The deposition was scheduled for 8 AM sharp and promised to be unpleasant. But Barb had walked through plenty of unpleasantness in her life. This wouldn’t even make the top twenty.
“After all,” she said to Marmalade, who was curled up on the vanity, “how bad can it be?”
Barb met her lawyer at the local offices of Black, Tanner, and Tanner, a satellite of their main office in San Jose. At first glance, Marvin was a Southern California type: blonde and blue-eyed with a surfer’s body. But his suit was Italian, as were the calfskin loafers on his feet, and Barb knew already from their phone call that his vocabulary extended far beyond “dude” and “tubular.”
“Ready for this?” he said.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Just remember. Don’t answer a single question—even what you had before breakfast—until I give you the nod.”
Marsha Black was waiting for them in the main conference room, a perfectly unremarkable space holding a polished oak table surrounded by leather chairs. Also present were a court reporter and a video operator. As Barb took her seat with Marvin by her side, she studied the adversary facing her. The woman didn’t look like a barracuda. She was mid-30’s, with a pleasant face surrounded by wavy brown hair, and wearing a simple navy skirt suit. She wouldn’t have looked out of place at a PTA meeting.
“There’s coffee if you’d like,” she said, gesturing to the sideboard lining one wall of the room. “Along with fruit and croissants.”
“No, thank you,” said Barb. “Let’s do what we’re here to do.”
“All right.” Marsha opened a leather notepad cover and glanced down at the top sheet. “Would you please state your full legal name for the record?”
Barb glanced at Marvin. He nodded.
“Barb Sharpe.”
“Are you certain of that?”
Again, Barb glanced at her lawyer, this time finding a small frown creasing his forehead.
“My client has already answered your question,” he said.
“I’m merely making sure she wants to stand by that answer.”
Barb said nothing. Marsha opened a folder and took out an official-looking document.
“Isn’t your true legal name, in fact, ‘Varvara Sharapova?’”
She held out the document. Barb ignored it, remaining silent. After a moment, Marsha raised her eyebrows.
“Would you like me to repeat the question?”
Barb shook her head, barely remembering to glance at Marvin before speaking. He gave her a small nod.
“My full legal name is ‘Barb Sharpe.’ I can produce a certified copy of the decree, if you want.”
“The name change decree,” said Marsha, nodding. “Then, let me amend my question. Before you had it changed, wasn’t your name ‘Varvara Sharapova,’ and didn’t you emigrate with your mother from Soviet-occupied Estonia at the age of 4?”
“What bearing does any of this have on the merits of your suit?” said Marvin.
“Just making certain I have the right woman,” said Marsha with exaggerated innocence.
Barb did her best to keep her breathing steady and her posture relaxed, not wanting to show the effect the unwelcome intrusion of her birth name produced in her.
“Your mother’s name was Yelena Sharapova, was it not? And she worked as a common maid.”
“That’s not true,” blurted Barb. “She had her own cleaning business, which she built up from nothing.”
The outburst earned her a gentle kick from Marvin. She pressed her lips together, willing herself to remain silent.
“A business she lost after accusing her primary client’s husband of sexual assault, did she not? An accusation that never even made it to court.”
“The DA was his golfing buddy.” Barb felt like she was outside her own body, as if she were watching the words come out of someone else’s mouth.
“Again, what possible bearing does this have?” said Martin, putting his hand on Barb’s arm.
“I’m merely establishing for the record that Ms. Sharapova’s primary role model in life was a would-be shakedown artist who, upon the failure of her scheme, descended into alcoholism, and subsequently gave birth to a son with fetal alcohol syndrome.”
“This is outrageous,” said Marvin. “We’re leaving this instant.”
He stood, taking Barb’s arm and urging her to her feet. Undaunted, Marsha Black continued her assault.
“Isn’t it true that you illegally obtained your shares in Simitri by following your mother’s example and sexually extorting the founders? And how would you feel if your whole sordid life story was spread across the front page of the LA Times?”
Barb could barely keep her feet as Martin led her out of the conference room. With a few simple questions, Marsha Black had awakened memories Barb had worked hard to bury, and they emerged from their cages, snarling and snapping and tearing off pieces of her insides.
