Authors: Lis Wiehl,April Henry
Hiding her wince, Cassidy remembered the story meeting where the segment had been proposed. It was the kind of stunt trotted out during sweeps month, when the news was taken over by the cute stories of kids who gave their hamsters mouth-to-mouth or anything else deemed moving or “aww”-inspiring. These, alternated with salacious eye candy masquerading as some kind of moral lesson.
This particular story had required a female reporter to dress up in red vinyl hot pants and high-heeled boots and troll for unsuspecting johns. The men would be directed to a seedy hotel room, where Brad Buffet was waiting with Andy to record their pathetic rationalizations. The station could pretend it was reducing crime, while viewers got to enjoy watching their fellow Portlanders end up in the twenty-first century video version of the stocks.
When the idea was first broached, Cassidy had protested that the assignment would be demeaning. And then she had waited for them to beg her. Her plan had been to eventually give in, in exchange for some extra vacation days. Instead, Eric had smirkingly informed her that Jenna had already been picked for the piece—the unspoken implication being that Cassidy was getting a little long in the tooth to play the part.
“What did she want a lipstick cam for?” she asked Andy now.
He shrugged. “She didn’t say. I told her we rented them. We don’t have enough call for undercover cameras, and the technology changes too often.”
So Jenna had been thinking of going undercover. But to do what? What?
Hadn’t Cassidy seen Jenna talking to Barney, Channel Four’s archivist, last week?
She tracked him down in his basement lair. Surrounded by stacks of tapes that needed to be cataloged, he was sitting at his desk, engrossed in the newspaper.
The representative of one dying form of the media reading another
, Cassidy thought sourly. Working as a print or TV reporter used to be a good job. Now Cassidy felt like a dodo bird. A single video on YouTube of a bunch of ugly guys lip-synching a Shakira song could attract more viewers than the local news did—sometimes millions more. Eric reminded them every day that TV’s slice of the ad pie had already shrunk 25 percent.
Barney still hadn’t looked up. Maybe he was getting a little deaf. He was a Vietnam vet with a graying ponytail and a belly so round and high it looked like he might be strapping it on every morning.
Cassidy cleared her throat.
“You can’t trust the government.” Barney stabbed the newspaper as he got to his feet. “It’s all a conspiracy.”
Cassidy had learned long ago not to ask any questions when Barney started muttering. The administration might change in Washington, but Barney’s suspicions did not.
“Barney, didn’t I see you talking to Jenna last week?”
His expression eased into a smile. “Yeah. I wish all the interns were as cute as her. She wanted a digie for a story she was working on.”
A digie was a digital recording. Barney’s job mostly involved cataloging and filing film, but sometimes events made his services far more important. Had a politician been caught with a call girl? Had a celebrity had a car accident? Had a famous politician died? In less than five minutes Barney would be able to pull archived footage to run as B-roll under the story. The B-roll would be what viewers saw while Brad droned on about the deeper meaning of the event.
“Do you remember what it was of ?”
“Yeah, she wanted . . . hm, what was it?” He scratched behind his ear. “Oh yeah, some footage of an arson that happened a couple weeks ago.”
“Did they have any suspects?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “Not when it was shot, anyway.”
Cassidy remembered the man’s message on Jenna’s voice mail. Had she figured out something the cops hadn’t?
Portland Fitness Center
A
s Elizabeth got ready for boot camp Wednesday morning, she thought about how Joey would soon take care of Sara and Noah.
He wouldn’t want to. But he would. Because he was more afraid of her than he was of anything else.
After that, the next step would be to take care of Joey. He had served his purpose.
But Elizabeth didn’t want to get her hands dirty. She hadn’t worked this hard to end up in some prison that would make the Spurling Institute look like a picnic. What she needed was someone who would be eager to help her. And she already had someone in mind.
The teakettle whistled. After pouring the steaming water over the paper filter holding freshly ground coffee beans, Elizabeth set the kettle back down on the stove.
