Charley's Web (22 page)

“Just that kids sometimes like to play doctor,” Charley said.

“I’m not a kid.”

Charley marveled at Jill’s indignation. She seemed genuinely perturbed at Charley’s suggestion. “Did they ever ask you questions of a sexual nature?”

“Like what?”

“Like, where do babies came from, or how are they made?” Charley elaborated.

Jill hesitated. “Sometimes Noah would say something like, he had a penis and Sara didn’t. Stuff like that.”

“They ever get on your nerves?”

“No. They were good kids,” Jill said.

“So, you never hit them or anything?”

“Of course not.”

“How did you discipline them?”

“I didn’t have to.”

“You never had to send them to their rooms for a time-out?”

“No, they were great. They never gave me any trouble.”

“Did you ever take them swimming?” Charley asked, shifting gears.

“Swimming?”

“The Barnets had a pool, didn’t they?”

“Yeah. Tammy and I went swimming together a couple of times.”

“Bathing suits can be tricky for little kids. You ever help Tammy get out of her wet suit?”

“I guess I did.”

“So you saw her naked.”

“Maybe. So what?”

“Did that turn you on?”

“Did
what
turn me on? Seeing a little girl without her clothes? How sick do you think I am?”

The question proved too much for Charley. “Jill, I have to remind you that you’re on death row for the sex slayings of three young children. Can you really be so outraged by my question?”

“I’m not sexually turned on by children,” Jill said emphatically. “I don’t even like sex, for God’s sake.”

“You don’t?”

“It’s a real pain, if you ask me.”

Interesting choice of words, Charley thought. “Do you like pain?”

“What?”

“Do you like inflicting pain?” Charley clarified.

“No. Of course not.”

“It wouldn’t be all that abnormal though, given your upbringing.”

“It wouldn’t be abnormal?” Jill sputtered.

“A psychiatrist might argue the fact that being brutalized as a child led you to brutalize others,” she said, proferring Dr. Norman’s assessment.

“Might he now?”

“How would
you
explain what happened to those children? How would you explain the bite marks and the cigarette burns, the sexual assaults and the…”

Jill covered her ears with her hands. “Stop it. Stop it.”

“Tammy and the twins were tortured before they were killed. They were suffocated with plastic bags, their dying screams recorded on a tape recorder found in your bedroom. Your voice was on those tapes. Your DNA was on their bodies.”

“There are reasons….”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Then what am I doing here?”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then help me to understand.”

“It wasn’t my idea. I never wanted to hurt those children. I loved them.”

“Whose idea was it?”

Jill bit down on her lower lip, her eyes moving from Charley to Alex, then back to Charley. She pulled at her hair, fidgeted in her seat, buried her face in her hands. “It was Jack’s,” she said finally.

Charley inched forward in her chair, tried not to look too eager. “Jack?”

“My boyfriend.”

“I thought Gary was your boyfriend.”

Jill giggled. “So did he.”

The giggle was unsettling. Was Jill playing with her? Charley wondered. “Jack who?”

Jill shook her head. “Jack Splat, could eat no fat…”

“I believe that’s
Sprat,
” Charley barked, in no mood to be toyed with.

“Yeah? Well, it should be
Splat
. You know, like when you squish a bug, and it goes splat!” Jill tossed her hair from one shoulder to the other with a flick of her head.

“Tell me about Jack,” Charley urged quietly.

Jill’s eyes got that dreamy, faraway look. A small smile played with the corners of her mouth. “He’s the best.”

Charley cocked her head to one side. Just like Bandit, she thought, as she waited for Jill to continue.

“And I don’t mean just that he’s good in bed. Which, of course, he is. He’s the best. He does this thing with his tongue that sends me into total spasms.”

Reflexively, Charley crossed one leg over the other. “I thought you didn’t like sex,” she interrupted, looking over at Alex, who was staring into his lap. Probably wishing he’d stayed in Palm Beach Gardens, Charley thought.

“I don’t. At least I didn’t. Until Jack.”

“What makes him so special? Aside from his tongue.” Charley uncrossed her legs, crossed them the other way.

“Everything. He’s sweet and smart and funny and considerate.” Jill shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s just different from any other guy I’ve ever met.”

“And it was this sweet, smart, funny, considerate guy’s idea to kidnap and murder three helpless children?” Charley asked before she could stop herself.

“You’re sounding very judgmental, Charley,” Jill chastised.

“Sorry. I’m just having a hard time reconciling the adjectives with the actions.”

“I don’t understand.”

