Gathering Lies

by Meg O'Brien

  The next morning, when we went to release Gabe, Grace stayed behind. She still hadn’t spoken, and in fact had withdrawn from us all. We didn’t press her. We told her it was all right, we’d go alone. We understood.

  But none of us really understood. Of the four of us, we had thought Grace would be the one to want to taunt Gabe the most. Closure, as Luke had said, for what had happened to her brother.

  On the way, we saw helicopters circling overhead. They were looking for the best place for boats to land, we surmised, and with a little luck we’d be out of here and back to Seattle by noon. Luke had left for the shore, hoping to direct the landing to a clearing there. Timmy and Amelia were already packing.

  When we got to the place where we had left Gabe, however, we stopped short in our tracks. Shock waves overtook us, every bit as strong as those from the quake.

  Gabe was dead, a bullet hole through his head.

  After the initial moments of disbelief, we agreed that it was clear Grace had done it. We didn’t know how she’d come up with a gun, but, as an ex-cop, she could have had one all along. That decided, we didn’t even discuss it further. Instead, we started removing traces of anything that might even remotely have fingerprints or DNA on it. To do this was my idea. But no one objected.

  Thus we covered for Grace, of all people. The one woman none of us had liked. We covered for her because we all knew we were just as guilty of Gabe’s death. We’d all put him in a position where he’d been unable to defend himself in those final moments.

  When the rescuers arrived, we didn’t tell them about Gabe, but let them find him like that. The San Juan sheriff’s office was called, and the sheriff himself came. He questioned us, but none of us had anything to say.

  The investigators searched the crime scene, but didn’t find the murder weapon. They did find Jane. And Angel. There was talk of taking us all in, even Timmy and Amelia. Of running tests and taking fingerprints. There would be a thorough investigation of the crime scene. A thorough investigation of all of us—including Dana and Kim, who both had secrets that, if they came out, could destroy their lives.

  I couldn’t let them go through that. Nor could I let Timmy and Amelia be put through that sort of thing. Not when they had been drawn into all this because of me. So I did what I had to do. I “confessed.” I said I’d killed Gabe out of rage when I found out he was in cahoots with the same cops who’d set me up on drug charges, and who then killed both Jane and Angel.

  The San Juan sheriff was skeptical. He wondered how I’d managed to take on a man Gabe’s size alone.

  “I took him by surprise,” I said, “and knocked him unconscious. That’s what he told me he did to Jane. It seemed fitting.”

  They couldn’t budge me from my story, and everyone else remained silent, as I’d asked them to. “I’ll work it out,” I told them. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

  Whether I would be or not was debatable. But I had to convince them. I couldn’t have anyone else hurt because of me.

  In the end, the sheriff let the other women go, pending further investigation.

  Ian had come with the rescuers, and he tried to take care of me. He talked to the San Juan sheriff and asked him to go easy on me. He was solicitous, almost like the old Ian, hovering over me and trying to stand between me and everyone else. He didn’t even like me talking to the other women, once I’d been arrested. Reminding me of my rights, he said, “Don’t talk to anyone at all. You never know who might turn up in court and testify to something that could make you look bad.”

  He was right. I knew that, and I followed his advice.

  As the sheriff loaded me into the chopper to take me to Friday Harbor and the San Juan County jail, I looked back to see Luke standing with his cell phone in hand, talking to someone who’d come in with the rescue team. He hadn’t been around much since the rescue team had arrived. Now, he looked up once as the chopper lifted into the air. I tried to read his expression, but it was blank. It seemed he pointed to his cell phone, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t know if he was sending a message to me, or to someone else.

  The women were all there, however—Timmy, Amelia, Dana, Grace and Kim. Holding hands, they had gathered together to say goodbye. Tears came to my eyes. To think I’d wanted, at one time, to separate myself from them, have nothing more to do with them. Catastrophe had indeed made bedfellows of us all.

