The Woods (17 page)

"You're not going to psychoanalyze me, are you?"

"No, nothing like that." She sat back and looked up and away. It was a look that sent me right back. We would sit out in the camp's old baseball field, where the grass was overgrown, and I would hold her and she would look up and away like that.

"When I was in college," Lucy began, "I had this friend. She was a twin. Fraternal, not identical. I guess that doesn't make much of a difference, but with the identical, there seems to be a stronger bond. Any way, when we were sophomores her sister died in a car crash. My friend had the strangest reaction. She was devastated, of course, but part of her was almost relieved. She thought, well, that's it. God got me. That was my turn. I'm okay for now. I gave at the office. You lose a twin sister like that, you're sorta safe the rest of your life. One heartbreaking tragedy per person. You know what I mean?"

"I do."

"But life isn't like that. Some get a lifetime pass. Others, like you, get more than your share. Much more. And the worst part is, it doesn't make you immune to even more."

"Life ain't fair," I said.

"Amen." Then she smiled at me. "This is so weird, isn't it?"

Yes.

"I know we were together for, what, six weeks?"

"Something like that."

"And it was just a summer fling, when you think about it. You've probably had dozens of girls since then." "Dozens?" I repeated. "What, more like hundreds?" "At the very least," I said. Silence. I felt something well up in my chest. "But you were special, Lucy. You were…" I stopped. "Yeah, I know," she said. "So were you. That's why this is awkward.

I want to know everything about you. But I'm not sure now is the time."

It was as if a surgeon was at work, a time-warping plastic surgeon maybe. He had snipped off the last twenty years, pulled my eighteen year-old self up to meet my thirty-eight-year-old one, done it almost seamlessly.

"So what made you call me?" I asked.

"The strange thing?"

"Yeah."

"You said you had one too."

I nodded.

"Would you mind going first?" she asked. "You know, like when we messed around?"

"Ouch."

"Sorry." She stopped, crossed her arms over her chest as if cold. "I'm babbling like a ditz. Cant help it." "You haven't changed, Luce." "Yeah, Cope. I've changed. You wouldn't believe how much I've changed."

Our eyes met, really met, for the first time since I entered the room. I'm not big on reading people's eyes. I have seen too many good liars to believe much of what I see. But she was telling me something there, a tale, and the tale had a lot of pain in it.

I didn't want any lies between the two of us.

"Do you know what I do now?" I asked.

"You're the county prosecutor. I saw that online too."

"Right. That gives me access to information. One of my investigators did a quick background check on you." "I see. So you know about my drinking and driving." I said nothing. "I drank too much, Cope. Still do. But I don't drive anymore." "Not my business." "No, it's not. But I'm glad you told me." She leaned back, folded her hands, placed them in her lap. "So tell me what happened, Cope." "A few days ago, a couple of Manhattan homicide detectives showed me an unidentified male victim," I said. "I think the man – a man they said was in his mid to late thirties-was Gil Perez."

Her jaw dropped. "Our Gil?"

"Yes."

"How the hell is that possible?"

"I don't know."

"He's been alive all this time?"

"Apparently."

She stopped and shook her head. "Wait, did you tell his parents?"

"The police brought them in to ID him."

"What did they say?"

"They said it wasn't Gil. That Gil died twenty years ago."

She collapsed back in the chair. "Wow." I watched her tap her lower lip as she mulled it over. Another gesture straight back from our camp days. "So what has Gil been doing all this time?"

"Wait, you're not going to ask me if I'm sure it's him?"

"Of course you're sure. You wouldn't have said it if you weren't. So his parents are either lying or, more likely, in denial." "Yes." "Which one?" "I'm not sure. But I'm leaning toward lying." "We should confront them." "We?" "Yes. What else have you learned about Gil?" "Not much." I shifted in my seat. "How about you? What happened?"

"My students write anonymous journals. I got one that pretty much described what happened to us that night." I thought I was hearing wrong. "A student journal?" "Yep. They had a lot of it right. Howe went into the woods. How we were messing around. How we heard the scream."

I was still having trouble understanding. "A journal written by one of your students?"

"Yeah."

"And you have no idea who wrote it?"

"Nope."

I thought about it. "Who knows your real identity?"

"I don't know. I didn't change identities, just my name. It wouldn't be that hard to find." "And when did you get this journal?" "Monday." "Pretty much the day after Gil was murdered." We sat and let that settle. I asked, "Do you have the journal here?" "I made you a copy." She handed the pages across the desk. I read them. It brought it back. It hurt, reading it. I wondered about the heart stuff, about never getting over the mysterious "P." But when I put it down, the first thing I said to her was, "This isn't what happened."

"I know."

