I looked at Jaya, who was streaming tears without making a sound. She nodded, and I could tell she wanted to come closer to me, but the hundred-and-ten-pound fact of the body between us didn’t let her.
They hadn’t taken Crissy out of a drawer. She was just lying on a table, a sheet pulled up over her with her two arms down at her sides, the wax white of her face blending into the roots of her hair. Without her blue eyes open, with her features perfectly still—she looked more like me than I could take.
She was dead, though. Seeing that gave me the assurance that Maitland couldn’t. After talking to him I’d dreamed of a stranger’s corpse in this white-and-gray room, a sacrifice body that Maitland had used to help Crissy vanish into an anonymity where she’d be more dangerous. Impossible, of course. But it was still good to see Crissy here, contained, limited, gone, on this slab that looked like the zinc bartop of my regular drinking hole in Koreatown. Definitely Mom, definitely dead.
Maitland was outside talking to the whitecoat who’d let us in. I kept staring at Crissy for another few minutes, circling the corpse like a priest conducting some nameless ceremony. I was, I think, looking for movement. Twitches. Life.
“I guess they expect some righteous anger out there. Or tears,” Jaya said. She’d kept quiet until the exact second when I was finished and felt ready to hear a voice. She was a master interpreter of silences.
“They can keep thirsting. I gave the cop a good dose of that yesterday. The anger, I mean.” All I’d told Jaya about Maitland was what I had to on the drive up: about finding the scope behind the trailer, and that he wasn’t doing a good job of the investigation. Nothing about Chuck Varner’s cult and Maitland’s tattoo. Nothing about what he’d threatened me with.
“Right,” Jaya said. “But are you—are you all right?”
I turned to her and laughed out of surprise, the sound obscene in this room. She was facing the wall, like someone in a horror movie.
“What? I just can’t look at her even peripherally anymore, I’m sorry. I can’t,” Jaya said.
“If I can, you should be able to,” I said, walking over and poking Jaya in the arm. She kept staring at the wall.
“You have to look at her. I don’t have to do anything but be here for you. I already did this in high school, in this exact room, looking at my dead dad on one of these slabs while Mom sobbed outside and two techs joked around like ten feet away from me as though I’d gone deaf or couldn’t speak English. That mugger shot him so close half his face was gone. His mustache was just a hole.”
“I know, baby,” I said to her, though I really didn’t. Jaya had lost someone she loved, and I hadn’t. All the good that had come out of Crissy’s insanity was in my arms just then in the morgue—this connection with Jaya, the girl I’d sought out after her father died, who I moved in with, who I convinced to join me in petitioning the state to let us go to the next grade of high school in a different county, so I wouldn’t be the Girl With the Killer Dad and Jaya wouldn’t be the Girl With the Murdered Dad. So we could just be a pair of nobodies in the hallway. And that’s what we got, more or less, once I had my new name and a new school.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, propelling Jaya toward the door with some minor shoves, leaving Crissy behind in whatever void she now existed in with Chuck Varner.
“Wait,” I said, turning back. Maitland and the tech were visible through the doorway’s tiny window, and they were emphatically not looking at us—probably the hug and Jaya’s tears had turned them around. “Make sure you’re between the door and me.”
All business again, or almost, Jaya positioned herself as told while I went back to the table. I pulled off my boot and extracted the small, flat Vixia camera I’d slid down the side that morning, and shot a minute of silent footage of my mother’s body. A slow track that ended on the bullet hole.
“Done,” I said, getting the camera back into the boot. Maitland hadn’t frisked or scanned us on the way in, but I figured there was a chance that he or someone else might on our way out.
The whitecoat was gone by the time we exited, leaving just an impatient Maitland, tapping away at his cell phone and affixing a look of concern not quite in time for our exit. I took my own phone out of my purse and slipped it into my jeans pocket, setting it to record audio. Maitland looked underslept, but not hungover.
