Ghost writer, p.9
Ghost Writer, page 9
“So you think he’s faking it?” I asked quickly. “This is all some sort of joke?” I wanted Pierce’s opinion, though I’d already made up my mind.
Pierce’s eyes narrowed in what I hoped was contemplation, and he stared at the white wall behind me. Then he laughed a little. “Joke? Interesting word, Keaton.”
My pulse raced a little, and I wondered why Pierce had suddenly seemed so intent on playing games with me. “Pierce, what?”
Finally Pierce seemed to come back to the room, his tired, bloodshot eyes focusing on me with deliberate intention. “The joke was on the FBI, Keaton. The Manuel Roberts case.”
I shook my head, not understanding.
Pierce continued talking as he smoked. “It was real hush-hush. Manuel Roberts was missing, and of course everyone assumed it was murder. His buddy, Jerome Mitchner, had the motive. They’d had a fight over some gun exchange, and three witnesses came forward stating that Mitchner had told them he would kill Roberts. Problem was, they couldn’t find a body. So they did, at that time, the unthinkable. They hired a psychic. The psychic was sure the body would be found in the North Haven drainage ditch, somewhere near the river.”
I leaned forward. “Yeah?”
“The media made a big deal about it, since the psychic was used. Not only that, the location made sense. A witness had seen Mitchner around the area the night Roberts disappeared. By this time, the FBI was under fire for not being able to find Roberts.” At this moment, Pierce Jenkins paused. The butt of his cigarette was flush against his fingers, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“And?” I urged him to continue.
Pierce’s face reddened a little. “An off-duty FBI agent, fishing by himself, found a body in . . . Bear Woods.” He swallowed smoke and threw his cigarette to the cement floor, grinding it under his old leather boot. “It was none other than Manuel Roberts. So the FBI did the unthinkable again. They moved the body to the drainage ditch, called the media out on a lead, and pulled Roberts from the water.”
“A cover-up?” I asked, astonished. “But why? They were sure this Mitchner fellow did it?”
Pierce smiled and lit another cigarette. “Sure. Mitchner had the motive. But the FBI looked bad, and that was unacceptable. So they moved the body, just to show everyone they knew exactly what they were doing the whole time. Sickening.”
“How’d you know about that? Did you work on the case?”
“Naw. Just had a little inside information, that’s all.” Jenkins took in a deep breath, as if he’d just confessed to a murder himself. “You know, I read the ‘official’ files later, and though Mitchner confessed to the murder, he always said he was never near North Haven.”
“So how deeply was this covered up? Who knows about the move?”
Pierce glanced nervously at me. “Nobody. Nobody knows but the few agents involved in the transfer. And the agent who found him. It was an unbelievable cover-up. I only know of about ten guys who know the story, and their lips are sealed. It was in their best interests not to talk.”
I sighed, thinking hard and trying to pull all of this into focus. Pierce wasn’t silent for long, though. “There’s only one person in the world, other than those few men, who would know where Roberts’s body was originally found.” He paused and looked his cigarette over, twirling it carelessly in his fingers. “The man who murdered him.”
“Donomar,” I whispered to myself.
Pierce only acknowledged the answer by making eye contact with me. He punched his cigarette out on the table and stood. “The FBI isn’t going to let this happen, Keaton.”
“You mean, they’d rather let an innocent man die than admit to wrongdoing?”
“You haven’t been in this business long enough to know that?” Pierce sneered. He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’d go around the FBI—go straight to the DA.” He smiled a little as he found his keys in his pocket. “Esther Caladaras. She never cared for the FBI much anyway.”
“I have no intention of smearing the FBI, Pierce. It’s not in my best interest. But I can’t let an innocent man die, either.”
“I understand.”
“So I do this quietly.”
“If you can.”
“Caladaras has to cooperate.”
Pierce nodded, and his whole body seemed to suddenly slump in fatigue. “Maybe you oughta become a profiler, Keaton. You made a coldhearted killer confess to his diabolical ways. Doesn’t really get any better than that.”
I stood. “Pierce, I didn’t do a thing. I just listened. He’d already made up his mind to confess.”
Pierce looked away, then quietly started to exit. He turned around one more time as he opened the door and said, “Keaton, make sure you know.”
“Know what?”
Pierce’s mind seemed to be sifting through words. “Make sure you know this isn’t a hoax.”
I nodded and understood the statement completely. With a little pride I said, “I know it isn’t. I watched his thumbs.”
“His thumbs?”
“Yeah. Donomar was trying to act as if he had it together, playing it off real cool in the beginning . . . basically just the same old Donomar. But the one thing that gave him away was his thumbs. He kept twiddling his thumbs. You know how he always did that. Sort of a silent indication that there’s this crazed killer in there, you know?” Pierce nodded as I continued. “So when he started in on this weird confession episode, his thumbs stopped twiddling. His whole body changed. It was like he was . . . insecure.”
Pierce listened intently to all I had to say. Then he opened the door to exit. “I’ll keep you posted,” I said.
“No thanks,” he replied quietly and left.
