“What are you talking about?” I said. “Didn’t you just show us that it’s Kevin Sullivan’s number? And you found this address.”
“It could be old information—numbers get reused. There’s a way to find out.” She pulled out her phone and started scrolling. “We need someone who’s close with Terry. Do we know anyone from school?”
She was talking to me, but it was Heather who answered. “Jane. Jane Bartel.” She pulled out her own phone and dialed. “Hi, Jane, it’s Heather Lysenko.” Silence for a moment. “Thank you, I appreciate that. Yes, Daniel’s okay, thank you for asking. Listen, I have a quick question. Do you happen to have the phone number for Terry Holloway? I’m trying to reach her about the—oh, okay. That would be great, thanks so much.” She covered the phone with her hand and whispered, “She’s looking it up.”
The number wasn’t the one we had. Alison typed the number from Jane directly into her phone as Heather repeated it. Alison put it on speaker and we waited, intently watching Terry, who still stood there on her front porch talking with Julie.
It rang only three times before we saw Terry pull a phone from the pocket of her slacks, and then we heard a voice that sounded familiar. “Hello?”
Alison hung up. There was silence in the car. A sense of despair washed over me. It wasn’t Terry Holloway; this whole thing had been a waste of time. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is—this was a phrase my father had loved to repeat, one of many maxims that had made up the majority of his conversational arsenal.
Less than a minute after we hung up, Julie said her good-byes and crossed back to the car. “It’s not her,” she and Alison said at the same time. The smile Julie had been wearing with Terry was gone; she looked pale and drawn. “What are we going to do?”
Nobody answered. Alison seemed particularly quiet, probably because she was the one who’d led us on this wild-goose chase. She’d called me a drunk—and so had Heather—but it wasn’t true. I’d had a glass of wine, maybe two, before leaving the house. Just to help take the edge off. I was perfectly lucid and I tried to examine all the different options, ticking them off in my head as we drove in silence back to Heather’s.
Without telling anyone, I repeatedly dialed the number we’d gotten the text from. I’d hit redial, let it ring seven or eight times, hang up and then call again. If the blackmailer wanted to fuck with us, we would fuck with him. Still, I jumped when a new text bubble showed up on my screen as we pulled up in front of the house: STOP CALLING! Three days. $20K same place or police.
“He’s texting again,” Heather announced before I could say anything, just as Alison and Julie’s phones also signaled new messages.
“Why does it say ‘stop calling’? Maybe it is Terry,” Julie said as we got out of the car. “Maybe she has another phone?”
I waited until we were inside the house to confess that I’d been making the calls, which earned me a look of disgust from Alison. “Are you trying to get whoever it is to go to the police?”
“I’m trying to drive them just as crazy as they’re driving us,” I said.
“We can’t get another twenty thousand,” Heather said. “Not in three days.”
Nobody contradicted her. Julie dropped onto a chair the minute we entered the kitchen, sitting with her head in her hands, one foot nervously beating a tattoo against the marble tile. Alison picked up the receipts that had been left on the floor and stacked them neatly back on the island, while Heather ignored her, taking cups down from a cupboard.
Julie’s repeated tapping annoyed me and I stalked over to the window to get away from it, staring out over that vast backyard. The tennis court looked forlorn, nets sagging, and clumps of leftover snow dotting the parched-looking surface.
The sudden whir of the coffee machine made me jump. Heather filled cups for each of us and brought them to the table, taking a seat across from Julie. I came over to sit down next to them, but Alison stayed where she was, leaning against the island. Usually it was Julie who played peacemaker, but she was still staring down at the table. I cleared my throat. “Come have some coffee,” I said to Alison, but she ignored me.
“What if we change the meeting place,” she suggested in a musing voice. “We could pick another spot, someplace easier to stake out.”
“Why would they agree to that?” I said.
“Because she—or he—is greedy. If they want the money they have to go along with our terms.”
“We tried catching them last time—it didn’t work.”
“It didn’t work because our view got blocked. We need to pick a place that’s easier to stake out and harder for them to hide.”
“A house,” Julie said, lifting her head out of her hands. “What if we said we’ll leave the cash at my listing in that new subdivision in Edgeworth? It’s vacant—most of the houses there are vacant.”
“They won’t agree.”
“We call this asshole’s bluff,” Alison said. “Either they meet us where we say or they don’t get the cash—it’s that simple.”
“They’ll go to the police,” Heather said. “You’re going to push them into it.”
“No, they won’t.” Alison walked over to the table and picked up her mug of coffee. “Think about it. Sarah was right—if they go to the police they’ll be charged with extortion. It doesn’t help them.”
“They probably wouldn’t charge him,” I said.
“Do you think he wants to bank on ‘probably’?” Alison said before taking a sip of coffee. Nobody answered, but Julie looked more animated.
“Okay, yes, it might work,” I conceded. “But what do we do when we catch him?”
“We take the phone,” Heather said.
“And we get their address,” Alison said. “We find out where he or she lives and get the computer and any other copies of the photos.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Julie said. “What makes you think this person will cooperate with that? How are you planning to make them give you anything?”
Alison was silent for a few seconds, and then said, “We’re going to have to hit him or something.”
“Too bad we don’t have a gun.” I looked pointedly at Julie.
“We can find something,” Heather said. “What about a baseball bat?”
“That would work,” I said. “We just need to knock them out so we can get the phone.”
“We’re going to crack someone over the head with a baseball bat?” Alison asked. “We could kill them.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what we should do,” I said quietly.
Stunned silence greeted this remark. Then Alison said, “That’s crazy.”
“Is it?” I said. “What else are we going to do? Steal this guy’s phone and computer and somehow he’s just going to go away and not mention that to anyone? How exactly do you think that’s going to work?”
“You’re right,” Alison said after a long moment, her voice so low I could barely hear it. “As long as he’s alive he’s a liability.”
chapter thirty-five
ALISON
Once when I was talking about the past with my brother, he said that being a police officer had taught him that the line that separates the civil from the uncivil is very fine, and that anyone is capable of anything given the right set of circumstances. I hadn’t believed him. There was a huge difference between the monsters and us, I’d argued. It wasn’t a fine line at all, but a gulf separating the law-abiding from the lawless.