“Are you all right?” he said gently.
She shook her head, unable to speak. He led her to the women’s room.
“Take as long as you need,” he said.
She walked inside, crossing to the nearest sink. After steadying herself on the counter, she wetted a paper towel, and closing her eyes, ran it over her face and neck. Its coolness soothed her and helped ease her back into her body. She shook her head, furious with herself. She should have been prepared for Jackery to fight dirty. Even as she thought this, she knew that no amount of preparation would dull the pain of being forced to relive the darkest parts of her past. She almost laughed when she thought of the people who’d called her an ice queen over the years. If they could see her now, they’d understand why she kept such a tight rein on her emotions.
Barb didn’t know how long she stood there like that before she opened her eyes and found Marsha Black at the next sink.
“I just want you to know this wasn’t my idea,” said the lawyer. “Jackery has a fancy new AI that spits out the names of people it thinks can be bullied into settling flimsy lawsuits. It does the research, writes the idiotic complaints, and formulates the questions for the deposition. If it could pass the bar, I’d be out of a job.”
“Would that be so bad?” said Barb, finding her voice again. “At least you’d keep your soul.”
“I’ll admit the work is distasteful, but it’s what I’m paid to do. So I put it out of my mind and do what I have to do.”
“It’s funny, dear, but I once bought lunch for a street corner prostitute who said exactly the same thing.”
#
Big Dave woke with a crushing headache and a ferocious thirst. On top of that, he had no idea where he was. He tried to yell for Danita to bring him some water, but all he could manage was a painful croak. He sat up in the strange bed, looking around through eyes slitted against the morning sun streaming in through the window. Where the hell was he? Only gradually did memories of the night come back to him. He remembered going to the cemetery and then driving to Gerrity’s. Shit, that’s where he was. In one of the fuck rooms upstairs.
He must have really tied one on. What time was it? He fished for his phone, finding it on the cheap nightstand beside the bed. When he picked it up, the first thing he saw was the time—almost noon. The second thing was the red dot showing he had two messages. The first was from Joey, checking up on him. Dave fired back a thumbs-up emoji. He looked for a message from Danita, but there was none.
The fucking bitch wasn’t even worried about him.
The second message hit like an atom bomb.
This is Lisa Gertner with the LA Times. I just left you a voice mail. Please call me back at your earliest convenience.
With dread, he thumbed his way to the voicemails. At the top was a local number he didn’t recognize. He tapped it, and the transcript slid onto the screen. When he saw “This is Lisa Gertner...” his brain refused to read any further. His finger hovered over the play button. He tried to summon the courage to press it. Before he could, his phone rang. He was so startled that he almost dropped it. He checked the incoming number. It said “Los Angeles Police Department.” He froze, his finger hovering above the button to answer the call. Just before the call went to voicemail, he answered it. He held the phone in a hand made claw-like by tension. He brought it to his ear.
“Hello?” he said.
“Special Agent Evers?” came a professional voice.
“Yes?”
“Captain Brenda Murphy with LAPD Media Relations. I assume you’ve heard from this Gertner woman at the Times?”
“I got a voicemail, but I haven’t listened to it yet.”
“And you haven’t spoken directly to her?”
“I know better than to do that.”
“Good, good. But the problem, Dave—do you mind if I call you Dave?”
“No, everyone does.”
“Great. And I’m Bren. As I was saying, the problem is this reporter somehow got a copy of a document that isn’t supposed to exist. You know the one I’m talking about?”
“Yeah.”
“When I went to look for it myself, all I could find was a heavily redacted version. So, you can see my problem. I want to protect you and the department, but I’m flying blind here. She can say whatever she likes, and I have no way of knowing whether she’d telling the truth.”
“Can’t you just tell her to fuck herself?”
“I’d like to, but that leaves her free to write whatever crap she wants without a detailed response from us.”
Evers’ phone buzzed in his hand, and an alert popped into view saying that he had another call. He froze, unsure what to do.
“Dave?” said Bren. “Are you there?”
“There’s another call coming in.”