"But it's close."

She nodded.

"I met this young woman who knew Gil. She said she overheard him talking about us. He said that we lied." Lucy kept still for a moment. She spun the chair so that now I saw her profile. "We did."

"Not about anything that mattered," I said.

"We were making love," she said, "while they were being murdered."

I said nothing. I partitioned again. That was how I got through my day. Because if I didn't partition, I would remember that I was the counselor on guard duty that night. That I shouldn't have sneaked off with my girlfriend. That I should have watched them better. That if I had been a responsible kid, if I had done what I was supposed to, I wouldn't have said I had done head counts when I hadn't. I wouldn't have lied about it the next morning. We would have known that they were gone since the night before, not just that morning. So maybe, while I put check marks next to cabin inspections that I had never done, my sister was having her throat slashed.

Lucy said, "We were just kids, Cope."

Still nothing.

"They sneaked out. They would have sneaked out if we were there or not."

Probably not, I thought. I would have been there. I would have spotted them. Or I would have noticed empty beds when I did my rounds. I did none of that. I went off and had a good time with my girlfriend. And the next morning, when they weren't there, I figured that they were just having fun. Gil had been dating Margot, though I thought they'd broken up. My sister was seeing Doug Billingham, though they weren't too serious. They had run off, were having fun.

So I lied. I said I'd checked the cabins and that they'd been safely tucked away. Because I didn't realize the danger. I said I was alone that night-I stuck to that lie for too long-because I wanted to protect Lucy. Isn't that strange? I didn't know all the damage. So yeah, I lied. Once Margot Green was found, I admitted most of the truth-that I'd been negligent on guard duty. But I left off Lucy's role. And once I stuck with that lie, I was afraid to go back and tell the whole truth. They were suspicious of me already-I still remember Sheriff Lowell's skeptical face-and if I admitted it later, the police would wonder why I lied in the first place. It was irrelevant anyway.

What difference did it make if I was alone or with somebody? Either way, I didn't watch out for them. During the lawsuit, Ira Silversteins office tried to lay some of the blame on me. But I was only a kid. There were twelve cabins on the boys' side of the camp alone. Even if I had been in position, it would have been easy enough to sneak out. The security was inadequate. That was true. Legally, it wasn't my fault.

Legally.

"My father used to go back to those woods," I said.

She turned toward me.

"He would go digging."

"For what?"

"For my sister. He told us he was going fishing. But I knew. He did it for two years." "What made him stop?" "My mother left us. I think he figured that his obsession had cost him too much already. He hired private eyes instead. Called some old friends. But I don't think he dug anymore."

I looked at her desk. It was a mess. Papers were scattered, some half-tumbling off like a frozen waterfall. There were open textbooks sprawled out like wounded soldiers.

"That's the problem when you don't have a body," I said. "I assume you've studied the stages of grief?"

"I have." She nodded, seeing it. "The first step is denial."

"Exactly. In a sense, we never got past that."

"No body, ergo, denial. You needed proof to move on."

"My father did. I mean, I was sure Wayne had killed her. But then I would see my father going out like that." "It made you doubt." "Let's just say it kept the possibility alive in my mind." "And what about your mother?" "She grew more and more distant. My parents never had the greatest marriage. There were cracks already. When my sister died – or what ever the hell happened – she totally withdrew from him." We both went quiet. The last remnants of sunlight were fading away. The sky was turning into a purple swirl. I looked out the window to my left. She looked out too. We sat there, the closest we had been to each other in twenty years.

I said before that the years had been surgically removed. They seemed to return now. The sadness was back. I could see it on her. The long-lasting destruction to my family from that night was obvious. I had hoped that Lucy had been able to get past it. But she hadn't. There hadn't been closure for her either. I don't know what else had happened to her over the last twenty years. To blame that one incident for the sad ness I saw in her eyes would be too pat. But I could see it now. I could see myself pulling away from her that very night.

The student journal had talked about how she had never gotten over me. I don't flatter myself to that degree. But she had never gotten over that night. What it did to her father. What it did to her childhood.

"Paul?"

She was still looking out the window.

"Yes?"

"What do we do now?"

"We find out what really happened in those woods."

1 REMEMBER ON A TRIP TO ITALY SEEING TAPESTRIES THAT seem to change perspective depending on where you stand. If you move to the right, the table appears to be facing the right. If you move to the left, the table follows you.

Governor Dave Markie was the human embodiment of that. When he walked into the room he had the ability to make every person feel as though he were facing and looking at them. In his youth I had seen him score with so many women, again not because of his looks, but because he seemed so interested in them. There was a hypnotic intensity in his gaze. I remember a lesbian friend at Rutgers who said, "When Dave Markie looks at you like that, heck, I'd switch teams for the night."

