Unthinkable

by Brad Parks

  Jenny didn’t hesitate. “No. And I’ve never heard the name Candice Carter Bresnahan either.”

  “She went by Candy, apparently.”

  “That doesn’t help. Should I know her?”

  “Probably not. She grew up in Warren, Indiana, a small town halfway between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. Most of what we learned about her came from stories written about her in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. She was described as an all-American girl with a happy childhood—a cheerleader, that sort of thing—when she abruptly dropped out of school and married her high school sweetheart.”

  “Sounds like someone got pregnant,” Jenny said.

  “This was 1972, pre–Roe v. Wade, so that’s not a bad guess,” Barry said. “In any event, she settled in her hometown and had two more kids. In ninety-three she was working the parts desk at a local auto dealership when she allegedly poisoned her husband, Jerome Bresnahan, with ethylene glycol. Killed him.”

  “Ethylene glycol?” I asked.

  “That’s the active ingredient in antifreeze,” Barry said. “At the trial, the prosecution made sure the jury knew that Candy had plenty of access to it because of her job. Jerome was a long-haul trucker. He worked for Dynamic Waste Disposal, one of the largest toxic-waste haulers in the country. He was gone a lot, and the prosecution’s theory was that he had cheated on Candy on the road, and she punished him for it.”

  “Ouch,” Jenny said.

  “The defense countered that Jerome was an alcoholic and may have guzzled antifreeze in a drunken stupor. Her lawyer also managed to hint that when Jerome drank, he got heavy handed with Candy and the kids. The defense attorney’s closing argument was basically a version of, ‘She didn’t kill him, but even if she did, he had it coming.’ The jury deliberated for five days before telling the judge it couldn’t reach a verdict. The prosecution decided not to retry it—a tacit acknowledgment they just didn’t have enough evidence to get a conviction. At the end of it all, Candy was a free woman.

  “But that’s actually not the strange part,” Barry continued. “After the trial, everyone expected she’d return to Warren. What else did she know? Instead, she disappeared. To White Stone, Virginia, of all places. The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette did a story on the ten-year anniversary of Jerome Bresnahan’s death. Candy Bresnahan could not be reached for comment. She hadn’t even come back to town for the birth of her grandchildren.”

  “Maybe she just didn’t want to live in a place where everyone looked at her like she was a murderer,” I said, wondering if I was simultaneously talking about Candy’s past and my future.

  “It’s possible,” Barry said. “All I can say is she doesn’t seem to have done much in White Stone other than get a driver’s license. She didn’t buy a house. She didn’t start a business or register a corporation. She didn’t even register to vote. Then she resurfaced to try and kill you. Thank God we got her first so she ended up like this instead.”

  With that, he casually flipped another picture of Candy Bresnahan on our kitchen island. It was a postmortem shot of her entire body, in situ.

  When I saw it, I had to stifle a gasp.

  In the photo, her left arm was raised. The sleeve of her T-shirt had slipped up, revealing a distinctive scar.

  It was a square with a P and an R inscribed inside.

  CHAPTER 28

  NATE

  Barry continued to share what the state police knew—or didn’t know, since the gun had no serial number, and the body yielded no clues about what Candy Bresnahan had been up to for the last quarter century.

  I knew.

  Or at least I could assemble a pretty good guess.

  Sometime in 1993 she had been approached by Lorton Rogers, or some other member of the Praesidium, and jolted out of her otherwise ordinary mother-of-three-in-small-town-Indiana life. She was told she needed to kill her husband because . . .

  Well, because Jerome Bresnahan was a man with a drinking problem who chauffeured toxic waste for a living. You didn’t need to be one with the currents to know it was destined to end poorly.

  Maybe Jerome was going to drive a truckload of nasty goo into a school bus, or spill a deadly mess across a busy interstate, or inadvertently taint an entire city’s water supply with his boozy recklessness.

  Whatever it was, it was bad enough that Jerome had to go. And the Praesidium decided he needed to die in its preferred manner: at the hand of his own spouse.

  Everyone knows Jerome is a drunk, Candy was told. We’ll just say he guzzled some Prestone thinking it was a mojito. The jury will deliberate for five days and then you’ll be free.

  Had Candy fought the inevitable, like me? Did she need to be convinced by a demonstration of DeGange’s power? Or had she accepted her fated future at face value, eager to be rid of her drunken, abusive husband?

  Whatever it was, she had gone through with it. And then she decided she wanted no part of the reception she’d get if she returned to Warren. She couldn’t face the withering stares at church or the under-the-breath mutterings at the grocery store.

  Or perhaps it was that working for Vanslow DeGange, a billionaire who helped the world dodge punches before they were ever thrown, was more interesting than selling auto parts in Indiana.

  Whatever the case was, she got her brand and she joined the Praesidium, at which point she did . . . what exactly? Procured replacement mufflers for the Praesidium’s fleet of cars?

  Or was she more like Rogers, jumping from crisis to crisis, never knowing who she’d have to conspire to kill next?

  And then, one day, that someone became my wife.

