Trust Me

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  That’s why I’m here.

  “We know she’s at your house, by the way,” Hilliard says, handing me a navy ceramic mug. “Ashlyn Bryant. If you’re planning on lying about that, or being cute about it, let’s not go there, okay?”

  Whoa. She’s tough. “Great,” I say. I shift in the swivel chair, its wheels squeaking on the dingy gray carpet. “Which brings me to why I’m here.”

  “You heard from Joe Rissinelli?” she asks.

  “Well, no.” Interesting that’s the subject she brings up. It’s been more than a week. Are they still looking for him? Do they still suspect I know something? “Have you?”

  Hilliard scratches her cheek, once, with an unpolished forefinger, as she leans against the edge of her desk. It’s uncluttered, no photos or mementos or painted pots of curling ivy. A stack of manila file folders, edges aligned, crowds one corner.

  “We’re no longer concerned,” she says.

  “But—is he—” I wonder, with a pang of conscience, if I should tell her Ashlyn’s theory that Katherine’s connected with his disappearance. I don’t get through the whole thought before I decide against it. “Is he okay?”

  “When there’s something we can share, we will,” Hilliard says. “You understand. So. What brings you here?”

  “Ashlyn told me you were holding her cell phone,” I begin my rickety cover story. “With the other evidence. And she really wants it. She’s—” I search for a word as I take a sip of coffee. “She’s reluctant to ask you for it, and her lawyer is out of town.”

  “Her phone?” The detective purses her lips, crosses her arms in front of her chest. Shakes her head, no. “We don’t have her phone. Or any of her possessions. We gave all that back to her, right after the trial. In fact, her father called, too, wanting it all returned to him.”

  “Her stepfather, you mean.”

  Hilliard shakes her head. “No. Her biological father. You’re referring to Tom Bryant, correct?”

  “Yeah, he’s actually—”

  “No. He’s not.” Hilliard’s gesture, a STOP-sign palm, rejects this entirely. “He’s not her stepfather. No way. Trust me, I know everything about that girl, Ms. Hennessey. Where’d you even hear that?”

  I know she must read the surprise on my face. I regroup, first looking away, then staring into my coffee cup, as if the future is contained in that dark liquid. Ashlyn made a huge deal of her dead father. Then, after crying and withholding and changing her story, she’d finally “confessed” the bitter truth about her stepfather’s actions. She’d corrected me, over and over, when I called Tom Bryant her father. If none of that is true, what else isn’t true?

  “Ms. Hennessey?” The detective’s voice is soft, encouraging. “If Ashlyn Bryant has told you something, anything, that might lead to finding out what happened to Tasha Nicole, we need to know. She’s been with you for almost two weeks now. We understand you’re writing a book about—”

  I look up, questioning.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Why do you think my partner gave you that business card?”

  “Because of Joe Riss,” I say. “Inelli.”

  She nods. “That, too. But Ms. Hennessey? Be straight with me. You’re not here to retrieve Ashlyn Bryant’s phone.”

  The coffeemaker hisses. A fluorescent light buzzes above. Detective Hilliard buttons her jacket, then unbuttons it.

  “She has her phone,” the detective says. “The day she was acquitted, we gave it back. Let’s see now. Why do you think she told you she doesn’t have it? Ashlyn concocts her own realities, Mercer. As you certainly observed from the trial outcome, she’s very good at it. But a courtroom is not the only place to find justice.”

  The detective lets her thought hang in the coffee-scented air, in a room filled with stacks of files, and flashing silent phones, and the occasional ping of an elevator in the hall. Justice. I used to think I could fashion it on the printed page. Choosing exactly the right words, telling a story, illustrating how people think and why they do what they do. But four hundred and ninety-one days after my own reality exploded against that oak tree, I’m still searching for justice, justice for my child who wasn’t even old enough to understand the word. Truth is, justice for Sophie cannot exist. But for Tasha? The story of Tasha Nicole isn’t about my life. It’s only about hers.

  If Ashlyn is innocent, that’s fine. But I need to know the whole story. The real one. The police do, too.

