The Big Exit (12 page)

A
T A LITTLE AFTER NINE IN THE MORNING
C
AROLYN HEADS OUT TO
pick up Beth. She’d put her in the Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel under the name of the neighbor, Pam Yeagher, who’d trailed behind
them in her car and spent the night in the room with Beth in the second bed.

Carolyn had picked the hotel because she knew it well. Pretentiously casual, it was a favored meeting spot of wealthy venture
capitalists, entrepreneurs, and other business leaders, and she had a friend who sometimes came down from the city and stayed
there for a night or two to take in a few spa treatments and, hopefully, land a “lifelong investor,” which she’d shortened
to the more text-friendly LLI.

Carolyn likes how the hotel’s a little bit out of the way, right next to the 280 freeway off Sand Hill, rather than closer
to downtown, and feels more like a hotel you’d find in the southwest; picturesque, with views of the Santa Cruz mountains—“Napa
light” as her friend fondly calls it.

That the hotel is just up the road from the entrance to the Stanford Linear Accelerator, where the accident had occurred all
those years ago, hadn’t factored into her decision, but that was because she hadn’t considered it until she pulled her car
onto Sand Hill the night before. Her hands had tensed little on the wheel as they passed through the intersection, but Beth,
sitting next to her in the passenger seat, didn’t react or show any emotion. She just kept staring straight ahead.

At nine thirty in the morning, Beth and Pam are waiting for her
in the hotel’s restaurant, plates of half-eaten food strewn about their table. In their black leggings, fleece pullovers,
and running shoes, they both look ready to work out. The large restaurant, with its high, arched ceiling, has just a smattering
of patrons, several of whom are eating alone, reading newspapers, or checking email on their phones.

Carolyn asks Beth how she’s doing.

“Okay,” Beth says. “And not.”

“She actually slept really well,” Pam remarks as if she’d been by her bedside, monitoring her all night. “Did you eat already?
Do you want some coffee?”

Carolyn has already decided she really doesn’t like Pam, though she can’t quite put her finger on why. The woman seems boxed
in, harried, and insecure all at once, yet she has this irritatingly perky disposition. Carolyn feels she’s compensating for
something—or perhaps coping is the kinder way to put it. She senses her relationship with her husband is far from copacetic.
And while she sympathizes with her plight on a certain level she doesn’t have the time or patience to deal with it now.

“If you don’t mind, Pam, I’ve got to talk to Beth alone. We need to head to the police station in a little while.”

“You want me to leave?”

As
quickly as possible
. “Yes. And I mean that in the politest way.”

“Oh.” She seems a little shocked. “Okay.”

After some hugs and naive, clichéd parting words (“Everything is going to be okay, I promise”) she’s on her way, her purse
tucked under one arm, a to-go cup of coffee in her other hand.

“She means well,” Beth says when she’s gone. “She just tries too hard sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Okay, all the time. But we’ve had some good talks. She needs a friend.”

“Her husband fools around, doesn’t he?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“How so?”

“He wants her to fool around with him.”

“Oh.” Carolyn considers that a moment. “You mean swing?”

Beth nods. “She tried it a few times but she’s having trouble with it.”

“I can see that.”

Not much surprises Carolyn anymore. Still, she had Harry Yeagher pegged as more of a bang-a-nurse-on-the-sly kind of guy,
not a wife swapper. This scenario is better, but only if everyone is on board with the program.
Poor woman
, she thinks.

The check comes. After Beth settles up, Carolyn asks whether she has any preference where they talk. Does she want to find
a more private lounge area?

Beth looks away, absently staring out the window at a terrace that has a row of tables lined up along it.

“I’m going to be cooped up in a little room for a while, aren’t I?” she says. “Why don’t we go outside? The hotel has a nice
garden. I saw it on the way to breakfast.”

The weather is still on the cool side, but they find a bench in the sun, where it’s considerably warmer. The garden—or the
Cypress Garden, as it’s officially named—is in a courtyard between two of the complex’s several two-story buildings. As its
name implies, it’s sprinkled with slim, perfectly straight Cypress trees. Manicured gravel paths run among native grasses,
plants, and flowers.

