Lie Down with the Devil Read Online Free PDF Page A

questions. I might have been reading into the situation, but it seemed to me that she was interested only because she was looking for an alternative, an answer to a question:
What do women do if they don’t get married? How do they live?
    I don’t consider myself a role model, just somebody who does what she can.
    Jessica said, “I’ll pay. I’ll pay for your time and for gas and whatever else you charge for—and a bonus because I’ve left it so late. I have the money. Don’t you see, I have to know.”
    “Let me get this straight: You want me to wait on your doorstep and tell you when Ken comes home, and whether he leaves again?”
    She bit her lip. “Well, no.”
    “What then?
    “I guess I want to know where he goes.” She swallowed and sniffed and I thought,
Oh, no, she’s going to start wailing again.
“I want to know who.”
    I held up the anonymous note. “You think you know who sent this?”
    “No. I just don’t want to be unfair! What if it’s nothing? I mean, what if he’s visiting a sister or—”
    “Does he have a sister? Locally?”
    “No. But what if he’s crashing at a friend’s, a male friend’s?”
    That, I thought, could be worse. But I didn’t even want to bring up the possibility. The girl was upset enough.
    I said, “So you think he might go to a party without you, or visit an old friend?”
    “He doesn’t have family around here. He might go out, to a bar or something, watch a game, but there’s nobody I know who’d want him to stay overnight, so if he did, I’d know. I mean, could you follow him, write down where he goes, who he sees?”
    Following, tailing, is a skill at which I excel, requiring good eyes, patience, and sheer cussed doggedness. I could do it and feel competent, more than competent. The offer was tempting. I don’t do divorce work, but I do handle due diligence cases, preventive work. Jessie’s dilemma was somewhere between the two, in a hazy new area.
    “You really don’t want to ask the guy?”
    “I love him,” she said. “Whatever he said, I’d believe him.”
    “If you love him—”
    “No,” she said. “I love him, but I’m not like that.” Her expression altered, grew even graver. “I won’t share him. I mean, either what we have is special and separate or it’s nothing. I don’t want to be with somebody I can’t trust.”
    If she trusted him, she wouldn’t be hiring me, I thought.
    “Okay,” I said. “Where does Ken work?”
    She answered more questions, filled out the usual forms, paid half up front, offering cash. Now I like cash as much as the next person, but it always makes me a little nervous. I signaled as much by raising an eyebrow.
    “It’s not that I don’t want your name on a check or anything,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve got more cash on hand than usual. I hit it big at Foxwoods.”
    I’d noticed matchbooks from Foxwoods, the Connecticut casino, when she’d dropped her handbag.
    “Would you rather have a check?”
    Her offer soothed my suspicious nature. I took the cash and we made arrangements to meet Monday afternoon when she got back from New York.
    “I might call sooner,” she said. “If that’s okay.”
    Poor baby
, I thought. She wants to know, but she doesn’t want to know.
    “Sure,” I said. “No problem.”
    She wants to know, but she doesn’t want to know.
    The words echoed long after Jessica Franklin departed. They described me as well as my new client. I wanted to know about Sam, but I didn’t want to know.
    I went to the fridge, yanked out a Rolling Rock, downed it standing at the counter, staring at nothing. Beer fueled my way upstairs, gave me the guts to walk past my little sister’s empty room.
    A week ago today. A week ago tonight. Late. Past midnight, I’d climbed the same steps, noticed the crack of light beneath her door, opened it to the tableau of Paolina’s masklike face and the knife and the thin line of blood tracing the cut on the inside of her left