“I can’t look at it,” Catherine said.
She put up both palms, blocking the computer screen in front of her. They’d hurried out of the Purple Martin and crossed to City Hall, she and Tenley and Brileen, then closed Catherine’s office door behind them. Snoop-faced Siobhan Hult had been sent to tell Ward Dahlstrom that Tenley was still with her. Siobhan had never seen Brileen before, so they would appear, Catherine hoped, to be a typical mom hanging out with her daughter and her daughter’s pal. It would all seem peacefully familial. Instead of disgusting and horrific.
Brileen had finished her stomach-turning story, mother and daughter silent, as the din of the Purple faded into white noise around them. “I kept the thumb drive with me, all the time, on my key chain,” she’d finally said. “As insurance. It’s the only way I could make sure it was safe.”
Now Catherine and Tenley were about to see what was on that thumb drive. The video Brileen had protected. The “insurance.” Had Greg watched it, too?
“Tell me again.” Catherine, sitting in her leather desk chair, her computer humming, was still trying to understand. “Whose idea was this?”
“I was only told his name was Hugh.” Brileen standing by the desk, hands jammed in her pockets, shook her head. “He said he had surveillance tape of me, with Valerie. From—well, it doesn’t matter. He threatened to show her parents, the worst possible situation, if I didn’t help him.”
“Help him what?” Tenley perched on the edge of the couch.
“With his—I don’t understand the whole thing, I don’t even want to, but he found me at school. Had me approach Lanna. ‘I know all about your little friend,’ he said. He told me to tell her he had surveillance video of her, you know.” She swallowed. “‘With’ someone. And that he wanted money. Or he’d make it public.”
“Surveillance video? From where?” Catherine couldn’t process this. “With who?”
“With who?” Tenley echoed.
“Lanna never told me.” Brileen shook her head again. “She asked me—begged me—to go to her father. She couldn’t face him. Hugh told me to warn her that it would not only humiliate her.” She paused again. “It would ruin you.”
“Ruin? Me? This man knew me? How?” After three terms at City Hall, Catherine had met an incalculable number of people. But how many would want to destroy her? Well, plenty, she guessed. It was politics. And all she needed was one. This one. “Do I know him?”
“Mrs. Siskel, I simply don’t know. I only met him that once, other times it was all by phone. I simply—arranged it. I’m so sorry, but…” She paused. Took a deep breath.
“But there was no way out. I had to protect Valerie, you know? Mr. Siskel and I met. Made the exchange. I put the money in the Dumpster, like Hugh told me. But I kept a copy of the video. In case, I don’t know, I needed it for evidence.” She pulled a chunky rectangular key ring from her pocket, silver with a black suede tassel on the end. She yanked the tassel, and a thumb drive clicked out. She inserted it into the keyboard port of Catherine’s computer. “I’ve never looked at this, though. I couldn’t.”
“Greg never told me,” Catherine murmured. The computer hummed, the screen still black. “Nor did Lanna.”
“Me either,” Tenley said.
Catherine reached out across the desk, took her daughter’s hand.
“Mrs. Siskel?” Brileen’s eyes filled with tears. Again. “Do you want to look at the video now? I don’t know if your husband ever saw it. Or if he even kept the original thumb drive—he said he’d destroy it. But Lanna was happy, you know? Until this. She had some boyfriend, I guess he was the one on the tape. And her father forgave her. They had pledged never to tell you, decided that it would be their secret. She loved him, your husband, I mean, so much. And you, Mrs. Siskel. And you, too, Tenley. And when she died—”
Catherine’s lungs worked to breathe against the weight of the burden suddenly crushing them. “This Hugh. He wouldn’t have—do you think he killed her? In the woods?”
“I don’t,” Brileen said. “I mean, I don’t know. Didn’t the police say it was an accident? I believe them. I have to. It’s the only way I can deal with it. It’s too horrible, otherwise, thinking that I … and now, I’d do anything to—”
“We all would.” Catherine looked around her office. The same low-bid office where she’d battled the hotel workers’ strike and the neighborhood pothole lynch mob and the snow removal budget and the mayor’s continuing disconnect with his constituents. Boring, mundane City Hall. Now getting ready to present her daughter on some sex tape from some obviously illegal hidden camera.
