Blind Spot (13 page)

Suki peered into the murky interior. Birds fled to the rafters and mice scurried for cover, and she wondered if the owl who had kept the mouse population under control for so many years was still in residence. She scanned the dark corners of the tall ceiling, but didn’t see the glint of his yellow eyes. She wiped the cobwebs away from her face.

“Over there, Mom,” Alexa said, pointing to the bank of lockers that ran along the west wall.

Suki nodded and followed Alexa, remembering: the Sunfish, the motorboat, the canoe, the tiny island on the far side of Echo Lake.

Alexa walked across the open space as if she had been here yesterday, and Suki realized she might have been. Alexa had always loved boats, whether it was sailing or kayaking or fiddling with greasy engines. For years, she had fished with Stan and Charlie Gasperini on Saturday mornings, worked on Charlie’s boat with him. And she and Jonah used to come out here all the time. Charlie and Jonah. How ironic.

As Suki watched Alexa expertly spin the combination on one of the small lockers, she wanted to ask exactly what the kids came up here for and why Alexa was so sure that, if the gun wasn’t in the river, it was in this one particular locker. She didn’t say anything.

“We leave notes and stuff.” Alexa glanced quickly up at her mother and then down again. “Sometimes kids have parties.”

Suki came and stood beside Alexa, but Alexa blocked her view with her body. Suki stepped back.

Alexa pulled open the lock and slipped it from the hook. Making sure Suki couldn’t see into the locker, she quickly pulled the door toward her and looked inside. Her shoulders slumped.

“It’s not there?” Suki asked.

“There’s another one I can try,” Alexa said, snapping the door shut. “But I doubt there’ll be anything in it either.” She walked along the bank of lockers and grabbed another lock, spinning it quickly. It pulled free of its housing and Alexa stuck her head into the locker.

“Nothing?” Suki came up behind her.

“Just a note.” Alexa pulled out a square of folded lined paper. “It’s for me,” she said, backing away from her mother and into the shadows.

Suki turned from Alexa and looked into the empty locker. She stuck her hand inside and stretched her fingers toward the far wall. There was no gun, but there were a few items stuffed in the corner. She pulled them out: matches, cigarette rolling papers, an empty film canister. She knew what the paraphernalia was used for, but she felt surprisingly numb to its significance. There was no gun. That was all that mattered. She had known finding the gun was a long shot—a long, long shot. But she also knew that in order to win this gamble, a long shot was going to have to come in. Suki threw the things back into the locker and closed the door. Now she’d have to go to Finlay empty-handed, his sense of morality her only appeal.

Alexa let out a low moan.

Suki whirled around as Alexa slumped to the floor. The note fluttered open to the sawdust next to her. “What is it?” Suki crouched and took Alexa in her arms.

Alexa shook her head, clearly unable to speak.

“Are you hurt, honey?” Suki asked softly. “Are you okay?”

Alexa managed to nod, then she burst into tears. She sobbed as if her heart would break, as if it were broken.

Suki held on to her daughter, rocked her as she hadn’t rocked her in many years. She crooned into Alexa’s ear, then she rocked her some more. As they sat there in the still, shadowy boathouse, Suki looked down at the open note. She couldn’t help but read it.

Alexa,

What happened isn’t my problem, you have to stop bad mouthing me around school. It’s over and it’s time to grow up and let it go. I’ll meet you here Monday at the usual time. We have to talk.

Jonah

Suki reread the note as Alexa cried. Jonah had been mad at Alexa and it sounded as if Alexa had been mad at him, too. And now Jonah was dead. Suki held Alexa tighter.

When Alexa finally quieted, Suki caressed her hair. “What does the note mean, honey?” she asked gently. “What wasn’t Jonah’s problem? What did he want you to let go of?”

Alexa pulled away and looked up at Suki, her eyes huge and miserable. “He lied to me, Mom,” she whispered. “He … he told me he loved me. That he wanted us to get back together. And then …”

“And then what, sweetie?” Suki asked although she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know. “And then what?”

Alexa shook her head.

“I think you need to tell me.”

“W-we,” Alexa stuttered, “we did it. And then, after … afterward he went back to Dara! He told me he didn’t love me, he only wanted to make her jealous.” Alexa hid her face in Suki’s sweatshirt.