You’re not the only one, Charley thought. “It was Jack’s idea to kidnap Tammy Barnet and Sara and Noah Starkey?”

“He said it would be fun.”

“Fun?”

“He said we’d take them on an adventure they’d never forget. I honestly never thought…” Jill’s voice drifted off.

“Tell me what happened.”

Jill looked to Alex, her eyes questioning whether she should proceed. He nodded.

“I went over to Tammy’s. She was playing in her tree house in the backyard. I knew she played there every day. Her mother would watch her from the kitchen while she was getting dinner ready. So I snuck around the back of the house and I got her attention, and I put my fingers over my mouth, you know, telling her to ‘ssh,’ and waved her over, like it was supposed to be a big secret. And I told her to come with me, that we were gonna surprise her mother. And she got all excited and took my hand, and we got into Jack’s car, which was waiting around the corner, and away we went.”

Charley barely suppressed a shudder. “And you honestly never thought any harm would come to her?”

“I honestly didn’t.”

“What about Noah and Sara Starkey? You had to know what was going to happen to them.”

Jill stared into her lap. “Jack said it would be different.”

“But it wasn’t, was it?”

“No.”

“And you just went along with him. You helped him….”

“I did as I was told.”

“Why?” Charley asked, incredulously. The image of Gabe Lopez suddenly popped into her mind. “Did he have a gun to your head?”

“He didn’t need one.”

“What does that mean?”

“He had this power over me. It was like I had no choice. What’s that old nursery rhyme?” Jill asked.
“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown…”

No choice, Charley was thinking as she silently finished the rhyme.

And Jill came tumbling after.

S
o what do you think? You really think there’s a Jack?” Charley asked Alex.

“I think there’s a guy. Whether or not his name is Jack, I couldn’t say.”

“She honestly never told you?”

Alex shook his head, lifted up his fork, and stabbed at his salad.

It was a few minutes after five o’clock in the afternoon. They were sitting in the small back room at Centro’s, an unassuming Italian restaurant located in an even more unassuming strip mall a few miles east of Pembroke Pines, drinking an exceptional Shiraz, and trying to pretend the dinner they were about to eat was strictly business. Was it? Charley wondered. What was this dinner really about? “Jack and Jill,” she mused. “Seems almost too perfect.”

Alex raised one eyebrow as he directed a forkful of mixed greens into his mouth, somehow managing to look appealing even with a hint of salad oil glistening at the side of his lips. “You don’t like your carpaccio?” He indicated her barely touched appetizer with his chin.

“No, it’s delicious.” Charley lifted a slice of the raw meat to her mouth, lowered it again almost immediately. “It’s just so frustrating,” she continued. “One minute I’m convinced Jill and I are making real progress; the next minute she completely shuts down.”

“You were getting too close.”

“To what?”

“The truth, obviously.”

“The truth is anything but obvious,” Charley corrected.

“The truth is that Jill didn’t act alone. The truth is that someone else was calling the shots.”

“That someone else being Jack
Splat
?” Charley leaned back in her chair as Alex speared another forkful of his salad. “What am I doing here, Alex?”

“Not eating your appetizer, by the look of things.”

Charley chuckled, once again brought her fork to her lips. “I meant…”

“I know what you meant.”

“What am I doing with Jill? Or maybe I should say, what’s Jill doing with me? Is this all an elaborate game to her? Is she playing with me? Like she played with Tammy Barnet and the Starkey twins before she…” Her voice drifted off, her eyes falling on the hand-painted map of Italy on the wall behind Alex’s head.

“I really don’t think so,” Alex said. “I honestly think she wants to cooperate, that she wants the truth to come out. I
know
she thinks the world of you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? That a child-killing psychopath thinks I’m terrific?”

“It’s hard for her, Charley. She’s never talked about some of these things before. To anyone.”

“Not even to you?”

“Not even to me.” He finished the last of his salad. “At least not in the kind of detail she talks about them with you. I knew about Ethan, of course. And I have my suspicions about her father.”

Charley ran her fingers along the edge of the white paper tablecloth. “Such as?”

Alex hesitated.

“Come on, Alex. I know Jill gave you permission to talk to me about this.”

“Yes, she did. It’s just that I’m used to
keeping
client’s confidences, not revealing them to reporters. It’s a hard habit to break.”

Charley found herself oddly stung by his casual reference to her as a mere reporter. Don’t be ridiculous, she castigated herself silently, pushing the carpaccio into her mouth and chewing furiously. That’s what you are, isn’t it? A reporter. Trying to do her job. To ferret out the truth. To write a thought-provoking, bestselling book about a heartless, bone-chilling sociopath, and in the process, to become rich, famous, and respected, not necessarily in that order. What else
but
a reporter would you be to him?

