Safer (22 page)

“Listen,” I say. “I know you’re in a bind.”

She scrunches up her eyes.

“I’m in a bind too. I think we can help each other.”

“You’re a creep. Leave me alone.”

“Rachel—”

“I’m calling my sister.”

“You know I’m not a creep.”

“She’ll bring a security guard.” She’s put down her smoothie and she’s digging in her purse.

“Listen, Rachel, I know all about the pictures. I know you and Brit were just goofing around. It’s okay.”

Her eyes are slits now. “What?”

“I’m telling you, it’s okay. I’m not here to get you in trouble. I just need to talk to you a minute. Please?”

“Get me in what trouble? What’s your
deal?”

“I know about the pictures, kiddo.”

Her cheeks flush pink, and she looks away, over the railing. Below us, on the lower level of the atrium, a bunch of little kids stand in line with their moms and dads in an aisle made of giant candy canes, waiting to get their picture taken with Santa Claus.

Rachel’s face clouds over. “Bet you got off on ‘em, too. Creep.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve never seen them. Any of them.”

“Whatev.”

“Rachel, I know that you took those pictures of Brit. I know she took some of you. Hell, when I was your age I know I did some—”

“What are you
talking
about?” Her whole face seems to crunch toward a central point between her eyes. “That is so gross.”

“You don’t have to prete—”

“Brit totally wants to die. I hope you know that.”

“Rachel.”

“She totally trusted you.”

“Brit knows I had nothing to do with this. So do you.”

“Whatever,”
she says. “You stole ‘em out of that guy’s house. Everybody knows.”

The table seems to tilt slightly.
That guy’s house?
She’s obviously talking about Roger, and something sinks in my stomach. All this time, I’ve been trusting my assumption that he’s somehow manipulated Brit into playing infantry in his lunatic aggression against me. But it’s never occurred to me that he’s actually turned Brit against me.

But of course he has. She wouldn’t tell these lies otherwise. I hadn’t realized that it would be possible to feel worse about all of this.

“Brit really thinks I e-mailed her those pictures?”

Silence.

“But that’s not true.”

“She totally trusted you.” Rachel stands up. “And you’re the same as Mr. B.”

Mr. B?

What are you talking about?

That is so gross.

“Rachel.”

“I’m outta here.”

“What are you telling me?”

“Dude, shut up.”

“No.” I stand up with her. I try not to tower, but I can’t help it. I’m a grown man, and she’s only thirteen. “Please talk to me.”

Maybe she really does want to talk to me. Or maybe it’s that I’m an adult and she’s been brought up to respect us. Or maybe she’s just terrified.

“Please,” I say. “I need your help.”

She casts her gaze over the food court as if looking for help herself.

“Tell me who took those pictures, Rachel. I need to know.”

A few people are starting to look back at us.

I’m in a bind.

“Listen,” I say. “I have an idea.”

She doesn’t want to listen, but she’s listening.

What do I do?

I take a breath and do exactly what I imagine I’d do if I were the kind of person I’m accused of being.

We end up walking all the way back to the computer store on the far side of the mall together. Not unlike a father and his teenage daughter.

I buy her the most expensive iPod they sell, and she tells me even more than I wanted to know.

IT S BEEN A PRODUCTIVE MORNING, Douglas Bennett informs me.

“How did she seem?”

“Melody? Like she’d spent the night in hell.”

I take a right on Van Dorn, which cuts through town on a diagonal. In doing so, I accidentally pull in front of another car in the oncoming lane and receive an angry horn blast for my mistake. I wonder if Bennett has one of those little hands- free earpieces I could borrow. This talking and driving is dangerous as hell.

“But she’s committed,” he tells me. “Obviously, what she has to say won’t help us with the possession and distributing charges, but it’s one hell of a step in the right direction.”

“So what happens now?”

“What happens now,” he says, “is that you point your car toward my office. Meanwhile, I reschedule your PDC on Wed nes day to be combined with Monday’s hearing instead. I’ll tell them that we need the week to get our ducks in a row. Then, Monday morning, I’ll hit them with initial discovery and move for dismissal of the producing charges at the same time. From there, our position improves considerably.”

