Free Shame by Alan Russell

about nine fifteen. When I walked up to the front door, I noticed it was slightly open. I rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Then I walked around to the back. I assumed Mrs. Sanders might be there. When I didn’t see her, I went back to the front door and rang the bell again. Then I knocked at the door, which pushed it open some. I went inside to yell that I was there, and that’s when I saw her.”
    Elizabeth continued to stare at Caleb. She kept trying to read something in his expression. Anything.
    “Will Mr. Sanders be able to confirm that he called you yesterday morning?”
    Caleb shook his head. “No.”
    “I thought you said...”
    His hand made a cutting motion, a movement that caused Elizabeth’s trigger finger to involuntarily tighten. “I heard Mr.Sanders interviewed last night on the eleven o’clock news,” Caleb said. “He definitely wasn’t the man who called me.”
    “How can you be so sure?”
    “I’m good with voices. Once I hear a voice, it stays in my head.”
    “You think the murderer called you up?”
    “I don’t know what else to think.”
    Another SODDI defense, Elizabeth thought. Some Other Dude Did It. The Bogeyman again. “Do you have any enemies?” she asked.
    “No,” Caleb said, a twinge of regret in his voice. “No one’s ever had strong enough feelings about me to hate me.”
    “Who knows your history?”
    “No one.”
    “Your wife—”
    He interrupted: “She doesn’t know.”
    “Old friends?”
    “I don’t have any.”
    “What about relatives?”
    “They stopped knowing me when my father was arrested. They don’t even know I’m alive.”
    “And you’ve never stumbled upon someone from your past?”
    “No. I buried my past.”
    “You didn’t change your name.”
    “I thought I did. I lost my first name, his first name, and went by my middle name.” He met her eyes for a moment, suddenly angry. “Besides, to the world my father was never Gray Parker. He was, and is, Shame. You and others like you gave him that name. It was like he was a rock star or something. No one remembers what he was called before.”
    Elizabeth didn’t respond to his bitterness. “If, as you say, you have no enemies, and no one knows about your past, how do you explain someone setting you up for Teresa Sanders’s murder?”
    She made a point of not mentioning Lita Jennings.
    “I keep hoping it’s an incredible coincidence,” Caleb said, “keep hoping that it will just go away.”
    “The longer you indulge in your wishful thinking the more guilty you look.”
    He nodded. Caleb knew what she said was true, but that didn’t make him any more ready to act on it.
    “You know what it’s like to have a terrible secret?” he asked. “A secret you’re not even comfortable thinking about? A secret that’s as bad as a cancer?”
    Yes, she did. She knew exactly. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Maybe it’s that bad because you’ve kept it secret.”
    “There’s a simple reason for that,” he said. “Living a lie is far preferable to living the truth.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “You need to think about clearing your name.”
    “Clearing my name? My real name is Gray Parker, Ms. Line.”
    “You should get a lawyer. I can recommend several excellent ones.”
    “Tomorrow,” he said.
    Elizabeth nodded. She had the feeling Caleb had overused that word his entire life. Now tomorrow was finally about to come.

8

    A S ELIZABETH STOOD to leave, Caleb didn’t raise his head to meet her eyes but instead spoke to the table. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay put for a few minutes.”
    She didn’t, Caleb noticed, tell him that wasn’t necessary.
    During the hour they had sat together, Caleb had repeatedly told the writer that most of his early life was “just a blank.” That was a lie, and he was sure Elizabeth knew it, but she hadn’t called him on it. Only once did he almost open up to her. She had forced him to make eye contact, had