  Except it made no sense Praesidium would dispatch her on that errand. Why send her to do on a Thursday afternoon what I was going to do on a Friday evening? Rogers said the Praesidium had a rule about not doing its own dirty work.

  And why, for that matter, was she so bad at it? The Praesidium surely had more capable people. Why send a woman in a bright-red shirt to fumble around the plaza in front of Jenny’s workplace for an hour, slipping her hand in and out of her bag, being so obvious with her ill intentions? Why not plant a sharpshooter on the top of the parking garage, much like the state police had done? Or simply kill her as she walked out to her car in the morning?

  None of it made sense.

  I actually wished I could talk to Rogers. He surely had some explanation. Perhaps this was part of the effort to exonerate me. The jury would hear that the day before Jenny’s death, this other woman had tried to kill her. And therefore it was reasonable to believe that someone else—some associate of Candy’s, perhaps—had shown up and finished the job.

  Was Candy really willing to sacrifice herself for the Praesidium like that? Or perhaps DeGange had already sensed that her death was imminent, but it would be slow and painful. So she was willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good.

  Whatever the answers were, Barry Khadem didn’t have them. And neither did Jenny, who kept insisting in different fashions that she had no knowledge of Candy Bresnahan and no inkling of her motives.

  Once they had hashed that through a few more times, Barry announced he was headed home for the evening after one last check of Jenny’s protective detachment.

  That left Jenny and me alone in the kitchen, but not alone in any broader sense. Between Rogers and the bodyguards, we had plenty of people around us who would constrain any move I was contemplating.

  “So,” I said, trying to sound like a concerned husband. “How you doing?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  Except the way she said fine made it sound a lot more like some other four-letter words.

  “No, seriously. Barry’s gone. You don’t have to keep up a brave front anymore. How are you? You must be—”

  “Fine,” she insisted. “It happened so fast. And then it was over. Even now it feels like something I saw in a movie, not something that actually happened.”

  There was again silence in the kitchen. And in that moment, I was again tempted to blu
rt out everything. Just tell her the whole story; ask her to run off with me and the kids; beg her to not just drop the lawsuit, but never think about the lawsuit for another second, lest she have the brainstorm that would change everything.

  But before I could even think of how to form the words, she yawned and stretched.

  “I’m beat,” she said. “I think the adrenaline has finally worn off. Let’s go to bed.”

  “Actually, can we talk?” I said. “There’s something I really need to discuss with you.”

  She shot me a look I had seen before. I called it her brick-wall look—because I would have better luck talking to one of those. She was worn out. She had been through hell. She wasn’t going to be able to hear anything I said.

  But shouldn’t I try anyway? Nothing could have been more important.

  And yet, in the Rogers-inevitable version of my life, maybe this was exactly why I had failed to convince her to run away with me. I had pushed it, instead of waiting until the right moment.

  So. Exercise some free will. Think you’re going to do one thing? Decide to do the opposite.

  “Actually, never mind,” I said. “It can wait until the morning.”

  “Great, thanks,” she said, sliding off the chair.

  She kissed me on the cheek, then left the kitchen.

  I stayed behind to turn off the lights and do the last of the dishes, worried I had actually made the wrong decision, wondering if this was what I had been fated to do all along.

  CHAPTER 29

  JENNY

  There was no sleeping. Not for a long time. Jenny’s brain kept replaying images of Candy Bresnahan.

  Then, at a certain point, the fatigue became its own self-perpetuating problem. Every time she was about to drift off, her body would spasm, waking her back up.

  At some point after 2:00 a.m., she finally dozed off. When her alarm clock bleated out its 5:30 a.m. call, she shut it off and rolled back over, intending to doze for another few minutes.

  Two and a half hours passed.

  When she awoke again, daylight was streaming into the room from the sides of the curtain. Still a little dazed, she propped herself up to look at the clock, unable to believe she had overslept by so much.

  And then, like he had been listening for the sound of her blankets rustling, Nate eased into the room.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were awake.”

  “Yeah,” Jenny croaked.

  “I was just coming in to get my slippers.”

  “Oh,” she said, then stared emptily at his socked feet as he walked across the room toward the closet.

  He retrieved the slippers, put them on, and then came over to the bed.

  “Can we have that talk now?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  He sat on the side of the bed. She scooched herself up into a sitting position.

  “I need a favor,” he said. “Actually, calling it a favor makes it sound small. It’s not small. But it’s something I need all the same, more than I can possibly explain. As a matter of fact, I won’t be able to explain it. But it’s still something I really, really need.”

  “Okay. Are you going to start making sense anytime soon?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. So here it is: I want you to drop the CP and L lawsuit.”

  Jenny was suddenly wide awake. She crossed her arms. “I see. And why is that?”

  “Like I said, I can’t explain it.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to try. Because ‘Hey, throw away two years of work because I need a favor’ isn’t really going to cut it.”

  “Okay. I just . . . I have this really awful feeling about where this is heading. That woman who tried to kill you yesterday, doesn’t that have to be related to CP and L somehow?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Nothing else you’re working on is that huge. I mean, four hundred million dollars can make people do desperate things.”

  “So CP and L sent a deranged grandma from Indiana to try and kill me? That doesn’t wash.”

