Лиза Гарднер - Never Tell - A Novel (A D.D. Warren and Flora Dane Novel)

And for one more night, I survive.

• • •

SIX YEARS LATER, Cambridge, Mass. I’m still standing in the kitchen of my apartment. Images of the murdered husband’s face appear, disappear, reappear, on the TV across the room. Followed by snapshots of his wife, the outside of their home, miles of yellow crime scene tape. I’m shaking. As hard as I shook that night, so long ago.

Now, I fist my hand and force myself to focus. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Jacob is gone. Jacob is dead. Jacob can never hurt me again.

The man on TV, Conrad Carter, I never saw him after that night. And now he’s dead, too. More power to his wife.

Except that so many thoughts hit me at once, I have to grab a chair for support.

It takes me a bit, but I finally get my legs to move. I retrieve my cell from the coffee table. I make a single call.

“Samuel, it’s me. You know how I said I’d tell you about my time with Jacob once and only once, and then I’d never speak of it again? I lied.”

Chapter 4 EVIE

IT’S AFTER MIDNIGHT WHEN THEY take me to the police headquarters. I have a brief impression of a monstrous glass building; I think I’ve seen pictures of it on TV. The officer leads me through a vast lobby, then through a warren of hallways. First stop, fingerprints. I was never printed the first time. Ironically enough, it’s my job as a schoolteacher that finally put me in the system. I had to have a background check to chaperone field trips, after-school activities. I’d been nervous then. What if they ran my prints and the previous incident—“ nothing but an unfortunate accident,” my mother whispers—popped up for all to see? You’ll be fine, Conrad had kept telling me. You were just a kid; no charges were even filed.

In the end, that’s what saved me—no charges were filed, meaning I had no criminal record, versus a sealed juvie record, which could come back to haunt a person later.

After scanning each fingertip into the digital machine, the uniformed officer—Bob, someone calls him—leads me to a clinical-looking room where a woman in a lab coat swabs both my hands with some kind of substance, then uses a metal file to remove scrapings from beneath my nails. “I’m going to require her clothing,” she informs the officer, who nods as if this is no surprise.

If they’re taking my clothes, what does that leave me with? But no one bothers to tell me, and I can’t bring myself to ask.

I’m tired. The shock, adrenaline, something wearing off. Mostly, I feel like a pregnant woman, up way past her bedtime and deeply self-conscious that it’s not just me the police are arresting, but my unborn child.

I haven’t even met my baby yet, and I’m already filled with so many regrets.

Upstairs. A new floor with miles of blue carpet. I don’t get a chance to look around. My escort leads me straight to a small room with two chairs, one table, and a mirrored wall. Interrogation, I realize, and can’t help but think it looks much nicer than the rooms you see on TV. Then Officer Bob dumps me in the chair, releases my left wrist from the handcuff, only to attach the bracelet to a ring on the table, and any positive impressions I have of the room are over.

Officer Bob exits. At least I still have my clothes, I think, then move my free hand to rest on my rounded belly. As if that can protect my baby from what will happen next.

The door opens. An older gentleman with thinning brown hair walks in. He’s wearing a brown-and-gold-flecked sports jacket over a light-blue shirt. Pleated khakis; the kind that went out of fashion a decade ago, and yet are still favored by people of a certain age. He has a nice face. Serious, but not harsh. Never the bad cop, I think, more like the stern father figure.

I’m grateful I don’t recognize him. Then wonder if they picked him because, given my history, stern father figure is exactly the right approach to take.

“Evelyn Carter?” he asks. “I’m Detective Phil LeBlanc.”

I have this ridiculous impulse to wave. Years of social training kicking in. I constrain myself to a short nod.

“I understand you’re pregnant?” he says.

I nod again.

“Can I get you anything? A glass of water? Ginger ale? My wife always loved ginger ale.”

Definitely the concerned father. I smile at him. I can’t help myself. He doesn’t understand. They never understood. And now … My baby. My poor unborn child.

“I would like my phone call,” I say. “And I’m not saying another word until I get it.”

• • •

THERE ARE TWO people I could call. Option A is the most obvious, and the call I can’t bring myself to make. Option B will inform Option A of the situation anyway, so it hardly matters. Plus, Option B was my father’s best friend. He has plenty of reasons to doubt me, which is why I trust him more.

He doesn’t seem to be surprised to receive my call in the middle of the night. Because of his job, or because of how well he knows me? I walk him through the evening’s events, at least the bare bones. Conrad shot dead. Me in police custody.

“Have they arrested you?” Dick Delaney, one of Boston’s top criminal defense attorneys, asks me over the phone.

“I think so.” The events of recent months, let alone the past few hours, are starting to weigh heavily on me, dragging me down till everything has taken on a surreal quality. They never handcuffed me the first time. Never put me in a squad car, never drove me to the station for fingerprinting and processing and interrogation. I don’t understand these steps. It’s like watching an old movie, except the story line has been changed.

I don’t know how this story ends.

“Where are you?” Mr. Delaney asks.

“Police headquarters.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing.”

“Keep it that way. They’re at the house now, working the crime scene?”

I nod into the phone, then remember I have to speak. “Yes. I’ve been fingerprinted. And my hands were swabbed. Blood. I had blood on my hands.”

“Probably testing for blood and GSR—gunshot residue,” Mr. Delaney mutters, but he seems to be talking more to himself than to me. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m tired.”

“Are you in pain, do you require medical assistance? How is the baby?”

“I’m okay.”

“You could be in shock. Perhaps you require medical observation.”

“I’m okay,” I say again.

Maybe that’s not the right answer. Maybe he’s trying to tell me something and I’m not getting it, because he falls quiet for a full minute or two.

“Evie—you’re going to have to spend at least one night in jail.”

I don’t know how to process that. Again, the story line is all wrong. I know shootings. I know blood and horror and loss.

The aftermath is not supposed to go like this.

“It’s the middle of the night,” Mr. Delaney is saying. “Nothing can happen till tomorrow, when the charges against you are formally presented in court. At that time, there’ll be an arraignment. I’ll be there to represent you, and hopefully get you released on bail. But again, none of this can happen before tomorrow.”

“They want my clothes,” I hear myself say. “Can they take my clothes?”

“Yes. They’re going to try to question you, Evie. Your job is to say nothing. Next, you will be taken to the county jail for overnight admittance. Given the severity of the charge, you’ll be held in isolation. But you’ll be formally processed. Your personal possessions will be taken and inventoried.”

I don’t have any. It occurs to me for the first time. I’d taken off my coat, set down my purse. I don’t have my cell phone. Not even my wallet. I feel a rising bubble of hysteria.