The Truth Hurts (12 page)

13
Marie

I take a shower and wash my hair. With the taste of spearmint toothpaste in my mouth, and with my hair still wet and fragrant from a balsam shampoo I found in the bathroom, I crawl into one of the twin beds in the room assigned to me. But after a few minutes of staring like an insomniac at the ceiling, while listening to the crash of surf on rocks, I get out of bed again and turn on my computer, connecting the modem to a phone plug in the wall. Within seconds I have an E-mail connection.

Surprise.

There it is: another E-mail from him.

Dear Marie,

I don’t have to ask what you’re doing, do I?

You’re in Key Largo with Franklin, Diana, and Arthur.

Reading that, I literally gasp. He
knows.

They’re sweet children, aren’t they, even if the little girl can’t adjust to your presence in their lives. Don’t worry, she’ll probably come around. If she lives long enough to do it. But then, that’s in your control. Her safety, Imean. Of more immediate concern to
you
is whether or not
you’ll
live long enough for it to make any difference.

That doesn’t concern me.

I have read the assignment you sent to me.

Bravo! Good for you for following my instructions by dismissing your assistant. That was fast, appropriate, work. I also like the honest way in which you depict your terror. And hers. I can tell you’re very realistic, far more so than Ms. Dancer is, apparently, but then you have the advantage of more maturity and a more difficult life from which to draw strength to face hard choices directly. You don’t hide from the truth or from what is difficult, do you, Marie? That’s excellent. You will need that courage as we work together.

Not that your writing in this draft is perfect; it’s sloppy in places.

I understand you had to hurry, however, so I’ll make allowances for first-draft mistakes. Don’t worry about your professional reputation. You may be assured that I’ll edit and rewrite everything later—afterward—when I have the luxury of time that you no longer have. But, really, apart from those quibbles, and for the purposes of a first draft, your work is remarkably adequate. You’re a consummate professional, aren’t you? Quite the little pro.

But our relationship is not all-business, Marie.

Not at all. It’s personal, too.

For heaven’s sake, what could possibly be any more intimate than the relationship between a murder victim and the one who kills her? So why do you say nothing directly to me? No greeting? No fond message for your writing partner? No comments, no questions?

We can’t have that! No, that won’t do.

So, don’t be shy. Talk to me, Marie!

In addition, here’s your next official assignment, due by noon tomorrow.

Chapter 2: How was your drive down to the Keys? Did anything unusual happen to you? If so, write about it. Also, write an account of telling your lover about me. Where were you when you told Franklin? What was his reaction when you informed him that his children are at risk from me? Don’t leave them out! I’ll be displeased if you leave them out. Let us get to know them, Marie! Don’t waste
too
many pages on them, butdo tell us enough to give our readers a chill at the thought of any harm befalling little Diana or Arthur. You might mention their soft skin, their wide and innocent eyes, their touching trust in their father. Of course, that’s just a suggestion. You know how to do it better than I. You’re so good at putting halos over victims, so adept at making them seem all-good and the killers seem all-bad. We want
our
potential victims to appear sympathetic to our readers, too, just as you’ve done in your other books. And don’t hesitate to make me seem as villainous as possible! What a terrible person I must be, to even think of hurting a single hair of their adorable heads, yes?

Blah, blah, blah, you know how to do it, you’ve done it often enough.

Finish this second assignment, dear, and submit it to me at the new E-mail address above. You didn’t think I’d keep using the same one, did you? There are a million different places to send E-mail these days, my darling, and even more ways to do it anonymously, so don’t even try to predict where your next E-mail is coming from. It could be Alaska, it might be Bucharest, it could be the E-mail café on Bahia Boulevard, or even your neighborhood library, the little one on S. E. Twenty-first Street.

I would taunt you to “catch me if you can,” but you can’t. I won’t waste our time—your very limited time—with such childishness. It will be so much better for you if you simply relax and do as you’re told. Some things get easier with practice, Marie.

Are we having fun yet?

I am, how about you?

No? Well, perhaps you’ll have fun with the little surprises I have arranged for you this weekend, Marie. You may have already enjoyed one in your car. Don’t worry, they’re nonlethal. For now. You have followed my instructions thus far, so there is no reason for me to harm Deborah or any of the DeWeeses. Or you. But I believe you will find my little surprises convincing, anyway.

I can’t wait to hear what you think of them.

