Todd Strasser - Kill You Last

“It has to be a mistake. It doesn’t sound like Dad. He doesn’t go around renting hotel suites. He’s got his own studio here in town.”

“Didn’t you once tell me he goes away a lot on the weekends?”

“But that’s to shoot weddings and parties.”

“You’re sure?”

Was I sure? The question hovered invisibly between us.

No, I wasn’t.

Not anymore.

I told Roman I’d talk to her later. For a second I wanted to run downstairs and ask Dad about the story, but my brain was still fuzzy from lack of sleep, and I decided to shower and dress first. Before I went downstairs, I peeked out at the street. The crowd of media people was back. There may even have been a few more reporters than the day before. And a police car had showed up to keep the street clear.

When I entered the kitchen, Mom was standing at the counter with a mug of coffee, gazing out the window at the backyard. The leaves had started to turn, and a few yellow ones were already lying on the grass. The kitchen TV was off. I poured myself some coffee.

“There was something on TV this-”

“I know,” she said tersely.

The kitchen grew quiet. Mom stared out, unmoving. I’d seen her get like this before when she was really upset. Like everything had shut down except the gears churning in her brain.

“Where’s Dad?” I finally asked.

“He left early.”

I had to assume he’d done that to avoid the media circus outside.

“Is it true?” I asked. “I mean, about finding girls in malls and charging all that money and promising them modeling work?”

Mom turned to me. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that her eyes were red, but I was.

“I think you’ll have to ask him that yourself.”

I took out my BlackBerry and called, but I got Dad’s voice mail. The sense of discomfort I was feeling deepened. He always answered when I called. Always. I turned to Mom. Even though it was obvious she wasn’t in the mood to talk, I had to ask: “You still believe he had nothing to do with the missing girls?”

She gazed at me with numb, empty eyes-the expression of someone who’d been disappointed and hurt too many times.

“I’m sorry, Mom. You don’t have to answer that.”

She nodded and gazed out the back window again. I couldn’t help imagining those naive, starstruck wannabes handing over the money they’d hoarded from years of babysitting, in the hope that Dad could turn them into supermodels. The dream of being on the cover of Vogue and flying around the world in private jets.

The thought made me wince. If the story the girl told on TV was true, it made Dad worse than a scam artist. It made him a con man and a deceiver of innocent young girls. And Janet and Gabriel had to be in on it, too, didn’t they? I felt my jaw tense and a headache begin to blossom. Please don’t be true, I prayed. Dad couldn’t have done that, could he? And not just to those girls, but to Mom and me?

My BlackBerry vibrated. I picked it up, desperately hoping it was a message from Dad.

But it wasn’t.

It was vengeance13773288@gmail. com: Enjoying the news? Hows it feel 2 have a father like that?

A wave of wretchedness crashed through me, filling my eyes with tears as I realized what the e-mail meant. Not just a cruel, hateful taunt to me, it was a reflection of how most of Soundview was feeling that morning. Even if they hadn’t seen the interview, they would soon hear about it from friends and neighbors. By lunchtime, everyone would believe Dad was the worst kind of scoundrel.

Mom put her hand on my arm. “What is it?”

“My anonymous e-mailer again.” I handed her the Black-Berry and rubbed the tears away.

The lines in Mom’s forehead deepened as she studied the message from vengeance13773288@gmail. com. “How many does this make?”

“Three.”

The doorbell rang. Mom’s eyes met mine, and I knew we were both assuming the same thing: the media was back, no doubt eager to see how we were reacting to this morning’s news.

Mom started toward the hall, saying, “I’ll tell them to go away.”

I sat alone in the kitchen, fearful of what the day would be like now that the whole world believed my father was not only a suspect in the disappearance of three girls but a con man as well. It might not have been so hard to cope with if I’d believed that he’d been falsely accused of the modeling scam, but something about it-some small part of it-felt ominously true. I truly, truly believed that he’d never hurt anyone and couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with those missing girls. But I couldn’t say the same about the scam.

My stomach twisted and churned. How could I reconcile the loving, protective father with the loathsome criminal everyone now thought him to be?

The kitchen door opened, and I expected to see Mom return.

But Roman came in.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, surprised.

She looked somber. “Wasn’t sure you’d want to go to school today, but I figured if you did, you’d want some company.”

My eyes instantly filled with tears of gratitude, and I hugged her. “You are the best.”

Roman had walked over, so we got into my car. With the windows raised and the doors locked, I drove down the driveway toward the waiting crowd. The media collected in the street when we got close, but the police officer got out of his car and made them clear a path so that we could pass. Some of the photographers took shots of us through the windows.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Roman said. “It’s not all bad news.” She propped her iPad in her lap and turned it on.

I glanced over and saw that she’d loaded a page from the Soundview Snoop. “Read it to me?”

“The headline is ‘Rush to Judgment?’ and it’s by Whitman Sturges,” Roman said, then read: “With the recent revelation that three missing young women from the Northeast were all clients of a local photography and modeling agency here, many in Soundview have been quick to accuse the agency’s owner, Kirby Sloan, of being involved in the case. But where is the evidence to support that assumption? As Mr. Sloan’s daughter, Shelby, pointed out in an exclusive interview, ‘My father’s entire reputation…my family’s whole life…is on the line. And except for some head shots, there hasn’t been a shred of evidence linking my dad to the disappearance of those girls.’’ Soundview’s chief of police, Samuel Jenkins, has confirmed this, saying that while there has been a great deal of media attention on the case, his department has found no reason to believe that Mr. Kirby is involved. ‘There are ongoing investigations in Hartford, Trenton, and Scranton regarding the missing girls,’ he said. ‘We’ve been in touch with those police departments. But so far there’s been nothing that indicates that Kirby Sloan had anything to do with this.’ When asked if his department had any plans to investigate Mr. Sloan’s connection to the missing girls, Chief Jenkins said, ‘We’re letting those other departments take the lead. If they come to us with information we feel we need to act on, we will. But until then, it’s important to remember that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Our detectives have spoken to Mr. Kirby, and, as of now, we have no reason to go any further.’”

I was shrouded by that awful guilt that comes when you’ve been mean to someone who was only trying to do something nice for you. Not only had I been too hard on Whit the night before, but I’d also completely misread his intentions. But then, I didn’t know at that time that he was going to write an article like this.

“Uh, Shelby?” Roman said. “There’s a stop sign.”