by Jane Jensen
Larry crossed his arms again and huffed. “Workin’. I drive my route six to two, Monday through Friday, and I usually don’t pull out of the dairy till three.”
“According to Klein’s, you take a lunch break every day from eleven to noon,” I said. “Do you park somewhere and eat a bag lunch?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Where’d you do that on Tuesday?”
Larry scratched his forehead with one overly long thumbnail. Cocaine. Either that or he was a fan of Dracula.
“I, um, I dunno. I usually pull the truck into a park, the one on London Vale Road. But maybe—no, I think it was Monday, I had to run some errands.”
I looked at him without blinking. That was almost coherent. “So you were at the Paradise Community Park on Tuesday?”
“I think so. Yeah.”
“Anyone see you there?”
“Well, I guess. I mean, people are around the park usually. Probably not in January though.”
This guy was full of certitude.
“Ever meet up with a girl on your break? Get a little action?” I raised an eyebrow slyly.
“What? No! Not in the company truck, man!” He laughed as if it was absurd, yet he looked damned uncomfortable. Made me think he had had a girl in there. Or maybe he liked a nice slow jerk-off on his lunch break. He seemed exactly the sort to film an at-work masturbation video and put it up on Xtube. I stared at him.
“So you basically have no alibi for Tuesday lunch, then,” Grady summarized.
“I told you, I was at the park! Maybe someone saw the truck. You could ask around. Isn’t that your job?”
“What about Tuesday night, from midnight on?” I asked calmly.
Larry shrugged. “I was here sleeping. I don’t go out during the week. I get up butt-fuck early on the milk route. Alarm goes off at five A.M. I’m always on time. You can ask ’em. I don’t party on weeknights.”
“Was anyone here with you on Tuesday night?”
“No. Shit, I live alone. Who’s supposed to be here? Casper the Friendly Ghost?”
“No, no worries,” I said, giving him a reassuring smile. “Hey, you don’t mind if I take a look around, do you?”
A jolt of panic appeared in his eyes. “No! I mean—hey, man, you can’t do that without a warrant or something. Right?”
Goddamned drugs. What I hoped to look for were the boots, but we weren’t getting past Mr. Paranoid here. Not today.
“That’s all right, Mr. Wannemaker,” Grady said. “We’ll be in touch.”
—
“I like him for it,” Grady said when we got in the car.
I hummed doubtfully. “He was lying. I’m just not sure about what. Seems like we can take our pick of the guy’s vices.”
“He was nervous as hell and has no alibi for when Jane Doe was killed or moved on Tuesday. What if he arranged to meet her at the park for a quickie, they argued like you said, he kills her, and then doesn’t have time to hide the body? He’s got to finish his route. So he stashes her at the park and goes back to take care of her later.”
“It works,” I said, though I wasn’t as convinced as Grady sounded.
“It explains the time lag. And he’s the type who’d kill like that, doncha think? Hit her impulsively and then chicken out and cover up her mouth and nose, like you said. Plus, he knows the Millers don’t have a dog. He knows those farms.”
“I could see him for the murder. Maybe. But what about the way the body was moved? Larry doesn’t strike me as having the fortitude to get into that ice-cold water with a dead body and carry her across the field all wet like that, try to be smart and arrange the body. Basically, he’s a stoner.”
“He’s not! He holds down a decent job. Besides, maybe he’s playing dumb.”
I shook my head. “Not convinced, kemosabe.”
Grady’s cell phone chirped the Rocky theme, interrupting our debate. I winced. “You know, there are three decades of movie themes to choose from since then.”
He rolled his eyes. “Grady,” he answered.
He listened for a moment, then looked at me, his eyes alight. “We have a positive ID on Jane Doe. Her name is Jessica Travis.”
“Thank God,” I breathed. I couldn’t stop a big smile. There you are, my girl. We’ve got you now.
“Hop on 283 toward Harrisburg,” Grady said. “We have a home address.”
