Innocent Monsters (27 page)

“Ok, I’m going. I’m going.” Jessica half turned her back to him as she grabbed the doorknob. “Oh and, just in case you were thinking of coming to visit me, my good friend Charlie is keeping an eye on me. It would not look good if I suddenly disappeared.”

Then she was out of the door, shaking. She didn’t wait for the elevator but ran down the fourteen flights of stairs as fast as she could. It was only once she stood on the pavement outside the door, feeling the wind on her face, that she realised she had left her hat and sunglasses in Roger’s office.

People walked past and stared at her bruised face as she started to cry, relieved, angry, terrified.

17 February 2001

JESSICA MET Brown for the last time at the department, in the same dark and stuffy room they had met the first time, the barred windows still dirty, the scribbled wooden table a bridge between them once again.

Brown was shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Jessica. I wish I could have done more.” “You did everything you could. It’s not your fault.” She was trying to sound upbeat but he could hear a trace of disappointment in her voice. Brown looked down, almost embarrassed. He had been able to prove Roger and Kaitlyn knew each other, but without DNA, without fingerprints, without a motive, without anything other than circumstantial evidence, the case would not move any further. Kaitlyn Lynch would become just another name on the long list of cold cases in the San Francisco Police Department’s archives. Not exactly the way he was hoping to retire; it made the prospect of moving to Florida without Chiara even harder to look forward to, somehow.

“I would have liked to see Roger Wither behind bars.”

“Me too, Brown. Me too. But it doesn’t matter.” She tried to smile at him. It didn’t matter, it really didn’t. Roger had left the company anyway, they had at least managed to ruin his career and there was still her new novel to work on. As she had told Roger a few weeks ago, jail was not the only way to ruin someone’s life.

“There’s something I need ask you, Jessica.” Brown shifted on his chair, his hands now reaching out across the desk. “That morning, when I found Blaise... I don’t know for sure, but I had a suspicion, I thought you and him might have been seeing each other. Were you?”

Jessica nodded, imperceptibly, almost invisibly. She could not admit of being there that night. She could not talk about him, about what had happened, not yet. It was too horrifying.

“Look, it’s none of my business anyway. I just wanted to tell you that I am sorry for what’s happened to him. It must have been a shock for you.” A second shock she didn’t seem to deserve. “And I don’t know if you were aware of the fact that I was meant to meet him... I wanted to tell you but you made it very clear you didn’t want to be involved in the investigation anymore, so... I just hope I didn’t ruin the last moments you had with him. That’s all.”

Had he? Had he ruined everything? Would she have ever rummaged in that trunk if the name Brown had not come up in conversation at the Aquatic Park that afternoon? If the only person placing him at the Windsor Hotel had been Lisa? Jessica was still trying to decide. She was still trying to come to terms with everything that had happened, the abuse in William’s past, her part in his death. Everything.

Jessica had learned about his so-called funeral by pure chance, a week after his death. She had bought the San Francisco Post to find out whether Elysa’s comic strip had already been replaced on page twelve; an article in its place told her and the rest of San Francisco that it had been William’s wish to be cremated privately, without a ceremony. In the same article, the funeral home’s director explained it had also been his wish to have his ashes scattered over the falls in Rumford, in Maine.

Jessica had spent days afterwards carrying a heavy feeling of hopelessness and despair, wishing she could somehow have been there for him instead of reading about yet another symbol of his alienation. She wished she could have been the one scattering his ashes, making this last step of his journey less agonizing because executed by someone who cared for him. She had wondered who would have had to do it instead, hoped whatever money William had decided to leave the funeral home had been enough for someone to take on the curious task with dignity, hoped he was not still stuffed in a jar on a dusty shelf or even worse, on a pile of garbage somewhere in a forgotten dump facility.

Rumford was a strange choice, not the most romantic of places and certainly not the best waterfalls in America, but Jessica could now speculate that this must have been the place where William had lived before the abuse had started, the only place where he had been allowed to be truly happy, free. There was so much she didn’t know about him, so much she would never have the chance to find out now. And she misses him desperately.

“Thank you. I’m sorry too.” Although being sorry wasn’t going to change a single thing.

“I also wanted to let you know that I am retiring. Should there be any new developments in this case in the future, I won’t be dealing with them.”

“That’s... Good, right? You must be looking forward to it.”

Brown shrugged, the corners of his mouth pointing downwards. “I don’t know. I should be, I know I should but... This job seeps into your life. It takes over. It stops you seeing what’s important. It’s too late for me. I’ll go, but I guess I would rather stay.”

It was too late. It had become too late the day Chiara had left him. All he could see ahead was a future he did not want, a time that didn’t belong to him anymore. But what was he doing telling these things to someone he barely knew?

Brown stood up, cleared his throat and offered his hand for her to shake, inviting her to stand up with him.

“Good luck with the future, Jessica.”

“Same to you. Hope you learn to enjoy your retirement.”

“I will try.”

Jessica shook his hand and walked out of the room. It felt like closure but she knew there was still something she had to do.

16 October 2002

IT HAD been two years since the funeral and it was the first time she had returned since. Coming to see Kaitlyn’s grave had seemed too traumatic up to this point, too much of an emotional effort, but today this seemed the only right place for her to be.

Kaitlyn’s grave was on a small dune of soil covered with bright green grass, dark green moss had started covering the tombstone. The marble vase by its side was dirty, filled only with rainwater and she looked at it trying to ignore the feeling of guilt rising in her chest, but it was impossible. Jessica had abandoned her, ran away, she had been scared, confused and depressed but she wasn’t anymore. She was ready.

