Nowhere Girl (29 page)

“Oh my God,” I texted Gabby out of habit. “Went to Brady's house and saw Colette standing in her garden naked talking to herself. It was sort of creepy. She's really beautiful.”

It took her about fifteen minutes to return the text, and by that time, I was already home, unlocking the door. She wrote: “Let's go to Cookies so you can tell me about her.”

I stood in my kitchen with my phone in my hand, feeling like I might cry and wanting to confront her again about everything she'd written in that notebook. “Sorry,” I wrote, “going to yoga with Greg on Sunday.” I thought of Chandler telling me that day at lunch how my family wasn't direct with anyone. But really, I realized, going into my bedroom and dropping my dirty clothes on the floor, I didn't know how else to be.

 

CHAPTER

33

“Thanks for dropping off the notebook,” Brady said the next day on the phone. I was in my office working on
Devils
when he called.

“No problem,” I told him. I didn't know if I should mention Colette or not, so I didn't.

“How's Bliss?”

“Good. I checked on him twice in the night and went back when I got up today. He seems fine this morning. I've never been so happy to muck a dirty stall.”

“That's great, Cady.” It really sounded like he was relieved, and I was touched that he cared enough to ask. “How about tomorrow to prep for and see Larry?”

“Um, I can't. I promised Greg I'd twist myself into a pretzel.”

“Oh-kay.” Brady drew it out like it was two words.

“Yoga,” I told him.

“You're hard to get lately,” he said.

We sat there on the line. And I had the urge to burst out that I'd seen Colette in his garden half-naked and she was talking to herself. “What about Monday?”

“Monday it is,” he said. “Breakfast first?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And unless a horse is sick, I won't cancel.”

“Deal,” Brady said.

And I felt that flutter again in my belly. I wondered again why it hadn't happened when we'd kissed.

*   *   *

When I went downstairs Sunday morning, there were two folded towels on the counter and two water bottles, already filled. Greg came in from outside, where he'd been pulling weeds since sunrise.

“Is this okay to wear?” I pulled up my yoga pants.

He straightened the straps on my tank top. “Perfect,” he said, and it surprised the hell out of me.

*   *   *

“It's called hatha yoga,” he told me on the drive over. “And it's not about exertion; it's about letting your body really wind down and relax. It's about coming back to your breath, that sort of thing. You don't have to do anything that feels uncomfortable.”

I didn't believe any of this, but I went along with it. With his hair slightly disheveled and his sweats on, he didn't resemble at all the type A guy who worked every waking hour and spent all our money on fancy cheese, wine, and the symphony.

The yoga room was light filled. Windows took up the whole south side, but they were above the view line, so all I could see was sky, and no one—thank God—could peek in. A plump woman slightly bigger than I with black shiny hair cut into a bowl shape was showing people where to put their shoes and giving out mats, and Greg took my hand and walked up to her.

“Tanta, this is Cady, my wife.”

Tanta opened her chubby arms and wrapped me into a warm hug. “I'm so glad you came,” she said. “I've been telling Greg to bring his sweetheart.”

“We're probably going to be in back,” Greg told her. “Since it's her first time.”

“Sure, sure.” The woman gave me a big smile, and her dangling silver earrings caught the light. “Sit anywhere you like, and, honey”—she touched my chin—“have fun!”

“Is that the teacher?” I whispered to Greg when we had our mats on the floor.

He nodded.

“The heavy one,” I said to clarify. “Tanta?”

He eyed me. “She's not that heavy, Cady.”

I watched her. Tanta carried it well. She wore a tight, plum-colored leotard and leggings, but it didn't matter that she had some extra weight; she was voluptuous, running her hands up and down her sides like she loved her body. I had expected the rest of the class to be slight, model-pretty girls in Lululemon garb, but most were middle-aged, some wearing worn shorts and kneesocks. When Tanta told us to close our eyes, I felt a kind of buoyancy to be there in that light, warm, quiet room.

