Jacob said, “You’re getting weaker.”
Good guess. Mallick flinched.
“I saw the book,” Jacob said. “Dorot shel Beinonim. My father has a copy.”
The Commander sat there, chewing his cheek. When he spoke next, his voice was low—almost ashamed. “It occurs at a slower pace. Generation to generation, rather than day to day. But, yes, sooner or later we’re going to reach the point where we can’t readily contain her on our own.”
“I think you’re already there,” Jacob said. “That’s why you need me.”
“We need you because, whatever our capacity to deal with her once we have her, she can simply continue to stay out of sight.”
“You don’t know where she is.”
“Of course I don’t,” Mallick said irritably. “I’m not a prophet.”
“Nobody’s taken the time to explain the rules to me.”
“Ask your father. I’m sure he’d be willing to fill you in.”
“I did. He showed me the book. He also told me what you did to my mother.”
Mallick stiffened.
“You destroyed her,” Jacob said.
“That’s not correct.”
“You used her the way you’re using me.”
“What happened,” Mallick said, “was extremely regrettable.”
Jacob began to laugh. “Honestly, sir? Right now, I’m trying not to say something extremely regrettable myself.”
Mallick folded long arms across his chest. “It did not occur on my watch. And we’ve revised our policies since then. Your safety is of the utmost importance to us.”
“Horseshit,” Jacob said.
Silence.
“I was supposed to retire,” Mallick said. “Did you know that?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“Mel organized a collection for the party. I had my watch picked out. Then . . . this.”
Jacob said, “So that’s your strategy for dealing with her. Containment.”
“Ask yourself what you’d do in my position.”
Jacob said nothing.
“I know you’re fond of her,” Mallick said. “But please believe me: it’s not safe to have her free in this world. For anyone. You. Most of all, for her. She’s a danger to herself. If you care about her, you’ll help us.”
Then, dialing up a new demeanor, he laid a waxy hand atop the stack of files. “Find anything interesting?”
The sudden bout of agreeability bothered Jacob. He assumed that Divya Das had relayed the contents of their conversation, and that Mallick already knew about his side interest in the Duvall murder. But the Commander’s curiosity sounded authentic, and tinged with regret, as if he was just now coming to appreciate the punitive nature of the archive assignment.
“There’s a case I’ve been taking a closer look at,” Jacob said.
“Really. And what would that be?”
“Double homicide. Mother and child. Ugly stuff.”
“I see.”
“I could use some time to work on it.”
Mallick was silent a moment. Then he said, “I suppose you’ll need a new setup.”
Special Projects, making amends for making amends?
Or changing the subject, diverting Jacob’s anger over Bina?
Whatever the Commander’s motivation, Jacob wasn’t about to argue. He much preferred the relatively human horror of murder. “That’d be helpful, sir.”
“I’ll have it sent to your apartment. Anything else?”
Jacob remembered a white credit card with seemingly unlimited credit—but only for certain items. “Expense account?” he asked.
Mallick stooped to tie a shoelace. “You want to work like everyone else, you’ll submit reimbursement forms just like everyone else.”
Jacob said, “What’s going to happen with the piano teacher?”
“Let us worry about that.”
“What are you going to do to her?”
Mallick straightened up. Fixed him with a stare. “I hope you’re not implying what it sounds like you’re implying, Detective.”
Jacob said nothing.
“We’re the good guys,” Mallick said. “Don’t ever forget that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Stoner Avenue Elementary School sat half a mile from the house where Marquessa and TJ had lived. Jacob flashed his badge briefly at the receptionist and introduced himself as a truancy officer on an administrative call.
She told him to head on inside while she paged the principal.
Patricia Eubanks was a black woman in her early fifties. She shut her door, fretting as she shook Jacob’s hand. “You must be new.”
He said, “I’m here about TJ White.”
She recoiled. “Pardon?”
He handed her his ID, adding that he’d meant to be discreet.
She appraised him before giving an appreciative nod.
“I’ve been asked to revisit the file,” he said. “I didn’t want to create a disturbance.”
Eubanks nodded. She sat at her desk and began opening and shutting drawers. “I haven’t thought about TJ in a long time. For a long time, I thought about nothing else.”
“Whatever you can tell me would be helpful.”
Eubanks found what she was looking for: a neon-green stress ball, which she began to squeeze rhythmically. “Unfortunately, I don’t think I can add much. I try to establish a personal connection with each one of my students, but that takes time, and I never got the chance to know TJ or his mother. They were new to the area.”
She paused. “I do remember where I was when I heard the news. That I will never forget. It was a Thursday evening, day before Christmas Eve. I was wrapping presents and my phone rang. One of our former teachers lived on their block.”
“Jorge Alvarez,” Jacob said. “I spoke to him.”
Green foam swelled from her fist. “I’d known Jorge ten years, but till that night I’d never heard him cry.”