  I hear Detective Hilliard spool out a breath. “Listen. You can help us.” She pauses. “Because, Mercer? This is not about you writing some book. This is about you helping a murderer get away with a horrible crime.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  After half an hour and two cups of coffee each, I’ve told the detective everything. That Ashlyn says Valerie and Luke are fictional. That she says the Skype was taped. That Ashlyn as much as told me that Tom, who she said was her stepfather, was Tasha’s father. Hot Stuff. The detective, sitting at her desk, takes notes with a blue plastic ballpoint into a Boston PD spiral notebook. Even at top speed, her precise handwriting stays between the lines. When I mention Hot Stuff, she lifts her pen.

  “Did you see that photo? The wet T-shirt contest at Hot Stuff?” Koletta almost sneers. “She probably didn’t show you that.”

  I blink, thinking about this. “She didn’t, but I mean yeah. I’ve seen it. But she said it was a charity event at the student union.”

  Koletta’s laughter fills the squad room. One peal of short, pure disbelief. She swallows, regaining her composure. “No,” she says. “It wasn’t.”

  She closes her eyes, shakes her head. Then looks up at me. “So, go on, Mercer. What else did she say?”

  I tell her about the cancer. Mercy Flights. The Cessna. I almost describe the Chihuahua in the airport, but just in time remember I made that up.

  “But it’s suspicious,” I go on. “How do you think her stepfather—I mean, father—and Georgia are paying for that cruise they’re on now?”

  Koletta narrows her eyes. “Mercer? The Bryants are home. In Dayton. You think we’re not keeping track of them?”

  Come to think of it, it’s my in-laws who are on a cruise. Did Ashlyn appropriate that palm-tree postcard?

  “You think they were involved?” I ask. “Tom and Georgia Bryant?”

  “No. They’re cleared. Those two are simply baffled—and unlucky—middle-aged suburbanites with a psychopath daughter. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

  That stops me, briefly, unhappy families. But this is not about my story.

  “Detective? You know that break-in at Quinn McMorran’s house?

  “Intimately,” she says.

  “Was Ashlyn almost killed?”

  Koletta waits a beat, as if evaluating my sanity. “The taggers were punks. We’ve got them, slam dunk. They didn’t come close to really getting inside. Didn’t even want to. No one was in danger. What’d she tell you?”

  “Never mind.” Okay, Ashlyn exaggerates. We know that. Being self-aggrandizing doesn’t mean she’s a murderer. It means she’s scared. Maybe. But Koletta—we’re on first-name basis now—is my lifeline. Someone with the same agenda. Someone objective, and knowledgeable. I can tell her anything, and she won’t judge. She knows a verdict doesn’t necessarily represent the truth. But it might.

  “So I was thinking,” I go on. “If I’m going write a true-crime story, I need to know the truth. What if Ashlyn is innocent? What if she’s making up stories—because she doesn’t really know the truth?”

  “I see.” Koletta leans toward me, elbows on her desk. She seems authentically interested. “Do you have a theory?”

  “Barker Holt,” I say. What’s the harm? I know a lot about this case, but I’m not Nancy Drew, and I don’t have the law enforcement power to investigate, so I might as well tell the police. If my solution is true, and Ashlyn is innocent, that’s gonna be—well, it would be a big freaking deal. And a big freaking story. “You know of him?”

 
Koletta nods. “Yup.”

  “Well. Ashlyn told Joe Rissinelli that Barker Holt was Tasha’s father. And that Holt died before Tasha was born. So I never thought of him as a suspect.”

  “Obviously,” Koletta says.

  “But then Ashlyn told me she’d made up part of that story,” I go on. “What if that was the part she made up? The timing of his death. What if he didn’t die until after Tasha was killed? No one knew who he was, or that they had a connection.”

  “Except Ashlyn,” Koletta says.

  “Right.” I’m so into this. “So no one was looking for him. In reality, well, he might have asked for visitation, something like that, and she felt obligated, or something, to allow it. And then he killed Tasha…”

  “Somehow,” Koletta says.

  “Right. It could be a million ways. And let me ask you—do you think it’s possible that someone’s blackmailing Ashlyn? Maybe framed her for Tasha’s death? Maybe Barker Holt himself? Maybe he’s alive?” I know I’m talking too fast. “Do you think Ashlyn was maybe involved? Or that she didn’t know? Or still doesn’t know? Or she’s still covering it up?”