Suki withdrew her arms and pressed them to her sides. Alexa had lied again. Pretending to be who she wasn’t, lying and running off to her parties and having sex and doing who knew what else. And now it was all coming due, perhaps deservedly so. But Suki also recognized that she was not without blame. This had all happened, while she, a trained psychologist, was going about life as usual: seeing clients, writing reports, buying milk and orange juice. It had been all too easy for her to believe Alexa’s lies. She put her arms back around her daughter. “Sounds like he deserved being bad-mouthed,” she said.

Alexa shook her head against Suki’s chest. “That’s not why,” she mumbled.

Suki held her breath.

“There’s more.” Alexa pressed her lips tightly together. “I … I got pregnant,” she said, her words tumbling out. “But Jonah said it wasn’t his—that it wasn’t his responsibility and that he wouldn’t help me. He said that I … that I slept around. That I was a slut. He told
everybody
.” She met Suki’s eyes straight on, and Suki knew her daughter well enough to know that what she was going to say next was the truth. “But I’m not, Mom,” Alexa told her, her voice ringing with conviction. “I don’t sleep around. I never had sex with anyone but Jonah. Not even Brendan.”

Alexa had had sex with Jonah. Alexa had had sexual intercourse, had made love, had screwed. Had been screwed. Jonah had screwed her, lied to her, humiliated her. And she had gotten pregnant. Suki took a deep breath. “You’re pregnant?”

“Not any more.”

“You had an abortion?” Suki asked sharply.

“What else did you expect me to do?” Alexa’s voice rose to meet Suki’s. “Somehow I couldn’t picture you with an unwed teenage daughter instead of a Princeton freshman in your family,” she spat.

“Don’t turn this around at—”

“Brendan took me to the clinic,” Alexa interrupted. “A few weeks ago. That’s why he was so mad at Jonah. That’s why we were out looking for him that night.”

The birds and the mice were quiet, the sound of the lapping water muffled by the walls of the boathouse. Suki listened to Alexa’s ragged breathing and clenched her fists. Then she heard a roaring in her ears. She looked around, surprised, before she realized it was the roar of her own anger.

How dare he? How dare Jonah manipulate, then violate, then abandon Alexa? How dare he hurt and humiliate her like that? Alexa’s only crime was that she had loved him, believed his lies. If Jonah weren’t dead, Suki would kill him. Kill him with her own hands. She pictured her fingers around Jonah’s neck, thought of the satisfaction she would feel as she watched his eyes fill with panic. Suki gasped.

If she wanted to kill Jonah, then so did Alexa.

CHAPTER NINE

S
uki didn’t get back to the rec center until late the next day. Upset as she was by Alexa’s revelations, she still had to see patients, work on the first section of the Kern report, drive Kyle to his drum lesson and go food shopping. She found it amazing, and even slightly amusing, that even though her world was being torn asunder, she still needed to buy toilet paper.

She walked across the boys’ gym, looking around for Finlay, but was unperturbed when she didn’t see him. Finlay was always about, as present within the rec center as the gym was, fixing a leak or pushing a barrel of garbage or helping a crying child find her mother. He’d be easy enough to spot. She poked her head outside.

A soccer practice was in progress. Boys, sixth or seventh graders by the size of them, were sliding on the long unmowed grass and falling into mud puddles left by yesterday’s rain, overseen by a coach who stood with his hands on his hips, a stance that even from this distance was clearly one of mock irritation. Laughter rang out as the boys pushed and jousted with shoulders and chests and hips, their hands clasped behind their backs. The coach shouted and they fell out into two ragged lines, still without the use of their hands, still butting each other with every available appendage. When he removed his hat, Suki saw the coach was Warren Blanchard.

Between the gym and the rear stairwell was a odd-shaped room that everyone called Finlay’s place. It would have been called his office if there was any space in it for a desk. Amidst the buckets and tools and broken sports equipment was a beat-up chair and a wall phone, but that was the sum total of the office equipment. Finlay Thompson was not an office type of guy. He was an energetic, wiry man in his late sixties who equated sitting with old age and death. He was hardly ever in his “place,” but Suki stuck her head in just in case. As she had expected, the room was devoid of human presence, but overflowing with all manner of junk.

Suki cast one more lingering glance at the soccer practice. Now the boys’ hands were held to the tops of their heads as Warren put them through some kind of running drill.

