The Pain of Others

  Only when the Mercedes had disappeared did she climb out of the bushes. Shivering, shoulders scraped, head pounding not only with a hangover, but a new element of suffering—coffee-deprivation.

  She jogged uphill to where the driveway widened and cut a roomy circle back into itself. Up the brick steps onto the covered porch, where she rang the doorbell twice, struggling to catch her breath.

  10:08 by her BlackBerry as footsteps approached from the other side of the door.

  When it finally opened and Daphne Rochefort stood in the threshold in a lavender terrycloth robe, Letty realized she had given no prior consideration to exactly what she might say to this woman, had thought through and executed getting here, but nothing after.

  “Yes?”

  “Daphne?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “What can I do for you?” Though at face value the words were all southern hospitality, the delivery carried a distinct northern draft.

  Letty rubbed her bare arms, figured she probably still reeked of alcohol and vomit.

  “There’s a man coming here to kill you.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I know this must sound—”

  “You smell like booze.”

  “You have to listen to me.”

  “I want you off my porch.”

  “Please, just—”

  “I’m calling the police.”

  “Good, call the police.”

  Daphne retreated to slam the door, but Letty darted forward, planting her right heel across the doorframe. “I’m trying to help you. Just give me two minutes.”

  Letty followed Daphne past the staircase, down a hallway into an enormous kitchen full of marble and stainless steel and redolent of chopped onions and cooking eggs. Daphne went to the stove, flipped an omelet, and began to peel a banana. “What’s your name?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “So talk,” she said.

  Letty stood across the island from her, light flooding in through the large windows behind the sink, the coffeemaker at the end of its brewing cycle, gurgling like it’d had its throat cut.

  “Here’s the Clif Notes,” Letty said, “ because we don’t have much time. I went to the Grove Park Inn yesterday. Someone hooked me up with a master keycard, tipped me off to which rooms might be worth hitting.”

  “You’re a thief.”

  “I was in the last room of the day when the guest came back unexpectedly. I had to hide in the closet.”

  “I’m failing to see—”

  “Chase was with him.” Daphne stopped slicing the banana. “Your husband gave this man, Arnold, a key to your house. A photo of you. A floor plan. And twenty-five thousand dollars to murder you.”

  Daphne looked up from the cutting board, her bright, black eyes leveled upon Letty like a double-barreled shotgun. Her smile exposed a row of exquisite teeth.

  “I want you to leave right now.”

  “You think I’m lying? I didn’t want to come here. I had a chance to steal the twenty-five thousand this morning. Could’ve gone home, had nothing more to do with any of this. You don’t know me, but this isn’t like me, this…selflessness. I’ve been to prison too many times. I can’t take another felony charge. Getting involved in this was a great risk for me.”

  Daphne took up the knife again, continued cutting the banana.

  Letty spotted the clock on the microwave. “I can prove it to you. It’s 10:11. In exactly four minutes, your husband will call you. He’ll tell you he can’t find his wallet. He’ll ask you to go upstairs to your bedroom and check in his bedside table. If he calls, will you believe me?”

  Daphne glanced at the microwave clock, then back at Letty. Honest to God fear in her eyes for the first time. A solemn, crushing focus. She nodded. The eggs burning.

  “How will he reach you?” Letty asked. “Landline? Cell?”

  “My iPhone.”

  “Can we take the Beamer in the driveway?”

  “I’m not leaving with you.”

  “You don’t understand. By the time your husband calls you, it’ll be too late. The point of the phone call is to get you upstairs so Arnold can break in.”

  “You want to leave right now?”

  “This second.”

  Daphne moved the pan to a cold burner and turned off the gas. They walked back down the hall, past a wall adorned with family and individual portraits and a collage of photographs—grinning babies and toddlers.

  In the foyer, Daphne plucked a set of keys from a ceramic bowl beside a coat rack and opened the front door. The yard brilliant with strands of light that passed through the trees and struck the lawn in splashes of green.

  Ten steps from the silver Beamer, Letty grabbed Daphne’s arm and spun her around with a hard jerk.

  “Ouch.”

  “Back inside.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a car parked halfway up your driveway behind the rhododendron.”

  They went back up the steps.

  “You have the house key?” Letty asked.

  Crossed the porch, Daphne struggling with the keys as they arrived at the door, finally sliding the right one into the deadbolt. Back into the house and Daphne shut the wide oak door after them, relocked the deadbolt, the doorknob, the chain.

  “I should check the back door,” Daphne said.

  “It doesn’t matter. He has a key and Chase left a window open. You have a gun in the house?”

  Daphne nodded.

  “Show me.”