  PART IV

  THE ARREST

  21

  SARAH LANSING

  Seattle, WA

  May 5

  I sit at my father’s desk, in my parents’ home, tying up loose ends in this journal. They don’t come easily, as I’m tired and worn after hours of sweeping broken shards of glass and china from the floors of my parents’ home. Some of the larger pieces of furniture are not where they used to be—as if the earthquake had given them feet to choose a new location. But the house is mostly sound. Certain areas of Seattle were hit worse than others, and I was relieved to find that our neighborhood was one of the lucky ones. A generator my father had installed during the Y2K hype provides enough electricity to run the bare necessities, one of which I consider to be my computer.

  I still have a book to write—and this account of the happenings at Thornberry to bring to an end.

  The words that come foremost to my mind are: Gather…gathering…gathered. For my own solace, and largely to sort things out, I write of the way we all came together, of what we did. Every night I obliterate what I’ve written, in fear of having my work confiscated by the police. Days, my fingers hover over the keyboard, ever ready to hit the delete key in the event that what passes for the law should show up unexpectedly at my door. What we women did at Thornberry can never come to light.

  It has been two weeks since that last day at Thornberry, and we have talked it through and through—Dana, Kim, Grace and I. We have told ourselves so many things: We didn’t think anything would happen to Gabe. We only wanted to scare him. Teach him a lesson. Then we’d turn him over to the law.

  We have also admitted that in our hearts, none of us believed the law would do enough to him. He would never suffer. Not the way we’d wanted him to.

  So we did what we did. We were all guilty of intent, the women kept saying—to which I could only reply that I was the most to blame. I was the one who’d spent her life practicing law. Upholding justice. For that reason, more than any other, I insisted that no one else come forward.

  Why open a can of worms and shine the light of guilt on the others? If nothing else, we had to protect Timmy and Amelia. They’d had no part in our crime, but suspicion would surely be cast upon them.

  I did ask Grace, yesterday, to tell the truth, just to me. She insisted over and over that she did not kill Gabe. She had found him there dead, she said. She had woken in the night and thought she’d heard a shot. She didn’t want to wake anyone else, so she went out alone to investigate.

  To be honest, she added, she thought I had done it. She was keeping silent for me. “I figured it was the least I could do, since I didn’t protect you very well back there.”

  Oddly enough, I finally believed her, and that’s when cold hard reality set in: I knew someone else had killed Gabe. But who else had motive and opportunity? Who else on the island had a gun?

  Any of the women, possibly. I just didn’t really believe it.

  Luke, then? I’d only talked with him a few times since the day I got into that chopper. I knew he was staying in Seattle awhile, and that he was still hanging around with Grace. This was something she had told me, while reassuring me that there was nothing intimate between them anymore.

  I believed her about that, too. Grace had softened somewhat since Thornberry, but she didn’t seem interested in anything now except getting her old job back in New York. She would be going home in a week or so, she said.

  Once I believed Grace to be innocent, I started writing down everything that had happened, in my journal, at night, while working on my book during the day. I thou
ght I might be able to reach some logical conclusion if I wrote it out just as I would notes for court.

  Amazingly, it worked. Putting all the parts together on paper like that, a lot of things have become clear this past week. Clues rose to the surface that I might not have thought about, otherwise. Clues that had become lost in the worry and anxiety over the quake and everything that followed at Thornberry.

  I finally knew—or thought I knew—who killed Gabe.

  I was working on this when Ian called last night. Could he come over and talk? he wanted to know. It was important, he said.

  I told him yes, but could he wait until tonight because I had a lot of work to do? He reluctantly agreed.

  After that I made a few pertinent phone calls.

  It is now twenty-four hours later, and Ian is due here at nine tonight. It is 8:40 now, and while I wait I go back to my notes, recalling that before we women left Gabe staked to the ground that day, I had retrieved the Allegra case from where he’d dropped it. That night, I’d taken the stockings out of the case and put them, in their plastic bag, in with some dirty laundry I was taking home with me. When I decided to confess the next day, I left them there, and though my luggage was searched for the murder weapon, the stockings must have seemed innocuous to the deputy who did the search. He didn’t even take a second look at them. I had some uneasy moments when my possessions were taken from me at the San Juan County jail, but then Ian came to escort me back to Seattle, and my suitcase was returned to me when house arrest was ordered.

