Baby Please Don't Go: A Novel (10 page)

12

Natalie called Lock two nights later. Witt had been home, and he knew that she didn’t always have the chance to do more than send a quick text.

“Hey, it’s my favorite yogi,” he answered.

“Hi, Lock,” she said.

She sounded stuffed up. “Did you catch that cold?” Lock asked. “Half my office has it, but I swear you didn’t get it from me.”

“He hit me, Lock,” she said.

“What? When?” He felt his rage build. He gripped the arm of his chair and took a deep breath. “What happened?”

“He came home at lunch today all pissed off. His lawyer heard I’d retained a lawyer. I took money out of the joint account for the retainer, and he started yelling and then he hit me. Slapped me across the face. Hard. You can see the mark.”

“What the hell, Natalie, are you okay? Did you call the police?”

“No,” she said, and she started crying. She sniffed and said, “His lawyer’s protecting him. Witt said the record will show that he was in a meeting with the lawyer at lunch. Who’s going to believe me?”

“You still have to report it,” Lock said.

“Why?” she wailed. “It’s just going to be a he said, she said thing, and I’m going to look like a liar because he’s got an alibi.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Yes! He said he’d say he thought I was having another affair and my boyfriend hit me. He’s got proof of when that happened before, so what am I supposed to do?”

“Does he know about us?” Lock felt bad for asking it, because for a moment he was more worried about his job than about her.

“No,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. How am I going to go to the police? And what am I going to do now? How can I live in this house with him?”

“You can’t,” Lock said. “You have to move out.” He didn’t like it, but he thought she was right. The police weren’t going to do anything besides interview Witt, and if he had an alibi from an officer of the court, it probably wouldn’t go any further than that.

“How? I don’t have any money—Witt drained the joint account, and I can’t stay with you. And what about the girls? I can’t just take them—his lawyer would be all over me. What am I going to do?”

“I don’t know, I have to think. Is there any way you can get away tonight or tomorrow?”

“He’s leaving tonight on business for the weekend. I have no evidence, but I’m sure he’s got a girlfriend stashed somewhere.”

Lock despised him for it, though he saw the irony, too.

“Candice will be at your house tonight, right? Come over after the girls are asleep and we’ll figure something out.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay.”

Just as he was hanging up, he heard her say, “I love you, Lock Gilkenney.”

He almost called her back to tell her he loved her too.

Later that night, they drank tea in front of the fire after making love.

“So?” Lock asked.

“So what?” she said.

Lock took a deep breath.

“So how’s he going to get identified?”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know a girl. She’ll swear to anything as long as she gets money for her crystal meth habit. She’ll say they did drugs together. She’ll say he made her do drugs and have sex while her two young children were present. He won’t want that story to circulate.”

“A false report.”

“It’s already all worked out,” she said. “You don’t need to know any more than that. I know it’ll work. I know it.”

“You know it. Want to know what I know? You’re staging a crime, Natalie. That’s a felony. And, you’re bearing false witness. There’s a reason that’s one of the Ten Commandments. Plus, you need the girl, an addict. That’s your weak link. I have a boss who’s pretty smart. The first thing he’ll do when he reads the report is scratch his head. Then when he learns about a divorce in the offing, he’ll burst out laughing. And when he stops laughing, he’s going to get mad. And when it gets to that point, he’s going to call the D.A., and the D.A. will squeeze your lowlife friend until she pops—and her guts are going to splatter all over you.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she said. “She has a good incentive to keep quiet. She’s got plenty of street smarts. And believe me, I don’t want to go to jail. Already did that once. When I was twenty, I spent six weeks inside for shoplifting. I had the money, sort of, to buy what I needed, but I guess the thrill of getting away with it was what I wanted.”

“You’re going to pay this girl out of your take,” Lock said.

“It’s not a take.”

“Sure it is.”

“It’s equitable distribution,” she said. “I’ve put up with Witt Mannheim and his abuse for six years. Raised the kids while he made tens of millions. That’s not worth anything?”

He sighed. “I know how repugnant he is, I really do. It’s taking all my strength not to go find him right now,” he said. “And it will never work. You’ve been in jail. You don’t want to go back, do you?”

“I’m already in a prison. Our farmhouse is just a comfortable cell.”

“Maybe. But now, you get plenty of time off for bad behavior.”

She smiled. It faded fast. “I can’t stand him anymore. I’m nauseated when he’s near me.”

Lock massaged her shoulders. “I know. Let’s drop this for now.”

Warmed by the fire in the stove, Lock and Natalie fell asleep in each other’s arms. An hour later, Natalie awoke, looked at her diamond-studded wristwatch, and cursed.

“I have to get out of here,” she said, rocking Lock off her arm.

He rolled over to free her and sat up. Natalie stood and dressed quickly. She took a blanket from the sofa and placed it over Lock, handing him a pillow from the recliner. “No need to get up, Lock. You stay here by the fire. I’ll let myself out.” She left.

Lock went to the window and watched Natalie start her car, and a few seconds later, he watched her get out to brush snow off her windshield. He knocked on a pane to get her attention. She looked up and blew him a kiss before getting into the car and pulling out of the driveway.

What could he do? Witt Mannheim was a piece of shit, and she made a good case that he was no good for the kids, but that alone wouldn’t make a strong court case. There was no smoking gun sure to convince a judge that Witt was any kind of real danger to the kids. That DUI incident wouldn’t influence the court enough, and if Witt’s lawyer was a scumbag, there was no value in reporting the domestic abuse. So Natalie was screwed unless Lock helped her. Who else would protect her, or her kids?

