by Ben Sanders
He checked that his package was undisturbed, and then crawled back out. As he closed the subfloor hatch, he felt the burner phone buzzing in his pocket with a call. He checked the screen: Jordan Mora’s number.
He answered quietly. ‘Sorry, just give me a second.’
He slipped along the alleyway to the street and went back inside his own place, locked the door again behind him.
‘You still there?’
‘Yeah, I’m here. I saw I missed a couple of calls. I thought it was probably you.’
He said, ‘Did you think at the time it was probably me and decide not to answer, or did you just think of it now?’
Quiet. He thought he might have misjudged that one.
She said, ‘I couldn’t decide whether to go to the funeral or not. In the end I thought maybe it was safer to stay away.’
‘It was all right. As far as funerals go.’
She said, ‘Look, I’m … I have the afternoon off. Or, I mean – I can take it. I thought we could maybe do something. If you’re free?’
‘I …’ He wasn’t sure how much to tell her on the phone: Boston, the trip out to New Jersey with Cifaretti’s crowd. He worried the more he told her, the less inclined she’d be to want to see him. Maybe this was all the kind of stuff he’d need to say in person. And they’d either arrest him, or they wouldn’t. Might as well play the odds, see her while he had the opportunity.
He said, ‘That’d be great. Why don’t you … do you want to come over, and we can grab some dinner?’
‘OK. That sounds nice.’
He gave her his address and she said she’d be around later that afternoon, five-ish. He ended the call, and for an entire second felt relieved, buoyant with the anticipation of seeing her again, and then he was back to pondering just how long he had before there were more police at his door. It’d be FBI, most likely, for an interstate offence, with multiple corpses. The crime scenes were a bleach swamp, so he doubted they’d have evidence beyond the circumstantial. But they’d still bring him in and hold him for a while. He needed to be out and free long enough to chase down the last of this Vialoux matter, get to the bottom of his bad feeling …
He checked the front window again. Still nothing that looked official. He called Ginny Boyne.
‘Sorry to keep pestering you.’
‘No, no. You’re not a bother. Don’t apologize.’
‘Do you remember, did Ray give you a receipt or anything? When he took Jennifer’s possessions?’
‘I don’t think so … no, he didn’t. There was no need. We trusted him with everything, obviously.’
Marshall said, ‘Sure, of course. Do you happen to have a serial number for the computer, anything like that?’
‘Probably. We have all of her things, packaged together.’
‘Terrific.’
Quiet for a long moment. She said, ‘I thought you were trying to confirm Ray’s movements.’
‘Yes, I am. This is all part of it.’
‘I’m just …’
‘Yes?’
She said, ‘It seems like … aren’t we going a little off-track?’
‘Like I say, I’m really sorry to keep pestering you, but it is important. Every little detail is important with these things.’
‘I just don’t see how it’s relevant.’
‘Ma’am.’ Slipping into his old cop voice. Like stepping through a door in his mind, and there was the uniform right there on its hanger.
He said, ‘It could be really important. If you can tell me the serial number, it would be greatly appreciated.’
Silence. Then: ‘You’ll have to hold for a moment.’
‘Thank you. I can wait.’
It was five minutes before she came back on. ‘Do you have a pen?’
‘Yes. Go ahead.’
She read out a long serial number for him. ‘The docket in here, the warranty, it says it’s a Microsoft Surface. If that’s any help.’
‘Thank you. That’s very helpful. One last question.’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you confirm for me again the date your daughter died?’
Ginny Boyne said, ‘I didn’t realize it was going to be such a detailed excavation.’
He didn’t know what to say to that.
She said, ‘August ninth. She passed August ninth.’
Then she ended the call.
Marshall got up from the desk and went through to the kitchen, hunted through cupboards and found the old copy of the Yellow Pages that Vera had left him. He opened it at C and found computer repairs. Dozens of them. Twenty-five places between here and Sunset Park alone. He saw a number for Computers by Larry. Newkirk Avenue. That would be Vera’s go-to man. Mr Four-point-nine stars on Google.
Marshall called the number.
No answer.
He tried the next number on the list. Lev’s PC repairs.
‘This is Lev.’
‘Hello. I’m looking to buy a computer secondhand. The seller tells me you deleted the contents for her a couple of months ago.’
Shit, that wasn’t the term. It was called something else … reformatting. That’s right: you reformatted a hard disk.
The guy said, ‘I’ll need some more info than that, pal.’
‘It’s a Microsoft Surface.’
‘And what was the customer’s name?’
‘Uh … I don’t know. I’m buying it online, I just have a username.’
‘I’m not sure I have time for a mystery.’
‘I have the serial number if that helps? She says she brought it in sometime between August ninth and August twelfth …’
‘Well, she’s mistaken. I was out of town first half of August. Have a nice day.’
He kept at it.
He tried more numbers, and got a litany of ‘no’s. He tried Larry’s again. Still no answer.
Three thirty, there was a knock at his door.
It wasn’t the police, and it wasn’t Jordan.
It was Ella Vialoux.
