Hold Tight (30 page)

Like his father.

Tia looked out the window. Her two men-boys started toward the door to say good-bye. She waved at them and blew them a kiss. They waved back. She watched them get into Mo’s car. She kept her eyes on them until the car faded away at the turn down the road.

She called out. “Jill?”

“I’m upstairs, Mom!”

They had taken the spy software off Adam’s computer. You could argue it a dozen different ways. Maybe if Ron and Betsy had been watching Spencer more closely, they could have saved him. But maybe not. There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness. Here Mike and Tia had been so worried about their son-and in the end, it was Jill who came closer to dying. It was Jill who suffered the trauma of having to shoot and kill another human being. Why?

Randomness. She happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

You can spy, but you can’t predict. Adam might have found a way out of this on his own. He could have made that tape and Mike wouldn’t have been assaulted and nearly killed. That crazy kid Carson wouldn’t have pulled a gun on them. Adam wouldn’t still be wondering if his parents truly trusted him.

Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.

So what had Tia the mother learned from all this? You do your best. That’s all. You go in with the best intentions. You let them know that they are loved, but life is too random to do much more. You can’t really control it. Mike had this friend, a former basketball star, who liked to quote Yiddish expressions. His favorite was “Man plans, God laughs.” Tia had never really gotten that. She thought that it gave you an excuse to not try your hardest because, hey, God is going to mess with you anyway. But that wasn’t it. It was more about understanding that you could give it your all, give yourself the best chances, but control is an illusion.

Or was it still more complex than even that?

One could argue just the opposite-snooping had saved them all. For one thing, snooping had helped them realize that Adam was in over his head.

But more than that, the fact that Jill and Yasmin snooped and knew about Guy Novak’s gun-without that, they would all be dead.

So ironic. Guy Novak keeps a loaded gun in his house and rather than it leading to disaster, it saves them all.

She shook her head at the thought and opened the fridge door. They were low on groceries.

“Jill?”

“What?”

Tia grabbed her keys and wallet. She looked for her cell phone.

Her daughter had recovered from the shooting with surprising ease. The doctors warned her that it could be a delayed reaction or maybe she realized that what she did was proper and necessary and even heroic. Jill wasn’t a baby anymore.

Where had Tia put her cell phone?

She had been sure that she had left it on the counter. Right here. Not more than ten minutes ago.

And it was that simple thought that turned everything around.

Tia felt her body go rigid. In the relief of survival, they had let a lot of things go. But suddenly, as she stared down at the spot where she was sure she had left her cell phone, she thought about those unanswered questions.

That first e-mail, the one that started it all, about going to DJ Huff’s house for a party. There had been no party. Adam had never even read it.

So who had sent it?

No…

Still searching for her cell, Tia lifted the house phone, picked it up, and dialed. Guy Novak answered on the third ring.

“Hey, Tia, how are you?”

“You told the police that you sent out that video.”

“What?”

“The one with Marianne having sex with Mr. Lewiston. You said you sent it out. To get revenge.”

“So?”

“You didn’t know about it at all, did you, Guy?”

Silence.

“Guy?”

“Let it go, Tia.”

He hung up.

She crept up the stairs quietly. Jill was in her own room. Tia didn’t want her to hear. It was all coming together. Tia had wondered about that, about these two horrible things-Nash going on his rampage, Adam vanishing-happening at the same time. Someone had joked that bad things come in threes and you better watch out. But Tia had never quite bought that.

The e-mail about the Huff party.

The gun in Guy Novak’s drawer.

The explicit video that was sent to Dolly Lewiston’s address. What tied them all together?

Tia turned the corner and said, “What are you doing?”

Jill jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice. “Oh, hi. Just playing Brickbreaker.”

“No.”

“What?”

They joked about it, she and Mike. Jill was nosy. Jill was their Har- riet the Spy.

“I’m just playing.”

But she wasn’t. Tia knew that now. Jill didn’t take her phone all the time to play video games. She did it to check Tia’s messages. Jill didn’t use the computer in their room because it was newer and worked better. She did it to see what was going on. Jill hated to be treated like a little kid. So she snooped. She and her friend Yasmin.

