Charley's Web (21 page)

Bandit began scratching at the door.

“All right, all right. I get the point.” Charley pushed herself off the sofa, took another long sip of her wine, then decided to take the glass with her. Maybe the fresh air would do her some good, clear her head of unwanted thoughts, and allow her sister’s stellar prose to get the attention it no doubt deserved. “We’re just going to the corner, that’s it.” She opened the door.

The man standing on the other side wasn’t very tall, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in muscles, his taut biceps bulging with impressive menace beneath his sleeveless black T-shirt.

Charley gasped, her wineglass falling to the floor, the dog scooting out between the man’s black leather, pointy-toed boots. Shock mingled with fear as she tried to slam the door in the man’s face, but he was too strong and too quick, and within seconds, without touching her, he’d managed to maneuver her back into the house and into her living room, until she was stretched backward over the sofa and he was almost on top of her, looming over her like an enraged grizzly. Was this the nutcase who’d written her those e-mails? The man who’d threatened her and her children? Thank God they weren’t here, she was thinking as her eyes skirted the area for something she could grab, her hand stretching for anything she could throw at his head. Was he here to kill her? Would her mother and children find her lifeless body sprawled across the living room floor when they returned the next morning? Would this lunatic still be here, waiting? Charley’s fingers knocked against the bottle of wine on the table. Could she grab hold of it?

“Don’t even think about it,” the man said.

Charley’s hand fell limp at her side. “Who are you?” But even as she was asking the question, Charley realized she already knew who the man was. “You’re Ethan Rohmer,” she said, as a strange calm enveloped her.

“Pleased to meet you,” Ethan said, smiling as he took a few steps back, allowing her room to stand up straight.

“What do you want?” she asked, although again, she already knew the answer.

“I want you to stay away from Pamela. I want you to stay away from my mother. I want you to stay away from my house.”

Charley said nothing. She was already trying to gather together the words to describe him in print: dark eyes framed by girlishly long lashes; a nose that had obviously been broken more than once, yet still managed to suit the perfect oval of his face; thin lips that smiled with perverse ease; chin-length hair blonder than both his sisters’; a torso that was noticeably long in proportion to his legs.

“I come home tonight, and I know right away something’s wrong,” Ethan said. “Takes me awhile, but pretty soon I worm it out of them. Turns out my psycho sister’s hotshot lawyer has brought some skanky reporter around, trying to dredge up dirt for a book she’s writing, telling vicious lies, and getting everybody all upset. I don’t like it when strangers upset my family.”

“You’re saying Jill’s lying?”

“I’m saying she’s a psycho bitch.”

“Which doesn’t mean she’s lying.”

“What’d she tell you? That I helped her kill those kids?”

“Did you?”

“Kids aren’t my thing.”

“You raped her when she was eleven years old,” Charley reminded him.

“The hell I did.” He gave a short laugh of derision, pushed the hair away from his face. “I assure you that anything that happened between Jill and me was at her instigation.”

“And Pamela?”

“Pamela wants you to stay away from her. She’s afraid if you keep poking your nose into other people’s business, you’re liable to get hurt.”

“Are you threatening me?”

Ethan smiled. “Just looking out for your welfare.”

“I think you should leave now,” Charley said, upset by the slight tremor she heard in her voice.

“As long as we’ve got an understanding here. You stay away from my family. You got that?”

Charley saw a shadow flit against the wall behind Ethan. She heard something click, a dog barking, and sirens rounding the corner.

“Don’t move,” Gabe Lopez said as Ethan turned to see a rifle pointed at his head. “I’ll blow your fucking face off.”

“Hey, man,” Ethan said, raising his hands into the air as Bandit scrambled into Charley’s arms. “This is all a misunderstanding. Put the gun away, man.”

“I was on my porch when I saw this guy go inside and your dog run out,” Gabe explained. “When you didn’t run after him, I knew something was wrong, and I called 911.”

“Thank you,” Charley said, as Bandit licked at the tears that were just starting to fall.

“What’s this I hear about you raping an eleven-year-old girl?” Gabe Lopez released the safety catch on his rifle.

“It’s a lie, man. I never raped anybody.”

