She closed the door softly behind her and scanned the surfaces. Clothes were strewn everywhere—across the bed and chair, hung from the top of the closet door and the knobs of his dresser. In some places, the state of the room would be cause for alarm. With Z, this was normal. Not that Jamie was one to talk. Her room wasn’t much better.
She found Z’s backpack and checked it carefully—every pocket, opened each book and shook them to loosen any papers, then flipped through his notebooks. With every sound, she froze, holding her breath for a count of ten before continuing her search. She went through the drawers, checked under the mattress, inside the pillowcases, behind the dresser, ran her hand across the bottom of the desk for something that might be taped. Nothing.
Math normally took the better part of an hour. She was done in about fifteen minutes. She’d been a part of enough searches to have a pretty good idea where people hid things, but Z’s room offered not a single clue. She hadn’t unearthed so much as a cigarette or lighter, not a letter or a note, not a picture of him with someone… not that kids printed pictures anymore. Nothing suspicious and no sign of his phone. She needed that phone.
In her room, she left the door wide open and sat down with her laptop. Keeping one ear on what was going on downstairs, Jamie logged on to their cell phone provider and checked the history on Z’s phone, then used the department’s reverse phone directory to run some of the numbers she didn’t recognize. A few names she recognized from school. Several were unlisted numbers. Those records would have to be accessed from the department. Travis Steckler was listed, probably Amanda’s phone. Z had spoken on the phone with Amanda Steckler. What in the world was Z’s relationship with Amanda Steckler?
She scanned the rest of the list of numbers, checked a few more of the names, ones that showed up more than three or four times. None that appeared too frequently or at odd hours. Probably other students. One could be Charlotte’s number. Z wasn’t much of a talker and none of the calls lasted longer than three or four minutes. Most were under forty-five seconds. The other calls were to a pizza place near school, Baja Burrito, and three separate numbers at the school. She was actually surprised how much Z used his phone, considering that he was always letting the battery run out or leaving it in his backpack or on his bedside table when she was trying to reach him.
None of the numbers came back to Michael Delman or Charlotte Borden. That might have been a relief except that she didn’t have access to his text messages online. She had to request them. The message she got said it would take three to five days. That was a lifetime.
She tried to reassure herself that, as far as she could tell, Z hadn’t dialed Michael Delman—at least not as of the end of last month when their billing cycle had ended. But somehow, in the last fourteen days, Z had found out his father and gotten wrapped up in the attack of Charlotte Borden. Not wrapped up. Maybe someone else had the mitt? Maybe Z had given it to his father? Or accidentally left it with him.
Maybe he’d been late to practice because he was getting the mitt back. But how? Had he left campus to meet his father? When would that have happened? Thursday, when he’d had the fight? Had he been telling the truth about that? Was it possible he’d been fighting with his father? She had so many questions and the person who could answer them was right downstairs, working on algebra like a normal fifteen-year-old kid. No, not normal. Better than normal. A sweet, respectful fifteen-year-old. A good kid. She could ask him. It might be that easy. Gathering her nerve, she stood from the bed. Blinked and saw her son in prison orange. Another statistic. Sank onto the bed again. How could she protect him?
On the dresser sat a framed picture of her, Tony and Z in front of the arrow sculpture at the base of the Bay Bridge. They weren’t supposed to touch the sculpture or go near it for that matter. There were signs posted all around to stay off the natural grasses. There they were, though, standing right on that grass. The picture was taken some three or four years ago, when the three of them had taken the ferry into the city on a Saturday for the farmers’ market, then walked all the way down to the IMAX theater to see the newest Spiderman movie before walking back for burgers at Red’s. The day was focused on Z who had been dying to see the movie, but it had turned out to be one of those perfect days. Everyone getting along. Laughing. Even the movie wasn’t awful.
On the way back to the ferry, giddy on soda, Red Vines, and french fries, Z sprinted up the side of the bow until he was almost at the top. As she thought back, he’d seemed little then, almost taller than her but not quite. Without hesitation, she ran up to join him while Tony watched from below and warned them not to fall. It was like that with Tony. He was fragile and didn’t take the same risks Jamie would take, but he was the net. If she told him about the mitt, he would be her net now, too. Except for Ohio. Except that she worried the net he would offer was taking him away.
When she and Z were atop the arrow, side by side, she had been on top of the world. An older couple approached as she and Z finally made their way back down. Jamie was certain that they were about to get a lecture on respecting public property. Instead, the woman offered to take their picture.
The three of them stood half elated, half embarrassed in front of the arrow with the sun fading quickly to the west. The boys had framed it for Mother’s Day, and Jamie kept it on her dresser, a memory of something a little daring but whimsical, fun.
How she would love to go back to that day.
When trespassing was their biggest concern.
Heavy feet trudged up the stairs. While Z thundered down the stairs like a charging bull, he climbed them more like a grazing elephant.
Z walked past.
She should have called out to him. Her mouth dropped open; she willed herself to say his name.
