MONICA
since faded outside the windows of the detective bureau. My partners and I were working overtime again. I was finally typing up the report from our visit to the Abbey Resort.
Lehman and I had been lucky enough to talk with the clerk who had served Fritz Geissler at the front desk. Geissler hadn’t had a reservation. He’d walked in around one in the morning on June sixteenth. He’d been polite, but his demeanor was forced. The clerk felt as if Geissler had really been tired and stressed, as if he were pissed off about something. He only stayed the one night. He never asked for room service. He had no visitors. In fact, he only stayed at the hotel a few hours. He checked out at 4:45 a.m.
According to the medical examiner, Geissler had been murdered no later than 7:00 a.m. that same morning.
Lucky for us, Geissler’s hotel room was empty today. Unfortunately, it had been cleaned—more than once, in fact. We searched anyway. And of course, we found nothing.
We knew that Geissler’s plane from LA to Chicago had landed at 9:05 p.m. on the fifteenth. Which meant, if he’d driven straight to Geneva Lake, a ninety-minute commute, he’d spent a grand total of, at most, eight and a half hours in the area before he died. Subtracting the four hours he spent at the Abbey, we had to account for just four and a half hours of his life, maybe less. Four and a half hours that led to his murder.
Meanwhile, our evidence files now contained a copy of the death certificate for someone named William Michael Read from Grand Rapids, Michigan—in other words, Fritz’s alias. The real Will Read had died in 1997—the same year Fritz disappeared. I wondered if Fritz had been skilled in forging IDs as well, or if he’d had help stealing Mr. Read’s identity.
Tonight, there were still far more questions than answers.
Lehman sighed and clicked his mouse loudly—the sign that he was finally putting his computer to sleep. I heard his voice beyond the gray cubicle wall. “Whatdya think, Neumiller? Call it a day?”
Mark Neumiller groaned appreciatively. “Don’t have to ask me twice.”
Lehman’s chair squeaked as he stood, his head and shoulders appearing above the divider. He gripped his hands together overhead and arched his back. “Anybody down for a beer? My ex has the kids, and the cat isn’t talking to me ‘cause I forgot the canned food.”
“You’re on,” Neumiller agreed, tossing files into a cabinet and turning the key in the lock.
Lehman leaned over the top of the cubicle, staring down at me. “Steele?”
“Another time,” I replied. “I have a few things to finish up.”
“It’s okay to breathe for a minute.” He nodded, as if berating himself for saying something asinine. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t know that.” He tried a new tactic. “What if I buy?”
“Rain check,” I said, still typing. All I wanted was for him and Neumiller to go away.
Neumiller slung his jacket over his shoulder and shrugged. “You tried, Lehman. She has a date with her job.”
Lehman cocked an eyebrow at me. “Well, I expect a wedding invitation when you two finally tie the knot.”
I shifted an eyebrow at him. “Noted.”
The guys turned and left, chatting on their way out. Their demeanor was subdued, not like they were about to hit the bars. This case had us all exhausted and constantly on our toes. What if, while we finally took a rest at the end of the day, The Man Upstairs made another move? What if, while we sifted through details, he moved mountains, ruining more lives? We never felt safe.
Still, Lehman had a point. Working myself to exhaustion ran the risk of dulling my mind.
Especially if I was secretly working two cases at once.
For the next half hour, above the clack of my own keys, I listened to the sounds outside my door, waiting until the station felt sleepy—or at least as sleepy as a police station ever gets.
When I was convinced the last of the day-shifters were gone, I picked up my cell phone and searched my contacts. Tara Slater. We hadn’t talked in years.
I took a deep breath and hit send. The phone rang. Tara’s voice came over the line.
“Well, hey, stranger! Long time, no chat.”
I smiled. She was the kind of friend you could pick up with right where you left off. I leaned back in my desk chair and swiveled lazily, letting the movement dissipate my anxiety. “Hey, Tara. What up in Madtown?”
“Oh, the yoozh. We added a new position in homicide. You looking for a job? We miss you up here.”
I grinned, a touch of nostalgia creeping in. Tara and I had shared an office in the Madison PD Detective Bureau. Lunch breaks usually found us at any one of the small ethnic restaurants on State Street—Thai, Greek, Russian, Indian, take your pick—or at a coffee shop that served beet sandwiches and offered water in upcycled glass jars. On weekends, we jogged together on the shore of Lake Mendota, winding our way past the stately, historic buildings of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And like any self-respecting Madisonian, we proudly wore tee shirts sporting pink plastic flamingos.
But for all the fond memories, you’d have to threaten me at gunpoint to get me to go back. Madison was the city where my marriage had fallen apart. Where Ryan had had a fling with another woman. Madison was where I’d finally gotten pregnant. And where I’d had my abortion.
I diverted the conversation away from the notion of returning. “I’ll wager Lake Geneva is more exciting than Madison right now.”
“No shit, lady. I get the news from Luke.” Luke Foreman from Madison PD Homicide had volunteered to join the investigative task force. He made the ninety-minute drive three times a week to attend our morning meetings. “What the hell’s going on over there?” Tara demanded.
“Well, that’s the question, I guess.”
Tara’s voice turned serious and sincere. “What do you need from me, girl?”
I twirled a pen on my desk, my stomach cramping. Tara Slater was deeply intuitive. It didn’t shock me that she already knew this wasn’t a social call.
“I just need to know…” My mouth went dry. Aside from the staff at the clinic that performed my abortion, Tara was the only person who knew about my pregnancy. I’d had to tell someone. And with her whole heart, Tara had offered me a shoulder to cry on. She helped me think through all the options—even though I’d been in no thinking mood. As always, I’d wanted swift and sudden action. But when I chose, she didn’t judge. She offered to go to my appointment with me. In the end, I took that journey alone. But I had never forgotten her willingness and support.