“I can’t look at it,” Catherine said again.
But Brileen had already clicked the silvery mouse. One frame of video now filled Catherine’s computer screen. Black and white, that muddy half-tone identifying surveillance video. A white triangle violated the middle of the screen. When Brileen clicked the triangle again, the video would start.
“Mom?” Tenley’s voice was tiny, the thin, reedy voice of a child. She pointed to the screen, moving the pale pink rounded nail of her right forefinger past the triangle. “Um. I think that’s, like, your greenroom.”
Catherine stood, slowly, both palms on her desk. The room around her seemed to be off its axis. The floor was moving and the lights were dim, then bright, then dim again. There was no surveillance camera in her greenroom. That she knew of. She reached out a hand. It felt almost as if it weren’t attached to her arm. Lowered two fingers to the sleek polished surface of the mouse.
And clicked the triangle.
And then clicked it again. To stop it.
“Wait,” she said. Catherine had more to think about than the past, more to worry about than what might have been on some contraband video—in her office! How?—of her daughter and some asshole who’d taken advantage of Lanna, and Catherine, and practically every other thing in her universe that was honorable and sane. If he had harmed her daughter, in Catherine’s own office, it couldn’t be any worse on video than it was in her imagination. She would not poison her brain with it.
She needed one more answer. Right now.
“Brileen,” she said. “You said you and Greg were trying to protect me and Tenley, both of us.”
“Yeah. I—” Brileen put her face in both hands. When she took them down, three seconds later, her face was splotchy with tears. “—I only did what I thought was best for Lanna. That’s what Mr. Siskel was doing, too. We thought it was over. But two days ago, Hugh contacted me again. He told me to tell Greg he had pictures of Tenley.”
“What?” Tenley’s voice came out a strangled cry. Her hand went to her throat and her face went white. “That could not—I mean—there’s no way that—no!”
Catherine clamped her arm around her daughter, holding her tight, so tight that Tenley could never leave. She would never let go.
And now Tenley was sobbing.
“It can’t be.” Her daughter’s anguished words were muffled by Catherine’s chest. She could feel her daughter’s tears through her blouse, the wetness against her bare skin. “I never—”
Catherine steeled herself. If there were pictures of Tenley, how had they been taken? In the greenroom?
“Shhh.” She unclenched her daughter, sat her on the couch. Put one hand on Tenley’s thin back, trying to offer strength, then sat beside her, their shoulders touching. She reached for the words she knew were always welcome, though not always true. “Everything is going to be all right, honey,” she said.
She needed facts. She focused on Brileen.
“I see.” Catherine made her voice ice and fire. She forgot about everything but protecting the last living member of her family. “What did Hugh tell you to do?”
“It was like before,” Brileen said. “Like with Lanna. He had me tell Mr. Siskel to bring money, in a brown paper bag. But I wasn’t the conduit this time. Mr. Siskel was to meet a guy at noon in Curley Park.”
“What? You know this? And then what?”
“Just like before. Then Hugh or someone would get the money out of the Dumpster. But I was there, hiding. Afterward I even told a cop to look in the Dumpster. Guess they didn’t.”
“You knew this?” Catherine stood, heart pounding, head pounding, trying to understand. If she let it, this would destroy them. But she refused. Refused. She jabbed an accusing finger at Brileen. “Hugh killed my husband? You saw it?”
Catherine needed the phone. Forget strategy. This was no longer a negotiation, no longer politics. This was family. Their lives. “We have to tell the police. We have to—”
“Not Hugh,” Brileen said.
Catherine paused, one hand on the receiver of her black desk phone. She saw her daughter, now silent, face tearstained. Had Greg died protecting Tenley? He’d tried to protect Lanna. And Catherine herself. If only he’d told her, trusted her, confided in her. She wished he had shared this with her instead of taking it all on himself, destroying their marriage and sacrificing his life.
“Five seconds, Brileen,” Catherine said. “You have five seconds to explain. Then I’m calling the cops.”
“Not Hugh,” Brileen whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Yes, I saw it. And I can’t stand to think of it. But it wasn’t Hugh who killed your husband. The person who did—I’ve never seen him before.”