Without hesitation, she made a fist and hit herself in the right eye, her knuckles making contact with the top of her cheekbone. And then she poured milk into her coffee.
Twenty minutes later, just before she walked out the door, she checked her face in the bathroom mirror. The corner of her eye was already puffing up. It wasn’t much of a bruise, but it would continue to darken. And there were ways to make it look much worse. A little purple eye shadow and a few tears could go a long way, Elizabeth knew.
She had done it before.
L
et my face be a lesson to you,” Elizabeth said at the beginning of class. “Never turn your back on the lat pulldown machine. That bar can be vicious.”
Cassidy was actually early to boot camp, and her form wasn’t half bad. For once.
“You look like you’re in a good mood,” Elizabeth said at the end of class.
Cassidy attempted to blot the sweat off her forehead with one of the thin white hand towels the gym provided. “Actually, something terrible is happening at work. Remember the intern we were talking about? Jenna? She’s gone missing—and it looks like something bad happened to her.”
Elizabeth flattened her palm across her chest. “Oh, no! What happened?” She had been dying to bring up Jenna with Cassidy—
dying
—but there had been no good way to work her into the conversation. But Cassidy’s next words shocked her.
“She was going to meet someone in this run-down motel on Barbur, probably for a story. Now she’s missing. But she left her purse and car keys behind.”
Elizabeth nodded, inwardly cursing herself. She had seen the girl slip out of one room and into the one where she had met Joey. Why hadn’t she searched it? But no, she had been too eager to act. So eager to take care of one problem that she had only replaced it with another.
“The motel called me about it, and then I had my friend Nicole —you remember, the FBI agent?—look into it. And they found blood
sprayed
on the wall. It looks like Jenna was shot.”
Elizabeth stiffened, barely managing to keep her expression unchanged. Worse and worse. Nicole was involved in this? The woman whose kid she was now giving swimming lessons? Elizabeth didn’t know how it had come to this.
She just knew she had to put a stop to it.
Northwest Portland
T
oday was the day. The day Joey had to kill Sara McCloud. Or Sissy would kill him.
Put like that, it wasn’t much of a choice.
Joey’s first stop was a 7 Eleven where he bought a newspaper and a liter bottle of Coke. The newspaper he could hide behind. The caffeine in the Coke would keep him awake. And lukewarm Coke tasted better than lukewarm coffee.
He parked the El Camino down the street from the house where Sara was staying. It was a neighborhood for people with money. The houses were set back from the street and spaced well apart. There was even a small park across the street, more green in an oasis of green.
About twenty minutes after he arrived, the garage door rose and a dark blue Lexus backed down the driveway. The guy driving was so busy texting on his phone that he didn’t even notice Joey when he drove past. Joey had a feeling he wouldn’t have noticed an entire herd of elephants. He seemed Sissy’s type—rich, good-looking, and arrogant. And maybe not smart enough to see how he was being used.
A few minutes later the front door opened. A woman and a little boy walked out.
Joey panicked, wondering how he could follow them. If he drove behind them at a speed only a notch over idle, they would surely notice. But if he got out of the car to follow them on foot, and they took a bus or taxi or got picked up by someone, he would be up the creek.
His palms sweated and his breath came faster as his fingers hovered over the ignition key. Should he take it out? Or turn it?
But then they crossed the street to the park. It wasn’t much of a park, just a swing set and some kind of colorful structure with a ladder, a slide, and a couple of plastic tubes. But the kid was young enough that he probably didn’t know any different. Joey remembered the parks of his youth. Fifteen-foot slides, monkey bars where you could clamber to the top and defy death by hanging by your knees. Those things were probably illegal now.
Joey gave it a few minutes, then he slipped on some sunglasses, got out of the car, and walked to the park bench, carrying his newspaper and Coke. The gun was heavy in the small of his back, and he had to keep resisting the urge to hike up his pants. He sat down, angling his body away from the woman and the boy. She was pushing the kid on the swing.
