Reputation

by Sara Shepard

  “I was at this after-hours club,” Patrick finally mutters. “I stopped at home first, and then I went there.”

  “What kind of after-hours club?” I demand.

  His shoulders heave. “It’s just this . . . place. I’m part of this online community that gets together every once in a while. I knew they were getting together that night, and I made an excuse to my wife, and . . .”

  He lowers his head. A sour feeling rushes through me. I once did an investigative report on certain after-hours clubs; a woman who frequented one was murdered. By the shame on Patrick’s face, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t going to one to play poker and drink. He was going to have orgies, maybe some sex play. Bondage, extreme violence, rape fantasies, and worse. The interviews nauseated me, plunging me back into memories I didn’t want to consider. I’d almost had to give up the story.

  But this is someone Kit was sleeping with? I glance at her, registering the shock on her face. It’s clear she didn’t know, either. She takes a small step back, and her lips pucker into disgust. I can see it all over her face: Who are you? But she doesn’t say it out loud.

  “I didn’t touch Strasser,” Patrick goes on. “If you need a witness to corroborate that, I have someone you can call.”

  His eyes lower. I exchange a glance with Paul. I presume he means the woman he was with that night. I check Kit’s expression about all of this once more. She looks shattered.

  “I just didn’t want to admit where I really was,” Patrick grumbles. “I have a wife. Kids. A business reputation.” He glances uneasily at Paul. “Can you stop pointing that gun at me?”

  Paul goes to lower the rifle, but I catch his arm, telling him to wait. “You were still hurting my sister,” I growl. “Care to explain why?”

  I watch as Patrick’s eyes widen and he holds his arms in front of his chest like a shield. But then Kit sighs. “Forget it, Willa,” Kit mumbles. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  Patrick makes a small, beleaguered noise, but Kit doesn’t look at him. I nod for Paul to stand down. Patrick hurries into the SUV I’d mistaken for Ollie’s; within seconds, he’s out of the lot. Darkness swarms over us. Paul and I had parked our vehicles down the road, and without any lights, I can barely see a few inches in front of my face.

  But I can still sense Kit’s presence beside me. She’s oddly still, like she’s thinking—or trying not to cry. I try to process what I’ve just witnessed—and how Kit must be taking it. I have so many questions. How long has Patrick meant something to her? A while? Before Greg? And who steals into the woods at two in the morning?

  But I can’t ask any of that, because Kit’s shaking so badly. I touch her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “No,” Kit says. Her voice is thick, maybe on the verge of collapse. Had she loved this guy? I feel hurt that she felt she couldn’t tell me about him. I feel heartbroken, too, that he’s turned out to be such a dick.

  I reach over and hug her hard. Kit’s body is stiff, but I can feel her heart beating quickly through her thin chest. “Thank you for coming,” she whispers. “I don’t know how you figured it out, but . . . thank you. That guy . . . he was a big mistake, I guess.” She starts to walk into the woods. “He threw my phone in here. Can you help me look for it?”

  I hesitate a moment—does her phone really matter right now? But it also seems easier just to look for it, so I switch on my phone’s flashlight and shine it over the forest floor. “You know, we followed you because we thought you’d gotten into someone else’s car. The man I’m pretty sure did kill Greg,” I say softly.

  Kit’s eyes widen. “W-Who?”

  Somewhere in the distance, a large truck rumbles down the road; because of the stillness, it seems so much louder than usual. “Ollie Apatrea.”

  Kit is bent over, peering into the fallen leaves, but when I say this, she rises and stands very still. It takes Kit a minute to wrap her head around it. “The cop?”

  I nod. My heart is beating fast. There’s so much that I haven’t told her yet. So much I wasn’t even sure of, though when I floated my theory to Paul just now—going through the dates of Laura’s tryst with Greg, outlining the exact conception date of her baby, telling him about Ollie’s hostility on the phone when I tried to call his wife—he said my hunch seemed right. But once again, this will be another blow for Kit. Maybe the worst blow. It means her husband has a child out there. It means another secret she has to absorb.

