Look Closer

by David Ellis

None of them exist—not anymore. But the cops will sure be interested in how you seem to know so much. They’ll take a hard look at you, Gavin. You up for that? A lot of police scrutiny into those petty little financial scams you’re pulling? I’m thinking no. I’m thinking, you took your best shot at Vicky and me, but you failed. And be lucky it doesn’t get any worse for you. You have no idea what contingency plans I have.”

I won’t tell them about you. That doesn’t help me. The best thing you can do, Gavin, from here on out, is play dumb.

He points his finger at me but doesn’t have the threat to back it up.

She nods, as if it’s just idle conversation. It’s not.

I can’t help but grin. “Jane, you know when you get pulled over by a cop and the first thing they ask you is, ‘Do you know why I pulled you over?’ I always hated that. I always felt like that was a Miranda violation. It should be, if you think about it. You’re not free to leave, and the question is designed to elicit an incriminating response.”

I’m a pretty darn good director, but not an actor.

If things get far enough, the police could search my work computer, and if a forensics team dug through it, they’d see that I looked her up. It would look better if I voluntarily fronted that information. That was a mistake, looking her up like that back in May. But back then, when I first saw her on the street, I was in shock, disbelief.

There is no reason for me to be coy about my hostility toward Lauren. An innocent person wouldn’t hide his disdain for her, under the circumstances.

If I knew it would be important, I’d have kept a journal or something.” (I like to amuse myself, even if it’s a private joke.)

We seem to be well past pretense. I can’t know everything she knows, but if she’s gotten as far as Nick, she has a pretty good theory of a case that keeps me in the clear.

And yet, Jane is certain she is looking at a guilty man. I always remembered her as a smart one.

And I went there once, just inside the lobby, when I first saw her in May. Stupid, but I did it. I didn’t mention that to Jane, but I did mention seeing her on Michigan Avenue, so even if the security cameras in her condo building are retained for that long, back to May, and they see me standing in the lobby for five seconds, I’ll just say it’s consistent with what I already told them.

It’s always a dilemma, how much candy to buy, right? You buy too little, you run out. You buy too much, then it sits in your pantry all winter and you eat it. It’s a real conundrum.” I practiced that line. I’ve been rehearsing for this conversation since Halloween. I liked this little ditty, with a little nudge of sarcasm at the end. But hearing it now, under the circumstances, as the temperature has dropped in this room, it sounds forced.

Jane nods, like that all sounds great to her. “I would expect nothing less of you, Simon. I’ll bet you can tell me exactly what show you were watching and describe it for me, too.” “House of Cards,” I say without enthusiasm. Andy taps Jane on the arm. “Loved that show. It’s about a guy who manipulates everyone around him to get them to do things for him. Kills some people, too.” “You know what I love about streaming shows on your phone?” Jane replies to Andy. “You hit ‘play,’ and once one episode ends, the next one begins automatically. You could let the phone just sit there all night, and it would play one show after another, as if you were binge-watching. And the cell phone, of course, will be pinging the local cell tower all the while.” “Right, so if you’re a fan of CSLI,” says Andy, “y’know, like, if you’re a law professor who specializes in the Fourth Amendment and knows all about historical cell-site location information—it would seem like a pretty good cover. Like you were sitting home all night.” Jane nods along. “Right. But in the end, what does it prove? It proves that your cell phone stayed home all night. It doesn’t tell us anything about where you were.”

“That’s quite a theory you have there,” I say. “My cell phone was home all night, therefore I wasn’t home. That should get you far.”

Jane Burke, seemingly in the act of pushing herself off the couch, preparing to leave—though it’s obviously just that, an act, a bit of theater—sits back down again.

I sit like a casual listener, though I feel anything but casual right now.

I saw the scene myself, afterward. It looked pretty good to me. But what do I know about crime scenes?

Too much. Overload. I can’t keep straight what I’m supposed to know and not know. I’m afraid to speak. I screwed up, and I’ve put Vicky in the crosshairs as a result—that much I know. And here I thought I could outsmart everybody with some planning and deliberation.

With all the evidence piled up against Nick, Jane won’t be able to hold off the chief and the Village president much longer.

Al has since lived alone in the house Lauren bought them in Arizona.

No, he didn’t. But that seems to be what Lauren told her parents back then.

Maybe Al knew differently deep down and was just instinctively siding with his daughter. Or maybe he believed everything his daughter told him. Or maybe the passage of eighteen years has blended what he knew to be true into what he wanted to believe. Time and blood have a way of playing with the truth. Either way, Jane isn’t going to burst that bubble right now, with Al mourning his daughter’s death.

