Vaughn gestured at C.J… “Did you have a relationship with Jane?”
“Professionally, yes.” C.J.’s eyes looked lost without her glasses, but otherwise she was composed again. “As I’ve told you, Jane and I worked together for years.”
“Nothing more than that?”
She shook her head, a short, dismissive movement. It wasn’t exactly the firmest denial. Vaughn’s eyes flicked from her to me and back again.
“You see her on Monday?” he asked her.
She said nothing.
“Were you in her bed?”
We both looked at C.J. Although her face was composed, her black hair appeared thin, her pale skin overly delicate. It seemed as if tough, strong C.J. was aging before our eyes.
“C.J. loved Jane,” I said. C.J. took a step back then, her body fading into the shadows of the editing suite. And then her knees went out from under her, and she began to fall backward as if she’d been shot.
“Hey!” one of the officers said, trying to grab her. But C.J. landed on the floor of the editing bay with a thud.
“Get up!” Vaughn barked at her.
She just sat there as if she hadn’t heard him.
“Get her up,” Vaughn yelled at his officer.
The cop bent toward her.
“No!” C.J. bellowed. “Don’t touch me!” The raw agony of her voice froze us all.
C.J. curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She began to shake her head back and forth, back and forth, as if saying no, no, no to some internal words that no one could hear.
Vaughn stared at her, his gun still pointed. He looked at me. “Where’s her office?”
I pointed down the hallway. “Maggie is there, along with another Trial TV person.”
Vaughn nodded at one of his officers. “Stay here.” He took the other officer and left.
And then in the dark of the editing bay, like a child who finally gives in to anguish they feel deep inside, C.J. put her head on her knees and cried.
83
I hear a knock on the bedroom door.
I try to call out, “Come in,” but my voice is hoarse from lack of use.
Another knock.
I clear my throat and sit up, swinging my feet over the side of the bed.
I look around the room. It bears a helter-skelter appearance-scattered clothes, plates of half-eaten food, mugs of half-drunk tea. A couple of prescription bottles are lined up on the nightstand. Diazepam. Halcion.
Another knock on the door and this time it opens.
My brother’s mop of curly hair enters the room first, then I see his face and an expression he doesn’t normally wear-worry.
“You awake?” he asks.
I clear my throat. “Yeah,” I croak out. “What day is it?”
“Tuesday.”
Two days since the cops searched my place, two days since I confronted C.J. at Trial TV.
It all happened so fast.
Jane’s Emmy was found in C.J.’s office, in that box. C.J. had tried to wipe the trophy clean, to make it truly hers, but one tiny speck of blood was left from the vibrant force that had been Jane Augustine. And the half fingerprint that was left matched C.J.’s. So did the DNA from Jane’s bed. That was enough to get the crime lab and the cops to agree-C.J. had killed Jane.
I was interrogated again. But the interrogation was different. Vaughn asked questions and actually listened. When I left, he stopped Maggie and me at the door.
“Got something to say?” Maggie asked, sarcastic, triumphant.
Vaughn only shook his head. But for an instant, our eyes met, and he gave me the briefest of nods. It was the closest thing to an apology I would ever get from him.
I have been sleeping for most of the last two days at my mom’s house. The prescription bottles are hers.
Just in case, she had said. You might have a hard time sleeping.
But I hadn’t needed them. Sleep had been easy. The difficult part was the moments I was awake, usually at odd hours, scrounging the kitchen for food to bring back to the guest room and trying not to be angry. I have been telling myself that Vaughn, although misguided in his suspicions of me, was just doing his job, a job he had a passion for. Such reminders haven’t worked. I didn’t kill Jane, and I live with my own passion now-a passion to see Detective Vaughn get the shit kicked out of him by me or someone close to me.
I get up, tie a robe around my waist and pick up my cell phone from the nightstand. I look at the calls that came in while I was sleeping. Theo, three times. Grady, twice. No Sam.
“He’s outside,” Charlie says.
“What?”
“Sam. He’s sitting outside in his car. He says you need to get out of the house.” Charlie gives me a once-over. I haven’t showered in days.
I stand and peek through the wooden blinds onto State Street. Sam’s car is parked half a block down. I smile and turn to Charlie. “I’ll call him.”
“Mom and Spence are at the store,” my brother continues, “and I’m taking off for a job interview.”
My eyes open fast. “Are you kidding? A job interview?”
“Yeah, who knows? I might be a working stiff soon.” He shrugs and grins, then leaves.
My cell phone rings. Mayburn.
“You all right?” he asks.
I hear that worry in his voice, but the answer comes quick. “I am.”
“Good. Got some news you’ll like. You know your buddy, Mick, that writer you told me about? Well, I did a little digging. Found out that a couple of years ago on Christmas Eve, he got hammered, and tried to hammer his own dad.”
“What do you mean?”
“They got in a fistfight. Apparently, Mick won and beat the hell out of his father. Both were arrested, both were loaded. They were about to get charged with disorderly conduct and assault, but at the last minute, the dad’s agent did some sweet-talking-and some sweet bribing-and no charges were brought. The whole thing was hushed up, and both Mick and his famous father really, really want to keep this thing quiet.”
