Even though Faith knew detectives were planning on running the sketch in the papers from Orlando on south, she was still startled to see it staring back at her from the front page of the Sun-Sentinel’s local section, right underneath the headline:
POLICE SEEK ID OF SUSPECT IN RAPE AND MURDER OF PALM BEACH DANCER.
And even though Jarrod had predicted that the case might grow larger than the local section, she wasn’t prepared to see that same sketch on the news. Or hear the reporter inaccurately portray a ‘thirty-two-year-old Parkland woman and her four-year-old daughter’ as witnesses to Angelina Santri’s abduction and murder. While they weren’t specifically named and there wasn’t a map to their house appearing on the screen next to the sketch, she immediately thought of Jarrod’s frightening admonition: He knows there’re witnesses and now he knows they’re talking. It won’t be hard for him to figure out the rest – name, address, phone number …
She took a long sip from the flask that she’d filled with Ketel One and stared blankly at the Cupcake Wars supplemental application on the computer screen that she’d been working on for over an hour. She had three lines completed so far. It was hard to concentrate on anything. But she hadn’t been to the bakery since Angelina’s body was found and things were piling up and she couldn’t leave everything on Vivian’s plate. Without knowing what was going on, Vivian had been very understanding, telling Faith to take as much time as she needed, but that tolerance couldn’t – shouldn’t – last indefinitely. They had a business to run. A growing business, actually. The realtor had called yesterday to tell Faith that he’d found the perfect location in Fort Lauderdale near the beach for Sweet Sisters’ second shop. She was supposed to head out there this afternoon to take a look at it with him.
She felt like a sneaky teenager, drinking on the sly in her office at ten in the morning on a Thursday. She knew how it would look if anyone found out. But no one had any idea the pressure she was under. Her nails were bitten to the quick, her hair was coming out in the shower. She was smoking almost a pack a day, even though she told herself she was still trying to quit. To calm what felt like every frazzled nerve in her body, she reasoned that a shot of something to take the edge off was better than popping a fistful of Xanax, like a lot of ladies on the car-pool line did on a daily basis. It was just less accepted.
A girl was dead and she was responsible. No matter how many ways she’d tried to talk herself out of that accountability before Angelina Santri’s body had been found, it wasn’t working any more. The horrifying realization was slowly wearing away at her paralyzed conscience and physically breaking her down, much like waves can reduce a rock to sand by crashing violently and continuously into it. Piece by piece, her life was in danger of falling apart. Then there were all the lies she’d told. And the ill-thought-out lies that followed to cover up the lies that got her in trouble in the first place. Guilt had invaded her sleep, manipulating dreams into nightmares – even when she couldn’t remember the dream itself, she’d wake hearing the girl’s raspy whispers for help. And her makeup-streaked, crazed face somehow managed to appear in every dream she could recall, even if it was only a face in the crowd. In last night’s nightmare, Faith had reached to open the car door, only to hit the lock purposely with her hand, watching as the girl screamed and the Deliverance man pulled her out of sight. She’d woken up screaming herself, feeling his mutton chops scratching against her cheek, his breath smelling like sodden earth, his arms wrapped around her own body, pulling her back into the abject darkness with him.
It was actually Jarrod, though, trying to hold her as she thrashed about in their bed, punching out at invisible demons. He was trying to comfort her, to tell her it was only a nightmare, that it wasn’t real. He’d asked her to tell him what the dream was about, to tell him what was going on with her, but she’d pushed him away and gone into the bathroom. She couldn’t tell him. It was too late.
It was too late.
The plan had been to tell Detective Nill everything when they went out to the scene: the presence of a second man in the woods, the fact that she had been drinking and feared getting a DUI – even the accident. She would tell him everything. She would explain why she was so reluctant to come forward: first for fear of being arrested; and then second, for fear she would lose her husband and her family. That was the plan. But Jarrod had come along. He was in the car with her and the two detectives as they drove down streets that looked much less threatening than they had that night. The cane fields that had menacingly towered over both sides of the roadway, claustrophobically boxing her into a dizzying asphalt maze, had been cut and burned in some stretches; the road signs that she couldn’t seem to find in the driving rain were seemingly everywhere. Then they had found the town – Pahokee. It had two stoplights and definitely had seen better days in years past, but with people milling about and businesses open for business, it didn’t look so much like the small, creepy, Stephen King town she remembered it being. And the modest houses they passed that fed off Main Street – one after the other, with cars in the driveways and swing sets on the front lawns. She hadn’t seen them that night. It was a neighborhood she had driven through. Small, yes – concentrated within a few short blocks – but it wasn’t a completely abandoned city like Chernobyl, infested with zombies. In the daylight, the reality of it all was jarring: she only felt more ashamed of her inaction and insecure of her perceptions. And Jarrod was right there beside her and the detectives the entire time – listening, jotting notes, asking questions, taking pictures alongside crime-scene techs. It was almost like he was a PD again, working up a case for one of his defendants. The plan was aborted at the last minute: she’d swallowed the confession that was going to make her feel so much better.
She heard Vivian’s jingling jewelry and the clicking of her heels down the hall. She quickly poured a shot of the Ketel One into her coffee and tucked the flask in the bottom of her desk under a pile of junk. Vivian probably wouldn’t care, but since she didn’t know what the hell was going on, she just might.
The door opened. ‘There you are!’ Viv began with a broad smile. ‘Linda told me you were back here! Where’ve you been, girl?’
She tried to smile back, but the tears had already started. She put her head in her hands. Jarrod and she had both agreed not to discuss ‘the incident’ with anyone. Maggie, too, was instructed not to say anything to her classmates, cousins, or teachers. Until they knew how the case was going to play out in the courts, in the press, it was best to keep silent. But the weight was suddenly too much to carry.
‘Faith! Honey! Oh my God! What’s the matter? Is it Maggie? Is she OK? Is it Jarrod? Are you guys OK?’ Vivian was on her knees in front of her, embracing her in a huge hug.
‘I have to tell you something,’ Faith started. ‘It’s really bad, Vivian. It’s … oh my God, so bad …’
‘Is it cancer? Is someone sick?’ Vivian asked, hugging her even tighter. ‘Tell me, Faith!’
There was a knock on the office door. ‘Mrs Saunders?’
‘Not now!’ Vivian yelled impatiently. ‘Whoever that is, not now! Go away!’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Vardakalis,’ replied the young voice ruefully. ‘I’m really sorry to bother you, but there’s ah, there are detectives out here. And they want to talk to Mrs Saunders.’