Whatever I might want, whatever we might have had, I’d just set it to flame.
CHAPTER 19
Morality? Go on, give me a black-and-white definition for that one.
One man’s sin is—by quirk of fate or need or desperation—another man’s necessity.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
Sleet had changed to snow, which fell steadily as I drove. White powder filled the hollows in the land, erased the gutters, piled on the fir trees like lines of cocaine. Everything—buildings, sidewalks, lights—turned blurry as snow enshrouded the city. Denver went silent under the soft, murderous weight.
At a traffic light I waited, wipers slapping back and forth, while a car heading the other way slid through the intersection. It skated through almost an entire three-sixty before the tires bit. The car righted itself and continued on.
I watched it disappear into the storm. The traffic light cycled through its circus colors of red, green, and yellow, and still I sat. Not another car in the world. Not a single pedestrian.
I huddled into my pain.
Older by a year and always protective of me, Gentry had been a stalwart friend through my stint in the Marines. Emailing me, answering my calls when I got my turn at the phones, telling me I was doing the right thing by fighting in Iraq while cowards like him were chowing down at Walter’s Steakhouse and struggling through Constitutional Litigation Practicum. He told me I was a hero.
He kept me sane. And by keeping me sane, he’d saved my life.
I could not accept that he’d played any part in the disappearance of a child. Nor in Elise’s death. I remembered the cry he’d given when Nik gave him the news about Elise, and I had trouble believing it was pretense. But the police would look hard at him because he, perhaps more than any other of the Royer Boys, had a lot to lose if the story came out. Gentry was in line to make partner in just a few years, a real coup for someone so young. But who wanted a lawyer with a little girl’s blood on his hands?
The light cycled again and again, and still I did not move. I told myself that if just one car appeared behind me, if just one set of headlights broke the darkness, things would be okay. A superstitious game I used to play in Iraq. If we made it safely past the next heap of trash then there would be no bombs that day.
But no cars came.
Only the Sir, standing in the yellow glow of the streetlamp on the other side of the road.
I sat up higher in my seat, my shoulders at military bearing.
Clyde rose and put his paws on the dash. Panting softly, he too watched the Sir.
The Sir stared at us, expressionless, his ghost-gray head tilted ever so slightly. Waiting for me to figure it out, I guess.
“Talk to me, Sir. Tell me what’s right.”
He stood with his helmet in his hand, his rifle slung over his shoulder. In the yellow light, his desert camos glowed. His body from the waist down was a bloody mess.
He made no move.
“You used to talk about the slippery slope,” I said. “Like it was a sheet of ice that, as soon as we stepped on it, doomed us to slide over the edge. We used to laugh about it. But then Habbaniyah happened, and we went sailing right into the abyss. So by that logic, it doesn’t matter what I do about Gentry. Because I’m already gone. My life was over as soon as I burned Resenko’s body so that no one would know how he really died.”
He straightened his head. I thought maybe he gave me a bit of a nod.
“It was your job to be our moral compass,” I went on. “We were just kids.”
You want me to be your moral compass, Corporal? I could almost hear him say. Not my job. You got to figure this stuff out for yourself. What’s right and what’s wrong. What’s wrong and what’s worse. You’re a Marine. You can’t count on someone being around to tell you how to act like a human being.
“You sure as hell got that one right, sir.”
The Sir turned and walked away, striding up the street on ruined legs. I watched him go, my hands lifted to my face as if holding my head together.
“Fuck you too, sir,” I said softly.
Tiredness prowled up my legs like a tiger and tried to sink its claws. I rooted around in the glove box for my stash of Dexedrine capsules. I chewed up two—bitter but effective—then waited for the buzz. When the tiger loosed its claws and backed off, I put the truck in gear.
Maybe I couldn’t accept that Gentry was guilty of anything more than keeping bad company. But for the police to believe that required proof. It was my job to find it. To save Gentry as he’d saved me. Just as I’d promised I’d save Tucker.
Then, when Gentry and Tucker were clear, I would feed Alfred Merkel and the Royer Boys to the monster.
