Face of Betrayal (13 page)

Good. Stone wanted to keep him off-balance. His clients had to know who was boss—and it wasn’t the person who was paying the bills.

“I’ve seen her pictures. She’s a cutie. And you’re a big shot senator. I’ll bet you were like a rock star to her. So were you getting it on with her?”

“No!” Fairview was now light-years away from being relaxed. “I was mentoring her,” he said, sounding like he was reading from a tele-prompter. “I often take a special interest in one or two of the pages every year, because that’s an integral part of the internship program and—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, here’s the deal. It’s very simple. They’ve set up a grand jury to investigate her disappearance. Now they’re going after your phone records. If you had sex with her or killed her or even sent her that last crappy Paris Hilton YouTube clip, there is no way you should be talking to the feds or any other law enforcement people. Don’t worry, I’m not here to judge you. I am here to try and point out the Indians behind the trees. I just want to make sure you even see the trees!”

“But they’re dragging my name through the mud. My staff and I agree that this has got to stop. Every time I turn around, someone is asking me about this girl. Not only are they asking me, they’re asking my wife.” Fairview’s eyes teared up. “My kids.”

“You’re a smart guy,” Stone said soothingly. “Hell, you’re a senator. Who was that politico who said that the Senate is the most exclusive men’s club in the world? Whatever—I understand why you and your ‘people’ think it is important for you to get out there and say, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ Just stay away from ‘I am not a crook,’” he added dryly. “It’s been done. But if you talk to the feds, you either tell the truth or you don’t talk at all.”

“I understand. What else should I know?”

Finally, Fairview was asking an intelligent question.

“Simple. Keep it short and sweet. No speeches, no big explanations. When they ask you a question, answer it in as few words as possible. If they say nothing after that—do
not
start adding to your answer. That’s the way you get hung out to dry.”

“Okay, okay.” Fairview nodded like a bobblehead.

“If you want to sit down with the feds, I will be there. Just don’t try to pull the wool over their eyes. My point can be made in two words: Martha Stewart. She went to the can after being convicted of lying about a crime she was never charged with in the first place.”

“Well, I haven’t been charged with any crime either.” Fairview seemed ready to get back on his high horse.

“You really think so?” Sarcasm colored Stone’s words. “How long has your cable been out? You might want to call them and get it back on. Because every night I listen to two blonde ex-prosecutors and my fellow defense lawyers debate your innocence. And let me tell you—it’s not looking too good for you. The feds may not have charged you, but in the court of public opinion you are already being found guilty.”

“Is there anything else?” Fairview sounded irritated.

Stone guessed he was used to being surrounded by yes-men, not someone who gave it to him straight.

“Yeah,” Stone said. “Got a check for me?”

SAN FELIPE TAQUERIA

December 23

W
hen will you tell work?” Cassidy asked, biting into a chip loaded with salsa.

A drop splashed into the deep V of her turquoise blouse that exactly matched her eyes. Allison watched as she nonchalantly scooped it up with her index finger and licked it off.

Allison, Cassidy, and Nicole were grabbing a quick meal at San Felipe Taqueria, a little hole-in-the-wall in Southeast Portland that served the best fish tacos in the city. Cassidy had ordered a margarita, Nicole had gotten a beer, and Allison, despite the counterwoman’s puzzled look, had ordered a large milk. It arrived in a glass with a beer logo on the side.

Allison said, “I’m not going to tell anyone else until I’m sure everything’s going to be okay. When I was working at McGarrity and White, there was an associate who told everyone she was pregnant when she was only a few weeks along. Then she found out the baby had Down syndrome. She took a week off, and when she came back she wasn’t pregnant anymore. But everybody knew what had happened.” She sighed. “I keep wondering if everything is going okay. This must be how people feel when they find out they have cancer. Like something secret is happening deep inside them, dividing and growing, something you can’t see.”

“But this is a baby.” Cassidy looked startled. “Not a cancer.”

Nicole’s mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Sometimes it feels like that, though. The baby takes priority, and if there aren’t enough nutrients to go around, the mother gets shorted. That’s why women used to lose their teeth a hundred years ago.”