Innocent kid stuff, right?

“You knew we were watching Adam’s computer, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Brett said that whoever sent that e-mail had done it from inside the house. They sent it, they went on Adam’s e-mail because he wasn’t home, they deleted it. I couldn’t figure out who would or could do that. But it was you, Jill. Why?”

Jill shook her head. But at the end of the day, a mother knows.

“Jill?”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“I know. Tell me.”

“You guys shredded the reports, but I mean, why did you suddenly have a shredder in your bedroom? I could hear you whispering about it at night. And you even bookmarked the site for E-SpyRight on your computer.”

“So you knew we were spying?”

“Of course.”

“So why did you send that e-mail?”

“Because I knew you’d see it.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you want us to see something about a party that wasn’t really happening?”

“I knew what Adam was going to do. I thought it was too dangerous. I wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t tell you the truth about Club Jaguar and all that. I didn’t want to get him in trouble.”

Tia nodded now. “So you made up a party.”

“Yes. I said there would be drinking and drugs.”

“You figured that we’d make him stay home.”

“Right. So he’d be safe. But Adam ran away. I didn’t think he’d do that. I messed up. Don’t you see? It’s all my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Jill started to sob. “Yasmin and me. Everyone treats us like babies, you know? So we spy. It’s like a game. The adults hide stuff, and then we find out about it. And then Mr. Lewiston said that horrible thing about Yasmin. It changed everything. The other kids were so mean. At first Yasmin got really sad, but then it was like, I don’t know, like she went crazy mad. Her mom had always been so useless, you know, and I think she saw this as a chance to help Yasmin.”

“So she… she set up Mr. Lewiston. Did Marianne tell you about it?”

“No. But see, Yasmin spied on her too. We saw the video on her camera phone. Yasmin asked Marianne about it, but she said it was over and that Mr. Lewiston was suffering too.”

“So you and Yasmin…?”

“We didn’t mean any harm. But Yasmin had had enough. All the adults telling us what was best. All the kids in school picking on her. On us, really. So we did it on the same day. We didn’t go to her house after school. We came here first. I sent out the e-mail about that party to get you to act-and then Yasmin sent out the video to make Mr. Lewiston pay for what he’d done.”

Tia stood there and waited for something to come to her. Kids don’t do what their parents say-they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here? Tia was not sure.

“That’s all we did,” Jill said. “We just sent out a couple of e-mails. That’s all.”

And that was true.

“It’s going to be okay,” Tia said, echoing the words her husband had repeated to her son in that interrogation room.

She kneeled down and took her daughter in her arms. Whatever had been holding back Jill’s tears gave way. She leaned against her mother and cried. Tia stroked her hair and made comforting sounds and let the sobs come.

You do what you can, Tia reminded herself. You love them the best you can.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said once more.

This time, she almost believed it.

ON a cold Saturday morning-the very day that Essex County Prosecutor Paul Copeland was to be married for the second time-Cope found himself standing in front of a U-Store-It unit on Route 15.

Loren Muse stood next to him. “You don’t have to be here.”

“The wedding isn’t for six hours,” Cope said.

“But Lucy-”

“Lucy understands.”

Cope glanced over his shoulder where Neil Cordova waited in the car. Pietra had broken her silence a few hours ago. After all her stone-walling, Cope had come up with the simple idea of letting Neil Cordova talk to her. Two minutes in, with her boyfriend dead and a deal firmly in place with her lawyer, Pietra broke down and told them where they would find the body of Reba Cordova.

“I want to be here,” Cope said.

Muse followed his gaze. “You shouldn’t have let him come either.”

“I promised.”

Cope and Neil Cordova had talked a lot since Reba had vanished. In a few minutes, if Pietra was telling the truth, they would now have something horrible in common-dead wives. Weirdly enough, when they looked into the background of the killer, he too shared this hor- rific attribute.

As if reading his thoughts, Muse asked, “Do you leave any room for the chance that Pietra is lying?”

“Very little. You?”