At the Black Egg Diner, I hung my wet coat near the door then walked past the cherry-red service counter where a trio of men sat blinking at the lights as they tried to crawl out of the night’s drunk. I went to a back booth, slid my bag across the seat, and tucked the end of Clyde’s leash beneath it. Clyde paused in the damp and muddy aisle to sample the air, drawing in the smells of fried eggs and steamy water, disinfectant and the warm wool scent of drying coats. Finally he decided all was as it should be and sprawled under the table.
Suzie Blair appeared at my table with an urn of coffee. She took in my battered face without a word, poured my first cup of coffee then bent at the knee to fuss over Clyde. Clyde softened his ears and let his tongue unfurl. He knew Suzie as the source of All Things Bacon and accorded her proper respect.
When she straightened, Suzie said, “What can I bring you, honey? And don’t you dare tell me ‘coffee’s good.’ You look like something the bears hauled out of the dumpster.”
I didn’t take offense at anything Suzie said. She talked that way to everyone. “How you doing tonight, Suze?”
Suzie puffed a breath and tucked a graying strand of blond hair behind one ear. Her face was as flat and creased as an old pillow. But when she smiled, she was something.
“I’m fifty-three,” she said. “Fifty-four in a month. I’m on my feet at two in the morning. That about says it all, don’t it?”
“Prince Charming still a no-show?”
She laughed. “I’d take the devil himself if he’d rub my feet now and again. You’re young enough to have a shot at Prince Charming, Sydney. So make it happen. Now, how you want your eggs?”
She’d bring food no matter what I said, so I ordered eggs over easy and toast. Bacon for Clyde. After she left, I took the folded papers I’d lifted from Jazmine’s file and laid them on the table. I smoothed the pages out and started reading.
I stopped at the list of names I’d found under the heading “Suspect Interviews.”
Peter Kettering
Frank Davis
Gentry Lasko
Alfred Merkel
Sean Sutherland
According to the investigating detective’s report, all five men—Gentry was the only underage kid in the bunch—had been released for lack of evidence. But it was also clear from the report that to the detective’s way of thinking, they were all as guilty as Cain. He just couldn’t prove it. He’d poked around the case for six months, come at it from the front and back and sideways. Nothing ever broke. No witnesses could definitively place the Royer Boys with Jazmine. No bloody clothes or weapons. No body. And some of Jazmine’s friends said she’d been talking about running away. The detective had no choice but to let the Royer Boys go. They no doubt went on to terrorize blacks and Jews and God knows who else in other cities and rail yards. Only Gentry stayed behind.
Suzie brought my eggs. She put a plate of bacon and sausage links on the floor for Clyde, refilled my cup, and plopped a fork down on top of the pages.
“Eat now,” she said. “Work later. You work too much.”
My mind elsewhere, I watched her leave. I pushed the fork aside and turned pages until I came to Gentry’s interview. Because Gentry wasn’t an adult, his father was present. As a police officer, Nik had known to keep his m
outh shut during the interview. But according to the transcript, he hadn’t managed very well. He was clearly pissed at the cop for considering Gentry a suspect. And furious with his son for getting himself into a position where he had to be interviewed by a homicide dick.
Nik and Ellen Sue had also been interviewed separately about Gentry’s whereabouts that night. Both insisted that Gentry, after school ended at 3:30 p.m., had stayed for football practice and then been home for dinner by 6:15 p.m. Football practice ran until 5:30 p.m. Two of Gentry’s friends vouched for his presence, but another boy insisted he hadn’t been there. The defensive coach ran the practice that night, and he hadn’t taken roll. He couldn’t remember if Gentry, a third-string tight end, had been there or not.
The families of the other men, all from Royer, said their darlings were home in time for dinner at 5:30 p.m. The recanting witnesses—the two hobos—had no idea what time they might or might not have seen Jazmine and the skinheads. The railroad employee with the hazy memory guessed he’d seen the group around 5:30 p.m. According to the file, Jazmine’s brother Daryl took his dinner break at 5:00 p.m., and Jazmine had arrived promptly on the hour with his meal, which she’d brought in her school backpack. She’d stayed until 5:15 p.m., then left to catch the bus home. The bus driver couldn’t say if she’d been on the 5:35 p.m. or not.
