Jamie took a step toward him. With everything that had happened at the school, she’d forgotten that Vich had actually been working the case all day. “Did you meet with Charlotte’s friends?”
“All but one,” Vich said. “Nothing to report from them. Nothing’s come back on the Bordens or Bishops. No shady business deals, no disgruntled employees. It looks like they run a clean business.”
Jamie considered making a lawyer joke but couldn’t muster the energy. “And the kids at CA?”
“Clean. Teachers, the administration, her friends—everyone confirms that Charlotte was well liked.”
“What about jealousy? Some sort of girl rivalry? No bitchy gossip about a secret boyfriend?” Jamie asked.
“Nothing.”
“There has to be something.”
“We’ll brainstorm more tomorrow,” Vich said. “Tonight, you’d better get back inside and give Tony the news about today.”
Vich knew she hadn’t told Tony, which meant Tony knew something was up. “Thanks, Vich.”
He rounded his car and gave her a short, straight wave almost like a salute. “No problem, partner.”
“Sorry if I was—”
“Enough said,” he interrupted. He opened the car door and slid into the driver’s seat before she could say anything else.
Chapter 22
It had been a relief to see Dwight Stewart’s obit in the paper. The kind of relief that washed down your back like diving into cool water when it was hot. Done. The little girl didn’t matter one way or another. Part of him hoped she’d make it, of course. He wasn’t a monster, but she was irrelevant. She didn’t know him from Adam. But Dwight Stewart. Old Man Stewart, that was a hell of a coincidence.
He was as drunk as always, but even falling down drunk he had an eye for trouble. How many times had Old Man Stewart called them out when they were kids? His eyes half closed from drink, his head tilted at an angle that looked almost unbearable on his neck, he’d raise the hand that wasn’t clasping tightly to the neck of some bottle. “You—I know you…”
He’d shake his finger at them and they’d run away shrieking and making fun of him but scared shitless all the same.
What they feared wasn’t Stewart himself, who was mostly too drunk to matter much. And not the kind of mean drunk that many of the men—his father included—turned into most Friday nights. The fear of Old Man Stewart was that he was tight with Herman Childers.
Back in the day, Childers ran the local gangs. Grown-up gangs, professionals. Not a bunch of kids running around, like they did today. Gangs that squeezed businesses into paying for protection, skimmed profits with threats. Gangs with guys who weighed as much as a small car and were all too happy to make good on the threats. Those gangs kept everyone under their thumb.
Old Man Stewart used to hand Childers the names of the punk kids who needed a little straightening out. Amos Barton got straightened out by Childers. He remembered Barton well. A big kid, Barton was as mean as he was dumb, which was very. Barton took what he wanted from anyone smaller than him, which was everyone. One day, Barton wandered into a convenience store just outside their neighborhood. Place was owned by an angry Chinese man who used to rant at them. Never understood a word the guy said. Well, whatever Barton was buying, he came up short on cash. When the owner didn’t let Barton slide on the change, Barton took it anyway, leaving the owner with a black eye for the trouble. The place also happened to be where Stewart picked up his daily supply of malt liquor. When he heard what happened, he called Childers.
Next night, Barton was attacked a few blocks from home, thoroughly beat up and left for dead. As a result of the assault, Barton suffered a stroke that left the right side of his body limp and useless. He and Barton hung out some as kids, so he was pretty sure that Old Man Stewart would recognize him. No use risking that.
It felt like the world was smiling on him a little. After all, he didn’t get the newspaper delivered, but he had wanted to see today’s paper. Stewart had been on his mind. He’d wanted to search for the story, call the local hospitals, but he’d seen how these things went down. Anything he did on a computer—even a public one—they’d trace it to him somehow, so he had laid low and waited.
