by Meg Gardiner
He handed it to me. Putting it to my ear, I said hello.
‘‘Ev? Sweet Christ.’’
My brother’s voice sounded brittle. I began to understand how far the bad news had spread.
‘‘I’m okay, Bri. Mom and Dad?’’ I said.
‘‘Negative. I was waiting for verification before I called them. Jesus God, how did they make this mistake? Evan, you have no idea.’’
From his end came the noise of traffic. ‘‘Where are you?’’
‘‘Going like a Tomahawk missile down Highway Fourteen. I’ll be in Santa Barbara in a few hours.’’
I felt myself choking up, and fought it. ‘‘You mean you thought I was dead, and you decided to drive?’’
He let out a hard sound that wasn’t really a laugh. ‘‘The navy hates it when I borrow their Hornets for personal flights.’’ His voice sobered again. ‘‘We’ll be there in three.’’
We meant Luke, my nephew. I said, ‘‘Can’t wait,’’ and handed the phone back.
Aguilar said, ‘‘Ma’am, may I see some identification?’’
I showed her my driver’s license. She scowled.
‘‘Kathleen Evan Delaney. Same as all the credit cards on the deceased.’’
‘‘Oh, brother.’’ I glanced at the sheet, and at Jesse. ‘‘Hear that?’’
He hung up the phone. ‘‘Stolen ID. Or counterfeit. You know what that means.’’
‘‘Cherry Lopez. That last kick in the pants she loved to give people.’’
I explained to Aguilar. ‘‘My purse was stolen last summer. The thief was into online credit card fraud. This could be connected.’’
Damn, had Lopez sold my credit information online? Or was the woman under the sheet a professional thief?
‘‘It’s identity theft.’’ Jesse’s face was severe. ‘‘This is not good.’’
‘‘Not in any way.’’
Aguilar gestured to the door. ‘‘Let’s discuss this elsewhere.’’
Jesse didn’t move. ‘‘Not until you tell me why you contacted next of kin before investigating this young woman’s identity.’’
Beneath Jesse’s voice I heard Gopher’s words. Yeah, right. You’re really Evan Delaney. Laughing, because he didn’t believe that. I ran my knuckles across my forehead. Something bad was unspooling all around me, and at the end of the line lay a dead woman on a slab.
‘‘You didn’t check fingerprints? Identifying marks? Missing persons reports?’’ he said.
I stared at the sheet, becoming aware of what I’d been consciously ignoring amidst the metallic sterility and cool of the room: a scent. Like a stagnant pond.
‘‘Did you take even a cursory look at her before calling Evan’s brother and telling him she was dead?’’ Jesse said.
Aguilar’s cheeks were turning pink. ‘‘She had a pocketful of plastic giving us a name. And if you’ll allow me to correct you, we have not identified this body. That, sir, is what you came here to do.’’
‘‘She drowned?’’ I said.
‘‘We haven’t determined cause of death yet,’’ Aguilar said.
The smell augured through me. It was the scent of the ocean.
‘‘Did she wash up on the beach?’’ I said.
‘‘Below More Mesa.’’ She gave the sheet a dispassionate look. ‘‘Near the black sands.’’
‘‘Jericho Point,’’ Jesse said.
I nodded distractedly. Jericho Point was what we called the beach below the eroding cliffs, because the walls collapsed and came tumbling down on hapless beachcombers. People died there with depressing regularity. And it was where the current could have carried someone who fell into the water in Isla Vista.
‘‘Let me see the body,’’ I said.
Jesse gave me an incredulous look. ‘‘You don’t want to do that.’’
‘‘I do. You go out to the lobby.’’ I looked at Aguilar. ‘‘Please.’’
Jesse took my wrist. ‘‘No, you truly don’t want to do that.’’
‘‘I can handle it.’’
His eyes were arctic. ‘‘Nobody’s told you.’’
‘‘What?’’ I looked from him to the sheet.
‘‘She didn’t drown, Evan. She was murdered.’’
At once I felt disconnected, as if the buzzing lights and chill air were biting at my face.
‘‘I don’t understand,’’ I said.
Aguilar looked somber. ‘‘The deceased was the apparent victim of a homicide. Viewing the body may be difficult.’’