In grade school, Savannah and I had been invited to someone's birthday party at a dance school, but my mother had gotten the time wrong. When we got there, soft music was playing, some German composer, on low. The instructor, who was doing paperwork out back, told us we could move around the studio if we liked. Savannah had stood at the bar, pretending she was a ballerina. I remembered how I'd closed my eyes and drifted across the wide space, twirling as if my body had no restrictions. When I opened my eyes, the instructor, an older man with a beard in tights and jazz shoes, was watching me. “So free,” he'd said to my mother. And then he'd taken off his glasses as if he'd been crying and wiped them on his top.

That was how I felt in the yoga class; one posture led to another, and my body felt fluid in the movement, light. At the end of it, we lay in what Tanta called corpse pose, and she led us through a guided meditation. I felt Greg reach over and touch my fingers. I squeezed them back. And for one brief moment, I saw how our lives might be if we let go of all the preconceived notions we carried around, all the defenses and the fears and the ways we learned to see each other that we'd never let go of, and I wondered if Emma had a point. Maybe we were all living in the past, unable to move forward. We were all damaged. Savannah's death had left us shredded, unable to talk to each other about what it was like to live without her.

 

CHAPTER

34

Brady was dressed like a movie star from the '50s in a tight white T-shirt and jeans. He had a double latte on the table waiting for me when I sat down. “How's it going?” he asked, tousling my hair like I was his kid sister.

“Hey,” I told him. “Thanks for the coffee.”

He took a sip of his own. “Are you ready to interview your favorite psychopath again?” he asked, his lips drawn in a tight line.

“
Favorite
isn't the right word.”

He watched me. “Cady, it's dangerous.”

“But he's chained to the table.”

“You know what I mean.” He squinted into the sun and then back at me. “Greg must hate me for this.”

“He doesn't know.”

I saw the surprise in his eyes.

“I mean, he knew the first time, but it was too hard to convince him I needed to go back again. Except for my agent, no one is really thrilled with me interviewing a serial killer.”

Brady ran his finger around the rim of his cup. “Least of all me,” he said.

“I have a character in my book,” I told him, “who thinks a serial killer murdered his sister, but really it was her best friend.”

Brady watched me. When he spoke again, his voice was husky. “That's fucked up.”

I couldn't get that notebook out of my mind. “But I have to get into my characters' heads. That's how I write.”

Brady gripped his coffee.

“I know you think I'm nuts,” I said.

“If you tell me what questions you want Cauchek to answer, I'll talk to him myself.”

“Thanks.” The sun had shifted, and the slanted rays were hitting my knees in a way that made me feel hot and lazy. “But I need to do it.”

“Then let me go in with you.”

I turned sideways so I could look at him. “Don't take this the wrong way, but I've kind of built a rapport with him. I'm not sure he'd be so open if you were there. Besides, he's vile.”

Brady checked his watch. “I'm familiar with vile,” he said, gathering his jacket and his backpack, which I assumed contained his prison garb. “I'll watch from the other room. Everything gets recorded, you know, as long as you're not a lawyer.”

*   *   *

At the front desk, Brady watched me throw my cell and car keys into a plastic bucket. “Jewelry,” the guard said, and I reached around and undid the necklace that I never, ever took off. I'd kept it on once, and it had dinged, so I knew to leave it behind before I went in.

“I can't get it,” I told the meaty guard.

“Turn around,” Brady said, and I lifted my hair so he could reach the clasp. His hands were warm, and I could feel him fumbling, a little clumsy. Then he drew it over my head. And when I turned around, his face was bright red as if I'd seen him naked. It was so familiar by now, Brady's guilt when we got physically close, that it didn't surprise me. I had to soak my hand in ice water to get my wedding band off, so I'd done that at home.

Prison was about steel doors. There were so many doors that by the time I got to the interior, I felt I was in some kind of high-security bank vault, and if there was a fire, I'd be totally screwed. Brady left me on a plastic chair in a tiny staff room with the requisite vending machines while he went into the locker room to change, and I watched the video camera above my head that switched from the empty yard with its basketball hoops and razor wire to various cell blocks.