What else would you like to be? she found herself wondering, biting into another piece of raw meat. “So, what suspicions do you have regarding Jill’s father?” she asked, trying not to notice how distinguished Alex looked in his navy suit, or the way the color underlined the deep blue of his eyes. What was the matter with her?

“I think he may have sexually abused Jill, along with Ethan. Isn’t that what you think?”

Charley sighed. “I think the Rohmers manage to make the Webbs look almost normal.”

Alex laughed. Charley waited for him to ask the obvious questions about what her family was like, but he didn’t.

Clearly he doesn’t care, she thought. “How come you didn’t raise any of this at Jill’s trial?”

“Any of what?”

“The abuse, the family history, the mysterious Jack Splat.”

“I wanted to.”

“Jill wouldn’t let you?”

“She refused to testify,” he said simply. “Said she’d deny everything if I so much as raised the possibility of abuse or an accomplice.”

“Because she was protecting someone or because she was afraid?”

“Probably a bit of both.” He finished the wine in his glass, looked around for the waiter. “I guess this book will be her testimony.”

“A little late, wouldn’t you say? She’s sitting on death row.”

Alex squirmed in his seat, pushed his salad plate into the middle of the table, almost knocking over the small vase of brightly colored plastic flowers. “I’m painfully aware of where my client is sitting, Miss Webb,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“No, I’m sorry,” he apologized immediately. “I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. Do you think we could talk about something else?
Anything
else. At least for a little while?”

“Of course.”

There was silence.

“So, what made you decide to become a lawyer?” Charley asked, then rolled her eyes. Of all the dumb questions to ask, she was thinking, feeling like a teenage girl on her first date. Why was she so nervous?

“Will you excuse me for a minute?” he asked as if she hadn’t spoken, then left the table before Charley had a chance to respond.

She watched him disappear into the washroom at the back. “Well, this is going very well,” she said under her breath. Then, to herself, Where did you think it was going to go? It was obvious the man wasn’t remotely interested in her, that he’d taken her to dinner—at five o’clock in the afternoon no less, when the place was filled with seniors there for the “early bird” specials—because he felt obligated. And now he couldn’t wait to get away from her. That was why he’d been so eager for her to finish her appetizer. Not because he wanted to impress her with the quality of the food, but so that the waiter could serve them their main course and they could get out of here. Since she had her own car, he wouldn’t even have to suffer her company on the long drive home. They could go their own merry—and separate—ways.

Wasn’t that what she wanted as well? When had she started to think of Alex Prescott as anything other than a means to an end? He wasn’t even that attractive, she decided, watching as he exited the washroom and began zigzagging through the other tables toward her.
It wasn’t the blueness of his eyes or even the way they seemed to look right through her, as if he were staring into her soul, as if he could read all her most secret thoughts,
Charley recited silently, as he stopped to talk to the waiter.
Nor was it the insolent way he occupied the center of the room, his slim hips tilted slightly forward, his thumbs hooked provocatively into the pockets of his tight jeans, the pout on his full lips a silent invitation, daring her to come closer. Approach at your own risk, he said without speaking.
“Shit,” Charley said out loud, downing what was left of her wine in one prolonged gulp.

“Something wrong?” Alex asked, pulling out his chair and sitting down.

Charley held up her empty glass. “Out of wine.”

“I’ve asked the waiter to bring us each another glass. So,” he said, leaning forward on both elbows. “What made me decide to become a lawyer? Was that the question?”

She shrugged. “Small talk 101.”

He smiled. “Well, let’s see. My mother always said I could argue anyone under the table. An old girlfriend complained I always had to have the last word. And the idea of justice as a goal always fascinated me.”

“What do you mean?”

“People are always trying to make things right,” he explained. “Something bad happens, you immediately look for the good you hope will come out of it. Something gets broken, you instinctively try to fix it. Someone gets hurt, you want to kiss it better. A family falls apart, you look for somebody to blame. Innocents get slaughtered, you cry for the blood of the guilty. Somebody has to pay. People want justice,” he concluded. “They think it will make a difference.”

“You’re saying it doesn’t?”

“I’m saying I haven’t given up on the idea entirely, which is why, to answer your earlier question, I became a lawyer.”

“An idealist and a cynic all in one sentence,” Charley said, not without admiration.