Jonathan rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the story but felt he should probably stop. He’d been reading all day, and this was a good place to finish. He was very intrigued by the story and admittedly quite impressed with it so far. He was drawn to its mystery, and he knew he would have no problem finishing it. But today he would have to stop.
He checked his watch, astonished to find it was nearly five-thirty P.M. He left his office and checked Edie’s desk for messages for him. Just a few, nothing that couldn’t wait until Monday.
As he walked to his car, he remembered the “date” he had with Meg and looked forward to spending Saturday night with her. But this was Friday night, and he wondered if he shouldn’t take Kathy out. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d done something together.
On his way to his car, he noticed Sydney’s fiancé’s Firebird parked a few cars away. Although the windows were slightly tinted, he could tell no one was in there. As he passed it, he noticed something very peculiar, something that stuck out without his having to look very hard. He turned back around to double-check. There was no crack in the windshield.
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Their evening might have been perfect if Jonathan had been able to concentrate. Kathy sat across from him at the small, familiar table of the Redwood Crest Restaurant. The mood was set with a single votive candle lit in the center of the table and the soft, haunting music of violins in the background.
Kathy had even made an attempt at looking presentable. She wore a flattering brick-colored silk dress, had combed her hair and pulled it back on both sides with barrettes, and even dabbed on a little mascara and lipstick. The candlelight on her skin drew out a translucent illumination, and even her eyes danced with the slightest bit of anticipation.
They ordered their favorites, a silent signal to them both that familiarity is always so comfortable. The conversation mostly consisted of talk about the girls, thankfully. Jonathan could follow that with only half interest, pretty sure he came off as intrigued and captive.
His mind, though, was being pulled away by a single thing he didn’t see upon leaving work . . . the crack in the windshield. Over and over he played it out in his mind. Had he misunderstood Sydney? Had she been joking when she mentioned her head hitting the windshield?
As he watched Kathy’s mouth move, hearing about every other word, all his mind could see were the bruises and the cuts on Sydney. And those images festered up even more disturbing images, especially one in particular: When he had stated how happy she must be to be engaged, she had simply looked at her ring and moved the conversation along.
His conscience kept avoiding the obvious, until Kathy’s words startled him from his reverie.
“—beating her up.” The words followed by the silence rang in his ears like a bell. “Jonathan?”
“W-what? Sorry?”
Kathy tilted her head to the side and gave him one of those looks that no husband could miss—the look of disappointment. But Jonathan tried to quickly recover. He smiled, winked at her, and said in his softest, most soothing voice, “I was just thinking about this vinaigrette.”
“The salad dressing?” she asked with deliberate blandness in her voice.
“Yes. I think I had this exact same dressing our very first night here.”
Kathy folded her hands together on top of the table, and for a moment, Jonathan couldn’t read her. He pretended to be obsessively interested in the vinaigrette as he waited out the grueling silence from the other side of the table.
“I’m surprised you remember that,” she said softly, and Jonathan could tell by her tone that he had her. He looked up at her with an intentionally surprised expression.
“Why is that, dear?”
She simply shrugged and continued eating her own salad.
“So—what were you saying?”
Kathy resumed the conversation without missing a beat, explaining that math was, in Meg’s own words, “beating her up,” and Kathy was wondering if they should get a tutor. Jonathan tried his best to keep up, all the while entertaining disturbing thoughts of Sydney and the fact that perhaps her knight in shining armor was beating her to a bloody pulp.
Relying completely on what little self-control he had left these days, Jonathan managed to finally stick the thoughts of Sydney in the back of his mind and finish dinner with his wife.
Afterward, as the waiter took the dishes away and asked for their dessert orders, Jonathan resigned himself to tell Kathy about the manuscript. The mood was right, the night had been light and cheerful. Kathy was in a good mood.
Jonathan uncharacteristically ordered dessert and coffee, which prompted Kathy to do the same. He noticed she almost had a dreamy look in her eyes. Almost. It was as if she wanted to surrender but couldn’t quite find the courage. For some strange reason he understood. He felt the same way.
Still, there was a peace at the table, and Jonathan was relaxed enough to bring up the topic of the manuscript.
“Honey,” he said after the waiter brought out their coffees, “there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”
The waiter appeared out of nowhere with two pieces of cheesecake, and as he placed the dessert in front of each of them, the pause seemed almost too much for Kathy to bear. She picked up her fork as if she wanted to do anything with it but eat, and she must have folded her napkin five times, twice in her lap and three times on the table.
Jonathan waited for the waiter to leave, then continued. “I should’ve told you about this a long time ago. I just . . . we’ve just . . . there have just been some problems between us, and I wanted it to be the right time. It’s nothing big,” he said as he watched her face turn pale. “Seriously, nothing alarming. But I thought you should know.”
“Know what?” she asked stiffly.
Jonathan took a bite of his cheesecake and pointed to hers with his fork. “Aren’t you going to—”
“Know what?”
Jonathan was a little surprised at her tone. He wondered if he should indeed tell her, but it was too late. He had to tell her something. He took one more bite of his cheesecake, so as to appear relaxed, sipped his coffee, and said, “Well, there’s this little mystery going on in my life.”
