Face Time (19 page)

“If I didn’t love you so much, I’d throw you right out of here,” the shelter director says, pointing me to the needlepoint cushion padding the visitor’s seat. “You’re asking me for information about a client? Mind you, I’m not confirming anyone is a client. But you know the rules, Charlie. Confidentiality is our middle name—no, it’s our first name.”

She takes a covered rubber band from her top drawer and tames her tangle of curly salt-and-pepper hair into an unruly twist. There’s a smile in her dark eyes as she looks at me again. “You never give up, I know. And that’s why we love you. But you ain’t getting one word from me.”

“Can I just ask,” I begin, “if you’ve ever—”

Ro holds up a weary hand. “Nope,” she says. She points to one ear. “I can’t hear you. In fact, I can’t hear questions at all.”

“But I—”

“I seem to remember you’re a coffee girl,” she says. “Don’t want you to drive all the way back to Boston caffeine-free. Come grab a cup in the kitchen and we’ll talk about old times. But that’s all. Your stories made a lot of difference to the women here, and I’m grateful.”

I follow Ro back down the hall, past closed doors and an array of children’s drawings and finger paintings on sheets of newsprint tacked to the walls. Multicolored rainbows. Big yellow suns. Crayon green trees with circles for leaves. Stick-figure children with outsize feet. No houses. No faces. I count my blessings for a moment, marveling at the cosmic roll of the dice that landed me and my mom in safety and security.

A slender figure, back to us, is chopping carrots on a wooden cutting board. She turns, skittish, as we step through the doorway. Knife in hand, her face flares into fear. “It’s okay,” Ro reassures her. We’re not introduced and she turns back to her chores.

Ro pours coffee into two mismatched mugs, hands me one and points me back out the door with hers. “Dinnertime soon,” she says quietly, “and I don’t want to scare any of our clients, you being here.” She smiles. “No offense.”

As we stroll back toward the front of the house, chatting about nothing, Ro points out the new couch, chairs and throw rugs she’s purchased with a state grant she managed to wrangle. A chaotically colorful room is filled with toys and easels and towers of blocks, train tracks laid out in a sprawling figure eight.

“We’re getting there,” Ro says. She knocks on the wooden door frame for luck. “And no trouble to speak of.”

We arrive at the triple-locked front entrance, and both deposit our empty mugs on a doily-covered side table. She clicks open one dead bolt with a snap, then another. Then turns back to me.

“Look, Charlie,” Ro says, “you know I can’t tell you about any clients. But it’s not a breach to tell you we do have a volunteer counselor at Framingham. Getting her degree in psychology, focusing on domestic violence. Her name is Laura Maldonado.”

“Is she—” I begin. Maybe she’s Dorinda’s counselor.

“Who she talks to, what they talk about? That’s one hundred percent off-limits,” Ro answers. She pats me on the shoulder, opens the door and waves me out. “Dinnertime soon. Our staff and clients need privacy. But as always, it’s nice to see you.”

“S
O MUCH FOR THAT
brilliant idea,” I mutter out loud as I head down the flagstone path. “Good coffee, zero information.” It’s still early evening, the sun’s still up, neighborhood kids flash by on bikes, a menagerie of dogs happily chasing after them. I dig for my keys as a navy-blue car with an unfortunate dent in its passenger-side door attempts to parallel park in front of my Jeep.

She’s never going to make it. I trot around behind my car, afraid to get in her way, and wait while she makes another attempt. I hear the grind of her gearshift as she backs into place, see her rear tire bounce against the curb. No wonder there’s a dent in her door. Girl cannot drive.

Smiling, I position my key to open the Jeep’s door and glance up as the driver climbs out into the street. My key never makes it into the lock.

I can’t be sure, but the journalism gods may have answered my prayers. I just wish they would have told me what to say.

“Excuse me?” I figure that’s as good an opener as any.

The girl turns toward me with a polite smile, questioning. She’s twenty-something. Wearing a plain white shirt and a dark cotton skirt tied with a colorful scarf. Bare legs, little navy flats. A bulky brown leather bag, almost bigger than she is, hangs over one shoulder, with a rolled-up newspaper sticking out its un-zippered top. Could be a college student? Coming home from her summer job as a salesclerk? I don’t know. But I do know her brown eyes. I know her cheekbones. I recognize the oval shape of her face and the wave of her almost-russet hair. I have her picture in my cell phone.