“If that’s true then maybe I-”
“Already took care of it. Had a talk with Mick. We’re not going to mention this again, and he’s going to scrap the book about the news personalities.”
“He’s not publishing it?”
“Nope.”
I close my eyes and feel a wave of relief for Jane. I open them again. “You’re the best.”
“I know,” he says, and hangs up.
I dial Sam’s number. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“Look, I know you’re supposed to be saving yourself,” he says, “but I want to make sure someone’s watching over you.”
“Sam.”
“Come downstairs.”
“I need a shower.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
84
S am drives, and we’re silent.
I have the sense that we’re waiting, holding everything back until we’re sitting somewhere and can look each other in the eye. The waiting makes the car feel like a ticking clock, as if we both know that this moment, which seems so mundane, so Sam-and-me-just-driving-in-the-car, is so much more than that.
I look out the window. I tell myself not to be scared of the weight of the moment, not to jump ahead of it.
Sam turns from Clark, then onto Lincoln Avenue. The day is vivid, full of light. The more I stare out the window, the more I feel that I’m waking up and the more I realize that the fear about what’s going to happen to Sam and me is nothing compared to the fear I felt when I found Jane and then the terror of being wrongfully accused. Now that it’s over, I can see that terror from afar-like a sharp, blue light that cuts through and crystallizes everything else, leaving only the dust of memories and the force of the fear itself.
I study Sam. He’s been in the sun lately with rugby practice, and his skin looks warm and golden.
“Did you get a haircut?” I ask. “It’s shorter than when we went to North Pond.”
“Yeah. She did something different.” He points at his forehead. His hair is pushed up at a different angle than normal. “Like it?”
I keep looking at his hair. It is so miniscule, that change, but it is a change. “I like it,” I tell him.
I turn and stare out the window. Then I roll it down, letting the sounds of the city seep in, letting the breeze-balmy and invigorating-twirl its way through my hair, through me.
Chicago seems to have sprung to life since I last paid attention. Music bleeds from second-floor windows. The smokers, usually huddled outside bars bearing haunted looks, stand tall in the spring sun, talking and gesturing with their cigarettes, laughing loud. There is color everywhere-orange and red tulips dotting otherwise feeble front lawns; cherry-blossom trees sprouting pink and white; bushes bursting with yellow bulbs. The urban landscape looks as if it’s been painted by an artist, one unafraid of vivid splashes of color.
“Where are we going?” I ask Sam.
“A dive bar. Just for you.”
“Which one?”
“You’ll see.”
He keeps going on Lincoln Avenue. He passes Fullerton, then Wrightwood, then pulls over and parks at a meter. Town houses run along one side of the street, and a Mobil station sits on the other.
“Rose’s,” Sam says, and he points.
Next to the gas station is an old, brick three-flat apartment. The bottom floor has a wooden front, painted a bleak ivory color, with two high octagonal windows that are dark, revealing nothing about what’s inside. Only the Old Style On Tap sign that hangs above the door indicates it’s a bar.
“I haven’t been here in years,” Sam says. “But I thought if the press was still following you, they’d never be able to see inside.”
We get out of the car and look up and down the street. No press. They had been crawling all over my lawn, making my neighbors crazy, and so I’d escaped to my mom’s house, hoping to lose them. And now, apparently I have. Or maybe it’s more simple-maybe my part of Jane’s story is over.
We wait for a few stray cars to pass, and we cross the street.
Stepping inside Rose’s is like stepping into a bar somewhere in Wisconsin in the 1970s. The dark wood furniture is mismatched, scarred. Many of the seats of the bar stools are duct-taped. A sagging pool table is wedged next to an ancient jukebox croaking a Sinatra tune. I love it.
Two guys sit at the end of the bar. They look a bit tougher, less styled, than the usual Lincoln Park crowd. Cops, I guess. The thought sends a reactionary frisson of fear through me, but I see it and I let it loose. I have nothing to fear. At least not right now.
Sam and I sit at the bar, and a woman with gray hair, stooped with age, asks what we’d like to drink.
“Do you have Blue Moon?” Sam asks.
“No.” She shakes her head at the notion. “I have Polish beers. They’re the best.”
“I’ll try one.”
“Make it two,” I say.
She gives us beers in the bottle and dumps a few pretzels onto a white paper plate. Then she leaves us alone.
We talk about everything we haven’t talked about in months, everything except us. It feels good, in a dark bar with no indication of time or even of season, to spend these moments with Sam.
He stops, though. He’s in the middle of a story about his landlord-He’s trying to raise the rent, and I said, you can’t do this, I’ve got a two-year lease, and then he said… And Sam just stops. Just like that.
Sam looks at me. “We have to decide.”
“Decide what?”
“Us.”
“There’s a word I haven’t heard you use in a long time.”
“I know.” Sam turns on his stool to face me. “Because we’ve been so back and forth. We’re not engaged, but we haven’t broken up. We’re sort of dating, but we’re sort of not. We’re kind of together, but we’re kind of not. Let’s pick one. I need something certain, Izzy. You do, too.”
I think about what he’s said. “Actually, I’m okay with not nailing it down.”
