went on for another hour. We finished the bottle of wine and opened another. We went over and over the various ways it might all add up and what I should do about it. It was maddening. An endless calculus filled with nothing but variables. I finally sat up, exhausted, and rubbed my face with my hands.
“I just can’t think about any of this anymore. I keep hoping that if I just don’t do anything it will all go away.”
“But if Steele is the killer, you can’t just let him get away with it.”
I could feel a disgusted look come over my face. “Shit. Yeah, I dunno. Can’t I? I mean he did spend twelve years in prison. Maybe that’s enough.”
Liz looked flabbergasted at the suggestion. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“But I also have no obligation to endanger myself by coming forward. I just don’t know who’s out there trying to get me. I’m not going to just stand out in the daylight and say, ‘here I am, come and get me.’ I mean, what about my future? Sharon Steele is already dead. Nothing I do is going to change that. If society wants revenge, then it needs to do the investigation I’ve done. I don’t have to get myself killed.”
“Who said anything about you getting killed? Why would they kill you? I mean, if you gave them the file, they could destroy it and there’d be nothing left.”
“I’d be left, and that might be too much for some people to tolerate.” I looked around the apartment, confused for a second. “Shit,” I finally sighed. “I need someone else to tell me what to do. I just don’t believe I’ll be safe if I run into the police station waving my files around and I don’t think I’ll be safe if I don’t. Meanwhile, someone is out there right now wondering where I am.”
Liz watched my movements. They were hesitant, jerky, uncertain, and confused. At no time had we discussed what I had done to her and I could sense her resisting an intoxicated urge to confront me about it. But despite her anger over my behavior, I could see she remained concerned about me. It was in her movements, in her eyes and voice. I looked exhausted and frightened, and she knew I needed her.
We continued talking, going round and round over the same territory. Steele’s story, Kelly’s story, Murdock’s story, the documents from the credit report, the phone call to Andersen, the photographs of Andersen and Steele, the man in the black car, my trashed apartment, it all added up to nothing but confused suspicion and fruitless speculation. We finished the rest of the bottle of wine and started on another. Darkness came over the city and we talked without the lights on and late into the night.
24
Liz had not forgiven me, despite the previous evening, and that was apparent when she made me sleep on her couch. I awoke exhausted, mildly hung over, and suddenly worried that Liz was still pissed at me. The excitement of the case had drowned out all other emotions and given the two of us something else to focus on, at least temporarily. But it wouldn’t last, and I knew it. I lay awake on the couch listening to her movements in the bedroom and debating whether I should say anything. Somehow it felt wrong, inappropriate, and I decided to let it go.
Somewhere in my dreamless sleep I had decided to contact the journalist who’d called me. I was hoping that perhaps some press coverage might offer me a kind of protection the police could not. If there was too much attention focused on me, I’d be safe for awhile. But then, if no one cared much for my story, I was really fucked.
Liz came out of the bedroom in a light cotton sundress, lugging an overloaded backpack. She dropped the pack on the floor and it made a loud thud.
“Ugh,” she groaned, “this going back to class thing really sucks.”
“Tell me about it. I haven’t even thought about studying. And I’m not even going today.”
She shook her head and stood looking at me with her hands on her hips. Her concern was obvious and though she wished for my safety, she could not forgive me. I could see her hesitation. I shared it. We both wanted our old life back but secretly knew it was impossible to regain.
“You can stay here if you like,” she finally offered, as a sort