by A. J. Sand
“Sure. Make sure you tell him I’m your reference.” Bryson reached for his cell off the nightstand and recited the number for her, and as she walked out to the dining room where her laptop was, she suddenly had a thought. School websites normally made teacher email address public to facilitate parent communication. With school right around the corner, Matt’s teacher information was probably already up. But a search of Sherman Oaks Magnet Academy’s website had no teacher named Matt Corso, even though there was a webpage introducing all the new teachers. He’d lied about what he did? And now she was wondering what else had he been dishonest about.
Out of curiosity, she typed his name into Google along with “Tufts University” and was taken to a Tufts alumni’s personal website about a mini-class reunion on the East Coast. She breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted him in a group picture; however, as she scrolled down the caption of another photo, a dull ache streaked across her stomach. Matt was kind enough to fly all the way from Los Angeles to attend. The pictures were from last year. He’d told her he’d only recently moved to Los Angeles. Another lie. Erica jumped out of her chair like the laptop had exploded and paced the floor. Had he just been lying to spend more time with her? But why? She pressed through every conversation they’d had as she turned in a circle, her legs weakening beneath her with each step. Pinkberry. Venice. The Grove. Luz. What had she missed? Luz. Luz. Hadn’t he called her ‘E’ that night? Might’ve been a great guess given her name, but there was something else.
Erica sat down hard in one of the chairs. Fitz. Fucking Fitz. He’d thought he’d known Matt…and Matt…he’d called Fitz her brother-in-law at Luz. There was no way he should’ve known that. Of all the guys she’d been hanging out with, how could he have known her relationship to any of them other than Abel? Erica’s pulse rate skyrocketed as her mind sifted through all the possibilities, purposely avoiding the only one that made sense: Matt was a private investigator. With dread, she walked back to her laptop and typed in “private investigations in Los Angeles” in Google. After some hesitation, she followed up with ‘Matt Corso.’ It didn’t turn up any results, so she tried just ‘Corso’ with ‘private investigations,’ and her heart sank when she saw the very first result: Corso and Sons Investigative Services. And right on the front page of the website was a man in an Orioles baseball cap.
Erica was willing to buy into a coincidence because there were tons of people with that last name, so for the next few days she staked out the place, and even saw the Orioles baseball cap guy come and go. Finally, one evening after nearly an entire week, which sometimes involved doing her homework in the car, Matt pulled into a parking space, in a jovial mood and chatting on a phone call. If he had only looked to the left, he would’ve seen her and probably had the opportunity to escape. Not that she wouldn’t have chased him down like those high-speed chases she’d grown up seeing live on T.V.
He fumbled to maintain his hold on all the belongings he was pulling from his passenger seat still chatting happily on his call. Erica’s sense of anticipation shot up as she waited for him to turn around. She wasn’t sad or hurt, just angry. In a moment of introspection, she realized that it was almost tragic how hardened she’d become to betrayal. But she refused to let it become something she would expect from the people she knew. Her real friends hadn’t let her down. And there were still good people left; she had to believe that.
Matt spun away from the car then froze mid-step when their gazes latched, and Erica relied on sheer will to control her smile and the satisfaction she felt. The things he carried careened down to the pavement, including the cell that had been propped between his head and shoulder. His face paled quickly, like the color was being sucked right out of his skin. His expression was the first thing to break from his motionless stance; a contrite look settled over his features.
“Shit. Oh shit. Crap. Oh crap. Erica—”
“You can explain?” she interjected. “Or… it’s not what I think?”
“Erica—”
“Don’t you mean ‘E’? ‘Cause you called me E that night at Luz. I missed it then, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, right? You shouldn’t have known that. You also knew Fitz was my brother-in-law…another thing you shouldn’t have known. Gabi told me you returned the necklace, and I’m guessing you did that because there is no sister. Who was she? A cousin? And now I find you here. It’s true, isn’t it? You were helping to investigate me. Deny it. Please. Prove me wrong.”
“You’ll hate this part.” Matt sucked in a deep breath and took several steps toward her, but cast his eyes at the ground. “I can’t.”
While she was prepared for that response, the reality of hearing it brought on her rage like the fever of the flu. “You bastard. I told you stuff… and you…” Erica whittled the few feet of space between them. “So was all of it a lie, the other stuff? Did you make up that story about being mugged? Was that to get my sympathy?” Erica made a face of disgust.
Matt’s head flicked up and he looked like he had just been slapped as he shook it. “No… I was mugged,” he said, adamant. “…But I made up the part about going back there and looking for the guy with a knife in my hand. It’s what I wish I had done. I was too afraid the guy would find me and come after me. I wanted you to think I was braver than I was, especially because you weren’t afraid to remember what happened to you.”
She wanted to tell him not wanting to face the person who attacked him had nothing to do with a lack of bravery, but Erica had no room for compassion at the moment. Scoffing, she said, “Like I’m supposed to believe anything you say now, anyhow.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“But I’m willing to bet the rest of it was all bullshit. There’s no sister. I know there’s no teaching job. Obviously, you’ve lived here in L.A. for a while.”