But she didn’t, and she knew exactly why. She wasn’t prepared to have this conversation or, more accurately, she wasn’t prepared to hear the answers. She didn’t want Z to lie to her. She would know if he lied, and she wasn’t sure which would have felt worse. So, she let him pass. She went downstairs and sat at the counter with her laptop, staring at screens without the ability to focus until Tony disappeared down the hall to his room. She counted to ten after his door had closed and pulled the Trader Joe’s bag out from under the sink, stuffed it into her computer bag, and carried it upstairs.
Safe behind her locked bedroom door, Jamie scrutinized the room. She wished there were some sort of crawl space or a hidden closet somewhere. The house was built in the ’40s, so the rooms were small, the closets smaller. She had only one dresser with long, shallow drawers. Her closet wasn’t lined with shoeboxes or big purses where she might hide something as bulky as a baseball mitt.
For the first time in a long time, Jamie wished fleetingly that she was a different kind of woman, one whose bedroom was stuffed with trunks and dressers, whose bed had a long frilly skirt, and whose closet was a sea of shoes stored in their boxes. At the back of her closet was a single cardboard book box. It had been there, undisturbed, since she brought it home.
The brown packing tape was yellowed; her father’s print faded and bleeding from sun and moisture and age. As far as she knew, the box hadn’t been opened after her mother’s death. She had found it in her father’s closet after his death. His handwriting looked like it had when she was a girl—blocky, confident cursive. The way he wrote before the tremors began and his cursive grew more tentative, more rounded, and long before he eventually started printing everything. In his youthful writing, he had written one single word, Catherine. Her mother’s name.
At the time of his death, Jamie had gone through the apartment where he’d lived the last ten years of his life. He owned nothing of real value and very little of sentimental value. She kept the old Timex watch he’d worn his whole adult life and the few pictures she’d found, folded together with his birth certificate and hers. In the stack, too, was a single picture of a couple who had to have been his parents. The edges were frayed, the background silvering. She didn’t re
call having seen the picture before, but she saw her father in his father and perhaps a bit of herself in her grandmother.
The other photographs were familiar ones, most of them taken at the firehouse. They never had a camera in the house, so whatever pictures were taken at the weekly station dinners or the few holiday events each year were the only ones that existed of her as a kid.
This box had been in the closet of the small office he used as a den. While she had brought it home, she couldn’t bring herself to open it. Only now did she cross to the closet, carrying the small pair of scissors she kept in her bedside drawer. Delicately, she flipped the box and cut through the brown tape, gummy after so many years. Beside her was the Trader Joe’s bag. By the weight of the box and the way the contents shifted when she flipped it upside down, she knew the box wasn’t full. She didn’t need to look at the contents; she would simply put the bag inside.
Lifting the cardboard flaps at the bottom of the box revealed a pink book, maybe ten inches by thirteen. It fit snugly, side-to-side, end-to-end, and she struggled to wedge her fingers in far enough to pry it loose.
With the book loose, she couldn’t help but look. She flipped it over in her lap. On the front was an etching of a little girl in a white nightgown, her feet bare. At the top it read, Baby Girl, and in the bottom right corner her name was etched in gold: Jamie Catherine Vail.
She held the book in her lap, terrified to open it. Her mother had died shortly after Jamie’s second birthday. She had been sick almost a year before. Likely, the book would be empty, something her mother had planned to do but never had the chance. Jamie fingered the edge of the book and ran her palm over the smooth cover.
In the box were three bundles of letters and papers, another book, a small photo album, and a stack of carefully wrapped plates, surrounded by bubble wrap. Why had she never opened this box? She didn’t remember her father ever showing her a photo album. Had he packed all of this up after her mother died? Had it all been hidden away for almost forty years?
With a deep breath, she opened the baby book to the first page and read her name in an unfamiliar script. She ran her fingers across her mother’s handwriting, touched the impression the pen had made on the page. Studied the words: Born May 19, 1975. Six pounds, twelve ounces. Nineteen and a half inches long. Six pounds. That was tiny. Six pounds was about the weight of a police belt without the gun in it. It was the first time she recalled thinking of herself as a tiny human. Somehow, she never considered anything before the motherless three- or four-year-old of her earliest memories. The realization made her miss her father. She hadn’t appreciated how difficult a job he had, taking care of her and living with the grief of losing his wife. Beside her was Z’s mitt. What sort of things would she leave him? What sort of legacy would Z have? The mother pain squeezed in her chest.
Downstairs, the doorbell rang.
The mother pain was replaced by the hot rush of panic. Jamie made room for the Trader Joe’s bag alongside the bundles in the box and laid the pink book back across the top of the pile. Her hands trembled as she folded the flaps in a circle so that the bottom wouldn’t fall open.
“Jamie,” Tony called up. “Vich is here.”
Why would Vich be there? “Coming,” she called out, hurrying to put away the box. It seemed lighter and more fragile. She set it down tenderly and slid it into the back corner, moving her laundry basket in front of it.
“Jamie!” Tony shouted again.
There was a stain on the front of her white blouse. Dark brownish.