Then, that paper was lying on the table where he’d sat down, a nice neat stack to read while he ate fried eggs and hash browns, coffee with creamer—not milk—and sugar. The stress had been getting to him a little. He could tell by the food he was craving, but that wasn’t evidence compelling enough to make a case. They could watch him and lean on him all they wanted. They were watching, he was sure of that. He knew the game and he played along. Did everything way out in the open. Made himself visible. People who were afraid hid. He would not let them see any fear.
He parked his car right in front of the diner. Set his phone on the table and ordered his breakfast. Ate exactly what he wanted. Dessert came in the form of an obituary. The paper was sitting on that table, waiting for him. He opened to the obits, skimmed them quickly. Didn’t stop to read when he noticed Stewart’s name. He was dead. What else was there to know? He certainly didn’t care who Stewart left behind.
Now, Delman, too, had been taken care of, another piece of the mess that was tidied. That left one more connection between him and all this and he could leave it behind. Aside from Charlotte, of course. Time would tell on that one. Every day, it felt a little less urgent. The security around her would loosen. Access to her hospital room would be easier.
If nothing changed, one day he would walk in, sit by her bed like he belonged there. While he told her to have a long, restful trip to heaven—because girls like Charlotte had to go to heaven—he would insert the tip of a syringe into the IV tube and fill it with air.
Chapter 23
“The bomb went off at the school?” Tony asked again as they sat together in the kitchen. It was the third time he’d asked almost the identical question. She was ready for bed, exhausted, but neither of them would sleep until he’d had time to process what had happened. What it meant. Not that she knew.
This was the time to bring up the mitt, but she kept it to herself. It was the wrong decision; she knew that almost immediately. Tony was her partner. In everything related to Z, she had always been totally honest with him.
This was different. This wasn’t something they could solve. She wished she didn’t know about that mitt. She couldn’t answer the questions Tony would inevitably ask if she told him the whole story. Questions about what it might mean. If Z had been the one… If he was capable of throwing Charlotte down the stairs and keeping it a secret. Or of watching her fall and keeping it a secret.
No, she was sticking with her decision. Until she understood how that blood had gotten on that mitt, how the impression had gotten on Sondra’s Mercedes, how all of that could fit together in a way that left Z as the strong, morally centered boy they had raised. Until then, that mitt remained a secret. She had the desire to vomit again.
With every passing minute, she was acting more outside the law. There was no going back from hiding evidence. She was a mother first. A mother, and then a cop.
“What reason would someone have for planting a bomb at City Academy?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything from the lab or the—” She started to say “homicide” but caught herself. “And I haven’t heard from Hailey either.”
“Well, you know a lot more than I do, considering I don’t know anything,” he said, eyeing her. “There’s something you’re not saying.” His face grew red when he was angry. Irish red as it was now. “So, why don’t you tell me what you do know?”
“I don’t know the motive behind the bombing, although it may have been to camouflage a murder.”
“Murder? Someone was murdered at Z’s school and this is the first I’m hearing about it?” He pushed his coffee cup away. He hadn’t taken a single sip; small wisps of steam billowed into the air.
“Shh,” she hissed.
“Someone
planted a bomb at a high school to cover a murder? Damn, Jamie, I thought we had him at some prestigious school. Now it sounds like Columbine.”
Before he could ask, she delivered the second piece of news. “The man who died—who was killed—was Michael Delman.”
Tony’s breath came out like air from a tire’s broken valve—a fast, hard hiss.
“He’s been visiting Z at school.”
He stood, knocking the chair onto its back, and slapped the counter. “Jesus Christ, Jamie.”
Before she could stop him, Tony sprinted up the stairs and marched into Z’s room. Jamie entered as Tony was forcing Z out of bed. Z was half asleep as Tony inspected him head to foot.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” Z said.
Tony grabbed his son’s face and ran his hand across it.
Z pulled away. “I’m fine. Jamie pushed me out of the way.” He sank back onto his bed and let his head fall into his hands.
“Why didn’t you tell us that your father had come to talk to you?”
Z didn’t answer Tony either.
