The Gray Zone (24 page)

Stacy Steingart’s Child Protective Services file could’ve helped Jake tie up some loose ends, but that was impossible now that the feds had it. Was there another way of getting the information he needed? It was a long shot. Still, Jake sped up the car, determined to get to his alternative source before anyone else did.

He found the Gordons’ street and cruised down it, knowing his nondescript rental car would attract no attention in this neighborhood. He parked in front of the house across the road and waited. The minivan was in the driveway. Gary Gordon was probably at home. Jake wondered how often Cheryl left the house. He needed to get her alone.

After about forty-five minutes, Jake saw movement at the front door. Cheryl Gordon waddled out, a purple shirt billowing over her
black Bermuda shorts. Her head jerked around nervously, as though she sensed she was being watched.

Jake was surprised to see her get into the minivan alone. She backed quickly out of the driveway and drove fast down the street, so fast that Jake struggled to keep up with her. She pulled onto a main boulevard and he fell back, letting her weave ahead so she wouldn’t suspect she was being followed. She parked at a shopping mall full of the same chain stores as every other mall in America. Looking around furtively again as she climbed out, she closed the car door and headed inside. Jake trailed her at a safe distance.

Inside, the mall was cavernous and chilly. Air-conditioning poured out of unseen vents. Shoppers strolled, bored, along the tiled walkways. Cheryl Gordon walked purposely through the crowds, a woman on a mission.

When she reached her destination, Jake understood why she had seemed so secretive. He wondered whether Gary Gordon knew about his wife’s evening visits to this place in the mall. He doubted it.

Cheryl Gordon pushed open the door to Souplantation, took a tray, and began filling it. Piles of salad, pasta, soup, pizza. Jake found a bench and watched her through the window. She returned to the pasta bar three times, each time with a plate as full as the last. She returned multiple times to the dessert bar, too, filling her tray with Jell-O, pudding, ice cream with toppings. She ate everything. Jake would have felt sorry for her if her crimes against Kelly hadn’t been so heinous. Her addiction was clear—her emptiness on display for all to see. She’d had a shitty life, too, and she lacked the spiritual or mental reserve to fight back: against Gary, against a system she must have known was destroying children, against her own huge body.

Cheryl Gordon sat, still, at the table for close to ten minutes after she finished eating. She almost seemed to be considering going back for more, but then she stood up. Jake watched her place her napkin
on her plate and head toward the back of the restaurant. Most likely she was heading to the restroom. Jake knew he had to act fast. She was probably running out of time, trying to rush back before Gary noticed she was gone.

Jake strode through the doors and followed his mark through the back door that led to the restrooms. The door to the women’s room was just swinging shut. He pushed through it, checked the room quickly for other women, and was relieved to see he was alone with Cheryl Gordon. He locked the door and turned around.

Cheryl Gordon had gone white. Her mouth hung slack; her arms flailed uselessly by her sides. Her eyes darted around the room but held a resignation, as though she knew she was trapped.

“Do you remember me?” growled Jake in a low voice.

The woman nodded, unable to speak.

“Do you remember this picture?” Jake held the picture he had found in Kelly’s duffel bag in front of Mrs. Gordon’s face. The woman’s eyes moved over the image of her younger self standing on one side of a teenaged Kelly, Gary Gordon on the other side, and Stacy Steingart standing sullenly off to the side. Mrs. Gordon shook her head, her mouth trembling. Jake grabbed the front of her shirt at the collar and leaned in.

“Who is that standing between you and your husband?”

“N-N-Natalie St. Clair.” Her voice was a whisper.

Jake got in closer. “And who is that?” He pointed at Steingart.

“S-s-s-sta—”

“I can’t hear you,” Jake snarled.

“Stacy Steingart.”

“Why are these two together?”

Cheryl Gordon shook her head.

“What was going on between them?”

“Nothing.”

Jake twisted the fat woman’s collar. Her eyes looked panicky.

“Nothing, I swear,” she gasped. “They were just living in the house at the same time.”

“What do you know about Steingart?”

“Nothing. I don’t know what you mean—”

“You know she killed a congressman?”

Mrs. Gordon’s face was expressionless.

