by P. J. Vernon
He grinned again. “I do. But I need information from you first.”
Here we go, I thought to myself. His opening salvo had knocked me completely off-balance. Now came the part where he started to dig. The look on his face suggested he sensed my hesitation.
“Don’t dismiss me so fast.” He tapped his finger on the paper sitting between us. “I think I’ve proven I don’t mind playing ball.”
I sipped my wine. “What do you want?”
He followed my lead with his scotch. “The crime scene unit. What’ve they found?”
“Blood,” I answered tersely.
He arched his brow. “Paul’s?”
“Yes.”
The tone of his next question surprised me. “Has Paul’s case transitioned to homicide?”
“Not officially, but you can do the math.” We locked eyes. “Why do you care what label the case has stuck to it?” Joking, I added, “He’s no good to Cooper and Waters dead?”
Andrew’s face became stolid. “In so many words, no.”
“I see.” Beltway business was cut-throat and cold. No reason to be surprised, I guessed.
He continued, polishing off his drink in the process. “When Paul’s undamaged return is no longer a possibility, they’ll recall me. Dead men can’t run for congress. Dead men can’t vote in the firm’s interests on Capitol Hill.”
“No concern for his family? Beyond the portrayal of worry in public, of course.” I sighed. “But there’s still a possibility of his return. The blood we found was trace at best.”
Andrew corrected me. “His return? Perhaps, though unlikely. Undamaged? Not a chance.”
I leaned forward on the table. “What do you know? If Jacob’s bad credit alibis him, then the last person seen with Paul the night he disappeared was his wife.” I paused for a moment. “But Paul was stone-cold sober, and Gray was blackout drunk. The picture witnesses paint had her nearly immobile. Being dragged off a dance floor.”
“That’s true.” Andrew ran a manicured finger around the rim of his tumbler. “But Gray wasn’t the only woman with Paul at Ruby’s that night.”
My heart fluttered. “I’ll ask again. What do you know?”
He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “Like I said, I’m not as regulated as law enforcement. We’ve done forensics on Paul’s work computers. Maybe even some devices in their Georgetown place.”
“You broke in?”
“The firm has a copy of the keys in case of emergencies. Courtesy of Mr. Godfrey. All above board.” His tone grew playful. “Unfortunately, no one could recall if the Godfreys kept any pets that might need care during their unexpectedly prolonged absence.”
Access to Paul’s work computer? Devices from the home? The warrants for all these things were working their way through the system, but with the amount of coordination between jurisdictions …
“You’ve seen the debts. That’s what you meant by damaged.” I found myself whispering, too.
Andrew nodded. “Alive or not, Paul Godfrey is no longer a viable candidate as far as the firm is concerned.”
His previous words replayed in my mind. Not the only woman. “What else did you find?”
He lowered his head. “We uncovered a large trove of personal correspondence between Mr. Godfrey and an IP address in Raleigh, North Carolina. He’d gone through proxy servers to cover his trail, but our IT department followed the breadcrumbs.”
My heart beat in my throat, and I spoke slowly to make up for it. “Charlotte.”
“Correct.”
Gray’s sister. Gray’s diligently supportive sister. My mind went straight to Annie. Annie, a name no one in the Godfrey or King families recognized. Someone who had intimate knowledge of Gray’s self-destructive habits.
I decided to keep the details of Annie to myself. Instead, I spoke of Charlotte. “She’s recently divorced. A case of infidelity on the husband’s part with a woman named Florence or Florencia or something.”
“Not quite.” Andrew shook his head as he spoke. “We’ve interviewed the husband. Will Barfield. There was an affair, but not on his end. The knowledge of it was enough to unravel their marriage, but with whom, he couldn’t be sure. I don’t think he suspected Paul.”
If what Andrew had said was true, then Charlotte lied about her husband being the one who cheated. On its own, it was a common thing to do. No reason to take responsibility for sinking your marriage if it’s not germane to the discussion. But in this instance, it was definitely germane.
“Someone who used proxy servers to mask IP addresses would be careful. Does the correspondence confirm an affair? Between Paul and Gray’s sister?”