“
What you need to know is written in a dead boy’s hand
,” Lindsey Kern’s voice came at her as if, instead of having spoken the words two days before, Lindsey were speaking them now. Suki dropped to a seat on the bottom row of a set of bleachers pulled halfway out from the wall. She stared at the basketball hoop at the end of the gym, imagining she saw Jonah leap in front of it, slam-dunk the ball, and land on the floor, his arms raised in triumph. The crowd roared.

But the gym was silent. Jonah was dead. Jonah who had violated and abandoned Alexa, who had written Alexa a note, that if found, would destroy her life. Lindsey Kern was wrong: what Suki
didn’t
need to know was written in a dead boy’s hand.

What no one else needed to know. The note was gone. Burned in her kitchen sink yesterday, its ashes washed down the drain by the rushing water. Suki was well aware that she was destroying evidence, a significant crime, but she didn’t care. She had more doubts about not telling Mike; he should know, but he was already freaked out by Alexa’s prediction, and despite what defense lawyers claimed, Suki knew they always did a better job if they believed their client was innocent. Alexa had silently watched the flaming note curl into blackness, then without a word, had turned and gone to her room. She hadn’t come down for dinner and had feigned sleep when Suki came up to kiss her good night. What no one needed to know.

Suki launched herself up from the bleachers and headed out to find Finlay. She walked down the narrow corridor that separated the two gyms, then meandered the labyrinth of hallways off of which opened game rooms and sewing rooms and kitchens and art studios. She searched both levels of the main building, then worked her way through the two smaller ones.

Children were everywhere, as were their mothers, who gossiped or read or just enjoyed a few moments in which nothing was expected of them. Suki recognized many, nodded to a few, smiled at even fewer. No one tried to engage her in conversation, and although such a thing would never have happened two weeks ago, Suki was just as glad. She wasn’t in the mood for arch questions or oversolicitous condescension; she just wanted to find Finlay.

But Finlay, the man who was usually everywhere, didn’t appear to be anywhere. Suki stood in front of the main building, kicking at the gravel at the edge of the sidewalk, eyeing the office windows. She had wanted to confront McKinna with Finlay’s admission in hand, but it was obviously time for Plan B.

She walked into the building. Ellery’s office opened to the right of the secretary’s desk, which sat in the middle of a large airy room; Ellery’s door was closed. Suki smiled as she approached the secretary. Alice was her name. Alice something-that-started-with-C. She was the one who claimed to have seen the boys in the rec center the night of Jonah’s murder, but Alice’s story hadn’t stirred much interest in either the police or the press, because she had added that she hadn’t been there for the entire evening.

“Hi,” Suki said. “I’m looking for Finlay. Do you think you could page him for me, please?”

“Finlay Thompson?” Alice asked, as if there could be any other. Her eyes darted to Ellery’s door.

“Yes,” Suki said patiently. “That would be great.”

Alice fiddled with the buttons on her phone, but didn’t press any.

“I’d really appreciate it.”

The door to Suki’s right opened, and Ellery McKinna walked out. He was dressed in khakis and a short-sleeved shirt that displayed his muscular build far more than the suit he had worn to the funeral; dark hair curled above the shirt’s open neck, contrasting with the ice blue of his eyes. There was no arguing that he was a seriously attractive man. A dangerous and powerful, seriously attractive man. Ellery pressed his hands together, then reached his right one toward her. “How you doing, Suki?” he asked as though she were an ordinary acquaintance. The slight hesitation in his voice could be interpreted as curiosity, as if she had just returned from a long trip.

Reflexively, Suki shook his outstretched hand. “I’m trying to find Finlay,” she told him. “Alice was just paging him for me.” Miss Manners would be proud of her deportment. Civility was a powerful force.

Ellery glanced at Alice, who shrugged. “I’m, ah, sorry,” he said. “Finlay doesn’t work here anymore.”

Suki was stunned. “Doesn’t work here anymore?”

“You just never know with people, do you?” Ellery turned his palms to the ceiling. “Man works for you for years and years, and suddenly he wants something else. Another job, Finlay said. Something easier. Less stressful.”

Suki looked from Ellery to Alice. “Are you kidding?”

“I’m afraid not.” Ellery appeared honestly saddened.