“Yes?” she replies. Then she frowns. “Oh, I didn’t hit your car, did I?” She walks closer, eyes fixed on my front bumper.

This is Gaylen. My mind is racing. Of course. This is where she lives. The shelter. This is where she’s hiding. The possibilities in my brain shift, rearrange, and then click nicely into reality. This is how Gaylen gets to see her mother but disappear from the rest of the world.

“Laura?” I ask. I’m low-key. Casual. Unthreatening. She’d never know my heart is beating so fast I can barely breathe. If she bolts, I’m screwed. “Laura Maldonado?”

She stops short, her face registering confusion, then suspicion, as she takes a cautious step backward. Her car keys are still in one hand, a tube of pepper spray and a silver whistle dangling from a metal key ring. I see her glance at them, shift them, as if she’s worried she’ll have to physically defend herself or call for help.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” she asks, her forehead furrowing. She’s still taking tiny steps backward, away from me and toward her car.

I’m taking tiny steps forward. Toward her. And toward some answers. “You’re Laura, right?” I confirm. She nods, only just, but says nothing. “I’m Charlie McNally, Channel 3 News.” I’m almost close enough to reach out and touch her. “And this morning I had a long talk with your mother.”

Laura—Gaylen—whirls around, scrambling for the proper key, one hand reaching for the car door handle. With a step, I plant myself between her and the car, leaning against the still-warm metal, preventing her from opening the door. I’m the tiniest bit anxious about the pepper spray thing, but I’m betting she won’t use it.

I smile at her, attempting to telegraph how much a threat I’m not. “I know who you are,” I say softly. “And I’m so sorry.”

Laura/Gaylen is breathing in little puffs, her chest rising and falling, her eyes darting. She looks like a frightened child—she
is
a child—caught in a lie, trying to calculate if she can get away with it. Then with one quick motion, leading with a thin shoulder, she darts for the car door. But I’m taller and stronger. And I’m not going to budge.

“Gaylen?” I continue, keeping my voice low and steady, “I understand you don’t want people to know who you are. I respect that. And I can keep a secret.” I pause. “If I need to.”

I scout up and down the quiet street, cars in driveways, the last of the kids inside. The dinnertime lull in a summer night. “Look,” I say. “Walk with me. Once around the block. Just hear me out.”

“You can’t—” she begins. Her eyes narrow warily and suddenly she looks much older. Sadder. Suspicious as a mistreated animal. Then her nose goes in the air, and she looks at me from under her lashes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. “And if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll call the cops.”

“Want to use my phone?” I ask pleasantly. “I’ll wait with you while they come.” I elaborately adjust the sleeves of the thin sweater tied over my shoulders and tuck a strand of hair behind one ear. I call her bluff. “But of course, when the officers ask your name, if you don’t tell them the truth I will.”

Her shoulders sag. The sneer disappears from her face.

“Once around the block,” I coax, taking advantage of the chink in her armor. I take her elbow gently, and guide her away from the car. “I think your mother may be innocent, Gaylen. Do you?” I feel her stumble and take her arm more protectively as we walk.

“I don’t know,” she whispers. She looks at me with a flash of dread. “If she didn’t kill Ray…

Ray.
Not Dad.

…who did?” Her head goes down, eyes on her feet, as we continue along the cracking sidewalk, patches of random grass and yellow-headed dandelions poking their way into existence. “And why did she confess?”

“Well, that’s what I’m wondering, too,” I say. “Wondering if you had any ideas about that.”

We walk in silence for a moment, a cawing flock of starlings settling into the scrawny municipal trees lining the sidewalk. I can’t figure this girl out. If she’s guilty, she would be defensive, somehow. And she’s not. It’s as if she’s really asking me,
why?
What’s more, this is not the self-centered kill-your-father-and-leave-your-mother-to-rot-in-prison psycho brat I’d imagined. There’s something about her expression, her weary demeanor, the way she stretches her tension-strained neck. She looks so much like her mother that—

“Gaylen,” I say. “It was you in the bar that night. Wasn’t it?”

