“Oh, okay. Yeah.” Carl was flustered. “Hey, Lynette,” he said to the woman as they passed each other on the stairs. The whole exchange was befuddling to me. Their dynamic did not seem romantic in the least, and yet they had to live together; otherwise, she wouldn’t feel comfortable going upstairs on her own. Roommates, maybe. His sister?
“There’s coffee made,” Carl said, clearly wanting to avoid the subject of Lynette. I had so many questions for him that I knew I had to pick my battles, and Lynette was not one worth fighting.
“That would be great,” Tina said. We followed him into the kitchen, sun-warmed via a sliding glass door that would be so easy to shatter. I stared at that glass door, quietly seething at the discrepancy in our threat levels, that Carl could write the fawning twaddle he did only because his was tuned so low.
“Milk? Sugar?” Carl asked, stalling before the open refrigerator.
“Sugar,” I said.
“Black,” said Tina.
Carl placed a dented box of white sugar on the kitchen table and poured us each a mug. Cold. On top of being a turncoat, he was a lousy host. This was the thing that undid me.
“What’s going on, Carl?” I asked bluntly. “You’re avoiding my calls. You stopped answering my letters. And what you’re writing about him—I thought journalists were supposed to be unbiased.”
Carl returned the carafe to the coffeemaker and faced me slowly. “Do you not see, Pamela”—he was speaking in this pandering tone that made me want to throw my cold coffee in his face—“the irony in saying that to me when you’re so clearly biased?”
“You wrote that he was working his way through law school,” I pandered right back. I didn’t need to scream and shout; I didn’t even need to raise my voice, the facts were that loud. “But working where?” I made my eyes big—this wasn’t a rhetorical question. I wanted him to give me an answer.
“I’d have to check my notes,” he said.
Tina groaned like someone had made a corny joke.
“I’ll save you the trouble,” I said. “He was collecting unemployment checks, Carl. And stealing antique rugs from nice hotels on the side.”
Carl shrugged in a pouty way that eradicated everything I’d once found attractive about him.
“You also said he’s personable and bright,” I continued acerbically, “with a girlfriend and many friends who believe he is innocent. But his girlfriend was the one who called the tip line on him.” I paused, in case he had a response to this, knowing he would not. His face was baby pink by the time I got to the inarguable kicker: “If this is the route you’re going to go, painting him as some kind of legal shark, at least have a word with your photo editor. It’s disrespectful to be sitting on the counsel table while addressing the judge.”
Tina added disdainfully, “I called your editor, Carl. He said you pulled the Colorado piece yourself. Some bullshit like there not being much to the story after all.”
Carl didn’t deny it, confirming everything.
“Excuse me,” he retorted, “are you with me in the courtroom, seeing what I see every day? Have you spoken to any of his friends and family? Have you spoken to—” He broke off huffily. “Forget it. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
I gasped. “Are you speaking to him?” That’s what he was about to say, I was certain of it.
“We’ve exchanged a few letters,” Carl admitted.
Tina stared at him like he was the most repugnant person she’d ever shared oxygen with.
“You said the person who did what he did to Denise deserved to burn,” I reminded him, hot tears blurring my vision. I had trusted him, and I was ashamed of how little it had taken. Green eyes. One fair article in the paper about Denise. Carl ducked his head, sweeping breakfast crumbs into his hand and dusting them into the trash can. Then he wiped down the counter with a dampened dish towel for good measure. I knew a thing or two about cleaning to avoid facing oneself.
“He used a hair spray bottle on her!” I roared, only because Carl had made it clear he was not amenable to reality, to the truth. I wanted everyone to know—Lynette upstairs, the woman out on the street walking that good dog, the neighbors to the left and to the right—that Carl was devoid of dignity, of humanity.
Carl cowered behind the kitchen counter, saying sorely, “This case is getting national attention. And it’s all going down right here in my backyard. I have interest from a publisher for a book. I… This is what people want to hear about, Pamela.”
I saw, so clearly, the copy of Helter Skelter in Carl’s bag, placed mistakenly in my room during that trip to Colorado. It had become a sensation, thanks to the prosecutor-turned-author’s firsthand access to the case. The cold coffee churned in my stomach. He’d been planning this all along.
That woman—Lynette—was standing at the threshold to the kitchen. She saw my agonized expression, saw the worried way Tina was looking at me, and her face softened sympathetically. “I am so sorry,” she said, sounding like she meant it. “Um, Carl. He’s asking for you. Normally, I would tell him you left for work already, but he can hear all the voices, and he’s getting agitated.”
“I’ll be right up, Lynette,” Carl said stiffly. Lynette retreated up the stairs while Carl stood unmoving, his head hung and hair in his eyes. “My dad. He’s not well. So I’ve got his care to worry about, the house, all our bills. I’m sorry,” he said, holding my gaze finally, as though having a sick father justified what he’d done to us. “Really, I am. But people are fascinated with him. What would you have me do?”
“You can go to hell,” Tina said ruthlessly. She grabbed my arm and pulled me out of there.
* * *
In the car, Tina watched as I stabbed at the ignition with the key. I finally landed one of the blows, then nearly took out Carl’s mailbox when I hit the gas in reverse. “Fuck you!” I exploded at the gearshift.
“Get out,” Tina said. “You shouldn’t be driving right now.”
I released my seat belt, and we passed each other around the front of the car. Tina turned the key, put the car back in reverse, and bulldozed Carl’s mailbox cleanly to the ground before driving off at a leisurely Sunday speed.
One day soon, Carl would secure the exclusive interview with The Defendant he so unilaterally sought, and in a few short years, he would publish a briefly bestselling true-crime novel that was adapted into one decent television movie of the week and one very bad straight-to-videotape production. There were other, better books turned into movies with other, better actors. Occasionally over the years, I would catch Carl on some obscure hour of a morning talk show, hawking a rerelease of his book that supposedly contained explosive new material. Carl always seemed like the guy the booker scheduled because they couldn’t get the guy who wrote the blockbuster. Still, Tina and I read and watched everything Carl did, hoping for some sort of update on the Lake Sammamish disappearances. But Carl couldn’t answer for it. No one could. Eventually, her hopes dashed one too many times, Tina called a moratorium on all things Carl and Lake Sammamish. There would be no knowing for her, and she needed to find a way to accept that so she could grieve it and carve out some semblance of a life for herself.
So when the missive landed in my mailbox—You may not remember me, but I have never forgotten you—I kept it from Tina. It was embargoed content until I could tell her it was time to hope again.
February 12, 2021
Dear Pamela,
You may not remember me, but I have never forgotten you, nor the night, forty-three years ago, when I called you at The House to offer what little assistance I could. I would not be surprised if your brain overwrote my memory, as that’s what healthy brains do in traumatic and stressful situations. I know this because I work in the science of memory disorders.