“Speaking of mothers, what do you think of Katie’s?” Cassidy raised her eyebrows.

“Heck, if I were that girl, I might run away just to get away from her.” Nicole shook her head. “She’s just a tad rigid. And according to her, Katie walked on water. Nobody is that perfect.”

“Not even Makayla?” Allison teased. Hidden by the table, she put her hand on her stomach. If this baby was a girl, could she do a better job with it than her own mother had done with her?

“That child can be willful. But she knows I won’t stand for any back-talk. She doesn’t like the hours I’m working now because of the task force, but I just tell her, ‘Honey, how do you expect me to pay for that private school and those ballet lessons?’”

“So how
are
things going with the Katie Converse case?” Cassidy looked at Nicole and Allison expectantly.

“We’re getting lots of tips—but 90 percent of them are from crazy people. The big cases bring out the big nuts. I think half the people in the county have had some kind of prophetic dream about her.” Nicole popped another chip into her mouth. “We’re under orders to treat everything seriously. So we’re going on a lot of wild-goose chases, but we haven’t found anything. It’s like Katie walked that dog out her front door and vanished.”

Allison sighed. “The results from the trap and trace on her phone show nothing unusual. Almost all of it is calls back and forth to her parents. A few calls to the senator when the program started, then nothing.” For now, she kept to herself the subpoena for Senator Fairview’s records.

Cassidy looked disappointed. “What about her blog?”

Behind her, a Mexican soap opera played silently on TV. Allison watched a young woman with flashing dark eyes slap a handsome man in the face. A second later, they were in each other’s arms.

“Clearly Katie was having some kind of stormy relationship with somebody,” Nicole said. “But whether it was the senator or a boy—or both, or someone else entirely—we don’t know. And we checked her e-mail, but there’s nothing to go on there.”

Cassidy said, “But look at Fairview. He knows the whispers are start-ing. He’s showing up with his wife in tow at any kind of event where there will be cameras. He’s always got his arm around her. I think he’s acting guilty. And so does Rick.” She sighed. “Rick. That man is amazing! I haven’t felt this hot for a guy since my first boyfriend!”

“If you say so,” Allison said.

Cassidy said defensively, “Well, what was your first time like?”

“The usual.” Allison looked away. She picked up a chip. “More his idea than mine.”

Nicole raised her head, as if scenting something interesting. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen.” Younger even than Katie, she realized. But she hadn’t felt young. Her father had just died, and she had felt as old as the world.

“So he went to school with us?” Cassidy asked, licking the salt off the rim of her margarita.

“Kind of.” Allison could barely hear her own words.

“What—did he drop out?” Cassidy arched an eyebrow. “You had your-self some kind of rebel boyfriend?” She and Nicole exchanged a grin.

They might not have run in the same circles, but they both knew Allison had been just as buttoned-down in high school as she was now. Part of her just wanted to see the surprise in their eyes.

“No. It was Mr. Engels.”

Cassidy set down her glass. “Wait—the AP English teacher? Wasn’t he like, fifty or something? And married?”

“He told me we were in love.”

“Love? Hello?” Nicole said flatly. “You were just a kid. That’s not love. That’s some adult manipulating you by using the magic word.” She sat back and crossed her arms. “I see that kind of crap every day.”

It hadn’t seemed like that at the time,
Allison thought.
It hadn’t seemed like that at all.

Allison already felt like an adult when she met Mr. Engels. Not only had her father died, but Lindsay was cutting classes and smoking, her downhill slide already well under way. Most mornings when Allison got up, her mom was sprawled on the couch, asleep under the quilt Allison had spread over her the night before, a bottle of brandy on the coffee table.

Mr. Engels had talked to Allison about world and national events. He wanted to know her opinions. He listened respectfully. She began staying after school and helping in his classroom rather than go home and face her mother’s retreat, her sister’s absence. At least Mr. Engels noticed things about her. Little things, like if she bought new earrings or wore her hair up. He
was
old, forty-six, but after a while Allison was barely aware of that. He was just her friend. He told her about his wife, about how she was so busy with the bakery she was opening that she really didn’t have time to talk anymore. That’s what he liked about Allison. That he could talk to her, and she really listened.