The
story of the whole night spills out. Gaylen describes it almost faster than I can even envision it happening. Yes, she admitted,
she
had been in the bar, not her mother. Arguing with her bully of a father, bitterly, loudly, because she wanted to move out, into an apartment of her own. And as always, he’d refused, laughing, and told her he’d never allow her to leave. Her father pounded down tequila. She’d had two margaritas. She’d been dizzy, they’d hit her hard. They’d walked home, still arguing. He was aggressively, intimidatingly drunk. She’d stalked off to her bedroom and collapsed, still dressed, on top of her bed.

The next morning, her mother shook her awake and told her Ray was dead.

It had taken her more than once around the block to tell her story, as the evening waned into the breezes of a New England summer night.

Now curled against the back of the worn and anemically once-red booth in the Bizzy Bee coffee shop, Gaylen has her head down, her eyes covered with sunglasses. I’ve yanked my hair back with a clip and put on my reading glasses, hoping my do-it-yourself disguise will fool any Channel 3 viewers. It doesn’t matter. Weary-looking customers in work shirts, nurses’ uniforms, oil-stained jeans silently stir coffee and pick at tired sandwiches, stolidly ignoring the intense conversation of the two unfamiliar women in the corner booth. So far, actually, I’m mostly listening. Bursting with questions and dying to take out a notebook, but I know it’s better to wait. She seems ready to talk. Let her give me all she wants. And then, maybe, I can even get more. Could I be sitting with a murderer?

We both have iced teas, our second refills. The condensation drips down the nubby sides of the tall plastic glasses. Gaylen jabs at a wedge of lemon with her straw.

“Gaylen? Should we talk about what happened that morning?” I put my chin in my hands, leaning toward her, trying to convey my willingness to listen. “You’ve been hiding for a long time now. You’ve given up your life. And your mother—if she’s innocent—has had her life unfairly taken away. I can’t believe that’s how you’d want to spend your life. Or your mother to spend hers. Is it?”

Gaylen’s still staring at her tea. Now, with one hand she twists the glass, around and around, smearing a puddle of water on the speckle-topped plastic table. All I hear is the buzz of background café conversation and the slosh of the ice in her glass. Finally, she looks up from under her lashes.

“What do they say in TV?” she says. “Off the record?”

I’m definitely not having that conversation. “Listen, Gaylen, like I told you,” I say, ignoring her question. “The Constitutional Justice Project, Will Easterly, Oliver Rankin—they think your mother is innocent. My producer and I are researching the story. This train has left the station.”

No answer from Gaylen.

“So let me ask you this,” I begin. “And we’re on the record. Back then, did you mother tell you she killed—” I pause, just briefly, my mind registering my uncertainty that Ray Sweeney was actually Gaylen’s father, another complicated subject “—she killed your father?”

“She confessed,” Gaylen says. She takes a deep breath, a gesture so consuming I see her shoulders rise, then fall, then sag. She looks me in the eye, challenging. And says no more.

“Gaylen? That’s not what I asked you.” I meet her eyes. “Listen. I’m going to lay this out for you. I don’t think your mother is guilty of murder. I think she’s protecting someone. And I think it might be you.”

This is a risky tactic. She might leap out of this booth and try to head for the hills. I reach across the table and put one hand, gently, on her arm. “If your mother is protecting you—it means she loves you very much. But it means she’s going to spend most of her life locked away. Behind bars. Because of you. Is that what you want?”

Gaylen leans against the back of the booth, her eyes assessing, her expression uncertain.

My hand is still on her arm, but I slowly take it away. “You want to visit your mother in prison, just see her once a week, not even be able to touch her? Or hug her?”

Gaylen’s face begins to crumble. I can almost see her will disintegrating. She’s what—twenty-four years old? Twenty-five? She’s gone through hell. And she’s probably still there.

“Have you ever talked to anyone about this?” I persist. “I bet you haven’t. You could have just run away. But you didn’t. I know it’s because you don’t want to lose your mother, Gaylen. That means you truly love her. Do you think this is the best way to show it?”