“Same,” Muse said. “So Nash killed these two women to help his brother-in-law. To find and destroy this tape of Lewiston ’s infidelity.”

“So it seems. But Nash had priors. I bet if we go back, we’ll find a lot of bad in his past. I think this was probably an excuse for him to wreak damage more than anything else. But I don’t know or care about the psychology. You can’t prosecute psychology.”

“He tortured them.”

“Yes. In theory to see who else knew about the tape.”

“Like Reba Cordova.”

“Right.”

Muse shook her head. “What about the brother-in-law, the school-teacher?”

“ Lewiston? What about him?”

“Are you going to prosecute him?”

Cope shrugged. “He claims that he told Nash as a confidante and that he didn’t know that he’d go so crazy.”

“Do you buy that?”

“Pietra backs it, but I don’t have enough evidence one way or the other yet.” He looked at her. “That’s where my detectives come in.”

The storage unit supervisor found the key and put it in the lock. The door was opened and the detectives poured in.

“All that,” Muse said, “and Marianne Gillespie never sent the tape.”

“Seems not. She just threatened to. We checked it out. Guy Novak claims that Marianne told him about the tape. She wanted to let it slide-thought just the threat was punishment enough. Guy didn’t. So he sent the tape to Lewiston ’s wife.”

Muse frowned.

“What?” Cope asked.

“Nothing. You going to prosecute Guy?”

“For what? He sent out an e-mail. That’s not against the law.”

Two of the officers walked out of the storage unit slowly. Too slowly. Cope knew what it meant. One of the officers met Cope’s eyes and nodded.

Muse said, “Damn.”

Cope turned and walked toward Neil Cordova. Cordova watched him. Cope kept his eyes up and tried not to teeter. Neil started shaking his head as he saw Cope move closer. He shook his head harder now, as if the very act could deny the reality. Cope kept his pace steady. Neil had braced for this, knew it was coming, but that never cushioned blows like these. You have no choice. You can no longer divert or fight it. You simply have to let it crush you.

So when Cope got to him, Neil Cordova stopped shaking his head and collapsed against Cope’s chest. He started sobbing Reba’s name over and over, saying it wasn’t true, couldn’t be true, begging some higher power to return his beloved to him. Cope held him up. Minutes passed. Hard to say how many. Cope stood there and held the man and said nothing.

An hour later Cope drove himself home. He took a shower and put on his tuxedo and stood with his groomsmen. Cara, his seven-year-old daughter, got “awws” as she walked down the aisle. The governor himself presided over the nuptials. They had a big party with a band and all the trimmings. Muse was there as a bridesmaid, all dressed up and looking elegant and beautiful. She congratulated him with a kiss on the cheek. Cope thanked her. That was the extent of their wedding conversation.

The evening was a colorful whirlwind, but at some point, Cope got two minutes to sit alone. He loosened his bow tie and undid the top button of his tux shirt. He had gone through the cycle today, starting with death and ending with something as joyous as the joining of two. Most people could probably find something profound in that. Cope didn’t. He sat there and listened to the band wreak havoc on some up-tempo number by Justin Timberlake and watched his guests try to dance to it. For a moment, he let himself drift into the dark. He thought about Neil Cordova, about the crushing blow, about what he and his little girls were going through right now.

“Daddy?”

He turned. It was Cara. His daughter grabbed his hand and looked at him, all seven years of her. And she knew.

“Will you dance with me?” Cara asked.

“I thought you hated to dance.”

“I love this song. Please?”

He rose and walked to the dance floor. The song repeated its silly refrain about bringing sexy back. Cope started to move. Cara grabbed his new bride away from some well-wishers and dragged her onto the dance floor too. Lucy and Cara and Cope, the new family, danced. The music seemed to grow louder. Their friends and family started clapping encouragement. Cope danced hard and horribly. The two women in his life smothered laughs.

When he heard that sound, Paul Copeland danced even harder, flapping his arms, twisting his hips, sweating now, spinning himself until there was nothing left in the world but those two beautiful faces and the wondrous sound of their laughter.