THIRTY-SIX
In her dark, baggy sweater and baggy jeans, arms hanging at her sides, she was almost penguinlike. She lifted her arms a little and let them fall again, looking up at him flatly with her jaw pushed slightly to one side. Marshall wasn’t sure if the gesture meant Bring it on, or if it was intended more as self-deprecation.
She said quietly, ‘I just came to say, I didn’t mean to be an asshole.’
‘It’s fine.’ He stood aside. ‘You want to come in?’
She smiled faintly. Dim light coming out of the dark. ‘I was only planning to say it once.’
‘That’s fine. We’ll think of something else to talk about.’
She stepped inside. ‘I don’t have your number. I got your address off that note you left.’
‘Right. Cool.’
‘Hey, this is whatshisname. From the MoMA.’ She was looking at his Pollock puzzle.
‘Yeah. Jackson Pollock. I’ve had him there so long, I call him JP now.’
‘Oh, man. You need to work on your jokes. Your face is all bruised, by the way. Down the side.’
‘Yeah, I know. I slipped. You want a drink or something?’
She shrugged. ‘Yeah. Glass of water would be good.’
He poured one for each of them, and they sat at the kitchen table, Ella hunched slightly and turning her glass slowly on its coaster like a three-a.m. drinker looking down through a Johnny Walker. She said, ‘Yeah, so, anyway …’
As if summing up an explanation playing out in her head.
Marshall said, ‘I wasn’t trying to get in your face or be an asshole, either. I’m just trying to find out what happened to your dad. Why it happened.’
She didn’t answer.
He said, ‘I’m not insinuating anything. I’m not accusing anyone of anything.’
She nodded slowly. ‘It sorta felt like … I was just worried you thought I had something to do with it. I mean like. Maybe you thought Jennifer killed herself because of something I di
d. But she didn’t. Only she knows why, but it wasn’t from what I did.’
‘OK.’
‘She was so nice. Honestly. Just kind of a bit like. I don’t know. She always seemed a little bit afraid of life or a bit vulnerable or something. But super nice, super kind. A bit like her mom, really. Like you can imagine things buffeting her around. She often … she kind of went around with this look a lot of the time like she was just hanging on. I mean, maybe a bit stressed or something. But she was so smart. We had classes together sometimes. This is at high school, I mean, so up until last year, really. She was so quiet, people used to think … it was easy to think maybe she didn’t know what was going on. That she was a bit slow or something. But she always understood things. She just took things in quietly.’ She smiled. ‘She was like this undercover expert in all kinds of stuff. You could ask her a question, and you’d get this whispered but certain answer.’
‘When I talked to you this morning, you said she hadn’t been bullied. She told you that?’
‘Yeah, well … I just thought. I mean, I’d known her for like almost fifteen years or something. Since we were six or seven, probably. And I could tell something was up. You know. We had people we both knew from school, so I’d see her quite often at parties and whatever. She was just quieter, even quieter than normal. I said to her, this would’ve been a couple of months before, you know. A couple months before she died, I just said to her straight up, is everything OK? And I remember she said … she basically just brushed me off, really. Said don’t worry, it wasn’t anything to do with anyone we knew. She literally said, she wasn’t being bullied or anything. So I was like, well, you know. What’s going on. And she said it was just something for her to figure out. She said yeah, she had a problem, but no one could help her with it.’
‘Did you talk to her about it again?’
‘No. That was it. The next thing … that was the last time I spoke to her. After that, it was too late. She was gone. She was dead.’
She blinked carefully. ‘Uh.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Sorry.’ She drank some water.
‘No, don’t apologize. I’m pleased you’re telling me all this.’
She said, ‘Even though she’d been sad, it was still such a shock. You know. You don’t expect it. Even when things are rough.’
‘Yeah. I know what you mean.’
‘That’s why I called Ginny. I thought, you know. If I’m wondering why it’s happened, they’re going to be wondering like ten times or a hundred times more, so at least I could tell them why she hadn’t done it. You know? At least I could rule something out for them.’
‘Sure.’
‘Dad was like … he was drinking way too much. He just seemed … it was weird. It was like he was just dead set on something going wrong. I thought, I had this idea … if he helped the Boynes, maybe it would help get him back in the right direction. Make him more like himself. For a few days, you know, for a little while, I think maybe it worked. He had sort of a project, and he was doing something with a real purpose. But then, you know. There was nothing on her computer that explained anything. It was all just normal stuff. Homework projects on Paul Revere and Martin Luther King and shit. He said he had this special P.I. software he could run that searched for certain words like dead and die and whatever. But nothing came up. Nothing that was like a goodbye letter, I mean.’
Marshall didn’t answer.
Ella said, ‘I remember when I called Ginny, this was a couple weeks after Jennifer died, and I said maybe my dad could look into it. You know, like how he used to be a cop, and now he’s an investigator. And that was when she said, you know, she and Martin, they’re not that good with digital stuff, so maybe dad could try and get into her computer and see if there was like a note or a clue. They were just … she was so grateful, it made me sad. I mean. Like they’d been through so much, but she still didn’t think the world owed her anything. She was like that … it was exactly the same last week. I spoke to her again, she said she’d found like a hard drive of Ginny’s, and maybe Dad could look at that, too. Dad was down in like, Brighton Beach or something, maybe Coney Island. I went around and picked it up from her and … oh, man. Every time I see her I want to cry.’