“Ms. Potter? Coping?” Maitland had barely acknowledged Jaya since our arrival, which was fine by her. She’d grabbed her phone the moment we were out of the morgue, taking it out of the little plastic bucket by the door where we’d been asked to leave our electronics, and was likely beating back emails from the production company asking where the hell we were for press on Marigny and pretending to be enthusiastic about the Caroline Blackwood documentary we were trying to sell them on.
She was also probably memorizing every word we said. Jaya didn’t always like being ignored, but when she was, she made full use of her invisibility.
“Yeah, I’m doing absolutely great, Officer, sure. Still think this was a totally random break-in?”
“Like I told you earlier, Ms. Potter, we’re going to have to start from scratch. But yes, there is still no reason to figure this was premeditated,” he said. He was looking at Jaya now, significantly, then looking back at me. “But without Kindt to place him at the scene, there just isn’t enough to hold Vernon Reilly, no. And Kindt’s alibied, too, before you ask. We ran powder tests on him at the time, I interrogated him personally, all of it. He had a buddy with him that evening, watching the game. We’ve talked to the friend, pinned down his cell signal: checked out that he was with Kindt, that they were in a sports bar a half-mile away from your mother’s trailer at the time of death.”
“You didn’t check up on his location when Kindt told you he’d ID’d the killer, though.”
“No. It seemed like a lock. We didn’t have much reason to suspect Kindt of killing her at the time, and now he’s alibied.”
“I can agree with you on that point alone, I guess.” Even with a gun, Kindt wouldn’t be any sort of challenge for Crissy, even if he came in when she was asleep. She was a light sleeper.
Sharing the secret of our conversation last night brought Maitland and me closer to each other, an invasive, creeping closeness that made me nauseous.
“I owe Mr. Kindt another thank-you visit,” I said. “Thanks for ID’ing my mother, thanks for misidentifying her murderer, that kind of thing.”
“Kindt never saw the body. Hung around the trailer while forensics was there, though, either right out front or, after I told him to leave, sitting on the hood of his car about twenty feet away. Eating sunflower seeds and sipping Gatorade while he stared.” Maitland pointed to the doors at the end of the corridor and we started to walk out of the morgue, Jaya lagging a few feet behind us.
I whispered to Maitland. “One of Chuck Varner’s people killed her, Maitland. Not you. One of the others. You know this now. This is not random, the trail going cold while this stooge Reilly sat in jail for just long enough. This isn’t right. And whoever it was waited until I got to town to get active again, with the scope, with Kindt flipping his ID. Things are happening too quickly, and it’s going to get worse.”
Maitland answered at full volume.
“I know it isn’t right, Ms. Potter, and I’m frustrated, too. I thought this was locked up, and that I’d done right by your mother, and now I don’t know exactly what to do.”
“You talk to Kindt again. You talk to him long and hard in a room that’s too bright. You do it or I’ll make sure a real cop does.” We exited the building and stood in the rank heat and sunlight, a combination that enhanced the depth and sharpened the corners of my hangover.
Maitland took sunglasses out of a little case on his belt and put them on. “There’s no need to go over my head, Ms. Potter. I’ve been checking in daily with Detective Pargiter. He’ll be contacting you himself today.”
“You still think it was a home invasion. With everything tha
t you know about Crissy Varner, every detail, you still think that.”
Jaya looked at me sharply, dropping the pantomime with her phone. She knew, in that second, that I’d been holding out on her about Maitland.
And Maitland dipped his eyes. “We’ll know what happened when the time comes,” he whispered.
I caught it, but couldn’t know if Jaya did. My phone, still recording audio, projected an inch or so from my pocket, and I made sure not to drum my fingers on its surface.
“There’s still nothing we’ve seen so far to dissuade me from the home invasion theory,” he said. “I can’t think of another logical angle on this, and if you can, I’d love to hear it.” Behind the shades, Maitland’s eyes were narrowed into a simulated Eastwood stare. It didn’t work.
“It’s not what you’ve seen. It’s what both of us know, Danny. And what the fuck is he doing here?” I yelled this last part, pointing over Maitland’s back.