It might have been a hundred things.
Blood was the first to come to mind.
But whose blood?
“Jamie. Are you upstairs?” Tony’s voice called from the stairs. “Vich is at the door.”
“I’m coming,” she shouted, grabbing a sweater off the chair and yanking it down over her head before emerging from her bedroom.
Chapter 21
Jamie was surprised to find Vich in the entryway. “What’s the matter? Has something happened to Charlotte?” As soon as the words came out, Jamie found herself studying Z on the stairs.
Her son was wide-eyed, worried. Her chest tightened. Did that mean something?
“No,” Vich assured them. “No change with Charlotte.”
“She’s still in a coma?” Z asked.
“Yeah. What happened to your door?” Vich asked with concern. “You have a break in?”
“Wind blew it shut,” Jamie said.
“Sorry to show up. I tried to call.”
Jamie patted her pants pocket, which was empty, of course. She had no idea where her cell phone was. She’d had it in the car but so much had happened since then.
“I wanted to see how you were,” Vich added. He looked up at Z. “Both of—”
“Vich,” Jamie snapped, cutting him off. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
Tony hadn’t moved. “Jamie?”
“I’ll be right back. Z, go finish your homework.”
Z lumbered back up the stairs. She hoped he would stay in his room. She hoped Tony would wait for her to come back. She needed to be the one to tell him. She should have already done it. Damn it, Vich. She opened the front door carefully, and Vich walked out into the dark.
“I am sorry for coming to your house,” he said as they walked.
“Why did you?”
He stopped then and stared down the driveway before turning back to her.
She was edgy and angry. Back in the house, everything would be unraveling. Maybe not this instant but any time. Tony knew something was up. She waited for an answer and watched Vich’s expression harden. He was angry, too, but why? What right did he have to show up at her house?
“I had news on the case,” he said, through closed teeth.
“You didn’t want to leave it on my voicemail?”
“You don’t listen to your voicemail,” Vich quipped.
She blew out her breath. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah, I heard,” he said flatly. “That’s why I came. Back where I’m from, when your partner’s hurt, you show up.” He started for the car. “So, I showed up. Sue me.”
“Wait.”
“I can update you on Monday.”
It was like a block on her chest. Monday. That was almost three days away. “Vich.”
He turned back, one eyebrow raised.
“Please. I’m sorry, but the shit’s about to hit the fan in there,” she said, motioning to the house. “So, give me the damn news quickly.”
“Matched the paint found in the automotive paint database. It’s factory paint for a Buick Lucerne.”
“What year?”
“Unfortunately, they used the same paint from 2005 to 2011.”
Jamie exhaled. “So, we’re looking for a white Buick Lucerne manufactured sometime between ’05 and ’11. That narrows it down to—what—a quarter million cars?” She wanted to sit down but hers wasn’t the kind of yard to have a bench or a little bistro table, so she sat down at the end of the walkway. “Why don’t these guys ever drive custom paint jobs?”
Vich walked back. “It’s not that bad. Three hundred twelve thousand Buick Lucernes manufactured and sold in America in that time. Eight colors. That narrows it down to maybe fifty or sixty thousand.”
“Sixty thousand?” she balked. “Like that helps. Did we run a DMV search for white Lucernes in the San Francisco Bay Area?”
“We did,” Vich said, emphasizing the word “we.” “Got twenty-four hundred eighty-seven hits.”
Jamie said nothing.
“But none belonging to Michael Delman, the Bordens, or the second victim, Dwight Stewart.” Vich paused a beat. “I assumed that was your next question.”
“It was.”
“Also, Sondra’s alibi doesn’t check out,” Vich said.
“Really? She said she was at some opera meeting. They were working on a fundraiser.”
Vich shook his head. “She wasn’t there. I met the director, Helene
Remy, and her assistant. Sondra had a meeting scheduled with them during that time, but she called ahead to cancel. She was supposed to call back to reschedule, but then there was the attack…”
Jamie needed to go back inside and talk to Tony. She started to push herself up when Vich reached a hand down. She accepted his hand and let him pull her up. “Why lie?”
“Don’t know. Maybe we should go by and ask her.”
Jamie brushed off the seat of her pants. “I can do it. I plan on going into the station tomorrow morning, getting caught up.”
“What time? I’ll meet you there.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday, Vich.”
“I don’t take many weekends off, and I’m sure as hell not taking the weekend off on this one,” he said firmly.
She nodded slowly.
“You can text me in the morning.” He started to walk away. “Oh, I almost forgot the strangest bit.”
“What’s that?”
“The lab found an off-label tracking device on the Mercedes,” he said.
“A tracking device on the car?”
“Yep. It was under the driver’s side wheel well.”
“Did they find any prints?”
“No.”
“You think someone was watching them?” she asked.
“Maybe but not necessarily. Sydney thought it was possible that the Bordens or their people put it there for security. I guess that’s something wealthy people do in case of a carjacking, especially if the daughter is driving the car. The lab’s running a search on the serial number to see if they can determine where it came from.”
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