Her backpack had never been found, either. Jazmine might as well have dropped in a hole to Wonderland. But it hadn’t been the Queen of Hearts who found her.
Wearily I pushed the pages away. Nothing in there marked Gentry as a killer, just as the original detective had concluded. But nothing absolved him, either. Which meant that if Cohen and Bandoni linked Gentry to Merkel, Gentry would be a suspect in both cases.
And so what? Gentry wasn’t a killer any more than Tucker was. Evidence against him couldn’t appear out of the ether.
Suzie watched me from the counter. Obediently, I ate a few bites of egg. Drank more coffee and pondered my next move. The Dexedrine and coffee gave me energy I didn’t know what to do with. I rifled through the pages again.
Across the table, Elise slid into the booth. Her sweet and bloody face looked newly struck by grief. Perhaps she’d gotten news of Tucker’s collapse.
“If you’d tell me who did this,” I said, “it would save us all a lot of trouble.”
She, of course, said nothing. Maybe truly crazy was when your ghosts talked to you. So I wasn’t completely gone yet.
I shrugged at her, then deliberately dropped my eyes. I could not deal with her right now. When I lifted my head, she was gone.
But she’d unjammed my thoughts. I needed a different approach. If I couldn’t clear Gentry of having played a part in Jazmine’s disappearance, I could focus on finding proof of Merkel’s guilt for Elise. If he’d killed Elise to shut her up about Jazmine, then that would help seal his fate for both cases.
I hauled my camera out of the bag to look through the photos I’d taken at the crime scene. In addition to the shots I’d snapped in Elise’s bedroom, I’d taken thirty-two more on my way out. Now I scrolled through them one at a time.
The crime scene was exactly as I remembered it: horrific. Blood everywhere. Hobo sign scratched in black atop the blood-spattered, white walls. The camera had caught the red-soaked curtain in mid-furl from the breeze entering through the open window. Elise a shattered doll in a bloody bed.
I forced myself to look past the wreckage of her death and search for details of her life. The nightstand held a lamp, a Bible, and a blue teddy bear. On a narrow bookcase were maybe twenty books and a startling collection of knickknacks. Bobbleheads. Ceramic figurines of pretty girls and mischievous boys. A wooden bowl filled with brightly painted hobo beads. And cats. A lot of cats. Maybe gifts for the kindhearted lady, whose hobo symbol was a cat? There were also a carved wooden box, candles, and a second bowl, this one filled with jewelry. On the top shelf sat a model of a steam engine.
I clicked on around the room. A large vase with dried flowers on the floor. A closet, partially ajar. Inside, shoes lined neatly on the floor. Hanging on the doorknob was a baseball cap with the DPC logo. Blood spattered the brim.
I set the camera down.
Nik had given one of those caps to me for my tenth birthday. As if to say that while I might have lost the tribe of immediate family, there was always him and Ellen Ann and the entire railroad community.
Gentry, also one of the tribe, had the same cap from his father. Presumably Nik had bestowed this one upon Elise, letting her know she was one of ours, never dreaming it would be witness to her death.
Our little tribe, shattered again. I closed my eyes.
Sensing my distress, Clyde came out from under the table and placed his chin on my thigh. I laid my hand on his head, spread my fingers through the thick fur between his ears. Clyde’s solid, loyal strength passed through my skin in some sort of wonderful osmosis and eased the pain in my heart.
After a moment, I could open my eyes. Clyde studied my face and, apparently satisfied, returned to his lair beneath the table.
I kept clicking through the photos. Out of her room and down the hall. A shot of the room with the Tweety Bird and the empty nightstand. On through the kitchen, with its refrigerator covered with photos of hobos, and out to the living room. I scanned my shots, zooming in and out. Of all the photographs of rail riders in Elise’s apartment, only one of them showed Merkel. The shot had been taken outdoors, a string of coal hoppers in the background. Merkel stood alone, his eyes burning into the camera, his tattooed face a series of hard lines and arid planes. A handsome man once, now corrupted from within.