“Listen, you piece of shit. The FBI is coming after you soon, but I know more about this situation already than they do. You tell me what you know, and there might be a sliver of a chance you can save your sorry ass.”

“We didn’t do anything to Natalie—”

“I’m not talking about Natalie. I’m talking about Stacy. I know you did something to her.”

“Nothing … happened. Gary … didn’t.” Cheryl Gordon’s legs were buckling. Jake loosened his grip and followed a hunch.

“Why did you let him rape her?”

Mrs. Gordon’s face turned into a mask of panic. “That didn’t—he didn’t. Even the court said he was innocent. There was DNA—”

Jake kept his voice steady. “Then who did it?”

She shook her head, her mouth a tiny white line above the quivering rolls of her neck, and closed her eyes.

Jake whispered, “Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to drag you out of here and drive you back to that bag-of-shit husband of yours and tell him what you do at the mall. That you sneak out of the house and spend his money porking down all this food. Then I’ll tell him you told me everything about him—the abuse, the rape, everything. Then I’ll tell him you called the FBI and that’s why they’re going to come knocking on your door tomorrow. You’ll be lucky if you live through the beating he gives you, and you know I’m right.”

Cheryl Gordon slid to her knees, whimpering.

Suddenly there was a knock on the bathroom door. A woman’s voice shouted, “Hey, you about done in there?”

Jake shot a fierce look at Mrs. Gordon. “Tell her you’re going to be a while,” he growled.

“I’m—I’m going to be a while.”

“Well, hurry up. There’s other people waiting.”

“She said she’d be a while,” bellowed Jake. He heard a gasp and the sound of retreating footsteps.
Shit.
Now he really had to work fast.

“The truth. Now. What did you do to Stacy Steingart?”

Cheryl Gordon squirmed. She stammered, “There was this guy. He paid us a lot of money.”

“He paid you a lot of money for what?”

“For Stacy. He paid us a lot of money so he could … be with her.”

“‘Be’ with her? What do you mean? Fuck her? In your house?”

Mrs. Gordon groaned. “I don’t know what he did with her. She went off in his car.”

“You sold her off for sex?” Jake could feel his blood rushing to his fists, and he fought to control himself.

“Not for sex. For the weekends.”

“Week
ends
? You did this more than once?”

“Weekends. When he wanted her. He brought her back Sunday nights. He paid us a lot of money.”

As if that made it okay.
In disbelief, Jake heard himself asking, “What about Natalie? Did you do that to her, too?”

“No, never to her … He didn’t want her. He always sent a muscle man for Stacy. Natalie tried to stop him once. She stood there in front of Stacy’s door. The man pushed her aside. Pulled Stacy out of bed and took her. Natalie went after him, kicking him, hitting his back. He shoved her aside and told me to grab her.”

Jake felt a stab of relief. “How many other girls did you fuck up like that?”

“No others. Just Stacy. She was the only one the guy wanted.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t remember his name.”

Jake struggled to keep himself from hitting her. “I don’t believe you.”

“He never told us his name.”

Furious, Jake let go of Cheryl Gordon’s shirt and she sprawled to the floor.

A sudden pounding filled the room.

“This is the manager,” bellowed a man’s voice from the other side of the door. “Open up.”

“Give us a minute,” said Jake, his voice unnaturally calm, filled with a sudden realization of an impossible possibility. “My wife and I are working something out. I’m sorry for the disturbance. We need one minute.”

The manager hesitated, as if he didn’t know what to say. “Okay, one minute.”

Jake leaned down to Cheryl Gordon, hissing in her ear.

“Who’s the guy?”

“He told us not to tell. He paid us not to …” She looked at Jake with her piggy eyes, then squeezed them shut.

Jake put his lips to her ear. “Who are you more afraid of—that guy or your husband?”

He felt her slump and knew he had her.

“Like I said before, he told us his name was Michael Young.”

Jake was thrown for a loop.
Kelly’s long-lost uncle?

Mrs. Gordon went on. “But … but … I saw him in a magazine, once. And his name was actually … Gillis. Todd Gillis, the bank guy. He has a ton of money.”