“I like the structure the justice system provides,” Alex continued, again as if she hadn’t spoken. “Just the putting of those two words together—justice and system—the notion that you can have a
system
of justice, I find that fascinating. I like that you have this whole institutionalized procedural—arrests, arraignments, grand juries, indictments, trials, sentences, appeals. I like that people come to me because they think I can help them. I like that sometimes I’m able to do just that. I’m glad that I can put my ability to argue anybody into the ground to good use, and that sometimes my last word is strong enough to keep someone from going to jail. Occasionally I even get to make things right.”

“You kiss it better,” Charley said, and smiled.

Alex suddenly pushed himself out of his chair, leaned across the table, and kissed her on the lips. Then he sat back down, watching the colors shift on her face as the waiter approached with two fresh glasses of wine. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” he said as soon as the waiter departed.

Charley said nothing. If she spoke, the words might dislodge the pleasant tingles that lingered on her lips. What had just happened?

“Can we pretend I didn’t do that?”

“Why did you?” Charley asked.

“Because, obviously, I’m an idiot.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

“You don’t?”

Charley shook her head. Alex leaned forward and kissed her again. This time Charley kissed him back.

“Well, this is a surprise,” Alex said, as the waiter returned with their dinners.

“It certainly is,” Charley agreed.

“I’m sorry,” the waiter said. “You didn’t order the lasagna?”

“No, I did,” Alex said. “I definitely ordered the lasagna.”

“And I’m the ravioli special.” The waiter placed the ravioli in front of Charley, the steam rising from her plate partially obscuring her view of the man sitting across from her. Who was he? she found herself wondering. More to the point, who was
she
? “I feel like a character in one of my sister’s books,” she admitted.

“And how does that feel?”

“Pretty good actually.”

They laughed.

“What exactly happened there?” Charley asked.

“I kissed you. You kissed me back,” he said.

“But why did you kiss me? I didn’t think you even liked me.”

“You didn’t think I liked you?” Alex repeated incredulously. “That’s why I keep making this incredibly boring drive down here, because I don’t like you?”

“I assumed you were just looking out for Jill’s interests.”

“It was more a case of looking out for yours.”

“Really?”

“Don’t you ever look in the mirror?” Alex asked. “God, the first time you walked into my office, I just about fell off my chair. And then you opened your mouth, and it got even better. You were smart and feisty and full of pee and vinegar, as my mother used to say, and I thought, Shit, man, you’re in trouble here.”

“You sure had me fooled.”

“God knows I tried.”

“I thought you were an arrogant son of a bitch. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Charley qualified immediately. “I have a soft spot for arrogant sons of bitches.”

He laughed. “I kept telling myself to keep my distance, keep everything nice and professional, try not to notice how nice your hair looked, or how pretty you smelled. But then you were sitting across from me, not eating your carpaccio, and making small talk 101, and you said something about kissing it better…. And so I did.”

“So, what happens now?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Well, I’m not really very hungry,” Charley said, pushing her plate away. “I don’t usually eat this early.”

“We could always get a doggie bag,” Alex suggested. “Eat later.”

“Later?”

“After.”

“After?” she repeated. “As in ‘happily ever’?”

He smiled. “As in after,” he said.

It was almost ten o’clock before they finally got around to eating their dinner. “I’m so starving,” Charley said, tearing into her ravioli, and watching some of the spicy tomato sauce drip down the front of Alex’s pale blue shirt. “Oh, no. Look what I did.”

Alex reached across the round glass table to wipe up the spill, his fingers brushing up against Charley’s bare breast beneath. “It’s an old shirt.”

They were sitting in the small eating area off the large kitchen in his one-bedroom condo off PGA Boulevard in the heart of Palm Beach Gardens. The seventh-floor apartment looked out over an artificial lake beyond which was a new plaza full of upscale restaurants and specialty stores. The fabulous Gardens Mall was right next door. The ocean was less than ten minutes away. I could live here, Charley found herself thinking, then instantly dismissed such thoughts from her head. One night does not a lifetime make. Just because Alex Prescott was good in bed—make that
great
in bed—didn’t mean their relationship would last longer than any of her others. She took another mouthful of ravioli, hoping he’d be around at least long enough for her to finish her research.

“You’re frowning,” he said.

“Am I?”

“Having second thoughts?”

She shook her head. “Just wondering how this will affect our working relationship.”

“It doesn’t have to affect it at all. We’re both professionals.”

“Yeah, but I’m a girl,” Charley reminded him with a laugh. “We don’t compartmentalize as easily as you guys do.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” He took one forkful of lasagna, then another. “How come you never got married?” he asked, then, “Don’t answer that. It was a stupid question.”