  Daphne ran up the staircase, Letty kicking off her heels as she followed. By the top of the stairs, her pulse had become a thumping in her temples—exertion and panic. They turned down a hallway, passed an office, a bright-white studio filled with sunlight and tedious acrylic paintings of mountain scenes, then two children’s bedrooms that emanated the frozen perfection of unlived-in space. At the end of the hall, French doors opened into a master suite built in the shape of an octagon, the walls rising to a vaulted ceiling that was punctured with skylights.

  Chirping crickets stopped them both. Daphne withdrew her iPhone from the pocket of her robe and forced a smile that managed to bleed through into her voice.

  “Hi, Honey… …no, it’s fine… …upstairs… …sure.” Daphne stepped into a walk-in closet, hit the lights. Letty lingered in the doorway, watched her reach through a wall of suits, emerging a moment later with a pump-action shotgun.

  She mouthed, “Loaded?”

  Daphne nodded. “Chase, it’s not in here. Want me to check downstairs?” Letty took the gun from Daphne. “All right,” Daphne said. “You two have fun.”

  Letty whispered, “Call Nine-one-one,” and while Daphne dialed, Letty flicked off the safety and racked a shell into the chamber. She peered around the corner, down the hall. The house stood silent. She moved out of the closet and into a lavish master bath the size of her apartment, the tile cool on her bare feet.

  Garden tub. Immense stone shower with a chrome fixture a foot in diameter. Long countertops cut from Italian granite.

  Letty opened the glass shower door and cranked the handle. Preheated water rained down. The glass steamed. She returned to the bedroom, shutting the door behind her, found Daphne standing just inside the closet.

  “Why’d you run the shower?” she whispered.

  “Are the police coming?”

  “Yes.”

  Letty killed the lights. “Go crouch down in the corner behind those dresses and turn your phone off.” As Daphne retreated into the darkness, Letty pulled the door closed and padded out into the hall, making her way between the easels in the studio to the big windows that overlooked the front yard.

  The car in the driveway hadn’t moved. A black 4Runner. Empty.

  She walked out into the hall, straining to pick out the whine of approaching sirens.

  Had the central heat been running, it would’ve completely escaped her notice, and even in the perfect silence she still nearly missed it—just around the corner and severa
l feet down, the faintest groan of hardwood fibers bowing under the weight of a footstep.

  Letty backpedaled into the studio and stepped behind the open door.

  Through the crack, she eyed the hall.

  Arnold appeared without a sound, wearing blue jeans and a fleece pullover. For a second, she thought there must be something wrong with his hands, their paleness. Latex gloves. Navy socks with strips of rubber gripping kept his footfalls absolutely silent and he moved slowly and with great precision down the hall, a black pistol at his side that had been fitted with a long suppressor.

  Arnold stopped in the doorway of the master suite.

  Waited a full minute.

  Nothing but the white noise of the shower.

  In the time it took Letty to step out from behind the door and peek into the hall, Arnold had disappeared.

  She held the shotgun at waist-level and started toward the master suite. The half-speed fog of her hangover was replaced with a throbbing vigilance and a metal taste in the back of her throat that had come only a handful of times in her life—fights in prison, the three occasions she’d faced a judge to be sentenced, her father’s funeral.

  She entered the master suite again. Steam poured out of the bathroom and Arnold stood in the doorway with his back to her. She felt lightheaded and weak, unable to summon her voice just yet, not fully committed to the idea of being in this moment.

  Arnold walked into the steamy bathroom and Letty edged farther into the room, past the unmade bed and the stair climber, the shotgun trained on Arnold’s back through the open doorway, slightly obscured in the mist.

  “You have a shotgun pointed at your back.”

  He flinched at the sound of her voice. “Don’t turn around. Don’t move. Drop the gun.” Arnold didn’t move, but he didn’t drop the gun either. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’ll tell you again.” It clattered on the tile. “Kick it away from you.” The gun slid across the floor, coming to rest against the cabinets under the sink. Letty closed the distance between them, now standing in the bathroom doorway, close enough to smell the remnants of his cologne. “Keep your hands out in front of you and turn around.” When he saw her, his eyes betrayed only a glimmer of surprise. “Sit down, Arnold.” He sat at the base of the shower as Letty stepped into the bathroom, clouds of mist swirling between them.

  He said, “What are you, a cop?”

  “I was in your room yesterday afternoon when you and Chase came in. I hid in the closet. Heard everything you said.”

  “So you’re a thief. That means we can work this out.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Can I get something out of my pocket?”

  “Slowly.”

  He reached into his fleece jacket, withdrew a set of keys, let them jingle. “The 4Runner’s new. There’s a briefcase with twenty-five thousand in cash in the front seat.”

  “I know about the briefcase.”

  “I can just go home. That’s a good score for you Letty. Bet you never had a payday like that.”

