“I know a twenty-two-year age difference can work,” I say to Cooper, laying aside the cookie part of my Oreo after eating the filling. “There’ve been some very happy, long-lasting marriages in which the age gap has been even more vast. I think Mr. Rochester was that much older than Jane Eyre, or close to it, and that book is considered one of the greatest romances of all time.”
“Sure,” Cooper says. “And there’ve been some teacher-student relationships that have worked too. But I’m not aware of any in which murder and blackmail have been factored into the mix. Anyway, according to Wikipedia, Tania’s twenty-four now, making our pal Gary forty-six.” He taps some more on his laptop. “So we’re looking for guys named Gary Hall—although I highly doubt that’s his real name—who were born approximately forty-six years ago and have lived in Florida. I take it she doesn’t know his social security number, current address, anything like that?”
“God no,” I say. “She said she’s been having her accountant wire ten thousand dollars into a bank account in his name every month. Her accountant is under the impression—because Tania said she told him as much—that the money is for her ailing grandfather. Since Tania’s also supporting her mother and brothers”—the marriage to the new stepdad had not worked out—“this arrangement has never been questioned by anyone.”
“Of course not,” Cooper says, still typing. “And because Tania is supporting her, the mother has never sold the story about the injudicious first marriage to the press either, even though she could probably make a pretty bundle off it. She’s a real little UN, our Tania, supporting so many in need.”
I think back to the conversation I’d had with Tania in her in-laws’ media room. I’d urged her—no, begged her—to go to the police with me, right there, right then, with everything she knew about her ex. She’d refused.
“You don’t understand,” she’d said. “I went to the police. I did, Heather, I swear, the first time he . . . the first time. It took everything I had, but I showed them what he did to me. There were bruises and everything. And do you know what they said? They said I could file a report, and they’d arrest him, but most likely all it would do is make him madder, and he’d be out of jail in a few days—maybe even a few hours—and then he’d come home and hit me harder, even if I got an order of protection against him. What I needed to do, they said, was find a safe place to go that he didn’t know about and go stay there, and then if I still wanted to file the report, they’d arrest him. But I didn’t have anywhere like that to go—”
“That’s why there are women’s shelters, Tania,” I’d explained to her. “They’re for women who are being battered. Didn’t the police tell you about them?”
She made a face. “Oh yeah, of course. But I wasn’t going to go to one of them. I wasn’t being battered. Gary just hit me sometimes when he was super-stressed.”
Wow, was all I could think.
“So I never filed,” she said. “Mr. Hall—I mean, Gary—he says if I tell . . .” Her voice had trailed off.
“What?” I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “What, Tania? What’s the worst that he can do to you? He’s already murdered Jared, and he tried to kill Bear. Or are you going to sit there and tell me that shooting was totally random, the way you’ve been telling everyone else?”
Tears had filled Tania’s huge Bambi eyes.
“Not me,” she said, with a sob. “I don’t care about me. There’s nothing he can do to me that he hasn’t already done. I just . . . I don’t want him to hurt the baby. I can’t let anything happen to her.”
So that’s what had done it. Tania didn’t care what happened to her—she seemed to think she deserved physical pain, enough to inflict it on herself. But her maternal instinct had already kicked in and would not allow her to let anyone injure her unborn baby.
“All right,” I’d said to her. “But what if he goes after Jordan next? Don’t you think Jordan has a right to know? Jordan loves you. Jordan will understand.”
She’d shaken her head vehemently.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “He has photos. He says he’ll send them to Jordan.”
Oh no, I thought to myself. Could this get any worse?
“Tania,” I said, “lots of female performers have had embarrassing photos of themselves published on the Internet. Madonna. Scarlett Johansson. Katy Perry on Twitter that time she wasn’t wearing any makeup. I don’t think Jordan is going to care, and your career can certainly survive it.” A good publicist, I thought, could spin this whole thing into gold in a heartbeat. All Tania would have to do was appear on an Oprah special, provide some pictures of herself as a child in her undoubtedly run-down home, and Gary Hall was going to come off as the monster he was. “A couple of sexy photos—even a sex tape—aren’t going to hurt your marriage or your career.”
“Not those kinds of photos,” Tania said, looking shocked. “I’d never do that. I’m not stupid. I always knew I was going to be famous, and I’d never let some guy—not even my husband—take nasty photos of me. No, he said he’s going to publish the wedding photos”—for the first time all evening I saw a hint of the girl from the “So Sue Me” video, the fierce diva holding the whip who wasn’t going to take any guff from any man—“and that is not going to happen. No police. No one. Just you.”
“Okay,” I’d said, backing off. “We’ll handle it privately.”
Of course I was lying.
“You said he e-mails her his blackmail demands,” Cooper says. “He’s probably smart enough to write to her only from computers in Internet cafés, but did she give you copies of any of the e-mails? Because they could help us track him down if he’s living off the grid.”
“Off the grid?” I ask. “You mean like in the Everglades or something?”
Cooper grins. “No. Guys like him don’t usually have credit cards,” he explains, “because they don’t want to leave a paper trail, anything that might identify them or connect them to a certain place they might have been, either because they’re paranoid or, as in the case of our Mr. Hall, because they’re a criminal. They carry out all their transactions in cash, and they definitely don’t pay taxes. This makes it even more difficult to track their whereabouts. It’s possible he only carries an ATM card connected to the bank in which Tania makes her deposits, so he can withdraw cash whenever he needs it.”