Stoletti is smart enough to let this thing ride out, and we remain quiet until we’re sure he’s done. Done for the moment, at least. There’s more, but I don’t know what. I was bluffing before, of course. We don’t have Evelyn Pendry’s notes from her interview with Albany or with anyone else. We’re completely in the dark. I just recognized something in his eyes and acted on it.
“Tell us the details,” I try.
“I’m saying I don’t know the details.” He waves his hands, pleading. “I don’t know if she was even pregnant, much less whether she got an abortion.”
“Keep going,” I say instinctively. In my job, you learn to control your reactions. I want to keep the focus on him so it’s not on Stoletti or me. Stoletti has a notepad and she casually scribbles something.
Pregnancy? Abortion?
Cassie Bentley?
I feel a burn through my chest. All of this is news to me.
The professor, deflated now, shakes his head. He has nothing more to tell us. I believe him.
“Who told Evelyn about this?” I ask. “How did she know to ask these questions?”
“I have no idea. She’s a reporter. She probably wouldn’t have told me if I asked. And I didn’t.”
True enough. Christ, Evelyn said nothing about this to me. Then again, I didn’t give her much of a chance.
“Did Cassie even have a boyfriend?” I ask, feeling something swimming in my stomach. That’s a question to which I, of all people, should know the answer.
The rumor had been she was gay. And then none of the details of her personal life mattered, not for the case, once we dropped the charges on her murder.
“I have no idea,” Albany says.
Stoletti looks at me and I shrug. She slips him her card and gives the standard line, If you think of anything else, don’t be a stranger. I walk out first, through the hallway, down the stairs and out the door, not entirely sure where I am.
But having some idea where I need to go. I call Shelly on my cell phone.
“What are you doing this afternoon?” I ask her.
28
STOLETTI AND I drive back in silence. She was never exactly warm to me, but since learning that I’m Harland Bentley’s lawyer the temperature has dropped still further. It feels odd, the silence, because both of us were floored upon hearing this talk of Cassie possibly having been pregnant and gotten an abortion. Such a blockbuster, and Stoletti treats me like a passenger in a taxicab. I sense that this supposed open-door policy has become decidedly one way.
When she drops me off at the station, I switch to my car. I dial information on my cell phone and ask for a number in Lake Coursey, where Harland thought his niece might still be living. “Gwendolyn Lake,” I say.
The operator tells me there are two numbers. “A Gwendolyn Lake on Spring Harbor Road, and a Gwendolyn’s Lake Diner on County Road 29.”
Party girl-heiress Gwendolyn Lake runs a diner?
I tell him I want addresses as well as phone numbers, and I’ll take them for both entries. Then I call my assistant, Betty, and tell her to get directions to both addresses off MapQuest.
I swing by the law school where Shelly works. She’s waiting out front. She didn’t have to be in court today and it’s summer, so she’s casual in a blouse and blue jeans. My disillusionment with Professor Albany’s revelations notwithstanding, I feel an immediate lift.
She jumps into the car, and I take in her scent. I consider reaching over to kiss her, but then I think, Slow. I promised.
But I don’t resist when she turns my face toward her and plants one on me.
“So this is how you entertain your dates?” she asks me. “A witness interview?”
I start driving. “It’s up north,” I explain. “Your kind of country.”
Shelly grew up downstate, where her father was a prosecutor before running statewide for attorney general, and later governor. She’s a city girl now, but she’s complained more than once about not seeing the stars at night and how she misses the clean, crisp, unpolluted air.
“While we’re up there,” I add, “we can look for a second home. Some place on a lake with a boat.”
She doesn’t take the bait, so I keep going.
“But first things first: We have to get you pregnant. And then the wedding, of course, at the governor’s mansion. I’ve got a preliminary invitation list. Is two thousand too many?”
I keep my face straight and my eyes forward.
“You mock me, Mr. Riley.”
I take her hand, which she reluctantly yields, and kiss it.
“Ms. Trotter, you’ve never known slow like I’m going to show you.”
“Don’t forget, Paul, I’ve seen you on the jogging path.”
Life is grand. I’m like a teenager after his first kiss.
“Tell me about last night,” she requests.
I had to leave Shelly last night when I got the call about Evelyn Pendry. I give her the long version, and because we have almost a hundred miles to go I tell her about Professor Albany today, too.
When I’m finished, she says, “Whoever’s doing this has an agenda.”
The interstate is relatively clear midday. I push it past seventy as we head through the northern part of the state, mostly underdeveloped, rural flat land.
“The victims aren’t random,” she elaborates. “Evelyn called Fred Ciancio, and both of them are dead. And he lets you see the weapons, from the song. He writes ‘I’m not the only one.’ He’s not hiding what he’s doing. The question is, why?”
She’s right about the victims. Ciancio can be linked back to the Burgos case because of the phone call he made to Carolyn Pendry. And then, recently, he called Carolyn’s daughter, Evelyn. This is not random.
“The other question,” she adds, “is where Cassie Bentley comes in. The thing about pregnancy and the abortion. You didn’t know anything about that?”
I shake my head. “The word, back then, was that Cassie had been ‘troubled.’ That was the word we always heard. Intensely private, too. She had, like, two friends. And her closest friend was Ellie, one of the other victims, so we never learned too much about her.”
“Troubled how?”
“Like locking herself in her room. Not going to class. Not socializing. Not even eating.” I shrug. “Rich kid who can’t be happy: ”
I feel Shelly’s eyes on me.
“Don’t be dismissive. It’s not easy having a famous family.”
Well, Shelly would know. She didn’t exactly have a winning relationship with her folks as her father ascended to the highest office in the state.
“Apparently,” I say, “it got worse around the time she died. She went into a cocoon.”
Shelly doesn’t respond, but I know the same words are on the tip of her tongue as mine. Pregnancy. Abortion. Enough to send an already troubled college girl into a nosedive.
“Did Terry Burgos know Cassie?”
“Not so far as we could tell. He certainly never said so.”
“Do you think these things going on in Cassie’s life have anything to do with why Burgos killed her?”
“No,” I answer. “I think he killed Cassie because she was Ellie’s friend. He needed another victim and she was it.”