Jacob considered Alvarez’s emotional state during the most recent interview—less extreme, but consistent with the natural ebb of grief. “Did the police ever talk to you?”
“No.”
“His teachers?”
“Nobody came to the school, Detective, except for the community relations officer. We held a meeting for parents in the gym.” Eubanks paused. “I suppose they could’ve spoken to Susan over the phone.”
“Susan . . .”
“Lomax. TJ’s teacher. We have two kindergarten classes. One slot, we can’t keep someone there more than a couple of years; it’s a revolving door. The other class belongs to Susan. She’s been around longer than I have. We had an emergency staff meeting the day after Christmas to figure out how we were going to talk to the students about what had happened. Susan was at the center of the discussion, because it was her kids most directly affected. In the end, we tried to use it as an opportunity to learn.”
“About death?”
“About life,” she said.
She put down the ball.
“That poor, poor little boy,” she said. “Everyone, and I mean everyone, was a wreck. We came back for spring semester, and it felt ten degrees colder.”
“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to speak with Mrs. Lomax.”
“It’s certainly all right, although you’d be better off not calling her that.”
“What should I call her?”
“Ms.,” Eubanks said. She glanced at her computer. “Recess is in seven minutes.”
She left, clutching the stress ball.
Eight minutes later, the door opened and in walked a stout woman in khaki cargo pants. Susan Lomax stood around five feet, but her entrance dramatically shifted the room’s gravity, prompting Jacob to sit up a little straighter.
She said, �
�I’ve been waiting ten years for you people to call me back.”
• • •
LOMAX AND JACOB sat facing each other.
She said, “We keep a sign-in sheet posted on the wall of the classroom. There’s a space for morning drop-off and another for pickup. It’s important for us to know who’s taking which child and when, and to have a record of it. TJ’s mother kept forgetting to sign him out. It was an ongoing problem. At the end of the week, I have to submit the attendance sheet to the principal, and in TJ’s row there would be five blank spaces, highlighted where his mother hadn’t signed.”
Realizing she was taking a dead woman to task, she toned it down a degree. “I didn’t like to pester her about it, because I knew she was a single mother, and she always looked wrung out. About halfway through the fall semester—early November—a man came to pick TJ up instead of her.”
“Can you describe him? Age, race, height, build?”
“He was white. Big, and tall, although frankly, everybody looks big and tall to me.” Lomax grimaced. “I’m not being very helpful, am I.”
“You’re doing great.”
“I feel responsible to get it right,” she said.
Her eyes grew unfocused as she walked back in time. “It’s hard to say how old he was. People age differently. He wore a hat, one of those—you know, fur, with earflaps. He was totally overdressed. That struck me. He looked like he was getting ready to land on the moon. Overcoat, scarf, gloves. Then I heard him talk and thought, ‘Well, he’s Russian, that’s why.’”
A spike of excitement. “How do you know he was Russian?”
“My mother-in-law is from Petersburg,” she said. “I recognized the accent. And TJ called him dyadya. ‘Uncle.’”
“TJ knew him.”
She nodded. “And liked him, I could see that. He said TJ’s mother was busy and had asked him to help her with pickup. But he wasn’t on the authorized list. I told him sorry, I couldn’t allow it. He started arguing with me. ‘Just for today.’ I told him to tell Ms. Duvall to come get TJ no later than six, and that she’d be responsible for the fee.”
She paused to explain: “We do an after-school program. You have to be enrolled, and TJ wasn’t. It costs eight dollars a day. Less back then, but we need every penny.”
“What happened?”
“He took out a hundred-dollar bill and waved it in my face. ‘For the fee,’ he said.”
Jacob stopped scribbling and looked at her.
“Your basic bully,” she said.
“Did you get his name?” Jacob asked. “Maybe when you checked the list?”
She looked despondent. “I’m . . . I don’t remember. I—”
She broke off, her eyes big and round. “Something else. I just thought of it. He was wearing a ring.”
“What kind of ring?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t gold, that much I can . . . Black, I think, and huge. He’d taken off his glove, to get at his wallet, and he was waving the money in my face. I thought he might punch me. Does that help at all?”
“Absolutely,” Jacob said.
“I’d draw it for you,” she said, “except there’s really nothing to draw. It was just a big piece of metal, almost like brass knuckles. Vulgar. Black, though. Definitely black.”
Jacob said, “That’s excellent. Thank you.”
“I’m sorry I can’t remember his name.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “What happened next? After he waved the money at you.”
“I asked him to leave. He walked out and I never saw him again.” She paused. “TJ’s mother came to get him that evening. She was pretty clearly annoyed with me.’”
Disapproval had crept back into her voice.
“It’s the child’s welfare I’m concerned about, first and foremost,” Susan Lomax said. “Parents don’t always understand that. It can be very frustrating.”
Jacob asked if she had told any of this to the police.
Like a lighthouse beacon, the disapproval swung around in his direction.
