Dina Santorelli Read online

  Phillip immediately showed his distaste. "I'm sorry, but I don't need to win that way," he remembered telling her, even though he was trailing in the polls by seven points with the election six weeks away. "I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong candidate." She smiled and left his office. The next day, compromising photos of Assemblyman Mitchell Tuttle and a student intern appeared in the Albany Times. Six weeks later, squeaky-clean Phillip Grand—war veteran, philanthropist—won the assemblyman seat in a landslide. The following day, Phillip hired Katherine as his media spokesperson. Two years later, he married her.

  Phillip got up from the bed and stood behind his wife. He put his hands on her shoulders.

  "Phillip, you're annoying me."

  "Come to bed," the governor said.

  Katherine stopped typing. "I can't," she said.

  "You need to sleep."

  "I can't sleep." Katherine stood up and walked to the window. A family of moths hovered just beneath the recessed lighting of the overhanging eaves, flapping their tiny wings in confusion. Arthur, the night guard, was sitting in a chair just outside the security post at the main gate talking to a policeman.

  "We'll find her," Phillip said. He walked over to his wife and spun her around so that she was facing him.

  "This is my fault," Katherine said.

  "What?"

  "It is. I'm Charlotte's mother." Her face seemed softer away from the white light of the computer screen, the crevices returning around her eyes and mouth, the freckles visible again on her nose. "If I had been here, this wouldn't have happened."

  Phillip reached in and hugged his wife. She stood there hard, resisting, as she always did for the first few moments, but her body weakened. "I don't think there's anything that you could have done," he said, "that I could have..."

  "The press is going to have a field day with this," she muttered into his shoulder.

  As much as Phillip was a media darling, Katherine Grand hadn't been so lucky. She and the press had had a loathe/hate relationship from the start—they accused her of spoon-feeding them fluff, and she charged them with demanding nothing but dirt. Over the past ten months, in particular, Katherine had taken a lot of hits in the media for being an unfit mother—a "Mommie Grandest"—to quote one local blogger who went so far as to run a press photo of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford beside a headshot of Katherine Grand.

  "The press doesn't know anything," Phillip said, as Katherine released herself from his grasp and sat down. She unbuttoned her jacket, hung it on the back of a chair, and slid her feet out of her pumps, rubbing the ball of her right foot.

  "You don't really believe that, do you?" Phillip sat on the floor next to his wife.

  "Believe what?" Katherine asked. He could already feel her distancing herself from the vulnerability of just a few minutes before.

  "That this is your fault."

  "Do you?" she asked.

  Phillip wiped the smudged mascara flaking on her bottom eyelid with his thumb.

  "No," he said. "I believe it's mine."

  "Oh, Phillip," Katherine said, with a wave of her hand. She stood up and walked back to her desk. "There you go again, taking responsibility for things that don't concern you."

  "How can you say that?" Phillip's voice grew loud. "How do you know that? Katherine, you are an accomplished, amazing woman, but it's not your name they've got etched onto picket signs. It's not your face they've got drawn on a doll-sized body hanging from a noose, parading it around."

  "Phillip, that was two years ago."

  "I don't care!" Phillip stood up and began to pace in front of the king-size bed. "I've kept that haunting image in my mind for two years, two years, wondering how anyone, anyone, even if they're diametrically opposed to something I feel strongly about, would feel compelled to do that."

  It took a lot to rattle Phillip Grand. He was repeating words twice, Katherine thought, a telltale sign that he was serious. She turned from her computer.

  "There are schmucks in the world, Phillip. C'mon. You know it deep down. It amazes me that after forty-seven years on this earth, it still surprises you when bad people do bad things."

  "It doesn't surprise me, Katherine. I've seen my share of people doing horrible things."

  "Oh, here we go again." She rolled her eyes. "The war."

