“Haven’t heard from him lately. I have to assume he has his own problems.”
We stopped on a wooden footbridge over a small stream. Yellow and red leaves floated on the dark water under us.
“Any job offers yet?” I asked.
He shrugged. “You mean, after being written up in the Times? Actually, it’s been pretty quiet. And you? Any thoughts about Sarah Lawrence?”
“Haven’t had time to think about it. I mean, I guess I want to go to a bigger school than that. I only went to the interview because my mom wanted me to. I don’t see how we could afford it now anyway.” Whit gazed away. I couldn’t see his expression. “What about you?” I asked. “The last we talked about it, you weren’t so gung ho about the school, either.”
He looked at me with those pale green eyes. Were they merely pensive, or also a little sad?
“I think I’m going to stay there. The classes are small and the professors are great, and they do offer a pretty wide range of courses.”
“But you said not that many in journalism …”
“No, not that many,” he repeated, almost wistfully.
Did that mean he wasn’t as excited about the profession as he’d been only a few days before? A light breeze blew through the trees around us, rattling the leaves. A few fell gently.
Then he said, “You might want to give Sarah Lawrence more serious consideration. Even though it’s small and close by, it could be a really good place for you.”
I wondered why he’d said that. We hardly even knew each other. How could he know what school would be good for me?
“You think?” I asked.
The slightest smile appeared on his lips. “Yeah, I do.” He pushed himself away from the railing, and we started back toward the parking lot.
And that’s when it occurred to me that maybe part of the reason he’d wanted to meet had nothing at all to do with Janet, Gabriel, Dad, or the murdered girls.
Chapter 35
BACK AT HOME, Mom and Dad were in silent mode and avoiding being in the same room at the same time. I made a conscious effort to divide my time between them. But it wasn’t easy. Mom was understandably distant, sullen, and uncommunicative; and while Dad tried to be affectionate and open, it was impossible for me to be with him without feeling furious about what he’d done.
And then there was the TV. Like the Sirens who tempted Odysseus in the Odyssey, it was both tempting and the source of great misery. We tried to keep it off as much as possible. But there were moments, usually first thing in the morning, and around dinnertime, when it was impossible to ignore.
That evening around dinnertime, hunger forced me down to the kitchen. Dad was boiling hot dogs and heating baked beans. He was clean-shaven and was wearing jeans and a freshly laundered shirt.
“Hey,” he said with an unconvincing smile. “Feel like joining me for this gastronomic extravaganza? I made a few extra dogs.”
Even though I was still angry, I started to take plates out of the cupboard.
“So how was your day?” he asked.
“Okay.” I didn’t want to talk about Jane/Janet, or the discovery of the second body.
“How are things at school?”
“Okay.”
Dad glanced at me, then nodded as if accepting the fact that I didn’t want to talk. Ever since I was a little girl, I’d been warned about strangers. About what they might offer and what they really wanted. I’d been taught to be careful and watchful and suspicious. There were men who would say or do anything to get what they desired.
But whoever thinks…that one of them could be your own father?
When the hot dogs and beans were ready, we ate in silence. I guess Dad realized that there was nothing he could say. That whatever was going to happen next between us would be my decision. In a strange way, I appreciated him for that.
At a few minutes before six, he glanced at the kitchen clock. We both knew there would be reports on the TV about the latest developments.
“We don’t have to watch,” I said.
But Dad turned it on anyway. “Can’t get worse. If it did, I’d know about it, right?”
On the TV, Police Chief Jenkins stood at a podium with microphones. His forehead glistened with sweat, and he squinted in the bright TV lights. “All right. I’ll read a short statement and then take some questions.” He put on a pair of reading glasses. “Earlier today, at the request of the police in Hartford and Scranton, we took Jane Fontana in for questioning regarding the murdered young women from those cities. Miss Fontana is an employee of the Sloan Photographic and Modeling Agency. It is alleged that she may have committed identity theft in an attempt to hide a lengthy criminal record.”
I glanced at Dad, who nodded gravely. “Until this morning I had no idea.”
I could only hope that he was telling the truth.
Chief Jenkins continued: “After several hours of questioning, as well as a search of Miss Fontana’s home and car, detectives uncovered evidence that appears to link her to the murders. Therefore, she is being held pending charges. Investigators are working on several possible motives in the case. That’s all I have to say right now.”
A barrage of questions followed. I wondered if Whit was in the crowd of reporters, but the camera stayed on the police chief. A reporter wanted to know what evidence had been found linking Janet to the two missing women. Chief Jenkins talked about traces of mud on her car that had come from the crime scenes, as well as rope that matched the rope used to tie the victims’ hands and feet. Someone else asked whether Mercedes was now considered a possible victim.
“At this time, there is no evidence linking Ms. Colon’s disappearance to those of the three girls,” the police chief replied. “But we are continuing to look into the situation.”
