“But I know about it,” I said quietly, allowing him to pull me into his lap.
Brian bounced me on his knee as if trying to cheer up a brooding child. “Want me to talk to my dad? Maybe I can get him to reconsider. At the very least, let me pay you back for whatever you’re out of pocket.”
It was under two thousand dollars. I would easily raise that with a luncheon among our regular donors. “I’d rather you didn’t,” I said. “I would like to be done with this.”
Brian’s knee stilled, and he slipped his hand under my hair, lifting it up and over my shoulder so that my face was exposed. “I really admire how you’ve handled this,” he said. The right thing to do was lean in and return the kiss he was clearly angling to deliver. Denise once did this impression of me when someone tried to hug me, or cuddle up, or sit too close. Her thin shoulders shot up, her neck disappearing, and her eyes went big and horrified. You want to touch me? She was right that getting too physically close to anyone repelled me. I was afraid of what they might say and how they might smell. I’d had sex with Brian before, but it was always after a date when we’d both been properly perfumed and minted. We’d never spent the night together, and I was aghast to learn what his mouth tasted like in the morning. I parted my lips and accepted the dry slug of his tongue, realizing you have two choices in life. You either wake up to someone’s fusty kiss or you wake up alone. Pick your poison.
* * *
Later that week, I was up in my room, working through the thank-you notes, when someone shouted my name from the first floor, telling me I had a visitor.
I hurried downstairs to find Carl on my doorstep, a proper beard where I’d last seen thirtysome-hour scruff. He’d been gone six days, and it looked as if he’d come straight from the airport to my front stoop. He broke into a toothy, lopsided grin when he saw me descending the stairs, his whole face taking on a clandestine slant that indicated we shared a secret. I was blushing furiously by the time I met him at the door.
“You’re back.” I hoped I didn’t sound too worshipping.
Carl leaned down, his long eyelashes fluttering sleepily. “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
I spun on my heel, gesturing over my shoulder for Carl to follow me, using the short walk to the formal sitting room to bring my cool palms to my hot cheeks. It was lunchtime on a Friday, the sun high and white in the sky, and the girls were ferrying lifeblood through the veins of The House again, bustling to and from class, meetings, practices, appointments. In the daytime, you could almost believe none of it had happened, and maybe that’s why the nights hit us as hard as they did. The House was a pressure cooker, but at least during the day we were up and about, back doors and side doors and front doors swinging open and shut. At night, the deadbolts bolted and the drapes drawn, the reality of our situation was detained, compressing in on us with whistling force.
I pulled the double French doors closed. One of my sisters passed by on her way to band practice, her flute in its wooden carrier that I always worried might nick the walls, and she slowed her pace, peering into the narrowing entryway to see who had warranted a meeting in the formal room. I gave her a quick nothing to worry about smile just before shutting her out.
Carl let his duffel bag slide off his shoulder and lie in a heap at his feet.
“Here,” I said, reaching for it, “let me take that for you.”
Carl did a funny karate chop to my wrist, stopping me. He dropped down, butt on his heels, and unzipped the bag. I don’t know why, but I followed, plopping onto the carpet across from him. Because I wanted to. Because I was feeling cute.
Carl retrieved a yellow file folder, and instinctively, I grabbed for it. Carl held it high, out of my grasp. “So impatient, Pamela.”
“Carl!” I laughed.
“You won’t even know what you’re looking at if I don’t explain it to you first.”
I folded my hands reservedly in my lap. “Fine.”
“Seattle wasn’t all that happy when I showed up asking questions, but I wore them down. Especially after I mentioned making a FOIA request. Do you know what that is?”
I shook my head. Carl explained that the Freedom of Information Act was amended in the aftermath of Watergate, in response to the public call for more transparency from the government. “Technically,” Carl said, “the materials Seattle took from Colorado are now federal property, since they crossed state lines. They have to share them with me if I make this request, by law. Seattle knew that, and so they made me a deal.”
I stared at the file folder in Carl’s hand, too keyed up to breathe.
“They made me a copy of the container list, which catalogs every item in The Defendant’s possession during the time he was incarcerated in Colorado.” At last, Carl offered me the folder. With trembling hands, I opened it. “Let me know when you see it.”
I went down the list with my fingernail, cataloging what I was reading line by line. Interrogation tape number one, interrogation tape numbers two, three, and four—
“After he was captured,” Carl explained, “he would only speak to Seattle PD, remember? These are the recordings of those conversations.”
“I want to know what they talked about!”
Carl laughed. “Don’t we all?”
“So this is what we are going to ask about in the FOIA request?”
Carl shook his head regrettably. “You can only request physical files. Anything video or audio is protected.” This would change eventually, but not until 1996, and by then it would be too late. Carl nudged my knee. “Keep reading, though.” There was a third-edition criminal law textbook, a few family photographs, deodorant, and… I stopped. Tears of relief sprang to my eyes. “Carl,” I whispered.
“A 1977 brochure for Florida State University,” Carl said without having to look. “He’d had designs on this place for an entire year before he got here.”
I wondered where we were and what we were doing when he decided on us. I understood in a new way why premeditation carried a stiffer sentence than crimes that occurred in the heat of the moment. It was a unique kind of violation to think that when you were curled up on the couch, watching As the World Turns with your best friend, someone was plotting your demise. I found I was having difficulty swallowing. The more I tried, the tighter my throat became.
“What does this mean for us?” I asked Carl in a strained voice.
“It means I’m going straight from here to get this story down. Four thousand words on the Colorado cover-up that led to a completely preventable double homicide right here in our backyard.”
I dragged the heel of my hand beneath my chin, flicking tears onto the copy of the container list. “Oh, God, sorry,” I said, using the hem of my sweater to dab the page dry. “I’m just so relieved. They’ll have to listen to me now.”
Carl nodded with this adoring smile on his face. “It’s going to be okay, Pamela.”
“Thanks to you,” I said. I went to hand him back the document, and he leaned forward slightly. In the heat of the moment, I scooted closer and kissed him.
* * *