  "I love how you dismiss that. You always have. As if what happened over there was a figment of my imagination. To this day, every day, there are casualties there. Kids, kids, fighting for people they don't know and will never meet. For God's sake, you gave a speech at last month's Wounded Warrior Project luncheon."

  "I don't dismiss it, Phillip," Katherine said calmly, unscrewing her post earrings and placing them in a crystal bowl on her dresser, "but I also don't dwell on it."

  "Well, maybe you would if you'd been there."

  "Oh, that's just great." Katherine took out a pair of flannel pajamas. "I love how people who have fought in military conflicts don't think much of anyone who hasn't."

  "It's not that we don't think much of you," Phillip said with a sneer. "It's that we don't have the luxury to wonder and theorize like you do."

  But Katherine wasn't listening. "It's just like parents."

  "What?" The two of them somehow had slipped into a familiar argument. Phillip couldn't remember what had set them off.

  "Parents—breeders—they think you're not really an adult until you have children. It doesn't matter what you accomplish, if you work your way through college, part-time, and start a company from scratch, if you're not getting up in the middle of the night to breast-feed, then you're less than." Katherine had now disrobed, except for a pair of panty hose that she peeled off leg by leg, revealing a pair of black bikini-cut underwear, and Phillip watched her fight her way into her pajamas, first the sleeves, then the pant legs, muttering to herself the whole time. The only words he caught were "egotistical" and "flabby whores." She went to the bathroom and shut the door. The water faucet was running, and Phillip imagined Katherine's face covered in suds and her mouth a big gaping hole that continued to open and close.

  Phillip lay back down on the bed. He hated fighting with Katherine. He hated fighting with anyone, really, and this was accomplishing nothing, but Katherine's last words about parenting were ringing in his ears. He had pushed for a child—a litter, actually—practically from their wedding night, but Katherine wouldn't hear of it. He wore her down over time, and she agreed to "one child—that's it." Charlotte had been born just before Phillip and Katherine's fifteenth wedding anniversary, and no sooner had he seen those tiny fingers and toes than he had begun hinting for another. Phillip knew the loneliness of the only child. He remembered how, even as a preschooler, he had tried to use his money to bribe his classmates to play with him, how he'd ask for a brother or sister every Christmas, but instead had opened box after box of toy trains and cars. Charlotte needed a sibling.

  It wasn't until that very moment that Phillip realized that, deep down, he did think that everyone should have kids, that it was a natural rite of passage for adults. Did that make him a horrible person? "Egotistical"? He thought again about the Phillip Grand doll hanging from the noose, which had left such an indelible mark on him. He hadn't even seen it in person, but on the evening news, which was covering a pro-choice rally at a local Planned Parenthood clinic after his State of the State address in 2009. "The governor is telling us what we can and can't do with our bodies," the young woman, named Laurie, told the news reporter. "He says it's murder." Then, with a sly grin, she looked into the camera and pointed to the doll. "Murder like this, governor?"

  Katherine opened the bathroom door. Her face was scrubbed and shiny, and her hair had been combed back around her ears. She stood before the bed.

  "I'm..."

  "It's okay," Phillip said. "I'm sorry too."

  Katherine gave a quick nod, turned off the bedroom light, and climbed into bed next to her husband. Phillip turned toward her and put his hand on her waist. "We'll find her, Katherine. W
e will."

  Katherine stared up at the ceiling and then turned onto her side, away from her husband. The vibration of Phillip's cell phone on the nightstand startled them both.

  "Is it Nurberg?" Katherine flipped around, flinging off the covers. Phillip had given the detective his personal cell number.

  Phillip looked down at the caller ID. It wasn't Nurberg. The telephone number was familiar, though he couldn't place it, and there was no photo accompanying it, which meant that his phone didn't recognize it.

  "I don't think so," he said.

  "Who else would be calling your private line at this hour?" Katherine asked, and then she bolted upright. "Oh my God!"

  "I don't know. Just relax." Phillip's hand was shaking.

