The Burden of Desire

“Do you have the woman’s name?” Sally reached behind her to open a small cabinet drawer. In her haste, she had forgotten to bring a pen and paper with her, but the cabinet was stocked with lined pads and ballpoint pens.

“I don’t remember.” Ronnie sniffled. “I’ve blocked out so many of those details. It’s all like a bad dream now.” Her chin twitched and her shoulders sagged as if she was about to crumple. “I was devastated. Our marriage, the life we built together, all of it was a lie. I blacked out.”

“Amnesia,” Marlow explained. “Mrs. Kruger doesn’t remember anything after the argument.” He placed a hand on her shoulder as she shuddered. “There now. No one’s upset with you.”

“I wouldn’t say that just yet.”

Sally’s attention snapped to Ben. His mouth was pulled tightly as he studied Ronnie. “Ben, I don’t think—”

“For the past year, law enforcement has been working hard to find you, Mrs. Kruger, and you’re saying that you never had any idea?” He sat straighter in his chair. “And yet, after almost a year of amnesia, you regain your memory enough to come back home right before your husband is tried for your murder. I find that hard to believe.”

He was in full litigator mode, his face blank, his muscular body imposing even as he sat at the table. Sally followed his gaze to Ronnie, who had balled her tissue in her fist. “I told you the truth. I woke up in Vegas without any idea who I was. No ID, nothing. I was treated at a clinic and released. I’ve been living in a motel and waiting tables.”

“Mrs. Kruger has a number of people who can swear she’s been in Vegas,” Marlow interjected. “I called a few of them myself, and I’ll email the list to the police.”

“Copy us on that, please,” Sally said. Marlow nodded and made a note.

Ben turned in his chair, still intent on watching Ronnie. Sally couldn’t read his expression, but she was guessing that he didn’t buy anything she’d just said. “Let’s back up a minute. Now, you had an argument with Mr. Kruger. What was the nature of that argument?”

“It may have started out with something minor, but then I learned he was...that he’d been unfaithful.” Ronnie’s posture had shifted, and now she sat up straight in her seat. All her tears were inexplicably gone. “I remember that we argued, and I walked out. I don’t remember anything after that.”

“Did he hurt you?” Sally asked.

“No.”

“So you remember that he didn’t hurt you?” Ben observed.

Ronnie eyed him coldly. “Mitch has never raised a hand to me.”

Sally nearly shivered from the icy glare Ronnie thrust at him. “Mrs. Kruger, I’m sure you’ve heard that we found an awful lot of blood—your blood—on an area rug that your husband discarded after your disappearance. Any idea how that blood got there?”

She blinked several times and looked around the room. “Now that I think about it, when I was in Vegas, I discovered this.” She lifted a section of hair on the side of her head to reveal a thick, jagged scar. “I have no idea where it came from, but maybe I fell during our argument.”

“Could explain the amnesia,” Marlow interjected. “Bumps on the head, right?”

“You think you fell?” Sally’s eyebrows shot up. The scar was ugly, but any injury that would have produced so much blood on the carpet would have been fatal. “Did you receive stitches?”

“I don’t...” Ronnie turned to Marlow. “Am I in trouble?”

“Absolutely not. Ben, Sally, I’m not sure what the cop routine is all about. Maybe you should leave that to our fine men and women in blue.” Marlow placed his hand on Ronnie’s arm and leaned forward in his chair. “Mrs. Kruger has been through a terrible shock. She’s told you she doesn’t remember anything. Now, kindly do what you need to, to verify that she is alive, so we can reunite her with her husband, who is still rotting in jail. Any further questions as to what happened that night will have to come from a police officer.”

Ben’s face relaxed into an easy smile, and he turned to Sally. “Well, partner, you’re the one who has to file that motion. Are you satisfied that Ronnie Kruger is alive?”

Sally studied her one more time. Ronnie Kruger had a small mole on the left side of her chin. All the missing persons reports had mentioned that mole, and Sally had seen it in each and every photo, and again right now when she looked at Ronnie. “Yes, I’m satisfied.”

“Great.” Marlow rose and indicated that his client’s wife should do the same. “We’ll stick around and wait for you to file that emergency motion. I expect we’ll be pulled in front of the judge in no time.”

