Trace of Innocence (15 page)

I
looked at the lake. It was dark out now, and the lake was even darker. Frigid water lapped at my ankles, and a little bit of ice crusted at the edges of the lake. I had better be certain I didn’t fall in at any point.

Fortunately, I wore my hiking boots, thick and waterproof. I pushed on the rowboat and hopped in, steadying myself. I put the oars in the oarlocks and started toward the middle of the lake, though I couldn’t see the island as the moon slipped behind a cloud. A big lantern-style flashlight and a life vest were also in the
boat, but I couldn’t imagine adding more bulk to my frame with the life vest.

I shivered a bit as I rowed, the wind hitting my face and making my eyes tear involuntarily. “God, it’s freezing,” I said.

The lake was silent. I could hear the sound of the occasional car on the road, a sort of faraway whoosh, but mostly I heard the sound of my oars hitting the water, and then the mechanical sound of the oarlocks.

When I had rowed pretty far out, I stopped to get my bearings. The island was there in the distance. My muscles ached, but I thought of my father and got a burst of energy, steeling myself against the cold and dipping my oars in the lake again.

Finally, I reached the shoreline of the island. I rowed around in a circle to see where Jack had moored his boat. Around the back side of the lake was a giant fallen tree. His rowboat was there, tied with a rope to one of the branches and then dragged up to shore.

“Go on, tie it.” I heard his voice, though I couldn’t see him yet. “I’ll help you.”

I saw a rope coiled in the bow of the boat. I grabbed it and threw it over the tree trunk. I felt the boat being pulled as he tugged on the rope. Cautiously, when I felt the boat actually hit
land, I made my way to the point at the front of the rowboat and hopped out, my boots crunching on ice.

“Where are you?” I called out.

“Here.”

I whirled around, and there he was, looking thinner than I remembered, and tired.

“Hi, Jack. I’m here. Where’s my dad?”

“Where’s Cammie’s underwear?”

I pulled the fake pair of panties out of my pocket and thrust them at him, sealed in the Ziploc bag. “I could lose my job over this.”

“Lewis won’t fire you.” He shoved them in his jacket pocket.

“The film is in there, too.”

“You have duplicates?”

“No. There wasn’t time. Or a reason. I wasn’t expecting my father to be kidnapped, Jack. I wasn’t expecting any of this, least of all for there to be a personal connection to the suicide king murders.”

“Would you believe me if I told you I had nothing to do with her murder?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I wanted to get him to trust me. “I guess it would depend on what you had to say.”

“Come on,” he said. “Over here. I have a little Coleman stove. We’ll light it to keep you
warm and I’ve got a thermos of hot coffee. I have a couple of blankets, too.”

“What if someone on shore sees the fire?”

“It’s small enough. Come on.” Out of, I guess, instinct, he grabbed my hand. As if all this hadn’t come to pass and we were still close. I pulled my hand away as soon as we got to the stove, which he had in the center of a fire ring made of gathered stones.

I sat down, and he passed me a thick wool blanket and lit the stove.

“Thanks,” I muttered. “Jack…look, I want to know where my father is.”

“I’ll tell you. After you give me the chance to tell you the truth.”

“Fine.” I wrapped the blanket tighter around me and leaned a little closer to the stove’s warmth.

“Want some coffee?”

“No. My stomach already hurts from what you’ve done. I couldn’t drink coffee if I wanted to.”

“I haven’t had a drink in thirty-four days, Billie. Thirty-four days. Got a thirty-day coin from A.A. and everything.”

I had attended a few Al-Anon meetings when we were dating. “Yeah? What are you going to do when it gets to the amends step? Where you
have to admit all you’ve done wrong? You’re just going to skip over that part?”

He hung his head for a second. “I still love you, Billie. I know right now you’re really upset with me. But you know how I am when I’m drinking, I mess up.”

“Yeah. You murder people.”

“I didn’t. Will you listen to me, please?”

“Fine.”

“All right.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I could see the wisps of his breath swirl around him in the freezing temperature. “Cammie Whitaker was my lover. It was a screwed-up thing to do, but I sort of…my marriage was a mess. We’d been trying to have a baby, and…we weren’t successful. Carol, God…she never talked about anything else. Baby, baby, baby. It was like we had nothing else in our lives but to watch when she ovulated. We were at each other’s throats. And I had just gotten my promotion. Like a lot of guys on the job, ambitious guys, I felt like I had to make my mark. I was putting in so many hours, I was falling asleep in my car. Meantime, we’re broke from seeing fertility specialists. Anyway, one night, I’m onto a possible drug bust. Marty and I, we end up finding a gym bag full of cash. Untraceable. Dealer was shot dead in
his place before we arrived. So we pocketed the cash.”

