Chapter 26

For safety reasons, I decided to spy on Lauren and Mark Thompson on their coffee date. I didn't trust him, but nothing I had said had convinced Lauren of his untrustworthiness. I reminded her how he'd driven around the city, visiting sites connected with each of the women.

"So what?" she said. "You're the one that followed him while he was doing that."

I didn't know what to say after that.

They met up at a Starbucks close to the courthouse. I made a detour to my car to grab my sunglasses, the only way that I could think of to disguise myself. Following Mark had been significantly easier before he knew who I was. It was ironic that I spent all my time wanting to be seen and when I was finally visible, I longed for anonymity. I figured that if either of them saw me, I could pretend I was there getting a cup of coffee. After all, I hadn't been sleeping well, my dreams filled with visions of murdered women.

It took a couple scans of the Starbucks to find them and I was momentarily worried that I was too late, that something had already happened, but there they were, seated close together at a tiny table, nothing obviously wrong going on.

Mark gesticulated with his hands. Lauren nodded along with what he said, occasionally stopping to jot something down on a notepad. She was right about one thing: they looked more like father and daughter than like two people on a date.

I sat with a book in my hand, the same book that I was always reading and never had the concentration to finish. Though I longed for a latte, something with caramel and chocolate, I couldn't afford anything more than a plain coffee. People liked to suggest that if only young people didn't buy fancy beverages, then maybe they would have money in savings, a suggestion that only made my plain coffee more bitter. I sipped too quickly and lamented the loss of the drink when it was gone. I gazed enviously at the lemon loaf that the man at the table next to me was consuming.

My envy caused me to miss the moment when the shift occurred between Mark and Lauren. His voice, usually loud and boisterous, lowered to a whisper and she had to lean in close to hear what he was saying. It irked me that she was privy to information that I wasn't. All those times that I'd said hello to Mark, made small talk with him in the security line or on the way to the bathroom, and she was the one that he invited out for coffee, while all I got was suspicion from his wife. Yes, it was about youth and beauty, but it was also about potential. Lauren could be invited to pick his brain because she had a future ahead of her. All I had was the trial and William.

Lauren shook her head in response to something that Mark said. Her lips moved and I wished that I could read them. When she finished talking, she glanced in my direction with an expression that indicated that she knew I was watching. The sunglasses weren't enough of a disguise after all.

The two of them stood up. My eyes widened as they hugged, but it was a chaste thing and they pulled apart without anything more happening. They parted, Mark disappearing into the bathroom and Lauren walking in my direction.

"What a coincidence seeing you here," she said.

"I wanted to make sure you were safe."

"What could happen to me here?" she asked and gestured toward the people around us. "I know how to take care of myself."

"Everyone thinks that," I replied.

"Well, he didn't try to hit on me."

"No? It seemed like the two of you were awfully close."

"He mostly just talked about law school. He told me that he would help me apply to his alma mater."

"Did he say anything else?"

Lauren hesitated.

"Yeah. He asked me what else I knew about the murders. Things that maybe were overlooked during the trial."

"I told you that there's something shady going on. Do you think that he has something to do with it?"

"It seemed more like he was investigating. He kept talking about how great William's lawyers are and then, in the same sentence, expressed frustration that he couldn't do the job himself."

I understood the feeling. I was frustrated with how little Lauren had asked him in return. Some people loved serial killers because the violence intrigued them, and others, like Lauren, were obsessed with innocence. They couldn't imagine any man, never mind a handsome one like William, committing the acts that they were accused of doing. She didn't need to have a moral rationalization the way that I did because she believed she was in love with a man who had been falsely accused and that justified her actions. The problem was that she couldn't ask too many questions, otherwise her fragile ethics might start to crack. If Mark was involved with the murders in any way, she didn't want to know.

"I like you, Hannah. I do," Lauren said before she left. "But it's weird to spy on people. Just text me or something next time."

I stopped myself from telling her that she would've been grateful for my presence if anyone had attempted to murder her.

"Sure thing," I said.

She left the coffee shop and I was about to do the same when Mark reappeared and sat back down at the table. He looked at his phone for a couple of minutes, peering at the screen through a pair of reading glasses, when an attractive woman approached and tapped him on the shoulder. He stood up and they hugged.

The woman sat down across from him. She looked closer to my age than to Lauren's, though she was still decades younger than Mark. I was too far away to see if there was a wedding ring on her finger. She wore a shift dress and heels, an outfit better suited to a business professional than someone meeting for a sexual affair, but there was an intimacy to their conversation that indicated familiarity. The woman made me feel unattractive on both a physical and a mental level; she was prettier than I was and my jealousy of that made me feel ugly on the inside too. It seemed ridiculous that Cindy had ever gauged me to be a threat when this was who her husband was meeting with alone.

Like in his conversation with Lauren, Mark did most of the talking. He was the kind of man who dominated a room without noticing because to him that kind of domination seemed normal. At one point, he reached out for her hand and rubbed her fingers between his. It wasn't an open-mouth kiss, but it wasn't nothing. Something about the way they were interacting made me self-conscious, like watching a sex tape of two people who didn't know they were being filmed. Despite the publicness of their meeting, their low tones and close heads indicated something private.

The woman nodded along in agreement to everything he said, occasionally finding the space to interject single-word answers. She glanced in my direction once in acknowledgment of my stares and I quickly turned and looked in the other direction. I wanted to tell her to run, though I wasn't sure what she'd be running from. Surely, she knew that she was speaking to a man whose son was accused of serial murder.

Their faces were serious. The end of an affair, perhaps? I can't see you anymore, I imagined Mark saying. My son needs me right now. He would be the sort of man who would break bad news in a public space so that the woman wouldn't cry. The eyes of the world are upon my family. I don't want to drag you down with us, he would say convincingly.

When Mark finished his monologue, the two of them stood up and hugged again. They exited together and I watched through the window as they got into separate cars. Whatever was happening, Mark wasn't fucking or killing her. At least not at that particular moment. I had to stop myself from being disappointed. It wasn't fair of me to wish ill upon another woman because it would make for an exciting story to tell Dotty and Lauren. Instead, all I had was Mark talking, and I didn't quite know what to do with that.