The Dark of Day (42 page)

He turned and leaned over her. She felt the spittle striking her lips. “I know who you are. You're the little hick who wanted to go out with me because I had money and a fast car and a father who wasn't in jail or drunk. You were all over me. Yes, we had sex. We got stoned, too, on weed that you provided, and we got drunk, but I did not . . . force you. It was consensual. You wanted it. All of it.”

“That isn't true! To be asphyxiated? Raped? Are you crazy? I should have called the police, but I was too ashamed.”

“They wouldn't have believed you. No one will believe you now.” Paul Shelby gripped her upper arm so tightly she groaned and dug into his fingers. He shook her. “I have a wife and children and a position in this community. If you repeat this to anyone, I will sue you for slander. You will be fired from Tischman Farmer. Believe me, Ms. Dunn, you don't want to try it. You are sick. You need help.”

When he pushed her away, C.J. leaned with both hands on the edge of the desk. “I never said I would make it public. I would never tell your wife. I only wanted you to look at me and see who I am, so maybe I could forget it too.”

“All right. I've seen you. Now get out.”

rick was standing at the gate in the side yard of C.J.'s house talking to Edgar Dunn when he heard an engine and the shriek of tires. He had parked his Audi in the driveway, and a silver BMW was swerving to miss it. The wheels went off the driveway into the grass and then corrected to the left, but not fast enough. C.J. didn't make it into the double-wide carport. She hit the corner of the house, smashing the right front headlight.

Edgar lifted the latch on the gate and hurried through. Rick got to her first. She was gripping the top of the steering wheel, and her forehead rested on her hands. He tried the door. Rapping on the window, he said, “C.J.!” It took her some effort to find the lock. He opened the door and reached over her to turn off the ignition and the lights. There was an empty pint bottle of Absolut on the floor of the passenger side.

She was laughing. “Who moved the garage?”

“Is she hurt?” Edgar tried to see.

“No, she's drunk.” Rick handed him her tote bag and the keys. “Let's get her inside.” She wasn't wearing a seat belt. He pulled her out of the car.
With an arm around her waist, he half-carried her up some steps and through the side door of the house, which led to a utility room, then the kitchen. Edgar turned on the lights and Rick followed him. A couple of cats ran out of the way, scooting into a dining room whose table was cluttered with papers and files, then through a wide opening to a living room with a fireplace and high beamed ceilings. Edgar hurried to the sofa and cleared off a week's worth of newspapers and a tray with the remains of a frozen dinner.

C.J. struggled. “Let me go. Please. Bathroom.” She staggered down a hall and a door slammed. Water ran, an attempt to disguise the sound of C.J. Dunn being sick.

Her uncle stood by the telephone. “Should we call emergency, do you think?”

Rick walked to the door, knocked, and went in. She was curled up on the tile floor, moaning, her skirt up her thighs and vomit on her blouse. He flushed the toilet and ran some cold water over a hand towel. Edgar stood in the doorway. To give the old man something to do, Rick asked if he'd make a pot of strong coffee.

He crouched beside her and cleaned her face. “C.J. Talk to me, C.J. Who am I? Do you know who I am?”

Her eyes drifted toward his face. “Rick? What are you doing here?”

“You didn't show for dinner, so I came looking for you.”

“Oh. I'm sorry. I forgot.” She hiccuped.

He took off her high heels and set them under the sink. “We're going for a walk. Come on.” He lifted her to her feet. “That's it. I've got you. Walk with me.” He took her to the living room, across to the foyer, then back in the other direction.

She buried her face in his shoulder. “I didn't mean to. I'm so embarrassed.”

“It's all right. Just keep moving.”

“Dizzy. I have to sit down.”

“Not yet. Walk it out.”

She heaved, and he took her back to the bathroom and let her spit bile into the sink. She shuddered and started to cry and put her forehead on the porcelain. He lifted her face and wiped it off again. He leaned into the hall. “Mr. Dunn? Could you bring a glass of water? No ice, room temperature.”

He closed the toilet lid and let her sit there, and when her uncle brought the water, Rick held the glass to her lips. “Not too much. Just sip it.” When she turned her head away, he said, “If you don't drink this, you'll be in the hospital with a saline drip in your arm.” She drank then leaned over the sink again, but nothing came up. When she had finished half the water in the glass, Rick walked her back to the living room.

Edgar said, “Last year I found her on the floor in the kitchen, passed out cold. I called nine-one-one. I had to sign papers to get her some help. I thought she was okay.”

“She's going to fight it the rest of her life. Do you have any antacid?”

“Yup. Got some Pepto-Bismol in my bathroom. I'll be right back.”

Rick walked her up and down the hall and around the living room, and C.J. told him how ashamed she was, and she was not a good person, she was weak and a phony, but she was glad he was there, since he knew about taking care of drunks, didn't he, because his brother had been a drunk too, and she would give anything not to go back in the hospital, and she would never never do this again.

“Please don't tell anyone. You won't, will you, Rick?”

“I won't.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

She grabbed the front of his shirt in both hands to keep her balance. “Rick, I want to tell you what I did. I called Sarah Finch. Left a message. Sorry. Can't do it.
Rich, Famous, and Deadly.
I would've been so good. I would've. But I gave it up, Rick. I left her a message . . . and said I was sorry. Thank you for con—considering me, but I can't.”

“Why'd you do that, honey?”

“You called me honey. Oh. You're such a nice man. Please don't leave.” C.J. started to cry again, getting his shirt wet. “Please don't.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

He wiped the tears off her cheeks, and they walked some more.