My skin tingled. I couldn’t stop staring at the sheet. ‘‘I need to know.’’
‘‘Perhaps there’s another way,’’ Aguilar said.
Stepping to the tray, she lifted a section of the sheet and exposed one of the dead woman’s arms. I saw a delicate wrist wearing a silver charm bracelet. And a grayish hand twisted stiff with rigor mortis.
‘‘Does this look familiar?’’
She gestured to the charms hanging on the bracelet. A shamrock, a koala, a dolphin, a Chinese character. I shook my head.
‘‘May I presume that you can give us a negative on the ID? Mr. Blackburn—can you confirm that this is not Kathleen Evan Delaney?’’
Jesse was pale. ‘‘Jesus.’’ He pushed closer to the tray, staring at that wrist.
‘‘Sir?’’
He lifted a hand to pull the sheet off, only to stop himself. ‘‘Show me.’’
I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘‘What are you doing?’’
‘‘Take off the sheet.’’ Sparks in his eyes. ‘‘Do it, just do it, come on.’’
Aguilar looked uncertain. But with practiced formality she stepped to the side of the locker tray and folded back the sheet.
‘‘Oh.’’ The cry escaped my lips as I staggered backward. ‘‘God.’’
I had seen the dead before, but not this. ‘‘Shit. Oh, God.’’
If I force myself, I can see her blond hair, with one streak of blue, matted and packed with sand. A purple blouse, dried and wrinkled. Paper-gray skin. But then I smell the smell, and I start to swim, and I see her face.
‘‘Fuck. Damn, fucking hell.’’
Jesse said it, or I said it, stumbling away from that tray.
‘‘Do you recognize her?’’ Aguilar said. ‘‘Mr. Blackburn?’’
I banged into Jesse and kept going backward. ‘‘Stop it, make it stop.’’
The corpse was staring at me. Right at me, shit, with bloodshot huge eyes that bulged out of her eye sockets.
She was willow thin, with flawless skin, and from the neck down her body looked perfect. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one. She could have been me at that age. Sand crabs were crawling in and out of her mouth.
It was her, I knew, the girl who had gone off the balcony at the party. She had been garroted. With wire. Through the gore, I saw a bloody, shining strand embedded in her throat. Her head had almost been sawed off. Her face was bloated. Her tongue looked like a sea slug protruding through swollen lips.
The lights spun. The door hit the wall when I threw it open. I fought to bring air into my lungs, shoved my way through the lobby and outside into the wind.
Nikki stood next to the car, bouncing Thea on one hip, talking to Carl. I lurched past. Carl called my name. I felt covered in filth. My clothes stank with the smell of the corpse. I pulled my sweatshirt over my head and threw it to the ground. I yanked off my shoes and socks and tore off the track bottoms and stood there in my shorts, shivering. I still smelled it.
‘‘Ma’am.’’ Aguilar was calling to me. ‘‘Ma’am. I’m sorry about that.’’
I paced in a circle, shuddering. ‘‘And you haven’t determined the cause of death? Jesus Christ.’’
‘‘As a formality, can you tell me whether you recognize the deceased?’’
‘‘Where’s Jesse?’’
‘‘He said he needed to wash his face. The deceased, ma’am.’’
That girl hadn’t fallen off of any balcony. P.J.’s story w
as a lie.
‘‘I’ve never seen her.’’ I sat down on the sidewalk and leaned my head on my knees. ‘‘But I think I know where she died.’’
I gave her a short summary. Jesse came out, looking ashen. Aguilar went over and spoke briefly to him before going inside. I sat on the sidewalk. Jesse was talking to the Vincents. Nikki put a hand over her mouth and turned away with Thea. Carl shook his head. Jesse headed for the Mustang, jerking his head for me to join him.
I stood up, gathered my things, and wandered over like a zombie. Jesse was trying to put the car key in the door lock. He kept missing.
I covered his hand with my own. ‘‘Think I’m in better shape than you. I’ll drive.’’
‘‘It’s not that.’’ He lowered his hand to his lap. ‘‘Did you see her charm bracelet?’’
‘‘Yeah. It brought her no luck, did it?’’
The wind raked his hair. He looked up at me.
‘‘It belongs to my mother.’’
