The Night Shift, page 5
Two years ago, the speech had given Chris goose bumps. Not because the great Bartholomew H. Badcock had represented none other than Chris’s brother, Vince Whitaker. But because of the sentiment—that Chris and his colleagues were part of something honorable, something bigger than themselves. That they quite literally were the guardians at the gate.
Now, Chris is less enchanted by the tale. He’s since learned that the office lifers don’t revere Bartholomew H. Badcock. To the contrary, they fear ever representing a client so despicable that they might lose everything. The name “B-file” is shorthand at the office for dogshit cases no one wants. And the lack of resources, pay, and respect make it hard to keep up with Henry’s idealism.
Chris wonders sometimes if he should’ve gone for the money, gone to Big Law like his girlfriend, paid off those student loans. He’s three months behind on the payments and, lawyer or not, there isn’t much he can do to stop the harassment from the collection agencies. He’s like many of his clients: in too deep, with no end in sight. It’s not drugs that pulled him in, though. It’s higher education. Soon, he might have to go back to bartending. That was how he got through college, in addition to racking up debt on his credit cards that are still compounding double-digit interest.
He’s had satisfying moments on the job—like the time he helped a prostitute, trying to escape a husband who forced her to turn tricks. Chris was surprised to learn that many pimps aren’t fur-jacket-wearing clichés, but domineering spouses in abusive relationships. And he once managed to get a confession thrown out after the cops pressured his intellectually disabled client. But most of his days are spent pushing paper, entering pleas for silly drug-possession charges, representing people who hate him.
Worse, to his shame, he hasn’t exactly blazed a trail at the office. His friend Julia is the rising star. She already has a reputation as a passionate and superb advocate. A someday-successor to Henry. Chris is simply another one of the sheepdogs herding the flock. His adoptive father, Clint, would be so disappointed … if he knew.
But no matter how hard he tries, no matter how many Mondays arrive and he swears things will be different, he mostly phones it in. On his lunch break today, eating another microwaved burrito, he sits at his cubicle, puts in his earbuds, and watches more videos of the man. The anonymous travel vlogger whose life seems so exciting, so free.
Chris imagines himself on similar adventures: riding a motorbike across a rickety bridge in Belarus, staying in an ice hotel in Sweden, meeting a girl on Tinder in Reykjavík, eating reindeer burgers in the arctic, going to a water park in North Korea. Chris isn’t the only one with such fantasies—the anonymous vlogger has become wildly popular in the past few months. He’s been playing a catch-me-if-you-can game, a ploy to increase his followers.
Chris’s eyes go to his phone, and he sees something surprising. It’s a live feed. Usually, the traveler posts videos after the fact. As always, he’s off-screen, the scene an unidentified airport terminal:
“I wanted to thank everyone for your support. Today, I hope you enjoy this clip from my trip to Romania. I’ve just landed in the U.S., and I’ll be posting all week. Who knows, maybe you’ll find me…”
This is the chance Chris has been waiting for—an opportunity to find and meet the vlogger.
He’ll find him.
He has to.
Because he hasn’t seen his brother in fifteen years.
YOUTUBE EXCERPT
Mr. Nirvana, the Anonymous Travel Vlogger
(1.2M views)
“Visiting a Romanian Fortune-Teller”
EXT. ROMANIA—BUCOVINA—SUNSET
The scooter stops at a fork in the dirt road. As always, only MR. NIRVANA’s hands are in the frame.
MR. NIRVANA (O.S.)
People warned me against visiting a village on the outskirts of town, known for the best fortune-tellers in Romania. But when has that ever stopped me, right? I found this guy online, Pavel, who agreed to take me there. He gave me pretty good directions here, so I hope he shows up.
The video cuts off, then back on. A figure emerges from the woods. It shows only the guide, PAVEL, who shakes Nirvana’s hand. Pavel then counts bills he’s given and grabs the handles of Nirvana’s rented scooter.