“I’m going to ask you to let it go. We need to get this nailed down.”
In his hungover state, Evers struggled to know what to do. His indecision gave the incoming call time to go to voicemail.
“Now, as I was saying,” said Bren, “my redacted copy doesn’t have the name of the girl…”
Another alert popped up, this one for a text beginning, dont trust media… Evers quickly clicked to read the entire message.
dont trust media relations. is recording you
A burst of adrenaline drove the fog from Evers’ head. Had he said anything incriminating? He didn’t think so, but he’d been about to.
“Gotta go,” he said, ending the call.
Immediate, the phone rang again. He checked the number, expecting it to be Media Relations. But it was the sender of the wanting text. He took the call.
“Hello?” he said. “Who is this?”
#
Barb was in her home office, headphones on, using a voice-changer app to become “Brenda Murphy.” In another window of her laptop’s screen, she used another app to make a call from a random number. In yet another window, she sent a text from that same number, warning Evers. When he hung up on “Bren,” she relaxed and initiated a second call from the random number. This time Evers answered.
“Hello? Who is this?”
Barb triggered the voice-changer app to use the second setting she’d prepared. This one was a deep male voice, a man’s man.
“You didn’t give them anything, did you?”
“Who the hell is this?”
“Call me Jack. I can’t give you my real name. Because this shit goes straight to the top. I’m only reaching out because I hate to see them fuck over a good cop.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Internal Affairs is ready to sell you out. How do you think that Gertner slut got her hands on the report? It’s like these women are stuck in the past, like they never got the memo.”
“Fuck me.”
Barb steeled herself. Her machinations this morning had been designed to knock Evers off-balance and get him to lower his guard. The next part of her plan would require all of her acting skills, honed over decades in the corporate world. She needed to put Evers at ease, and the best way to do that was to get down to his level.
“They’re a bunch of dried-up old maids. They can’t stand the idea of someone having a good time. They’ve got to make it into a crime.”
“Those illegals they say I was taking advantage of, half of them threw themselves at me. And none of the other ones had any complaints afterwards.”
“There you go. What’s the harm in that?”
“Exactly.”
“As far as the last one, I’ve seen the pictures. No way does that chica look underage.”
“I swear, Jack. I had no idea.”
“You don’t have to convince me. Everyone knows they grow up fast south of the border.”
“As soon as I found out, I was hands off. I’m no pervert.”
“Of course not. And you did the right thing calling ICE on her.”
The silence that followed this line made Barb sit up straight. Had she said something wrong? Did she somehow give herself away? As the seconds ticked past with nothing from Evers, her instinct told her she’d overlooked something. There was a missing piece to the story. Barb had assumed that he’d turned the girl in because he wanted to get rid of the evidence of underage sex. But what if that wasn’t all? What if there was evidence of something more? Suddenly, she had it.
“And then she comes and tells you she’s knocked up. Jesus.”
Barb held her breath. The intuition was so strong she’d just gone with it. As the silence stretched, she became more and more concerned that she was wrong.
“I thought she was lying,” said Evers at last. “Trying to get money out of me.”
“That’s how they operate.”
“It’s a shame what she did to herself, but how is that supposed to be my fault?”
Satisfied that she’d gotten all she needed, Barb broke the connection and went to work. Fifteen minutes later, she called Evers back.
“Jack?” he said.
“No, Mr. Evers,” she said.
“Who are you?”
“That’s not important. What is important is the recording I just sent to the district attorney and the reporter who originally covered the Alma Garcia-Torres suicide.”
Barb pressed a key on her laptop, and Evers’ voice issued forth, clear and unmistakable: Those illegals they say I was taking advantage of, half of them threw themselves at me. And none of the other ones had any complaints afterwards… I swear, Jack. I had no idea she was 16.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“A citizen who thinks your actions constitute a crime. Specifically extortion, sexual assault, bribery, violation of civil rights, and statutory rape.”
“I’m innocent. The board cleared me.”
“On the contrary, they bent under political pressure to preserve the reputation of the LAPD, but now you’re ICE’s problem. With pressure from the press and a subpoena from the DA, they’ll happily turn over the evidence they have.”
