“You can come in,” I heard her mumble on the other side. Or maybe it was You can’t come in? I was already opening the door.
Tina was curled up on one of those fainting sofas under a trio of bay windows. The room was big; too big. It was clover-shaped, the canopy bed in the center surrounded by nooks for office, dressing, and living areas. In just this one bedroom, there was more furniture than we had on the first floor of my house. I don’t have a problem pitying rich people. There are a lot of sad things in this world, and getting everything you want only to realize you are still empty inside is certainly one of them.
“Oh,” Tina said, a little sullenly, when she saw me. “I thought you were Frances.”
I stepped back. “I can get her.”
Tina considered. “No. Don’t. She always takes Janelle’s side, anyway. Can you close the door? I don’t want anyone to hear us.”
I shut the door, bursting with importance. Tina had chosen me as a confidante. She shifted over, making room for me on the sofa. The windows looked down on the back of the property, where Tina and her late husband must have been building a pool before he died.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Tina said tearfully.
“About what? What’s happened, Tina?”
Tina picked at a loose thread in her sweater. She didn’t seem to want to answer. “I have to attend this conference in Aspen this weekend. I’m supposed to do a mock therapy session. It’s all part of my work experience. Janelle was supposed to come with me and help me practice and just be there for me.” Tina covered her face and wailed, “She promised me.”
I was glad Tina was covering her face so she couldn’t see the bafflement on mine. That was what she was so upset about? “Can’t you go without her?”
“I have to speak in front of a bunch of people who will be judging me, and I’m terrified. And… and there’s just a lot about this trip that will be hard for me.” Tina used the cuff of her sweater to wipe away her tears. “It’s a long story. But she knows it. And she’s just abandoning me anyway.”
I was still confused. “Why isn’t she going anymore?”
“Because she’s married.”
“Won’t her husband let her go?”
Tina gazed down at the ragged hole in her backyard with a bitter laugh. “He doesn’t even know about me.” She drew her thighs to her chest and made herself into a tight little ball. “We loved each other, Ruth.” She glanced at me over the ledge of knees bashfully, waiting to see how I would react.
I was thunderstruck. I was elated. I was devastated, and I was angry. My face took her along for the ride, so I could tell she had no idea what was going through my mind. But you’re not sick, is what I was thinking. You’re young and beautiful, wealthy and educated, loved, respected by Frances, a therapist for twenty-five years. Is it possible to be thatand not be sick?
“I’ll go with you,” I declared boldly. I pictured telling my mother that I was going away with the woman who lived in the Spanish mansion: payback for picking on me earlier. She would be oozing with nosy questions, but she would have too much pride to ask any of them. It was the perfect revenge.
“We have to fly,” Tina said cautiously. “It’s far.”
“I know.” I rolled my eyes as if I’d been to Aspen a thousand times.
“Company would be nice,” Tina said to herself, cheering some as she gave my offer serious thought. “You really don’t mind?”
I grinned. “I’m due for an adventure.”
Pamela
Aspen, 1978
Day 12
I asked Carl to come with us to Colorado, telling myself it had everything to do with getting justice for Denise and nothing at all to do with the way he had looked up at me from the corner of her bed. Like what I had to say was not just interesting but important.
It was four years before the release of the Meryl Streep movie Sophie’s Choice, before the title took root in the public consciousness, but when the police asked me if I wanted to press charges against Roger, that was very much my predicament. A prosecutor could easily argue that the presence of a weapon—the Swiss Army knife—met the criteria for aggravated kidnapping, a felony charge that could carry a life sentence.
Though it would be a service to the women of Tallahassee to put him away for life, a felony charge was sure to only bolster the police’s theory that this was their guy. And what would happen when the press got ahold of the news? When the public heard about it? A twenty-eight-year-old man who had spent a year in an institution, falsified his transcript to pose as a college freshman, and dated the girl who was murdered first. Roger looked so good for it that I sometimes wanted to believe it. I’d have to remind myself: But you saw him. And yes, for a second you thought it was him. So maybe it was him. No. Stop this. You saw him and it wasn’t. That was the obstacle course my mind laid out every time my head hit the pillow. Sleep, the unreachable finish line.
I asked Sheriff Cruso for the weekend to think about what I wanted to do. When I called Carl, it was my attempt to have it both ways—Roger prosecuted at the felony level and the media on my side.
“I have a story for you,” I told Carl.
Carl listened while I spelled it out. Police incompetence, at a criminal level, that had led to two deaths and three beatings here in Florida.
“He escaped twice under Colorado’s watch,” I stressed. “We know how it happened in Aspen, but how do they move him to a so-called higher-security prison and let it happen again? It’s malfeasance, and you could be the one to expose it.”
Carl put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke to someone in the background, asking for a pen so he could write down my flight information. I found myself straining to make out if the voice that responded Here you go was female. You are engaged, I reminded myself. Practically.
* * *
“This is a fashion statement,” Carl said as we buckled our seat belts for takeoff.
I looked down at what I was wearing. I’d come straight from my externship at the Capitol Building in my page uniform—navy wool skirt, tights, starched white button-down, loafers swapped out for white sneakers. I’d known I’d have to race back to The House to grab my bags and make the flight. Only a few years later, this look would become popular among professional women with a commute, immortalized in the movie Working Girl, but on that January afternoon in 1978, I suppose I just looked weird.
“My externship is Wednesday and Friday mornings,” I explained.
“It’s not even been two weeks. You’re already back at that?”
I gave him a sideways look. “I never left.”
Carl did a double take. “Not even the week it happened?”
“That was a Saturday night,” I said.
Carl was staring at me, his eyes roving back and forth, like he was waiting for me to break. Surely I had to be pulling his leg.
“So by Wednesday…” I trailed off, figuring the point had been made. So by Wednesday, things had settled enough for me to get back to work.
Carl rested his head on the back of the airplane seat, closing his eyes. “You’re pretty incredible, Pamela. All you girls are.” His voice was sincere but immeasurably sad.
Tina was seated across the aisle from us, her head bowed over a marked-up map of Colorado, but at this she looked up, cocking her head curiously at me. Carl sounded like he was about to cry.
“Oh,” I said unsteadily. “I guess. I mean, we’re just doing what anyone would do in our situation.”
“No,” Carl said forcibly, “not what anyone would do.” He exhaled hard, his nostrils flaring like he was remembering something unpleasant, and opened his eyes. “I served. And when I came back, I wasn’t okay for a long time.”
The airplane was gaining speed, bumping and skidding along. I always hated this part. It never felt like we were moving fast enough, for long enough, to actually lift into the air. We hit a pocket of something as the plane nosed into the sky, and Carl’s hand flew to my wrist.
“Sorry,” he said, giving the back of my hand an apologetic pat.