Mother May I(90)

She held up a large white envelope, the stiff cardboard kind they sold at the post office. She had Robert in a baby sling, crunched up into a wad like a little frog, sideways against her chest. It looked uncomfortable, but he seemed happy, peering cheerfully out. Marshall was glad the baby wasn’t in his crib. It would be hard to forget that Trey existed with his small, helpless son right there, tied to Bree’s body, always between them.

Bree grabbed his hand and tugged him inside. She hurried him back to the master bedroom, but at the door she stopped so abruptly he almost bumped into her. She pulled him back the other way, calling, “Mills? My friend is here. We’re in Trey’s office if you need us.”

“All good, Ms. Cabbat,” a young male voice called back from the great room.

“Today’s ex-marine. Except Mills was an Army Ranger,” she said by way of explanation. “Anna-Claire has a little crush on him.” She was calmer than she’d been on the phone. Talking about her daughter, a smile ghosted across her face.

He followed her to Trey’s office. The room would not let him forget Trey either. He was present in the pictures, the stark, masculine furniture, the law books, and the bar cart full of pricey brown liquor.

She closed the door behind them before she spoke again. “Did you tell anyone at work you were coming here?”

So this was a secret meeting. Great. “My job keeps me on the move. No one’s going to find it strange that I left the office.”

“Good. Mills won’t mention it. He barely speaks. Strong, silent type.”

“Show me,” he said.

She held out the envelope. It was technically evidence, but he was untechnically going to do everything he could to conceal it from the cops, so there was no reason not to take it. He did so, and her empty hand immediately went to cup Robert, petting his back. He made a soft, happy sound.

She said, “I keep seeing her. Lexie Pine. I’m so tired that the edges of my vision feel all blurry. She’s in my peripheral vision, peering in my windows. But when I go look directly, there’s no one. The weirdest part? I’m not seeing the woman in the mug shot. Not that middle-aged person. It’s Lexie when Trey knew her. The one in that envelope.”

He was still examining the outside, reading the red-stamped words. “Coral sent pictures?”

“Not just any pictures. The pictures. The ones that Adam Wilkerson took that night,” she said.

“How?” he asked, walking quickly to Trey’s desk to empty the contents. At least twenty photos fell out, along with a single sheet of college-ruled paper, filled front and back with crabbed, spidery writing. The note was new, but the photos were very old, the corners bent, the paper soft from years of handling.

Bree was looking deliberately away, her arms loosely around her swaddled son. “It’s in the letter. When Lexie left school and went running off to Memphis, she stopped all contact with her mother. Coral got worried, and she did the things any mother would do. She called the roommate and the dean’s office. When she learned that Lexie hadn’t been going to class and some of her things were gone from her room, she went straight to UVA, demanding to meet with someone in administration. They had a couple of the pictures by then. They showed her. The man who sat down with her made it clear that Lexie wasn’t welcome back. Coral stayed in Virginia, though, looking for her kid. She also tried to collect the pictures. She couldn’t stand the thought of them, her daughter’s body trapped on paper, being passed around forever. She tracked down as many copies as she could, shaming or threatening or begging kids all over campus. There were complaints, of course. Security started watching for her. Eventually they called the real police, who told her they would arrest her if she came back. She wrote it all down for me.”

He didn’t read the letter, though. Instead, as she spoke, he sorted the pictures. There were only five shots, multiple copies of each. He understood what was troubling Bree almost at once.

Four he could dismiss. They were only raw, ugly pornography, graphic and unkind. In all of them, Lexie Pine’s face was visible, but peripheral. The person holding the camera had had little interest in her face. The two young men in the shots, always headless or with their backs to the camera, swarmed her slight body, using it and filling it. Her expressions in the first four, from what he could see . . . well. She was having sex. Her face twisted into unflattering shapes that might be pleasure or pain or simply bad angles.

The fifth photograph was different. Significantly different.

There were three copies. He picked up the least damaged, studying it closer. He looked to Bree. She shrugged, tears leaking from her swollen eyes again.

The shot had been taken over one of the participating boys’ shoulders, so his body obscured Lexie’s below the waist. Lexie was on her back, her arms over her head to show the vulnerable hollows of her armpits, shoulders crunched up. Her small breasts were centered in the shot, lifted by her stretched, taut arms. The other young man was barely in the photo at all. Only the ends of his knees appeared, framing the crown of her head. Lexie’s hands and wrists weren’t visible, but her arms were stretched tightly, as if they were being pulled. As if the boy kneeling at her head was holding them, keeping them out of his friend’s way.

In this shot, and this shot only, she stared directly into the camera. Her pale eyebrows pressed up and together, distressed. Her eyes were wide. To Marshall her gaze looked frightened, even distraught, but the rest of her expression was not visible; the young man at work between her legs had his hand over her mouth. Hard enough for his fingers to indent her cheek, for his palm to flatten her nose.