I’m not entirely following this barrage of new strategy, but it all sounds promising.

Bennett says, “When can you be here?”

“I have another appointment.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m heading there now. I just need to stop at the hotel first and use the printer in the business center.”

After a pause, Bennett says, “Professor, you’re beginning to piss me off.”

“Listen.” Traffic slows to a crawl. There’s some kind of fender bender up ahead. “Have one of your interns do all the research they can on a guy named Timothy Brand. Last name spelled B, R—”

“Who’s Timothy Brand?”

“He
was
a history teacher at Bluffs View Middle School. Also Brit Seward’s seventh- grade volleyball coach.” I pause to pay attention while a patrol cop diverts traffic around the crash—a red pickup truck and a van from the Clark Falls Public Power District, hoods crumpled, glass everywhere. “I don’t know what he is now.”

Bennett says nothing.

“She got mixed up with a teacher at her school,” I tell him. “He’s the one who took the photos.”

“How do you know this?”

“I’ll fill you in after my meeting.”

“I want you to fill me in right—”

“Look, Bennett, I just want to get started finding this guy, okay? I called the school, but they wouldn’t give me any forwarding—”

“Stop. For your own sake, stop what you’re doing. Right now.”

“I just need to—”

“Are you listening? Get your ass to your attorney’s office where you can’t do any more damage. I swear to God, I’ll have Debbie track you down by scent. What meeting?”

I’m afraid he might accidentally hurt himself if I tell him.

“I’ll call you after,” I say.

The Firehouse is a brewpub not far from my hotel, housed in a historic downtown building that used to be a fire station before it was converted into a brewpub.

The interior is warm and dark, with old plank floors, modern finishes, brick walls hung with antiquated gear once used to battle blazes but now used as decoration. It’s two in the afternoon when I get there, and patrons are sparse. A few late lunchers. A few people at the main bar, watching a basketball game on a plasma screen.

I spot Maya Lamb right away, sitting alone in a booth in a small alcove in back. Apparently, this is her regular spot; when I called her two hours ago, she told me that she uses this booth as an office on her days off. The afternoon regulars are used to seeing her, and the staff knows to leave her alone.

The fact that being on television makes Maya Lamb a celebrity in a town the size of Clark Falls is only one of the reasons why I want to do this.

Here in Clark Falls, Roger Mallory is a well- known face people trust. Maybe I can get a well- known face people trust on
my
side. She sees me coming, lays down her
Lolita,
and motions to the guy behind the taps.

“Miss Lamb,” I say.

“Professor Callaway.” She smiles. “Call me Maya, and I’ll call you Paul. What do you say?”

“Maya, I feel like we’re practically old friends by now.”

“In that case, how was your day, buddy?”

“Illuminating.” I take off my coat and gloves. “Yours?”

“Anticipatory.”

As I slide into the booth across from her, she strips the menu card from its clip between the salt and pepper shakers and hands it to me. “Best beer in the Falls.”

According to the card, there’s nothing stingy about the Ebenezer Stout. When our waitress comes over, that’s what I order. Maya orders the Backdraft Bock and studies me while we wait for our beers to arrive.

“So,” she finally says. “How do we start helping each other?”

It’s a good question. Sitting here, I find myself with the same narrative problem I encountered sitting across the square in my jail cell three nights ago: starting.

“I have a story for you.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“It’s a long one.”

“I love long stories.”

I think I’ve learned how to tell this one now. It starts the same place it always started. This time, my job is easier. Maya Lamb already knows the beginning.

So I start at joining the Ponca Heights Neighborhood Patrol. I summarize the progression of my relationship with Roger Mallory, from becoming friendly to falling out. When our beers arrive, we toast the new year and raise our glasses.

After an impressive swig, Maya Lamb wipes her mouth and says, “Proximity is perhaps the strongest predictor of friendship.”

“Oh?” I have no idea what she means by this.

“Of course, proximity also provides opportunities for assaults, rapes, and murders. Myers.
Exploring Psychology.”

“Who?”