“Fuck you. It’s all hearsay. You can’t prove anything.”
“That would be true if the pathologist who performed the autopsy hadn’t saved a sample of the fetal DNA.”
“Why are you doing this? Do you want money?”
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me, Mr. Evers. I’ve already sent the recording. There’s no taking it back.”
“But why?”
“You’ve been above the law too long.”
An anguished cry came over the line, wordless and filled with horror and despair.
“If you turn yourself in, considering the current political climate, the DA will likely offer you a sentence of eight to ten years. With good behavior, you could be out in six. Of course, you’ll no longer have a badge to hide behind, but you’ll have the rest of your life to learn how to be a better man.”
There was another agonized cry, full of even more despair.
“It’s really your only choice, Mr. Evers.”
But of course it wasn’t.
#
Barb pressed the phone to her ear, waiting for Evers to say, all right, he’d turn himself in. But she was well aware he might choose another, more drastic, course of action.
“Mr. Evers?” she said.
There was no answer.
“Mr. Evers, I know you think this is the end of the world, but—”
A thud came over the line, letting her know he’d dropped the phone. She held her breath as she heard clothes rustling, then a snap being undone and the creak of leather as something slid out of it. She closed her eyes, pulling the phone away from her ear bare moments before the thunderclap of gunpowder igniting.
#
Afterwards, after she’d destroyed the burner phone and shredded the agency printouts, she took a moment to remember the initial research she’d done on him, letting herself picture the sensitive boy who’d been broken by his mother’s untimely death and abandoned to the mercy of an overburdened and under-funded bureaucracy. Barb said a small prayer to the memory of Samantha Evers, hoping that she and her son were reunited in a place far away from earthly cares and woes.
Next, she allowed herself a moment to think back over her actions, to search for anything she might have done differently. Try as she might, she could think of nothing that wouldn’t have risked allowing Evers to continue—if not escalate—his abuse of Danita.
Still, she searched her motivations, looking for any part of her that deliberately drove him to suicide. If so, she couldn’t find it. All she’d done was, for the first time in the man’s life, force him to face the consequences of his actions. She’d known he might react badly to the prospect of prison, but she’d honestly hoped he’d surprise her.
Even so, there was something inside her that wouldn’t let her be, a small voice that accused her of being cold and inhuman.
In other words, why aren’t I more torn up inside, torturing myself with grief and guilt? she said to the voice.
Now you’re being melodramatic.
Am I? Let me ask you this: what if I were a man? Say a soldier? What if I went on a mission to rescue a hostage, and the enemy was killed by friendly fire? Would you be judging me for not breaking down afterwards?
That’s not fair.
Isn’t it? We call men heroes when they kill to protect the innocent. We celebrate their ability to remain cool and do whatever they must. Well, the world is full of innocents with not nearly enough heroes to go around. It would be a crime to let gender expectations rule out half the population, don’t you think?
#
Dave was dead.
Danita hung up the phone. She stood, frozen, not letting herself believe the news. Belief meant letting her guard down and opening herself to crushing disappointment when he came swaggering into the house, like always. She kept to her daily schedule, making sure the house was spotless and his favorite meal was in the oven.
She was preparing to change into his favorite dress when the doorbell rang. She walked to the door and peered through the peephole. Standing on the front porch was Joey.
She took a moment to compose herself before opening the door.
“Joey?” she said. “Where’s Dave?”
“I’ve got some bad news,” he said.
She didn’t have to pretend to be surprised because the deepest part of her hadn’t dared to hope that her ordeal might truly be over. But now her spirit soared, and all she wanted was to be alone with the news. Joey, however, insisted on sitting and talking about what a great guy his partner had been and asking why on earth he would eat his gun. She felt like an actress, doing her best to play the grieving girlfriend, hoping he’d blame her lack of tears on shock. The truth was, he didn’t seem to be paying that much attention to her.
“Did he say anything to you about getting strange texts or emails?” he said suddenly.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“He never said a word. Why?”
“Someone was fucking with him,” he said. “I don’t know who, and I don’t know why, but I swear to you I’m going to find out.”