“I…I…I don’t know,” Gaylen says. “Mother…I…she—confessed.” The word
confessed
comes out twisted, as if she doesn’t like the taste or sound of it. “She says she remembers what happened that night. I
don’t.
And she refuses to discuss it. She told me to disappear, Charlie, but I couldn’t do that.” She sighs, a bone-rattling full-body sigh, and briefly puts her face in her hands. “I changed my name and I left Swampscott. But I couldn’t leave her. And if she didn’t kill my father, why would she say she did?”

“Well,” I begin, taking a tentative step onto shaky ground, “because—”

“I know why she would,” Gaylen interrupts. “Because she thinks I killed him.”

And there we have it. I’m still, silent, waiting.

“And what if I did? And I don’t remember? Am I supposed to go to the police and say, ‘Excuse me, Officer, I might be guilty of murder but I don’t know’?” She puts her hands back to her cheeks and speaks through her fingers. “You’re right. I’ve lost my mother. And I’ve lost myself. And I want us back.”

The streetlights click on, illuminating the storefronts of the quiet street outside our window as the two of us sit across from each other, measuring our options, Gaylen’s looking more and more fragile. And I don’t blame her. I push forward another step. “You’re studying domestic violence, right? If Ray Sweeney hurt you, even threatened you, and it was all an accident, you know that—”

The whir of my cell phone, set on vibrate, buzzes insistently and audibly inside the purse tucked beside me. Damn. Who could be—?
Mother.
What if something’s wrong? I hold up a finger, shake my head in frustration. “I’m so sorry, Gaylen. It might be my…” I pause. “I need to take this.”

I flip open my phone. Franklin’s voice crackles through the receiver. “I’m at Swampscott PD,” he says. “Chief’s office.” His voice is terse, and I can feel the tension even through the annoying hiss of our static-filled connection. “Found Clay Gettings.” Something something. “Detroit.” Something something. “You at the bar?”

I can barely make out his words as the connection weakens. He’s still talking, but it’s becoming more impossible to comprehend. At least this is good news. We knew Claiborne Gettings, the other cop who investigated the Ray Sweeney murder, had moved to Detroit. If Franklin’s found him, he could confirm the lineup photos we saw were not what cops showed the witnesses back then. At least, he could if he’s not in on the cover-up.

I see Gaylen shift in her seat. She’s eyeing the back of the restaurant. If she’s looking for the bathroom, I guess that’s fine. If she’s looking for a back door, that could be disaster. I hold up a hand, stopping her, as I try to get a word through the buzz.

“Franklin?” I say. “Can’t really hear you. You found Claiborne Gettings? That’s great.” I glance at Gaylen, who seems to have settled back into the booth and is digging for something in her tote bag. “Where? Will he talk to us?”

“Dead.” That, I can hear. “Drowned. Behind the Lynn docks.”

A flare of static is not all that makes me wince. This is no coincidence.

“Apparently he came to town last week for some family thing,” Franklin continues. “They found him this morning.”

“An accident?” I ask, although I fear I know the answer.

“No,” Franklin says. “Signs of a struggle, police say. Seems like someone wanted him out of the picture.”

I hear a voice in the background, apparently talking to Franklin. Finally Franklin comes back to the phone. “Gotta go,” he says. “Seems like they might have a suspect. Later.” And he’s gone.

I stare at the dead phone in my hand, trying to process Franklin’s news. Then Gaylen passes a business card across the table. Its edges are splitting and frayed. It’s creased and worn. I can see it once was white. And I see whose name is on it.

“Did you say Clay Gettings? The cop who investigated the murder?” she asks. “I’ve been carrying around his card, all these years. He said if I ever remembered anything, to call him. I just couldn’t let go of it, somehow.” She tucks it back into her wallet, a physical reminder of another time. “Did you say
accident?
”

“Ah, Gaylen, I don’t know, really. That was my producer, Franklin Parrish, who’s at the Swampscott Police Department. Apparently there’s been an incident.” Things are moving too fast, and I feel as if the china plates on sticks I’m attempting to juggle are about to come crashing down. I was just connecting with her, I could sense her opening up and I don’t want to lose her. “Go back, Gaylen, to what we were talking about. That’s the most important thing. Are you willing to face your past? And your future? Can you help us find out what really happened?”

Gaylen bites her lower lip. I can see tears welling in her frightened eyes. She’s forlorn and forgotten, a non-person trying to carry an impossible secret. Trying to make an impossible decision.