“Textbook I had in college. For some reason I always remembered that line.”

“College,” I say. I can’t help smiling. “That was what, last year?”

“Thanks for the compliment. I’m twenty- nine.”

I decide to see her quotation and raise her with Roger’s favorite:
Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s house is ablaze.
Doing so, I’m struck pleasantly by the thematic aptness of our surroundings: a defunct firehouse.

“You should work that into your story,” I tell her. “People like irony.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m still feeling the Lolita angle.”

“I suppose clichés are nice, too.”

“Besides, in your situation, the jury’s still out on irony, don’t you think?”

“How do you mean?”

“You could be found guilty,” Maya Lamb says. “As far as I know, you could actually
be
guilty.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“And I know we’ve got plenty of viewers out there who would say that Roger Mallory’s organization has more than proven its worth.”

“I’m sure you have plenty of viewers out there who would say all kinds of things.”

“Look at the numbers.” She slides her beer to one side and leans forward. “In the seven years since Mallory organized the neighborhood associations and watch groups under the Safer Places banner, crime rates in nearly all the so- called residential categories—”

“Oh,” I say. “Those numbers.”

She ticks off the categories on her fingers anyway, continuing as though she hasn’t been interrupted. “Destruction of property. Car theft. Burglaries. Trespassing, window- peeking, animal control. Hell, even noise violations.” She sweeps her hand as if erasing them all. “Over the past seven years, all categories have trended down.”

“Sounds just like one of Roger’s press releases.”

“Give me some credit. I’ve validated the organization’s literature against official CFPD statistics.” She tilts her head. “Did you know that, as of the department’s latest Comstat report,
domestic dispute calls across every coalition neighborhood zone are at an all- time low?”

I can’t say that I knew that.

“Meanwhile, real estate markets are approaching all- time highs.” Her eyes seem defiant.
Look it up if you don’t believe me.
“Especially new construction. This, bear in mind, at a time when interest rates are high, statewide income per capita is stagnant, and housing markets in comparable cities are flat to declining.”

I take a long pull from my beer, lick the droopy foam mustache from my top lip, and wonder if I’m stupid after all. For the first time, it occurs to me that perhaps there’s more going on here than cub reporter ambition.

Why
is
Maya Lamb the only reporter following me around?

Maybe Roger got to her first? Maybe he had this idea long before I did. Maybe he’s found, in Maya Lamb, his own personal media mouthpiece for Safer Places. Or maybe Safer Places just pays her station a bundle for its public service announcements.

“So you can see,” Maya says, “how comparing Safer Places to a decommissioned fire station would probably seem, to some viewers, more like sarcasm.” She sips her beer and looks at me. “As opposed to irony.”

Douglas Bennett’s words are crackling like static in my head:
Get your ass to your attorney’s office where you can’t do any more damage.
He practically begged me, but I wouldn’t listen.

“What
I’d
like to know,” Maya says, “is the reason you filed a privacy complaint against Roger Mallory three weeks ago.”

“Right.” I drink my beer. “I’ll bet he told you all about that, didn’t he?”

“Nobody told me anything.”

“Then how do you know about it?”

“I know about it because I’ve been checking the police department’s shift records every couple of weeks since mid- July. For any reports involving your address.”

I must look surprised. Maya Lamb bounces her eyebrows at me.

“Why would you do that?”

“I told you. Uncommonly keen story sense.”

“No, wait a minute. Seriously.”

“Come on, Paul.” She’s smirking now. “This morning? You might as well have asked me why I’m the only reporter in Clark Falls who thought that break- in at your house was a little bit tough to swallow.”

“What?”

“Listen, I covered the so- called Moving Day Burglaries last year; hell, I’m the one who named ‘em. I don’t care what the Comstat reports say, the neighborhood patrols shut that operation down, not the police department.”

“I’m not following.”

“Fourteen months later, out of the blue, these burglaries suddenly start up again? For one night only? In the middle of what my aunt Jamie would tell you is the real estate market’s slowest sales month?” She rolls her eyes. “Right across the street from the head of the neighborhood safety coalition? That’s a little cute, don’t you think?”