Page 36 of The Ghostwriter

I see the email by accident. It’s been three weeks since I last checked, distracted with all I’ve uncovered—from the writing on the wall and the discovery of the movies to my conversations with Margot and Mark. I’ve been in the zone and have relegated Calder to the back of my mind. But after I close a couple tabs, my father’s in-box appears and there is Calder’s response.

Olivia Dumont is a hack. Her brand of feel-good story is a fad the industry is already tired of reading.

I’ve had enough. I don’t know what I thought I’d learn. I already know that someone within Monarch has told him about the book; I already know he hates women like me. I don’t need to engage with him anymore.

I type: The book is under contract and I’m happy with its progress. I’m afraid that’s where we need to leave things.

I hit Send, and then, before I can change my mind, I log out and close the window. Then I head into the empty house, up the stairs to my father’s computer, and toggle the screen awake again. I click over to his email and click on settings, requesting a new password. After I enter the old one, the computer suggests a very long and complicated string of letters and I quickly accept it, knowing it’ll be saved on his computer but that there’s no way I could ever remember it.

It’s done. I’m done. I check the time and head toward my car. I’ve got a long drive to Ventura.

***

An hour later, I’m situated in a coffee shop on Laurel Street, waiting to see a man who’d been a deputy DA at the time of the grand jury in 1993. The lead prosecutor, the DA himself, died about five years ago, but Charles Monahan had been his second chair. I’d stayed up nearly all night reading everything I could get my hands on about the coroner. Which of his cases had been overturned. What evidence they had to exclude. Anything that would help me see whether something had been overlooked.

My father is clearly lying to me, which makes me wonder if he didn’t kill them both after all. I feel as though an anvil has been lodged in my chest. A desire for answers weighing heavy on top of the sickening sense that once I know something, I can never unknow it. And the fear that whatever I learn next might change everything I believe to be true.

After he lied to me about that fight with Danny, I’ve been avoiding my father, once again putting him off with excuses I’m sure he can see through. Claiming to have rewrites on the drafted chapters I’ve submitted so far. “Best for me to nail down what Neil wants now before we move on,” I told him. My thoughts are tangled around one question: To whom—or what—do I owe my loyalty? To my father? To Danny and Poppy? Or to my own floundering career?

Now I sit near the back wall, watching the door, and wave when I see Charles enter.

“Ms. Taylor?” he says when he approaches.

I stand and shake his hand. “Thanks so much for meeting with me, Mr. Monahan,” I tell him.

“Please, call me Charlie.”

I slide the coffee I’d bought for him across the table, and he takes an appreciative sip. “So you have some questions about your aunt and uncle’s case.”

“I have questions about my father’s alibi,” I tell him. “My father is ill, and I feel like the opportunity for answers is shrinking.”

Charlie nods and takes a sip of his coffee. “That’s understandable, but I’m not really sure there’s anything I can tell you.”

“Can you tell me why a grand jury was convened? What evidence was there?”

Charlie sighs and looks across the crowded coffee shop. “Mainly, we called the grand jury because of what was going on with the coroner who did the autopsies of your aunt and uncle. If you’ve read anything about the case, I’m sure you know he had a problem with drugs around that time.” Charlie shakes his head. “But your father’s alibi held up, and there were multiple witnesses who testified that the coroner wasn’t using drugs in June of 1975.”

“If you had that information, why call a grand jury at all?”

“The DA had to cross the t ’s and dot the i ’s. We figured it was better to let the system make the decision, not us.” Charlie thinks for a moment, then says, “I don’t know if this will help you or make things worse, but in my opinion the grand jury got this one right.” He must see the shock on my face because he hurries to clarify. “I know it’s not a popular opinion. A lot of people want to believe your father is guilty because that makes for a better story. But all I can tell you is that in this situation, I believe the system worked. We didn’t prove our case, and if we can’t do that, then the grand jury shouldn’t indict.”

I’m stunned. “Really?” I say.