“No doubt,” Sally replied flatly.

She watched as Marlow held the door for Ronnie and then followed her out, closing it behind them. She exhaled. “I don’t even know—”

“This stinks.” Ben sat back in his chair. “She just told us a bunch of damn lies. What, are we supposed to believe she had post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of some argument with her husband?” His face darkened. “This is wrong.”

“The cheating is all new,” Sally said. “Mitch told us that they’d argued over dirty dishes.”

The corner of Ben’s mouth lifted in a wry smirk. “They didn’t get their stories straight. Not surprising when it’s been almost a year.”

Sally felt something akin to relief creeping up her spine. Ben believed the Krugers were hiding something. Maybe she wasn’t alone in this, after all.

She tamped down the feeling. Facts were facts, and facts alone would vindicate her and save her job. Besides, this was Ben, the man who’d betrayed her a hundred ways. She couldn’t forget that.

“How did she get to Vegas?” he asked.

“Sorry?”

“She was in Vegas, right? How did she get there?”

He leaned closer, and Sally caught his scent. Soapy and clean, with a hint of vanilla. She felt hot under the intensity of his gaze. “Her car was found near a bus stop on the outskirts of town, about a mile and a half from the Kruger household. We assumed Mitch had dropped it off and walked home.”

“But now we have to rethink that.” Ben’s forehead tensed. “She made it to Vegas, but she didn’t take her car.”

“She could have traveled by bus,” Sally said. “Gotten off at the station and taken a series of buses to Vegas. The police asked around at the time of her disappearance, and flashed her picture. They never found anyone who recognized her, which we took as evidence that she’d never been on the bus, because she was dead.” Sally tapped her fingertips against the tabletop as she thought. “But now that we know she wasn’t dead, we can think about this differently. She didn’t have to take a bus somewhere just because her car was at a bus stop.”

Ben nodded as he picked up her trail of thought. “The police assumed that Mitch had dropped off the car at the bus stop after killing his wife. But now that we know Mitch didn’t kill her, anything’s possible. Especially if they were in it together.”

“Yes. He could have dropped her off at the airport. The police never had a reason to check airline records.” A nervous excitement sent Sally’s heart pounding. “I have to call the police detectives. Maybe they can follow up on that.”

Ben’s jaw was set as he sat in quiet reflection. “Are we even sure she was really in Vegas? There could be layers of lies here.”

That brought Sally back to reality with a thud. “Yes, she could be lying about Vegas. Heck, she may have even gotten a lift from a friend.” Sally puffed up her cheeks with a breath and released it, fluttering her lips. “Even if they’re lying, we don’t know why, and until we do, we’re living a public relations nightmare.” She tucked a stray tendril behind her ear. “Regardless of our suspicions, now that I know Ronnie’s alive, I need to formally drop the murder charges against her husband. Whatever happens after that...” Her voice trailed off. “All that work. It’s like starting from square one, trying to figure out what happened that night.”

“It’s one step at a time, Sally. And remember, you’re not working alone.”

Ben looked as if he was fighting something, the way he stared uneasily at his hands. Then he glanced up. He didn’t need to look at her like that. All intense, as if he were actually listening to what she said. The hair on her arms rose as she remembered how he used to look at her back at the beginning of law school. Back when they’d been friends.

And then suddenly, briefly, so much more than friends.

She wondered what had happened to him, to have gone from an associate at an international law firm in Manhattan to a prosecutor in a small district in Connecticut. Sure, Sally loved the town, but she’d grown up in this area. Her family was here. Ben was from...actually, she didn’t even remember.

She cleared her throat and rose. “I’ve got to get that motion out. We can talk later.”

* * *

Ben nearly bounded up the stairs. After a dismal morning, he felt light with adrenaline. He couldn’t get Ronnie Kruger out of his mind—her facial expressions, the way her tears had dried up the second he’d put her on the defensive. She hovered like a bad premonition at the edge of his mind. This time when he entered his office, he overlooked its small size. This job had just got interesting, and his heart was pounding.

What was Ronnie Kruger hiding? His mind hummed with possibilities. This could be a failed attempt at insurance fraud, or a publicity stunt. Maybe Ronnie had framed her husband for her own murder and then skipped town. This case could go a hundred different ways.