“Most definitely.” Andrew puffed out his cheeks. “Those emails? Lewd is an understatement.”
27
Annie
I slip the USB—the one with my private collection of photographs—out of a tiny drawstring sack I keep hidden at the bottom of my bag. Black satin and utterly fitting.
I should tell Gray about Paul. Tell her all about Paul. The things about Paul she thinks only she knows.
Like his dick. Limp like cooked spaghetti when he drinks too much. Gray’s not the only Godfrey who likes their liquor, though Paul likes to lie that he’s a teetotaler. Then there are his hobbies. The way he likes to be tied up. Tight enough for him to struggle, to really struggle. He likes it to hurt when I hit him. No playing around.
“Leave a mark,” he’d tell me right before I’d stuff his own silk tie into his mouth. While flames from dozens of candles painted the room in flickering shadows. Once the candles had burned down far enough, once enough hot wax had collected at the wicks, I’d mark him from head to toe.
I should tell Gray. Privileged, entitled Gray. Gray who’s been afforded the entire world only to squander it with booze and a passivity entirely out of place in modern society. Did she even know women could vote now? Hold property? I’m not certain she knows she solely owns their townhome.
As I open the USB’s contents on my laptop, graphic images fill my screen. I scroll through them, unable to stop smiling. My pulse races as I recall the circumstances of each one. Paul was a dolt, but he made me wet. Even now. Especially now.
I continue to scroll. Not once do I appear in a single photo. He, on the other hand, is front and center. Bound every which way, from hogtied to spread-eagle. I stop at one particularly satisfying row of images: the one with the toys.
Men are fools when pussy’s a possibility. A lobbyist running for congress putting himself in front of a camera? In these ways?
I shake my head.
Clicking the browser, I open ShadowMail, an anonymous email account. Ostensibly for folks who don’t want their personal addresses linked to passwords for online services. A “spam-avoidance platform” is how ShadowMail sells itself, but everyone knows its real use.
I begin highlighting files to attach to the email I’d composed, but pause for a moment. Grinning, I click select all.
Then I press send.
28
Gray
It was a sunless early morning. A single night in the hospital, and I’d been discharged. Whatever they’d given me got me to sleep, but all my dreams were nightmares. Home invasions, liars. People cutting me open for organs only to discover them shriveled from booze.
Charlotte placed her hand atop mine in the backseat of Mamma’s Jag. She’d convinced Mamma to ride in front with Cora who drove in polite silence as Mamma smoked a cigarette. She cracked the window, but it hardly helped.
The cigarette’s not what burned me up.
What the hell was Mamma thinking? I sat motionless, but my mind raved. Worms wiggled and crawled under my skin. Matthew’s face at the foot of my bed had summoned them, and they moved relentlessly.
I didn’t even choose to pour everything out to Nina. It happened as naturally as breathing, and as I spoke, relief washed over me like a cleansing river. A baptism of truth. But moments later, the worms had resurfaced.
No
one had mentioned Paul since I’d been picked up.
“I’ve got your phone and computer with the rest of your clothes from the accident,” Charlotte said. “You can get them back at home after we’ve gotten you settled in.” She hesitated. “No missed calls.”
No missed calls. No progress. And now I was back to settling in at Piper Point.
“Do you think you’ll be able to eat something when we get there?” Charlotte asked, rubbing her forehead. Her eyes appeared weary, too.
I tried my best to give her a nod, but I wasn’t sure if she noticed my reply.
I knew she’d been torn up by all this. Fresh off her divorce from Will, raising two boys as a newly single mom, and now this? My shit show? Worried sick over Paul on my behalf, she’d given into my pleas to borrow her car, despite her best judgement, and I’d totaled it. The slight smile her lips always held must have been so hard to maintain. But somehow, she did it.
My head buzzed, see-sawing down and then wildly up again.
Maybe I didn’t hate Matthew most of all. No, I hated myself more. I’m a drunk. A manipulative, conniving drunk. The way I fell over Jacob at the bar made me unfaithful, untrustworthy. The liar Mamma and Paul always knew I was. Wedding vows as meaningless as the promises I made to Charlotte when she handed me her keys. I hated myself, and Charlotte deserved none of this.
