remember the story.”

  He smiled. “Of course you remember . . . Anyway, you know how the McMartin preschool kids were coerced into accusing the adults because the investigators asked them leading questions?”

  “You got accused of leading the little girl into saying she saw a blue car.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t lead at all. You were . . . very kind, actually.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw the interview.”

  “You did?”

  Brenna nodded. “I read the whole police report.”

  “When?”

  “Eleven years ago.”

  He smiled at her.

  “But, uh . . . also last night.” Brenna opened her messenger bag, removed the small stack of files Nelson had given her. She slid them across the table. “I told Nelson I would only show these to you,” she said. “He doesn’t trust the police. Or maybe he just doesn’t trust middle-aged dudes who drive Trans Ams, I don’t know . . .”

  Morasco was paging through the folders—the yellowed news articles, the kindergarten pictures and family portraits, and then, finally, the police report. “Where did he get these?”

  “They were Carol’s,” Brenna said. “She’d hidden them, at the bottom of a craft and hobby box.”

  “Quite a hobby.”

  “She was looking for Iris.”

  He gazed at her. “Weren’t we all?”

  She took a sip of her coffee, scalding her tongue. No matter how long she seemed to wait at these chain shops, the coffee was still too hot. She took the lid off and blew on it and said, “I think they might be related.”

  “Carol and Iris?”

  “No,” she said. “Carol Wentz’s murder and the Iris Neff case.” She told him about Carol, calling herself Lydia and telling her friends in the Chrysalis chat room that her missing daughter had called. She told him, too, about the calls Nelson had received from the young girl saying it was her fault—but she didn’t put two and two together. She let him do that.

  “You think Iris Neff came back to town and killed Carol.”

  “No,” she said. “But I do think it’s possible that they may have been in contact.”

  “Carol and Iris.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “And you’re thinking that . . . this contact . . .”

  “Could have been the thing that got Carol Wentz killed,” she said. “Yes.”

  Morasco said nothing. He swallowed his coffee and gave her a long look—that same look he’d given her outside the Neff house two nights earlier, and again she wanted to get inside his brain, to read his thoughts. “We found the murder weapon,” he said.

  Brenna stared at him.

  “Large flat-head screwdriver. From the same set Nelson Wentz has in his garage.”

  Brenna felt numb. “Where . . . where was it found?”

  “Wrapped up in a garbage bag and thrown in the trash can of the Lukoil station on Van Wagenen and Main.” He placed his cup on the table and looked at Brenna. “Cheapest gas station in town. Owner says Nelson Wentz goes there all the time.”

  Brenna’s jaw clenched up. She felt as if the floor were shifting, listing under her chair like a rickety boat, about to capsize.

  “Is there anything I should know about your collection of tools?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Well . . . they’ve all been bagged and removed from your garage. I’m just wondering if you’ve noticed any of them missing in the past few weeks.”

  “No.”

  She focused on the song seeping out of Starbucks’ speaker system. Death Cab for Cutie. “I Will Follow You into the Dark.” Yet another song about the romance of dying, and it was one of Maya’s favorites. This disturbed Brenna. Of course, every generation entertained this notion, and sometimes when Brenna closed her eyes and focused, she could hear Clea blasting “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and singing along at the top of her lungs, though the memory wasn’t as clear as she’d like it to be. No memory of Clea was as clear as she’d like it to be.

  “When Pomroy and I were questioning Nelson Wentz at the hospital,” Morasco said, “Pomroy asked him about a murder weapon. Nelson didn’t seem to know what he was talking about, but as we were leaving, I thought I heard him say something under his breath.” He took another swallow of his coffee.

  Brenna watched him.

  “Flat-head screwdriver,” Morasco said softly. “That’s what I could’ve sworn I heard him say.”

  Over the speaker system, the singer assured his love that they would be holding each other soon, in the blackest of rooms. Brenna thought about Nelson—his frightened face, the plain gold wedding band on the small hand. She thought of a screwdriver, coated in Nelson’s dead wife’s blood, and hard as she tried, she couldn’t picture that hand, holding that screwdriver. Brenna took a deep breath and released it slowly, placing her hands on her coffee cup, just to feel the warmth. “McMartinizing,” she said. “Isn’t that some kind of dry cleaning?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I’m telling you that Nelson Wentz is a person of interest who is getting more interesting by the hour.”