“Okay, Erica, you’re right about all of it. I played you. You were just a name on a file back then. A woman supposedly making false accusations about a sexual assault. I was supposed to find out what you were saying and what kind of person you were and if you had a history of doing this. So, I hung out with Fitz for weeks before I approached you, that’s why I had to avoid him at Luz because I was afraid he would recognize me, but being around you made me drop my guard. I got sloppy.
“Anyway, I got him to tell me about you when he was drunk. He was wasted at the mansion party because of me. You know he has no brain-to-mouth filter, and he’s probably an alcoholic, so with the right setup, he’ll talk about anything. He told me you and Naomi were really close and that you really liked to help people, so the day I approached you, I knew exactly what to say and how to act. He gave me everything I needed.”
“To manipulate me.”
“I wanted to tell you everything so many times, Erica, but even in the little time we spent together, the harder it got. I liked you as a person almost from the get-go. That’s why I stopped talking to you. I wanted you to remember Matt the good guy.”
“Oh, Let me guess? This is the cliché part of the story where you ended up falling for me?”
The truth was plain and brutal in his half-smile. He had. “No. You were always a job.” Though he couldn’t even make eye contact with her. “But I...I was serious about you not being what I expected. I was told things about you that were flat out untrue.”
“By who? Chase Bunyan? I’m assuming you know what his brother did to me. He hired you to find out if I was just some whore with an agenda, is that it?”
His jaw muscles pulsed as his eyes stretched. “It’s not uncommon to hire investigators in a sexual assault allegation, but my uncle has a confidentiality policy, and we can’t disclose the identity of clients. What I will tell you is that a client came in and said he worked for someone famous, and that someone else had slipped him information that a woman he knew was planning to commit extortion. Look, we don’t just take a case just because someone comes to us and asks. Sometimes a stalker or abusive ex will use a P.I. to try to get to his victim or someone wa
nts to use the information we get to harass someone else. So we try to verify whatever aspects of the story we can right away. We went and talked to the person who gave the client the information, and they asserted that you were indeed telling people that you were attacked. The client established that you had a personal relationship with the famous person because he showed us pictures of you with the famous person. At that point, it became a typical case, and we went with the client’s version that it was consensual and sought to either prove or disprove it.”
“Consensual? Consensual? Do you know what I haven’t even told my friends yet about that night? The thing I’ve been downplaying as a headache when I tell the story because I don’t want them to worry? I got a concussion that night, Matt. A brain injury. It’s probably why my memory is really so screwed up…on top of being drugged. That sounds consensual to you?”
Matt gulped hard. “I didn’t know that…”
She took several steps toward him, anger tightening every visible muscle. “So, what, were you going to fuck me and then report that back to him? That I was just spreading my legs for whoever looked my way, so clearly what I was saying wasn’t true?”
Matt flinched. “Jesus, Erica. If things had gone that route, I would’ve left the case—”
“And we were going to live happily ever after with me being clueless to all the lies?” Erica lifted her hands in an act of frustration. “What was that whole little show at Luz? Asking me if I could ever love someone else? Wanting to be my escape?”
“I…I don’t know, Erica. I don’t…know…” Matt sighed deeply after getting frustrated and flustered. “Things didn’t go that way, so it really doesn’t matter, does it? It was a lapse in my objective judgment.” He finally bent down to retrieve the things he’d dropped.
“Was it just you following me? Was your uncle? Were any of those Camrys I saw his?”
“It was mostly just me. Those cars were a coincidence, and I’m not really an investigator. I’m more of an assistant than anything. He and one of his other investigators talked to your friends, and took some pictures of you out and about, but he knew he’d never get close enough to pull information out of you. He knew eventually you’d pick up on his presence. He’s an old guy. I’m young, so I could be at places you were without you getting suspicious. I could become your friend and get better pictures of you. Who’s going to raise any eyebrow at a twenty-something with a cellphone camera?”
“What did you take pictures of?”
“You partying at Luz—”
“Just the partying slut looking for another guy to seduce and lie on, right?” she shouted. “What else?”
“Erica—”
“What. Else?”
“You and Bryson Ellis in his car in front of your apartment….the night after Luz. I didn’t know it was him back then. I deleted them.” He snapped his mouth shut and his jaws clenched. Erica pulled out her cell and showed him the text message presumably Chase had sent to her friends featuring the picture of her and Abel.
“Did you take this at Luz?”
“No! That isn’t mine. I swear. I didn’t take it…” He sighed. “Erica, the look on your face that day at Santa Monica beach when you were thinking about what happened to you haunted me for a long time. No one can fake what I saw, and you didn’t even know I was watching. I saw how much you missed Bryson. For what it’s worth, I started to believe the client was wrong about you very early on.”
“Oh, well, YAY me!” she said sarcastically. “You’re really lucky. I’m not going to tell my guy friends about this because they would hurt you… and because I do remember ‘Matt the good guy,’ and I really want to believe that was a genuine part of you. I got what I came for. Goodbye, Matt.” Erica strolled past him, and while heading for her car, she realized she hadn’t actually gotten what she had come for. She had gotten something far worse. Her fears were now confirmed. Chase got his information from someone who knew about her accusation against Jeremy. Someone she had confided in. Matt’s betrayal was an annoyance; this was a knife in the back and a torn beating heart from her chest.
