Caught. Part 20

It was getting late now, but this was hardly the time to worry about being phone appropriate. Wendy dialed the Wheelers' home number. A man--probably her husband, Noel--answered on the third ring.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"This is Wendy Tynes. May I please speak to Jenna?"

"She's not home."

Click.

She stared at the receiver. Hmm. That seemed rather abrupt. She shrugged and put the phone down. Turning back to the computer, a strange thought hit her: Facebook. With silly quasi-peer pressure mounting, Wendy had opened a Facebook account last year, accepted and requested a few friends--and pretty much did nothing else with it. Maybe it was an age thing, though there seemed to be plenty of folks older than her populating these social sites, but when Wendy was younger--not to sound like an old fart--when a man "poked" you, it meant something, uh, different from what it did on Facebook. Intelligent people she respected were constantly sending her silly quizzes or throwing things at her or inviting her to Mafia Wars or posting on her wall--were the double entendres intentional?--and she felt like Tom Hanks in the movie Big, Big, the part where he keeps raising his hand and saying, "I don't get it." the part where he keeps raising his hand and saying, "I don't get it."

But she remembered now that her Tufts graduating cla.s.s had its own page, complete with photographs old and new and information on cla.s.smates. Could there be a page for those who graduated Princeton twenty years ago?

She signed on to Facebook and did a search.

Pay dirt.

Ninety-eight members of the Princeton cla.s.s had signed up. The front page had tiny photos of eight of them. There were discussion boards and links. Wendy was wondering how to join the group so she could get access to everything when her cell phone started buzzing. She checked it and saw the little logo signaling a phone message. Call must have come in while she was at Blend. She scrolled through the incoming call log and saw the most recent had come from her former place of employment. Probably something about her nearly nonexistent severance package.

But, no, the call had come in less than an hour ago. HR wouldn't call this late.

Wendy dialed in for the message and was surprised to hear the voice of Vic Garrett, the man who'd fired her on . . . was it really just two days ago?

"Hey, sweetums, it's Vic. Call me p.r.o.nto. Hugely important."

Wendy felt a tick in her blood. Vic was not one for hyperbole. She dialed his private line in the office. If Vic was gone, he'd forward it to his mobile. He picked up on the first ring.

"Did you hear?" Vic asked.

"What?"

"You may get rehired. At the very least, freelance. Either way, I want you on this."

"On what?"

"The cops found Haley McWaid's cell phone."

"What's that have to do with me?"

"They found it in Dan Mercer's hotel room. Apparently your boy is responsible for whatever the h.e.l.l happened to her."

ED GRAYSON lay alone in his bed.

Maggie, his wife of sixteen years, had packed up and left while he was being interrogated for the murder of Dan Mercer. No matter. Their marriage was dead, had indeed been dead for a while, he guessed, but you still go through the motions and hope, and now that hope was finally gone. Maggie wouldn't tell. He knew that. She wanted to wish problems away. That was her way. Pack the bad away in a suitcase, stick it on the top shelf of some closet in the back of your mind, close the door, and plaster on a smile. Maggie's favorite phrase, something her mom in Quebec had taught her, was "You bring your own weather to the picnic." So both women smiled a lot. They both had smiles so great you sometimes forgot that they were meaningless.

Maggie's smile had worked for many years. It had charmed young Ed Grayson, swept him off his proverbial feet. The smile seemed like goodness to him, and Ed wanted to be near that. But the smile was not goodness. It was a facade, a mask to fight off the bad.

When the naked pictures of their son, E. J., first surfaced, Maggie's reaction had shocked him: She wanted to ignore them. No one has to know, Maggie said. E. J. seems fine, she went on. He's only eight years old. No one actually touched him--or if someone had, there were no signs of it. The pediatrician found nothing. E. J. seemed normal, untroubled. No bed-wetting or night terrors or extra anxiety.

"Let it go," Maggie urged him. "He's fine."

Ed Grayson was apoplectic. "You don't want this sc.u.mbag put away? You want to let him keep doing this to other kids?"

"I don't care about other kids. I care about E. J."

"And this is what you want to teach him? 'Let it go'?"

"It's what's best. There's no reason the world has to know what happened to him."

"He did nothing wrong, Maggie."

"I know that. Don't you think I know that? But people will look at him differently. He'll be defined by it. If we just keep it quiet, not let anybody know . . ."

Maggie flashed him the smile. For the first time, it made him cringe.

Ed sat up and made himself another Scotch and soda. He flipped on ESPN and watched SportsCenter SportsCenter. He closed his eyes and thought about the blood. He thought about the pain and horror that he'd inflicted in the name of justice. He believed everything that he said to that reporter Wendy Tynes: Justice needed to be done. If not by the courts, well, then it fell to men like him. But that didn't mean there wasn't a personal price paid by those who delivered it.

You often hear that freedom isn't free. Neither is justice.

He was alone, but he could still hear Maggie's horrified whisper when he got home: "What have you done?"

And rather than make a long defense, he kept it short and simple: "It's over."

He might as well have been talking about them, Ed and Maggie Grayson, and then you start to look back and you wonder whether it was ever really love. It was easy to blame what happened to E. J. for their demise--but was that accurate? Did tragedy cause fissures, open them wider--or did tragedy merely turn on the light so you could see the fissure that had always been there? Maybe we live in darkness, blinded by the smile and facade of goodness. Maybe tragedy just takes away the blinders.

Ed heard his doorbell ring. Late. The sound was immediately followed by an impatient fist pounding on the door. Reacting more than thinking, Ed jumped up and grabbed his gun from the night-stand. Another doorbell ring, more fist pounding.

"Mr. Grayson? Police, open up."