  “No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying an action like this, it’s going to make you a lot of nasty enemies. A lot of them. CP and L is just the start. We don’t know what drove this lady or who she was working for. There will also be other power companies, not to mention the entire coal industry. Those coal barons are no sweethearts. They play for keeps.”

  She was already grimacing. “I don’t know about that. Face it, the woman was mentally ill and decided to target me for some reason that only she understands. Maybe she has a thing against female lawyers. Maybe I represent some client who did her wrong. We’ll probably never know why.”

  “You can just dismiss it that easily?”

  “I’m not dismissing anything,” she said. “Barry is still looking into it. If he wants to keep me under protection while he sorts it out, fine. If he is able to figure out this woman had some connection to CP and L or some other entity we need to worry about, we’ll deal with that. But if he doesn’t come up with anything substantive, I’m not going to let it paralyze me.”

  “Okay, so forget what happened yesterday. This thing, it’s a very different kind of law than what you signed up to practice, a very different kind of law than what CMR is really set up for. How many other partners are pursuing huge mass-tort claims? None that I’m aware of. You’ve gotten this far in your career by playing the game the right way. This is a completely different kind of game. You’re at a stage of your career where you ought to be out hustling clients, building your book, not going down this rabbit hole with CP and L.”

  She shot him a look that could have cut glass. What was Nate really up to? Where did this fit in with all the other unexplained and unusual behaviors? With the gun that wasn’t a gun. With the off-the-books lawyering. And now, here he was, acting conspiratorial, using some suspiciously familiar language.

  “Have you been talking with Dickel?”

  “What? No,” Nate said hastily.

  “Because that’s practically word for word what Dickel said to me. Word for word.”

  “Well, because it’s true. The man has a point.”

  “I don’t care if he does or not. Did you go behind my back with Dickel?”

  “No.”

  Jenny watched Nate’s gaze shift to the floor like some middle school truant. He had never really tried to lie to her, at least not that she was aware of. And now she understood why: he was terrible at it. His body language screamed deception.

  “When’s the last time you talked to him?” she pressed.

  “I don’t know. Probably one of the times I visited with the girls.”

  “Have you been playing racquetball with him?”

  “Not in a while.”

  “Are you lying to me right now?”

  “About racquetball?”

  “No. About having talked to Dickel about this.”

  “Why would I talk to Dickel about this? And what makes you think Dickel would care even if I did?”

  “Oh, please,” Jenny said with an eye roll. “He’s had a crush on you since the first day of orientation. He’d do anything for you just to have the chance to ogle your ass while he’s doing it.”

  “Don’t be silly. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  Nate was at least again making eye contact. Did he actually think he was getting away with this? Pulling one over on her? Jenny took in a deep breath and prepared to dismantle that misapprehension.

  “Yesterday Dickel came to my office and, without citing any particularly compelling reason, said the executive committee was going to have a vote this afternoon on whether to continue the CP and L case. When he was talking about why, he used almost the exact phrase you just did, with the rabbit hole and everything. And you’re saying you didn’t talk to him about this?”

  “No. Definitely not. It’s just a coincidence. Saying someone is going down the rabbit hole, I mean, that’s a pretty common saying.”

  Jenny sat the
re for a moment, staring at him, trying to peer into his soul. Nate, the non-game-player, was playing some kind of game. Jenny just couldn’t figure out what it was.

  She understood Dickel’s motivation for wanting to submarine the CP&L case: he was a generally miserable human being who was tormented about not being able to live authentically and therefore enjoyed the suffering of others.

  But what was Nate’s angle?

  “Okay, forget Dickel for a second,” she said. “Forget everyone else. Why do you want me to drop this lawsuit? Don’t tell me you’re worried about my career. That’s nonsense. We both know my career will be fine.”

  “Look, I’m afraid, okay?” Nate said. “I’m afraid of what this suit will do to you, to our family. I feel like this Candy Bresnahan lady is just the start. There will be other stuff. And it’s not worth it. Say you win everything you’re asking for and it doesn’t get knocked down one penny on appeal. Great. The partners at Carter, Morgan, and Ross will have another hundred-whatever million to divvy up at the end of the year. Everyone will have a great Christmas. And your year-end bonus will certainly be healthy, but so what? Do we really need the money? It’s not like we’re hurting here.”

  “It’s not about the money,” Jenny said. “It’s about the Hendersons. And the Griffins. And the Russells. I’ve looked into their eyes. I’ve seen their suffering. They didn’t do anything wrong. All they did was breathe, for God’s sake. Power companies like CP and L have known for a long time that coal kills, but they keep burning it anyway. Why? Because it’s too expensive to build new plants that don’t burn coal. Well, okay. If that’s how they’re going to play it, then the only way to get their attention is with a huge settlement like this.”

  “That’s all well and good, and I don’t disagree with you. But it’s still too big a risk for you. For us. I’m not talking about your career. I’m talking about your life, Jenny. No offense to them, but the Hendersons, the Griffins, and the Russells are not my greatest concern. The Lovejoys are. Parker and Cate. And they’d rather have you alive.”

  “Really? Keeping me alive. That’s your concern.”