Jaya said, “No way,” as Maitland turned to see Emil Chadwick leaning against the hood of a Budget rental Acura, in a parking space twenty feet from us.
I caught the wince that started on Maitland’s lips and crawled up to his eyes.
“I wanted to be here to capture the reunion, Blanche,” Chadwick said. He was wearing a linen suit with a white shirt that I wanted to stain a deep red. “And to pick up our chat.” He nodded at Maitland, who nodded back.
“You know each other?” Jaya asked.
“Mr. Chadwick got Ms. Potter and I in contact,” Maitland said. “We were unable to track her down after her mother’s death, and Mr. Chadwick had a line on—”
“He’s a little turd that’s been trying to blackmail Blanche into taking part in his Junior Journalist project,” Jaya said. Her meekness in the morgue was impossible to remember now that she was fired up. “You should arrest him.”
“For what?” Chadwick asked.
“For being a dick,” Jaya said.
Chadwick smiled.
“For riding your mommy’s coattails to a career that you still can’t make anything of,” I added.
Chadwick stopped smiling. “I came down here because a source has been keeping me apprised of key details of the case, and made me aware that we’ve lost our prime suspect,” he said. “I have an interest.”
“And what might that be?” Maitland asked.
For now, at least, I had little doubt that he was Chadwick’s source, that he was trying to shove the conversation onward from that little reveal. Chadwick had told me he’d talked to my mother once—was Maitland at that meeting, as well?
“Your source is this cop,” Jaya said.
Maitland started a retort that died on his tongue when I looked at him. “I’ve been answering Mr. Chadwick’s inquiries honestly, as he’s a member of the press, and our department is open with the press. I would have thought that documentarians would appreciate transparency.”
At least his answer was almost truthful.
“I think, and I have told Officer Maitland, that Ms. Varner’s murder could be the start of a new wave of violence that we should all be very afraid of,” Chadwick said. “Don’t you agree, Blanche?”
“Yes,” I said, even though it hurt quite badly to agree with Chadwick. “The difference being that I’m trying to stop it, and you’re staking your career on it happening, aren’t you, Emil?”
Both men were stone-faced by now. Jaya put her hand on my wrist and gave me a tug in the direction of her car. “Let’s go see Vernon Reilly the second he’s processed out, Blanche. Before any cops or fake writers can convince him to bullshit us, too.”
Chadwick waved at us as Jaya bundled me into her car and pointed us toward the San Joaquin County lockup. Maitland just stared. As we drove out of the lot, the two men started talking.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
* * *
THE BOY WAITED in Kindt’s office just long enough to feel stupid, before he started rifling through his memories for something else he knew about the old man. A place he would run to. Kindt was obedient, the kind of obedience that came with absolute faith, but he was also scared. He’d been told to wait exactly six hours after exonerating Vernon Eagle Reilly before even thinking of going anywhere, and by hour five, The Boy was on his way to Kindt’s inevitable hiding place.
The Village West Marina was where Kindt had dumped all the money he’d skimmed off tenants and the landlord for the decades of his tenure at the Underwood park. The Boy made the drive out, two miles west of Interstate 5, carrying in his brain Kindt’s boat slip number, which had been printed on innumerable bills in the scummy little office.
So The Boy was waiting for Kindt when the old man huffed down the stairs to the cabin of his twenty-eight-foot houseboat, so much tidier and cleaner than the spaces where he spent his landlocked hours. When he saw The Boy, Kindt moaned, a reaction so genuine that The Boy laughed.
“You really seem like a different person here, I was thinking, right up until you made that pathetic crushed-duck noise. A spick-and-span sailor, a retired navy man with a glint in his eye and scads of charm to give away. That’s probably how you present yourself to the other lushes and retirees out here, isn’t it? Mooning around the bar and telling stories about the job you’ve made up to fit in? What was it—something close, I imagine, so you wouldn’t feel totally lost the minute you got a question back. Building management?”