Yours truly,

Paulie Barnes

“Hi, Marie.”

I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of a man’s voice, whispering near my face, and the whisper of a man’s cologne filling the air around me. I whirl around, expecting I don’t know what, but what I find there is Franklin, bending down to read the E-mail over my shoulder.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Jesus! You scared me to death!” I fling my arms around his neck and hang on to him, pressing my head against his. He puts his arms around me, pulls me down off the chair and onto my knees so that we’re kneeling nose to nose, pelvis to pelvis.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers between kisses.

He tastes deliciously, mysteriously like strawberries.

When we pull apart enough to speak, he says, “I can’t believe I fell asleep.
Goodnight, Moon
does that to me every time. Are you all right?”

“Oh, sure. No problem.”

He laughs a little, quietly. “You’re saying that was a dumb question?”

“Prosecutors,” I remind him, “never ask questions to which they don’t already know the answers.”

“That’s only in court.”

I rub my forehead against his, like a cat. “I wanted to scream at you when you wouldn’t leave the dock.”

“I figured. But I didn’t want us to panic.”

“Yeah, well, we could all have been calm and dead.”

He puts one hand on the back of my head and pushes my face toward his and kisses me again, and this time it’s long enough and hard enough to make me forget I was ever annoyed at him for any reason whatsoever. Oh, I do adore the taste of strawberries. When we part this time, I sigh. “Are you trying to suck the tension right out of me?”

“Is it working?”

I see deep concern in his eyes, which are a lovely light brown. He can communicate all sorts of things to juries with those eyes, and he’s certainly expressing some of them to me now.

“I’ll say. I’m a deflated balloon. But we really need to talk, Franklin.”

“I know.” He tugs at a lock of my hair, points silently toward the first floor, and starts to pull me to my feet along with him. “Let’s go downstairs so we don’t wake the kids. I’m sorry about Dia—”

I place my fingers over his mouth. “Shh. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, but I don’t know what else to do about it. I just don’t know what her mother filled her head with before this weekend.”

I feel a little sick at the thought. “What do you think she said about me?”

He shakes his head, either because he doesn’t know, or because he doesn’t want to tell me. “Probably nothing worse than what she says about me.”

What Truly DeWeese says is that their father abandoned them in order to have an affair with me. No part of that sentence is true. He initiated the divorce, but only after three years of failed marital counseling, and even then only with Truly’s consent, and he didn’t even
meet
me until after it was final. But they are both lawyers, and so the money and custody battles were meaner than they might have been between normal people. I try to remember that this can’t possibly be the only story in the world with only one side to it. Truly’s got her side, too, and maybe it’s more understandable than her ex-husband makes it sound when he complains so bitterly to me.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” I tell him.

After he leaves my bedroom, I grab my canvas briefcase.

Thank God. Now he’ll take over.

I leave the computer on, but switch off the room lights, so the entire second floor is dark except for the “night-light” of my screen. Then I make my way down the carpeted steps in the dark, holding on to the briefcase with one hand, feeling my way down the wall with the tips of my fingers with the other, testing my way with my toes before committing my feet to the descent. From the steps, I can see out through the windows that wrap around the living room—out to the water gleaming darkly under that amazing moon. There’s one wide band of light, like a spotlight on the water, waiting for someone to walk on it.

When I step onto the first floor carpet, he is there in the dark, startling me again, making me cry, “Oh!” on a soft, involuntary breath. Franklin takes my briefcase, lays it on a nearby chair. Then he takes my hand, now free, and tugs at me to follow him.

“I think you enjoy scaring me,” I accuse him in a whisper.

He doesn’t defend himself but, instead, leads me silently into an empty bedroom on the first floor.

I see a queen-size bed, made up, empty, waiting.

Without speaking, as if we are one body with one mind, we turn down the quilt, the blanket, the sheet. With eager fingers we undress each other, letting our clothes fall into a pile on the floor. My palms slide around his waist to his back as his hands cup my hips. His skin is smooth and cool to my touch, his lips are warm.

He lays me down on my back on the bed.

“The children?” I whisper as he lowers himself toward me.

“They won’t wake up until morning.”

“Such good children,” I murmur, reaching for him.

Afterward, Franklin pulls me close so that we are pressed together again, skin to skin, heart to heart.

“Don’t you dare go back to sleep,” I warn him.

