I went over to the desk and sat down in the chair. I glanced at the pictures. A family portrait, Meredith and her parents dressed in white, standing in front of a Christmas tree. A picture of Meredith and Meg, lounging on the beach. A formal picture of her and Derek at a dance, both of them with flushed cheeks and glassy eyes.
“You have any clue that Meredith was a prostitute?”
“That’s not even a little funny, Joe.”
“You’re right. Wasn’t meant to be.”
I popped open the laptop and hit the power button.
“What are you talking about?” Gina asked.
“So you didn’t know then?”
She came up next to me at the desk. “If you’re telling me that Meredith has sex for money, then no, I didn’t know that. Is that what you’re saying?”
I nodded.
“How do you know this?”
I told her about Derek and his entrepreneurial endeavors.
Gina listened to me, but the expression on her face told me that she didn’t necessarily believe me.
“He told you all this?” she asked. “And he’s the pimp?”
The computer booted up. A picture of Meredith and Megan, hugging, served as the background on the screen. “Yep.”
“How do you know he’s telling the truth?”
“Because I saw it in action.”
“You saw it?”
I told her about what I witnessed in the hotel. About going up to the room.
She stayed quiet.
“But there’s another piece,” I said.
Her expression went from concerned to dour. “What’s that?”
When Derek said freelancing, I assumed he meant Meredith was working without a pimp, going out on her own. But I was wrong.
“There’s somebody else,” Derek had said as we pulled up at his home. “She’s working for somebody else besides me.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t even supposed to know. I saw an email on her computer for a set-up that I knew wasn’t from me.” Derek slumped in his seat. “At first, she tried to play it off like it was something else. But then she told me. Yeah, it was for another set-up and it was none of my business. She said she wanted to make some more money and there was nothing I could do about it. I got pissed and left. When I saw her at school, I told her I was sorry for getting pissed. She blew me off, said it was okay. I tried to get her to tell me who was setting her up, but she wouldn't. Said if I asked her again, she’d never talk to me again. So I didn’t ask.”
“How long ago was this?” I asked.
“About three weeks ago,” he said. “I’m not sure how long it was going on before I found out.”
Gina digested all of that, her eyes growing wider by the second. She had not been feigning ignorance when she said she didn’t know about Meredith.
“So I wanna try and get in her email,” I said, clicking on the email icon on the lower part of the screen. “See what I see.”
“You have to tell Jon,” she said.
“I know that.”
“He’s going to…I don’t know what he’s going to do.”
“Which is why I want to get as much information as possible.”
Gina let out a long breath. “He won’t believe you.”
“Which is also why I want to get as many hard facts as I can before I talk to him.”
The email program loaded up on the screen and asked for a password. “Shit.”
“What?”
“She’s got her email password protected. Think Jordan would know it?”
“She probably has it protected because of him.”
“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know it.doesn’/p
“We can ask him,” she said. “And I might know someone who could break it.”
“Who?”
“Let me worry about that.”
I shrugged and scanned through the files on the computer’s desktop. Mostly school projects and some other random but meaningless files. If she was smart enough to protect her email account, any files that might help us were probably on a portable hard drive. With her. But I couldn’t imagine what she’d have in any sort of digital file. Email addresses or text messages, those would be the things that might help us.
I snapped the laptop closed. “Let’s ask him about her phone records, too. Take a look at those.”
Gina nodded, but something crossed her face and she looked hesitant.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Meredith’s a smart kid,” she said. “You saw that with her grades. If she wanted to hide something, she’d figure out how to do it.”
“So you don’t think we’ll find phone numbers or emails that might help us? That she would’ve covered her tracks that well?”
Gina thought about that. “Yeah. I think that’s accurate.”
I stood and looked around the empty room. It seemed so sterile, so generic. Teenaged rooms usually had their own personality, their own vibe. Meredith’s did not and it made me feel sorry for her.
“You’re probably right,” I said to Gina. “But we need to check anyway.”
We walked out of Meredith’s room, down the long carpeted hallway and out of the massive Jordan home.
“I’m going to see Chuck,” Gina said, as we walked down the steps to our cars.
“Oh yeah? Good.”
“This afternoon.”
“Good.”
She wanted something else from me, but I wasn’t sure what. I stayed quiet.
“Is he any better?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“What you said…” She glanced away from me. “The other day, about not really giving a shit about him. It’s not true.Oh y
“Okay.”
She moved her gaze back to me. “I’m serious. I care about him. A lot.”
“Okay.”
“Stop saying okay,” she said, irritation pinching her face.
I started to say exactly that, then caught myself and didn’t say anything.
The irritation faded in her features. “I don’t think Chuck did anything to Meredith. I don’t. All of that came out wrong. Yeah, they were spending a lot of time together, but I know there has to be an explanation for that.”
“I believe that, too,” I said.
“And what I said about Jordan, about being sure of what you know before you go up against him?” she said. “That’s the truth. You do need to be sure about taking him on.” Her mouth twisted and untwisted. “But you and I? We’re on the same page. Because I’m sure about Chuck and if I’ve gotta choose between him and Jordan, I’m choosing Chuck. Every time.” She waved her hand in the air between us, like she was shooing a fly. “And I just wanted you to know that.”
The morning sun was warm on my neck as I studied her. I wasn’t much into trusting people any longer in my life. Trust had disappeared the day Elizabeth did. But Gina seemed sincere in her words and she hadn’t given me a reason to distrust her.
“Is it okay to say okay now?” I asked.
A thin smile forced itself onto her lips. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
She took a deep breath, seemingly relieved to have cleared the air. “Have you learned anything else about Chuck? About what happened?”
Before I could answer, my phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out. I looked at the number on the readout and my breath caught. The familiar cold and dread I felt every time that number showed up on my phone consumed me like a bitter cocktail forced down my throat.
I waited a moment until my breathing found its rhythm again.
“I haven’t,” I said to Gina, then held the phone up in her direction. “But this might help.”
FIFTY-FIVE
A couple of times a year, just when I’m beginning to think the pain is subsiding from suffocating to tolerable, I get a phone call that goes like this.
“Joe?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Hey Mike.”
Mike Lorenzo is a cop, was my mentor and we have known each other now for a dozen years. I would recognize his voice if it was one in a thousand.
“Got a call,” Mike says.
The familiar fluttering begins in my stomach. I would use every ounce of my strength to crush it, but it is Pavlovian now and there is nothing I can do to quell it.