  “We’ll wait to get the evidence, okay?” The phone rings on an unoccupied desk. Koletta ignores it.

  I’m right. I knew it. This book is going to be—as we used to say in college—kickass. I’m getting that feeling, hard to describe, that comes at the end of the final draft of an important story. It almost brings tears to your eyes. Because it seemed impossible at the outset, but then it all worked. Plus, talk about justice.

  “And Koletta?” Pushing it now, but I can tell she respects me. “Joe Rissinelli was in close contact with Ashlyn. She told him things. Do you think Joe’s disappearance connects with what happened to Tasha?”

  Koletta nods, listening. She takes a sip of coffee, and I can almost see the wheels turning in her brain. Clichéd, but in this case precise.

  “Why don’t you call him and ask?” she says.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  “Call? Joe? Rissinelli?” I say. Is this a trick? “He doesn’t have his phone. Right?”

  Koletta stands, flaps her spiral notebook closed, tucks it into an inside pocket of her blazer. “He does now.”

  She doesn’t look sly or conniving, or like she’s trying to trap me, but what do I know about police deceptions?

  “I emailed him right after Detective Overbey came to my house,” I say, standing. “And texted, and he didn’t answer. Again and again. He hasn’t tweeted. For days. Like, a week.”

  “That was then,” Koletta says.

  Now it’s the wheels in my own brain that are turning. After all, these are the cops who were trying to identify a five-year-old Hispanic girl. The ones who charged the possibly-innocent Ashlyn Bryant with murder. What might they do to me? What might they have misinterpreted or gotten wrong? Is this exactly what happened to Ashlyn? The police are now mistakenly blaming me for—something?

  But at this point I can hardly refuse to call Joe. Can I?

  I pull out my cell. Koletta’s gone back to the coffee pot, and I see her selecting a fluted filter paper and opening a plastic-topped canister of Dunkin’s coffee. Her back is to me. I click my phone contacts, take a deep breath, and call.

  One ring. Two.

  “Rissinelli.”

  “Joe?” I say. Koletta doesn’t turn around.

  “Mercer? Hey, how are you? Long time no talk.”

  My brain sputters and goes out. “Where have you been?”

  “Uh, nowhere, really,” he says.

  I think his voice sounds funny, but I don’t trust my powers of observation much right now.

  “What d’you mean by ‘been’?” he goes on.

  Koletta raises my empty mug, inquiring. I shake my head. Wine maybe. But that doesn’t seem to be in the offing.

  “I mean—where were you? I mean…” I close my eyes for a second, try to collect my thoughts. Truth is good. Especially with the police in earshot. “The police came to my house. They were looking for you, said your wife was worried, said I was the last person you called, said you didn’t have your cell. Said no one knew where you were.”

  Silence on the other end. “I did call you,” he finally says. “On closings day, remember? But anyway, I’ve ‘been’ out of town since then. With my other phone. It was kind of a misunderstanding.”

  What the hell kind of misunderstanding? I want to yell at him. But maybe that’s not appropriate. I turn away from Koletta and face a bulletin board, its cork crumbling under thumbtacked layers of union notices and wanted posters. And a DO YOU KNOW ME poster of Baby Boston. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he says. “I’m fine. It was—personal. My wife is sort of … well, it’s all fine now. What’s new with you?”

  What’s new? What’s new? I don’t know what to say first. And I don’t want to have a whole conversation in the detective’s office, especially asking how much Joe knows about Ashlyn. About what really happened. Or what she told him. Joe doesn’t know she’s at my house. Does he? I’m still not sure he’s a good guy. Although the cops—is this a trap?

  “Have you seen Katherine?” Is the first thing that comes out.

  “Katherine?” A pause. “Listen, Mercer? Maybe it’s better to talk in person. Want me to come over?”

  Just like la-dee-dah normal? Like you haven’t worried the hell out of me for a week? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream or kill someone. Do I trust him?

  “I’ll call you back,” I say.