MR. NIRVANA (O.S.)
We’re taking the bike?
Pavel shakes his head, and rolls the scooter to some bramble and conceals it. He then gestures for Nirvana to follow him into the woods. The camera jostles, following Pavel as the night gets darker.
MR. NIRVANA (O.S.)
Our guide is a man of few words. Let’s hope I’m not being led to my death.
Pavel turns and smiles, showing missing teeth.
MR. NIRVANA (O.S.)
You can see the village up ahead.
Ramshackle houses are in the distance. The video turns black. When it returns, Nirvana and Pavel are inside a room illuminated only by candlelight. An OLD WOMAN looks into the camera. She shuffles a deck of cards, says something in Romanian.
PAVEL
(ACCENTED ENGLISH)
She says put the money on the cards, and make the sign of the cross on top of the bills.
Nirvana puts bills on top of the deck, and makes a cross with his hand over them. The woman scoops up the money, then displays the first card on the table. The woman’s face crumples. She speaks again.
PAVEL
She says you have a dark past. She’s not sure she wants to—
The old woman stands abruptly. She flings the bills at them, starts yelling.
MR. NIRVANA (O.S.)
What’s going— What is she saying?
PAVEL
She says we need to go. Now. Or she’s calling her sons. We’re not welcome here.
MR. NIRVANA (O.S.)
I don’t understand. I thought she was going to do a reading.
PAVEL
No. We must go. She says you’re damned.
FADE TO BLACK
CHAPTER 12
ELLA
Ella had two sessions that morning: a college kid who was flunking out and hiding it from her parents, and a seemingly perfect mother of two who purged every piece of food that entered her body. The meme is true: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.
She’d considered canceling all sessions for the day, but she’s still wired from the hospital. From meeting this strong girl who survived the most brutal of attacks. From finally letting Brad take the parachute before the plane crashed into a ball of fire against the mountainside. So, she’d taken a scalding shower, blasted away the smeared eye makeup, put on professional attire, downed four Advil, and made her way in. Brad had told her to be out by the end of the day, but what was he going to do? Throw her stuff on the curb? It would serve her right. But that isn’t Brad. She’ll go stay with her mother—its own form of punishment—and get her things later this week while Brad’s at work.
At lunchtime, she heads to the hospital. The nurse tells her that Jesse’s been discharged.
“So soon?”
The nurse frowns. “Insurance issues.”
How compassionate.
Ella calls Principal Steadman on the walk back to the car.
“They what?” Steadman says in disbelief.
“Discharged her this morning.”
“For goodness’s sake.”
That was about as harsh as you could expect from Dale Steadman.
“Can you give me her address?” Ella asks. “I’d like to check on her.”
She hears typing, then he reads her the address of the foster home, which is on a rougher side of town. Linden in many ways is a small town nestled in a county of a half million residents, surrounded by an area unflatteringly called the “Chemical Coast.” The wealth gap is significant.
Ella arrives there ten minutes later. She raps on the screen door, which is torn and rickety.
A heavyset woman answers. Looks her up and down. A TV blares inside.
“Hi. Is Jesse available?”
“You the lawyer?”
“No. I’m a—” What is she exactly to Jesse? “I’m a friend.”
“The lawyer said she shouldn’t talk with anyone until—”
“It’s fine, Dori,” Jesse says, appearing from behind.
The woman—the foster mother, Ella presumes—shrugs. Totters back to the couch.
Jesse looks Ella up and down, examining the business attire. “I guess you aren’t a stripper.”
Ella smiles at that. “Wanna get a Starbucks?”
Jesse calls over her shoulder, “I’ll be back soon,” and pushes out the beat-up screen door.
At the coffee shop, they find a table in the back, away from the other customers.
They both cradle their cups—Ella a black coffee, Jesse some complicated sugar-filled monstrosity—and say nothing for a long time.
“Thanks for coming,” Ella begins.