Tony, too, seemed distraught by the news that Z’s father had come back in his life.
“I need sleep,” Z said. He flopped onto his front, his feet hanging over the end, and yanked the covers over his head. He grunted something about the light, which Jamie shut off.
“I can’t believe he’s been seeing his dad,” Tony said in the dark.
One more reason she couldn’t tell him about the mitt. Tony would have insisted they confront Z, and Jamie was too terrified that he would lie. Or that they would prove he was involved. If they had proof, irrefutable proof, she would have to turn the mitt in. Did she have it in her to destroy evidence?
Even for Z, she didn’t know if she could do that. If Tony knew the truth and they confronted Z, she might actually learn that Z was the one who pushed Charlotte. She couldn’t stomach the idea. The part of her that knew it might be him warred with the part that prayed it wasn’t. She refused to voice the possibility because to let those words out was to allow that doubt to overtake her hopes that somehow Z had nothing to do with any of it.
In the kitchen, Tony put his coffee mug in the microwave for something to do. She didn’t tell him it was steaming. While it heated, Tony stared at the machine. When he finally looked up, he asked, “How did he take it?”
“What?”
“Delman’s death.”
Z’s words were still in her head. I don’t ever want to leave you, Z had said, clinging to her though he had thirty or forty pounds on her. Tony’s eyes looked heavy as though his furrowed brow created weight that pulled them down. “He took it hard.”
Tony retrieved his coffee, burning himself on the mug before using a dishtowel to set it by his place at the counter. He righted the stool and sat down. “Why would someone kill Delman at City Academy? What was he doing there?”
“I don’t have any answers, Tony. All I’ve got are more questions.”
“Should we be handling funeral arrangements?” Tony asked.
“No.”
“He was Z’s father, Jamie.”
“Was,” she said. “He gave up that right when he went to prison for the third time and abandoned him.”
“At the very least, we should sit down together, the three of us, and talk about it,” Tony said.
He was right, of course. Talking was exactly what they needed to do. She hated that Tony didn’t know everything. Z was their child. He deserved to know and yet… all she kept thinking about was what might happen. Would Tony insist she enter the mitt into evidence? Or would he urge her to destroy it? Would he insist Ohio was their only option? Every possibility was terrifying. She didn’t want him to condone that she’d hidden evidence, but she also wasn’t prepared to turn it in. And she did not want to have to move to Ohio.
“Do we know how long they’ve been talking?” he asked, pulling her back from her own thoughts.
She shook her head.
“How about his cell phone records? Have you checked those?”
“I checked them earlier tonight. As of the end of the last billing cycle, there are no calls to a number listed to Delman or to any burner phone.”
“When did the cycle end?”
“Fourteen days ago.”
“So this all started in the last two weeks,” Tony said. It wasn’t a question, so Jamie didn’t answer.
Sometime later, the brakes on the newspaper deliveryman’s Corolla squeaked in the driveway. He always delivered the paper between midnight and 1:00, which meant it was late. Jamie went out in her bare feet to get the paper, opening it as she made her way back inside.
Sure enough, the story made the front page. MAN KILLED IN BOMBING AT PRESTIGIOUS HIGH SCHOOL. Delman was named, so the notification had been made—to Delman’s sister, Tanya, she assumed. She wasn’t aware that Delman had other family. She would go on to read the article six or seven times. She and Tony read it through three or four times that night, sitting side by side at the kitchen counter.
There was no mention of her or Z or the other kids who were present. It wouldn’t take the press long to link Michael Delman and Z. A few years back, Z had talked about changing his last name. To Galen or Vail, or some hyphenated version of the two. Jamie had never felt a close affinity for her name, which represented a ritzy ski town she would never visit. Tony had his own mixed emotions about his parents and heritage. Neither of them had offered any compelling case to Z for changing his name.