And then we never spoke of it again. She knew it was off limits. But sometimes a spark of knowing passed between our eyes. And hers always seemed to say, I’m here for you. I’m ready to talk when you are.
But I’d brushed that offer off as well, telling myself I was fine.
Now, ten years later, how did I bring it up again? How did I ask her… whether she had really kept my secret?
“I just need to know…” I tried again. “Tara, did you ever tell anyone about…?”
She seemed to know immediately what I was trying to get at. “No. Never. Not even Max.” Her husband.
The fear released my heart, one piercing claw withdrawing at a time. I found myself sniffing back a tear. “Thanks,” I said in a husky voice. “That means a lot to me.” And it did. But if Tara had never told, how did The Man Upstairs seem to know about my pregnancy? Or was I interpreting his words incorrectly? But if he wasn’t talking about my baby, what was he talking about? Yes, Monica, YOUR children…
“Why do you ask?” Tara inquired. She gave a little gasp. “Ryan hasn’t found out, has he?”
“No, no, he hasn’t.”
“Oh, thank God. That would be… awkward.” The word itself fell short, and she knew it.
I leaned forward to place an elbow on my desk, cupping my whole upper body around my phone. “It’s… it’s related to the case we’re working on.”
“What do you mean?”
I closed my eyes for a moment, the voice of The Man Upstairs circling through my head. “We’re trying to locate a suspect. A suspect who…” His words stabbed into my heart again. “Tara, I think he knows.”
“What?”
Forcing my emotions to remain at bay, I told her about the phone call I’d received moments after the bombing. The challenge to play The Man’s game. The boast that he knew everything about everyone in town—even me. The hint that maybe—maybe—he knew about my child.
“Holy shit,” Tara breathed. “Monica, I promise, I never said a word.”
“I know. I believe you.”
“That leaves only one option.”
“The clinic.”
“Someone who worked there?”
“It has to be.”
“Do you want me to look into it?”
I thought about that. “No.” I was already out of bounds, sharing details of the case with someone who wasn’t assigned to it. Right now, the only person outside of the task force who knew about that phone call was The Man Upstairs. If we caught a suspect and he let on that he knew about the call, we’d know we had our man. It was bad enough that I’d shared this detail with Tara. It could only make things worse if I let her involve herself in my investigation. “I’ll look into it myself,” I said.
“Okay.” She seemed to think for a moment. “Have you told the task force?”
I drew circles on my desk with the back end of a pen. “No.”
She didn’t answer. Her way of not judging, but silently forcing me to consider what I was doing.
“Ryan’s on the task force.” It was all I needed to say.
“Ah.”
Silence stretched uncomfortably. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“Have you considered telling him?”
I bit my lips together. Under different circumstances, maybe I would have. Or rather, I would have let him find out. I pictured Ryan walking into the meeting room just as Lehman added a note to the marker board in bright red ink: Monica’s baby. Ryan’s reaction would be the same as if someone had put a slug between his eyes. To hold a secret this long, only to dish it up semi-publicly for the sake of an investigation, would be the ultimate way to let him know how much I hated him.
Except that I didn’t hate him anymore.
Quite possibly I was in love with him.
I was nowhere near being able to explain any of that to Tara. I hadn’t squared with it myself yet. Nor had I figured out how I could possibly tell Ryan about our child more privately. Not without losing him all together. My only excuse was that I couldn’t bear to raise our child alone—to see a miniature version of Ryan’s face every day, reminding me both of him and of what he had done to me. To us. All three of us.
Had I considered telling Ryan? Yes. A thousand times, in a thousand different ways. None of them seemed right—or even like the right thing to do.
“That’s not an option,” I said, and left it at that.
“You sure?”
I thought again of the shock that would pass through his eyes, followed by the anger. I wasn’t able to face that yet. “Yes.”
“Okay.” She was quiet for a moment. “You’re investigating this on your own?”
“Yes.”
I waited, maybe hoping she’d shrive my soul. God knew, I should have told the task force. I was playing with fire, not sharing everything I knew. What if I hamstrung the investigation? What if running an independent inquiry put me or my colleagues in danger? I was a cop who played by the strictest interpretation of the rules. Always. No exceptions.
Until now.
I guess we each have our own breaking point. I had clearly reached mine. My psyche was a mess.
But once again, Tara neither condoned nor condemned my actions. Perhaps it was merely a way of shriving her own soul of my questionable decisions. “You’re walking a wire,” was all she said. An observation, and nothing more.
I dipped my head, as if I had to hide my shame over the phone. “I know.”
“What are you going to do if you turn up anything?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll find a way to get the relevant details to the task force.”
“But not your pregnancy?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
Tara sighed. “Okay. Well… you know I’m here for you.”
I smiled “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
We said good-bye and hung up. I folded my arms on my desk and dropped my head on top of them. Damn The Man Upstairs. Who was he? How did he know? I had to find him. And I had to find him first—before the task force did. The truth would be out as soon as he was caught. And every word he said would be hashed over a thousand times.
I even know how to exploit your children. Yes, Monica—YOUR children.
What did you mean by those words? some interrogator would ask.
And he would tell them. And my life as I knew it, both good and bad, would be over.
The Man Upstairs had invited me to play his game. But maybe he had already won. He’d told me his goals: Control. Manipulation. Clearly, he already had perfect control over me. In some dark room hidden from my sight, he was chuckling to himself. Reveling in my mental turmoil. If he really knew everything, then he knew that I was a crumpled wreck. Fighting to protect my secrets. Fighting to find him. And shedding fresh tears for the baby I’d wanted desperately, then didn’t keep because I didn’t know how to be anything short of an asshole.
With the whisper of a few words in my ear, The Man Upstairs completely owned me.