Authors: Unknown Author
When April saw Kathryn’s expression she let out a short hiss of breath. “I know who might have a clue,” she said.
Tim answered on the third ring.
“Have you seen it?” Kathryn asked.
“Yeah.”
Kathryn waited for him to continue, but he did not. “Nice work,” she said finally.
“Hey! Wait a minute! How much has he told you?”
“Nothing. I figured most of it out on my own.”
With a little help from Jesse Lowry
,
she thought wryly.
“Then I don’t feel comfortable — ”
“Oh, spare me, Tim!” she barked. ‘You practically accused Eberman of murder in the
Herald
and then three weeks later Randall outs him in the
Atherton Journal
.
This has got your name written all over it.”
“As I just said, I don’t feel comfortable—”
“Randall’s
gone,
Tim. He dropped his bomb and then ran for cover. Was that part of your plan?”
His shocked silence indicated she’d just scored a point. “We didn’t have a plan.”
“You helped him, though?”
“Yes.”
“Tim, you didn’t have the first clue who you were helping.”
“
What
?”
“Just get over here. I have something to show you.”
She hung up before Tim could respond. It had only taken Tim a few minutes to read “Drywater, Texas,” by Randall Stone. Once he was finished, Kathryn handed him the printout of the article on the catastrophic derailment of a Dallas-bound Southern Union train that destroyed the Valley Vista Mobile Home Park. When she knew he was finished, she waited for him to look up from the paper he held in both hands. He didn’t.
“How could a dead runaway get admitted to this school?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know.”
“So? What?” Tim tossed the paper back at her. She didn’t make a move to catch it and it fluttered to the floor.
“How did Randall get you to go along with this?”
“He had proof that Eberman murdered his wife.”
“What proof?” Kathryn barked.
“He said ...”
“Oh, he
said
!
”
“What are you trying to get at here?”
“Everything Randall has said since he got here has been a lie, Tim. He’s not from New York and his parents aren’t even alive, much less living in some apartment on Park Avenue. And his name isn’t even Randall Stone. And maybe we can add in everything he said to get you into bed with him so that you could help him do what he did this morning. Which was ruin a man’s life.”
Tim swallowed his anger and kept his voice steady. “You think he’s lying about Eberman?”
“I don’t know where it ends with him, Tim. And you don’t either.”
“Kathryn, for two people with no investigative experience, we turned up some evidence—”
“Really?” She picked up her copy of
The Atherton Journal
.
“Why isn’t any of it in here? We’ve got Randall in bed with Eberman. We’ve even got Randall going down on Eberman in his friggin’ office. But nothing about murder.”
Tim rose from the chair as if it would be easier to speak to the vanity. “Because I fucked up. Look. ..” He turned as if he was arguing his case before a judge. “We found a letter that Lisa had written to a divorce attorney. Something about a property dispute. Anyway, the important thing was that it proved she was planning on getting a divorce. But Randall was still too chicken to come forward. I mean, some of the shit he was saying ... It was crazy. Anyway, last night, I delivered the letter to the attorney it was addressed to, thinking that even if Randall didn’t talk, a letter from a dead woman would be enough to reopen the case. Well, it turns out I put our most important piece of evidence behind the iron wall of attorney-client privilege.”
“The lawyer won’t talk?”
“Not to us. He’ll talk to the police, who don’t even know what he has. Richard couldn’t mention the letter without a quote.”
“Because you stole it,” Kathryn answered, unable to keep the reproach out of her voice.
“Look, I don’t know what you want!”
“Take a look outside, Tim. Look at what you and Randall have done. Don’t you think that if Randall’s allowed to slaughter Dr. Eberman’s reputation just by talking to a reporter, it’s only fair that the reporters crawling all over this campus know exactly who’s making these accusations?”
“It’s not an accusation, Kathryn. They were fucking.”
“Tim!”
