She was a recent Stanford Law grad and gorgeous and chipper and full of life, and you wondered when life would beat it out of her. It always did in the end. That kind of enthusiasm wouldn’t last.
“I’m fine, Sharon. Just finish up those briefs, okay?”
It was amazing what we could hide when we try, he thought. No one-neither his clients nor opposing counsel-had any idea that as he sat through the depositions, jotting notes and giving counsel, he was completely devastated by his wife’s lie. The lawyerly facade never gave way. He wondered now if we were all like that, all the time, if everyone in the other room was just putting on a mask to hide some internal pain, that all of them, everyone in that room, had also been crushed this morning and was as good at hiding it as he was.
Dave looked at his wife’s panicked text. She wanted to explain. Last night he had been so forgiving. He loved her. He trusted her. Whatever else there was in her or his life, well, everybody has something, right? No one is perfect. That core would always be there. But when morning came, despite the night’s bliss, that whole rationale had just felt wrong.
Now he felt adrift.
He would have to talk to Megan eventually, hear her explanation. He wondered what it would be and if he’d believe her. Dave was tempted to call her back now, but he’d let her stew another few hours. Why not, right? No matter what the explanation, she had lied to him.
Dave glanced at the computer monitor. Eventually, he guessed, Megan would want to know how he’d known about her visit to Atlantic City. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her. Last night he had detested tracking the GPS in her cell, but suddenly he liked the idea of being able to know where she was at his whim. That was the problem with crossing lines. That was the problem with losing trust.
He clicked the link to her phone’s GPS and waited for the map to load up. When it did, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Megan wasn’t home, crying or stewing or feeling bad about what she’d done.
She had gone back to Atlantic City.
What the…?
He took out his smartphone and made sure that he could see the GPS map on the app. He could. That meant that if Megan moved, he’d be able to see. Fine.
Maybe it was time to see for himself what she was doing.
Dave grabbed his car keys. He rose, pressing his office intercom button. “Sharon?”
“Yes, Mr. Pierce?”
“I’m not feeling well. Please cancel the rest of my day.”
Megan was pacing while Broome wrote down Ray’s cell phone number. She hadn’t asked for the number last night-hadn’t wanted it-but she casually glanced over Broome’s shoulder and memorized it. She debated calling Ray, warning him about Broome’s upcoming visit, but a voice inside her told her to leave it be.
Let the investigation take its natural course, she thought.
She didn’t believe that Ray was guilty of… of what anyway? Assault? Kidnapping? Disappearances? Murder? She had been persuasive in her arguments to Broome, defending Ray as best she could, but there was something that still gnawed at her. So much of this-Stewart Green, Carlton Flynn, the Mardi Gras Missing-didn’t add up, but the one thing she couldn’t shake was the feeling that Ray was keeping something from her.
There was more to what happened to him, more to what crushed him, than a girlfriend running away. Yes, they were lovers and all that and who knows what they might have been. But Ray was also first and foremost a photojournalist. He’d been independent and sarcastic and smart. A lover running out on him would hurt, sting, break his heart. But it wouldn’t do this.
Her cell phone rang. She could see from the caller ID that it was her mother-in-law calling from the nursing home. “Agnes?”
She could hear the old woman crying.
“Agnes?”
Through the tears, her mother-in-law said, “He was back last night, Megan.”
Megan closed her eyes.
“He tried to kill me.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.” She sounded like a scared child. It was obvious and a bit of cliche, but we don’t really age in a straight line. We age in a circle, curving back to childhood, but in all the wrong ways. “You have to get me out of here, Megan.”
“I’m a little busy-”
“Please? He had a knife. A real big one. The same one you keep in your kitchen, you remember, the one I got you for Christmas from that Home Shopping Network? It’s the same kind. Check your kitchen. Is the knife still there? Oh God, I can’t stay here another night…”
Megan didn’t know what to say. Another voice came on the phone. “Hi, Mrs. Pierce, this is Missy Malek.”
She ran the nursing home. “Please call me Megan.”
“Right, you’ve told me that, sorry.”
“What’s going on over there?”
“As you know, Megan, this behavior is nothing new for your mother-in-law.”
“It seems worse today.”
“This isn’t a disease that improves with time. Agnes will continue to get more and more agitated, but there are things we can do to help in these situations. I’ve spoken to you about this before, am I right?”
“You have, yes.”
Malek wanted to move Agnes to the third floor, out of “independent living” to the “reminiscent floor” for those with advanced Alzheimer’s. She also wanted authorization to use heavier sedatives.
“I’ve seen this kind of thing before,” Malek said, “though rarely this acute.”
“Could there be something to it?”
“Pardon?”
“To what Agnes is claiming. She still has plenty of moments of clarity. Could there be something to it?”
“Could a man be breaking into her room with your kitchen knife and threatening to kill her? Is that what you’re asking me?”
Megan wasn’t sure how to respond. “Maybe, I don’t know, maybe someone on your staff is playing a prank or she’s misinterpreting something…”
“Megan?”
“Yes?”
“No one is playing a prank. It is the cruelty of her disease. We understand when it is something physical-losing a limb, needing a transplant, whatever. This is similar. It is not her fault. It is something chemical in her brain. And sadly, as I’ve tried to stress, this isn’t a problem that will get better. Which is why you and your husband really need to seriously reevaluate Agnes’s living arrangements.”
Megan’s phone felt suddenly heavy. “Let me speak to Agnes please.”
“Of course.”
A few seconds later, the scared voice was back. “Megan?”
“I’m on my way, Agnes-and I’m taking you home. You just stay put, okay?”
29
When you first get to the Atlantic City boardwalk, you are pretty much stunned by the seedy albeit lively predictability of it all. Skee-ball arcades, funnel cakes, hot dog stands, pizza stands, time-share salesmen, mini-golf, suggestive T-shirt shops, souvenir stands-all perfectly blended in among giant casino hotels, the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum (this one featured a “penis sheath” from New Guinea used, according to the caption, “as decoration and protection against insect bites,” not to mention a heck of a conversation starter), and upstart new malls. In short, Atlantic City’s boardwalk is exactly what you expect and probably want: total cheese.
But every once in a while, the boardwalk threw you a surprise. If you’ve played the board game Monopoly, you know the geography, but there, tucked in an alcove where Park Place meets Boardwalk, with the tacky Wild Wild West-themed facade of Bally’s Hotel and Casino looming as its backdrop, was a Korean War memorial that, for a few moments anyway, had the ability to strip away the kitsch and make you reflect.
Broome spotted Ray Levine standing next to the memorial’s almost supernaturally dominant figure-a twelve-foot-high statue of The Mourning Soldier sculpted by Thomas Jay Warren and J. Tom Carillo. The soldier had his sleeves rolled up, his helmet in his right hand, but what struck you, what gave you pause, was the way the bronze figure looked down, clearly grieving, at the too-many dog tags dangling from his left hand. You could see the devastation on his brave, handsome face as he stares at his fallen comrades’ tags, the rifle still strapped to his back, the dagger still on his hip. Behind him, a group of weary soldiers seem to materialize from a wall of water, one carrying a wounded or perhaps dead comrade. Next to that, under an eternal flame, the names of 822 New Jerseyans killed or missing are engraved.