“What?”

“Billie, you know what it’s like to have trouble paying your electric bill while the bad guys live like kings and drive fancy cars you couldn’t afford if you saved for ten years? I did it and I’m ashamed of it—but part of me isn’t. And Marty talks me into investing with him in a club.”

“A strip club.”

He nodded. “It didn’t feel right, but I was drinking a bit too much at the time. And investing in the club? It made me drink more. I didn’t even tell my wife about it. I just put away the cash saving for a house. Anyway, I used to go to this one bar after work where Cammie was the bartender. She was a kid. A real kid. But she was a good listener. Sweet. And before I knew it, I thought I was in love with her.”

“Were you?” I managed to croak, though my throat had gone completely dry.

“I think so. But then my wife got pregnant. I mean, we had waited so long for a baby. And then out of nowhere, she’s pregnant. So I broke it off with Cammie.”

“And what happened when you did?”

“She took it bad. She was a mess. I was, too,
but I just felt like it would be wrong not to try to make it work with Carol. I buried myself in my job—
the
job. And I was spending time at the club. Making some decent money out of it. And then Cammie showed up.”

“At the club?”

“Yeah. She got Rick to give her a job—Marty had pulled together the deal with the four of us. I was really, really upset. She had no business doing that kind of work. She had no business there. Then Rick talked her into taking some side work. By now I was in so deep I felt like I couldn’t get out, Billie. And I was sick about Cammie. Sick. She was trying to make me mad, make me rescue her. I think she had a…complex about that. Wanting to be rescued. Knight in shining armor.”

“Why didn’t you just fire her? I mean, these guys were your friends, right?”

“Yes and no. Friends, but a lot of locker room crap. We were hard on each other. Always this edge to it. Rick said she could quit but he wouldn’t fire her. She was bringing in too much money.”

I shook my head slowly, back and forth. “Poor thing.”

“Yeah,” he whispered. “So then I reached a point, I had to see her outside of that place, out
side of the club. So I went to her apartment. God, just seeing her, I felt the way I always had. We made love. I told her I wanted her to stop that shit. But then she pressured me. Was I going to leave my wife, all that. I told her about the baby, and she went completely insane, so I left. I drove around and around and around. Thinking. Came back…and now this guy’s there. Falco. So I mean, I went back to make things right. I figure, yes, my wife is having a baby, but we’re not in love. Maybe I can somehow, after the baby comes, leave my wife. There was more money now, and I thought maybe I could somehow do it. But Falco is there.”

“And Cammie was nasty to you.”

“Yeah. She was playing me. Not like I blame her. I leave…and next thing I know, she turns up dead. I had used a condom. Thought I was safe. I kept my mouth shut. I figured it was Falco. Fuck it. Let him rot in there and throw away the key.”

“What about the card? The playing card?”

“I didn’t leave it. I assumed he had.”

I wanted to throw up. I mean, aside from the fact that I was upset over Jack’s moral and personal failures, if Jack was telling the truth, it opened up the tiniest window that David was guilty. Who was the real sociopath?

“But his DNA wasn’t inside Cammie, Jack. Yours was.”

“Right. But I didn’t kill her. Now, I may go to prison for obstructing justice, for some other bullshit, now that you and your pals stuck your noses in here, but I ain’t going in for murder. I didn’t kill her.”

“So you’re saying Falco did it?”

“I assumed so. Until later, a few years later, I find out that Rick did it.”

“Why?”

“She was playing everybody. She was so messed up, she was sleeping with him to get back at me, and she was doing drugs. He cut her off. Wasn’t going to risk a moneymaker. And then she started making a lot of noise about going to the feds, the IRS and the goddamn chief of police about our little club and what was going on there.”

“So he killed her?”

“Yeah. He went to her with drugs, said he was sorry. She could have all the drugs she wanted. But he slipped her something else. Something to paralyze her. And then he killed her. Turns out a few girls wanted out. He did it as a warning. You don’t fuck with the suicide king.”