  “And you go back to doing what you do?”

  He smiled, shook his head. “The people I work for…if they want someone dead, that person’s going to die. It’s their will that causes it to happen. Not mine. They pull the trigger. I’m just the bullet. The damage. And I’m not the only bullet. So really, Letty. Why get yourself tangled up in this? You’re a thief, a tweaker. You been to prison?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why not stay out of the affairs of the spoiled rich? Why do you care so much to interfere? To put yourself at risk, which you’ve done?”

  “Late at night, when you’re alone, do you ever feel like somewhere along the way, you crossed this line you didn’t see? Actually sold yourself out?”

  Arnold just stared at her as the shower beat down on the stone.

  “I thought I was completely lost, Arnie. And then I found myself hiding in that closet in your room, and I saw a chance to go back to the other side of the line.”

  Letty heard the closet door swing open. Daphne came and stood beside her.

  “My husband paid you to kill me?”

  Arnold made no response. Daphne walked over to the sinks, bent down, picked up his gun.

  “You shouldn’t touch that, Daphne. The police are coming.”

  “Not yet they aren’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re an ex-con. I don’t want you taking any flak considering you were stealing from the guests of the Grove Park Inn when you got involved. Take his car and his money. I’ll call the police after you’re gone.”

  “That’s your money, Daphne.”

  “No, it’s Chase’s.” She aimed Arnold’s gun at him. “Keys.”

  He tossed them to Letty.

  “I don’t want to leave you here alone with him, Daphne.”

  “I’ll be all right.” She took the shotgun.

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “You saved my life, Letty. I’ll never forget it. Now go.”

  Five days later, at 6:01 p.m., Chase Rochefort stepped off the elevator, dressed to the nines in a light grey Coppley and a cobalt Oxford, engaged with his iPhone as he breezed through the lobby of the neo-gothic Jackson Building whose twelfth floor housed his law practice—Rochefort, Bloodsworth & Sax, LLC. The stunning redhead followed him out onto the street, sprouting her umbrella against the drizzly Friday evening. Trailed him along South Pack Square to North Market, and then several blocks to the intersection with Woodfin, where Rochefort entered the Sheraton Hotel.

  He sat at the corner of the chophouse bar, letting his Chilean sea bass turn cold and drinking double Powers on the rocks with twists of lemon like his life depended on it. Halfway through his sixth, the barstool beside him opened up and Letty claimed it and ordered a glass of Merlot.

  While the barkeep poured her wine, Letty reached over, patted Chase’s hand, and asked with faux-empathy, “How you holding up?” Searched his face for some tell of the preceding weeks’ stress, but no indication presented aside from a darkness under his eyes that had mostly been erased with concealer and the blush of Irish whiskey.

  He worked up a glassy-eyed smile, slurred, “We know each other?”

  “Well, I certainly know you.”

  The barkeep returned with her wine. “That’s ten dollars. Would you like to start a—”

  Chase tapped his chest. “My tab.”

  “Of course, Mr. Rochefort.”

  Chase banged his rocks glass against Letty’s wineglass and threw back the rest of his whiskey. “Have I sued you before?” he asked, excavating the lemon from the melting cubes of ice, crunching the rind between his back molars.

  “No, you haven’t sued me.”

  “Good.” He grinned. “I’ve sued half the people in this town.”

  The barkeep arrived with a fresh double Powers on the rocks and swapped it out for Chase’s empty glass.

  “But I was curious about something,” Letty asked, letting her left knee brush against his leg.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve read the Citizen-Times cover to cover for the last five days and there’s been no mention of it.” He sipped his new drink, Letty wondering about the depth of his intoxication, how much of this was sliding past him. “I’ve called your home. Never got an answer. You and Skyler have been living out of this hotel all week, and you come down here and drink yourself into a stupor every night.”

  His face paled slightly through the Powers glow. “Who are you?”

  “I was there, Chase.”

  “Where? What are you talking about?”

  She leaned over, whispered in his ear: “Room 5212 at the Grove Park Inn when you met with Arnold LeBreck and hired him to murder your wife. I was in the closet. I heard everything.”

  He drew back, the noise of the chophouse swelling—thirty separate conversations intermingled with the clink of glassware and china.

  She said, “Last Sunday morning, I went to your hou
se in Montford. I told your wife everything—”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “—and when I left, she was holding a shotgun on Mr. LeBreck and on the verge of calling the police. I should never have left her…

  “But as I just mentioned, nothing in the papers. No sign of Daphne. So I’m sitting here wondering what happened, but before you answer, let me tell you that I’ve written a letter to the Asheville Police Department providing a firsthand account, and it will be delivered tomorrow by a friend of mine should I become scarce.”