He chuckled a bit, hoping to lift the sudden fifty-pound weight that had apparently dropped in the middle of the table. Kathy didn’t so much as blink.
“It’s the oddest thing,” he said again cheerfully, “but a few days ago I received this strange manuscript in the mail, addressed to my boyhood address, of all places, and when I opened it, it didn’t have an author’s name.” He sipped his coffee again, this time feeling a little nervous and fidgety. Kathy was stone-cold. “Anyway, long story short, it’s sort of similar to my life.” He paused and looked up at her, hoping for a response.
The waiter returned and warmed his coffee. Kathy’s cheesecake and coffee were untouched. “Um, the story starts out with these two young kids, and one kid gets killed by this tractor and plow. Anyway, they’re brothers, and their names are Jonathan and Jason.” He paused to try to stop any emotions that might want to creep up. Nothing was coming, so he continued. “I think I told you that Jason, my brother, died.”
“Barely.”
“Yes, well, the story was so similar it really caught my attention. And the more I read, the more similar the story became about my life.”
Kathy stopped him, holding up her hands. “Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that you’re reading a story about your own life?”
“Well, honey, it’s nothing big. It’s similar. Key word there. There are a lot of discrepancies—”
“How similar?”
Jonathan swallowed and scraped the side of his cheesecake with his fork. “You know, just sort of generalizations. I mean, it doesn’t record every bathroom break I took in elementary school.”
Kathy leaned forward a bit. “Jonathan, what are you saying, exactly?”
“I’m just saying that—and there’s nothing to be alarmed about, I assure you—that it may be some practical joke or something, but it appears that someone is sending me my life’s story. Anonymously.”
Kathy’s face turned worried. “Do you know who?”
“Honey, if I knew that, it wouldn’t be anonymous,” Jonathan said smoothly, trying very hard to keep his voice steady and calm.
“Who would do such a thing?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure it’s just a joke or something.”
Kathy finally picked up her cup of coffee and sipped it. “You’re not worried?”
“No, no. Not in the least bit. I mean, it’s weird. But it’s not dangerous. And it’s only been three chapters, just about my childhood—vague, very vague descriptions of my childhood—and that’s it. There’s nothing in there about you and the kids. Nothing to worry about. I just told you because I thought you should know.”
Kathy set down her coffee cup, picked up her fork, twirled it in her fingers, and looked directly in his eyes. “So is that what this dinner was about?”
Jonathan’s whole body went limp with relaxation. He’d done it. He’d told her, with few questions asked. And it seemed as if the evening would go on as normal. His appetite furiously rushed back, and he took two or three more bites of cheesecake with barely a breath in between. “Yes, honey. I wanted to tell you.”
But before he could finish his third bite, the table shook as Kathy laid both of her hands down onto it with a thump. Jonathan looked up in surprise.
“So this wasn’t about us? About you and me?”
Jonathan felt his head begin to spin. He hated being lost in a conversation in which he had no idea the direction it was about to take. “What?”
“This whole night was what? A prompting for this big news you had to break to me?”
“Kathy, I—”
“I get it,” she said, throwing down her napkin and almost knocking her coffee over.
“Get what?” Jonathan demanded, setting his own fork down.
“This night. This wasn’t about you and me. This wasn’t a date. This wasn’t you wanting to spend time with your wife. This was an attempt to relax me so you could tell me about some dumb manuscript about your life.”
Jonathan was so caught off guard that he didn’t know what to say. He flung his body back into his chair, opened his wallet, took out a credit card, and looked for the waiter. “I guess I can assume the evening’s over,” he stated harshly, avoiding her heated eyes.
“Apparently it never began,” she blurted out. Shoving her chair back, she grabbed her sweater off the back, turned toward the door, and then stopped. Without turning around, she said quietly, “I just wish you knew how much I wanted this night to be about you and me.” She then quietly walked out of the restaurant.
Jonathan slumped in exhaustion, and when the waiter arrived to take his credit card, all he could do was slide it slowly across the top of the table. Nothing was simple. Nothing could be enjoyed anymore. He felt as desperate as he ever had.
chapter 9
Jonathan vowed to not let Kathy ruin his entire weekend. Although he would’ve rather subjected himself to acupuncture needles than stay home, he remembered his date with Meg Saturday evening. And so he and Meg went to the video store and rented some movie Kathy would never have let her watch and stayed up late eating junk food.
He waited till Meg was absorbed in the movie to slide the mysterious manuscript out of his briefcase, all the while participating by grabbing obnoxious handfuls of their famous popcorn-and-Milk-Dud mix, something they’d accidentally created when Meg was seven and both discovered they loved.
Kathy kept herself busy upstairs with the two other children, making enough noise to let everyone in the house know she was around. Jonathan deliberately left the movie case on the kitchen table, daring her to say something about the movie choice he’d made. But neither of them spoke, and though Jonathan knew the silence was more grueling for her than him, he remained silent and unapproachable the whole day and evening.