Next to Merkel’s picture, a miniature Confederate flag was thumbtacked to the wall. I studied that for a moment before moving on.
I looked at the two glasses of milk on the dining room table and wondered how old they were. Given the general disarray in Elise’s apartment, they could have been there for hours or for days. The sides were covered with fingerprint powder. I scrolled back to the kitchen. Dirty plates stacked next to the sink. A jumble of glasses, one of which was tipped on its side. A couple of drawers partially open. Mail in piles on the counter—envelopes and magazines and flyers. As if it had been weeks since Elise had taken care of anything around her home. The only things of beauty in the utilitarian kitchen were a painting of a mountain lake that hung between the refrigerator and the doorway and a lone ceramic cat on the windowsill.
Back to the living room. Three pairs of shoes neatly lined under a coat rack, which held four or five coats, a few winter scarves, and two woolen hats.
No sign of a struggle in the living room. Nor in the kitchen or second bedroom. No sign of a struggle anywhere except the hobo beads in Elise’s bedroom.
I returned to the photo of Merkel and the red-and-blue flag tacked to the wall next to it. Was the flag something Elise had really wanted in her house? Had she used it to mark Merkel as a neo-Nazi? Or had someone other than Elise put it there?
I felt the first tickle of excitement. But just as suddenly it drained away. Merkel’s photo and the Confederate flag didn’t make him the killer. It didn’t even place him in her home.
Something nagged at me. Something I was missing. But damned if I could figure it out.
I packed up the camera, pulled on my coat. What I had right now was a whole lot of nothing. Maybe something would show up in the autopsy or the DNA tests. Maybe one of the neighbors would remember something. All of that was now Cohen’s purview. It was his investigation, and I had cut myself out of it.
For now, I was long past the point of being able to think straight. Time to go home. Sometimes my best ideas came while I slept. Maybe I’d wake up with an idea about where Melody and Liz might be.
I threw some bills on the table and nodded good-bye to Suzie as Clyde and I made our way out. Suzie blew me a kiss. Which only reminded me of the night’s earlier kiss. And everything that followed.
Another broken tribe.
In the truck, Clyde and I ga
zed out the window as snow fell past a street light forty yards away, and the wipers scraped against the collection of ice. I pulled out my phone, saw that Cohen had tried to call more than an hour ago. I’d silenced my headset when we went to Melody’s house.
I stared out at the winter bleakness for a time, then called him back. He picked up on the third ring.
“Parnell. I thought you’d be sound asleep around now.”
“Sleep when we die, right?”
“Right.” Behind him, other voices called back and forth, phones rang, and someone slammed a door. The homicide room in full what-the-fuck-just-happened mode. “It’s the life we chose.”
“How’s Bandoni?” I asked.
“Doc patched him up and sent him home. Guy’s a boomerang. Right back to work. Chief tried to put him on administrative leave, but that went over about like you’d expect. He says to tell you thanks, by the way.”
In the background, I heard Bandoni say, “Fuck your mother.”
“Grateful bastard,” I said. “What about the precinct cops?”
Cohen’s voice took a turn down a dark alley. “Officer Rossi is in critical at Denver General. We’re working on IDs for the two punks in the kitchen. As for the assholes who started this shit, Frankie bled out before the EMTs got there. Petes is MIA. And not a goddamn whisper about Alfred Merkel. Frankie didn’t have ID on him, and we couldn’t find anything in the house or the cars. We’re running prints.”
“My guess is Frank Davis and Peter Kettering. Both Royer Boys.” The words were out of my mouth before I stopped to think what it might mean for Gentry.
“Okay.” Keys tapped. “We’ll look at that.”
“And what about Rhodes? How’s he doing?”
“Too early to tell. Subdural hematoma. They’re just watching him now, taking repeated MRIs to see if the bleeding goes away on its own.”
“Good,” I said. “I guess.”
“We got an ID on the civilian in Merkel’s basement. You were right. Thomas Brown. Kid had just turned twenty-two.”
I closed my eyes. Searched for words and came up empty.
Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell Series Book 1) Page 25