“Not a chance,” he says, managing to sound relaxed, amused, and determined all at once. “Let’s put on some coffee. And I’m hungry as hell, are you?”

“God, yes.”

“Then we’ll figure out what to do about the son of a bitch.”

“Ah. I do love the sound of the word
we.”

I reach for one of his hands. “Listen. I’m incredibly sorry to bring this down on your family. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

“It’s not your fault, Marie.”

“Thanks. In spite of everything, I have to tell you that I’m really glad that I’m not alone tonight.”

Franklin strokes the side of my face.

“You’re not alone.”

“Not even in the shower?”

“Especially
not in the shower.”

14
Marie

Some time later, I’m propped against the kitchen counter, dressed in the same clothes I shed a little while earlier in the bedroom. Franklin has slipped back into his shorts and a T-shirt. We’re barefoot and slightly damp. I watch as he measures grounds into an automatic drip coffeemaker that the condo management has supplied, and I can almost smell the finished brew. We’ve already started on cheese and crackers. This is a pretty nice place, I realize with a feeling of some surprise as I come awake to my surroundings at last. There’s nothing like a little hot sex followed by a hot shower to relax a girl.

“Do you take the threats seriously, Franklin?”

“Are you kidding?” He gives me an incredulous look. “You and my kids have been threatened—of course, I take it seriously.” Then he feigns a tone of nonchalance. “Somebody wants to kill you, Marie? He wants to hurt my kids? No shit, what’s for dinner?”

The pretense vanishes and I see in his eyes how he really feels.

“I’m taking it seriously, too,” I tell him, “partly because Erin McDermit and Aileen Rasmussen seem to think I should.”

“You talked to them already?” His tone is sharp.

“Well, yeah.” His tone scares me, and I get defensive. “Was that a mistake? Do you think I shouldn’t have done that? I couldn’t get hold of you, and Aileen’s freelance and Erin hasn’t been a cop for years now, so they’re not officially law enforcement anymore, and so I thought it would be okay—”

“Hey, it’s okay.” He pats the air to calm me down. “You had to talk to somebody. I’m just sorry it couldn’t be me. You did the right thing, a smart thing.”

“Really?” I calm down a little. “You think so? I don’t want to make a mistake and risk—”

“Do you have any ideas who this guy could be?”

“Maybe.” I give him all of my theories about demented fans and killers I’ve known. Then I run and fetch my canvas briefcase.

“What have you got?” he asks, coming closer.

I start pulling things out, one by one. “You’ve seen the E-mails and what I wrote in response to them.”

He grabs for the items in plastic. “What’s all this?”

“That’s something he sent me today. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but each of his E-mails has the phrase [email protected]. John D. MacDonald wrote a book that’s had both of those titles—”

“I’ve read it. Scary book, especially for lawyers. All about how some things have to be solved outside the law.”

“Yeah. Let’s hope that’s not the case this time. Remember the movies they made of it, with Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro? Well, this Paulie Barnes sent me that copy of the book today. And then—get this, I haven’t even told you this, Franklin—he left a book-on-tape in my car for me to find today, and just guess which book it is.”

When his jaw drops, I add, “Hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Coincidence?” he says, sarcastically. “Sure.”

Now he looks a lot more worried, and that worries me. “You picked your car up from Ernie’s?” he asks me, and when I nod, he says, “We’ll check with him, to see who had access. Where’s the cassette?”

“In my glove box, wrapped in a Kleenex.”

“Good. What else have you got there?”

“Well, here’s a folder with all of the obscene and threatening mail I have received over the years.”

Franklin sees how thick it is, and gives me a look of amazement. Then he lifts the cover and starts to read the first letter inside. After only a moment or two of perusal, he flips the folder shut again. It must be some mark of distinction that my fan mail has managed to disgust even a hardened prosecutor.

“You look like you just stepped in slime,” I observe.

“This is awful stuff, Marie. With fans like these—”

“With fans like these, I may have enemies. But my gut feeling is that Paulie Barnes is not in that file of perverts.”

Franklin, who is now rooting through the refrigerator, looks up in surprise. “Really? Why not?”

“Wrong style for any of them. If you ever get the dubious pleasure of reading through that whole file, you won’t find many of my pen pals who can even connect two consecutive thoughts, much less construct whole letters that make sense. This guy seems pretty well educated to me, don’t you think so? He uses correct grammar, he moves logically from one paragraph to another, he even builds up a kind of suspense, the way a novelist might, like in the way he’ll sometimes use single-sentence paragraphs.”