“It was you or the lawyers. Dori said we had like ten calls. They’re saying we can sue the ice cream store.”
Ella nods. “How are you?”
“Peachy.”
Ella gives her a supportive smile.
“Can we just, you know, not…”
“I get it,” Ella says. “After what happened to me, I didn’t want to talk about it either. But I learned if you hold it all in, your mind will find other ways to deal with it. Usually, self-destructive ways.”
“Like cheating on your fiancé?”
Ella is taken aback. “What are you—”
“Brad needs to learn about the privacy settings on Facebook,” Jesse tells her. “And he spends way too much time on social media. His business conference in Atlantic City looks like torture, by the way.”
Jesse’s done some serious online sleuthing.
“I loved the sappy engagement posts. You’re his soul mate.” She says it with mockery. “But with Brad at the conference, I wondered where you’d been in that dress.”
Ella feels a tightness in her chest. Jesse grows more complicated—more interesting—by the second. She seems to be trying to antagonize Ella, push her away, but maybe she’s simply testing her.
“Wow, stalker much?” Ella says with forced nonchalance. “And for the record, Brad kicked me out this morning.”
Jesse eyes her skeptically, as if she doesn’t believe her, then seems to change her mind. “You’re better off. He’s boring as shit. He also spends too much time liking bikini-pic posts from his friends—cree-py.”
Ella’s mother doesn’t like Brad either. But that’s because he isn’t wealthy, doesn’t have the pedigree suitable for a Monroe. But Jesse’s right, Brad is boring as shit. “He’s a good man,” Ella says in tepid defense.
“Oh yes, so good. He makes sure everybody knows it. Very woke—a real fighter against racism, sexism, and every other -ism.”
Jesse’s right about Brad again. This girl’s wise for her age. This no longer feels like getting coffee with a damaged teen. More like hanging with a snarky girlfriend. But she’s not a friend, Ella reminds herself.
Ella says, “There are actually studies on virtue-signaling, did you know that?”
Jesse caresses the Starbucks cup and takes a sip, her eyes inviting Ella to continue. She’s intrigued.
“People who virtue-signal are much more likely to have what they call the ‘dark triad’ of personality traits—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.”
“I knew it!” Jesse’s eyes are alight.
They fall silent again amid the whine of blenders and chatter.
Eventually, Ella says, “It’s your senior year. Are you excited to graduate?”
“You have no idea.”
Ella has every idea, but she doesn’t say so. She remembers graduation day, skipping out on the diploma-walk, getting high under the bleachers. Her mother was livid.
“Do you have plans for—”
“For college?” Jesse interrupts. “No Wellesley in my future. Not even community college.”
Ella nods, doesn’t ask how Jesse knows that she attended Wellesley. “Not everybody has to go to college right away.”
“I want to be a writer,” Jesse says.
This surprises Ella for some reason. “Oh yeah? What kind of writer?”
“I’m thinking long-form journalism. At my old school, I was the editor of the school paper.”
There’s pride in her voice. Ella wonders why Jesse transferred schools. Cruel to move a kid senior year. She decides not to ask. One step at a time.
“I’d love to read some of your pieces.”
Jesse doesn’t respond but Ella swears she blushes, her porcelain skin briefly turning a shade of pink.
Ella raises her cup. “Here’s to the next Woodward or Bernstein.”
“I prefer Joan Didion.”
Ella has no idea who that is. She’ll look it up later. “You working on any stories now?”
Jesse sips her drink. “Yeah, a pretty fascinating one.”
“Yeah?”
“A true-crime mystery.”
Ella leans in to hear more.
“About an unsolved crime in Linden.”
Ella feels a tingle crawl up her spine.
Jesse continues, “A fifteen-year-old mass murder at the local Blockbuster.” She continues staring at Ella, waiting for a reaction.
Ella sips her coffee but makes no reply.
“So?” Jesse prompts her.
“So what?”