The woman took one look at him, then looked away. Even with the sunglasses, the scars were still visible. Most people did that. Didn’t let their gaze linger. Embarrassed that they had looked at him at all. And then they might try to sneak little peeks when they thought he couldn’t see them. In a way, it was good that the scars threw her off. She would be too caught up in hiding her own reactions to his face to wonder why he was there in the first place.
The park, Joey decided, was also a good thing. It was right across the street from the house, but it was so small it was likely to be empty most of the time. So when they went back to the house, and he followed and killed them, there wouldn’t be any witnesses here. And the houses on either side looked like no one was at home. Everyone at work, and no one the wiser.
Joey turned another page of the newspaper, pretending to read. It had been years since he had opened a newspaper. He was surprised at how thin it was. Didn’t newspapers used to be more, well, substantial? All the sections seemed to have collapsed into one another. Only sports was still separate.
As he read about a baseball game, he watched Sara out of the corner of his eye.
“Give me an underdog, Mommy!” the boy demanded, and with a little huff she pushed him up high enough that she was able to duck and run underneath him as he reached the top.
Sara turned, laughing, brushing her dark wavy hair out of her eyes. She was maybe five foot two, a little plump.
Nothing like Sissy.
Which was good. In Joey’s opinion. The world didn’t need another Sissy. It didn’t even need one Sissy. He never should have agreed to this. When his dad had called and said someone named Sissy was looking for him, he never should have written down the phone number. He never should have called her, his heart knocking in his chest.
He should have remembered that the real reason Sissy made his heart beat faster was that he was afraid of her.
Joey spared a thought for Jenna. Another thing he never should have done was to call the TV station. That Jenna had been so excited, saying it was her big break.
Only it had broken her.
“Okay, honey,” Sara said to the kid after she had gamely crawled through the plastic tubes after him and slid down the short plastic slide over and over. “It’s time to go back.”
“I don’t want to.” The kid stamped his foot.
Joey could sympathize. He wished they could stay here forever.
“I’ll make you a snack.” Sara held out her hand.
The boy hesitated, then grabbed her hand. Joey realized it was now or never. He had to do this thing. Even if it terrified him.
He waited until they had crossed the quiet street. Then he hurried up behind them, his feet silent in his Nikes. Sara didn’t even know he was there until she put her key in the lock and he pressed the gun into her ribs.
“Don’t say a word or I’ll kill you.”
She let out a gasp and pulled her son in close.
Later Joey would wonder about it. What if she had pushed him away, screamed at her kid to run, to not look back, to get the neighbors to call 911—what would he have done?
But she didn’t.
T
wenty minutes later Joey hurried back to his car. It was done. There was no going back now.
In the car, he flipped open his cell phone and looked at the photo. His stomach rose and pressed against the bottom of his throat. The woman with her arm around the boy. Their empty eyes and slack mouths as they lay on the hardwood floor in a spreading pool of red.
He had done what he had to do, he told himself. There hadn’t been any other choice.
Joey keyed in Elizabeth’s number and pressed the Send key. And then he began to drive. Not even knowing where he was going.
Less than three minutes later Elizabeth called. He could hear the smile in her voice.
“Good job. Let’s get together tomorrow morning, and I’ll give you the rest of the money.”
Portland Fitness Center
I
n an empty corner of the locker room, Elizabeth took one last look at the photo on her cell phone.
It didn’t move her in the slightest. Not even the sight of Sara’s limp arm around her dead child’s shoulders. As if, even in death, she had been protecting her kid.
Because who had ever protected Elizabeth?
She stared at their slack faces one second longer, then hit the delete key. The photo blinked out of existence. She flipped the phone closed. Those two would have been a problem as long as they lived, she thought as she changed into her swimsuit. An endless sinkhole for Ian’s money. But now they would no longer drain his checking account, demand his time. She tucked her hair into a silver silicone cap. She didn’t want her highlights turning green.
Ian would be coming home sometime in the next few hours, depending on whether he came home straight from work or went out to blow off some steam. He would find their bodies and call the police. Elizabeth wondered how long it would be before he would think to call her with the news.