Chapter 44
ABBY
This time, I hadn’t bothered to text or phone.
“Do I know this Elisa?” he asked.
“The wife.”
He stepped back as I pushed my way into the hallway, six-pack of beer in one hand and file folders in the other.
“But she went back to her maiden name, Agapov. And on formal documents her first name is Elizaveta. Which is why it took me two damn hours to find the obituary and news coverage. Vada washed up dead, too, a week later. That’s Curtis’s daughter, or was.”
He reached out to take the beer. But I didn’t plan to let go of the six-pack until I knew he was listening and believing.
“You remember that cruise she went on?” I asked.
“The reason she didn’t show up at the hearing, supposedly?
That was in July 2017. The wife and the daughter were found in August. Accidental drownings after a private watercraft overturned, officially.
No wonder Elisa—or Elizaveta—didn’t make that hearing. ”
“She was from Pleasant Park. Did they report it locally?”
I didn’t know if he was buying everything I’d discovered but I handed him the beer. It was getting too heavy anyway.
“Looks like she didn’t live on the North Shore long and by the time they were breaking up, she’d already gotten herself a permanent address in Chicago. It was in the city papers. Nothing local. Easy to miss, especially in a summer with so many Chicago shootings.”
Robert’s place was even messier than mine. Take-out napkins and an open bag of chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table. Basket of unfolded laundry on the couch.
“You can move that,” he said.
I sat down and looked around for the remote, to pause the movie he’d been watching.
“Under the cushion, maybe,” he said. “I assume you’ve got the address of where he and Benjamin were supposed to be headed?”
“Fond du Lac. At his father’s. Or come to think of it, he sometimes said ‘near’ Fond du Lac. And doesn’t the county have the same name? I haven’t been able to find the address. Did you have any luck?”
“Not yet. The father’s named Campbell, right?”
“Yes. I forgot the first name. Something long and biblical. But what if it doesn’t even matter, Robert? What if they drove to Canada? What if they flew to Mexico?”
“Not easy to do without a passport for Benjamin.”
“Florida, then. California. They could be anywhere. They could—”
Robert popped open a beer, handing it to me. “One big swallow. One big breath. Repeat.”
He gestured for me to stand up, found the remote, turned off the television, gestured for me to sit again, and said, “Two more sips. Keep breathing. Good job. Not just on the beer—on the research. I thought this guy had disabled your bullshit meter permanently. Welcome back, friend.”
I looked up at Robert and saw him for the first time in weeks, maybe months.
He was scruffy but clean, wearing a big gray sweatshirt and even looser black sweatpants dabbed with dried white paint—I had doubts whether that kitchen project had ever been finished, but I also knew that if it had been my renovation, he would have come through, because that’s how Robert was.
Ready to mobilize instantly for someone else’s chore or emergency.
Not always so great at dealing with his own.
I took two more sips to dissolve the egg-shaped lump at the base of my throat.
I said, “You’re going to lecture me for being stupid enough to trust Curtis.”
“I won’t.”
When he sat down hard next to me, the couch shifted an inch. He’d put on a few pounds since we broke up.
“Fond du Lac is a small town,” he said. “Forty thousand people. Can’t be too hard to find a man with a biblical name. If that’s where they are. And if he meant the town, not the county. But you remember him saying ‘near’?”
Sour beer rose up in my throat. “I think so.”
Fond du Lac, the town or the county. Fond du Lac.
You didn’t just invent Fond du Lac out of thin air.
And then again, Green Bay? His wife and daughter had never lived in Green Bay, from what I could tell following two hours of online searches.
And the dog? What the fuck was up with pretending to have a dog?
“His father isn’t doing well,” I said, still clinging to islands of fact in a sea of deception. “Curtis has been busy trying to help him.”
Robert had just popped open his own beer when I shouted, “Mattathias! That’s his father’s name. Both of their legal names. Mattathias Campbell, and Curtis’s father was a doctor, too.” I allowed myself one breath of relief. “I’ve got to pee now.”
When I came back from the bathroom, Robert’s face was pink, like he’d been rubbing it, the way he’d often done when we were a couple and he was feeling uncomfortable.
“This whole thing is beyond weird. It doesn’t all add up.
” He said it gently, watching my face. “I’m worried there’s stuff you haven’t told me.