He nods. “The media loves to talk about all the ways the system is broken. Poppy and Danny’s friends have a lot of theories about what was happening in 1975 and a lot of really valid concerns, but our only job was to examine the evidence in front of us. To present it in the most honest and compelling way for the grand jury. We did that. And they found it insufficient because at the time, it was. The purpose of reasonable doubt isn’t to prove anything; it’s to introduce questions. To show that there might have been another route of investigation. Reasonable doubt is like a bell—once rung, you can’t unring it.” He’s quiet for a moment, thinking. “The law can be a fluid thing,” he says. “Hard to pin down. We try to make it concrete, to apply it fairly, but it’s challenging even under the best of circumstances.” He looks up again. “I was never 100 percent on bringing the case to the grand jury. Not at the time. We didn’t have enough evidence.”

“Like what?”

“The murder weapon, for starters.” My mind flicks again to my father’s night terror. To Poppy’s hiding place, thankfully empty. Charlie continues. “But also, what we did have was completely circumstantial. The time of death, plus the testimony about the coroner which confirmed your father’s alibi, convinced them not to indict.”

I feel a glimmer of something—hope? relief?—that my father isn’t completely unknown to me. “So you believe it was the man who picked her up hitchhiking?”

Charlie looks out the window next to us into a crowded parking lot and, beyond it, a busy car wash. “No,” he says. “But unfortunately, that’s all we’ve got.”

“What about DNA? Technology has come a long way since 1975. Perhaps the evidence you still have could turn up something new.”

“Maybe,” he says, though I can tell he doesn’t believe it.

I think of the story Margot told me, how my father had once pulled a knife on Danny. Surely, she’d told Charlie the same story. And yet it didn’t seem to matter.

Charlie takes a final sip of coffee, setting his empty cup on the table between us. “This case was never going to make it into a courtroom.” He levels his gaze at me, and I see the years of toil, working in the public sector, never making the kind of money that his fellow law-school friends probably made, fighting for justice in a system that most will say isn’t perfect and many would argue is irretrievably broken. “A civil case could have been filed, but there wasn’t anyone left to file it. Your father’s parents had died years before, and he was the only one left.”

“Did you ever meet them?” I ask.

“No. We had their statements at the time of the murders, but that’s all we had,” Charlie says. “Both had maintained your father’s innocence until the very end, though their voices were muted. They’d been devastated by the loss. I don’t know if they really believed Vince didn’t do it, or if they just couldn’t bear to lose their last child.”

“What about the lead detective on the case in 1975? Any way I could speak to him?”

“Clint McGinnis died back in 2000.” He fiddles with his empty cup, turning it in a slow circle on the table. “You’re going to find that most of the people who were around that day—firsthand witnesses, people who knew Poppy and Danny, or people involved in the original case—are gone.”

“Do you think he’d be indicted if the case moved forward today?”

Charlie gives a hollow laugh. “You’re forgetting, we still don’t have a murder weapon. But regardless, I doubt it. The time of death plus your father’s alibi clears him. Your mother and the teacher they were with have never wavered. He didn’t do it.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes, and when it’s clear he isn’t going to say more, I say. “Thanks for coming out to meet me today,” I tell him. “You’ve been incredibly helpful.”

He stands and we shake hands again. “You’re welcome. I’m very sorry for your loss, and I wish I had answers about what happened to your aunt and uncle. But what we know clears your father, and I hope that helps.”

***

I text Jack when I get back to my car. I need to meet with you, can you get away?

I sit there, my mind turning over my conversation with Charlie. His belief that the time of death was correct. More troubling was how easy it had been for me to believe my father had killed Poppy and Danny. A sixteen-year-old boy.

Finally Jack texts back. Meet at our spot in thirty minutes?

I send a thumbs-up and head toward the highway.

Our spot is in the Valley View Preserve, nearly two hundred acres of protected land. Jack and I used to meet at a fallen tree a few yards off the trail, where we’d sit and talk for hours, hiding out from our respective families. I find a parking spot near the Pratt Trailhead and make the quick trek, checking over my shoulder before veering off at the giant oak tree with the branches that swoop low across the path.

I find Jack already there, waiting for me. “How did it go?” he asks. When he sees my expression, he says, “I’m guessing not well.”

I sit on the log next to him and pick up a twig, breaking it into pieces in my hand. “I’m more confused than ever.” I give him a brief outline of what Charlie said to me.

“This is a good thing.”

I look up at him. “You can’t be serious. I have a book to write, and no one can tell me anything I can verify.”

“Stay open to all possibilities. Let the story lead you.”

