Stephen White - Critical Conditions

Jesus.

“Maddy had told me to make sure I was on my back with his back to her so she could take the pictures without him seeing her and she told me to sit up once so my face was on the video and he couldn’t pretend it was some grown-up he was with so I did. I sat up and saw her standing there with the camera and the red light was flashing and then he was like spreading my legs and climbing on top of me and I felt him like stabbing at me and it hurt and he said he wanted me to help and I was thinking like help what? and wondered what I was supposed to do and then he looked up and I thought he was looking at the mirror behind the bed and that he had seen Maddy’s reflection in the mirror but then it went in and he started-and I kind of disappeared then until he was done and he was like grunting what do you do with this thing after and I was saying like is it over is it over like I’d just woken up after I was in intensive care and I remember thinking that I was so glad he didn’t really take off much of his clothes and I climbed off the bed and picked up all my things and held them against me and I said I needed some time in the bathroom again and he was just laying back on the bed panting and pink and I was so mad because his dick was still out and I didn’t want to see it and I closed the door behind me and Maddy hugged me and kissed me on the cheek and whispered to me that she had all the pictures and we got him now we really got him now and that it was over.

“She said I was a hero.”

I couldn’t remember ever being so exhausted. Merritt’s dark story was draining me of every bit of my vitality; I felt as though a catheter was open in my arm and I’d been donating blood the entire time she spoke.

She said, “There’s more.”

Oh God. “You sure you want to go on?” I don’t.

“Absolutely. Yes.”

Softly, I said, “I’m listening.”

“We watched the tape that night at Maddy’s apartment. It’s pretty good. I mean the quality. She caught his face in the mirror a couple of times and she got my face like she said she would. Most of the time you can only see my legs. The sounds are disgusting. Gross.” She shivered.

“The pictures, you know, the photographs, weren’t as good. She had them developed at one of those one-hour places and they’re too dark. But you can tell…you know, what’s going on.

“I went back and surprised him the next day during his walk. He was really uncomfortable. Me? I was like, totally cool, relaxed. It was my turn now, that’s the way I felt. He wouldn’t even look at me. He actually told me he was too busy to visit with me that day, he was sorry. Visit with me? Can you believe it?

“I started jogging backwards in front of him, like, facing him? I asked him how old he thought I was. He said nineteen or twenty. I said guess again. He ignored me. I said I was fifteen, I can’t even drive. He stopped and stared at me like I was this disgusting little thing. I stopped, too. ‘Fifteen,’ I said. ‘Fifteen.’ He said he didn’t believe me and he started walking again. He tried to speed up, walk past me. I wouldn’t let him. So he turned and headed the other way. I caught up with him.

“I said, ‘I have a videotape, too.’

“He looks at me real quick, then he says, ‘Of what?’ like he doesn’t really care.

“‘Our little encounter yesterday.’ That was Maddy’s word. ‘Encounter.’ I liked it.

“He didn’t look at me, he just said, ‘Bullshit.’

“‘And a witness. I have a videotape, and a witness, too,’ I tell him. ‘A friend of mine followed us up to your ranch and videotaped the whole thing. Took some pictures, too.’

“‘Bullshit,’ he says again.

“‘Dr. Robilio,’ I say, ‘I think you’re in a heck of a lot of trouble.’ That gets him. He asks me how I know his name. I tell him I know everything. I know about his company. I know what stuff he does. Who his friends are. I got all that from the research Trent did, it’s in the file at home. I’m ready, I’ve done my homework. It was sweet.

“He says I’m lying. I ask him if he wants to see the pictures.

“He does. I give him two. They’re not very good, not as good as the video. But they’re good enough. He knows it’s him. He won’t give them back to me. I say I don’t care, my friend has the negatives and the videotape.

“He wants to know who my friend is and I say no way. But I say, ‘You want to know who I am? I’m Chaney Trent’s sister. Remember her?’

“I thought he was about to croak. He gets bright red. Turns away from me, then looks back over his shoulder.

“It takes him one more second, and he asks me how much I want. I say I want a lot and not just money. I want my sister. But later, we’ll get to that later. I’d like to show him the tape first, so he can see what kind of a mess he’s in. How about five o’clock, his house?

“He turned on me then. I was afraid he was going to hit me. So I stepped back and he called me ‘a little flesh-peddling whore. How dare you do this to me?’ I couldn’t believe it.

“I said, ‘To you? You’re the one who lets babies die. You’re the one who has sex with kids.’ I almost hit him. Talk about money for flesh; he was the one who was killing my sister just to save money. I said, ‘I’ll be at your house at five o’clock, warm up your VCR,’ and I jogged away. I felt fine. My heart wasn’t even racing. His reaction told me that he knew we had him. We had him good.”

She stopped as though the story was over.

Puzzled, I said, “And you went back at five, with the tape?”

“Yeah, I did. But Trent was already there. I told you I saw his Jetta, remember?”

“Yes. But what you told me before is that you had gone to plead with Dr. Robilio for your sister’s life. But what you’re saying now is that you had actually gone back to blackmail him with the videotape?”

She seemed stunned by the bluntness of my summation. She said, “Yes, I guess that’s right.” With both hands she lifted her hair off her shoulders and twisted it into a knot above her head. “Before, when I, um-”

“Lied?”

“Okay. Lied. I guess…I wasn’t sure I was going to tell you about the videotape at all.”

“And the rest of the-”

“The rest is just the way I told you. The way I look at it now is that I feel I may have done what everybody says I’ve done. Killed him, you know. But I didn’t pull the trigger. That was…Trent.”

“You went home with Robilio’s gun? As you told me before?”

“Yeah, the same as I told you already. I really was going to shoot myself with it.”

“And the videotape, you took that with you?”

“That, too.”

“The police never found it in your room.”

She lowered her hands and her hair spilled back down past her shoulders. She swiped a few strands from her eyes. “I, um, left it outside…for Maddy. When I called her I told her where it was. I didn’t want anybody to know what I’d done. I figured she would get rid of it, the tape. I made her promise not to show it to anybody. Especially Brad.”

“You didn’t know about any scheme that they cooked up? Madison and Brad? To try to extort Robilio’s company for money?”

She shook her head. Her tone was incredulous as she asked, “You think I would do this for money?”

I dropped my chin to my chest to try to stretch the tendons in my neck. They felt like they had been surgically replaced by steel cables. When I raised my head again I focused on Merritt’s eyes and knew my heart was not in what I needed to do next. I didn’t want to confront this kid. I wanted to comfort her. But I did what my training, and not my instincts, told me to do. I said, “You’re not being totally honest with me, Merritt.”