Franklin pulls out the cheese, mustard, and pickles. “I thought that was considered a literary cheap thrill.”

“It can be, but you’ll note he used it effectively.” I give a shiver. “Made my skin crawl a few times. Hey, if you’re going to make bologna sandwiches, I want mayo on mine, please.”

He reaches back in for it, while suggesting, “So if it’s not a fan, it could be one of the killers you’ve written about?”

“I guess they could want revenge on me for slandering them.”

“Do you slander them?”

“Honey.” I fake a thick southern accent. “I’d never say anything about a murderer that his own mother wouldn’t say for money.” Franklin laughs at that, having known plenty of murderers and their mothers, himself. As he sets himself to constructing sandwiches, I add, a bit indignantly, “No, I don’t slander them! But they may think I do. It’s the truth they can’t stand to hear about themselves.”

“So . . . six books, how many murderers?”

“Eight, counting codefendants, but three of them are already dead.”

“Review their names for me—the living ones.”

“There was Anderson McDermott, who killed college girls. Nadine and Rowena Perkins, the twins who killed their boyfriends. And your guy—A. Z. Roner, who killed nurses.”

“Roner’s on death row. Where are the rest of them?”

“All still behind bars, as far as I know.”

His voice and glance are sharp as he hands me my sandwich. “You haven’t checked?”

“I haven’t checked? Franklin, most of this only happened since this morning! I had to get Deb to safety first, then write his fucking assignment, then pick up my car and drive down here, then—”

He takes a big bite of his. “You’re right.”

“—and spend the evening with the kids and—”

“I said I’m sorry,” he claims, with his mouth full.

“No, you didn’t.” I set down my food, and take a breath. “Okay. Time-out. I’m sorry, too. It’s been a long day. But I don’t need you acting like I’m some first-year paralegal who hasn’t done her job right.”

Wisely, he says nothing this time but instead pulls two coffee cups down from a cabinet, holding them out for me to point to the one I want. I choose a mug with an alligator on it, leaving him with a pink flamingo.

“Eat your sandwich,” he says, “while I make a phone call.”

I pick it up again, though I’m not very hungry anymore.

By the time I’ve forced down every bite, Franklin is off the phone, having spoken to someone working the night shift in the mysterious bowels of the Florida penal system.

“They’re all still inside,” he says, confirming what I already know from hearing his end of the conversation.

“One of them could be writing me from inside, for kicks,” I theorize out loud, but then I punch my own hole in that. “But they’ve all been in prison for longer than I’ve employed—or even known—Deborah. I don’t think they could know about her, much less know that we were coming down here. How in the hell did he know that?”

“Somebody on the outside could be telling him things.”

“I guess. That seems kind of far-fetched to me.”

Franklin laughs a little. “And the rest of this
isn’t ?”

“No. I don’t think it
is
far-fetched, Franklin. I mean, look at what you and I do for a living. If we’re going to hang out in swamps, don’t we take a chance of stepping on snakes?”

“Well, then, I don’t think the idea of an accomplice is so farfetched, either,” he argues back at me. “The E-mails did say executioners, after all. Plural.”

“Damn. It did, didn’t it? Oh, great, that’s just what I want, a whole gang of them. Although he sure sounds like a lone wolf to me.”

“Those five murderers you wrote about, Marie, the ones who are still in prison? How’d you get along with them at the time?”

“Like gangbusters,” I say, with a wry smile. “They thought I was their best friend at the time. I think it’s very rare for people like them to get to spill their guts to somebody who’s just listening, not judging, and who doesn’t have an agenda like prosecuting them or defending them.”

“Writing a book about them is not an agenda?”

“Yeah, but they get to thinking it’s their agenda, that finally they’re going to get to tell the world everything they’ve always wanted to say.”

“What about the ones who never admit they did the crime?”

“Oh, they’re especially ‘cooperative,’ because they think they can manipulate me into writing the story their way, to get them off. I guess they hope the governor will read it and say, ‘Oh my God, that poor fellow, I’ve got to commute his sentence.’ ”

“They talked easily to you?”

“After a while, they almost all do.”

Franklin fills my cup with coffee. “How’d they feel about you when your books came out?”

