by Saul Black
“Or maybe a message saying, you know: Are you okay?”
So the guilt was ready to morph into injury. It added to her irritation. And made telling the truth easy.
“I didn’t go home either,” she said.
A longer pause. His silent calculations. Her disappearance after the dinner with Serena and Lou. Their shared silence in bed when she’d got home.
“Oh,” he said.
Here was the perverse fascination again. She could ruin it all, let it all go. It was heady temptation. You let it go and flowed on into the freedom of loss. It was appalling that you could have such power in your hands. Appalling and, of course, if you were a monster, thrilling.
“I was at work all night,” she said.
The logic of which was luminous: I wasn’t wasted. I could have called. But I didn’t. You don’t call, it’s because you’re unconscious. I don’t call, it’s because I’m preoccupied. One more scrap of evidence to add to the case for you caring more than me.
“I have witnesses,” she said. Unnecessary. Irresistible.
He didn’t say anything.
“Look, I’m in the middle of something right now,” she said. “I’ll call you later.”
Hung up before it could go any further.
* * *
In pale green chinos and an ivory flannel shirt, Logan Myers came out to meet her on the white-graveled driveway of his detached Sausalito home. Tall, balding, liver-spotted, with silver-rimmed glasses and a magnificent hawkish nose showing a peck of gray hair in each nostril. Blue eyes visibly nostalgic for the pre-retirement days of putting away the bad guys. Her hand felt small in his when he shook it.
“How’s the investigation going?” he asked her.
“Tangled.”
“And there’s a limit to what you can tell me, though my hunger must be obscenely plain to see.”
“I wanted to ask you what the case-file-handling protocols were when you were in office,” she said. “These days it’s all digital, security encrypted. Were you guys still using paper on the Lucifer case? I mean, did you actually take physical documents home with you to work on after hours?”
“Yes, of course. One had to be extremely careful, obviously. But even in those days the ethical parameters weren’t rigidly defined. Even now, unless I’ve missed something, there’s no national consensus. It’s amazing, isn’t it, that less than twenty years ago we actually trusted human discretion?”
Valerie nodded. It was only confirmation of what she already suspected.
“From which I gather someone has seen something they shouldn’t?”
“It’s possible. We found a body with the Lucifer mark on it.”
“What makes you think it’s not the original killer?”
“Victim’s male. Different MO.”
“Different how?”
Valerie was about to answer—when the picture in her head shifted.
Fuck.
An object of two dimensions suddenly tilting to reveal that it was, in fact, three.
In the moment of revelation she felt a genuine, separate astonishment that she could so grossly have underestimated Rachel Grant.
“Jesus,” she whispered. To herself. For a couple of seconds, Logan Myers, the yard, the house, everything—disappeared. Valerie was in the Grants’ bedroom. Seeing it. All of it.
“Detective?”
She snapped back.
“You’re smiling,” Logan Myers said. “Something I said?”
“Sorry,” Valerie said. She was smiling. “Nothing. Well, yes, actually. It was something you said. But…” She waved it away. It was still difficult to keep the shock—the pleasure—down.
“The different MO?” Myers prompted.
Valerie hesitated. Myers laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m well aware that no one is above suspicion. Even”—he drew himself up and flared his nostrils in mock self-importance—“a former district attorney.”
“There was some mutilation not common to the previous victims.”
“I see. And why spoil a pretty morning with the gory details?”
“I’m sorry.”
This time it was Myers who waved it away.
“Adam wasn’t married when you worked with him,” Valerie said.
“Correct.”
“Girlfriends? Any sense of what his personal life was like?”
“Not as racy as mine,” Logan Myers said—and as if on cue, a silver-haired woman Valerie assumed was Mrs. Myers appeared in the front doorway. She was dressed, cutely, in Bermudas, a Raiders T-shirt, and red espadrilles. Gardening gloves, a wicker basket over one arm, a pair of pruning shears in hand. She looked a good ten years younger than her husband.
