Chapter 31
“Send him up,” I tell Zane. “It’s fine.”
“Who?” says Jeremy.
“An old boyfriend.”
Jeremy doesn’t need to know the relationship isn’t all that ancient or that he’s that roommate’s older brother.
“Are you okay?” asks Wallace when I greet him out front. He’s a bit breathless. “Jesus, it took me five minutes to get that deputy to even call you.”
“Wallace, it’s late. What’s up?”
“I didn’t see the news until tonight. I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier. We rehearsed late for the show this weekend.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine. You didn’t need to come.”
I’m going to set much firmer boundaries with Wallace, even if it hurts his feelings. Wallace walks up to the door right as Jeremy comes up behind me.
“Who’s he?” says Wallace.
I introduce Jeremy, saying that he’s a reporter.
Wallace studies Jeremy with a what the heck look. “It’s late,” he says to me. He’s giving Jeremy the stink-eye along with his rutted brow.
“The news didn’t break until this evening,” Jeremy offers.
Wallace glances around the driveway. “And where the hell is his car?” he asks, as if Jeremy isn’t standing right next to us.
“He walked over.”
“Walked? From where?”
“Over there.” Jeremy points across the field. “My car’s on the neighbor’s drive, off Dillon Road.”
“Jesus.” Wallace shakes his head.
I’ve never seen him this angry and impolite before. “Wallace, it’s fine.”
“No, it’s not fine. Are you kidding me?” His voice is loud, overriding the loud trill of the chirring crickets in the dry fields. “Jesus, Crosbie. Your life could be in danger, and you’re inviting strangers in? You need more protection. One cop at your entrance is clearly not enough.”
No, clearly, it’s not zings through my head as I stand here and talk to two men late at night during one of the most bizarre and threatening weeks of my life.
Wallace looks at me, then Jeremy. Confusion and anger still fight for center stage in his eyes. “Can we talk for a moment?” he says to me.
I need to be careful, and if Jeremy stays and we continue to chat, I’ll have to keep fighting off his prodding for a full-fledged interview.
Wallace showing up is a stroke of luck because he provides the perfect excuse to shoo Jeremy away.
But the hairs standing up on the back of my neck won’t lie down.
“Of course,” I say to Wallace. I look at Jeremy. “Jeremy was just leaving.”
Jeremy smiles wryly at me, tips his head once like he gets it that I’m using this to get rid of him. “You mind?” He motions to the kitchen.
“No, help yourself.”
He walks back to the table, pulls out his notepad, bends down to scribble something, and tears off the page.
He doesn’t pick up the rest of the six-pack, which was what I’d assumed he’d returned to fetch.
He grabs only his open beer, saunters back over with the bottle dangling in one hand, and holds out the piece of paper to me with the other.
“Do me one favor, okay?” He dips his head at the slip. “Read this.”
“What is it?”
“The title of an article I’ve written. To show you I’m not a hack.”
He closes the gap between us, and I sense, more than see, Wallace tense up.
I tense up. His light-brown eyes, with the fans of tiny lines on the skin around them from time spent squinting in the sun, stare squarely into mine.
This is the closest Jeremy’s stood to me since I saw him in the baggage claim area, and I feel his presence too keenly.
It throws me off-kilter. I take the note from him.
“Stay safe,” he says. Our gazes stay fixed for a second longer than normal, and he slides out the door to head back across the field. Watching him disappear into the dark, I’m thinking: Should I trust that all he wants is a feature story? Or is Jeremy Fisher playing me?
“What was that all about?” Wallace asks as we go back inside.
“Just a reporter wanting an exclusive interview with me now that Fee-fucking-ona and Trey have gotten the press involved.”
Wallace winces at my sailor mouth. He says, “You sure it was them?”
I tell him that I’m positive, and explain the situation with Fiona and Trey. “I guess they took photos of them. Plus, Trey had an old picture of me at the banquet, too.”
Wallace’s forehead wrinkles in confusion until something dawns on him.
He looks away. I see a sadness in his expression, and I realize my mistake—I’ve not only admitted how long it’s been since I’ve worn the earrings but callously demonstrated that I cared so little about them that I left them in a purse at Fiona’s all this time.
God. I don’t have the luxury to worry about whose precious feelings I’m stomping on right now. My mind whirs. I have so much to think through, including what happened with my car at the dump site and the fact that Jeremy took the one thing that would have his DNA on it if we ended up needing it.