  Now the stockings are carefully hidden again beneath the corner of carpet where I’d hidden them before going to Thornberry. I have lived with the fear that the Five, who are still uncharged, could come to this house any day with a search warrant, find them and take them from me. The one thing that has reassured me somewhat is that the DNA report is still filed away at the laboratory in the East. Without the stockings themselves, Ivy should still be able to bring charges. If she ever brings charges. Lately, I’ve been thinking she needs a bit of a boost.

  I check the clock on the mantel of the fireplace that stands between my father’s two mahogany bookcases. It tells me it’s 8:50. The ankle cuff rubs against my skin, reminding me of my lack of freedom and how I could lose it forever if things don’t work out tonight as I’ve planned. I take a sip of water and close my eyes briefly, gathering my strength.

  The doorbell rings, and I realize ten minutes have passed. Going into the center hallway, I open the door, letting Ian in. I take him into the living room, away from my work, away from the notes, away from Lonnie Mae’s evidence. I want nothing tonight to remind him that I’m working things out for myself.

  Ian is sharp, however. He glances into my father’s study as we pass it, sees the light on at the desk, and guesses at what I’ve been doing.

  “Been working hard?” he asks.

  “Oh, just a bit. Still have a book to write, you know.” I smile.

  “Have you come up with anything about the murder on the island? Any way to clear your name, that is?”

  “I’ve been giving it some thought,” I say noncommittally.

  “You’ve been pretty closed-mouthed about what really happened out there in the forest,” Ian says, taking a seat on the couch and leaning back, relaxing. “Wouldn’t it help you to talk about it?”

  “It might,” I say, sitting in a chair across from him. “I just don’t know where to begin.”

  “Well, why not begin with how many of you really participated in the crime?” he says.

  “Ian, I told you—I told everybody—I was the only one.”

  He shakes his head. “Sarah, c’mon. Nobody actually believed that. They just didn’t have any proof that you’d had help. You did have help, though—didn’t you? You couldn’t possibly have done all that on your own.”

  “A woman filled with rage can do a lot of things,” I observe. “Once the adrenaline starts flowing, an almost superhuman power takes over.”

  “There were footprints in the forest grasses,” he points out. “More than one set. The San Juan sheriff says he’s certain there was more than one of you.”

  “I know,” I say. “I heard that yesterday. That’s why I was pretty sure I’d be hearing from you, Ian. What is it you want from me?”

  He sits forward, leaning his arms on his knees.

  “Sarah, I’ve been charged with finding out what really happened on that island and how it relates to the Seattle Five. I need to know if any of the other women know about the Five. If Gabe Rossi told them anything, that is. He might have let something slip that will help us put them away. Also…I understand you have a certain piece of evidence that could be used to incriminate the Five.”

  “Did Ivy tell you this?” I ask.

  The small flicker of surprise on his face tells me otherwise. “Ivy? You mean, Ivy O’Day? No. Why, Sarah? Have you talked to her?”

  I wave a hand as if to clear my mind. “Oh, Ian. There are so many people I’ve talked to, I can hardly remember them all.”

  He looks uneasy. “You haven’t given anyone this evidence, have you? What did you do with it?”

  “Given it to anyone? Good lord, no. I hid it inside a tree near where Gabe died,” I say. “Don’t worry, it’s still there.”

  “A tree? You hid it in a tree?” He runs his fingers through his hair. “Dammit, Sarah, there are a hell of a lot of trees near where Gabe died!”

  “Not like that one. It’s called the Ghost Tree. It’s huge and hollow, big enough for a person to sit inside. Big enough for just about anything—including a piece of evidence—to be hidden inside it and not found for hundreds of years.”