A wave of dread washed through Jake. He helped Cheryl Gordon to her feet and handed her some tissues. He unlocked the door and pushed her out ahead of him. A scrawny man in a polo shirt
with
SOUPLANTATION
stitched over the breast stood in front of them, keys in hand. An angry-looking woman with bleached hair stood next to him.

“It’s about time,” she muttered.

Jake barely looked at the manager as he walked by. “It’s a family matter. I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again. We’re just leaving now.”

The manager still looked uncertain, torn between Cheryl Gordon’s obvious distress and Jake’s tailored suit and confident demeanor. “Ma’am, you want me to call security?” he yelled after them, but Jake and Mrs. Gordon kept walking. Jake kept his arm on her all the way to the minivan. Then he walked away to his rental car, leaving her to face her husband and her conscience on her own.

WHEN JAKE GOT BACK TO HIS APARTMENT THAT night, it was cold and still, but enough ambient light shone through his uncurtained windows for him to see his way to the kitchen without turning on any lamps. He pulled a beer out of the refrigerator door, changed his mind, and grabbed a Red Bull instead. Popping the top, he wandered back to his dark living room.

He took a long sip and sighed. The pieces were starting to stack up, but he still couldn’t see how they all fit together. When he’d checked in at the Houston airport, a concierge had handed him an envelope. It contained a fax from Joyce with a message scrawled across the top:
You can thank me in the morning.
Leafing through the papers, Jake had smiled. It was a copy of Steingart’s Child Protective Services file. Joyce had worked her magic.

The confidential file filled in a little more background on what he already knew about Steingart and her horrible abuse at the hands of the Gordons—and Gillis. At sixteen, Steingart became pregnant.
Child Protective Services investigated, on the suspicion that Gordon had raped her. After DNA testing determined that Gordon was not the father, he was exonerated and Steingart had an abortion. The Gordons’ story was that she had run away and gotten raped on the street. Jake knew now that this was a lie: Gillis had been taking her on weekends, using her as what could only be called a sex slave. Either Gillis had gotten her pregnant or he had sold her to yet another man who had. Whatever the case, the young Stacy Steingart had confirmed the story that she had run away and been raped on the street.

Jake felt an uncomfortable stab of pity for the woman who had killed his friend. What she had done was unforgivable, but as usual he was readily able to see the reasons why she had become what she was.

The file said that after the investigation of Gordon, Steingart was removed from the house and put in a lockup unit in a residential group home. She remained completely mute during her time there, refusing to talk to anyone about anything, even about her basic daily needs such as food and sleep. There she remained for two years until receiving her emancipation at age eighteen. A line of text noted that the first person she saw after leaving the group home was a psychologist who had tried to reach out to her earlier, when she was still with the Gordons. The notes from that meeting remained confidential. After that visit, Steingart had joined the Marines.

Jake sighed again. It was such a sad, familiar story. He shook his head. Where did Kelly fit into all this? The likelihood was that she had met Gillis through the Gordons. But what about her story about meeting him on the street? Were she and Gillis somehow in this together? It seemed improbable, but Jake didn’t know what to believe anymore.

He reached for a cigarette—and in the spurt of the lighter, he saw her.

Kelly sat in his leather club chair, legs crossed, honey-blonde hair fanning over her shoulders. She was barefoot, wearing just a man’s T-shirt.
His
T-shirt. His
recently used
T-shirt, on closer inspection. The ultimate seductress—dressed in his own sweat.

Jake moved the lighter to the tip of the cigarette, not uttering a sound. Putting his feet on the coffee table, he exhaled smoke through his mouth. He could hear his heart beating in his ears and wondered whether she could too.

Kelly’s voice, when it came, was not buttery and melodic as usual. It had been stretched and pounded and mixed with sand. “I’m sorry.”

Jake sucked on his Red Bull. “I met with Gillis.”

Kelly looked shocked.

“He said he’s got the knife that killed Porter, and your fingerprints are on it.”

Kelly looked startled and sounded scared. “He did?”

“Mmm-hmm. He has it in a Ziploc bag, like a cheese sandwich. I saw it.”

“He’s going to use it. Against me.”

“I believe you’re right.” Jake didn’t even try to keep the edge out of his voice.

“But how could he—”

“It’s easy to plant evidence if you want. Plunge it right into the investigation.”