“I’m just telling this nice young lady about the constancy of my love,” Logan Myers called to her.
“Don’t listen to anything he says,” Mrs. Myers said. “He’s demented.”
“We could use some iced tea out here,” Myers said.
“There’s a jug in the refrigerator. Assuming you remember where that is.”
Mrs. Myers walked off to the colorful beds bordering the lawn. As if mildly hypnotized, Valerie and Logan Myers watched her, until she bent to snip the first shrub. In the midst of her tiredness (the missed night’s sleep had draped itself on her like a veil) Valerie was vaguely aware that there was a happy marriage here. Children launched, successfully, into the world. Grandchildren already with their own cell phones and dramas.
“Irony is one of the paltry consolations of age,” Myers said. “To answer your question, I honestly don’t know. I think he dated a little, but as far as I know nothing serious. The women in the office called him ‘the Enigma.’ The general opinion was that he was too good to be true. Polite, proper, professional. Naturally the assumption was of a secret and probably deviant life. To me he just seemed superheroically focused on his career. To be completely honest I was surprised when I heard he got married.”
“You keep in touch? Ever meet his wife?”
“Nope. Adam and I didn’t have that kind of relationship. I was sorry we lost him to the sharks, but we were never really more than work colleagues, and we didn’t keep in touch after he went corporate. The loss was professional. He would’ve made a hell of a chief prosecutor.”
The Enigma. Polite, proper, professional. Hadn’t she thought something similar that abortive night with Adam Grant? That something sexual was missing?
“Well, I can see you have thoughts of your own,” Myers said. “I’m not asking you to share them with me.”
“You know how it is.”
“It’s one of the things I miss. I know your work, by the way. I read the papers.”
Valerie looked away. Mrs. Myers was down on her haunches, snipping with precise viciousness.
“I’m no good for anything else,” Valerie said.
“In it for the long haul?”
It was all she could do not to give in to what was becoming the reflex gesture—of putting her hand on her belly.
“Can’t really imagine an alternative,” she said. “Hard as I try.”
* * *
At Willard & Gould, Valerie had to wait almost forty minutes to see Fiona Perry, who was in a meeting. On the upside, the Grants’ former housekeeper, Isabella Hernandez, returned her call, and agreed—with audible reluctance—to meet with her later that afternoon.
“Detective?” Fiona Perry said, finding Valerie seated in the corridor outside her office.
Valerie rose. “Got a moment?”
“Sure.” Fiona opened the door to her office. “Come in. It’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.”
Valerie followed her in. There were stacks of boxed files and a plastic crate containing Fiona’s personal effects.
“You leaving?” Valerie asked.
Fiona was, as per Valerie’s last visit, immaculately turned out, this time classically, in a white silk blouse and black pinstripe pencil skirt and heels. Her makeup looked as if it had just been applied. She w
as sans glasses this time, which made her jaw look heavier. “Not leaving,” she said. “Moving. upstairs, at least temporarily. Fortunately for me, Ben Willard’s secretary’s just taken maternity leave, so I’ve got three months to make myself indispensable—again. I’ve been kind of a fifth wheel since Adam…”
“But you’ll stay on, right?” The phrase “maternity leave” had, along with the Myerses’ happy marriage and all the world’s other jolly reminders, pricked Valerie.
“Who knows? I thought I was dug in here. Life resents assumption, it turns out. But I’m sure that’s not what you’re here to discuss.”
“Right,” Valerie said. “I realize this is going to sound stupid, but how many phones did Adam have? I mean, was there just the one number?”
“Only one that I used,” Fiona said. “Although God knows he upgraded his phones often enough. He was a bit of a geek for the latest hardware.”
“Do you recognize this number?” Valerie handed her a slip of paper with the number on it from which the caller had contacted Dwight Jenner.
“Can’t say I do. Whose is it?”