  "I'm running downstairs to get Detective Matrick. They're not calling the landline. Oh my God! They're not calling the landline! They're calling your personal cell phone. We're not ready. We can't trace it. Can we?"

  "Wait."

  Katherine didn't wait. She grabbed her robe and ran out the bedroom door.

  The phone kept ringing. There were only three people who had this telephone number: Katherine, Rosalia, and, now, Detective Nurberg. Katherine had insisted that she be able to reach Phillip at any time and bought him this cell phone last Christmas, and Phillip had given the number to Rosalia just in case she had to reach him in an emergency. Even his mother called him on his business cell.

  Ring... ring...

  Phillip looked toward the bedroom door. He couldn't chance letting it go to voice mail. I know this number, he thought, and pressed call accept, but it was too late. He heard a dial tone.

  Damn! He called his voice mail, but there were no new messages yet. Someone must be leaving a message. Right now. Phillip's palms were sweating, as Katherine and Det. Matrick ran into the bedroom.

  "Did you get it?" Katherine asked.

  "I didn't... Not in..."

  "For God's sake, Phillip, what are you waiting for?"

  Suddenly, his phone dinged, signaling a phone message.

  The three of them stared at one another.

  Phillip dialed his voice mail as Katherine sat on the bed, and the officer placed a call to Detective Nurberg. Katherine reached over and pressed speaker on Phillip's phone: "One new message."

  Phillip pressed one and braced himself as an automated message began to play:

  "This message is for (pause) Phillip Grand... We have important news about your Visa credit card ending in 2543. Please call us at 800-832-2093."

  "Jesus!" Katherine said. "Fucking telemarketers. It's goddamn two o'clock in the morning. How did they get that number? I told you not to give it to anyone."

  "I have no idea," Phillip said.

  Det. Matrick flipped his phone closed. "No worries, Mrs. Grand. You did the right thing. It was just a false alarm. I've made Detective Nurberg aware of the situation, and he said he will be here first thing tomorrow morning."

  "Thank you," Katherine said as the detective left the bedroom and shut the door.

  She rehung her robe on the poster of the bed, climbed onto the mattress, and pulled the blankets up to her neck. "Fucking telemarketers," she grumbled as she turned onto her side.

  Phillip sat on the bed with the phone in his hand. Something was bothering him. That telephone number. He knew it. He had an uncanny memory for numbers. In grade school, he had dazzled his fourth-grade teacher by memorizing his multiplication tables up to twenty, and when he was in the military, he had won a bet from another private by reciting the serial numbers of all the men in his unit. He looked at his call log and was studying the telephone number when his phone vibrated again.

  Katherine turned toward her husband.

  "It's the same number," he said.

  Katherine turned back. "Answer it or decline the call already, Phillip." She pulled the blankets up higher.

  The governor pressed his index finger on the call accept button and brought the phone to his ear.

  "Hello?" he whispered, as the familiar voice spoke. The governor listened to every word and then pressed the end call button and put the cell phone down on the bed next to him.

  "So?" Katherine asked without turning over.

  The governor blinked. "Fucking telemarketer," he said and wiped his brow.

  Chapter 16

  Blackness engulfed the master bedroom where Jamie's eyes blinked nervously, the only body parts she allowed to move at all; the rest of her remained still under the immobile, hairy arm of Don Bailino. The static silence of the room would have been overwhelming had she not been consumed with the violent, intense battles taking place within her mind: Why was she here? Whose baby was it? How long would it take Edward to realize she was missing? Would Bailino rape her again? Why didn't she fight harder? Who was the blonde girl? Why didn't she fight harder? She used the calming techniques that she'd practiced during the adult ed yoga class she'd taken last summer to assuage the disjointed discourse in her mind, and, for hours, while the monster slept beside her, she mentally segmented the events of the previous day, putting them into neat columns. But it all came down to one inevitable conclusion: Bailino was going to kill her.