“You have to go to the police, Jack.”

“We
are
the police.”

“Well, you need to make things right. You left a man to rot in prison knowing all this. And what about this girl in Atlantic City?”

“We all made a pact to keep our mouths shut. We felt like Rick was the loose cannon, so we kept a tight rein on him. As we expanded, we each sort of ran our own operation. That girl in Atlantic City, she was turning tricks on the side and apparently had stolen our little black book, made copies. That book has got celebrities in it, politicians. She was blackmailing us. By then Falco was out, and we couldn’t risk attention falling on us. This time, Marty killed her and he did it so…well, like a copycat, like Falco was still guilty. Didn’t count on you falling in love with the guy, Billie. Didn’t count on DNA clearing him.”

“Jack, you’re an accessory to murder. You think having those panties is going to keep you out of jail? You think you telling me all this is going to sway me?”

“Without my DNA, there’s nothing to tie me to her.”

“Except your three partners—sooner or later, when the D.A. lays it all out, they’ll roll on you. You’re all going to go to prison, Jack.”

“He who makes the best deal, wins. Just like
in poker. Without the DNA, I have the better hand, the better story. I know the truth.”

“Jack…this isn’t a poker game. It’s a crime.” I stood up. “I want to know where my father is.”

“Do you love this guy, Falco?” He looked up at me, his face anxious.

“Jack…” He looked so sad. “Whatever we had is over. It was over before I met him. It was over when you couldn’t stop drinking.”

“But I’ve stopped now.”

“I know. But you’ve been hiding so many secrets. You’re a dirty cop, Jack.”

“I’m out of it. I swear. Billie…look, you know when I lost Katie, I was a wreck. I’ve fucked up in my life, but I’m looking to straighten out now. And in all my life, Billie, you’re the one I loved. I swear it. You know how we are.”

“We’re combustible, Jack. There was always something intense between us, but that can’t be anymore. I’m going back to shore right now, and I want you to tell me where my dad is.”

“I’ll take you to him.”

“You swear?”

“I swear. Come on.”

He extinguished the stove, and gathered the blankets. We made our way back to the rowboats. Dry leaves swirled in the wind.

“We’ll go in this boat,” he said. “Leave the other one. I’ll row. Climb in.”

I stepped into the rowboat, and he pushed us off, then jumped in himself. He went in the middle seat, with me in the bow, and started rowing.

“Did you ever love me, Billie?”

I nodded. “I loved who I thought you were.”

We rowed under the starry sky. Suddenly, Jack stopped.

“What was that?”

“What?” I asked warily.

“That flash on the shore. I saw a light flash.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t like it. You tell anyone you were coming here?”

“My brother. That’s it. And you know Mikey. It’s not like he’s going to go to the cops. He hates cops. And now, frankly, after hearing your story, I do, too.”

“Are you wired?”

“What?”

“I don’t like this.” He pulled the panties and film out of his jacket pocket and out of their plastic bag. He plunged them into the water, using his oar to sink the underwear.

“Jack…”

“Shut up.” He pulled out a gun.

“Jack, don’t…we don’t need guns between us.”

A couple of minutes later, two helicopters swooped across the night sky, shining lights on us. On the shore, cop cars lit up their headlights, and someone was on a bullhorn, telling him to put down his weapon. Jack grabbed me and pulled me to my feet. Both of us were standing in the boat, which was unsteady. He held the gun to my head.

“Whoa, Jack…don’t do this.”

“You lied to me, Billie.”

“I lied to you? You kidnapped my father, Jack!”

“PUT THE GUN DOWN!” A male voice spoke authoritatively over the bullhorn.

“If I go down, Billie, you’re going with me. Tell them to back off.”

“Guys…” I said. “Things are getting hairy here. Please back off.”

The helicopters shone bright lights on our boat, and the gusts from their propellers stirred up the water, which shook the boat.

“Back off!” Jack screamed. One of the helicopters dipped a little, and we started losing our balance. I put my hands out to grab the sides of the boat, but we both fell into the water.

At the first touch of the water, I felt a shock
go through me like the snap of electricity, then a wall of pain. I opened my eyes underwater, but could see nothing. I looked up and could see the light of the helicopter, and I tried to move toward it but found my arms were like lead. I gulped in cold water, which seared my lungs. Already, my brain couldn’t think. I felt as though I was moving in slow motion.