As the Wicked Watch(100)

Manny said, “No, I need to keep it in case the cops come around.”

I pulled my cell phone from my purse and snapped the photo with Brent and the one with Terrence and Masey.

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

“I just need it for something,” I said. “The question is, what are you going to do with these photos?”

Yvonne looked at Manny again, as if she were waiting for his permission.

“Yvonne, look at me!” I said. “There are three little boys whose lives are at stake. What are you going to do?”

She looked up and finally said, “Give them to the police.”

“Right! Don’t wait for them to come around. Do it. Today,” I admonished her. “Okay?”

She nodded.

“Have you told me everything you know?”

They both nodded.

“Yvonne, are you going to be okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“I want to thank you both so much. I know it must’ve been hard for you to share this.”

As I got up to leave, Manny said, “Wait, before you go.” He grabbed a miniature filing cabinet on a nearby table and pulled out a business card. “In case you’re interested,” he said, and handed it to me. “This is Terrence’s card.”

“Mad Cash Talent Management,” I said. “What a stupid name.”

The card listed an address.

I don’t know whether Manny read the determination in my face or misread the wince of pain that followed from my still tender, swollen cheek, but in his search for redemption, he said, “If you wanna check it out, let me know. I’ll go with you.”

*

I already knew before I left Yvonne’s that there was no way in hell I was going to rely on her to turn over the photo of Terrence and Masey to the police. That errand was all mine. And although I knew it was dangerous to be texting while driving, I wasted no time forwarding the incriminating picture of Terrence and Masey and his office address to Bartlett and Fawcett on the way home.

TERRENCE BANKHEAD. CHECK HIM OUT. THIS PIC SAYS IT ALL.



Then to Joey.

THIS IS TERRENCE. CALL ME. LOTS TO SHARE. WE NEED TO TALK ASAP!



The traffic I’d missed on the way to Louise’s showed up with a vengeance, providing the stop-and-go I needed to fire off one more text, to Sabrina, to get an update on Bass.

ANY CHANGE? I tapped out with my right hand while holding the steering wheel steady with my left.

Thomas had called, but I wasn’t in the frame of mind to deal with him. I hadn’t seen him since before the attack, though he’d called several times, full of regret that he hadn’t been with me that night. There wasn’t anything he could have done anyway, even if I’d agreed to let him come over. He still would’ve been too late.

After what I’d learned this afternoon, there was no doubt in my mind that I was 100 percent ready to be Jordan Manning, the reporter, again. The repugnance I felt at Brent Carter’s years of sexual assaults on his little sister and Terrence Bankhead’s grown-man hand cradling Masey’s teenage bottom in that photo fueled my rage. In my mind, I wandered off to a dark fantasy where I ran into him and brutally beat him into confessing.

My empathy for the girls and Yvonne, too, held my thoughts in place long enough that I didn’t have time to focus on my own trauma as I pulled into the garage, instinctively now looking for any car that seemed remotely out of place.

Safe inside my apartment, I locked and unlocked the door for what seemed like a dozen times, testing the security and the sanctity of my own home as I’d never done before. I peeled off my work clothes and slid into the stunning silk kimono that Mom gave me after years of begging. Dad had bought the kakeshita, or wedding kimono, at one of the temple markets in Kyoto, Japan, while serving in the Army. Why I chose today of all the days to wear it I wasn’t sure. But in the moment it made me feel as if my parents or something higher was wrapping me in a literal security blanket. Pacing around the apartment was doing little to tamp down my racing thoughts, which randomly bounced from “Is my door locked tight?” to “Should I move?”

As if someone had concealed a camera in my walls, watching and waiting for the right time to call, the phone vibrated, shimmying across the table. It was one of maybe five people I felt up to engaging.

“Hey!”

“Hey yourself! You sound good. How are you feeling?”

“Great, Ellen. So great, in fact, I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”

“Jordan, who are you kidding? This ‘fake it till you make it’ act is not impressing me.”

“Ellen, put what you think you heard to the side. It’s not a request; it’s a demand. I need to return to work.”

“O-kay,” she said, relenting in a way that was unlike her, but perhaps knowing that if I was anxious to get back in the hot zone, there was a compelling reason for it, which I expected her to ask me about next.

Instead, Ellen posed the most authentic question I’d heard in a long time. “I hate to ask, but how do you look? Peter’s not going to let you back on the air if you’re still bruised up.”

And there you have it. It’s TV, not radio. Male or female, you knew what shade of eyebrow pencil to use and how to lay the foundation on thick when you needed to, and you were always ready with a makeup bag stuffed to capacity. This wasn’t hard.