Now, it was stupidly obvious that he would have been better off with a new name. Especially living in the Bay Area, there was always a chance that Z’s relation to Michael Delman, and Michael’s long record, would sneak up on them. But Michael Delman was not front-page news. He was not a vicious killer or a sophisticated criminal mastermind. He was an average thief, a thug, a low-rent hustler, so how could she have imagined that his image would end up above the fold?
It was getting close to 2:00 a.m. “I have to go into the city to meet Vich early tomorrow. Z has to be at the school at 3:00 for practice before the game. I might make it back in time to take him…”
“I’ll take him,” Tony said.
“Are you going to the game?”
“Yes. Definitely. You?”
She nodded.
“Maybe we can go get something to eat afterward,” Tony suggested. “I can’t be out too late. I’ve got an early flight.”
“Flight?”
Tony huffed. “I leave Sunday at 10:00 for Cincinnati. You’re taking me to the airport, remember? I need to be there by 8:00.”
Jamie hesitated a moment too long.
“It’s been on the calendar for three months, Jamie. I can see it in bold print from here.” He pointed to the family calendar that hung on a corkboard at the edge of the kitchen. In his print were the words “Ohio House Hunt Trip” across a whole line midmonth. There had been talk, at one time, of them all going. Talk from Tony, that is.
“It snuck up on me,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was this week.”
“Should I cancel?”
“No.” Slowly, calmly. Not emphatic, she knew exactly how Tony would react if she made it obvious that nothing appealed to her more than his absence. She didn’t want to add to the hurt already there, but she would have taken an overnight at this point. Three whole nights to sort this all out was a gift from God. “We’ll be okay, T.”
He watched her. “If I don’t see you in the morning, I’ll meet you at the field?”
“Yes. I’ll be there.” She motioned up the stairs to where Z’s door was closed. “Probably best to let him sleep in, after everything…”
Tony glanced up at the closed bedroom door but said nothing.
Her head was full of things she didn’t want Tony to ask Z. Since the announcement about his new job, she’d been easing him out of their lives, while he was right there. Already she’d shut down so much of the input he had on raising Z. She watched him stare down at the cup of coffee, will
ing herself to make some offering.
When his chin lifted, though, his expression was changed. His eyes were narrow, darker. His shoulders rose and pulled back. “Z needs this move more than ever.”
This move. As though moving to Ohio had ever been a possibility. Jamie folded the paper neatly and tucked it under her arms as she headed toward the stairs.
“I’ll fight for this, Jamie.”
She wasn’t having this argument. He had no legal recourse. She was Z’s mother, his guardian. Only her. Tony hadn’t been on the papers. Yes, he was Z’s father, and he was important to Z and to her. But he was only that because Jamie had let him.
“I’ll petition the court for guardianship,” Tony went on, gathering steam as his words came faster. He had the same snarling tone when he’d been drinking, but he was sober now. “I can offer him something in Ohio that you can’t.”
The words stung. She fought to calm herself. Her son was sleeping upstairs. Tony was hurt, worried, angry. This was how he handled it.
“I’m telling you,” he went on. “I’ll fight with everything I have.”
She lost to the urge, swung around.
He wanted her attention and he had it. “A good school, new friends, away from his father’s murder. A stable home with a new start.”
Jamie took a deep breath. “Ohio would offer him a fresh start, Tony. I won’t argue with that.” She hoped he would drop it. Not tonight. Let’s not do this tonight.
“You don’t think I can win.”
She walked toward the stairs.
“You underestimate me. You always have.”
“No,” she said slowly. “I know the judicial system. With your record, there isn’t a judge out there who would rule you more stable than me.”
Tony said nothing. Jamie hated herself as she walked up the stairs and closed herself into the darkness of her bedroom.
Chapter 24
It was midmorning on Saturday, the morgue quiet, as Schwartzman ran the Stryker saw in a straight line diagonally from Michael Delman’s right shoulder down through his sternum. Next, she did the same on his left.
Everything to Lose Page 16