  That was clear to her. She knew names, faces, and had witnessed the brutal death of another human being—the thought of which once again jolted her nervous system into panic, but Jamie willed her body to relax. She could feel the clouds of her mind rearrange, and her breathing became so light she feared she might even stop breathing at all. She ached for the familiarity of her apartment: the nighttime ticking of the wall clock, the one her brother had given her for Christmas so she would never be late; the beeping of her next-door neighbor's car alarm as he left the house at 11:15 p.m. for his night shift at the twenty-four-hour McDonald's in town; the way her pillowcase smelled when she first rested her head on it.

  Bailino's warm breath crept up the nape of her neck and blew a steady stream of stale, used air down her back. Was he awake? She didn't know, and her thoughts flashed six months back to the night of October 15, the last night of her marriage: It had been nearly as dark as it was now, the LED lights of her alarm clock tingeing the lacquered nightstand red as she lay in her usual corner of the king-size bed. Bob lay on the other side, a few feet of springs separating them, but miles of distance. She could tell that Bob was awake. She'd learned the patterns of his breathing while he slept, and as she stared off into the nothingness, she'd heard him say it, clear as day: "I'm leaving you." How still she lay there that night, as she was lying now, conscious of that stillness, of making no reaction. Jamie remembered the wave of relief that swept over her with those three little words, followed by the grip of disappointment that she hadn't said them first.

  Bailino lifted his head and nuzzled his chin sleepily against her side, and Jamie held her breath until he settled back down again. A little voice inside told her she had this coming: How many times had she daydreamed about a tall, dark stranger swooping in and carrying her away from her life? Or about Bob being hit by a car and killed at the scene, rendering her free—all because she was too much of a chicken to walk out the door? Why was she always looking for someone or something to save her?

  A horrendous thought jolted Jamie back to the present: She needed to use the bathroom. The urge came out of nowhere, and there was no way she could hold it long. Bailino's arm felt like a weight on her side, but she rolled left. Instantly, his right hand grabbed her waist. He was awake.

  "Where are you going?"

  "The bathroom," she whispered.

  Bailino thought for a moment. "Okay, go, but hurry." He released his grip, and Jamie rose to a sitting position. The dizziness was immediate; she caught herself from falling backward. She couldn't get up.

  "Well?" he asked.

  Jamie fumbled with her clothing, which hung from her like ripped streamers after a lively party, and managed to get herself up and off the bed. Even in the dark, Jamie could feel Bailino's steady eyes on her, and she became self-conscious about her nakedness, something s
he wasn't totally comfortable with on any given day, let alone that day. She stepped in the direction of the bathroom, stifling a moan as a twinge of pain shot through her upper thighs as she separated her legs. She took what felt like baby steps across the dark bedroom and finally passed through the doorframe. The coolness of the ceramic floor tile soothed the soles of her feet, and she closed the door before Bailino told her not to and then ran her hand along the wall near the molding to find the light switch. She flicked it on.

  The fluorescent brightness shocked her tired pupils, and she closed her eyes until they adjusted, putting her hands against the wall for support. She locked the door and then waited, but there were no protests from the other side. She shuffled across the room to the toilet and, in a small moment of utter joy, relieved her bladder, her eyes scanning the large bathroom, decorated in a warm, yellow color palette, and resting on a small window that was above the Jacuzzi bathtub. Was it big enough for her to climb through? Possibly, but unlikely, she thought, and even if she tried, she was two flights up from the ground. There were small heating and air-conditioning ducts next to the tub, but they were hardly large enough for one leg. The truth was, the only reason Bailino would probably let her go to the bathroom on her own was because he was confident that there was nowhere she could go, and Jamie felt the anxiousness return to her insides. She thought she heard footsteps outside the bathroom door, and she sat still and listened, watching the doorknob, but nothing happened. She knew he wouldn't let her stay in there for long.