Ben helped himself to several boxes of files and settled at his desk. He paused before opening the lid to the first box. These were Sally’s files, and whatever he found in here could put her job at risk. Ronnie Kruger may have pulled a hoax, but what if Sally had overlooked something obvious while compiling the case? He frowned. He was working a job, that’s all. It wasn’t his concern what Sally had or hadn’t done. He couldn’t blame himself if she lost her job.

He thought of her strutting angrily down the hall in those heels, and smiled to himself. How she managed to stand, let alone walk in those things escaped him. She was just as sexy as he remembered, with that exaggerated sway of her hips. Sally was larger than life, and it was impossible not to notice her. Everyone in their law class had known Sally. They’d all spent the first few weeks of school wondering why Columbia had accepted a ditzy prom queen, and the next few years regretting ever underestimating her. She’d walk into moot court, all smiles and designer clothing, and then proceed to wipe the floor with her opponent. He knew firsthand that underestimating Sally was dangerous business.

He studied the box again. He couldn’t assume that she’d made a mistake. Sally might come off as a lightweight, but when it came to something she cared about, she was all business. The girl was dumb like a fox.

There was a knock on the door, and Ben looked up to see Jack enter. “How’d it go with Veronica Kruger? I went to ask Sally, but she’s in court.”

Ben shrugged. “Looks like she’s alive, all right. Alive, and spinning some lies about what happened that night she went missing.”

“What’s her story?”

“A fight with her husband left her with amnesia that conveniently cleared up right before his trial.” Ben tossed the lid to the first box aside. “Sally’s off dropping the charges against Mitch Kruger as we speak, and I’m going to start digging through these documents to get some background.” He shook his head. “It’s a shame we can’t keep him a little longer. I can’t help but feel he’s getting away with something.”

“You’ll want to talk to the detective on the case and the folks at the crime lab,” Jack said. “We need them to take a fresh look at the evidence.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jack placed his hands on his hips and took a breath. “I don’t need to tell you that there’s blood in the water,” he said. “The media are circling. I need to know what the hell happened. I need to throw them something.”

Ben nodded. “Yes, sir.” He needed to get Sally officially assigned to the case. That was part of their arrangement, and this was the perfect opening. “You know, I was thinking it might be helpful if Sally helped me conduct this review.”

Jack shook his head. “I went over this with Sally earlier, Ben. I want an independent review. A fresh set of eyes.”

“Oh, I understand that, sir. It’s important that you feel you’re getting an honest analysis of the case.” Ben shrugged. “I just thought that if time is of the essence, and it seems that it is, then it’s going to take me a while to get up to speed with this case. But if Sally were to assist me, show me where to look and who to talk to, I might be able to get somewhere, quickly.”

Jack folded his arms across his chest as he considered this, his brow creased in thought. “So you think Sally should help in the investigation?”

“It’s clear to me that no one in this office knows or cares more about this case than she does,” he said. “I think she could speed up the investigation significantly.”

Jack let out a breath. “But your report would be independent, correct? That’s a sticking point with me. I need an unbiased review of this case. It helps that you’re an almost complete outsider.”

“Absolutely, sir. You have my word.”

The older man paused again, then nodded slowly. “All right. That makes sense. Have Sally partner with you on the investigation side, but I want that analysis to be completely independent, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ben smiled to himself after Jack left the room. He’d upheld his end of the bargain, and now Sally had to uphold hers. Wouldn’t she be pleased.

* * *

“He came in and interrupted us. He actually walked right into my office as if we were standing in the hallway, and said he would review the files. He was so smug about it, too. You would’ve thought he was a knight in shining armor!” Sally punctuated her statement with a fork and then viciously speared a ketchup-soaked French fry on her plate. “Of course Jack agreed because, what, like he has any free time these days to review my files.”

Tessa took a sip of seltzer water from her straw and nodded at Sally’s plate. “Can we talk about how you’re the only person I know who eats French fries with a fork and knife?”

“How am I going to get through this, Tessa?” Sally continued, her eyes beginning to sting. She rested her fork on her plate. “I’ve worked harder on this case than any other. I thought I was doing everything right. And now?” She swallowed the tight knot that had worked its way into her throat. “I could lose my job.”