  But I take a breath, and I tell her anyway. After I’m finished, Kit slumps to the cold ground and is hugging her knees. “Jesus. Are you sure?”

  “We aren’t, unfortunately.” I glance at Paul, who has followed us into the woods. “And it’s sticky because Ollie’s a respected officer—if we go to the detectives, they might be less likely to look into him, I’m not sure. So we’ll need some kind of proof.”

  “What kind of proof?” Kit asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But I’ll figure it out.”

  Kit nods, but then adds, “Just make sure it doesn’t impact the baby.” She makes a strange noise at the back of her throat. “I’ve met that baby. Those blue eyes. I mean, I never thought . . . but it was right in front of me. All along.”

  We nod quietly. Then, Paul breathes in. “There.” He shines his phone’s flashlight on something wedged in the leaves. It’s the edge of Kit’s glittery iPhone case. She pounces on it and presses it to her chest. I feel grateful we were able to solve something.

  After that, we slowly walk Kit back to the VW. Paul heads back to his own car, but before he can get there, I grab his sleeve. “Hey. Thanks.”

  He turns and looks at me. “Of course,” he says.

  There’s a lump in my throat the size of a baseball. There’s so much more that I want to say, but I don’t know how to say it. I realize the preciousness of finding a man who will wake up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night to drive to an abandoned park with you to save your sister—and that’s after you’ve rejected him. I realize how good a person he could be for me—for so many reasons, including helping me through the things I’m keeping from him. But that’s just the thing—I’ve never considered anyone helping me.

  I reach out and give his hand a squeeze. It’s all I can do right now. Tomorrow I’ll call him, and we’ll talk more, but now I have to get my sister home. Paul seems to understand this, and he waves at both of us and disappears into his car. I don’t really remember the drive home except that it was very quiet. Kit sat slumped in the passenger seat, arms clenched tightly across her breasts. I keep picturing the strange, angry man in the woods, trying to configure him with someone Kit could love. It just goes to show there are so many sides to a person. It’s always so hard to know whom to trust.

  We pull alongside the curb and Kit leans into me one more time, letting out a whimper that seems to be her way of saying thanks. “Come on,” I say, climbing out of the car. “Let’s get to bed.” We walk across the lawn arm in arm, shivering in the middle-of-the-night chill. The police car sitting at the back of the driveway has its lights off, which is why I don’t notice it at first. That’s what I’ll tell myself later, anyway. It’s only when I hear a slam and footsteps ringing out that I whirl around.

  “Freeze!” voices bark. “Hands up!”

  Kit and I stop in our tracks. They’re right next to us now, grabbing my arm, twisting Kit around, and—inexplicably—snapping handcuffs on her wrists. “What’s going on?” Kit bleats, trying to wrench away. “I’m Kit Manning! I live here!”

  “We know you’re Kit Manning,” one of the officers says, pinning Kit’s arms behind her back. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  Kit’s eyes bounce all over the place. “Why?”

  “Ms. Manning, you’re under arrest for the murder of Greg Strasser. We found the murder weapon in your garage.”

  41

  WILLA

  SATURDAY, MAY
6, 2017

  This is impossible,” I repeat again and again as I pace around the police station waiting area the following morning. “Freaking impossible.”

  Then I look helplessly at a man named Colton Browne. He’s Kit’s lawyer, a fact I only vaguely recall my father sharing with me when I first came into town. It’s my first time meeting the guy. He’s dressed in a suit and bow tie as though this is his normal attire for a Saturday. He also looks a little bewildered, like he isn’t ready to defend someone who’s on trial for murder. It doesn’t give me much confidence.

  “Can’t you see what’s taking them so long?” I hiss at him. The guy’s sitting comfortably in a chair in the waiting area like he’s hoping to take a little nap.

  Browne glances toward the closed door that leads to the booking area, a bunch of interrogation rooms, and the jail. My poor sister spent the night in a jail. And that was after they took her mug shots, fingerprinted her, and filed her into the system. Now we’re just waiting around until the magistrate gets off his lazy ass this morning and decides to hear her case.