7
The Mustang fired up with a roar. Jesse threw it into reverse and spun the tires backing up. I braced my hands against the dashboard. This car.
Jesse had bought it from my brother. He painted it black and installed hand controls. And he kept Brian’s bumper sticker: MY OTHER CAR IS AN F/A-18. It was a load of V-8 menace.
I buckled up. ‘‘You’re positive about the bracelet.’’
‘‘I got the Xi in Beijing, the shamrock in Dublin. The koala in Sydney, when I swam Pan Pacifics. It’s all stuff I picked up competing on the U.S. team.’’ He flung the wheel and bounced out onto the street. ‘‘The dolphin was a birthday gift from P.J.’’
‘‘Did you tell Aguilar?’’
‘‘I had to.’’
‘‘Do you know who that girl is?’’
‘‘No.’’ He turned onto Hollister and let the car growl. ‘‘Do you?’’
I stared out the windshield. We had come to it.
‘‘This isn’t straight-out identity theft, is it?’’ he said.
‘‘No. And it has nothing to do with Cherry Lopez snatching my purse.’’
‘‘Spill.’’
‘‘Pull over.’’
He gave me a canny look and stopped the car along the curb. His gaze cooled on me.
‘‘It has to do with your brother,’’ I said.
For a long second he continued looking at me. Then he jammed the car in gear, spun the wheel, and slewed into a U-turn across traffic. The car did what Mustangs tend to do, with the big engine up front and the short back end. The wheels got light and started sliding across the slick roadway.
I grabbed the door. ‘‘Christ.’’
Horns blared around us. He steered into the skid, straightened out, and slammed it toward Goleta, full throttle. My blood rushed in my ears.
‘‘That girl’s dead, and P.J.’s involved. Fuck,’’ he said.
‘‘Pull the hell over.’’
He didn’t even look my way. We raced along, barreling through puddles, flinging up water. At the roadside trees thrashed in the wind.
‘‘You’re in trouble, aren’t you?’’ he said. ‘‘P.J.’s done something that’s going to boomerang on you.’’
‘‘I’m in big trouble. But I don’t know how P.J. fits in.’’
‘‘Don’t lie to me. And damn well don’t lie to yourself.’’
We boomed past the broad lawns and playing fields of San Marcos High School. His face was severe.
‘‘Tell me everything. And don’t talk to the sheriffs unless I’m with you. I’m your attorney right now; got that?’’
I sank in my seat. I felt as though everything was caving in at once.
‘‘Evan. That young woman was murdered. And . . .’’ He gripped the wheel, staring dead ahead. ‘‘The wire around her throat. I think I know what it is.’’
We ran a red light.
‘‘It’s a guitar string,’’ he said. ‘‘I think it’s from P.J.’s guitar.’’
Bitch. The more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. He had missed his chance.
It had been perfect, yeah, every time he reran it in his head, he came to that judgment. Capital-P Perfect. Except for the woman. And now he’d seen her again, which made him a little jumpy, but not too bad, not yet. Bad things came in threes, and she was just a two right now. Ballbuster. Pussy whipper.
But last night . . . The problem was, it had been improvised. He had to perform at the last minute, and he was brilliant. Open-air, too. His performance had been—well, almost cinematic. She walked right into it. And everything had been right at hand. And nobody saw.
That was the kick in the ass. His hottest performance, an improv at that, and nobody saw. That was the pisser about this kind of gig. Which was why it ate at him that he didn’t get it on tape. If it were on tape, it would be there for him to replay. Rewind, appreciate, critique, improve upon. Forever. If only.
But this wasn’t like laying down tracks or doing a video. You performed live, ha, so to speak, and you only got the one chance. You couldn’t rewind.
But you could always do it again.
Keith and Patsy Blackburn lived on a well-kept street in north Goleta. Jesse’s old elementary school was at the end of the road, its playing fields dark green from the rain. The house was designed in the Taco Bell school of architecture, with stucco arches around the front door, a red tile roof, and a pint-sized Spanish fountain out front.
When we coasted into the driveway, the car was as silent as the cold-storage room. I had told Jesse everything I’d kept from him the previous night, and he was seething.
Not solely at me, of course. The destruction we’d seen at the morgue had nauseated him. It had also planted a seed of fear. He turned off the engine.