I make a face that has nothing to do with the bad coffee. “Just about like you think they’d feel.”

“Betrayed?”

“Oh, yeah. Somehow it never seems to occur to these guys and gals that I am actually going to tell some serious truths about them. Like that they’re narcissistic, sadistic, egomaniacs, etcetera.”

“Any of them fall in love with you?” he asks, bluntly.

I grimace. “I suspect one or two may have. I mean, think about it, Franklin. It’s not because of my great beauty or natural charm, believe me. These are guys who haven’t seen a woman in ages, and here I come, all big eyes and tell-me-more.”

“Works for me.” His smile is thin. “That could be what this is all about, Marie.”

“Ah, sweet mystery of love,” I say, disgusted at the idea of it.

“If one of them is e-mailing you from prison, I think we can find that out pretty quickly.”

I tense up. “What’s this ‘we’ business, white man?”

“I’m saying, I’ll find out.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

I point upstairs, to where his children are asleep.

“You think I’m not thinking about them? Of course, I am. They—and you—are first on my mind in all of this. But, Marie, checking out this kind of stuff comes as natural to me as breathing. It’s what I do. He’ll never know I’m the one who’s checking up on him.”

“If he thinks there’s law enforcement of any kind—”

“He won’t know that, hell, he won’t know anybody’s doing anything. How would he know, Marie? He may be good—though I doubt it—but he can’t possibly know who’s checking out criminal databases.” He puts his coffee cup down on top of the folder of “fan mail.” “I’ll get an investigation started on
these
assholes, too.”

“No! I don’t want you involved, Franklin!” Maybe it’s just because I’m so tired by now, and maybe I’m overreacting, but I feel suddenly panicky, as if the whole situation is slipping out of control. “He wants you out of the picture, Franklin, and I do, too!”

He looks completely taken aback by my attitude.

But not half as much as I am.

“Oh God, Franklin.” I feel miserable and confused. “All the way down here, I looked forward to turning this whole mess over to you, I really did. But now I realize there’s just no way I can justify doing that, not when your involvement might jeopardize your children.”

“You told me you were glad you aren’t alone.”

“I was. I am! But Franklin, the whole point of threatening Deb was to get her out of the way and that’s the whole point of threatening your family! To get you out of the picture. He wants me alone. If we don’t do what he tells us to, something terrible may happen. Maybe it won’t, but we don’t know that. I can’t promise it won’t. You can’t, either!”

“Well, forget it, Marie. I’m not leaving you alone. The key here is making him
think
I will. All we have to do is make it
appear
that we’re doing what he wants us to do.”

That pulls me up short. “What?”

“That’s how you handled it with Deb, right? You only appeared to fire her, but you didn’t really do it.”

“So what?”

“Marie, use your head. We can do that, too.”

“Use your own damn head! Your children are in danger!”

“Goddammit, Marie, I am not putting them in danger, will you please understand that? I would not do that, all right? I am not a moron and I am not an irresponsible father. Or, maybe you think I am?”

“No. Of course, I don’t. Of course, you’re not. I just think you may be underestimating—”

“No. I’m not. You’re
over
estimating him.”

But you weren’t there, in my car when that tape came on. You didn’t feel what I did when I heard those words.

“I am involved,” he says, cutting off each word in emphasis, “and these are not decisions you can make for me, Marie.”

“All right!” I throw up my hands in frustration. If I have to capitulate to this I will, but I feel discouraged and deeply unhappy giving in. “But I’m telling you, Franklin, you’d better damn well stay invisible.”

We both glance upstairs again.

“You don’t have to tell me.” He reaches for me and pulls me into an embrace that starts out stiff and awkward for both of us. But after a rigid moment, I let myself melt into his body, and allow my head to rest heavily against his chest. He’s too tall for me, really, I’ve often thought; we’d make a better-looking couple if he were shorter or I were taller, but that’s not how we are, and somehow we fit all right, anyway. With all our differences of skin and height and weight and opinions, even with all of that, we fit pretty comfortably most of the time.

“Tomorrow I’m bringing in a couple of detectives,” he murmurs.

I jerk violently out of his arms and back away from him.

“No, Franklin, please don’t do that!”

“I’m a prosecutor, Marie! A sworn agent of law enforcement. It’s what I do and I’m going to do it. These guys, they always say, Don’t tell the cops, but you have to, you need the kind of help that only cops can give you.”