  But there is no case. It’s such bullshit. Clearly, clearly the kitchen knife, with the dried blood on its blade and with Kit’s fingerprints on the handle—because of course Kit’s fingerprints are on the handle, she used it to cook with—had been planted. Obviously, Ollie took the knife with him the night he’d murdered Greg. Maybe he held on to it for a while because he felt conflicted—he wanted Greg dead, but perhaps he didn’t necessarily want an innocent person charged. But I have a weird feeling my phone call changed his mind. How he figured out I was onto him, I’m not sure. But once he knew I’d put two and two together, he dropped the knife into the garage, called in an anonymous tip, and we were off and running.

  The lawyer’s phone beeps, and he studies the screen. “That’s your dad. He’s on his way. He’ll attend the bail hearing, and then we’ll get her out. It’ll all be over soon.”

  But not soon enough. I shift closer to the lawyer. “Look, someone else killed Greg. I might have proof.”

  His eyes widen. “Who?”

  I give a sidelong glance to the young cop at the front desk clacking on his computer keyboard. I’m not so idiotic that I’m going to accuse a fellow officer in a police station. “Greg impregnated another man’s wife,” I whisper. “And I think the husband found out about it . . . and snapped. We could run a paternity test to make sure.”

  Colton looks skeptical. “Are you sure?”

  Of course I’m not sure—if I was, I wouldn’t be sitting on my ass, helpless. But I’ve done enough reporting on murders and jealous spouses and terrible crimes that these sorts of things begin to take on a pattern. If we had proof the baby was Greg’s, it would be a great start. But why would Laura offer her baby up as a piece of evidence? I don’t know if she knows Ollie knows. Nor do I have any idea how she would take the news that her husband killed a man. For all I know, she will want to protect him. Even warn him that I’m onto him.

  Browne eyes me with pity. “I hate to say this; you might need to start really considering the fact that Kit might have done it.”

  Bile rises in my throat. “Are you kidding me?” I rise and slam out of the building. Note to self. Find Kit a new fucking lawyer.

  I walk across the parking lot, unlock the car, and climb in. Kit’s handbag, an expensive leather bucket that gapes open at the top, is still in here from last night. Inside it, I see her leather wallet, a pouch full of makeup, a pack of Trident gum. Her phone’s tucked into a little pocket in the side; the screen keeps lighting up with texts. I haven’t checked the news this morning, but I bet there are reports that she’s been taken into custody. Are these texts from nosy people seeing if it’s true?

  I glance at the phone, feeling curious . . . about more than just the texts. What if there’s a message buried in there that indicates culpability? Maybe I have it all wrong—and she and Patrick planned something together? But no. I don’t trust that Patrick guy, but I do trust Kit. I really do. Yes, she was hiding the Patrick thing from me . . . which is disappointing. But she doesn’t have it in her to kill. And she’d certainly never devise a scheme to run away, leave her daughters.

  Tires crunch. In the rearview, I notice my dad’s BMW pulling into the lot. My father’s, Sienna’s, and Aurora’s faces flash behind the windows, their expressions grave. My heart aches for all of them. I know I should wait with them for Kit’s hearing, except it feels so inactive. I want to do something beyond sit on a bench and wait for a judge to decide Kit’s fate. I need to prove something.

  I scan the parking lot. Lines of police cars flank the perimeter, but what I figure are the officers’ civilian vehicles sit farther to the back near a small grassy island and a picnic table. In a sea of vehicles, I instantly locate the white Subaru that Ollie and Laura Apatrea climbed out of the morning of the funeral. He’s here, then. In this very building. Working on the weekend. A shiver runs from my neck all the way to my tailbone.

  I get out of the car, but instead of heading toward the main entrance with my family, I walk to the Subaru and peer inside. The inside has been freshly vacuumed; not a single receipt or gum wrapper remains in the cupholders. The baby seat in the back looks like it’s just come out of the box. If Ollie tracked evidence into his vehicle the night he killed Greg, he cleaned it up. Luminol spray would show stray droplets of blood, but it wasn’t like I had access to that right now. Maybe I could get access, somehow? Maybe Colton Browne would have an idea?

