Lisa Unger - Sliver Of Truth

“I’m looking at the connection, Ridley.”

Now it was my turn to go silent.

“My missing couple, Myra and Allen Lyall. A dead woman, Esme Gray. A large bloodstain on the floor of Jacobsen’s apartment, Jacobsen nowhere to be found, last seen leaving the scene of a homicide. What do these people have in common? What links all of them?”

You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out where he was going.

“I’m not the only thing that links them,” I said defensively.

“No,” he said slowly. “There’s Project Rescue. But you’re intimately linked to that as well.”

I sat back down in the chair. Agent Grace pulled the other chair close to me and tilted it back against the wall, balancing on its two rear legs. I wished he would fall backward, hit his head and look like an idiot.

“When’s the last time you saw your boyfriend?” He leaned on the word boyfriend with some kind of sarcasm or even hostility, maybe both. I thought about telling him that Jake wasn’t technically my boyfriend any longer, but I didn’t want to be disloyal to Jake. Or answer the questions that would follow about the current nature of our relationship.

“The night before last.”

“And the last time you heard from him?”

“He left a message earlier today. Asked me to meet him here for dinner around eight.”

“What time did he leave the message?”

“I don’t know. Around three or four, I guess.”

“How did he sound?”

“Fine.” The truth was I couldn’t quite remember what he had sounded like.

“Did he call you from the landline here,” he said, nodding toward the phone on Jake’s desk, “or from his cellular phone?”

“I don’t know. I think from this phone. I can’t remember.” He’d called me from his cell; I could tell by the background noise. At least I thought so; I would check my caller ID when I got home. In any case, I didn’t want Agent Grace to know that he’d been on his cell; it seemed incriminating somehow. I was dying to call Jake now but didn’t know if it was wise to do this in front of Agent Grace.

He continued with the questions, writing my answers in a little black notebook he’d extracted from his pocket. “Where were you today that you weren’t available to take his call around that time?”

I hesitated, thought about lying, decided against it. “I went to Max’s apartment.”

He looked up at me. “Why?”

I explained to him the reasons I sometimes visited that place. I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t understand, thought my behavior was suspicious. Which, of course, it was.

“Can anyone confirm that you were there?”

“The doorman, Dutch.” I watched him write. “Is that the time around when she died?” I asked, deducing as much from his questions. “This afternoon around three or four?”

He didn’t say anything, just kept scribbling in his pad. I felt a tide of panic swell for Jake, a desperate worry aching in my chest.

“I have to be honest with you, Ridley,” said Agent Grace after a moment. “I don’t think you’re telling me everything you should be. I’m having a hard time trusting you right now.”

I tried for indignation but it didn’t take. I shrugged instead. “I really don’t give a shit what you think of me, Agent Grace,” I said, keeping my voice mild. It was true; I couldn’t care less. This was new for me; I used to be worried about what people thought, eager to please and play by the rules. But that was before. Before I knew I was Max’s daughter. “I don’t trust you, either.”

I wondered how long it would be before he started sifting through Jake’s office, before he looked at the computer and discovered the strange website. I wondered if he’d make the connection between the streaming video in London and the overseas call that had come into my apartment. Of course he would. He was all about making connections. I wondered how much he knew already. Probably a lot more than I did.

“I’m going to have someone take you home, and I want you to stay there, Ridley.”

“I want to stay here in case Jake comes back,” I said.

“If he comes back here, I guarantee he won’t be available for dinner,” he said coolly. “Give me your cell phone.”

“What? Why?”

“I want to call Jacobsen from your phone. We’ve been trying to reach him but he hasn’t answered. I’m wondering if he’ll answer a call from you.”

I didn’t know what my rights were here. I felt another wash of panic, folded my arms across my chest, and looked down at the floor. He held his hand out.

“Seriously?” he said. “Don’t make me wrestle it from you or take you into custody and confiscate your belongings, search your apartment. I might have to do that eventually, but it doesn’t have to be right now.”

It seemed like he was always issuing threats of this kind. I looked at his face and saw that he meant it. After another second’s hesitation, I handed my phone to him, watched him scroll through my address book and hit send. He put the phone on speaker and we both listened to it ring. I closed my eyes, praying silently for Jake to answer, until the voice mail picked up. My heart dipped into my stomach as Agent Grace ended the call. I held my breath, wondering if he was going to scroll through my call log, check my messages. But he didn’t do that; he simply handed the phone back to me. I was surprised; it seemed like a logical thing for him to do, to check my incoming and outgoing communications. We locked eyes and I considered giving everything up to him. Later I would look back on this as the last moment I could have asked for help out of the hole I was climbing into…a moment I let pass.

A STONE-FACED YOUNG man with a blond crew cut and a scar from his neck to his ear drove me home in a white Crown Victoria. I recognized him as Agent Grace’s partner. I didn’t remember his name. In the passing streetlights, his head looked like a wire brush. I stared out the window and cried quietly, hoping he couldn’t tell, until he handed me a tissue without a word. I was afraid for Jake, afraid for myself, unsure of what to do next.

The man at the wheel didn’t say a word as I exited the vehicle. I almost thanked him (that’s what a good girl I am), but I held it back and slammed the door instead. As I let myself into my building, I noticed that he turned off the engine and seemed to make himself comfortable, as if he were settling in for a while.

MEMORY IS ELUSIVE for me these days. When I learned that most of the things I had taken for truth about my life were lies, I lost faith in memory. The past events of my life? I started to remember them differently; odd tones and nuances started to emerge. And I couldn’t be sure any longer if my original memories or the new ones were truer to the things that had actually transpired.

Like the hours Max and my father spent in his study, for example. I had always imagined them in there laughing and relaxing, drinking cognac and smoking cigars. Now I wondered what they talked about in there. Me? Project Rescue? If Max had had this awful dark side, did my father know about it? Counsel him on how to deal with the “demons” he referred to that last night?

Or the harsh conversations between Max and my mother. She disapproved of the parade of anonymous women through Max’s life, resented bitterly their presence in her home and social life. They argued about it, but only when they thought my father was out of earshot. I wondered now why she cared. In the anger of their tones, was there something more? Intimacy? Jealousy?

I thought about those women. Who were they? All I remember was that they all seemed to be blondes, all in high heels, beautiful and distant, with something cheap about them. Were they call girls? Maybe some of them were. I didn’t really know. I never knew their names, never saw any of them more than once. What did that say about Max? I could have started making connections here: the picture Nick Smiley had painted of Max, the accusations of matricide, how Max had never had a serious relationship with a woman. But I didn’t. Not yet.