More questions followed, but in the kitchen, Dad and I were no longer paying attention. It felt as if we’d just come out of a trance. The police, the world, everyone would now know beyond a doubt that Dad had had nothing to do with the deaths of those girls. Both of us had tears in our eyes. Had the police arrested someone we didn’t know, those tears might have been for happiness. But because we knew Janet/Jane, and because Mercedes was missing, they were only tears of relief. Dad had finally been vindicated…at least as far as the murders were concerned. There was still the question of his behavior with the young women, but just for this moment, I decided not to focus on that.
The phone rang. The news on the TV switched to a story about unemployment, and I got up and turned it off while Dad took the call. “Hello?”
I could barely make out a man’s voice on the other end.
“Well, I’m both relieved and saddened,” Dad began in his “official statement” tone of voice, and I knew he was speaking to someone from the media. “Yes, of course, I’m quite worried about Mercedes Colon….”
A little while later, Dad went outside to make a statement for the news crews, and I went upstairs to see if Whit was online. I felt like talking to him, thanking him, really, for being one of the only people who’d resisted the temptation to rush to judgment about my father.
When I saw that he wasn’t online, I thought about calling him, but, remembering that afternoon at the reservoir, I hesitated. I still had the feeling that part of the reason he’d wanted to meet had less to do with Dad than it did with me. Why else would he have been so encouraging about Sarah Lawrence?
That’s where my thoughts were when the call came…from Whit.
I felt a smile on my lips and realized I was glad to hear from him. “Hi!”
“Good news, huh?”
“Yes…I guess, it’s just that …”
“It was Janet, or maybe I should say Jane. And Mercedes is still missing,” he said, finishing the sentence for me.
“It’s more than that. I’m still not sure she did it.”
“But…they’ve got evidence. The mud and the rope.”
“It’s just a feeling. You remember how earlier today we were both a little do
ubtful?”
“Shelby, listen, I was probably wrong about the seriously sick or seriously angry thing. They’ve got the evidence, and the motive definitely could have been that she killed those girls because they were threatening to go to the police about the scam and she knew she’d get sent back to jail. And that could explain Mercedes’s disappearance as well.”
I felt a queasy sensation in my stomach. Please not Mercedes. “I know that just having a feeling means nothing. Especially when Janet was hiding a criminal past, but it’s just such a huge leap from Internet scams to murder.”
“But—” he began.
“I have no experience with murderers, so how could I possibly know what I’m talking about, right?”
“Well, more or less, yes.”
“What if they are wrong, Whit?”
He was quiet for a moment. “You realize what you’re saying.
If you take the focus off Janet, it goes back on your father.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Maybe not in your mind, but in everyone else’s.”
“Including yours?”
He paused again, then said, “No. I’m still one of those old-fashioned people who believe that you’re innocent until proven guilty. But we both know that’s not the way a lot of people in the media world think.”
“Well, you’re the only one I’m telling this to,” I said.
“That’s smart. And don’t worry, I won’t make it the subject of my next story.”
I’d forgotten to say that I was speaking off the record. “Thank you, Whit.”
“So I’m just curious,” he said. “Since you still have this feeling that Janet might be innocent, do you plan to do something about it, or leave it alone?”
“I need to think some more.”
“So…there’s a chance you may decide to do something, even if you don’t know what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Whit paused again. Rarely has silence sounded more like disapproval. “Do me a favor? Before you do anything, promise you’ll talk to me?”
“I promise.”
Chapter 36
I DIDN’T KNOW what to expect the next day at school. A few people smiled, as if to show that they were happy for me. Others turned and whispered to their friends, just as they had during the first few days of this nightmare. But most didn’t react one way or the other, almost as if the story had never existed in the first place.
I was on my way to gym when Ashley Walsh came through the crowd in the hall and blocked my path. “I … have to talk to you,” she said with a quaver in her voice as she tilted her head toward the girls’ room. “In private.”
I felt a shiver of unease. What could she possibly want to say? But then I recalled that the last time we’d spoken, I’d had the feeling I’d asked the wrong questions.
Inside the girls’ room we primped at the mirror until the bell rang and the other girls cleared out for their classes. If there was one class I knew I could be a little late for, it was gym. As soon as the last girl left, I glanced at Ashley and was shocked to see tears in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I owe you an apology.” She sniffed.
“Why?”
“The reason Tara gives you such a hard time? It’s because of me.”
It’s so strange when you have absolutely no idea what someone is talking about. All I could do was ask “Why?” again.
Her lower lip quivered, and mascara-streaked tears left dark trails down her cheeks. “Because … he used me.”
I felt my insides go into deep freeze.
“I mean, he … he took advantage of me,” Ashley said, just to be clear.
I felt a shudder, followed by the most profound feelings of sadness and regret. “Oh God.” I put my arms around my old friend while she sobbed and trembled. “You shouldn’t be apologizing to me. I should be apologizing to you. I’m so sorry, Ashley. I’m so ashamed. I know what my father’s done, but I still can’t believe it.”