  Ian studies my face as if trying to unveil the lie. “Sarah, are you absolutely sure that’s where you hid it?”

  “Of course, I’m sure,” I say. “I wouldn’t forget something that important.”

  “And you’re absolutely sure it’s solid evidence? It could convict the Five?”

  “Ian, for heaven’s sake! It’s a piece of Lonnie Mae Brown’s clothing. A pair of stockings they didn’t bother to remove before they raped her. And it’s loaded with the Five’s DNA.”

  With an irritable wave of his arm, he stands. “That settles it, then. I’m going back out to that island.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  “Why bother?” I say. “Ian, it’s late. Let’s just call the San Juan sheriff. I’m sure once you explain about it to him, he’ll be glad to retrieve it and hold on to it for you till morning. After all, it’s not going anywhere.”

  He hesitates. “True. But we’ve waited too long for this already. The sooner that evidence is in safe hands, the better off we are.”

  I decide to end the game. “Who do you mean by we, Ian? You and the Seattle Five? Oh, wait, I forgot, with Gabe that makes it the Seattle Six, and then with you…What is it really, Ian, the Seattle Seven? Or are there even more of you in on this?”

  He stares at me. “What are you talking about? I told you, I’m working to put the Five away. I’m one of the good guys—not the bad.”

  I laugh slightly. “You know, old friend, I would love to believe that. But guess what? Luke’s cell phone has a feature that shows the last ten numbers dialed from it, and that day the rescue team came to Esme he checked those numbers on a hunch. Your home number was one of the last ten dialed, Ian. Luke told me yesterday that he didn’t call you. And the only other person who knew about Luke’s cell phone, other than me, was Gabe.”

  “But that’s crazy! For God’s sake, if Luke said that he’s lying. He’s covering for himself, Sarah. Use your head. I never got any calls from Gabe Rossi. I didn’t even know the man.”

  “Sorry, Ian. Nice try, but it’s not going to fly. Luke checked with his cell company, and the time the call was made to you is the same time Gabe admitted using the phone to ‘check in,’ as he put it. The same time Jane was murdered, in fact. And Luke was with me then.”

  “Sarah, a call may have been made to
my number, but I certainly didn’t talk to anybody. I don’t know why Gabe Rossi would have called me.”

  I stand and face him, folding my arms. “Give it up, Ian. It’s only a matter of time before they have all the proof they need. See, we’re already pretty sure we know what happened on Esme Island. It was you who killed Gabe, wasn’t it? He really was your partner—but in crime, not as a cop. You got on the island early somehow, in the middle of the night, and shot him.”

  When he starts to protest, I cut in. “It had to be you, Ian. You were the only one even remotely involved in all this who had a gun—a gun that wasn’t even questioned the next morning, because you were a cop. You killed Gabe, and then you met up with the rescue team and acted like it was the first time you’d been on Esme. The only thing I can’t figure out is why you shot him. Why did Gabe have to die?”

  Ian begins to speak, then pauses. He takes a few steps toward the big living room bay window, which is cracked and being repaired. Parts of it are temporarily covered by brown paper. Ian puts his hands in his pockets, and rocks back and forth on his heels.

  “Who else knows about this little theory of yours?” he says softly.

  “Just me and Luke,” I answer. “Look, don’t make this any harder than it is. Don’t make me turn you in.”

  He turns toward me and smiles weakly. “This isn’t about me, Sarah. There are other considerations. I wasn’t there when they raped that woman, but I’ve worked with those guys for years. There are…things that might come out if I don’t help get them off.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  His eyes close briefly. “So, Sarah. Where’s the evidence?”

  “I told you where it was.”

  He seems almost sad for a moment, then takes a deep breath and walks over to the curtains. He takes a knife from the inside pocket of his jacket, opens it, and begins to cut off a section of draw-cord.

  “What are you doing?” I say.

  “I need to go get that evidence—but I can’t trust that you told me the truth about where it is. Sorry, Sarah. I’ve got to make sure you don’t talk to anyone, while I go look.”