“Tell it to the judge,” Gabe Lopez said with a laugh. He was still chuckling as the police were pushing Ethan’s head inside the police cruiser some fifteen minutes later. “I always wanted to say that,” he said to Charley. Then, propping his rifle against the living room wall, “Is there any wine left in that bottle? I could use a drink.”

T
ell me about Tammy Barnet,” Charley instructed before Jill could sit down. Charley was sitting beside Alex at the interview table in the small airless room at Pembroke Correctional, her back stiff, her tape recorder already running. After last week’s debacle, after being unceremoniously escorted off the premises when Jill refused to see her, she was determined to dictate the course of their session, to show Jill who was in charge.

“Hi, Alex,” Jill said, ignoring Charley’s directive as she pulled out her chair. “That’s a nice blouse, Charley. Pink really suits you.”

“Please answer the question.”

“I didn’t hear one.”

“How did you meet the Barnet family?” Charley rephrased, feeling the ground already starting to slip beneath her feet.

“Come on, Charley. Be nice. You could at least ask how I’m feeling. Tell me you’re glad to see me. Something.
Any
thing. Girls like a little foreplay before the main event. You know that.”

“I’m in no mood for games, Jill. You’ve wasted enough of my time.”

Jill leaned forward, her elbows on the table, the playfulness vanishing from her eyes. “Then let’s not waste any more. I’m sure you’ve already talked to the Barnets.”

Charley had indeed spent most of yesterday afternoon interviewing Tammy Barnet’s mother. She and her husband were in the midst of a painful divorce, their daughter’s murder having proved too great a hurdle for them to surmount together. (“He blames me,” Mrs. Barnet had explained tearfully.) Mr. Barnet had refused to meet with Charley, but Mrs. Barnet had been cooperative, even eager to talk, although she was still in shock, two years after the event, that the seemingly sweet young woman she’d hired to baby-sit her little girl could have so brutally snuffed out her life. “I’d like to hear your version,” Charley told Jill now.

Jill smiled sweetly at her lawyer, as if Charley hadn’t spoken. “I wasn’t expecting you today, Alex.”

“I thought I’d sit in, make sure things went smoothly,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t they? I’ve already apologized to Charley several times for my behavior last week. You got my letter, didn’t you, Charley?”

Clearly this meeting was going to proceed at Jill’s pace and discretion, or not at all. There was no point in fighting it, Charley realized. “I got it, yes. Thank you.” Jill’s formal letter of apology had arrived on Monday, along with twenty-four pages of tightly written ramblings about everything from her mother—
I honestly don’t know whether she knew what was happening or not, but I really can’t blame her even if she did. There was nothing she could have done to stop it
—to her favorite singing group—
I really like Coldplay, and am still upset that Chris Martin married that scrawny bitch, Gwyneth Paltrow. What does he see in her anyway?
—to her fear of closed-in spaces—
Anyplace where I can’t stand up straight puts me in a total panic. What do you suppose that means?

“So, we’re okay, then?” Jill asked.

“We’re okay. We just have a lot of ground to cover, and I’d like to get started. I’m sorry if I was so abrupt,” Charley lied.

“And I’m sorry about what happened with you and Ethan.”

“You heard about that?” Charley glanced accusingly at Alex. She’d called him right after the police left, but he hadn’t been home. He’d returned her call first thing the next morning to express his concern and dismay. Then he’d asked if she wanted to abandon the project, said he’d understand completely if she’d changed her mind and wanted out of their agreement. She’d told him she’d see him on Wednesday afternoon, as planned.

“Are you kidding?” Jill was saying now. “The guards couldn’t wait to tell me what happened.”

“How did they know?”

Jill shrugged. “You can’t believe how fast this sort of news travels through the system. It’s like they have some sort of psychic newsletter or something. They said my brother had been arrested for breaking into your house and threatening you. They thought it was pretty funny. I called Alex right away, but he was tied up and obviously too busy to get back to me,” she said pointedly.

Alex ignored the mock hurt in Jill’s voice. “Not much to say. Your father posted bail. I doubt Ethan will get more than a slap on the wrist, considering he didn’t actually break into Charley’s house, and no real threats were uttered, other than those of an irate neighbor with a loaded rifle who threatened to blow Ethan’s face off.”