Marshall let her have a moment, and then said carefully, ‘What hard disk?’
‘It was in Dad’s office. It would’ve got burned up in the fire.’
‘Tell me exactly what happened.’
She studied him, concern coming into her face. ‘Why, what’s the problem?’
‘When was this?’
‘Why is this important?’
‘Please just tell me.’
‘It was … I don’t know. Tuesday. She called and said she’d found a hard drive of Jennifer’s. And could my dad take a look at it, like he’d done with the computer. Like I said, he was in like, Brighton Beach or something, so I went and picked it up from the Boynes and took it home for Dad.’
Brighton Beach. Probably down at Frank Cifaretti’s bagel place, trying to renegotiate his debt. Except …
‘How did you know your dad was down there?’
She was back in her three-a.m. drinker’s pose, staring at her glass. ‘Yeah, well. That was the other thing I needed to tell you.’
He waited.
She said, ‘I had a tracking thing in his car. I spent so much time worrying about him, and I knew Mom was stressed out, too, always thinking about him, so in the end I thought … I dunno. I thought it would be a good idea to know where he was. And then obviously Mom found it in his car, and gave it to you. And I thought … at first I thought you were just some kind of … I dunno. I didn’t know why you were there. So I thought it was pretty funny, you know, that thing keeping you busy for a while. But then … well. Mom said she’d told the police about it, and I thought about it, and … I’m glad you’re not in any trouble.’
‘They searched my house with six cops, but didn’t find anything. It was actually kind of funny.’
He thought she was laughing, but she wasn’t. She sat sobbing into her hands, shaking, hunched into herself. He sat there patting her shoulder telling her it was all right. She took a breath and let it go with a sigh, and it sounded like all her hope, all her happiness was riding out on that one breath.
He said, ‘It’s all right. It’ll be all right.’
‘I’m going to miss him so much.’
‘I know. But that’s how the good people keep on living. People missing them. Keeping them alive in their thoughts.’
She didn’t answer that, and he knew in her case, missing her dad would be complicated. Loving Ray Vialoux was a careful exercise in à la carte.
She rubbed her face. ‘Ugh. Man. Sorry to … I didn’t mean to come here and be all dramatic.’
Marshall poured her some more water. ‘This isn’t dramatic. Trust me.’
She took the glass from him and downed the lot. Wiped her mouth, a clumsy motion with an oversize sleeve, like a little kid. ‘What the hell happened. Honestly.’
Marshall said, ‘I think I know.’
‘You think you know.’
‘Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, I’ll know for sure. And I’ll be able to tell you all about it.’
She sat looking at him. She said, ‘What’s with this other hard drive?’
‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘Yes you are. You just don’t want to say it.’
He remembered the woman at the laundromat who’d seen Ray going in his office door with the package.
He said, ‘I’m not going to keep any secrets. I just want to make sure I’ve got it right before I tell you.’
She didn’t answer.
He said, ‘You want to hang out here for a while, or you can take off if you want …’
‘Yeah. I’ll take off. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.’
‘Don’t worry. You didn’t. I’m glad you came over. You’ve made things much clearer.’
No one came for him.
Ella left, and then Jor
dan showed up at five o’clock. Marshall was at his desk where he could see the front window, Yellow Pages open on the Pollock puzzle. Jordan knocked, and he got up and opened the door for her. She came in smiling, looking nice, looking relaxed and pleased to see him.
‘Cool place.’ She set her handbag down by the door, nodded at the desk. ‘I pictured you with different hobbies, though.’
‘Oh yeah? Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Reading true-crime or something.’
‘I’m reading the Yellow Pages. Almost as good.’
‘I just didn’t think of you as a jigsaw-puzzle man.’
‘It’s on hold until I finish the phone book. Gets real good about seven hundred pages in.’
She laughed. He was glad it was this easy. He didn’t want them chipping away at an iceberg all evening. But it was a strange experience to be standing here, moving easily through the small talk and all the while knowing that a SWAT team might kick down his door. It was like an out-of-body experience, in a way: the part of his brain in charge of self-preservation looking on as the rest of him went about a normal date night.
She said, ‘So how have you been? You made it through the funeral … Hey, what’ve you done to your face?’
He was going to give her his standard, dumb line: that he slipped. But her expression was one of deep and authentic concern, and he didn’t have it in him to bullshit. He sat down on the sofa.
‘Actually, it’s been a funny couple of days …’
He told her what had happened on Sunday night, getting picked up by Chris and Benny on his way back home, and then driven out to Jersey. That got her sitting down at the desk, and he saw the horror coming into the face as the color left it.
He said, ‘Sorry. I didn’t know whether to tell you or not.’
She didn’t answer for a moment, like the shock had caused a lag in her brain. Then she seemed to catch up with a frown, and a swallow, and a shake of the head. ‘What? No. Oh my God.’ She leaned forward, studying him with concern. ‘What happened?’