The place is barely large enough to swing your arms around, but it’s mine, and the stove and fridge and heater work.

I will, however, miss Simon’s comfortable bed. I’ll miss that huge kitchen and the pot of coffee ready for me when I wake up. I’ll miss never having to think twice about a full refrigerator, a stocked pantry. I’ll miss that rooftop oasis he created. I’ll miss Simon, too. His thoughtfulness and his quirks. His sense of humor. Most of all, the way he looks at me. I wish that had been enough for me. I wish I could have said yes when he proposed to me—both times he asked.

Simon figured they’d process the fingerprints within a day or so after finding Lauren. Which means I could find out any second now. Either I’m scot-free or I’m cooked.

You keep pooh-poohing the strong evidence of guilt we have against Nick Caracci, basically by saying it’s all a frame-up, it’s too convenient—which you could say about most crimes solved by law enforcement in the history of the country.

You and Andy are good cops, and your antennae went up when you talked to him. He seems suspicious. He seemed defensive, like he was hiding something. But how would you expect him to react? He knows he’s going to be a suspect in Lauren’s death. And he’s already been accused of killing his own father—not formally accused, but you know what I mean. So yeah, you’re going to be defensive. You’re going to be hostile.”

A good defense lawyer, which he could afford, would make mincemeat out of the case.

I could run. I could. Right now, I could run. Rambo could get me a new identity. But I have the girls with me.

Wandering around my house with little sleep, trying to occupy myself with a blog piece on a new exigent-circumstances decision from an appeals court in Texas.

What kind of a person keeps an empty bottle of champagne for years upon years, waiting for the right moment to exact revenge?”

“You should check Lauren’s fingerprints—I mean, I assume you took exclusion prints of her when you found her dead.”

I don’t see why Lauren wouldn’t be just as capable. And she didn’t have final exams to worry about. Right?”

Case closed! The St. Louis murder has been solved!”

Turns out, you didn’t pick it because it was final exams week. You picked it because Lauren Lemoyne had come back to the States.”

I hand the sheet back to her, keep a blank face. Jane Burke is a very good detective. But if she’s here, it means she’s lost the battle.

“Grace Village has one damn smart detective on the force,” I say. She gives me a deadpan expression. “Coming from anyone else on the face of the earth,” she says, “I’d consider that a compliment.”

Not that there’s much to rehearse. Deny everything, and if they back you into a corner, refuse to answer.

Oh, I may have used a Jeep to travel back and forth to Chicago, but that vehicle’s long gone now, and the registration won’t come back to me or Simon, anyway.

You mean the guy who forced me into rehab, who paid for the whole thing, and who was waiting for me when I came out? You mean the guy who convinced me to give life another shot? No, I’ve never met that man. Never heard of him.

When I turn onto the street, I see immediately that the police vehicle is gone. Relief floods through me.

I walk in slowly, my pulse decelerating, the adrenaline draining from me.

And I was out of my element. I’d never had to dispense a single word of advice to my older sister, the successful one.

That seems to help. Adam doesn’t have anyone to talk to about these things, about his guilt.

I had someone. I had Simon. Simon listened. He listened to everything I had to say.

He proposed marriage and talked about us having a family of our own. But even when I said no, he never left me. He said I should move on, move forward.

“You don’t want to keep even a little for yourself, Simon?” No. I don’t want one penny of that money.

My mother, in particular, who some of you remember, inspired a love of the law. Its goals, its ideality, but its flaws and frailties as well.

But on just the tiniest of suspicions, the government was able to destroy my life. And when they realized that they had no case against me? When they realized I couldn’t have done it—did they say so publicly? No. They didn’t give out a clean bill of health. They just dropped a bomb on my life and left me to pick up the pieces. “That’s when I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. When I realized, from experience, the importance of our constitutional protections. We read about them in books, debate them in classrooms, but I saw up close and personal their importance. I’ve devoted myself to that scholarship ever since. I’ve watched as our Fourth Amendment doctrines have become eroded, in my opinion, by the courts. I’ve argued for changes, wholesale changes in how we understand the privacy rights of our citizens. And I will never stop trying. I will never stop challenging and pushing and prodding. I’ll never stop writing about it. I will never stop teaching it. It’s all I’ll ever want to do.” I didn’t rehearse this speech. I didn’t need to. This is what I think, what I feel. I didn’t, couldn’t tell them the truth about what I did in St. Louis. That’s the only part that bothers me. A lie sprinkled into an otherwise heartfelt statement. But I’ve chosen to live with that lie. And now, after Lauren, with two lies. The brilliance of the law is that it’s not concerned with one person but with a system applicable to all. It protects the guilty so it can protect the innocent. It protected me,...