 

 

C.J. went to sleep on the couch with a pillow and a blanket from her bedroom. Rick had angled an armchair so he could see her if she stirred. A
lamp on the end table had three settings, and he'd put it on low. He propped his head on a fist and dozed. His eyes came open. She was looking at him. He didn't know how long she'd been awake. Two of her cats were curled up at her feet. A smaller white cat watched him from the chair near the fireplace. When Rick stretched his arms, it jumped down and hid under the chair.

C.J.'s voice came out on a whisper, like her throat was raw. “I stood you up. I'm sorry. What time is it?”

He glanced at his watch. “About four o'clock.” She looked at the dark window. “Four o'clock in the morning,” he said.

Struggling to sit up, she noticed what she was wearing—a satin nightgown with thin straps. She pulled the sheet to her chin.

Rick said, “I didn't do that. Judy Mazzio came over. Edgar called her. She's upstairs asleep in the guest room.”

“Judy. Yes, I remember.”

“What happened to you?” Rick asked.

“I screwed up, obviously.”

“It's day one. New day, new start. And it's Friday.”

“Aren't you Mr. Sunshine?” She held her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, God.”

He went over to the coffee table and opened the bottle of aspirin. “Here. Take a couple of these and drink the whole glass of water. All of it. Come on, down the hatch. You're going to feel like shit today. You should call in sick to work.”

She gave him the empty glass and wiped her mouth with her fingers. “We both get the day off. You don't have a job anymore.”

“That's right, I don't. How'd you find out?”

“Noreen Finch called me. She wanted the balance of your deposit. I told her to go to hell.”

“Good for you.”

C.J.'s smile vanished, replaced by a slit-eyed stare that he couldn't figure out. Her eyes were puffy, her makeup was gone, and her mouth turned down, pale and tight.

“What?”

She raised her knees, covering herself with the blanket. “Did Judy say anything to you about the boat at the Redfish Point marina?”

“No. What would she have said?”

“She got a list of owners. Guess whose name is on it? Carlos Moreno, the cameraman for Libi Rodriguez.”

They looked at each other in the dim lamplight. Rick nodded.

“My God. I knew you weren't telling me the whole truth, but this!”

“I couldn't tell you.”

“Oh, balls you couldn't. You didn't want to. What are you doing with Moreno?”

Rick came over and sat on the other end of the sofa. “Carlos is helping me with a story about Paul Shelby. I'm a freelance reporter.”

Her mouth came open and a small groan of disbelief came out.

“I might as well tell you now,” he said. When she continued to stare at him, he said, “Do you want to hear about it?”

She lifted her hands. “I can't wait.”

“I've known Carlos a long time. I met him in Karachi, Pakistan. I was in the Army, and he was working for Reuters. After I left the military, I bounced around doing this and that for a while, like I told you, and Carlos and I kept in touch. His wife didn't like his odds of survival, so he came home and started working in TV. I had written some articles when I was in the service and made some contacts among the press corps. I started working with a freelancer, a guy named Larry Everts, on a story about Blackwater. You probably never heard of him, but he's won a Pulitzer. He sold our piece to
The New Yorker.
I was with Blackwater at the time, so obviously my name didn't appear in the credits, but the right people told me that if I ever wanted to sell something, they'd look at it. The problem was, being out of the field I didn't have much to write about, so I said, hell, why not write a novel?

“I went to Mexico and spun my wheels. One day I got a call from Carlos. He said he had a tip from a girl who wanted money for her story, as long as he kept her name out of it. He was the only journalist she knew and trusted, but he's not a writer, so he called me.”

C.J. lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. “The girl was Alana Martin.”

“Correct. You asked why Carlos didn't sell the pictures in her portfolio. He was working with me, and besides that, he liked Alana. There wasn't any sex between them. He said his wife would kill him. Anyway,
Carlos told Alana about me, and I came to Miami to check it out. She said she was having sex with a U.S. congressman. He liked little girls, but he was afraid to go after the real thing. As a story, it had some spice, but it wasn't enough. What did interest me was the fact that the sex had been arranged as a bribe for a five-hundred-million-dollar project on U.S. surplus land. That's a bigger story than a pedophile politician cheating on his wife.

“So I called Larry Everts, and he said he'd be willing to work with me if I did the legwork in Miami. Larry had heard rumors about Shelby already. Whispers of illegal campaign donations, X corporation picking up the tab for Y product or services, and Noreen Finch using her contacts with the present administration to push her son's career. Larry would follow that up, and I'd take care of my part of the story. We knew it would take time, and I needed to get close to Shelby.

“You'd be surprised how many contacts you make in the military. The executive VP of Atlas Security is a former Navy SEAL I'd met on joint task force exercises in Guantanamo. Shelby didn't know he wanted a driver, but my friend at Atlas told him it would be a good idea to protect the family, so bingo, I had a job.”

C.J. wasn't saying anything, just staring at him.

“I watched Shelby for two months,” Rick said. “I dropped him off at Milo's place three times when the wife was out of town. Shelby said they were talking about The Aquarius, but nobody else seemed to be around. Alana said he never had any girl more than once, except for her. Shelby liked her acting ability, I'll put it that way. Alana gave me the names of other girls who had been with Shelby. There was a pattern. Long hair, skinny, looked young, from out of town. I was able to find and talk to one of them. She says she met Milo Cahill at a party and went to his house several times before he suggested she meet his friend. He didn't say who the friend was. She went to Milo's house, and he took her up into the tower on the third floor. The man was already there. There was some wine, and she thinks it was spiked with something. She has very little memory of what went on. I showed her Shelby's photo without telling her who he was. She couldn't identify him. She wasn't injured, and she refused to say it was rape. She had just turned eighteen. Milo gave her five hundred dollars.”