“Wall, look. I’m sorry. I—”
He holds up his hand to stop me. “It’s fine. We haven’t been seeing each other for months now. I don’t expect you to wear something I gave you.” But I can see it in his eyes. He’s calculated it out. The banquet was two months before we broke up.
“It was just me being absent-minded,” I offer. “A lot was going on back then.”
He waves his hand. “We should concentrate on the problem at hand. I mean, you’re not giving that ass an interview, are you?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not.”
“Good. I don’t see how that can help anything.”
I’m not so sure about that. For a split second, a part of what Jeremy claims he can do is almost appealing, as if it would be interesting to see how someone might assemble all the pieces of my life together into a cohesive whole instead of all the unflattering tidbits and conjectures that are probably already beginning to circulate.
It’s not that I think I’m biography-worthy; it’s that the thought of someone other than me making some sense of all my awful shit is almost tantalizing.
To have the company of others looking at me through the same lens of self-loathing and failure as I do.
But it’s only for a brief moment that I entertain this. It’s simply not going to happen, because, in the end, it all comes with enormous consequences.
And realistically, there is nothing I could do anyway to ease my conscience or atone for my deeds. What’s done is done. It’s my job to lift myself out of my own dreadfulness and the haze of my own guilt like everyone else does, one day at a time, all possibly while sitting in a cell.
I’m about to tell Wallace that although I appreciate his opinion, I’ll decide on my own how I want to handle the media, but my phone buzzes.
It’s Alderson.
“I need to get this,” I tell Wallace. I bring the phone to my ear as I walk down the hall and into my bathroom for some privacy and shut the door behind me.
“Crosbie,” Alderson says. “Is everything okay?”
It’s soothing to hear his voice. I’m glad it’s him and not Greene on the line.
“Yes,” I say. “You’ve seen the news?”
“Yes, and Zane filled us in, too. And he mentioned you’ve had two visitors, one he didn’t know about until you texted him, and the other your ex-boyfriend?”
“That’s right.”
“Not exactly airtight security.”
“They’re just two guys,” I point out. What am I, Zane’s and the other deputy’s PR person?
“So how did he get to your front door?”
I fill him in on how Jeremy walked over and is gone now. I tell him that Wallace is still here.
“He’s there with you right now?”
“Yes.”
“Is he leaving soon?”
“Yes, why?”
“You can’t afford to trust anyone right now. I want you to exit out the back door, circle around, and get to Zane. I’ll call him right now.”
“What?” I whisper so Wallace can’t hear. “I’m not doing that. It’s Wallace, for God’s sake.”
“Listen, Crosbie, we’ve been doing some more digging. And there’s a few things you should know.”
“A few things like what exactly?”
“Like the fact that Wallace has been out of town on the dates of the other two victims’ murders.”
That stops me. I can never keep track of all the places he travels for his gigs, but I haven’t thought of it. Why would I? It’s a ludicrous idea. “In the same exact place as the victims?”
“Within driving distance. Seattle and Los Angeles.”
“That’s nothing.” I swipe my hand before me. “He travels all the time for concerts. He’s in demand. He’s an amazing musician. I’m sure if you check each of those concerts, his whereabouts can be accounted for.”
“We have checked, and there are some large blanks in his schedule. He arrived way earlier than necessary for his gigs and left a good two days after he wrapped up each of his performances.”
“Again, that means nothing.” I see myself grimacing in the bathroom mirror.
“Wallace is that way.” I keep my voice down still.
“He likes to take things slowly, absorb his surroundings—unwind before and after events. He doesn’t like to feel rushed, and he enjoys the places he travels to.
He loves Montana, but he relishes it whenever he gets away to anyplace with some urban culture, where he can take in other musicians, museums, plays.
” But even as I say it, the thought that he, more than anyone, would know what I did with Sophie and have reason to hate me for it takes root in my mind.
“We figure that’s what he’ll claim, but the facts remain.”
“You haven’t spoken to him?”
“We wanted to talk to you first. We’re visiting him in the morning. We’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, you need to be extra careful with everyone you come across. Trust no one.”
“Look, I’ll have him out of here in five.”
“Okay, but if I don’t hear back from you in six, I’m calling Zane.”
I go back to the living room, where I left Wallace, but don’t see him. I turn the corner and find him beside the fridge, leaning against the counter with one hip, his back to me. I’m about to ask him if he’s hungry, like I normally would, but another part of me hears Alderson’s voice.
Six minutes. Get him out of here in the next few minutes so I can get back to work.
Then he turns, and I see that he’s holding my gun.