Carolyn starts the conversation by saying what she says to just about every client: “I’m your attorney, Beth. And you should
know that anything you say to me is guarded by the attorney-client privilege.”

Then she gets specific about what she wants:

“I need you to speak frankly with me about your relationship with your husband and Richie Forman so I can help you. And then
I need you to go through your day yesterday, hour by hour. You cannot lie to me. That’s Rule Number One. I don’t want to get
blindsided and I don’t want you to get blindsided.”

Beth smiles. “So you don’t believe me either?”

“I’m going to believe whatever you tell me, Beth. And based on what you say and the facts we have before us, I’m going to
do everything within my power to attain the best outcome possible.”

“Are you still dating that doctor? Cogan his name was, right? I saw you two together at the club a few times.”

Carolyn’s a little taken aback by the question. “No,” she says. “We broke it off about six months ago.”

“May I ask why?”

“Why?” Carolyn smiles. “I guess that would depend who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

She hesitates to answer, reluctant to dive into the private details of her love life with a client. But then she thinks that
maybe if she’s more open, Beth will relax.

“Simple,” she says. “I wanted to have a kid and he didn’t.”

“You wanted to get married?”

“No, I didn’t care so much about the married part. I’m just at the point where if I’m going to have a kid, I need to have
it already.”

“I’ve heard that one before. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

“I am, too.”

Carolyn is hoping the inquiry will end there, but Beth isn’t through. “So what’s his story? Why would he say you split up?”

“Him? He’d probably give the same reason. At least that would be his official response. But get a few drinks into him and
I bet he’d say I was psycho, exceedingly jealous, and prone to irrational outbursts.”

“But you don’t seem that way at all. You seem very even-keeled.”

“Mostly. Which is why you probably wouldn’t believe Ted. But objectively speaking, he’s right.”

Beth’s eyes turn to a group of small birds that have landed nearby and are pecking about, searching for food while glancing
over at them, hoping for a handout. “So, two truths,” she remarks. “Or should I say perspectives? Sometimes it’s hard to know
who to believe.”

“With Richie, I was just doing my job. You understand that?”

Beth looks up at her. “That’s a bit of a non sequitur, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But I wanted to say it. I’ve wanted to say it to you for a long time.”

“I wasn’t asking for an apology.”

“And I wasn’t giving it.” She lets her client chew on that for a second. Then she says, “Look, I don’t mind discussing my
personal life. But right now I need you to tell me what happened.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“Let’s start with your relationship with Mark. Where were you guys at?”

Beth gives a little shrug. “Things, you know, just didn’t turn out exactly as I thought they would. As I said, the Mark I
married was a different guy from the guy I ended up with. It wasn’t a whirlwind romance. He got under my skin, gradually.
My feelings evolved. He made me feel good about living again. There I was, dealing with Richie, who was angry all the time,
talking about how he’d been screwed over. I could understand it. But it just got oppressive, you know? And then after the
incident—he wouldn’t talk about it, but I assume he was raped—he just became very sullen.”

She pauses, takes a breath, and exhales hard, a sadness coming into her eyes.

“I didn’t think he’d ever be the same again, which I could live with, but the problem was, he didn’t think he could ever be
the same again. He was a different person and part of him despised the person he’d become. He’d lost this sort of wonderful
innocence he had; he’d been uncorrupted. There was something really pure about him. Sure, a lot of the marketing stuff has
a snake-oil side to it, but he was such an optimistic guy. And he was good at taking people’s cluttered ideas and turning
them into a focused, sellable message. And there was something pure about that, even noble. There’s a lot of great technology
and great ideas out there that never make it because someone couldn’t figure out how to frame it the right way. So much of
the stuff is pretty incomprehensible to begin with and then you throw in some poor naming and it’s no wonder it goes nowhere.”

“And then he got those extra years tacked on to his sentence,” Carolyn says. “For what he did to that guy.”