“I tried,” she said. “Nobody ever called me back. Can you explain that to me?”
He said, “Wish I could.”
“At least you’re honest. How hard is it to return a call? I even went down to the station in person, but they told me I was at the wrong department, they couldn’t help me.”
She shook her head, glanced at her watch, worn with the face on the inside of her wrist. Jacob figured it for a habit born of too many job-related casualties.
“Recess is over,” she said.
She didn’t get up to leave, though. She said, “He was a sweet child.”
Jacob nodded. “So I hear.”
“Some boys come into a room and immediately go for the first thing they can destroy. It’s not malicious, it’s just the age. TJ wasn’t like that. He was thoughtful, cautious. Young for the class. He preferred to play with the girls. He liked to draw. He liked to build. A bit of a loner, but I respected him for that.”
She reached for the tissue box on the principal’s desk.
“I’ve been doing this job since I was twenty-three,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m forty-seven now. Except for my mother’s death, I’ve never taken more than a week off. I timed both of my pregnancies to give birth over the summer. I love what I do. But I’ll tell you something, Detective. That spring, I came close to quitting.”
“You didn’t, though,” Jacob said.
She evaluated him for sincerity. Nodded, and set the crumpled tissue down, watching it slowly expand. She started to cry again, without fanfare. “I felt I had to set an example for the children.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
He phoned Neil Adler from the road.
“Christ, you’re impatient.”
“I need Russians,” Jacob said. “That narrow it down for you?”
“Lot of Russians in this universe.”
“Do your best.”
“I expect another meal out of this,” Adler said.
“You got it.”
“And an exclusive.”
“No promises,” Jacob said, clicking off.
Fighting his way to Hollywood along side streets, he pulled into the body-dump alley and stopped behind the bakery.
Two slots, filled by a white delivery van and a tan Sentra. He blocked both and entered the bakery through the rear door, walking a hallway crammed with cleaning supplies.
Dry heat radiated from the kitchen, where a pair of Hispanic men in hairnets toiled, one painting a sheet of dumplings with egg wash, the other tilting a fifty-pound sack of flour into a mixer. Neither man looked up as Jacob passed.
The same counterwoman was on duty. She did a double take, quickly returned her attention to the customer at the display case.
Jacob got in line.
While he waited, he scanned the corkboard, covered with bilingual fliers. English and Russian. He read the labels in the case, written in both Latin and Cyrillic characters.
Syrniki. Vatrushka. Bird’s Milk Cake.
The customer was an old woman. She left a smudgy trail on the glass as she indicated various piles of cookies.
“Dva . . . Pyat . . .”
The counterwoman dutifully filled a box, her eyes occasionally darting to Jacob.
“Okay,” the old woman said. “Chorosho, dostatochno.”
The counterwoman reached up to tug string from a reel bolted to the wall. The old woman counted coins from a beaded purse. Jacob’s eye snagged on the girl depicted on the box of chocolate bars beside the register.
Like TJ, a child who’d never age.
The old woman finished paying for her cookies. Said, “Spasiba,” and tottered out, activating an electric chime.
The counterwomen said, “Can I help you?”
Unmistakable no
w, the guttural h.
Ken I chelp you.
He was starting to take out the case file when the door chimed again. A man in a gray suit and no tie got in line behind him, shifting his weight impatiently.
The start of the lunch rush. Jacob ordered a cup of coffee and a couple of mushroom pirozhki and sat on the bench beneath the corkboard, eating. He waited for the gray-suited man to leave with his sandwich, then set his cup down, walked to the front door, flipped the sign around from OPEN to CLOSED, and threw the dead bolt.
“Excuse me please,” the counterwoman said. “What are you doing?”
Jacob took out the file, selected a close-up of TJ with his eyelids cut off, and slapped it on the marble counter.
“Look,” he said.
As she’d done before, she averted her face toward the ceiling. He’d thought then that she was reacting to the brutality of the image.
I have customers.
Now he knew better. She’d looked away because she was afraid.
“Look at him,” Jacob said.
The woman’s lips bunched. “Leave my shop, please.”
“Not until you look.”
“I will call police,” the woman said, loudly.
He held up his badge. “Be my guest.”
She said nothing.
“Look at his face.”
“I do not need to.”
“I think you do.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“I hear that a lot,” Jacob said. “Nobody ever says it unless they have something to say.”
“I want lawyer.”
“You’re not under arrest. We’re talking.”
She said nothing.
“You have kids,” Jacob said.
She blinked, but didn’t answer.
“They’re probably grown up by now. Do they have kids? Are you a grandmother?”
A rattle at the door—a pair of men in work clothes, trying to enter the bakery.
“He has a grandmother,” Jacob said. “You want to meet her? I could bring her by.”
The men began to knock.
“I have business,” the woman said. “Please.”
“You’ll get back to it, soon enough.” Jacob wagged a finger at the men. Pointed to the CLOSED sign.
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