A few weeks after Laura started working at the hotel, she’d walked in accidentally on a prostitute with a customer. The woman had been syrupy sweet, telling Laura it was an honest mistake and don’t worry about it and let me walk you to the hallway so you don’t get lost in this big suite—the guy had booked one of the suites on the top floor—and then when they were out of earshot of her customer, the prostitute whispered in Laura’s ear that if she said anything to anyone she’d find her and stab her in the stomach.
That’s what Susan’s face reminded her of now.
So Laura was ready for something besides sweet nothings and love-letter reminiscences from Dermot’s sister.
Laura shrugged. “Just Laura, I guess.”
“When I called the police station, they told me you were the one taking care of his body.”
“I didn’t know he had a sister.”
“That’s very kind of you, but I can help from here.” Susan pulled her wallet out of her bag. “How much have you spent so far?”
“I don’t want your money.” And it was true. Laura didn’t want handouts from some long-lost sister. “Why were you and Dermot not speaking to each other? He made it seem like he didn’t have any family.”
Susan raised an eyebrow. “That’s a long story.”
“I have time.” Laura settled into her seat opposite Susan on the sofa.
“Do you have anything stronger?” Susan wiggled the coffee cup in her hand.
“No.” Laura kept a bottle of whiskey under her bed to sip from in case she had trouble sleeping at night, but she wasn’t about to share that with anyone.
“Okay. Well, our parents were very religious growing up. The serious kind of Evangelicals who went to three-hour services every Sunday where people got up and spoke in tongues. Anyone who didn’t follow their rules about living was going to burn in hell.”
“I went to school with a few kids like that.” One of them told Laura her parents died because they sinned and God was punishing them for it. His name was Pete Buckley, and after he’d told Laura her parents were dead because they were such terrible sinners, he’d added, “Or maybe it was your fault. Maybe you did something terrible, and God decided to take away your parents to teach you a lesson.”
Laura had gone into the bathroom immediately afterward and thrown up.
“I was already married and living halfway across the country when Dermot was in high school. I’d been able to survive my parents by basically going along with whatever they said and then breaking from all of it once I was in college.” Susan paused. “I didn’t realize how bad it was for Dermot until afterwards. Things seemed to get worse after I left home. I came home to visit sometimes, but school kept me busy and it was hard to travel back. Our parents loved us, but they were incredibly strict. They wouldn’t let Dermot date. He couldn’t do most activities at school because our parents said they encouraged inappropriate behavior, and eventually they made him drop out to be home-schooled.”
Laura didn’t know anything about this part of Dermot’s life. He’d just said he didn’t have any family.
Susan continued. “He got his high school diploma by taking the GED and was able to get into a few different colleges. He went to the college furthest away from home. When he came back for Thanksgiving break that first year, I was home too for the holiday and we were all sitting around for dinner. Somehow while he was talking about his life at school he let it slip that one of his friends was gay. And that was it. My parents started screaming, calling him a heathen—just for having a friend who was gay—and Dermot wouldn’t take it. Everything came out then, about our childhood and how he felt so trapped and how oppressive our parents were. Mom started crying, not because she was upset about the fight, but because she was certain that Dermot was going to hell. Dad just kept yelling.
“Dermot left, all the food for our Thanksgiving dinner still steaming on his plate, and he didn’t come back. My parents wouldn’t talk to him, Dermot wouldn’t talk to them. And I was caught in the middle, but nothing I did seemed to help, until eventually I had to stop talking to my brother in order to keep a relationship with my parents.”
“Was it worth it?” Laura asked.
Susan shook her head. “No, it wasn’t.”
She went on. “Both of our parents are dead now. Dermot wasn’t lying about that.” Susan started to blink and her eyes grew wet. Laura noticed the redness around them, which she guessed Susan had tried to expertly cover with makeup. Susan flicked a finger across her cheek and wiped the tears away. “And now Dermot is gone. I’m the only one left in my family.”
“I’m sorry,” Laura offered. And she was, although she still didn’t trust what Susan was doing there.
“I’m sorry, too.” Susan straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. “You know, Dermot mentioned something else in his letter.”
“Besides how much he cared about me?” There was that edge again. Laura forced herself to take a deep breath.
“He said he was in trouble. That if anything happened to him in the near future, I should get in touch with you.”
“What?” Laura’s mind raced from one possibility to another.
“Do you know what kind of trouble he was in?” Susan asked.
“It’s not what everyone thinks.” Laura unconsciously put a hand on her belly.
“He mentioned someone else, besides you.”
“Who?”
“Someone named Tom.”