“Erica…wait…please. ‘Matt the good guy’ was actually planning to do something for you.” He jogged up next to her, much like he had the day they had become friends…based on his fraud.
Was it worth hearing him out? she wondered as she kept walking. She was almost at the car when she spun around, giving in to her curiosity. If he were lying, what would it matter? What more could he possibly do to her?
“The client came in the day before that record label party Fitz told me you were going to. He said he didn’t believe I hadn’t found anything. He said there was no way you weren’t just making it up. He said he was going to up the ante and expose you for what you were. He was getting unstable. So we dropped the case. And told him we wouldn’t work with him anymore. The day of the party, I went to your apartment to slip everything I had under your apartment door, but your neighbor got suspicious, so I left. I want to give you all of it now. I want to be ‘good guy’ Matt.” He handed her three manila envelopes and a memory card.
“Fine. Five minutes more. And then I never want to see or hear from you again.”
“Okay, fair enough.” Hurt passed over his face, and it nicked something inside of her, but she pretended not to feel it. You couldn’t just turn feelings off and she would only be lying to herself if she couldn’t admit that she had cherished their short friendship. “So, I saw Fitz one last time, the day of your sister’s engagement party. And like usual, he talked way too much—”
“Broken record,” she said curtly.
“He told me he was sure you hated him. He told me about the fight at his brother’s house and then everything you told him, the details about the rape. I didn’t have those before. He felt so guilty about the things he said about you before he knew the truth, if I have a right to ask you to do anything for me, and I don’t really think I do, I’m asking you to forgive him; He had no idea I was playing him. I lied about my name and everything. He doesn’t know Matt Corso. He’s so excited about having you in his family. He knows he messed up, so don’t hate him forever, because what he told me gave me enough to get something I think will change the situation in your favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Like a lot of P.I.’s, my uncle used to work in law enforcement, and he was based in the D.C. and Baltimore areas both as a cop and P.I. He helped out a lot of politicians and ambassadors and their friends with…legal problems, so he’s owed tons of favors. He has a lot of contacts and I begged him to follow up on some of the things Fitz told me. A source told him that a woman in North Carolina called the American Embassy in Thailand with information of a sexual assault on a U.S. citizen last year, and she thought she heard it and she might have seen the suspect fleeing. Plans were arranged through her local police station for her to go in and give a formal, legal statement, which would then be transferred through the embassy to the investigators on the case in Phuket. But she never showed up. She backed out and no one could reach her.”
“Yeah, I know about the reluctant witness.”
“I got you a phone number.” He extended a folded piece of paper to her. “No name, though. They only have the contact because someone called her back after she made the initial report to the embassy. She refused to give a name.”
Erica’s stomach immediately vised itself, and her knees buckled under the surreal nature of the moment. “Y-y-you have a number?” She looked at Matt like he was baring fangs.
“Nope. You do.” He stretched his arm out further. “I went through a lot of trouble to get it. If you ever say you got it from me or my uncle, we’ll deny it. I mean that. I want the air clear between us since we won’t know each other starting tomorrow.”
“Actually, I never knew you, Matt…” Okay, that was too mean and she sort of felt like she was in a glass house throwing stones, considering she had been deceptive to the people she cared about. “…But the person I’m seeing now is maybe
someone I would have liked to know. And I’ll work things out with Fitz.” Erica accepted the note, and a multitude of feelings—coupled with a dangerously fast heart rate—washed over her when she unfolded it to see the 919 number within.
“Thank you. And if you ever talk to him about me, please tell him how sorry I am.” Matt looked down at the ground for a few seconds. “So…you and Bryson, you really work things out with him?”
“Yeah. We did. We’re much stronger now, actually.”
“Good. I’m really happy about that. Just make sure he keeps being deserving of you…” She felt the exact opposite—that she needed to keep being deserving of Bryson—but she nodded as gratitude for the compliment. “You’re an amazing woman, Erica. You may not believe this, but talking to you helped me with what happened to me. That was always real. You made me feel okay about it.”
“Thanks for this. It counts for a lot, Matt,” she said, and his expression softened when she held out her hand, which he took. “All of this makes sense with why your character Miles is the way he is. You made him the ultimate good guy. I get it now. Your book’s good, and you’re a really good writer. You should go with that. Goodbye, Matt.”
“Erica, wait.” Matt clutched her wrist before she could pick up her steps. “I’m really sorry you had to be the one this happened to.”
Erica glared at nothing over his shoulder. “Nope… your client…he’s the one who’s going to be sorry.”
Help – Chapter 14
There was no time to think. If she did, she’d figure out all the reasons why contacting this girl was a waste of time, so Erica, still in the parking lot where she had just spoken to Matt, pressed out a text. She assumed it was a cell number, and if she didn’t hear back in forty-eight hours, she’d call.