CHAPTER 4
The Naming
Jessica Travis’s home was sad. There really wasn’t another word for it. It was a small bungalow in a trashy neighborhood of the little town of Manheim. It probably had no more than a thousand square feet inside, the small porch had collapsed on one side, the paint was peeling, and the snow-covered yard looked like it was tangled with weeds. An older Camaro, long overdue for the junkyard, sat in the driveway.
Grady and I shot each other a look as he shoved a piece of cinnamon gum in his mouth. We walked up to the door.
I braced myself. Jessica Travis had been identified thanks to the guidance counselor of Manheim Central High School. He’d recognized the crime-scene photo and confirmed that she hadn’t been in school since the day before the murder. Her family hadn’t been notified yet. It was a good chance to get a gut reaction from her parents, who had to be considered for the crime. Telling people their child is dead is never fun though.
Grady rang the bell.
It took several tries before anyone answered. The door was pulled open with a yank, and a woman stood there. She looked to be in her forties and she was dressed in a velveteen robe that looked vaguely Christmassy. Her bleached blonde bed head and bleary eyes said she’d just been woken up.
“What do you want?”
“Is this the home of Jessica Travis?” I asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah.”
“Are you LeeAnn Travis? Jessica’s mother?”
“Yeah. What’s goin’ on?” She looked worried as she fumbled in her pocket for a pack of cigarettes.
I showed her my badge. “I’m Detective Harris and this is Detective Grady. We’re with the Lancaster police. May we come in?”
She looked at Grady and me as she lit her cigarette and took a deep drag. “Shit.” Then she backed away from the door, giving us a silent invitation.
“I haven’t had coffee yet. I’ll make some,” she mumbled, as Grady and I entered and shut the door. The ceiling was so low, it made me feel claustrophobic. The living room sported a tatty couch and a fair amount of old newspapers and trash. “I work nights, so I’m not used to getting up at this hour.”
I checked my watch. It was just after eleven in the morning.
“If you don’t mind—we’d like to speak to you before you get busy in the kitchen,” Grady said firmly. “I’m afraid we have some bad news. You might want to have a seat.”
Jessica’s mother paused on her way out of the room and took a long drag on her cigarette. “Is Jessica in some kind of trouble? Because I know she ain’t eighteen for a few more weeks, but I really can’t control her. I ain’t even seen her in nearly a week.”
Grady glanced at me. I knew what that look meant. Either Jessica’s mother really had no clue that her daughter was dead, or she was a very good actress.
“When was the last time you saw Jessica?” I asked.
She thought about it. “Last Tuesday she asked me for some spending money. I make the best tips on weekends, so I usually give her some at the start of the week, but I didn’t see her on Monday.”
“So she’s been missing for a full week? And didn’t you report this to the police?” Grady asked evenly.
Mrs. Travis rubbed at her eyebrow with the thumb of the hand that held the cigarette. I winced at the sight of the smoke curling around her eyes, but she didn’t seem to mind it. “Look, Jess does her own thing. She’s out lots of nights. And she’s been telling me
for months she was gonna take off for New York. I figured either she done that or she was at some guy’s house and she’d show up eventually.”
Her voice was hard-edged but there was a hint of fear underneath, like she knew something was terribly wrong.
“Please have a seat on the sofa, Mrs. Travis,” Grady said gently.
She moved there, walking stiffly as if resisting it. She sat and looked up at Grady, her jaw set.
“I’m afraid Jessica is dead,” he told her.
LeeAnn Travis blinked a few times, took a long drag off her cigarette, and, with no facial expression at all, pulled a large and dirty ashtray toward her and cradled it in her lap like a dog. She stared at nothing. We waited for it to sink in.
“You sure it’s Jess?” she said finally.
Grady nodded at me and I spoke up.
“We can go down to the morgue later if you’d like to see her. But I do have a photo.” I took out the crime-scene photo we’d been showing around and passed it to her. She looked at it and her hand shook. Her mouth twisted like a cheap dishrag and her eyes got red. “Oh my God.” She sat the photo carefully on the coffee table and lit another cigarette off the first. Her hands shook so badly, she could hardly accomplish it.