But don’t worry. I’m gonna go first. This shit has been weighing on me, anyway.
” He set his can on the coffee table. “I didn’t resign just because they were going to fire me for the Sidney Mayfield diary thing.
I got into some other trouble over the last year. ”
“Oh, crap.”
“And,” he held up a finger, cautioning me not to interrupt, “I said some nasty things when Hernández was hired. Personal things. I was jealous he got the job I wanted. It wasn’t a cool thing to do.”
“Okay.”
“And then I was pulled over, leaving a bar. I put my badge on my lap to give the sign. I was with another off-duty cop and he even knew the guys. But it didn’t matter.”
“It shouldn’t matter.”
“Yeah. So, we got reported. The diary thing was just one strike, but it was the third one.”
“All in one year, huh?”
“It’s been a tough fucking year.”
“Is that it?”
“That’s never it. If you looked into my background, Abby, you’d find lots of things. Stupid bar fights. Girls I shouldn’t have dated. Even more girls who shouldn’t have dated me. Things I wish I hadn’t done and that I’d never tell my mother. Know what I’m saying?”
I’d met Robert’s mother, Stella. She seemed like a woman you could tell anything, especially if you were one of her three handsome sons.
According to her, they could do no wrong.
“Things that would get you cancelled now,” he added, “if you were someone important, and I’m not.
You called me a caveman once, and that’s probably true.
” He rolled his shoulder back, neck cracking.
He’d always said the long hours in the patrol car were bad for his back, as was the time he’d executed a flying tackle in order to stop a man intent on stabbing his wife.
“So now you know I never could have been the right role model for Benjamin. I’m a bad influence, just like you always worried I might be. ”
“Maybe a little. No one’s perfect.” I leaned over the low table between us, to take a better look at his face. “Plus you’ve been drinking a lot since you stopped working. Even if you’ve stayed at home to do it.”
“Guilty.” He hesitated. “But now you know what I’ve been holding back. I know it means losing your respect all over again. But I’m doing it for a reason. I think you’re holding out on something, too, and I want you to tell me. It’s not for us. It’s for Benjamin. No more secrets.”
I walked over to his desktop computer, on the far side of the living room under the signed and framed Bulls poster—the man would never understand interior decorating but at least he’d taken down the Sports Illustrated pinups—and I signed into my email account.
I pulled up the full hypnosis transcript but I didn’t let him read it over my shoulder. I had to be in control of this.
I started to tell him about that night—the driving, the drinking. How good it felt to be out of the house, partying with an older crowd. The fact that my brother wanted to get a discount on a used car. The fact that he was willing to offer my virginity for that discount.
“I’ll never know whether he was joking,” I said.
I fast-forwarded to the arrival of the cops, walking down the trail, finally getting picked up again by Grant and Ewan, the girl I had no memory of seeing. Then the accident and the failure to report it.
“I knew Ewan was convicted for what—obstruction of justice?”
“That was one of the charges. They weren’t able to prove that he withheld aid from Grant purposefully or even that he was part of the reason the accident happened in the first place. The only reason he’s still in prison is because he’s assaulted people in jail many times since.”
“But . . . geez. The girl?”
“She never came forward. Grant predicted she wouldn’t. But the next part is worse.”
I told him about Grant and what happened when the driver stopped to ask if Ewan and I needed help.
Robert stared at me, perplexed. “I just can’t see you as a young girl, failing to get help for someone, even if that guy was a jerk.”
“I don’t remember it, but I don’t want that to sound like an excuse. Obviously, I repressed it.”
“You were in shock from the accident. We can’t predict what we’ll do in those situations.” He scooted closer and put a big arm around me, carefully. “I’m sorry, Abby.”
I hugged him back, stiffly, then rolled my chair a foot away, needing more space, more time. Just talking about it made it all seem real in a way that made everything worse.
“So Curtis Campbell has something on you.”
“And that’s only half of it.” I’d saved the hardest for last—telling him about Benjamin possibly giving Izzy the clonidine that had caused her fatal reaction. “Curtis has something on Benjamin, too.”
Robert offered me another beer but I declined. It was nearly 11 P.M. No one would be coming and going to Curtis’s vacated place at this hour. I knew what I needed to do next, and I knew I would do it alone.