“Yeah, he waited. I don’t know, it was maybe three, four weeks after he got attacked. He was patient, which is like Richie.
The next time the main instigator—I guess that’s what you’d call him—the next time the guy came after him, he hit him in the
neck with a homemade blade of some sort. He was pretty messed up. I think he almost died. Thank God he didn’t.”

“Did Richie regret doing it afterwards?”

“I don’t think so. He made it seem like he didn’t have a choice. He wasn’t totally stupid about it. He tried to make it look
like a fight. Said it was self-defense. I think he’d gotten to the point where he just wanted to lash out at someone. And
there was some satisfaction in it.”

“Even if it meant losing you.”

“I think he already felt he’d lost me. He could see that part of me had just had enough. You gotta remember, I’d already lived
with all this for over two years.”

“So then you end up with Mark. And he ends up changing on you, too?”

“Well, in his case, I don’t know if he really changed.”

“You said he was a different guy from the one you married.”

“Yeah, I guess I did say that.”

“Well, this is important, Beth. You have to be very precise in your statements. And you have to stick to what you say. So
let’s try to clarify this before you get in there. Did he change or not?”

“I think it just turned out that he was more in love with the idea of me than actually loving me. I think he thought having
me as his wife would impress everyone, from his cronies here in the Valley to his father.”

“Who’s his father?”

“Some wealthy guy from St. Louis who ran a medical supply business. Made products for hospitals and doctors. He sold it before
I met Mark.”

“He’s still alive?”

“Yeah, but I’ve never met him.”

“Not even at the wedding?”

“We had a really small wedding. At a friend’s house in Napa. We basically eloped. Mark grew up more with his mother, who died
back in 2003. His father had kids with three different wives. Mark grew up in Cleveland with number two. He mostly lived with
his mother, but he spent a lot of vacations with his father. He’d see him four or five times a year for a week or two at a
time. He was always frustrated that his father didn’t understand what he did. He didn’t get all this web stuff. He was a manufacturing
guy. Real, physical products. He didn’t get bits and bytes.”

“Mark didn’t want kids?”

“He said he did. But it wasn’t like he was in any hurry and when we got married, neither was I. I was thirty-two. I felt I
had a couple of years to make that decision.”

“And then what happened?”

“He didn’t behave very well. That’s what happened.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’d say there were some substance-abuse issues.”

“Like what?”

“Pot, alcohol, some prescription drugs, a line or two of coke. He dabbled. Didn’t seem to play favorites.”

“And he’d do this in front of you?”

“We did it together sometimes. And let’s be clear, there was something casual about it. Every once in a while, he’d go pretty
hard, but he wasn’t a heavy-duty partier or anything. He was too worried about his reputation.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. Which probably made things worse. I just got very passive aggressive. He was out a lot at these networking
things, trying to create buzz for his new business. The Silicon Valley Circle Jerk Association, I like to call it. The CJA.
A lot of nights I curled up in bed with my own glass of wine. And then he kind of had a mini nervous breakdown.”

“What do you mean?”

“At work one day he started to get dizzy, got some tingling in his arm, shortness of breath, and chest pains. He thought he
was having a heart attack. Don Gattner, his right-hand guy, drove him over to the Parkview Hospital emergency room. Turned
out it was just a bad case of acid reflux.”

Okay
, Carolyn thinks,
she’s repeating what she said last night, which is good
. She watches Beth as she speaks. She’s one of those women who just don’t have a bad side to their face, which looks a little
longer and thinner with her hair short. Her nose is finely shaped, not too big or small, and she has greenish blue eyes and
a clear complexion. She’s barely wearing any makeup, just some eyeliner. The only thing that strikes Carolyn as odd is why
Beth changed her hair. She looks a little edgier, more artsy with the cropped blond hair, sort of like a younger version of
Sharon Stone.

“Did you dye your hair because he wanted a blonde?” she asks.

“Actually, no. He didn’t want me to change my hair or appearance at all. He loved how natural I looked and how people thought
I was such a natural beauty and all that.”