“Never thought I’d be grateful to the NRA,” Charley said, rubbing her forehead at the memory of Gabe Lopez coming to her defense. Who’d have thought? she asked herself, recalling the scene that followed: the police rushing in, arresting Ethan, taking him away, the neighbors gathering outside her house, some venturing inside to find out what had happened, finding Gabe Lopez and Charley sharing a bottle of wine, then returning to their homes to fetch bottles of their own, the whole thing turning into an impromptu street party, Lynn Moore offering tipsy hugs of forgiveness along with home-baked chocolate chip cookies, the already surreal evening ending with half the street cavorting in Doreen Rivers’s backyard pool.

Officer Ramirez had called yesterday to tell Charley that there was no hard evidence linking Ethan to the threatening e-mails she’d received, although they’d keep an eye on him. Nor could they charge him with rape unless Pamela came forward to back up her sister’s allegations, the word of a convicted child killer sitting on death row apparently considered something less than totally reliable.

Charley had no doubt that Ethan had sexually abused both his sisters. She was less convinced of everything else Jill had told her, and even less sure that she was smart enough to figure out where the lies stopped and the truth began. Was it possible that Jill herself didn’t know?

After Sunday brunch at TooJay’s, Charley had spent most of the day drawing up a list of the people she needed to interview—the Barnets, the Starkeys, Wayne Howland, who’d joined the army and was rumored to be fighting in Iraq, Gary Gojovic, whose testimony against his former girlfriend hadn’t exactly helped her case, Jill’s former teachers, her classmates, her childhood friends, the arresting officers, the various detectives, the prosecutors themselves, the members of the jury, even Alex. How was she supposed to know what to ask any of them?

“You’re a bright, talented young woman who will succeed at anything you set your mind to,” her mother had told her. “And if you don’t know the appropriate questions to ask right now, you’ll figure them out soon enough.”

With a little bit of professional help, Charley recognized, managing to contact Dr. John Norman, the psychologist who’d interviewed and then testified against Jill at her trial, first thing on Monday morning. “I need your help,” she’d begun after introducing herself and explaining her predicament.

“I have a patient coming in at ten o’clock,” the man replied in clipped, even tones. “You can’t really expect me to give you a lesson in abnormal psychology in twenty minutes, can you?”

Charley imagined the man she was speaking to was middle-aged and balding, rather like the psychiatrist on
Law & Order,
although he could just as easily have been young, with a full head of hair. Voices were as deceiving as everything else, where people were concerned.

“You’ve read my report, I assume?”

“Yes. In it, you describe Jill as having a ‘borderline personality disorder,’ meaning…”

“Meaning that she’s intensely narcissistic and lacks the basic human emotions, including empathy.”

“How does something like that happen?” Charley asked.

“Current theory holds that borderline personality disorder is the result of three main factors,” Dr. Norman told her patiently. “One’s genes, one’s upbringing, and one’s environment. In the case of someone like Jill Rohmer, the fact she was brutalized as a child obviously contributed to her brutalizing others later on.”

“But not everyone who was abused as a child goes on to become a cold-blooded killer. Her sister, for example.”

“Ms. Webb, if I were capable of predicting who would grow up to be a killer, I’d be more famous than Freud. The important thing for you to remember is that Jill Rohmer is nobody’s fool. She’s a very manipulative and clever liar.”

“So, how do I deal with someone like that?”

“Very carefully,” the psychologist replied.

“I met Mrs. Barnet in the park,” Jill was saying now, suddenly answering the question Charley had almost forgotten she’d asked. “The park was a couple of blocks from our house, and I used to go there when I wanted to be by myself.”

“That would be Crescent Park?”

Jill looked genuinely surprised. “I don’t know. I didn’t realize it had a name.”

“Go on.”

“Well, one day I was sitting on one of the swings—there were three of them—and Tammy came running over. Her mom was right behind her. You could see how crazy she was about Tammy, just by the look on her face. How come you want to talk about this now?” Jill asked Charley. “Are we finished talking about
my
childhood?” She seemed mildly put out.

“I thought we’d take a break from that for a while,” Charley answered.

“How come?”

“Well, you’ve already given me a lot to digest, what with your letters and our previous conversations. I just thought we might tackle something else today. Unless you have something specific you’d like to share with me.”

Jill leaned back in her chair, looking skeptical as she twisted the ends of her hair between her fingers. “Something I’d like to
share?
Now you sound like a psychiatrist.”