Ed looked out the window. Two Suss.e.x County cops in brown uniforms--neither was that big black sheriff, Walker. That was fast, Grayson thought. He was mildly surprised rather than shocked. He put the gun away, came downstairs, and opened the door.

The two cops looked about twelve years old.

"Mr. Grayson?

"It's Federal Marshal Grayson, son."

"Sir, you're under arrest for the murder of Daniel J. Mercer. Please put your hands behind your back while I read you your rights."

CHAPTER 17.

IN SOMETHING OF A DAZE, Wendy finished her phone call with her old (and current again?) boss Vic Garrett and hung up the phone.

Haley McWaid's iPhone had been found under Dan Mercer's bed.

She tried to process this, sort through her emotions. Her first thought was also the most obvious: She was sick to her stomach for the McWaid family. She hoped like h.e.l.l that it all somehow turned out okay for them. Okay, go deeper. Wendy was shocked, yes. That was what this was. Too shocked maybe. Shouldn't there be some kind of dark relief here? Wasn't this vindication, that she had been right about Dan all along? Justice of some sort had been served. She had not been a cog in some plot to take down an innocent man trying to do good.

But there, on the screen right in front of her, was the Facebook page for Dan's graduating cla.s.s at Princeton. She closed her eyes and leaned back. She saw Dan's face on the day they first met, that first interview at the shelter, the enthusiasm for the kids he rescued from the streets, the way those kids looked at him with such awe, the way she'd been drawn to him. She flashed to yesterday at the d.a.m.n trailer park, the horrible bruises on that same face, the dimming in those eyes, the way she wanted, despite all she knew, to reach out.

Do you just dismiss all that intuition?

The counter, of course, is that evil comes in all guises. She'd heard a dozen times the example of famed serial killer Ted Bundy. But the truth was, she had never found Bundy remotely handsome. Maybe it was hindsight, knowing what he was, but you could see the vacancy in the eyes. She would have, she was sure, found him oily, slimy, charm hiding villainy. You can feel evil. You just can. Or so she thought.

Either way, she hadn't seen or felt that with Dan. She had felt, even on the day he died, kindness and warmth. And it was more than intuition now. There was Phil Turnball. There was Farley Parks. There was something more going on here, something darker and more insidious at work.

She opened her eyes and leaned forward. Okay, Facebook. She had signed on, found the Princeton cla.s.s page, but how could she join? There had to be a way.

Ask the resident Facebook expert, she supposed.

"Charlie!"

From downstairs: "What?"

"Can you come up here?"

"Can't hear you."

"Come up here!"

"What?" Then: "What for?"

"Just come up please."

"Can't you just yell down what you want?"

She grabbed her mobile and sent a text telling him she needed emergency computer help and if he didn't hurry, she would cancel all his online accounts, even though she didn't really know how to do that. A moment later, she heard a deep sigh and the sound of heavy footsteps as he ascended the stairs. Charlie poked his head in the door.

"What?"

She pointed to the computer screen. "I need to join this group."

Charlie squinted at the page. "You didn't go to Princeton."

"Thanks for that in-depth a.n.a.lysis. I had no idea."

Charlie smiled. "I love when you go all sarcastic on me."

"Like mother, like son." G.o.d, she loved this kid. Wendy had one of those waves, the ones that sneak up on parents and crush them and make them just want to wrap their arms around their kid and never let him go.

"What?" Charlie said.

She shook it off. "So how do I join this group if I didn't actually go to Princeton?"

Charlie made a face. "You're kidding, right?"

"Do I look like I'm kidding?"

"Hard to say, what with your sarcasm and all."

"I'm not kidding or being sarcastic. How do I get in?"

Charlie sighed, bent over, and pointed to the right side of the page. "You see that link that says 'Join Group'?"

"Yes."

"You click it."

He stood upright.

"And then?"

"That's it," her son said. "You're in."

Now Wendy made a face. "But, as you so wisely pointed out, I didn't go to Princeton."

"Doesn't matter. It's an open group. Closed groups say 'Request To Join.' This one is open to anyone. Click and you're in."

Wendy looked dubious.

Charlie sighed again. "Just do it," he said.

"Okay, wait." Wendy clicked it--and just like that, voila, she became a member of a Princeton graduating cla.s.s, albeit the Facebook version. Charlie gave her a told-you-so glance, shook his head, and clumped his way back downstairs. She thought again about how much she loved him. She thought about Marcia and Ted McWaid getting word from the police about that iPhone, one Haley probably really wanted and squealed with delight when she got, being found under a strange man's bed.

Not helpful.

The page was up, so back to work. First Wendy scanned through the ninety-eight members. No Dan, no Phil, no Farley. Made sense. All three were probably keeping a low profile. If they had ever joined, they were probably off Facebook now. None of the other names were familiar.

Okay, now what?

She checked the discussion boards. One about a sick cla.s.s member, offering support. Another about regional gatherings of cla.s.s members. Nothing there. Another about the upcoming reunion. She clicked around that page and landed on a link that held promise: "Dorm Pics--Freshman Year!"

She found the three of them in the fifth photograph of the slideshow. The caption read "Stearns House" and featured about a hundred students posing in front of a brick building. She spotted Dan first. He had aged well, the curls shorter as an adult, but otherwise, he looked the same. No question about it--he'd been a good-looking guy.

The names were listed on the bottom. Farley Parks, ever the politician, was front and center. Phil Turnball stood on the right. While Dan was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, both Farley and Phil were decked out for the cover shot of Snooty Prep Monthly Snooty Prep Monthly. Khakis, collared shirts, loafers without socks--the only thing missing was a sweater tied around their necks.

Okay, so she knew the name of the dorm. Now what?