The sedatives I’d been administered were draining away like an outgoing tide, and the sharp bite of non-existent alcohol tickled my nose. Mamma kept hand sanitizers in the back-seat pockets. I reached into one and retrieved the clear, plastic bottle. What the hell was I thinking? I couldn’t drink this. Instead, I squeezed a dollop onto my hand and rubbed my palms together, inhaling the scent deeply.
Mamma ground her cigarette out in the front ashtray and turned her head to the backseat. “Soon as we’re home, you need to eat, Gray. The doctors were almost as concerned with your eating as your drinking. I know you’ve been stressed, but—”
“What are you concerned with, Mamma?” I demanded. She sat silent in the face of my outburst, shock creasing her brow.
Charlotte’s hand reached around my wrist as if to hold me back, but I pressed, “You called Matthew. You sent him to my room!” My lips quivered. I imagined what the hand sanitizer would taste like. Soapy, but the burn down my throat would feel good. My whole body began to shake.
“I did no such thing,” Mamma retorted, pale eyes locked onto mine. “I did not send him to your hospital room.”
“You called him, Mamma.”
She shouted back, “You were going to be arrested, Gray. Arrested! You think you’d be able to do a damn thing from behind bars? Get better? Find Paul? Anything?”
Charlotte slid over in her seat so our shoulders met.
“You were stark-raving drunk,” Mamma continued, turning to face the front again. “You could’ve killed somebody. Multiple people. You think a judge would go easy on you because of who you are? I got news for you, Hummingbird, this family isn’t what it used to be. I had one card to play, Gray. One card to save you. And I damn sure played it.”
As Mamma spoke, the blood drained from my head. Spots danced before my eyes as my chest squeezed. Her voice became distant and vague, and Charlotte’s soon joined in.
“Gray? You alright?” My sister asked.
I couldn’t speak. I’d lost control again. The harder I fought for breath, the more I hyperventilated. Was I dying? This is a panic attack, I told myself. This is what panic feels like. This is what it’s always felt like.
Muffled to my ears, Mamma said, “Go faster, Cora. We need to get Gray home. I’ll call our doctor to meet us there.”
* * *
Mamma turned down her own bed for me when we returned to Piper Point.
“Nonsense,” she said when I told her my old bed was fine. “Mine’s more comfortable. Bigger, too.” As she pulled the down-filled duvet up to my shoulders, she wiped her left eye. She squinted and turned away quick, but I saw a tear cut a trail down her cheek. I’d never seen Mamma cry before. Not when Daddy passed away. Not with Paul’s disappearance. Never.
It dawned on me then that not having seen someone cry was unusual. Particularly if that someone happened to be your own mother. Just as bizarre, it’d only been seeing her cry now that caused me to note a lifetime’s worth of absent tears. Absent or perhaps, unseen.
Sniffling, she straightened her back and said, “Press the pager on the phone hook there if you need anything.” She closed the door behind her.
She had the look of a deeply wounded woman. A corner of me felt sorry for her. Had it pained her at all to call Matthew? Was it a desperate attempt to keep me from jail like she’d said?
Then I remembered the first time she’d brought up reaching out to Matthew for help, and any pity that had collected for Mamma vanished. There was no threat of jail-time lurking in that scenario. Just the possibility of injured pride as public news of Paul’s disappearance broke.
What had happened that night on the highway? I racked my brain, struggling to carve out some kind of memory. Something beneath the surface of my subconscious. Nina told me Jacob had confessed to being with us on the shoulder of Paul Revere early that morning, but nothing about that detail seemed right. No, I was sure Jacob hadn’t been there. My top teeth clanged against my bottom ones as my mind turned to the one outcome I’d been running from since Christmas morning: Was Paul dead?
* * *
Voices from downstairs woke me. The clock on Mamma’s wall said it was morning, which meant I’d slept for almost twenty-four hours. But I hardly felt rested. It was more like my body had simply given out. A bowl of stone-cold grits sat on the nightstand. The pain in my shoulder had dulled, but I still winced as I lifted myself up.