  I jab off the phone, confused or angry, I can’t decide. Why didn’t he call me? But then, why should he? If he were simply “out of town” for “personal” reasons, there’d be no reason for him to check in. I emailed him, but we’re only colleagues. He wasn’t missing or bleeding in a damn alley somewhere or, as I secretly feared, dead. Those disasters were all in my imagination. Doesn’t mean I can’t be annoyed by it.

  The double door pings as it opens, then pings as it closes behind Detective Bryce Overbey. He stops at the office entrance, looks at me, then Koletta. Scratches his neck, as if surveying a crime scene. He mirrors his partner, navy blazer and black jeans. Plainclothes, supposedly, but as much a uniform as any regulation blue outfit.

  “What’s new?” he asks. “Is there coffee?”

  “Hey. Detective. Remember me? Joe Riss was just out of town?” I’m kind of mad about this, take a step toward him. It wasn’t only Ashlyn who planted the “bad Joe Riss” seeds. The cops, Overbey in particular, made me worry about him, too. “And you never bothered to inform me of that?”

  “Hi, Bryce.” Koletta’s leaning back in her desk chair, legs crossed, paper cup of coffee in hand.

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” Overbey half-shrugs at me. “Between us? It was personal. Turns out. Nothing to worry about. He’s a fine upstanding citizen. If you can call a reporter that. But ah, we gotta let him tell you about it.”

  I stare daggers at him, but he doesn’t seem to care. In the silence of the squad room there’s only the slosh of the coffee into his paper cup, and then a plunk as he adds a mini-container of half and half. So. Apparently Joe wasn’t embroiled in some drugs and murder plot with Katherine. As Ashlyn encouraged me to believe. My imagination will be the death of me.

  “Listen, Bryce,” Koletta finally says. “Mercer here has a theory. Or two.”

  “Ashlyn has an evil twin? Tasha is still alive?” Overbey says. At Koletta’s glare, he retreats. “Fine. Do tell. We’re all ears.”

  I’ll ignore his sarcasm. Rise above it. After they hear my theory, they’ll be sorry they scoffed. I can find out about Joe later.

  It takes me less time to tell Overbey my Barker Holt idea than it took to explain it to Koletta. Overbey nods, the whole way through, and makes his way to the desk at the back of the room, me following him, still talking, and Koletta following me, pulling a wheeled swivel chair behind her.

  He gestures me to keep going as he boots up his computer, and waves me t
o the chair. Koletta perches on a neighboring desk. Overbey’s typing now, and I figure he’s taking notes.

  “Hey, Bryce,” I hear another voice. Coming from—the computer?

  “Hey, Wadleigh,” Bryce says. “I’m here with a…” He looks at me.

  “Writer,” I fill in his blank. Wheeling my chair closer, I get a glimpse of his computer screen. It’s Skype. And on the other end is, unmistakably, Dayton Detective Wadleigh Rogowicz. He’s distorted, with the jaundiced light and peculiar camera angles Skype displays, but I’ve seen his image on so many TV stories and once, I think, in People. Funny, how much I’ve written about him, his thought processes, his determination, his pursuit of the Tasha case even under pressure to drop it. Wonder how much of that is accurate. I do know he hid in the Bryant’s front hall closet, though. How incensed must he be that Ashlyn was acquitted?

  “Reporter,” Overbey says instead. “And she has a theory we want her to run by you. Mercer Hennessey, meet Detective Rogowicz. From Dayton. Go for it, Ms. Hennessey. Gotta love Skype, right?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  “Detective? Do you know Barker Holt?” I blurt it out, not phrased very professionally, but I’m fueled by how psyched this Dayton cop might be to find Tasha Nicole’s real killer. “Could he have murdered Tasha Nicole?”

  “Yup. Nope.” Detective Rogowicz looks like the cowardly lion with a crew cut, round-faced and world-weary.

  I pause, seeing my own face boxed in the upper right of the Skype scene. It’s tiny, but large enough that I can read my own look of surprise. Why is he so sure? I should have laid the groundwork better, pitched him a more complete idea.

  “Tell her why,” Overbey says. He’s tilted back in his chair, the front wheels off the battered carpet.

  “Died before Tasha was born,” Rogowicz says. “Month or so.” I see his dour face attempt a smile. “Too bad for our Ashlyn—Holt mighta been a good alternative. But hey, just because a jury says she’s not guilty doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.”