“All right. So Randall lied about his past. Maybe he was ashamed of being an orphan. Maybe he grew tip in foster homes. That doesn’t change the fact that together he and I found compelling evidence that Eric Eberman murdered his wife! And considering that this porno article in the
Journal
is the best we could do, I’m not going to jeopardize any chance of getting the police to look at this again!”
Kathryn shook her head at Tim’s resistance. “He changed his name, Tim. He came here with a fake identity prepared. He wasn’t just ashamed of his past. He’s eighteen and he
erased
it. He’s not just an orphan who grew up in foster homes. He’s a con artist, Tim, and he pulled one over on you, me, and maybe even Eric Eberman.”
“Kind of stupid for a
con artist
to write down his big secret and just give it to you, isn’t it?”
“He told me it was just a story.”
“Still, he gave it to you.” Tim sounded happy to have a new battleground to stand on. “You want to know what he told me about you?”
“I probably won’t believe it.”
“He thought he was Eric’s motive for killing his wife. And part of him liked that. But another part of him stayed awake nights just thinking about what
you
would think if you knew what he had done. Sleeping with a married man. He thought if he found out the truth it would make it all easier for you to accept in the end.”
Kathryn looked away, shaking her head free of Tim’s words and the memory that after giving her the story, Randall had pleaded with her not to show it to anyone else. And she had agreed.
“You’re probably the only one here he holds himself accountable to.” “He’s not here anymore,” she muttered.
Nor was Jesse. And what had he written on Randall when he discovered that Randall’s entire identity was fabricated, that Randall was a runaway believed dead? Jesse had called it awe-inspiring.
“The fact that Randall just decided to leave town fucks with his whole credibility,” Tim said. “Since I honestly believe that the strength of his accusations are the only thing that’s going to help get at the truth here, I’ll do something that should satisfy you.”
Kathryn felt something go soft inside her chest. “What?”
“ ‘Who is Randall Stone?’ That’ll be the headline.”
“In the
Herald
?”
“Yeah. It’ll have to be subtle, and it’ll have to be mainly about the fact that he’s skipped town. The
Herald
will make it clear that in its attempt to write a fair and balanced piece it was unable to find any way to contact Randall Stone. Which will put the university on the spot, since they’re the only ones who have any concrete documentation on him. And if his identity is really as fake as you think it is, Atherton will figure out they’ve been conned too. Although how the twelfth-ranked school in the nation doesn’t already know is beyond me.”
Kathryn nodded. “You just want to force him to come back and defend himself.”
“
Yeah
,
I do,” Tim answered sharply. “And maybe when you get over how much he betrayed you, you’ll remember there’s a dead woman at the middle of this.”
Chastened, she took a breath before responding. “Fine. But he ran away before. Maybe he’s done it again.”
Tim rolled his eyes and moved for the door.
“Tim?”
He stopped without turning.
“You really believe she was murdered.”
“Yes.”
“You believe everything Randall told you?”
Tim turned. “I don’t have to. The letter we found made it clear that Lisa knew her husband handed over an entire house to one of his grad students for free. Randall thinks they were some kind of cult, but that just sounds crazy... .”
“Who?” Kathryn asked. Her blood had gone cold.
“What?”
“A grad student?”
“Some guy named Mitchell Seaver. Total prick. Anyway, Randall thinks Mitchell used it to start some whacked-out cult that holds orgies or something. He found this weird essay in Eric’s house, obviously written to Mitchell, from this girl who’d been molested by her uncle. He tried to tell me it was some kind of application. The point is he was grabbing at straws, trying to delay the inevitable.”
Cult
.
The word burned across her mind, stopped her breath in her throat.
Tim continued, “Lisa was divorcing Eric and it wasn’t going to be pretty. Given his extracurricular activities, I think Eric would have liked to see that not happen.”
She couldn’t bring herself to look up from the floor as Tim left the room. She was thinking of the essay she had slid into the mailbox at 231 Slope Street. Her stomach turned at the thought of six people reading it.
