Chapter 51
Zero Days
Six a.m. My nerves are frayed. I didn’t sleep a wink with questions pinging through my mind. How will the world take my confessions? How will Jess react? How will my friends and community take it?
I tried to block it out, but I kept swinging back and forth from too many people I’ve ever known, wondering what they’ll think of me.
I pick up my phone and see more confessions getting some national attention. What? Someone keeping quiet? Not reporting someone else? Worried about the exposure and what it will do to their business? I shake my head. A little too on the nose, I think.
My phone dings with a text.
It’s Jeremy. He’s worked through the night.
Check your email, see attached. You have final approval on every word. Four parts in all. 1) Sophie 2) Workplace harassment 3) Jess 4) Leon, Railes, Coleman, Lies.
I open the file.
He’s written a thorough, sensitive piece. I only have a few edits regarding two inaccuracies on time frames, but I don’t give him the go-ahead. Not just yet.
My cheeks are wet. I have no idea when I started crying. I try to parse the source. Is it because today could be the last day of my life? Is it because maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be getting the killer off my back?
It’s much deeper: I’ve been carrying this baggage for so long now. To finally release it is overwhelming, despite the consequences.
I could be charged with obstruction or, worse, conspiracy to commit murder.
I could be charged with conspiracy to cover up the murder, impeding law enforcement’s efforts to solve the crime.
I would pay my dues in jail time. I would also lose my private investigator’s license and never be able to reclaim it.
No law enforcement agency would ever hire me again because I would lose my Peace Officer Standards and Training certification that allows me to be a cop anywhere.
Worse, the sheer shame of it all. Where could I hide? What foreign country could I move to? I couldn’t even fathom leaving Jess and Sam anyway, so I swipe the thoughts away. Try not to think of life behind bars.
Jeremy texts:
All good? Do I have your go-ahead?
He has already informed me that after I give the thumbs-up, the piece will be published by midmorning on , and a few days later in the magazine’s (Sub)Culture section.
The persistent flutter in my gut spreads to my entire body like a giant bird inside me trying to take flight.
Despite the relief to get things off my chest, there’s a high-intensity tension saturating the air and coursing through me.
Even though I haven’t slept at all, I’m wired.
What have I invited in by not confessing on the killer’s timeline?
I take a deep breath like I’m about to dive into a cold lake. Then I give him the go-ahead.
But first and foremost, I need to tell Jess what’s coming. My plan is to drive to her place before the sun fully rises over the eastern mountains and tell her in person, then prepare for whatever comes my way for the rest of the day.
Jess and Sam still have security stationed at her place. And as fearful as I am to draw the killer to her house, I need to tell her about the full confession in person. And if I don’t survive the day, it will be the last time I see either one of them. I want to—need to—say goodbye.
I’m betting on it being early enough that the killer won’t even have had time to eat breakfast yet.
I’m grateful for Greene’s presence downstairs. Her company and her gun afford me enough reassurance to take a quick shower. I feel vulnerable and deeply alone, and it ends up being the fastest shower I’ve ever taken. I dress in a snap, don my vest, put on my holster, and go downstairs.
It’s pitch black out still, but Greene is making coffee.
“Did you sleep at all?” I say.
“A little. In your easy chair.” She scoops grounds into the filter. With her back to me, she adds, “Look, I’m sorry about the slipup with the reporter.”
I don’t have the energy to focus on Greene’s failings. I have only two things on my mind: staying alive and informing my sister about Jeremy’s article.
“I shouldn’t have talked to him at all.” She turns to me, holding a scoop in midair, and I see vulnerability in her for the first time. “I put you in a compromising position.”
“It’s hard to do everything perfectly in this business,” I say, the understatement of the year, but soon enough, that will all be out. “Besides, Jeremy is quite charming. Maybe too charming.”
She agrees with that, and we drop it.
“Any word on DNA on that Kleenex?”
“Not yet. You know the system. It always takes longer than we’d like, no matter how urgent, but we should have something by midday. Hopefully.”
I tell her my plan to go to Jess’s.
As I pick up my keys, she says, “I’m coming with. Just let me get us some travel mugs. It’ll brew quickly.”
