April 15
Told Mr. M I know what he and Rory Scanlon are up to, told him I’d found the bank statements from Continental for the Say, Yes! foundation. Said I hoped the foundation could help pay my college tuition when I go away next year. He said he’d talk to R.S.
He asked, what did I do with the papers, told him they were in a very safe place. Scary look on his face.
April 18
Ma beat me so bad tonight I want to kill her! Betty, busybody hypocrite Betty told her I’m on the Pill. Ma said I was stabbing the Blessed Mother through the womb. Went through my private things! Found the money Mr. M gave me, stole it, said it was immoral, time I learned she would never let me leave Chicago for college. I picked up kitchen knife, said, “You want to see what it’s like to stab someone through the womb, try this!” and she went insane, hit me with a frying pan. I blacked out. Came to with goose egg on head, woozy, throwing up.
Mr. W keeps saying I can stay in Vic’s room until it’s time to leave for college. Maybe I will, Ma will go insane, she hates all the Warshawskis, most of all my beloved Mrs. W.
Joel came over. I was in bathroom cleaning sick off my face. He saw my goose egg and freaked, begged me to let him marry me so he could protect me against Ma. Told him I don’t need protecting, just need to leave Chicago!!
Then he said he’d gone to Wrigley Field and found my book of papers, but he freaked when a maintenance man came in. He dropped them in the mud! They’re gone. All but one page from the Continental Bank which doesn’t mean shit on its own. I sat down in the middle of the floor and bawled my eyes out. He tried to put his arms around me and kiss me, tried to say he was in love with me. I told him to leave, to leave me alone, he ruined my plan. Anyway no man will ever own me. Not him, not Mr. M or Rory or Spike, none of them.
Joel looked so sad, slouching off down the sidewalk, almost forgave him for losing my papers, but what will I do without them?
I saw Rory Scanlon’s Buick across the street. I’m watching Joel, R.S. is watching the house like he does two or three times a week, maybe he thinks he can find something to blackmail me with. Like, if he said Joel was sleeping with me, I’d give him and Mr. M their papers back.
CLUTCH HITTER
Dead teen, and beautiful at that, life cut short, missing documents, sex with powerful men. It was a story made for TV; it went viral in an hour. By mid-morning, I was once again fielding media inquiries from as far away as Kazakhstan.
How and where had I found the diary?
It had come to me in the mail, in an anonymous envelope, no return address and according to the private forensic lab I use, no fingerprints.
How sure was I that this was really Annie’s handwriting?
I had the condolence letter Annie had written to my father; I was willing to let an independent lab compare that to the diary I was looking at—but only if Stella Guzzo would submit her diary to the same lab for the same tests.
The Kazakh media, obsessed with hockey, were more interested in Boom-Boom—did my copy of the diary vindicate him?
Other reporters had other questions, of course, about the drama at Dead Stick Pond, about the Sturlese brothers, but the main focus was on Annie’s death. Did I believe Rory Scanlon was responsible?
“I don’t know who killed Annie Guzzo. Twenty-five years ago, it seemed obvious that Stella Guzzo murdered her daughter, so no forensic evidence was taken from the crime scene. Now it’s a wide-open field. We know Annie was alive when her mother left to play bingo, but we only have these pages to suggest other names. It’s tantalizing, but we probably will never have the truth.”
In the middle of the media push, a cop came to my office, one of Bobby Mallory’s personal staff. The captain would like a word; could I ride with him to Thirty-fifth and Michigan.
Bobby had Conrad and a forensic tech with him. “I need to know about these documents, Vicki.”
Bobby was getting old; his jowly face had deeper lines around the mouth and eyes. At least he was no longer so red in the face—Eileen and his doctor had finally persuaded him to change his diet, take some blood pressure meds.
“I don’t know anything about them, other than what’s up on the Herald-Star website. They came to me in an anonymous envelope, and I don’t know if they’re real or fake. And they are in a vault right now until Stella Guzzo produces hers for comparison. Or you produce a subpoena.”
“The envelope?” Bobby held out a hand.
I took it from my briefcase: a plain manila 10x14, available at every office supply store in America. Postmarked three days ago, date-time stamped “Received” by me yesterday.