The Woods

After all that, the matador—from the Spanish matad or “to kill”—comes in and finishes the job with a sword.

That was my job now. I had made my witness run into exhaustion and jammed a lance into his neck and stuck some colorful darts into him. So now it was time to bring out the sword.

Flair Hickory did everything in his considerable power to prevent this. He called for a recess, claiming that we had never produced this film before and that it was unfair and that it should have been given to them during discovery, blah, blah, blah. I fought back. The film had been in the possession of his clients, after all. We only found a copy ourselves last night. The witness had confirmed that it had been watched in the fraternity house. If Mr. Hickory wants to claim his clients never saw it, he could put them on the stand.

Flair took his time arguing. He stalled, asked and got some sidebars with the judge, tried with some success to give Jerry Flynn a chance to catch his breath.

But it didn’t work.

I could see that the moment Flynn sat in that chair. He had been too seriously wounded by those darts and that lance. The movie had been the final blow. He had shut his eyes while it played, shut them so tightly that I think he was trying to close his ears.

I could tell you that Flynn probably wasn’t a bad kid. The truth was, as he now testified, he had liked Chamique. He had asked her out legitimately on a date. But when the upperclassmen got wind of it, they teased and bullied him into going along with their sick “movie reenactment” plan. And Flynn the Freshman folded.

“I hated myself for doing it,” he said. “But you have to understand.”

No, I don’t, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Instead I just looked at him until he lowered his eyes. Then I looked at the jury with a slight challenge in my eyes. Seconds passed.

Finally I turned to Flair Hickory and said, “Your witness.”

It took me a while to get alone.

After my ridiculous act of indignation at Muse, I decided to do some amateur sleuthing. I Googled Lucy’s phone numbers. Two gave me nothing, but the third, her work number, showed me that it was the direct line to a professor at Reston University named Lucy Gold.

Gold. Silver-stein. Cute.

I had already known it was “my” Lucy, but this pretty much confirmed it. The question was, what do I do about it? The answer was fairly simple. Call her back. See what she wants.

I was not big on coincidence. I hadn’t heard a word from this woman in twenty years. Now suddenly she calls and won’t leave a last name. It had to be connected to Gil Perez’s death. It had to be connected to the Camp PLUS incident.

That was obvious.

Partitioning your life. It should have been easy to leave her behind. A summer fling, even an intense one, is just that—a fling. I might have loved her, probably did, but I was just a kid. Kid love doesn’t survive blood and dead bodies. There are doors. I closed that one. Lucy was gone. It took me a long time to accept that. But I did and I kept that damn door shut.

Now I would have to open it.

Muse had wanted to run a background check. I should have said yes. I let emotion dictate my decision. I should have waited. Seeing her name was a blow. I should have taken my time, dealt with the blow, seen things more clearly. But I didn’t.

Maybe I shouldn’t call yet.

No, I told myself. Enough with the stalling.

I picked up the phone and dialed her home. On the fourth ring, the phone was picked up. A woman’s voice said, “I’m not home, but at the beep please leave a message.”

The beep came too fast. I wasn’t ready for it. So I hung up.

Very mature.

My head swam. Twenty years. It had been twenty years. Lucy would be thirty-seven now. I wondered if she was still as beautiful. When I think back on it, she had the kind of looks that would do well with maturity. Some women are like that.

Get your head in the game, Cope.

I was trying. But hearing her voice, sounding exactly the same…it was the aural equivalent of hooking up with your old college roommate: After ten seconds, the years melt away and it’s like you’re back in the dorm room and nothing has changed. That was how this was. She sounded the same. I was eighteen again.

I took a few deep breaths. There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

Muse stuck her head in the room. “Did you call her yet?”

“I tried her home number. No answer.”

“You probably won’t get her now,” Muse said. “She’s in class.”

“And you know this because?”

“Because I’m chief investigator. I don’t have to listen to everything you say.”

She sat and threw her practical-shoed feet up on the table. She studied my face and didn’t speak. I kept quiet too. Finally she said, “Do you want me to leave?”

“Tell me what you got first.”

She tried hard not to smile. “She changed her name seventeen years ago. It’s Lucy Gold now.”

I nodded. “That would have been right after the settlement.”

“What settlement? Oh, wait, you guys sued the camp, right?”

“The victims’ families.”

“And Lucy’s father owned the camp.”

“Right.”

“Nasty?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t that involved.”

“But you guys won?”

“Sure. It was a summer camp with practically no security.” I squirmed when I said that. “The families got Silverstein’s biggest asset.”

“The camp itself.”

“Yep. We sold the land to a developer.”

“All of it?”

“There was a provision involving the woods. It’s fairly unusable land, so it’s held in some kind of public trust. You can’t build on it.”

“Is the camp still there?”

I shook my head. “The developer tore down the old cabins and built some gated community.”

“How much did you guys get?”

“After lawyer fees, each family ended up with more than eight hundred grand.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow.”

“Yeah. Losing a child is a great moneymaker.”

“I didn’t mean—”

I waved her off. “I know. I’m just being an ass.”

She didn’t argue. “It must have changed things,” Muse said.

I didn’t answer right away. The money had been held in a joint account. My mother took off with a hundred grand. She left the rest for us. Generous of her, I guess. Dad and I moved out of Newark, moved to a decent place in Montclair. I had already gotten a scholarship to Rutgers, but now I set my sights on Columbia Law in New York. I met Jane there.