“Why not?”
Sam sighed gustily and went on, “She thinks it’s obvious. She thinks that anything she says could make it worse.”
“I don’t get that.”
“Neither do I, but she’s afraid of the prosecutor, and rightly so. She’s also worried about how she comes across.”
I murmured something in agreement. Felicity’s appearance belied her true nature: she was shy, but that could read as disdainful. She was practical, but to someone who didn’t know her, that could read as cold. She didn’t babble about meaningless matters, and her self-possession could seem judgmental. Plenty of people might consider Felicity intimidating, through no fault of her own.
I asked Sam, “Don’t you want her to say that she’s innocent? In her own words?”
“I do, but I don’t think it’s likely.” He gazed up at the ceiling. “Maybe she’s right. Maybe she doesn’t seem like the all-American small-town girl next door.”
That was, exactly, who she was to me.
“What can I do?”
He gave me a look that, despite the grim nature of our conversation, I felt as a shudder of lust in the pit of my abdomen. “It would be good if you didn’t write about this case at all.”
This I had not expected. “That...” I said. “That’s not an option.” I added, “I have to. And I want to.”
Sam told me he had discussed this with his mother and that it was her opinion that whatever I wrote would not help Felicity. “And could damage her in ways that none of us expected.”
I came back at him. “Well, I asked my mom about this also. My mom is an award-winning reporter and she says that thinking of the press as predatory is a common mistake when that’s almost never the motive.” I added, “And why did you ask your mom about Felicity and me? Why does this concern her? Does she pick your clothes out for you too?”
Here was another question: Why didn’t I shut my fat mouth?
“Only for Easter,” Sam said. “My mom is the managing partner of this law firm.”
I said, “Oh.”
Could I ask him if he wanted to have coffee? Or run away with me to Santorini?
Sam got up, sort of bowed to me, and wished me good evening. Then he left. It was a memorable beginning to a memorable friendship.
Not.
Did Felicity see talking to me in the same way as speaking up in court? Maybe. But still, she could change her mind. If absolutely refused, I would write around Felicity. There had to be a way to make it clear to her that my intentions were good. She wasn’t wrong to suspect that I just popped up out of nowhere to write about her downfall. That wasn’t true, but, after all, we hadn’t been in touch for more than two years. She also hadn’t said this, but I proceeded mentally as though she had. Her attitude (the one I had no idea whether she had) was mostly my fault. I was consumed by the strange rituals of the tribal world of fashion. I had to keep a straight face while standing on a pooldeck to interview naked people as their body makeup was applied. I chased high-strung designers through hotel ballrooms and the backstages of arenas as they wept and refused to discuss their controversial use of metal thread, only to wake me up banging on my hotel room door after midnight, drunk and ready to chat.
So, how would I investigate this? How were all the other reporters doing it? There weren’t that many newspapers left and those that were, were mostly in online form, except for those thick Sunday papers, and there were even fewer magazines. But news radio was thriving and TV news was alive if not exactly a bright light. Local TV news thronged the courthouse and their national affiliates were getting into the act. And why? I knew why I was obsessed but why were they?
There were murders more foul, murders more poignant, bad people who killed their children, good people killed by their bad children, second wives who killed first wives, husbands who conspired with their first wives to kill their second wives, hot blood chilled to cold blood by rage or boredom. There was a murder for every purpose, every place, and every day. The accused, however, wasn’t often a beautiful, intellectually gifted, and verifiably good young woman who unaccountably switched from studying biology to working it, who unaccountably made a very good living having sex and, even more unaccountably, allegedly knocked off two men for money, with a shit ton of premeditation, men whose only apparent vice was Felicity herself.
That was what drew the cameras: good visuals. And all those artfully coiffed TV men and women seemed to have no shortage of people to talk to—what did they do, pay them? And how the hell did they find them? If I asked, I would reveal myself to be the lightweight I really was. “Lightweight” was probably flattering myself. And yet, I could do this. Felicity and I wouldsupport each other as kids when something annoying happened in the linoleum corridors of Algebra II or on those mean streets of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. “Little Biggy Bigelow, give me no shit. You can do this!” she would say. And I would say to her, “Wild woman, shit me not. You can do this!”
It was the awfulness of murder that made it so terrific to read about. Who said that? Quotes and attributions were shooting out of my brain like popcorn.
But not promises. I held on to those.
Wild woman, I can do this.
It didn’t help that this story wasn’t straightforward, factually or emotionally. It was like those advent calendars, a mystery revealed one little door at a time, each tiny picture changing the larger picture as a whole. That was how the people involved would reveal what they understood as the truth. People loved to talk. I knew that much for sure. The impulse to confide, or even to confess, seemed all but irresistible. Once you got in the door, interviews were mainly gossip, and the allure of gossip was powerful. My mother had the same opinion of history—that, beyond established dates of this battle or that birth, it was mainly people talking about other people reaching a consensus that seemed to explain an actual circumstance that no one could really describe because the people it happened to were long dead.
Whatever I stitched together would only be an impression of the truth, just as a photograph was only an impression of a person or an event. I could only try for the most authentic impression.
I made a verbal list on my phone of people I would talk to. Beyond the obvious, including the families of the victims and the principals of the trial, there were other sources I might try—or try and fail—to enlist. There were Felicity’s coworkers at the so-called gentleman’s club where she worked for a while as a stripper. And I’d try to find other men who paid for her companionship. Print journalism came with the blessing ofa kindly distance that having a microphone shoved into your face for that day’s broadcast could not offer; I’d bet my life that the TV reporters weren’t snagging interviews on camera with an escort’s patrons.
But how would I even begin to find them, or talk them into talking to me if I did? I wasn’t afraid of a hostile source. Having to match wits was, in a sense, invigorating. But questioning a hostile source was one thing; it was quite another to question a source who was a ghost. The only people who knew the truth about Emil’s and Cary’s deaths were ghosts or would surely try to ghost me. I was, after all, just the princess of purses. Why should they trust me? And yet, turned another way, inexperience with this kind of story might be to my advantage. They wouldn’t see me coming. Seeming naive was as good an interrogation tactic as any other.