“Oh, honey.” Her friend leaned forward to grasp her hand. “I promise you won’t lose your job. You’re too damn good at it. Besides, we all have those loser cases, the ones we take a chance on, only to come up short.”

Tessa was being generous. She was one of the most skilled attorneys in the office and a genius with juries. Sally had been partnered with her a few times and had witnessed firsthand the way Tessa could read a jury, predicting which members would form a friendship, and knowing instinctively how to win them over. She was such a brilliant advocate that she routinely gave lectures to organizations in the Connecticut bar about jury psychology. Did she lose cases? Sure. But when jurors voted for acquittal, they sometimes apologized to her personally afterward. Sally was confident that whatever Tessa imagined her “loser” cases to be, they paled in comparison to this debacle.

“This is more than a ‘loser’ case, okay? My murder victim held a press conference.”

“This is where I remind you that we’re bureaucrats. We’re lowly cogs in a wheel on a big justice machine. You’re not the only one who decides to bring a murder case to trial.” She removed her hand from Sally’s to absentmindedly brush a crumb off the table. “That evidence must have been pretty darn compelling, for Jack to agree to go to trial without a body.”

Sally had thought so. Now she didn’t know what to think, other than that the instincts she’d always trusted had been horribly wrong. “The evidence was good.” She reached for her glass of lemon water and finished it off. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s change the subject.”

“Okay.” Tessa set her fork down beside her plate and softened her gaze. “How are things going? How are you feeling?”

That hadn’t been the change of subject Sally had hoped for. Tessa was the only other person in Sally’s life who knew that she’d been undergoing fertility treatments for months, trying to conceive her first child. The only other person who knew she’d been successful. “I don’t want to jinx it,” she said quietly. “So far, so good.”

“Any nausea? Fatigue?”

Sally shook her head, not wanting to confess that even though she was early in the pregnancy, the lack of symptoms troubled her. “Not yet, but who knows? Maybe Mr. X just has great genes.”

Mr. X was the man of last resort, the final reproductive frontier. The anonymous sperm donor. He was the concept to which a woman turned when she wanted a family, but the men she’d met were complete duds. When a woman spent so much of her youth heartbroken over men who were more interested in the size of her trust fund than the content of her character, she reached a breaking point. For Sally, that point came last year, when she’d walked in on her fiancé, Michael, with another woman.

She didn’t understand her luck. She was repellant to decent guys and syrup to creeps, and she’d spent more than enough time around men who’d treated her poorly. Ben, for example. She’d once allowed herself to believe she’d fallen in love with him. He’d gotten what he wanted from her, and then he’d been purposefully cruel. Broke off contact. Saw other women. Treated her as if what they’d shared had been nothing. Seeing him again reminded her of how foolish and naive she’d once been.

Well, no more. She was done. She wanted a baby and she would have one, but she’d just eliminate the middleman, so to speak. In a way, the decision was liberating. No more heartbreaks like the one she’d experienced with Michael. No walks of shame after a one-night stand, or waiting for a phone call that would never come. No more! She’d turned thirty-five over the summer and decided it was now or never. Insurance covered most of the treatments, and she had nothing to lose except the painful fear that she’d live out the rest of her life alone.

Sally knew nothing about her sperm donor except his education level, where he’d attended school, and that he lived in a different region of the country. She had a copy of one of his baby pictures, but he hadn’t submitted a photo of himself as an adult. Mr. X, the man who would be the father of her child because she was finished with men and had completely lost hope of ever finding one she trusted enough to make a baby the old-fashioned way, was an enigma. But thank goodness for reproductive technology.

She bit her lip. She didn’t want to talk about Mr. X. He was the white flag she was waving at her future. Yes, she appreciated his help, but he sort of depressed her, too.

“The doctor says it’s probably too early for symptoms, and that I should feel grateful for any day I wake up and feel like eating breakfast.” She looked at Tessa’s large gray eyes. “But you know? I worry. I do. I worry about being too happy and getting too attached. I feel like I’ve been swimming upstream. I thought I was having a baby with Michael, and look how that turned out.” The memory was still painful. “I just want something to go my way for once. Perfectly and easily my way.”