“Will you let me interview you? The prior reporting’s weak. It’s a joke, really.”
The girl has clearly done much more research than Facebook-spying on Brad.
Ella’s never wanted to talk about that day. Ever. In the past twenty-four hours, she’s already talked about it more than she has in the past fifteen years. But she knows that Jesse’s request for an interview isn’t about Ella or Candy or Katie or Mandy.
It’s about Jesse.
“Let me think about it.”
Jesse’s stare continues, strangely unsettling.
Yet, for some reason, Ella can’t seem to look away.
CHAPTER 13
KELLER
Keller crinkles her nose at the smell.
“Place is downwind from the Sewage Authority,” Atticus explains without her asking. They trudge up the steps to Union Self-Storage, its office housed in a cinder-block building. A chain-link fence topped with razor wire protects the rows of aluminum huts containing the remnants of people’s lives. She wonders who’d want to store their belongings in a place permeated by such a stench. Spying a semitruck parked in front of one of the larger units, she realizes it might be industrial storage, a place to keep excess loads of nonperishables.
Inside they’re met by a lazy-eyed clerk. Keller flashes her badge. That wakes him up.
“We’re here to see Rusty Whitaker,” Keller says.
“Rusty’s, ah, at lunch.” The man is jittery. But the badge tends to have that effect. Still, he seems to be sweating an unusual amount.
Keller follows his glance out the window to the semi. “He’s at lunch?”
“He goes to the buffet at Kitten’s,” the guy explains, wiping his brow with his sleeve.
“Kitten’s?”
Before the clerk responds, Atticus tells her, “I know the place.”
Ten minutes later, they’re at the front door to Kitten’s Gentleman’s Club, though Keller doubts there are any gentlemen inside. The flash of the badge does its thing again. The two make a sight: an eight-month-pregnant FBI agent and an Indian-American detective in a skinny tie. The burly guy with a long beard working the door taps out an anxious text and they’re met inside by the greasy smile of the owner.
“Mr. Kitten?” Keller says, for her own amusement.
He starts to respond, but realizes she’s kidding and displays the greasy smile again. “We don’t get the privilege of having the FBI here often. How can we help you, Agent…”
“Keller, Special Agent Keller. This is Detective Singh from Union County.” Keller glances about the dreary club. A woman wearing a bikini dances in the background to “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
“We’re just customers.” Keller gives him a hard stare.
The owner sucks his teeth. Calculating. The smile returns. “Welcome! For our friends in law enforcement we waive the two-drink minimum and give twenty percent off lunch. Buffet for two?”
Not on your life.
Atticus points to a man at a table near the stage who’s watching the dancer while he eats chicken wings. “We’re just here to meet a friend.”
The owner hesitates. “You need anything, you tell them to come get me.”
Keller couldn’t care less about whatever the guy is nervous about. Probably more than dancing is going on in the back rooms. She has no interest being the morality police for sex workers on the afternoon shift at a strip club near the sewage plant.
She feels less sympathetic toward the patrons seated at small tables throughout the club. She and Atticus approach Rusty Whitaker’s table. They sit directly across from him.
Rusty is unfazed at the presence of strangers, and continues gnawing on a chicken bone. “Who the hell are you?”
Keller doesn’t answer, but displays her badge.
Rusty rolls his eyes. Begins sucking another wing.
Keller feels a wave of nausea watching him eat.
“I have no idea where Vince is,” Rusty says, before they ask. “Haven’t seen or talked to that worthless piece of shit in fifteen years.”
“You’ve had no contact with him?” Keller asks.
“Nope. And I hope I never do. He’s dead to me.”
“Father of the year,” Keller says with a hard smile.
“Kids,” he says in disgust. “You’ll see.” He aims his chin at Keller’s belly.
She restrains the urge to punch him in his teeth.
Atticus must sense her strange wave of rage, and jumps in. “Look, we don’t want to create any problems for you. Just answer our questions and you can get back to your lunch.”