He brought that into my office. Jocelyn Durels, my secretary, tittered. Loren Muses face flushed. Even the U.S. Attorney, Joan Thurston, had a smile on her face that showed me what she must have looked like when she had her first kiss in the seventh grade.

Most would say that it was the power of the office. But I'd known him before the office. The office was a power enhancer, not creator.

We greeted each other with a hug. I noticed that guys did that now-hugged as a greeting. I liked it, the true human contact. I don't have a lot of real friends, so the ones I do have are hugely important to me. They were specially picked, and I love every one of them.

"You don't want all these people here," Dave whispered to me.

We pulled back from the embrace. He had a smile on his face, but I got the message. I cleared everyone out of my office. Joan Thurston stayed behind. I knew her pretty well. The U.S. Attorney's office was right down the street. We tried to cooperate, help each other out. We had similar jurisdiction-Essex County had plenty of crime in it-but she was only interested in the big stuff. Right now that mostly meant terrorism and political corruption. When her office stumbled across other crimes, they let us handle it.

As soon as the door closed, leaving the three of us alone, the smile slipped off Dave’s face. We sat at my conference table. I was on one side. They took the other.

"Bad?" I said.

"Very."

I put my hands out and gestured with my fingers for them to bring it on. Dave looked at Joan Thurston. She cleared her throat.

"As we speak, my detectives are entering the offices of the charitable institution known as JaneCare. They have a warrant. We'll be taking records and files. I had hoped to keep it quiet, but the media already has ahold of it."

I felt my pulse do a two-step. "This is crap."

Neither one of them spoke.

"It's Jenrette. He's pressuring me to go easy on his son."

"We know," Dave said.

So?

He looked over at Thurston.

"So that doesn't make the charges untrue."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Jenrette's investigators went places where we never would. They found improprieties. They brought them to the attention of one of my best people. My guy did more digging. We tried to keep it quiet. We know what charges can do to a charity."

I didn't like where this was going. "You found something?"

"Your brother-in-law has been skimming."

"Bob? No way."

"He's diverted at least a hundred grand."

"To what?"

She handed me two sheets of paper. I scanned down them.

"Your brother-in-law is putting in a pool, right?"

I said nothing.

"Fifty grand was given to Marston Pools in various payments and listed here as a building expansion. Did JaneCare have a building expansion?" I said nothing. "Another almost thirty grand was given to Barry's Landscaping. The expense is listed as beautifying the surrounding areas." Our office was half a converted two-house dwelling in downtown Newark. There were no plans to expand or beautify. We didn't need more space. We were concentrating on raising money for treatments and cures. That had been our focus. I saw too much abuse in the charity system, what with fund-raising expenses far outpacing the amount that went into the good works. Bob and I had talked about that. We had the same vision.

I felt sick.

Dave said, "We can't play favorites. You know that."

"I do," I said.

"And even if we wanted to keep it quiet for friendship's sake, we couldn't. The media has been tipped off. Joan here is about to hold a press conference."

"Are you going to arrest him?"

"Yes."

"When?"

She looked at Dave. "He's in custody now. We picked him up an hour ago." I thought about Greta. I thought about Madison. A pool. Bob had stolen from my wife’s charity to build a goddamn pool.

"You spared him the perp walk?"

"No. They're going to run him through the gauntlet in about ten minutes. I'm here as a friend, but we both agreed we would go after cases like this. I can't play favorites."

I nodded. We had agreed. I didn't know what to think.

Dave rose. Joan Thurston followed. "Get him somebody good, Cope. It's going to be ugly, I think."

I flicked on the TV and watched Bob's perp walk. No, it wasn't carried live on CNN or Fox, but News 12 New Jersey, our local twenty-four-hour news station, carried it. There would be pictures in all the big Jersey papers like the Star-Ledger and the Bergen Record. Some of the local major network affiliates might run something, though I doubted it.

The perp walk lasted seconds. Bob was cuffed. He didn't duck his head. He looked, as so many do, dazed and childlike. I felt nauseous. I called Greta at home and on her cell. No answer. I left messages on both.

Muse sat with me throughout. When they moved on to another story, she said, "That sucked."

"It did."

"You should ask Flair to rep him."

"Conflict of interest."

"Why? Because of this case?"

"Yes."

"I don't see how. They're unconnected."

"His clients father, EJ Jenrette, started the investigation."

"Oh, right." She sat back. "Damn."

I said nothing.

"You in the mood to talk about Gil Perez and your sister?"

"I am."

"As you know, twenty years ago they found their ripped clothes and blood in the woods." I nodded.