“I’d like to speak to my sister alone, if that’s okay with you. And I feel better with more eyes on this place after what happened to Deputy Zane.”
“Not a chance.” She turns to me, our eyes mirroring anticipation for the day to come. A charged alertness. “I’m coming, but I promise to give you some alone time with your sister.”
“Okay then.” I point to the cabinet to the left of the range where I keep some travel mugs.
We take Greene’s vehicle.
When I get in, it hits me that I haven’t been in an official law enforcement vehicle with all its bells and whistles in over a year now. A deep sadness falls over me, but I brush it off. I have more important things to concentrate on.
I call Jess, waking her up. When I ask if everything is fine, she says it is, that Sam is asleep, and that Allison came over, true to her word, and ended up staying the night after watching a movie.
When we arrive, it’s still dark. Jess’s and Allison’s cars are in the driveway. The same uniform from yesterday is out front watching the house in her dark sedan. Greene grabs a flashlight and says she’s going to chat with the officer posted out on the street and make the rounds.
To my surprise, Jess is alert and already making coffee. She gives me a cursory hug in the open doorway.
“Come in.” She stands aside to let me enter, still a bit cool over the sour telephone call. “Allison’s asleep on the office futon.”
Jess’s hair falls across her face. She looks at me with puffy eyes.
I scan her place. Everything is in order, except for a few of Sam’s toys and one of Jess’s bigger throws strewn across the end of her couch.
I figure she’s been waiting for me, curled up under it.
In loose sweats, my little sister looks frail and painfully defenseless.
“What’s this about?” Jess asks.
Surprise that she’s not showing more relief to see me—isn’t wrapping me in a bigger bear hug or offering a condolence or two—stalls me for a moment. “Some coffee would be nice,” I finally say, even though I’ve already had a cup on the drive over.
We go to the kitchen, not speaking, and she pours me a cup. After Greene’s done with her walk-around, she enters the back kitchen door and announces she’ll be in her car making calls.
Jess turns to me. “So, what’s going on?”
“I spilled my guts to a journalist. Every little scrap. The article is coming out soon this morning and I don’t want it to take you by surprise.
Your name isn’t mentioned, as I promised.
It just refers to a woman.” I say it softly so Allison can’t hear, but even if she does, she’ll read about it soon enough.
She stares dully at me, but she doesn’t erupt, which, in a way, frightens me because she might be moving beyond anger to total apathy. There’s a deadness in her eyes that worries me. I press on. I’m here for more than apologies.
“I want to explain the article before you see it. There’s a lot in it, everything from what happened with Sophie, what happened to you, a woman”—I use air quotes—“someone I care deeply for but no use of the word sister. And with Mark, then Leon. I told him about the shooting and my omission of the truth to the investigator.”
“Omission,” she mimics. “Don’t bother. I get it. You need to confess something. Your life depends on it.”
“I didn’t do it just to confess something. If that was the case, I would have had the article come out last night. I did it for other reasons.”
“Like what?”
“For you, in large part. To confess to you and the world, to finally get all this out in the open so we can all move on. I don’t want us to hide anymore, or cower, behind the secret of it all, what Mark did to you.
And for me, the guilt. I figured, if I put it out there, in the tangle of all this Confession Artist commotion, most of the attention falls on me, not you.
I know you think people will figure out that it’s you, but they can only speculate, and even if they do, then if you get any negative media attention, whatever victim shaming or blaming or accusations of making it up for attention for your podcast can be dismissed because I’m the one who put it out there, not you. ”
I want her to say something, anything. I can’t help it: I’m still shocked she hasn’t expressed relief that I’m okay on the day after the deadline.
And hurt, given how much I’ve always gone out of my way to protect her.
Also, it feels a little like a slap in the face she thinks my confession is just to save myself, that she can’t get out of her own headspace long enough to see how tortured I am by it all.
“Now that it’s coming out,” I continue, “you’re free to do what you need to do to thoroughly deal with the rape.
It’s time. You need help. No more excuses.
Your podcast is flailing anyway, you’re not sleeping well, you jump when someone comes up behind you, you never smile or laugh anymore.
Like you said yourself up on the stage in Dallas: Secrets are rarely better kept locked away. ”