“Your letters are quite remarkable,” Charley said, sensing hostility, and trying to maintain control of the situation. (Dr. Norman had stressed that it was important never to let Jill have the upper hand. “If anyone’s going to do the conning, it should be you,” he’d said.) “You have a real flair for writing,” Charley elaborated. “A gift.”

Jill’s smile was immediate and proud. “You think so?”

“Absolutely. Those letters tell me a lot about you.”

“Such as?”

“That you’re a very bright and talented young woman,” Charley said, borrowing her mother’s words, and wondering whether her mother had been similarly insincere. “That you can succeed at anything you set your mind to.”

“Honestly? You’re not just saying that?”

Charley shook her head. “It’s true.”

“That’s so nice. It really means a lot to me that you think that.”

What are mothers for? Charley thought. “So, you met Tammy and her mother at the park,” she reiterated.

“Tammy wanted the swing I was sitting on. Said it was her favorite because it went higher than the others. I said okay. I even offered to push her. One thing just kind of led to another. I guess I must have given Mrs. Barnet my phone number, ’cause she called a few days later, asked if I could baby-sit on Saturday night. I said, sure. Turned out that the Barnets liked to go out every Saturday night, so I lucked into a regular job. Of course, that didn’t sit too well with Gary. You talk to him yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Yeah, well, when you do, watch out. He lies like a rug.” Jill laughed. “My father used to say that all the time. ‘Man lies like a rug,’ he’d say. I didn’t know what he meant for the longest time. But once I figured it out, I had the best laugh.”

“Gary didn’t like you baby-sitting on Saturday nights?”

“At first he thought it would be okay, because he just assumed I’d let him come over and we could, you know, make out and stuff. He especially liked the idea of doing it in the Barnets’ bed, but that didn’t sit too well with me. I mean, what if they came home early or Tammy woke up? So after awhile I wouldn’t let him come over anymore. He was pretty mad. Then I started baby-sitting for the Starkeys on Friday nights, and he got really upset, said, ‘What kind of girlfriend spends her entire weekends baby-sitting a bunch of brats?’”

“It
is
a bit unusual for a girl your age, especially one with a boyfriend—you would have been how old?”

“I was nineteen when I started baby-sitting Tammy.”

“Gary was probably unhappy to be spending so much time alone.”

“He was unhappy ’cause he wasn’t getting his dick sucked as often as he liked. At least, not by me,” Jill said.

Right, Charley thought. “You must have really enjoyed baby-sitting,” was what she said.

“Oh, I did,” Jill said with such enthusiasm it was impossible not to believe her. “I loved those kids. Tammy was so cute, with her red hair and her little black patent leather shoes. She had the cutest little button nose. And this weird little giggle. I used to love making her laugh.”

“And the Starkey twins?”

“They were the sweetest things. Blond hair, blue eyes. Noah had this little scar above his right eyebrow where he’d picked the scab off a chicken pox. I used to kiss it all the time. You just wanted to eat him up. His sister, too. Really sweet.”

Yet you slaughtered them! Charley wanted to scream. These sweet little children with the cute button noses and kissable scars are dead because of you. How can you sit here and discuss them so calmly, so
lovingly
? Take it easy, her reporter’s voice cautioned. Keep her talking. Ask direct questions. Stay in control, the way Dr. Norman had advised. Go slow, or you’ll lose her. “You met Mrs. Starkey in the park as well?”

Jill’s eyes narrowed in thought. “No. I met her in the mall. I was in the bookstore, buying a present for Tammy, and she came in with the twins, and she asked me what book I was buying, and I told her. It was
The Paperbag Princess,
which is a really good book. I said I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, so she bought a copy. And we ended up taking the kids for ice cream, and it just kind of took off from there. Kind of like with Mrs. Barnet. I’m very good with people,” Jill said. “They really like me.”

Charley nodded, searching for even a small trace of irony in Jill’s voice, hearing none. “What sort of things did you do with the kids?”

“The usual. I read to them, we watched TV, we played Barbie and hide-and-seek.”

“Ever play doctor with them?” Charley asked casually.

“What?” Jill’s eyes widened. She glanced warily at Alex. “What’s that supposed to mean?”