Shadows from the tightly-closed shutters obscured the room’s garden mural in darkness, the painting of a placid outdoor space skewing into a haunted one. Weeping trees, twisting and thorny. Sliding off the large bed, my feet stung when they touched the icy pinewood floor.
I took a gulp of water from the faucet in the bathroom, catching the medicine cabinet’s reflection in the sink mirror. No point going through there again. Mamma had removed the good stuff already, and there wasn’t a chance she’d put it back with me still at home. At least I’d been discharged with a handful of Percocet. Even if Mamma or Charlotte rigidly dispensed them, they’d only help stave off the cravings. Cravings. The thought pushed an invisible needle into the back of my neck. I was stuck in a bone-dry desert with only tiny white pills. Would they actually take the edge off? Mornings weren’t so bad. I’d have to wait for the afternoon to find out.
The doorbell rang, and the voices downstairs paused as someone went to answer it. The needle stuck me again, and my whole head ticked.
Who had Mamma called over? In the midst of my panic attack during the ride home, she’d said something about calling the family doctor—Mary-Ann Conner. The aging woman whose name was all over the rattling pill bottles in Mamma’s cabinet. But I heard more than a single visitor. A range of voices spoke in muted chatter.
My thoughts went to those television shows about interventions. Would Mamma do something like that? Certainly, not right after I was released from the hospital. Who would they even call? Frances? Interventions were all about disclosures and feelings. Telling anyone anything about our family didn’t fit with Mamma’s personality. Not if she could help it.
Curiosity gripped me as I crept down the hall towards the staircase. From the landing, I could remain hidden from whoever sat in the salon but still hear most of the discussion. I squatted, avoiding my reflection in the cracked mirror. My body ached like it’d been beaten with a baseball bat.
“Thank you for calling,” an older woman said. “Sorry I couldn’t get over here sooner.”
“I’m at the end of my rope, Mary-Ann,” Mamma replied. So it was Dr. Conner.
A man spoke up, “No coffee for me, Cora.” I recognized his voice from church the night my life unraveled. And from sch
ool many years earlier. A bellicose drawl unchanged over time. Pastor Charles Calcutt.
“Thank you all for coming. Gray’s in serious trouble, and as hard as it is to admit, I’m in need of advice,” Mamma said.
So, this is an intervention. I nearly laughed aloud. Only, it apparently wasn’t to include me. An intervention organized by Mamma sure looked an awful lot like a scheming cabal: plotting what to do with me while I slept, voiceless, in the master bedroom upstairs.
“She needs real help,” another voice announced—Charlotte’s. I breathed a relieved sigh. At least I’d have a semblance of advocacy down there.
“God’s help is the best sort of help there is,” Pastor Calcutt rebutted. “We run a program, you know. Reformed Disciples. All folks who’ve struggled with addiction and turned to Christ to do something about it.”
“I didn’t know that,” Mamma exclaimed.
“Indeed, Mrs. King. The way the Great Recession tore through Elizabeth, nobody’s immune to the relief drugs and drink promise. I can’t tell you who attends regularly. That’s confidential, of course.” I imagined Pastor Calcutt nodding with self-satisfaction as he spoke that last sentence.
“Of course,” Mamma concurred.
“Joanna,” Dr. Conner spoke again, “I agree with Charlotte. No disrespect, Pastor, but Gray needs serious help. Medical help.”
Mamma answered, “If I’m not mistaken, the agreement with the county prosecutor requires her to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in South Carolina. She’ll have to sign in and everything. Maybe a church-based organization would be helpful, too—”
“AA is a wonderful program, but that’s not the sort of medical help I’m talking about.” Dr. Conner sighed. “She needs to see someone who can work with her regularly. Someone who can dive deep, emotionally, and prescribe medication.”
“A psychiatrist,” Charlotte said.
“Yes. Gray needs to see a psychiatrist,” Dr. Conner replied. A brief silence passed through the room before the doctor continued, “None of this comes as a surprise to me, Joanna. The substance abuse. The risk-taking behavior.”