“I don’t know who Tom is.” Laura tried to think, but she couldn’t put anyone’s face to that name. Maybe it was one of the kids Dermot had helped. “What did he say about him?”
“Laura,” Susan’s dark eyes locked on hers. “Dermot said he killed him.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN TRINA
The meeting with the lawyer wasn’t for another two hours. Trina could stay at the bar, keep drinking, eat some of the party mix in the small wooden bowl, and go to the meeting slightly smoothed-over emotionally. But lately she’d spent too much time numbing out, to the point where she was now involved in a murder investigation as a prime suspect and her job was hanging on by a thread and her only friend had to meet her in a bar under some pretense to ensure she wasn’t being followed.
She kept it to two drinks, which was an improvement for her. Instead, Trina got into her car, drove to a nearby park, and sat inside her warm seat while a class of preschoolers played in the winter light and she scrolled through her phone looking for Dermot’s social media profiles. She started with Instagram, but she couldn’t find anything close to him through a name search or her followers. She didn’t have many—she lost a bunch after that one picture was posted, and gained a few that she blocked as a result, too. She imagined Dermot was probably the type of guy who had a handle that was descriptive of his lifestyle, rather than literally describing him by name. She tried a few other options that she’d gleaned from the headlines she caught online about the case, or learned from Monica. “Hotsocialworker” seemed crass, but she found a number of accounts came up, none of them Dermot. She tried “helpinghands” and “helpingprofdermot”, but again there were too many and not enough. It was a mess, and Trina felt entirely out of her element.
She paused and looked out at the children. They all wore bright coats, pinks and lime-greens with a few neon-yellows and oranges thrown in. Like tiny gumballs tumbling around the patchy grass and blowing leaves.
Just before he died, Tom and Trina had started talking about having a baby. It seemed like the right time, both of them well out of school and settled into their jobs, stable in their love for each other, ready to put a down payment on a house—they’d also started looking at houses in neighborhoods with good schools. That’s why they were there, walking down the sidewalk, that day. They had an appointment to view a house. Three bedroom, two and a half bathrooms, with a fenced-in yard and a huge oak tree that the kids could climb. They probably would have bought that house if everything hadn’t fallen apart on the sidewalk that day.
Trina shifted over to Facebook and searched for Dermot by name. People seemed to prefer having their real names posted on Facebook instead of hipster handles. And sure enough, he popped up right away. A pit formed in Trina’s stomach as Dermot’s bright smile stared back at her. His profile was public, allowing Trina to click into his life instantly. Memories of their night together merged with what she saw on the screen as she moved through his posts and albums.
Dermot hiking, a waterfall in the background and droplets of water covering the bill of his cap and the bright-red poncho he was wearing. It was framed far enough away that someone else must have taken the picture.
Dermot’s face, sweaty and bloated, pressed close to hers. Locks of wet hair dangling from his forehead onto her skin, and Trina cringing as he tried to touch her, but letting him anyway because it was better than going home and being alone.
A photo of Dermot, clearly younger, with his arms around a group of young college-age men, all smiling in their soccer shorts and jerseys. Someone had gone through and tagged everyone in the picture. She could see Dermot commented on the photo. “Great times with great guys.”
She was getting nowhere.
Dermot grabbing the champagne bottle, popping the cork and letting it spray over the room. Pressing the bottle to her lips and Trina pushing it away. Trina pulling at his pants, hungry to get it over with, but he’d drunk too much. His anger swirling with hers. The bottle falling to the floor, leaving a wet spot where the shards of glass lay like a ruined stained-glass window.
Trina wasn’t even really sure what she was looking for. She just felt she needed to do something to understand who Dermot was. And if she could figure that out, then she could make a plan for how to get herself out of this situation without getting hurt or going to prison.
Most of Dermot’s pictures were of nature scenes. He wasn’t even in them. Snowy fields shifted to sun-drenched trees. Fall leaves scattered on the ground in the shape of a heart. Trina would have appreciated some of the photos and their composition if her viewing of them was under different circumstances. As it stood, she wasn’t finding anything that could remotely help her.
Until she did.
It was a photo hidden in an album titled, “Wanderings,” which Trina instinctively balked at. But inside, amidst pictures of fields and rivers and other trails, she found a photo of a young woman, staring back at the camera. Her eyes were slightly farther apart than would be considered conventionally beautiful, which made her face even more interesting. Short, blunt bangs and a rosebud mouth. She might be sixteen, she might be twenty-three. The girl or woman seemed almost ageless, her skin glowing in the light that Dermot captured as he took the picture.
Trina recognized her from somewhere. Those strange eyes.