“Oh, honey.” Tessa grasped her hand warmly again, between hers. “It will. I want this for you, too.”

Sally squeezed her friend’s hands before gently pulling back. “Anyway, I haven’t been thinking about it much since I found out last week that I was pregnant, because I have this trial. Had this trial.” She twirled her straw around in her glass. “What am I going to do?” She brought her elbow to the table and rested her forehead on her hand. “I’m so finished. Ben is going to find something, and he’s going to ruin me with it. I just know he is.”

Tessa arched her elegant brown eyebrows. “What makes you sure he’s out to get you? I met him, and he seems like a nice guy. Straightforward.”

“Ben is not nice,” Sally informed her. “If his picture was in a dictionary, it would be filed under ‘nice, antonyms.’ He is the anti-nice, and now he’s my coworker. Oh, and he’s reviewing my file, and he’s going to ruin my life. Et cetera.” She paused. “He wants me to stop sneering at him. He says that I need to give him a second chance.”

Tessa raised her eyebrows. “You held out on me! A second chance—what’s that, like a date?”

She shifted in her seat. Suddenly, there wasn’t enough air in the room. “It’s not a date. It’s more like blackmail.”

Tessa chuckled. “Blackmail? Yeah, right. A man who looks like Ben McNamara can blackmail me that way anytime.”

Sally felt an odd flash at her friend’s light remark, a twitch that felt something like jealousy. She tugged at the diamond stud in her right earlobe. No, not jealousy. She’d have no reason for that. The feeling must be protectiveness. “You wouldn’t like Ben. Besides, you should watch out for him.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“He likes brunettes.” Sally refolded the cloth napkin in her lap. “He also likes redheads, and blondes, so...”

“Okay, I got it. He’s one of those.” Tessa grinned. “But, Sally, you’re acting so funny about all of this. Since when have you been intimidated by anyone? We’ve worked together for years, and you’ve never struck me as someone who gives a damn what others think.”

She didn’t care what Ben thought. She was certain of that. She also wasn’t about to rehash their entire history right now, just as she and Tessa were finishing up lunch. They needed to get back to work, and things with Ben were complicated. They’d dated for three months, during which time she’d fallen completely in love with him. It could have been a happy ever after, until he’d gone and betrayed her.

She felt heat creeping up her neck. “I prefer to work with people with integrity, that’s all.”

Tessa dabbed at the side of her mouth with her napkin, then opened her purse as the check appeared. “You’re not going to lose your job.”

Sally shook her head. “You don’t know—”

“You’re not going to lose your job because you’re too clever for that. Lunch is my treat, by the way.” Tessa slid a credit card over the check. “Considering the day you’re having, it would be unconscionable for us to go dutch.”

Sally barely registered the gesture. “What do you mean, I’m too clever?”

“I mean that if Ben’s going to review your file, you’re going to review Ben’s. You’re going to be his partner on this. You know that case. You know the weaknesses and the strengths better than anyone else. If you don’t trust him, then don’t let him out of your sight.” She shrugged as if it was truly that simple. “It’s not like this is a formal peer review. All Jack wants is a second set of eyes so that he can put some spin on it for the press. The way I see it, you stand your ground, supervise Ben while appearing to just be helpful, and you come out looking like a hero.”

“How do you figure?”

“I know you. You didn’t make a mistake on that file. I also know the crime lab, and they triple-check everything. So I’m thinking that you’re either looking at some kind of terrible scam or publicity stunt by Mr. and Mrs. Kruger, or you’re looking at something very grim.”

Her words settled against the bottom of Sally’s stomach like a brick. “You think—”

“You know exactly what I think.” Tessa leaned closer and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think that if the forensic evidence shows that someone was murdered in that house, then someone was murdered in that house.”

“Yes.” Sally nodded slowly. “Someone was murdered, and we just got the wrong victim.”

She ruminated on this idea as they walked back to the office. The wrong victim—was it actually possible? Her head ached.

Before she reached her office, she stopped at the little closet of an office where Ben would be working. This was the worst office in the building, hands down. She sort of pitied him for it. He was sitting at his desk, absorbed in some kind of reading material. Her files. “Hey,” she said.