“Hotel. I owned a small hotel,” Kindt said. He sank down heavily on the step. Above him, through the open hatch, The Boy could see Kindt’s suitcases perched on deck. Would have to remember to get those down in here immediately afterward.
“You say that so well, Alfred. I would believe you, I think, especially after a couple of beers and some comradely talk of the high seas. Can you pilot this thing, or do you need a helper?”
“I can,” Kindt said.
“You’re wheezing, Alfred. Old Wheezy.” The Boy laughed again, but stopped when Kindt got the old, evil look in his eye.
“You little shit,” Kindt said. “Why she picked you I’ll never know. To fuck, sure. But as the follower? Chuck Varner’s torch in the world? No one understands it. None of us who knew it, who’d seen you, talked to you, could believe it. I knew Chuck. I know what he was, and you’re not it.”
“So you did used to watch us have sex while you slapped at your limp little maggot,” The Boy said, aware of and furious at the quaver in his voice. Kindt heard it and seemed to suck it in with his next mouthful of oxygen, shivering and laying a hand on his forearm, pushing down the rising goose bumps.
“Who’d want to see that? ‘Boy’ is the only thing she got right about you. They used to call me a pervert behind my back at the park, you know. Happens with someone who looks like me, working a job like that, whether you’re an ogre or kind to the kids. Part of the job. But I want you to know that even the nastiest pedo wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with you when you first came to Crissy. She barely managed to fix you at all. No matter what you look like, you’re repulsive, you know? You repulse people. You will never lead.”
“You’re scared of me,” The Boy said to Kindt. “That’s why you’re trying to go for this brave speech. You think this is a movie. It’s not.”
“No matter where she said you came from, I know what you are. Just an incest-obsessed little boy out to shoot up a world that thinks he’s not good enough. You don’t get anything about Your Life Is Mine. Nothing about Crissy, nothing about what Chuck was trying to achieve. You’ll give us all a bad name, all because of one mistake Chuck made and a long mistake that Crissy never stopped making.”
Kindt started whistling a song, getting a few bars in before The Boy came over and wrapped his hands around the old man’s throat, squeezing. He started to bang the body against the steps, and was grateful to see fear and pain return to the rheumy eyes. The suitcases, balanced against the hatch, came tumbling down the stairs as The Boy finished his work. For security, he found a whiskey bottle in the galley and then used it to methodically pound Ki
ndt’s trachea flat. The old man didn’t twitch. Crissy’s careful instruction, his own sharp discipline, and Officer Dan Maitland’s careful crime scene management had kept The Boy’s fingerprints and genetic traces out of any database, so there was nothing to worry about at the scene. By the time Kindt’s body was found, The Boy’s anonymity would be of no use to anyone, let alone himself.
Walking back to his car, The Boy hummed the tune that Kindt had been whistling, in an effort to remember it himself. He got it right as he put his hand on the door handle.
“Under the Boardwalk,” he said, and laughed. The old man had really rallied at the end there. It was almost inspiring.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
* * *
TELL ME PADMA doesn’t know anything about this,” I said to Jaya.
“So we’re not going to talk about that weird phantom-conversation you and the cop were having? Is that it? What the hell is going on, Blanche? What does ‘We’ll know what happened when the time comes’ mean, and why the hell is a police officer saying it to someone with a dead mother? We’re going to the station to talk to someone sane right after this, and that’s a definite.”
“Jaya, I can’t. Please. Not yet. I can’t talk about this. But yes, we’ll go to the cops,” I lied. Maitland still had me, as I had him—I couldn’t tell any of his superiors he was a Varner man without opening myself up to everything he knew about the last week of my life before I left Crissy.
“Look at me,” Jaya said.
I took my eyes off the road for a moment to make eye contact, for just long enough for her to register that I wasn’t telling her the whole truth, and just long enough for us both to know that she knew it.
“Fine. For now, fine. And, no, I didn’t tell my high-strung mother that we’re picking up a recently-off-the-hook-for-murder, multiply-convicted-of-crimes creep from prison to ask him a bunch of uncomfortable questions.”
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