Shauna moves a chair to the side of the square table next to me and takes my hand. She has brought nothing with her. No major discussion of the case today. We didn’t discuss the case when she visited two days ago, either. That was a Tuesday. The day after Labor Day.
That was the day she burst into tears before she even said hello. That was the day she told me that she’d lost the baby.
The spotting on her underwear, then the cramps, then the trip to the emergency room because her doctor’s office was closed on Labor Day. Labor Day—of course it had to be Labor Day that she miscarried. It wasn’t enough to put that tiny dagger through Shauna’s heart, but let’s have it happen on Labor Day so we can sprinkle in some irony, too, and remember it every year.
Today, Shauna is different. The mourning is still all over her, the slump to her shoulders, the lifelessness in her eyes, but there is something different in how she addresses me.
“How are you?” I say, my hand on her arm.
“Don’t,” she says, tightening up. “I don’t want to talk about that today. It’s too . . . it’s too much for me. Okay?”
“Sure, okay,” I say. And then I know. I suspected, but now I know.
“I’ve been thinking,” she starts. “There’s no longer a reason for all of this. There’s no baby to protect anymore, Jason.”
Her eyes fill, but her face is strident, determined.
“That was always the justification,” she says. “We were letting you carry the water for what happened, instead of me, because of the baby.”
I shake my head no.
“I want to tell the truth now,” she says.
“No,” I answer. “Absolutely not.”
She shakes her head and looks away from me. “Do you have any idea what this is like for me?” she mumbles. “Knowing that I did something and you’re taking the blame?”
“First of all,” I say, driving a finger into the table, “I’m far more responsible than you are, Shauna. Alexa was my doing, not yours. You were put in an impossible situation, and if it weren’t for me, you never would have been in that situation.”
She chews on her lip, listening.
“And second,” I continue, “I can win this case, Shauna. I can.”
She’s heard all of this before. She doesn’t look convinced.
“And if you don’t?” she asks. “Who was it who told me that the hardest feat to accomplish in the legal system is to overturn a guilty verdict?”
I never like it when she says my words back to me.
“If I’m convicted, then you can tell your story. I’ll back it up.”
She gives me a sideways look. She doesn’t believe I’d ever do that.
“Look at it this way,” I say, because I’ve expected this conversation, too. “You go in now, today, and spill it to Roger Ogren. What happens? You’ll be prosecuted and convicted. And me? Oh, they’ll find something for me, Shauna. They’ll convict me of something. Tampering with evidence, lying to a police officer, obstruction—something.”
She’s listening, at least.
“In other words, we both go to prison,” I say. “But do it my way, and if I beat this case, we both walk.”
Her eyes rise over my head as she ponders this.
“Think about it,” I say. “I’m just sitting here now, in solitary confinement. The detox program the county uses is actually pretty good. In a lot of ways, it’s easier to get off the pills while I’m in here, free of any temptation. So what’s the rush? There isn’t any. There’s no difference between you giving your mea culpa now versus giving it after I’m convicted, if I’m convicted. But let me have my trial. Give me a chance to win.”
Shauna leans into me. We’ve had this entire conversation in rather hushed tones—it’s a privileged communication and the DOC isn’t allowed to listen, but you never know—but now she speaks even more quietly still.
“Convince me you can win this case.”
I touch my forehead to hers. “Better you not know. We’ve been over this. I want to keep you clean on this. You and Bradley.”
Shauna is quiet for a long time. Then she asks a question I’ve long expected.
“Why do I get the feeling that it’s not just a coincidence that Marshall Rivers committed suicide at roughly the same time that Alexa died?”
I will credit Alexa with that feat—she pulled off the fake suicide. She had some help, I think, from the police. The way it’s been playing out in the press, the police had narrowed their list of suspects and were bearing down on Marshall, and Marshall felt that heat, killed himself before they could bring him in. Me, I don’t buy it. I don’t think they were close. But I don’t know. And I don’t care. The suicide theory fits their story line. It makes them look like they were days or hours from solving the crime, they were just about to knock on his door with their guns drawn, as opposed to stumbling upon the killer when he voluntarily ended his reign of terror. It’s good press for the mayor and the police department. Sure, he committed suicide, but only because he felt us coming. We knew it was him. We caught him. We can keep you safe.
“You have a vivid imagination, Shauna.”
“Jason.”
“Do you want to know if I killed Marshall Rivers, Shauna? If you do, ask me. I’ll tell you the truth.”
She makes a disapproving noise. “I see that the Area Three detectives handled that case. The north side murders.”
“Is that a fact?”
“And I suppose that’s why you want me to list every single detective on the Area Three roster on the witness disclosure. Because we’re going to be talking about that case, as well as Alexa, at trial.”
I don’t bother trying to disabuse her of that notion. It would be insulting her intelligence.
“Jason,” she whispers, “if you have something up your sleeve, which you clearly do, why not tell Ogren now and get it over with? Why rot in here for three more months?”
“Because he won’t let me off until he’s sure, and he’ll take his time. He’ll consider every angle.”
“Every angle,” Shauna says, an edge to her voice.
“Every angle,” I say. “He’ll look at the time-of-death window compared to the time I called 911, and he’ll say to himself, Boy, Jason might have had two, three hours to play with there. Maybe all this stuff he’s showing me to prove his innocence—maybe he doctored a few things. And we don’t want that, Shauna. We’ll spring it on him at trial, and he’ll have days, maybe, but not weeks and months, to react.”
Shauna draws back and gives me a look that a mother gives when she disapproves of a child’s actions but also finds them amusing. My mother wore that expression most of my childhood.
But then she grows serious again. “You think it will work?”
“Probably,” I say. “You never know for sure. Roger’s head is going to explode at trial.”
We are both quiet. The smell of her peach shampoo reminds me of better days. I’ve certainly had better ones, but I’m starting to break free of the grip that the OxyContin had on me. I’m still lost in the woods, but now I know the path back. I just have to make sure I stay on that path. This incarceration, ironically, has helped. Being deprived of your liberty eliminates options, removes temptations.
I still have the dreams, the night sweats, but the craving, that wicked tugging, has diminished. Everything is on a smaller scale now, still present, but dissipating. The medication they give me helps, but it’s talking about it every day that works the most for me, acknowledging it, identifying it for what it is, a sickness, instead of making excuses and keeping the good times rollin’.
“Lightner sends his best, by the way,” she says. “Talked to him yesterday.”
“About what?” I give her a look.
“Don’t worry.” She raises a calming hand. “Joel isn’t talking to me. Or anyone else.”
For obvious reasons, it would not behoove me if anyone discovered that I knew the identity of Marshall Rivers before his death. Joel understands that, too. So he has forgotten about all that work he did searching for the north side killer, which led him to Marshall Rivers. The police interviewed him about me, but they had no reason to ask him anything about Marshall; they asked him about my relationship with Alexa. I assume he told them the truth, that he suspected she was bad news but didn’t know much about her firsthand.