"All the blood was O positive. So were both of the missing. Four out often people are, so it's not that surprising. They didn't have DNA tests back then, so there was no way to know for certain. I checked. Even if we rush it, the DNA tests will take a minimum of three weeks. Probably longer."

I was only half listening. I kept flashing to Bob, to his face during that prep walk. I thought about Greta, sweet, kind Greta, and how this was going to destroy her. I thought about my wife, my Jane, how this namesake charity was about to be leveled. I had set it up as a memorial to the wife I'd failed in life. Now, again, I had failed her.

"Plus with DNA tests, we need something to compare it to. We could use your blood for your sister, but we'd need a member of the Perez family to cooperate too."

"What else?"

"You don't really need the DNA on Perez."

"Why's that?"

"Farrell Lynch finished the age progression."

She handed me two photographs. The first was the morgue shot of Manolo Santiago. The second was the age-progression shot derived from the photograph I'd given her of Gil Perez.

A total match.

"Wow," I said.

"I got you the address for Perez's parents." She handed mea slip of paper. I looked at it. They lived in Park Ridge. Less than an hour from here. "Are you going to confront them?" Muse asked me.

Yes.

"You want me to go?"

I shook my head. Lucy had already insisted on joining me. That would be enough.

"I also have a thought," she said.

"What's that?"

"The technology in finding buried bodies is much better now than it was twenty years ago. Do you remember Andrew Barrett?"

"Lab guy at John Jay? Talkative and strange."

"And a genius. Right, that's him. Anyway, he's probably the country's top expert with this new ground-penetrating radar machine. He pretty much invented it and claims he can cover a lot of ground quickly."

"The area is too large."

"But we can try some of it, right? Look, Barrett is dying to try this new baby out. He says he needs the fieldwork." "You already talked to him?" "Sure, why not?" I shrugged. "You're the investigator." I glanced back at the TV. They were already replaying Bob's perp walk. He looked even more pathetic this time. My hands tightened into fists.

"Cope?"

I looked at her.

"We gotta go to court," she said.

I nodded, rose without speaking. She opened the door. A few minutes later, I spotted EJ Jenrette in the lobby. He was purposely standing in my path. He was also grinning at me.

Muse stopped and tried to steer me. "Lets move to the left. We can go in through-"

No.

I kept walking straight. Rage consumed me. Muse rushed to catch up with my steps. EJ Jenrette stayed still, watching my approach.

Muse put a hand on my shoulder. "Cope…"

I didn't break stride. "I'm fine."

EJ kept grinning. I met his eye. He stayed in my path. I walked up and stopped so that our faces were inches apart. The idiot was still grinning at me.

"I warned you," EJ said.

I matched his grin and leaned in very close.

"The word has been passed around," I said.

"What?"

"Any inmate who gets Little Edward to service him receives preferential treatment. Your boy is going to be the bitch of his block." I walked away without waiting for a reaction. Muse stumbled after me.

"That was classy," she said. I kept moving. It was a false threat, of course – the sins of the father should never fall to the son-but if that image stuck when EJ laid his head on his goose-down pillow, so be it.

Muse jumped in front of me. "You gotta calm down, Cope."

"I forget, Muse-are you my investigator or my shrink?"

She put her hands up in a surrender gesture and let me pass. I sat at my seat and waited for the judge. What the hell had Bob been thinking? Some days, court is about sound and fury signifying nothing. This was one of them. Flair and Mort knew that they were in deep trouble. They wanted to exclude the pornographic DVD because we hadn't produced it earlier. They tried for a mistrial. They made motions and handed in findings and research and papers. Their interns and paralegals must have been up all night.

Judge Pierce listened, the bushy eyebrows low. He had his hand on his chin and looked very, well, judicial. He did not comment. He used terms like "under advisement." I wasn't worried. They had nothing. But a thought began to worm its way in and gnaw. They had gone after me. They had gone after me hard.

Might they not do the same with the judge?

I watched his face. It gave away nothing. I looked at his eyes, looked for some sort of telltale sign that he wasn't sleeping. There was nothing there, but that didn't mean anything.

We finished up by three p.m. I went back to my office and checked my messages. Nothing from Greta. I called her again. Still no answer. I tried Bob's cell too. More nothing. I left a message.

I looked at those two photographs-the aged Gil Perez, the dead Manolo Santiago. Then I called Lucy. She picked up on the first ring. "Hey," Lucy answered. And unlike last night, there was a lilt in her voice. I was thrown back again.

"Hey."

There was a weird, almost happy pause.

"I got the address for Mr. and Mrs. Perez," I said. "I want to take another run at them."

"When?"

"Now. They don't live far from you. I can pick you up on the way."

"I'll be ready."