On the other hand, was it Lock’s moral responsibility to do anything beyond what the CPS policies and procedures called for? If he took his desire for Natalie out of the equation, he wondered, would he be thinking about protecting her children from their father’s dangerous behavior?

Was he thinking clearly? Not really. Would the relaxing effects of just one drink calm his emotions down so he could think more clearly? Maybe. But then what? Ten drinks wouldn’t be enough—and one was too many. Maybe going to a meeting would give him some clarity. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He knew this was lust and infatuation, not true love, but he didn’t care.

Witt was in love with his money, not Natalie, not his children. But that wasn’t Lock’s concern. Lock thought he loved Natalie, but maybe it was just lust, or the kind of love that lasted only weeks or months. Maybe, someday, their relationship might be more than that. Witt driving the kids while drunk was of real concern to Lock, and him hitting Natalie made him want to choke the guy. Someone was eventually going to get hurt, or worse, and that was a problem Lock couldn’t ignore. The question was what to do about it. CPS and the courts weren’t going to solve this, so that left Lock to fix it. He’d be giving up much of who he had become since working at CPS—an honest, by-the-rules guy, someone who believed in the system. But even while debating with himself, he knew that what he might gain—Natalie, love, a family—outweighed all that.

Natalie and Lock lay intertwined on the floor in his living room. Logs burned in the woodstove.

“Natalie, I want to tell you something,” Lock said.

She propped herself up on an elbow and faced him with a sour expression, as if she expected a lecture.

“Your plan is strictly amateur night. One hundred percent third-rate.”

“Amateur or not, I have to do it.”

“I’m telling you not to do it,” he said. “It’s a textbook loser.”

“Desperate times call for desperate deeds,” said Natalie as she picked a piece of lint from the blanket they were laying on.

“Your husband has no history as a deviant,” Lock said. “If he was convicted, it would be a first offense. But he’ll never get convicted. Your witness is unreliable. Your husband’s lawyer will demonstrate that in five seconds. She’ll have to make it through interrogations without flinching, not even once. And she’ll fail. Then you hope to get your husband to walk into court and fold a good hand. For what? Being accused of flashing or doing drugs and a DUI? And what about his lawyer? He won’t sit there sucking his thumb. They’ll figure out it was your idea and that’s all they’ll need. You’ll wind up being prosecuted. Maybe it’ll stick and maybe it won’t, but your divorce will drag out for years.”

He took her hands in his. “Too many things to go wrong,” he said. “Your idea has ‘please put me in prison’ written all over it. In indelible ink. Baby, you have no idea how to make it work...”

Her eyes closed and she looked away. She wrapped the blanket around herself like a cocoon. He took her chin in his hand and turned her face back towards him.

“You have no idea how to make it work,” he said. “But I do.”

She froze for a beat. Then she placed her hands on his cheeks and rained kisses all over his face, neck, and shoulders. He pushed her away.

“Listen,” Lock said, “I’ve seen frames blow up in people’s faces a million times. And I’ve seen them work, too. I know how to play the family court system and I know how we’re going to do it.”

She hugged him.

“Do you know what you’re saying?” she asked. “Have you thought about this?”

“I can’t stand here and watch you bury yourself and expose the kids to God-knows-what. And I worry about myself, too, if I’m honest. If he hits you again, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

She held him tight. “I don’t want you to get involved if—”

“Little late for that.”

“Okay, Lock. Then what’s your idea?”

“Don’t worry about that for now,” he said.

“What about Abner? You said he’ll be suspicious.” Natalie raised her eyebrows and looked at Lock as if to challenge him.

“He would be—if he found out about it. But he won’t. I’m going to close your file as unfounded. CPS will be officially out of your lives. And whatever happens from here on in won’t make it onto his radar, because the agency will no longer be monitoring the situation. We don’t track closed cases.”

Natalie looked at him in the living room mirror. “I love you,” she said.

He sat up and said, “Me too. But you should go home. I have things to think about.” He reached out and touched her breast, and he watched himself doing it in the mirror. “I have to go over this, under it, around it—and after that, we’re going to go through with it. Very carefully. As I said, I don’t like small rooms with steel bars. But I need to help you.”

“It’s illegal?” she asked as she rose.

“Well, it’s a gray area,” he said, knowing it wasn’t. “And we have to do this soon. Right away. This week, if I can get all the details arranged.”

“Tell me.”

“Not now.”

Natalie darted around the apartment, gathering her few items of clothing and pulling them on.

“Why this week?” she asked. “Afraid you’ll lose your nerve?”

“Yes,” he said. “And I’m afraid of Abby. He’s in his seventies, but don’t let his age fool you. He’s brilliant, and worse, his instincts never fail him. We don’t want him to have a shred of an idea that something’s fishy. He’ll be all over it.”

“Why does he intimidate you so much? He’s only your boss.”

“We’re closer than that,” Lock said. “He’s like my father.”

“You started to explain that in one of our marathon phone calls, but then you changed the subject.”

Lock intentionally hadn’t told her much about Abby. He felt uncomfortable bringing Abby—whom he saw as his spiritual mentor—into a relationship that might turn out to be ill-fated. But it was too late for Lock to be that circumspect.