“Do you have someone you can call? You shouldn’t be alone,” Grady said.
“My friend Amy, but she’s at work right now. I’ll call her later.”
“We need to ask you some questions, to help with our investigation. Do you feel able to do that now?”
LeeAnn nodded absently. “Yeah.”
Grady and I sat. I pulled out my iPad and started the recorder. “This is Detective Elizabeth Harris. I’m with Detective Mike Grady and we’re interviewing LeeAnn Travis, the mother of Jessica Travis, on Tuesday, January twenty-eighth, 2014. Can you tell me, in more detail, Mrs. Travis, about the last time you saw Jessica?”
“I work nights at McLeery’s. I’m a cocktail waitress. Work six to three. If I see Jess, it’s normally in the afternoons between school and when I go off to work. Last Tuesday, she asked me for some spending money and I gave her two twenties. That’s it.” Her voice was thick.
“Did she mention any plans? Anyone she was going to see? Anyplace she planned to go?”
She huffed. “She didn’t tell me shit like that. We’d just fight about it, so we steered clear. Easier that way.”
“Fight about it? Why?”
For the first time since I’d told her Jessica was dead, LeeAnn seemed to come to her full senses. She looked me in the eye. “Jess met boys off the Internet. I didn’t like it. She said they were nice and cute and everything, but I told her it weren’t safe. Is that what happened? Did someone—”
Her voice cracked. She noticed that her cigarette had burned down to nothing, ground it out in the ashtray, and lit another.
“She was murdered, yes,” I said as gently as it’s possible to say such a thing.
She shut her eyes. “Oh God, no.”
“Do you know the names of any of the people she met up with?”
It took her a moment to respond. “No. Like I said, she didn’t never give me the details.”
“Do you know how she met them? What chat room she was in?”
She shook her head. “My poor baby. I told her. Told her she was gonna get in trouble one day.”
“She never mentioned a website or chat room to you?” Grady pushed.
“I’m not big on computers, so it wouldn’t have meant anything to me anyhow.”
“What about Jessica’s father?” I asked.
“Ain’t got one,” LeeAnn answered crisply.
“Do you have a boyfriend? An ex-husband? Anyone who might have been in Jessica’s life?”
She gave me a sharp look then. Her eyes got hard. “Not for the past year.”
There was the bite of anger in her voice. A stepfather or Mom’s boyfriend would be a good bet, especially if there was bad blood there.
“And before that?”
“There was someone. Charlie Bender. He’s a bastard, and you can tell him I said so.”
“LeeAnn.” I spoke softly and was rewarded when she looked right at me. “Was Charlie inappropriate with Jessica?”
She made a face, tears coming to her eyes for the first time. “She said not. It weren’t for lack of interest on his part, that’s for damn sure.”
Grady gave me a very interested look. “We’ll need you to give us any contact info you have for Charlie Bender. And I’d like you to make a list of all of Jessica’s friends and boyfriends, current or otherwise, any family she spent time around, and any other friends of yours she met, even if you haven’t seen them for a few years. Can you do that?”
“Yeah.” She wiped at her eyes. Her whole body was shaking now—just little tremors here and there, like the shudders of a sinking ship. “I have her car, if you wanna see that. Picked it up at that fruit market.”
“What fruit market? When was this?” I asked.
She closed her eyes as if fighting to concentrate through her turmoil. “Wednesday last. The man called in the morning and woke me up. Got our number off the registration in the glove compartment. Said the car’d been left there all night and I had to pick it up that day or he’d have it towed. He was nice about it though. I had my friend Amy drop me over there and I drove it home. I had spare keys, thank God.”
“The name and location of the market?”
“Oh, something with an ‘H,’ like Hank’s Fruit Market or something. It’s on 30 by that antique place.”