Something about Jane’s death, and her life, has made me rethink the way I want to live. Jane had a million accomplishments, but C.J. voided them in one instant. And yet what still lives on from Jane, what she’ll be remembered for, is her passion. There’s that word again. The story of Jane and C.J.’s passion for each other and the end result of it-Lesbian Lover Scorned-has been splashed all over the papers and the news. So far nothing has come out about the scarfing. Nothing about the other affairs. I assume many will scorn Jane’s passion and the way she acted it out. But her fervor for life, for the news, for love was undeniable, and it still remains.
And what I have been thinking in my waking hours is that I want to be known for my passion, too. I don’t want to act it out like Jane. I don’t want to emulate her in any way, except that I want to get in touch with my passions, wherever they lie, and I want to feel them, to wrap my arms around them, to taste them. The thing is, I’m not sure where my passions lie-not romantically or professionally,
I’ve decided that in the interim, an uncertain life, an uncertain relationship don’t necessarily point to a bleak future or even a bleak today. And so I don’t have to put labels on Sam and me. We can ride it and see whether that passion we had is alive, whether it wants to keep living.
But Sam, apparently, doesn’t agree with me. He shakes his head, pushes away his half-empty beer. “I don’t want this anymore, Iz. Not like this. It’s too hard.”
“Relationships are always hard.”
He gives me a long, indecipherable look. “Says who?”
“Says everyone.”
“It doesn’t mean that it’s right.” He takes one of my hands. He has the smoothest skin, so familiar that it almost feels like my own. “Can you promise me it will be easier someday?”
Reflexively, I start to say yes, but then I close my mouth. I want to say the truth-to me, to him, to us. “No,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean it will be bad. In fact, we might find a lot of joy that way.”
The song on the jukebox dies. The cops leave the bar. The bartender shambles over to us, holding her back with one hand. “You want something else?”
“Yes,” Sam says, but he’s looking in my eyes. “I’m sorry, Iz, but I want something else.”
85
W hen I walk out of the bar, the city feels razor-fresh. My senses are heightened. Sam is still inside, and for now I’m on my own. And I am fine. More than fine.
The brick of the buildings, which so recently looked dusty red, is vividly bright now, each brick like a poppy in a bouquet. The El train’s rumble is melodic. The smell of food cooking, of car exhaust, of spring earth-it all mixes in the air and wafts down the street. The sirens, so frequent in the city, are no longer in the background. Now, even though distant, they cut through my mind like bands, each one clear, bright, distinguishable. I will never hear a siren and not think of Jane. And after a while, that won’t be a bad thing.
After a while, Sam and I might get back together, or we won’t. We will be friends, people forever bonded, or we won’t. I will investigate the story of Jackson Prince and get back into the news business, or I won’t. I will find myself in the law again, or I won’t. Maggie will forgive Wyatt again or she won’t. Q will find a new profession he loves, or he won’t. My brother Charlie will get the job and not rely so much on my mother, or he won’t.
I will be okay with starting over again, or…or I will.
Book Club Questions
What do you think of Jane’s dalliances? Would you be able to handle a roaming spouse? Are acts of infidelity always wrong or are there gray areas?
What does the book say about monogamy, relationships, sexuality and forgiveness?
What did you think about the scarf, and, in particular, the symbolism of the color red and the way that Jane sometimes used the scarf? Did it expose something about her personality?
Does the city of Chicago look different from the back of Izzy’s Vespa
? If you live in Chicago did those scenes make you want to buy one? Does touring Chicago on a Vespa give the city more energy, make you feel a sense of freedom?
What did you think of the shifting point of view from first person (in Izzy’s voice) to occasional third person (from Jane’s point of view or that of Zac, Mick, etc.?)
Is there a character in this book you identify with? One you love to hate? One you really love?
Did you guess the murderer’s identity prior to it being revealed? If not, who did you suspect?
Deleted Scenes
This passage was originally included in the scene at Old Town Ale House:
“Why are you pulling a George Thorogood?” Grady asked.
“Who’s George Thorogood?”
“You don’t know Thorogood?” He shook his head in a disgusted fashion. “He sings Bad to the Bone and that song, I Drink Alone. Why are you drinking by yourself?”
“I don’t know. I just decided to stop in.” There was something there. Something underneath all this activity of mine, but I didn’t want to get anywhere near it right now. “Hey, I started a new job today.”
“Does this have anything to do with the time you made me pretend to be your husband?”
I laughed a nervous laugh. It did, in fact. Last year, when Sam was gone, I’d made Grady act like my husband at a party Lucy was hosting. We were trying to get close to her, and Mayburn thought she’d be more likely to be friends with a family woman who lived in the same neighborhood. But Mayburn had told me a number of times that secrecy about any work I’d done for him was absolutely required.
So I just waved a hand at Grady now. “Nah,” I said. “I’m working at a place called The Fig Leaf. It’s a lingerie boutique.” I thought of that pearl thong, tucked in the silver-gray box. I had studied it when I got home from the store and I had to admit, now that I owned it, I was dying to try it out, to see if it would be silly or sexy, raunchy or ridiculous.
Red Blooded Murder Page 38