As Kathryn approached 231 Slope Street, the brownstone rose out of what looked like an erupting cotton field; snowflakes were camouflaged by the milky white sky and visible only where they skittered across the house’s facade. With gloved fingers she dug into the mailbox slot, hoping to feel the slip of her essay against the metal, but the box had been emptied, her essay presumably taken in with the mail. The house’s gate was locked.
Behind her an engine groaned up the hill. Kathryn saw a Honda Civic round the far corner—Maria’s car. She crammed her back against one of the stone posts, listening as the Civic slowed to a halt. The driveway gate clanged open and the Civics tires crunched gravel.
Kathryn stepped out from her cover to see the gate make its slow swing shut. She ducked through it, as close to the hedge line as possible.
At the end of the driveway, Maria popped the Civic’s trunk. She and Lauren dug inside and backed up, carrying opposite ends of something large and heavy. They squeezed between the car and the house’s side wall. Whatever they were holding responded with a clinking of glass.
Kathryn waited until Maria and Lauren had disappeared behind the house. Then she moved quickly down the driveway and along the wall. At the back corner of the house, she could hear the girls grunting as they moved up the back steps. “Why don’t we take some of them out?” Lauren asked.
“Just keep moving. Please.” Maria’s voice was tight.
Kathryn dared to peer around the corner. They were inside, Maria’s butt still propping the back door open. Kathryn reached out and caught the edge of the door, letting it close on her gloved hand.
Footsteps scraped across the kitchen floor, followed by the thuds of glass bottles hitting the countertop. Kathryn kept her hand wedged in the door. Snow dusted her face.
“All right. What first?” Lauren’s voice asked.
“Start by opening them.”
“Yeah. I figured.”
“This isn’t calculus, Lauren. You’ve seen Mitchell do it a hundred times.”
“Stop it, already!” Lauren snapped. “I barely even know the guy and you’re treating me like I was his best friend. I understand you’re upset but— ”
“That’s
all
you understand,” Maria barked. Where was the delicate, doe-eyed girl Kathryn had been introduced to at the library? After a tense silence, Maria continued, tone steady, “Grind them until there aren’t any lumps. Use the funnel to get them in the bottle and try to make sure it doesn’t stick to the side. Then put them back in the case ...”
“I can’t believe you’re blaming me for this!’’ Lauren cut her off.
“It was a stupid idea, Lauren!”
“Why? If Mitchell wanted to know so badly, who better to tell him than that. . .
faggot’s
best friend? You should have seen them at the beginning of the year, they were like —”
“I don’t care what they we’re like!” Maria shouted, sounding nothing like an angry girlfriend, and too much like a mentor whose patience had been tested to its limit. “Unlike Mitchell, I didn’t care what Eric was doing in bed with anyone. But—”
“I told him to
talk
to her.”
Maria continued over her, “But now she’s just a step away from living in this house. Can you not see why that bothers me?”
Kathryn heard rapid footsteps leaving the kitchen and assumed that Lauren had exited in a huff. But it was Lauren’s voice that shouted, “How the hell was I supposed to know her boyfriend almost gave her AIDS?”
Kathryn’s hand blocking the door tensed around its edge. The first sting of betrayal gave way to a cold fury that fueled her courage. She peered through the cracked door. Lauren stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at four bottles of white wine on the counter in front of her. She turned to one of the cabinets, reached in, and removed something. Kathryn saw her prying at the childproof lock on a bottle of prescription medication.
Lauren uncapped the bottle and emptied pills into a ceramic mortar on the counter. She picked up the pestle lying next to it and angrily ground the pills into a powder.
Previously, Lauren’s transformation had seemed cosmetic to Kathryn. But watching her now, Kathryn saw dark circles under her eyes that dramatized the pallor of her skin, which itself seemed more drawn. She’d lost weight, and the simple task of grinding the pills left her breathless. Then her attention began to wander from her repetitive work. Her eyes drifted to Kathryn’s unwavering gaze.