“Well, it’s registered to Adam.”
Fiona shook her head. “Must be an old one. In my time Adam’s only had one number.”
* * *
Back at the station Valerie got an update from Laura Flynn.
“No-show on the Volvo from ALPR,” she said. “If Rachel went back to Campbellville after the thirty-first, she either took an alternative route or used a different vehicle. It’s not conclusive, obviously. For all we know she could’ve taken a cab. Or a bus. All we know for sure is that the last time she took the Volvo via 32 was on the night of July 31. Which still doesn’t prove that was Jenner’s last night in the land of the living.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Valerie said. “I know Jenner didn’t go back there after the thirty-first.”
“You know?”
“Pretty much.”
“How can you know?”
Valerie sat down at her desk. Opposite her, Will was just getting off the phone. She had to make a great effort to conceal herself, what she knew. Or almost knew. There was still a piece missing. To say nothing of the gap between what she knew and what she could prove. Even if she found the missing piece.
“So?” she asked him.
“Humble beginnings. Rachel Abigail Grant, born Rachel Abigail Lake at Penn Hospital, Philadelphia, in 1984. Known as ‘Abby,’ which was her grandmother’s name. Mother, Joanna Lake, unmarried, father unknown. Sketchy employment and residence for Joanna, lost a house inherited from her mother and pretty much dropped off the grid. Zero tax records, so whatever she did, she did for cash. Any guesses?”
“Go on.”
Will pushed a printout of a school records photograph in front of her. It showed a girl of twelve or thirteen years with long, untidy blond hair and a forced smile. The green eyes and fine mouth. Rachel. Who’d grown up to ditch the long blond hair in favor of short, snazzily chopped red. Except when she needed it back again. Except when she needed to go back to who she’d been.
“Rachel attended school in Philly until she was sixteen—pause for drum roll … At which time Joanna dies of a heroin overdose. Her body’s found in woods off the 23 just east of Bryn Mawr. Investigation—more on this in a minute—eventually gets an ID and alerts CPS, by which time Rachel’s long since AWOL and it goes to NCIC. Next and only thing we have is an address for her in Vegas, 2004. Employment says part-time at a tele-sales outfit that died in 2005. Not enough to live on, for sure. So there’s money or support coming from elsewhere.”
“NCIC never found her?”
“Apparently not.”
“For Christ’s sake. And Joanna’s investigation?”
“Curiouser and curiouser. No doubt about the cause of death, but apparently she’d been keeping police company. Neighbors said she’d been living with homicide detective Lawrence Garner, who disappeared shortly before her body was found. Garner—get this—was found shot dead himself in Jersey less than two weeks later. Murdered by a New York drug dealer named Cole Pruitt. Pruitt’s on a life sentence in Trenton. Claims Garner was as dirty as they come.”
“Nice.”
“Changes Mrs. Grant’s profile, don’t you think?”
“Adam must have known. Surely Adam must’ve known.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he saw what he wanted to see.”
“If he found out, it would explain the career shift,” Valerie said. “If you’re headed for chief prosecutor, do you really want a wife with that backstory? Corporate doesn’t give a shit. Corporate’ll make a virtue of it if the money comes in.”
“All right. Maybe. What’d you get?”
She sat back in her chair and smiled at him.
“I know you’re trying, Val, but you still look like the cat who got the cream. All the cream.”
She didn’t answer.
“Come on. Jesus.”
She looked at her watch. 4:15 P.M. She was meeting Isabella Hernandez at 7:00 P.M.
“Ask me again in a couple of hours,” she said. “In the meantime we’re going to need a search warrant for the Grants’ properties. Including the boat moored at Pier 39.”
42
August 3, 2017
It was still dark when the alarm woke Rachel for real. For real because the night had had many brief wakings between dense explosions of dreams. In those false wakings she hadn’t known where she was, who she was, even. The room and the darkness could have been anywhere. Each time she’d groped and flailed to gather her history, to get some basic bearings—and each time the dreams had sucked her back under before she could. Of the dreams, all she recalled now was a sense of trying repeatedly to free herself from some suffocating muscular redness, as if she were buried like a maggot in a lump of raw meat.