“Do you think I killed my father?” she asks. “Or do you think my mother did?”

And now she’s asked an impossible question.

“Do you?” I reply. I do know the answers, I decide. But I want to hear what she says.

“It’s the reason I didn’t leave,” she says. “I’ve been hoping, praying, that by staying near Mom, seeing her, being with her, I could convince her to tell me what happened to our family. And I try to help other women in trouble—it’s the only way I can keep myself from feeling horribly guilty. I know she never loved my father, and he did have his problems. They barely spoke. And we…we fought, you know? But like any father and daughter. I think he loved me. I do.”

Gaylen’s petite face turns wistful, and the furrows in her forehead soften. “Mom and I had a secret symbol, when I was growing up.” She holds up two fingers in a V.

I think back to the photo of her I still have stored in my phone. I thought she was giving the peace sign. But apparently it was more than that.

“It meant ‘to us’—the two of us, you know?” she continues. “In it together? Now we’re still that way. In it together. But our lives didn’t turn out the way we’d planned.”

Lights in the restaurant snap off, the farthest in the back, then another, then another. I squint through the approaching darkness. One white-aproned waitress, leaning wearily against the counter, points meaningfully to her watch. I smile when she holds up two fingers, but of course she means they close in two minutes. When I turn back to Gaylen, she’s touching her eyes with a blue-flowered paper napkin.

“Maybe you can help us.” Her voice has dropped to a whisper. “You’re right. And I know it. She’s sacrificing her life for me. I can’t let that happen. I’d rather know the truth than let her suffer one more day.”

“A
BSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY
not guilty,” I say to Franklin. The phone is tucked between my shoulder and my cheek as I attempt to sweep up the pellets of cat food Botox has scattered across the kitchen floor. She’s figured out how to shred open the pre-packaged pouches of Tender Vittles, so if I dare to arrive home too late for her tastes, she simply serves herself. She has to maintain her “if you don’t come home I could die” act, so after she opens the pouch, she only eats one or two of the puffy brown morsels and disdains the rest. I’m ravenous, too, having survived today on about six cups of coffee and a gallon of iced tea. Happily, the digital timer on the nuke is ticking down toward “reheated” for my usual low-fat soon-to-be-unfrozen lasagna.

“Gaylen could have taken off, you know? Disappeared?” I continue. “Instead she hides out in a shelter and sneaks in to see her mother. And now she says she wants to find the truth, too.”

I nudge Botox out of my path with the edge of my flip-flop and adjust the phone. I’m still in my work uniform of pearls, slacks and sweater set, but I’m finally out of my heels. And the tick of the microwave is making me feel as if I’m right out of Pavlov’s lab.

“I told her we’d protect her identity, as long as we can at least, so she won’t run. I think she won’t. She’s clearly devoted to her mother. You’ll be shocked, how much they look alike, so no surprise the witnesses got it wrong. Especially if they were only shown one photo. But Franko, here’s—”

“Charlotte,” Franklin interrupts. “Think about that night. The two witnesses—impossible to find. The bartender—missing. Claiborne Gettings—dead. Right now, the only person available who knows what photographs, or photograph, they used that night is Tek Mattheissen. And he’s going to say they all chose Dorinda from a legal, appropriate array. And he’s going to remind everyone she confessed. Gaylen could confess from now until kingdom come that she’s guilty. No one is going to care. Oz and Tek Mattheissen want Dorinda Sweeney in prison. They
need
her in prison to pave their way to power.”

My microwave beeps, and I almost cry with happiness. “Got to call you back,” I say. “Lasagna time.” My phone makes the call-waiting click.
Food,
my brain wails.
Now.
“Other line, Franko,” I say, “I—”

“Charlotte,” Franklin persists. “One more thing.”

“Let me see who’s calling. I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for a response, I click to the other line. “McNally, News—I mean, hello?”

“Charlie, it’s me,” Josh says. “We’re home. I’m sorry to call you this late, but—”

“Hey, sweets, never too late for you. Hang on,” I say. “Got to get rid of Franklin.” Without waiting for a response, I click back. “What?” I say. “I’m so sorry, it’s—”

“Charlotte, just be careful,” Franklin says. “If Gaylen didn’t kill her father, and Dorinda didn’t kill him…”