And that was the exact same thing she liked about him. They were “kindred spirits,” that was how he had put it.

“I thought we were kindred souls,” she said. Said out loud, the words were ridiculous. And yet at the time they hadn’t been.

“The first time was in his office. I stayed after to help him. And I was in the storage room, and he came in and I had to squeeze by.” She shivered, remembering what it had been like. “And one thing led to another. For a long time I thought it wasn’t really his fault.”

“You really believed that?” Nicole asked. “You were the child. He was the responsible adult.”

Allison realized that she had asked God’s forgiveness years ago, but she had never truly forgiven herself. She felt a flash of pity for the girl she had once been. Pity and tenderness. She sighed. “I was lonely and looking for attention. And he told me he loved me, and I believed him. He said it was true love.”

Even Cassidy—who had long ago told both women about losing her virginity when she was fourteen—looked skeptical. “Maybe when you’re a teenager you can tell yourself it’s true love. But an adult—he knows it’s not that simple.”

“I’ll bet you anything,” Nicole said, “that you were one in a long line of girls. You weren’t the first. And you weren’t the last.”

Listening to her friends was like opening the door to a room that had been closed off for years, and filling it with sunlight and fresh air. Looking back, Allison saw how lonely and vulnerable she had been. And how expertly Mr. Engels had manipulated her. Had Senator Fairview done the same thing to Katie?

Allison vowed again to get justice for Katie Converse. No matter what it took.

MARK O. HATFIELD UNITED STATES COURTHOUSE

December 24

A
llison Pierce,” Allison said in a distracted tone. The office was beginning to empty out as people left early to celebrate Christmas Eve.

But Katie had been missing for eleven days, and Allison felt she couldn’t ease up. Line by line, she was still paging through the dozens and dozens of pages from Senator Fairview’s trap and trace. They had gotten information for the phones in his Portland home, his DC apartment, and his office on Capitol Hill, as well as for his personal cell. Three months’ worth, beginning with the day Katie started as a Senate page and ending now. The resulting stack of paper was nearly four inches thick. Just trying to read the tiny lines of type was giving Allison a headache.

Only silence had answered her greeting, so she repeated, “This is Allison Pierce,” in a sharper tone.

“Ally?” The voice was that of a child, but it wasn’t really a kid. Just her kid sister.

“Lindsay,” she said warily. How long had it been since she had heard from her sister? Two months? Three? “What’s wrong?” There was always something wrong.

“I screwed up.” Through the phone line she could hear Lindsay gulping back tears.

“What happened?” Pushing down her impatience, she resisted adding
this time.

When their dad had died and their mother had gone to pieces, Allison had shouldered the burden of being the adult, even if she was only sixteen. Lindsay had gone a little crazy. It was Marshall who had gently pointed out that, in a way, Allison and her mother had welcomed Lindsay’s problems. By focusing on Lindsay, they could temporarily forget that their father and husband was dead.

“I’m in Tennessee, I think,” Lindsay said. “Or maybe Alabama.”

“What are you doing there?” Allison asked. Exhaustion crashed over her like a wave. She didn’t have the energy to deal with Lindsay. Not on top of everything else.

“I met someone new.”

On the surface that was good news. Allison hated Chris, Lindsay’s most recent boyfriend.

“So how did you end up in Alabama? Or wherever you are?”

“This guy’s a long-haul trucker. But it didn’t work out. And now, now I don’t have anything. All my stuff is still in his truck. And I think I sprained my ankle jumping out of it.”

Allison rubbed her temple. “So where are you exactly? Are you some-place safe?”

“I’m at a gas station. Look, could you put some money in my checking account? I just want to come home. Home for Christmas. Wouldn’t that be great, Ally? Like old times.”

Allison was long past falling for an idea like that. Give Lindsay some money, and it would more than likely go up her nose or down her throat. At least those were the only places Allison hoped it would go.
Please, God, not in her arm
. Lindsay chased after a high so hard that if she used IV drugs it wouldn’t be long before she started sharing needles to save time and ended up with hepatitis C or HIV.