When we got downstairs, Larry was already in the room, his back to the glass window, chained up. A guy with a burn mark down the left side of his face was standing outside.

“Butch.” Brady shook his hand, and then said to me, “You ready?” He took me into the room, sighed, and then left.

I sat down across from Larry, whose posture was as straight as that of a proper schoolboy.

“Cadence,” he said, smiling, showing me his teeth. “How kind of you to come again.”

“Cut the shit, Larry. You know why I'm here.” I'd done my homework on sociopaths and knew they felt superior.

The corners of his mouth turned up in a grotesque smile, making the metal table that separated us seem flimsy. “Indeed, I shall … cut the shit. Cutting the shit. Cutting the shit.”

I decided to play Dr. Holley's game from Sound View and be silent until he spoke first, not fidgeting, not breaking his gaze. It was a weak attempt to exert control over someone who was far more calculating than I. Sitting there made me want to scratch my body unnecessarily, pull my hair, pick my nails, anything. As we stared at each other, I remembered something I'd read: profilers often feigned yawning to see if their subject would yawn in return. Sociopaths did not engage in reciprocal yawns, because they lacked empathy. Wanting to know if he really was a sociopath, if there was a bit of empathy left in there somewhere, as casually as I could, I yawned. He continued to stare at me. Pretending to yawn made me have to yawn for real. I yawned again, and my eyes watered. I swiped at them quickly for fear he'd think I was crying.

“Love,” he said, his voice pleasant. “Move on. I'm not going to yawn.”

I felt my cheeks get hot, but I took him speaking first as a win.

“Indeed I shall,” I said, doing my best to imitate him. “Moving on. Moving on.”

“And the spunky girl is back.” He tried to reach his hand toward me, but he was, of course, shackled to the table. He closed his eyes, took a breath in, and spoke. “Not all murders are intentional. They don't all begin with a plan and end with a death.”

I scribbled those exact words in my notebook. The police's original profile of Savannah's killer was that he was disorganized. A transient killer. Patrick and Jon Caritano had gone through the twenty-seven boxes of notes and evidence and had decided that Savannah's killing was not really frantic but fervent. Even passionate.

“They might not begin with a plan to kill, but by definition, all murders have to end with a death,” I said.

He flicked his fingers at me. “Don't bore me trying to be coy.”

“I wasn't. How could a
murder
not end with a death?”

“Let me ask you”—Larry leaned back—“how many people have you duped into doing your investigative dirty work under the guise of research?”

I immediately regretted not preparing notes. I had thought an unscripted, fly-by-my-intuition session might garner more information, but I felt untethered, shaky. “I don't know.” The truth was, I kept a running tally of the people I'd interviewed for my books. But this felt too personal, even more intimate than admitting I tried to lie next to my dead sister in the morgue.

“Of course you know.” The way he stared at me without blinking made me think he either wanted to fuck me or kill me. Or both. And not necessarily in that order.

I realized Larry knew everything about me. “One hundred and forty-four. Most were offenders, followed by law enforcement and then victims.”

“How many victims?”

I spent the least amount of time with victims. In the end, it was very personal for them, and they never really knew why it had happened. “Not very many.”

“How many offenders?”

“Eighty-two
felons
.” I emphasized the word.

“You are very persistent,” he said evenly, watching me, “to put yourself in so much danger.” There was something hypnotizing about his mouth; it was a deep burgundy and full, and it made me sick to think where it had been.

“I'm quite safe,” I said.

“I heard there were a whole team of guards in the room when you interviewed the chap who bludgeoned his teenage daughter's best friend.” How could he possibly have known that? Was there some underground secret society of criminals? Honor among murderers?

“Ah yes,” I said, trying to keep my voice as even as his. “That chap was even more dangerous than you. So while you get chained to the table like a farm animal”—I nodded to his handcuffs—“that offender managed to kill three other inmates before he was executed.”