I roll my eyes. “You’ve been living in Ojai too long. Did you use crystals or do a sound bath to come up with that one?”

“I actually got it from an interview you gave a few years ago. I found it on YouTube.”

I stare at him, then scatter the broken pieces of twig onto the ground below me.

“I know you have a job to do, but don’t lose sight of the fact that your dad is dying,” he continues. “He asked for your help, and you came. No matter what happens with the book or what happened in 1975, you’ll always have that—the knowledge that you showed up when he needed you.”

“He never showed up for me.”

Jack gives me a sympathetic look. “Relationships aren’t transactional.”

Tom used to say something similar, but I brush away that ghost. Glad at least I won’t have to worry about explaining any of this to him. “I still have so many questions,” I say. “Nothing he’s told me matches up with the films or with Poppy’s diary.”

He nudges my shoulder with his. “Maybe it’s time to ask him about them.”

I shake my head and look up at the sky peeking through the branches of the trees. A blue jay flies from one branch to another, calling out to a friend. Then I look back at Jack. “Over the years, Margot and your dad have never wavered in their belief that my father is guilty.”

Jack sighs. “Margot was young. Think about a teenager’s brain. Layer over that the trauma of what happened to her best friend.”

“And your dad?”

“Danny was a hero to him,” Jack says. “Best friends, the way you and I were. How much is memory and how much is emotion?” He scratches his work boot in the dirt and says, “Have you thought about talking to your mom?”

“Very funny,” I say.

“I think you know the truth,” he says. “But you’ve built so many walls, you can’t see it anymore.”

I look at him, understanding crashing over me. “You never thought he was guilty.”

Jack looks into the trees beyond us, choosing his words carefully. “I could never reconcile the man I knew with a killer.” He shakes his head. “How could the guy who used to insist on ice cream sundaes for breakfast, who taught me how to tie a necktie, be the same person who murdered his siblings?” His voice grows quieter. “Your dad was a mess, but he always seemed to know when I needed him to get his shit together and step in. It’s like he intuited when my own father was struggling and just quietly gave me what I needed.”

I don’t know what I’m feeling, a mixture of confusion, maybe a little betrayal, a lot of regret. “You never told me that.”

“It wasn’t my place. Maybe if you hadn’t been halfway around the world, we could have had a conversation about it. But I wasn’t going to argue with you through letters.”

“You thinking my dad was innocent must have gone over well with your own father.”

Jack gives me a sad smile. “I never said anything to him either. What would be the point?”

“What did you think when my father started partying his way through the nineties?”

“I think everyone copes with trauma and grief in different ways.”

“And what about what he wrote on the closet wall?” I ask.

“We have no context. We don’t know when those words were written in Poppy’s closet, or even if he wrote it.”

“He wrote it,” I say, my voice coming out louder than I intend, so I soften it. “He also told me Danny killed the neighbor’s cat, but it was him on the film, burying it.”

“We have no way of knowing how that cat died. All we know is that your father buried it.” He must see the skeptical expression on my face because he says, “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you find out your father killed his brother and sister. What happens next?”

I think about it, about a path forward in the legal system. “Nothing,” I finally say. “There wouldn’t be any justice for Poppy or Danny. There’s no way he would be considered competent to stand trial.”

“Think about his life,” Jack says. “The years of substance abuse. The loss of everyone who mattered to him. He lives alone in that big house with only Angry Alma for company. What kind of life is that?”

“If he did it, he should have gone to jail,” I say. “Spent the rest of his life behind bars.”

Jack laughs, but he’s not really smiling. “You’re kidding, right? He’s a rich white man. I highly doubt it would have been the rest of his life.” In a quieter voice, he continues. “Now let’s say you find out he didn’t do it. He’s irrefutably innocent. Then what?”

This is what’s been nagging at me ever since I left the coffee shop. The weight that’s been hanging around my neck, threatening to choke me. “Then he spent decades being the villain in other people’s stories. And I went along with it.”

“But you’re here now.”

I watch a chipmunk scurry across the brush in front of us and disappear under another log. “Everything he’s told me is a half-truth. He’s been spinning Danny as this cruel, dangerous person when the truth is something totally different.”

Jack’s voice is gentle. “Then you need to ask yourself why this is the story he wants to tell.”