She looked up at me with surprised red eyes. “You know?”
“Not about you until just now, but two days ago, I found out … you’re not the only one. I don’t know how many there were. It’s so horrible. I’m so embarrassed to have a father like that.” Now I felt my own tears well up and spill out of my eyes. It was bad enough to know he’d done something to girls I didn’t know, but to find out he’d done it to someone right here at school—someone I’d been friends with and grown up with—was too much.
Ashley rubbed some tears from her face. “So you understand about the e-mails?”
I took a step back. E-mails? She couldn’t mean … “Not the ones from vengeance at gmail?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How do you know about them?” I blurted out.
Ashley averted her eyes and stared down at the floor. “I … sent them.”
Whatever sympathy I’d been feeling for her instantly vanished. “Are you serious?”
She looked up, a mixture of shame and pleading in her expression. “You understand, don’t you?”
“How can you expect me to understand?” I asked incredulously, feeling the blender of my emotions go into reverse, from sympathy to fury.
Ashley stared at me with her red, blotchy eyes. “But you just said—”
I cut her short. “How am I supposed to understand someone who threatens to kill me?”
Her eyes widened, and she frowned sharply. “I never …”
“How can you say that?” I asked. “You said I was the last one you’d kill.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I took out my BlackBerry, scrolled to the e-mail, and showed it to her. “You didn’t send this?”
Ashley squinted. “No way.”
“It’s from
[email protected],” I said.
She was still staring at the e-mail. “I swear I never sent this.”
“You’re saying someone else got into your Gmail account and sent it?” I asked doubtfully.
Ashley was still studying the e-mail. “Do you still have the others? The ones I did send?”
“Yes.”
“Could you show me one?”
It made no sense, but I scrolled to one of the other e-mails, wondering what fantastic explanation she could come up with. But instead of giving me any kind of explanation, she asked me to go back to the e-mail that threatened murder.
“They’re from different accounts,” she said. “Look at the address. All of mine are from vengeance one three seven seven three two eight eight. The one threatening to kill you is from vengeance one three seven seven two three eight eight. Someone reversed the three and the two.”
Now it was my turn to flip back and forth from e-mail to e-mail.
She was right. Not only were the addresses different, but the writing styles, too. Ashley’s e-mails were all written in texting style, with abbreviations like “2” for “to” and “U” for “you.” The e-mail from the other vengeance wasn’t.
Someone else … someone pretending to be Ashley … had threatened to kill me.
“Oh my God, I am so sorry,” I gasped, my jumbled emotions making my eyes grow watery again.
“No, it’s okay.” Ashley touched my arm. “We all make mistakes. Mine were way worse than yours.”
That may have been true, but I still felt miserable and confused. Here was this sweet girl who’d been taken advantage of by my father. The old question gnawed at me: Why? Why would he do something so awful? Were all men like that? Or just my dad? But as painful as that question was, I knew it was less pressing and less immediate than the new question that had formed in my thoughts: if Ashley hadn’t sent the e-mail threatening to kill me, then who had?
Chapter 37
THE AFTERNON WAS warm and sunny, one of the last days of Indian summer. When I got home from school, the crowd of media was gone, and Mom was washing her car in the driveway. Her car was something of a family joke because
she never drove it farther than the supermarket, and it probably hadn’t been outside of Soundview since the day she bought it. And yet, being both frugal and compulsive, once a month she spent an afternoon cleaning and washing it.
“Oh, I can see this car really needs cleaning,” I teased.
“Well, it does get dusty,” she replied. Maybe it was the warmth of the afternoon, but it seemed like she was in a good mood. The news of Janet being arrested had to be a relief.
“Oh my God!” I gasped playfully. “It’s really blue? I always thought it was black.”
“Very funny,” Mom replied with a smile. “Help me with the mats?”
She’d already washed the floor mats, and they were drying in the sun. We put them back in the car, then she handed me a rag and a spray bottle of Armor All.
“What do you do with it?”
Mom rolled her eyes as if she couldn’t believe I didn’t know.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said, pretending to be offended.
“I almost said, ‘You are so much your father’s daughter,’” she said. “But thank God you’re not. Not really.”
I knew she’d meant it lightly, but at the mention of his name, things darkened for me, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. Mom must have noticed.
“Well,” she said, as if trying to salvage the situation, “at least they’ve figured out who did it.” She gestured to the bottle of Armor All. “Wipe down the dashboard and interior plastic like the door panels and handles, but try not to get it on the windows.”
I did as I was told, and gradually forced the dark thoughts about Dad out of my head. Even though it seemed that I’d been wrong to hope that this crisis might bring Mom and Dad closer, maybe there was still an unexpected silver lining—the crisis might bring Mom and me closer.
She brought the shop vac from the garage and cleaned out the trunk. We worked silently, but I still felt a closeness to her that I’d missed. Once all this was over, I promised myself I would try to patch up our relationship and spend more time with her.