  “And I’m telling you,” Brenna said, “that you know what it’s like to be wrongly accused.”

  Morasco swallowed. She could see his throat moving up and down under the striped button-down collar of the rumpled shirt he was wearing beneath his tweed jacket—the same one he’d worn to her office three days earlier. She could feel his eyes working behind the glasses as he watched her face. Brenna kept her expression neutral, hoping hard that he couldn’t see through her, couldn’t see this gnawing doubt. She needed Morasco on her side right now. The doubt she could deal with later, on her own.

  Morasco said, “Why are you so convinced Nelson Wentz didn’t kill his wife?”

  Brenna exhaled. “Why are you so convinced he did?”

  “I’m not.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Not entirely.”

  “But others are, right?” She leveled her eyes at him. “Your coworkers. Probably some of the same ones who told you to leave the blue car alone. It wasn’t worth pursuing. As if anything wouldn’t be worth pursuing when it came to a missing little girl . . .” Brenna was going back to September 8, 1981—to the feel of hard vinyl against the backs of her legs as she sat across from Detective Grady Carlson’s desk in the Pelham Precinct House, to stale cigarette smoke worming into her sinuses and Detective Grady Carlson’s voice, so slow it had reminded Brenna of a 45 record played on 33 . . . “You saw your sister getting into a light blue car, but you didn’t say anything about it for two whole weeks?”

  “Clea said not to tell.”

  Brenna forced the coffee to her lips and drank with her eyes squeezed shut, pulling herself back, pulling herself away from the headachy smell of the precinct house, from the crumbs in the detective’s mustache, the deep lines in his face, framing that smirk.

  “You were very nice to that little girl,” Brenna told Morasco. “You showed her respect.”

  Morasco gazed at her. Brenna became aware that her eyes were hot, her vision slightly blurred. He didn’t mention it, though—didn’t even ask if she’d been in a memory—and she couldn’t figure out whether it was out of kindness or if he was simply too lost in his own thoughts to notice that her eyes were filled with tears.

  “I’ll look into the Wentzes’ phone records,” he said.

  The Neff police report—the missing page, specifically—wasn’t something Brenna felt comfortable asking Morasco about, especially after watching him read through the entire thing, making no remark other than “This brings back memo
ries.” Either he didn’t realize the John Doe interview was missing, or he’d been instrumental in its removal. She might learn in time, but not now; it probably didn’t have much to do with what happened to Carol, unless . . . “You said you questioned Nelson in Iris’s case,” Brenna said, as they left Starbucks. “Why?”

  “Nelson didn’t tell you?”

  Brenna shook her head.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  She looked at him.

  “If it had any bearing on your case, I would, Brenna. But it was just about some . . . rumors. I don’t feel comfortable gossiping about people.”

  “You asked Nelson about his affair with Lydia.”

  He opened the door for her. “Why did you ask me if you already knew?”

  She stopped on the sidewalk, facing him. “Nick?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did Chief Griffin ever question Nelson? Anonymously or otherwise?”

  Morasco’s eyebrows went up. “No,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

  She started walking. “No reason.”

  Brenna felt her cell phone vibrating, and picked it up to a text from Trent: TNT charm strikes again. CW’s carrier will e-mail me her records, subpoena-free. “Yes,” Brenna whispered.

  “Huh?” Morasco asked.

  “Oh, my assistant,” Brenna said, realizing halfway through the sentence that Trent’s illegally obtaining Carol Wentz’s cell phone records wasn’t something she wanted to share with the police, even one she was starting to trust. “Uh . . . he ordered us Cajun for lunch.”

  Morasco shrugged. “Not a big fan of burnt food, especially when they call it blackened.” He looked at Brenna. “Don’t throw euphemisms at me. You burnt it, say so. Tell it like it is.”

  “Good point.”

  “Brenna?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “We can’t tell each other everything.”

  She looked at him.

  “That’s okay. Far as our jobs go, it’s the nature of the beast, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I’m pretty sure we’re on the same side.”

  She started to smile, but something in his eyes stopped her. “Not many of us on this side, are there?” she said.