‘‘P.J. could not have done that to her,’’ I said.
‘‘I don’t want to think so. But that guitar string— heavy-gauge with the blue thread on the end. It’s what he uses.’’
‘‘It’s impossible. He couldn’t hurt a fly.’’
His eyes were weary beyond all age. ‘‘He’s on drugs. Don’t be naive.’’
His mother’s Honda sat in the driveway. I nodded at it.
‘‘Are you going to tell her?’’
He looked as if he’d rather set his hair on fire. ‘‘I have to. The cops are going to come asking about the bracelet.’’ He opened the door and pulled his wheels and frame from the backseat. We got out and headed for the house.
At the front porch he turned around. He could make it down the two porch steps with a double bounce, but not up, which meant that I got to play forklift. I went behind him and grabbed the frame of the wheelchair. He rocked back, pulled hard, and I hauled him up.
It was a moment, I think, that he quietly hated. Not because he’d thundered around this house growing up and now needed his girlfriend to help him move sixteen vertical inches. That, he was coming to believe, we could both take in stride. But each trip home reminded him that, more than three years after the crash, his parents had not built a ramp. And that he took as a message.
But they wouldn’t talk about it. His parents maintained a well-honed silence, a mental version of sticking their fingers in their ears and singing, ‘‘La-la-la I can’t hear you. . . .’’ Suppression, a cappella. It was a song the Blackburn family was good at singing. They had lots of verses. Disability was just the latest addition to the lyric sheet.
He crossed the small entryway. The sunken living room, with its wall of mirrored tiles, was empty.
‘‘Anybody home?’’ He shifted his weight and bounced down the step from the entry to the hallway. ‘‘P.J.?’’
‘‘Back here, Jess,’’ a woman called. ‘‘I’m on the phone.’’
We found his mom in the family room. A college basketball game was on TV. She had the phone pressed to her ear, and was stubbing out a Marlboro.
‘‘Your aunt Deedee,’’ she whispered. ‘‘The wedding.’’
Patsy wore cutoffs and a fuchsia blouse.
Her shapely legs were draped across the arm of her easy chair. She cupped her hand over the receiver.
‘‘This’ll take a while.’’ She rolled her eyes. ‘‘A bride eruption.’’
Patsy had always reminded me of Liz Taylor playing Maggie the Cat. She had the barracuda smoothness and overt sexuality. The pout came easily. The swirling cigarette smoke added a retro aura of fifties dissolution.
‘‘I have to talk to P.J.,’’ Jesse said.
She turned a cheek toward him and squeezed her lips, asking for a kiss. He held still. She gave me a tight little ain’t-he-a-stinker smile and tapped her cheek. Stiffly he crossed to the chair and stretched to give her a peck.
‘‘He’s at work,’’ she said.
‘‘Which job, the shelter? Jimson’s?’’
She shrugged, making sympathetic sounds into the phone. The wedding of her sister’s son was a nuptial typhoon that had sucked everyone into its maw, including me. I had been drafted as a ninth-inning bridesmaid.
‘‘The girl’s hypersensitive. Give her a Valium, Deedee.’’
Jesse rubbed a palm against his leg. I knew he was one step from breaking down and shouting, but his mother lived her life one step from breaking down herself, day in and day out, so he held back, saying nothing about the murder.
She glanced up. ‘‘Yes, he and Evan just came in. I don’t know, I can’t imagine why he . . .’’
She scowled at him, and reached for a highball glass that sat on the coffee table. Jesse watched her take a sip. His expression smoothed into a mask. Turning, he headed to the door into the garage. He opened it.
‘‘Mom, his Suzuki’s here. Are you sure he isn’t upstairs?’’
Embarrassed for them, I looked away. Framed photos cluttered the mantel. It was the P.J. show, a collection of photos in which he invariably looked winsome and happy. The only shot of Jesse was in one corner of a family portrait, which hung like a rebuke to all that had happened since then. Keith seemed less beaten down, spiffy in his cheap suit. Patsy smiled proudly. The house appeared less dog-eared. P.J. was impish. And Jesse looked as though he might be able to take flight. His grin and stance radiated confidence that anything was possible and just around the corner.
As it had been.