  I stride back to the station. When my phone rings, I pick it up without checking the caller ID. “Willa.” It’s Paul. “I just heard about Kit. Where are you?”

  Guilt stabs through me. So Kit is news, then. I feel bad that I haven’t told Paul myself. “At the station,” I admit.

  “Do you want company?”

  “Wait, no,” I say. My mind scrambles. It’s better if I work alone with this one. Paul was helpful with tailing Kit last night, but this Ollie stuff . . . I don’t want to drag him into something dangerous. “I’m about to go into a magistrate meeting. Can I call you later?”

  “Oh.” Paul sounds a little disappointed. “Yeah. Sure.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling awkward and shitty, because all Paul has done for the past week is help me, and I don’t want him to think I’m pushing him away. “I do want you here,” I add. “There are too many people here as it is. I’ll just call you and let you know how it goes, and then we’ll think about next steps.” I’m careful to use we—to let him know that he’s still included.

  But I’ve lied. I didn’t want him to stay away because of the crowd. I didn’t want his company because I have no intention of going into the magistrate’s office. And, as luck would have it, when I push into the lobby, it’s empty. I guess the magistrate was ready for my family early. This rules out asking Browne about luminol, but maybe I can explore another avenue now that I’m free to investigate without my family asking questions.

  I approach the front desk and clear my throat. The officer working there has the face of a high school kid playing dress-up in a cop uniform. “Is there a larger restroom than the public one in the lobby?” I ask, trying to sound sheepish. “Maybe something with a room that gives someone a little privacy?” I mean, there’s no way I can just ask to see Officer Apatrea. He’d see that coming from a mile away.

  The kid looks at me quizzically, and so I add, sotto voce, “I’m waiting to hear the results of my sister’s bail hearing, but I’m a nursing mother, and I really need to pump.” I don’t know what made me think of leaky boobs being the very thing that would embarrass a kid this age the most, but by the mortified look on his face, I think I’ve hit the jackpot.

  He tugs uncomfortably at his collar. “Well, it’s against station policy to let civilians behind the gated door without special permission.”

  “Please?” And then, yes, I touch my breasts. I’m fully against this sort of mani
pulation, normally, but I figure it’s an emergency.

  The kid is turning red. He thumbs the door. “There’s a handicapped stall in the women’s room for the staff. We’ll have to check on you every ten minutes or so, but is that good enough?”

  “Perfect,” I shoot him a grateful look. Something else buoys my spirits, too: Behind him, on a printed chart, are the cube and office numbers for everyone who works in the building. Oliver Apatrea is there in plain, bold ink. Office 205.

  Now I know where to go.

  42

  WILLA

  SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2017

  I climb to the second floor. No one else in this precinct works on Saturdays, it seems, as every door I pass is tightly locked. Some of the hallway lights aren’t even on. But the door to room 205 stands open. I inch against the wall outside it, trying not to breathe. Is Ollie in there? Is this crazy?

  After a few seconds, I muster the courage to peek into the room. Ollie’s chair is empty. Light from a single banker’s lamp shines on his desk. My pulse rocks even in my eyeballs.

  Slowly, I tiptoe inside. Pictures of Ollie’s son fill the bookshelves. One newborn shot, wrinkled and baby bird–mouthed on a pale blue blanket. Another shows Ollie proudly holding the baby against his chest, his big hand splayed along the baby’s tiny back. A more recent one on his desk shows the baby sitting up, giving the camera a gummy smile and popping his big, brilliant, blue eyes wide.

  I mean—those eyes. Of course Ollie knows it.

  A click sounds, and I freeze, my fingers spread wide at my sides. Nothing. You’re okay, I tell myself. Nothing’s going to hurt you.

  Drawing deep, even breaths, I head for Ollie’s desk. File folders lie in disarrayed stacks, some of them open, some of them fastened closed. Ollie has two computer monitors, though they both show Excel spreadsheets that mean nothing to me. If only I could click over to his e-mail.