Tess Gerritsen - Whistleblower

She led Victor into what Hickey had dubbed his “shooting gallery.” Cathy flipped the wall switch and the vast room was instantly illuminated by a dazzling array of spotlights.

“So this is where he does it,” said Victor, blinking in the sudden glare. He stepped over a jumble of electrical cords and slowly circled the room, regarding with humorous disbelief the various props. It was a strange collection of objects: a genuine English phone booth, a street bench, an exercise bicycle. In a place of honor sat a four-poster bed. The ruffled coverlet was Victorian; the handcuffs dangling from the bedposts were not.

Victor picked up one of the cuffs and let it fall again. “Just how good a friend is this Hickey guy, anyway?”

“None of this stuff was here when he shot me a month ago.”

“He photographed you? ” Victor turned and stared at her.

She flushed, imagining the images that must be flashing through his mind. She could feel his gaze undressing her, posing her in a sprawl across that ridiculous four-poster bed. With the handcuffs, no less.

“It wasn’t like-like these other photos,” she protested. “I mean, I just did it as a favor…”

“A favor?”

“It was a purely commercial shot!”

“Oh.”

“I was fully dressed. In overalls, as a matter of fact. I was supposed to be a plumber.”

“A lady plumber?”

“I was an emergency stand-in. One of his models didn’t show up that day, and he needed someone with an ordinary face. I guess that’s me. Ordinary. And it really was just my face.”

“And your overalls.”

“Right.”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“I can guess what you were thinking,” she said.

“I don’t even want to tell you what I was thinking.” He turned and glanced around the room. “Didn’t you say there was some food around here?”

She crossed the room to the refrigerator. Inside she found a shelf of film plus a jar of sweet pickles, some rubbery carrots and half a salami. In the freezer they discovered real treasures: ground Sumatran coffee and a loaf of sourdough bread.

Grinning, she turned to him. “A feast!”

They sat together on the four-poster bed and gnawed on salami and half-frozen sourdough, all washed down with cups of coffee. It was a bizarre little picnic, paper plates with pickles and carrots resting in their laps, the spotlights glaring down like a dozen hot suns from the ceiling.

“Why did you say that about yourself?” he asked, watching her munch a carrot.

“Say what?”

“That you’re ordinary. So ordinary that you get cast as the lady plumber?”

“Because I am ordinary.”

“I don’t think so. And I happen to be a pretty good judge of character.”

She looked up at a wall poster featuring one of Hickey’s super models. The woman stared back with a look of glossy confidence. “Well, I certainly don’t measure up to that.”

“ That,” he said, “is pure fantasy. That isn’t a real woman, but an amalgam of makeup, hairspray and fake eyelashes.”

“Oh, I know that. That’s my job, turning actors into some moviegoer’s fantasy. Or nightmare, as the case may be.” She reached into the jar and fished out the last pickle. “No, I really meant underneath it all. Deep inside, I feel ordinary.”

“I think you’re quite extraordinary. And after last night, I should know.”

She gazed down, at the limp carrot stretched out like a little corpse across the paper plate. “There was a time-I suppose there’s always that time, for everyone, when we’re still young, when we feel special. When we feel the world’s meant just for us. The last time I felt that way was when I married Jack.” She sighed. “It didn’t last long.”

“Why did you marry him?”

“I don’t know. Dazzle? I was only twenty-three, a mere apprentice on the set. He was the director.” She paused. “He was God.”

“He impressed you, did he?”

“Jack can be very impressive. He can turn on the power, the charisma, and just overwhelm a gal. Then there was the champagne, the suppers, the flowers. I think what attracted him to me was that I didn’t immediately fall for him. That I wasn’t swooning at his every look. He thought of me as a challenge, the one he finally conquered.” She gave him a rueful look. “That accomplished, he moved onto bigger and better things. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t particularly special. That I’m really just a perfectly ordinary woman. It’s not a bad feeling. It’s not as if I go through life longing to be someone different, someone special.”

“Then who do you consider special?”

“Well, my grandmother. But she’s dead.”

“Venerable grandmothers always make the list.”

“Okay, then. Mother Teresa.”

“She’s on everyone’s list.”

“Kate Hepburn. Gloria Steinem. My friend Sarah…” Her voice faded. Looking down, she added softly: “But she’s dead, too.”

Gently he took her hand. With a strange sense of wonder she watched his long fingers close over hers and thought about how the strength she felt in that grasp re flected the strength of the man himself. Jack, for all his dazzle and polish, had never inspired a fraction of the confidence she now felt in Victor. No man ever had.

He was watching her with quiet sympathy. “Tell me about Sarah,” he said.

Cathy swallowed, trying to stem the tears. “She was absolutely lovely. I don’t mean in that way.” She nodded at the photo of Hickey’s picture-perfect model. “I mean, in an inner sort of way. It was this look in her eyes. A perfect calmness. As though she’d found exactly what she wanted while all the rest of us were still grubbing around for lost treasure. I don’t think she was born like that. She came to it, all by herself. In college, we were both pretty unsure of ourselves. Marriage certainly didn’t help either of us. My divorce-it was nothing short of devastating. But Sarah’s divorce only seemed to make her stronger. Better able to take care of herself. When she finally got pregnant, it was exactly as she planned it. There wasn’t a father, you see, just a test tube. An anonymous donor. Sarah used to say that the primeval family unit wasn’t man, woman and child. It was just woman and child. I thought she was brave, to take that step. She was a lot braver than I could ever be…” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, Sarah was special. Some people simply are.”

“Yes,” he said. “Some people are.”

She looked up at him. He was staring off at the far wall, his gaze infinitely sad. What had etched those lines of pain in his face? She wondered if lines so deep could ever be erased. There were some losses one never got over, never accepted.

Softly she asked, “What was your wife like?”

He didn’t answer at first. She thought: Why did I ask that? Why did I have to bring up such terrible memories?

He said, “She was a kind woman. That’s what I’ll always remember about her. Her kindness.” He looked at Cathy and she sensed it wasn’t sadness she saw in those eyes, but acceptance.

“What was her name?”

“Lily. Lillian Dorinda Cassidy. A mouthful for such a tiny woman.” He smiled. “She was about five foot one, maybe ninety pounds sopping wet. It used to scare me, how small she always seemed. Almost breakable. Especially toward the end, when she’d lost all that weight. It seemed as if she’d shrunk down to nothing but a pair of big brown eyes.”

“She must have been young when she died.”

“Only thirty-eight. It seemed so unfair. All her life, she’d done everything right. Never smoked, hardly ever touched a glass of wine. She even refused to eat meat. After she was diagnosed, we kept trying to figure out how it could’ve happened. Then it occurred to us what might have caused it. She grew up in a small town in Massachusetts. Directly downwind from a nuclear power plant.”