“Let’s just say everyone wants me to be content with what they’re telling me.”
Paula slips off the desk and settles deep in the wing chair opposite me, pumping her shin, fleece slipper rising and falling like a metronome counting the beats until I crack. I grow conscious of new tics. The way my knee jitters. The eyelid twitch that feels visible. The compulsion to flex my own ankle every few seconds.
Finally, she breaks the spell. “We’re a lot alike, you and me, aren’t we?”
“We are?”
“Information is our oxygen.” She rises and closes the door. “If I do this for you, can you do something for me?”
“I can’t ask Kellan to ask his father about Ana Alvarez.”
“Then this.” She grabs an index card from her desk and scribbles a note, folding it once. “There’s someone I haven’t been able to get through to.” She presses it into my hand. “But she might talk to you.”
I squint as I unfold the paper. On it is the address of a house I know. Windows fogged with filth. Car on the lawn. An only son, sleeping under its roof no longer.
My palm falls open as if singed, and the card drops to the floor. “You want me to talk to Donald Jessup’s mother?”
“I know it sounds crazy. But it might bring you closure. It’s not as unusual as you might think, speaking with the relatives, especially the parents, of your perpetrator. Particularly when the perpetrator can no longer harm you.”
I look at the note, white-hot on the dark paneled floor, nearly flashing. Paula sees only me. “Yvonne Jessup would never talk to me,” I say.
“I’m only asking that you try. One question, and then you can hightail it out of there.”
“You mean I have to go inside?”
“Yvonne Jessup is something of a shut-in. Honestly, Julia, if there was anyone else I thought she would talk to, I wouldn’t ask you. She has no love for the press. Heck, she has no love for me. I simply need you to ask if she ever met or saw Donald’s parole officer. I believe that the police may have created a false record of visitations,” Paula says.
I envision a muddled, ancient woman dressed in fatigues in a room teeming with cats and trash. “What if she doesn’t remember things exactly as they happened?”
“It’s only anecdotal evidence I’m looking for. Something that will strengthen my hunch and confirm taking my investigation in that direction.”
“I do this, and you’ll use all of your resources to help me figure out what’s going on with Liv?” I ask.
“I promise. There’s another thing.” Paula drags the wing chair closer to mine and sits. “I need you to let me interview you afterward. An exclusive. You speaking to the mother of your attacker is a human interest story. Every worthwhile story contains tension between victims and perpetrators. Part of my job is to frame that conflict properly. I wouldn’t be doing my job as a reporter if I didn’t.”
I bite my lip, staring at the piece of paper.
She leans over her knees. “There’s no guarantee we’d even use the interview.”
“Tell me how you’ll look into Liv.”
“I’ll start at the hospital, for one. I have sources inside. Let’s see where that gets me first.” She plucks the note from the floor with two fingers and holds it in the air. “Just promise me one thing: if you do speak with Yvonne Jessup, call me first and let me know. As a matter of personal safety.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking the folded slip of paper, “for looking out for me.”
She covers my hand with hers, cool and light. “You have no idea how important you are to me.”
She holds my eyes, then checks her watch and rises, changing slippers for pumps. I take that as my sign to go. Anything I say now will be awkward anyway. I leave, closing the door softly behind me, and am enveloped in darkness. It seems Dorotea has drawn the heavy striped silk drapes and turned off the glass chandelier. Somewhere, a clock ticks heavily. The rose centerpiece forms a massive shadow in the center of the table. I lean over to smell one, but it smells like just the faintest whiff of grass.
“Get with it, Julie. Roses don’t smell anymore. The smell got bred out so they can be grown farther away, be bought cheaper, and last longer.”
I spin around and stagger. Hudson leans against the wall near the light switch, his arms crossed.
“Jack off,” I say, my voice shaky, rushing past him and making for the door.
He calls after me, “There’s always a price.”
TEN
363 Days After the Woods
Alice drops her sleeve, nibbling long and hard on her bottom lip. I hum the Jeopardy! theme music.
“Jesus would tell you to help thy friend,” I say.
She shakes her head, knocking her headband over her eyes and jamming it back up miserably. “Please stop! I won’t even think about going. Besides, I have to work at the rectory.”
“You yourself said Father Carl lets you leave and come back all the time, no questions.”