I knew the place she meant. It was in the town of Paradise. The fact that she’d just blithely picked up her daughter’s abandoned car and didn’t notify the police seemed to slide from “open parenting” to “criminal negligence.” I could feel myself getting angry. This whole scene was a little too familiar. “And you didn’t worry that Jessica had apparently abandoned her car there?”
She rubbed a knuckle in her eye, her lip quivering. “I see it now, but I just thought . . . thought she’d had some guy pick her up there and let the car sit. You know how teenagers are. Never think about the trouble they’re causin’ someone else. And that car ain’t worth nothin’. I almost let them tow the damn thing but then I thought, when Jess got back . . .” She trailed off weakly.
Grady gave me a grim look. “We do want to take a look at that car. Is it here?”
“In the garage.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about it when you picked it up? Any . . . blood. Signs of a struggle? A suitcase? Anything?” I prompted.
She shook her head. “Nothing like that. And I did look through it,” she said defensively. “Thought maybe she’d left a note or somethin’, but it just looked like always.”
“All right. Did you notice anything unusual in Jessica’s behavior in the past few months—maybe she’d met someone new and was happier than usual, or stressed out or fearful?”
LeeAnn frowned and picked at some lint on her robe with her cigarette-free hand. “She didn’t say a whole lot to me most days. She was a teenager. Thought she knew it all.” She picked some more, her frown deepening. “A few months ago she was upset about a friend. Asked me what she should do if she thought someone had gone missing. I told her to report it to someone at the school. Never heard if she did. Guess she was pretty upset about that at the time.”
“Do you recall the friend’s name?”
“She never said. Jess never brought friends here. She was ashamed of this place, I guess. Of me. Kids are, at that age. It’s normal.” She looked at me pleadingly, as if wanting me to confirm that she was right, that it wasn’t about her.
Grady and I exchanged a look. “She never mentioned this missing friend again?” I pushed. And you didn’t bother to ask?
LeeAnn shook her head.
—
I left Grady to collect a l
ist of names and went into Jessica’s room. I was hoping for a laptop or a computer, maybe some photos.
I’d already been feeling a sense of uneasy familiarity in the living room. Jessica’s room brought it forward in a bittersweet rush. The room was small, but I could tell she’d taken pains with it. There were cheery rainbow decals on the window and a bright pink comforter on the bed. There was a bookcase full of young adult books. There was a big poster of the Manhattan skyline at night on one wall. It wasn’t the poster of New York I’d had on my wall when I was a girl, but it was close enough.
The house where I’d grown up in nearby Quarryville had been a bit more respectable than this, but not by much. My father was a high school math teacher and my mother a housewife. Dear old dad was also a closet alcoholic who shut himself up in his “office” whenever he was home. My mother was a passive enabler addicted to her soaps and romance novels. Everything was fine with my mother as long as she was left alone. I was the only child of a couple that probably should never have had any children at all.
I stared at Jessica’s New York poster with a weird sense of déjà vu. I’d once been a small-town PA girl who’d longed to escape. Fortunately, I had a high IQ like my father and tests came easy to me. I’d gotten into NYU with a partial scholarship. I’d lived my dream and now here I was, back in Pennsylvania in a tiny house in another small town looking at someone else’s hopes. Someone who, unlike me, would never live them.
I made myself turn away and keep looking. The room was very tidy, as if Jessica were rebelling against her mother’s disorder. There was a mirror and a bag of makeup on the dresser. I unzipped the bag. It was full of newer-looking makeup. It seemed unlikely to me that Jessica would have left it if she’d intended to be gone for long. Her closet too was full of cheap but well-cared-for clothes, including sweaters, skirts, and T-shirts. Jeans were neatly folded over wire hangers. I guessed these were the best clothes Jessica owned. Either her mother hadn’t bothered to check to see what Jessica had taken, or LeeAnn didn’t know much about her daughter.
There was a book bag inside the closet. It contained three textbooks, a packet of Jessica’s senior pictures, and a notebook. I flipped through it but nothing caught my eye. I went out to the living room.