She was exhausted. An enormous energy was pouring into her to compensate. A finite allowance. Move fast. Hurry while it lasts. Even as she’d lain there—surely only a few seconds?—the darkness outside had lost a layer of its conviction. She should have set the alarm for earlier. She should have done what she had to do in the middle of the night. But she’d been so tired. Just sitting on the couch had drained her. She’d watched television with the sound down and felt all the house’s ordinary objects in awe of what she’d become. She was like a supernatural entity who’d somehow torn through into the natural world.
Without turning on the lights she crossed the landing to the reading room, knelt on the window seat, and parted the curtains a couple of inches. Vincent Lyle was, as always at this hour, seated in the pink velour wingback in the conservatory of the big house that backed onto her own. She couldn’t make out the book in his hands, but he’d confessed he was struggling through The Corrections. She had a copy herself and had promised him she’d start it soon to keep him company. He never retired before first light. His sleeplessness outlasted hers, generally (she usually gave in sometime after 3:30 A.M. and crept to Elspeth’s room) though their mutual small-hours acknowledgments had become a nightly routine. He must have wondered, these last couple of nights, what had kept her. Perhaps he thought she’d finally cracked her insomnia. Be there tomorrow, Vincent. You have to be there tomorrow.
In the bathroom she took off her T-shirt and panties and stood naked in front of the full-length mirror. It was required, this moment of nudity, this reduction to her absolute physical self. She had to look at her body, her face, her limbs, see, accept. It’s you. You’re doing this and it will be all right. All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.
She put on the fresh scrubs and old sneakers and went downstairs. In the kitchen she took several pairs of the disposable gloves from the cupboard under the sink, pulled one pair on. Five plastic ziplock bags. You only need two—so take five. Plastic for the organic material. Paper for the evidence. And for right now, for between the shed and the house, a Met Foods carrier bag.
The backyard was very still and tender in the twilight. She was tempted, courtes
y of adrenal sensuality, to take the sneakers off and feel the cropped grass between her bare toes. These temptations, too, were murder’s potential imperfections. You were hopelessly susceptible in your new world where anything was permissible, where there was only one answer to any question of possibility, namely, Why not?
She resisted, however. Her rational self labored toward its goal, the single sane navigator when the rest of the crew had gone happily mad.
The same rational self made her look up beyond the bamboo at the yard’s edge. At ground level, of course, Vincent wouldn’t be able to see her, but there was always the chance one of the Lyles was awake upstairs.
Nothing. The upper rooms were in darkness, blinds drawn.
She went first to the shed.
For a man who, as far as she knew, had never undertaken a single DIY task, Adam had an abundance of tools. Wealth, again, demanded acquisition. In addition to a complete set in the utility room there were many random bits and pieces here, including several hammers of various sizes. Two of them—claw hammers—were almost identical, albeit with different-colored grips. One was slightly larger than the other, but not, she decided, sufficiently to make a difference.
She took them both, checked the bleach and bucket were where she’d left them, then slipped out, closing the shed door behind her. The scent of night jasmine filled her nostrils, a sweet, insinuating headache. She went softly to the greenhouse and turned on the small plug-in lamp she’d set ready on the bench.
Aside from the mild tinnitus of her new lunacy there was a detached curiosity. A biological curiosity. Would it smell? Would there be blood, as with (she realized now) the raw meat of her dreams? Her inner voice repeated: Carefully and methodically … Carefully and methodically. Imagine every single gesture as part of a sequence you have to commit to memory—so that when the doubts creep in afterward you’ll have some certainty to bring to bear against them: No, I was careful. First I did that … And then that … And so on. Memorize the map that will guide you home to innocence.