Jessica kneeled down. The wet grass soaked up her knees as she unwrapped the flowers she had brought and arranged them carefully in the vase —pink and orange tulips with yellow strips on the petals, the kind Kaitlyn liked to paint when she was just a teenager experimenting with brushes and canvasses.

A warm late morning sun shone through the trees across the cemetery creating shadows on her sister’s tombstone, and she stared at the shapes shifting, stared at the engraved letters.

In the loving memory of

Kaitlyn Daniell Lynch

1972 - 2000

She’d been so distressed at the time, she had been unable to come up with a more imaginative epitaph, anything more emotive. It seemed clear now that this precise moment had been the beginning of her writer’s block. But that had passed.

Jessica had surprised herself, week after week, month after month, sitting at her desk typing away, doing very little else, completely engrossed in her new novel. Unstoppable, just as it had always been
before
.

“I made a mess of things, Kait,” she whispered. “I can only try to repair some of the damage. It’s time to move on.”

A few yards away from where she was kneeling, a group of people was attending another function, someone else’s burial, someone else’s friend, relative, a blotch of black against the bright green of the grass. How long would it take them to get over their loss?

Jessica moved closer to the tombstone, kissed her index finger and pressed it between the L and the Y of her sister’s name.

“I will see you soon,” she whispered then she stood up and started off towards the cemetery gate.

She was looking forward to getting back home and have some lunch, maybe sitting by the window in the kitchen, looking out at the rooftops against this morning’s bright sky, and it was still an unexpected feeling. She had been prepared to feel trapped there, sad, desperate —the way she had felt in her old house in Crocker Amazon— because every square foot, every inch of the apartment reminded her of him, William. But those feelings never arrived and now she couldn’t really imagine being anywhere else. The apartment was the only part of him she had left and she couldn’t let it go. Not now.

Four weeks after his death she had received a phone call from a Mrs Darcy, someone she had never heard of before. Mrs Darcy had explained that she was a lawyer acting out for the charity organization Childhelp. She had explained in very plain terms that William had left everything he owned to them, which meant they now owned her apartment. Childhelp were giving her a chance to buy it. There was no need to let them know straight away, a letter would soon come through the post advising her on what was happening and what to do.

Jessica had put the phone down that day knowing exactly what her next step was going to be, loving William a little bit more, for the beautiful person he had been prevented from being, for the beautiful person he had proved he was even after his death. She loved him. Still. She loved him so much it hurt, more each day when she thought the feeling would just die away like the acute pain and the sadness she had stopped feeling thinking about her sister.

Maybe if she wrote about him...

Could she write about him?

Jessica walked to the nearest cable car stop and waited for the next one to come along. She checked her watch —three fifteen. This time tomorrow she would be back at the ABC studios, on the red sofa where it had all started. This time tomorrow she would start trying to repair some of the damage.

17 October 2002

A TELEVISION interview. Lights. Cameras. Hundreds of people watching, hundreds of people sitting in rows in front of her smiling, ready to clap, cheer, laugh. Millions of people watching her all over the country.

Jessica was sitting on the red sofa at the ABC studios again. Sarah Tyler smiled opposite her, passed a hand through her ginger hair.

She had decided to wear William’s diamond pendant and she played with it looking out at the audience, held it between her index finger and her thumb.

She was feeling relaxed, strangely rational, a definite contrast with the first time she had been sitting on this very sofa. So many things were different now, so much had changed. She would have given anything to go back there, to her first interview, back to the launch of her first book rather than her second.

“My next guest is Jessica Lynch. You might remember this young writer as the author of the best-selling novel
Later Than Ever
, which was the fastest selling book of the year two-thousand. Six million copies in less than five months, I believe.” Sarah Tyler checked her notes on a clipboard bearing the show’s logo. “That is impressive. I’m sure most of you own a copy of the book, or bought it for someone you know.” The presenter turned towards her guest, her perfectly manicured fingers spread over her knee. “First of all, welcome back to the show.”

“Thanks for having me back.”

“These must have been an incredible couple of years for you.”

Jessica sniggered. “You have no idea.”

“For anyone here in the studio or at home who doesn’t already know, Jessica lost her sister, I believe soon after the first time you were in this very studio. Right?”

“Yes, that’s right. October two-thousand.”

“That must have been hard for you.”

“It was. It was extremely hard. I would say it still is. Kaitlyn was the only family I had left. We were very close and… Let’s just say it’s been very hard to adjust to life without her.”

“Yes, I can imagine.” There was an obligatory long pause before Tyler started again. “Now, let’s talk about your new book,
Truth or Dare
which actually opens with a funeral, your sister’s funeral. Am I right in saying that your sister’s death and the circumstances surrounding her death is what this book is basically about?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Why did you feel you had to write a book about an obviously painful subject for you? Why not let it go and try to move on like most people would do?”

Jessica coughed, cleared her throat. “Because this is how I move on. I wanted to make sure everyone knew the truth about my sister’s death. I didn’t want a suicide to be the one thing people would remember about her. So I decided to write it down, make the truth public the only way I know how.”

“When you say, the truth about my sister’s death, what exactly do you mean?”

“I mean my sister didn’t kill herself, she was murdered.”

The whole studio was quiet. Jessica’s face was on millions of screens all over the country.