Flame Out

by M. P. Cooley

  “And to closing your last case!”

  Dad clinked his glass against mine. I curled into the corner of the couch closest to Dad’s recliner, tucking my feet under me. My toes were chilled, but asking to start a fire would be admitting winter hadn’t left. People were wearing shorts—wishful thinking in fifty-degree weather—but after the winter we’d had, I could see where they might want to will summer into being.

  We settled into a comfortable silence, and I let Dad enjoy the moment. The TV was muted, but out of the corner of my eye I could see a commercial for the ten o’clock news, and a picture of Luisa and Bernie Lawler flashed on the screen, along with their son, Teddy. They’d probably had the portrait taken at Olan Mills: Bernie and Luisa in the forefront, Luisa perched on a stool wearing a corduroy jumper, Bernie standing behind her, arms wrapped around her waist, and in the corner, the silhouette of a young boy, his smile revealing a perfect line of baby teeth. My family had a similar photo, my shadow self beatific in a soft, hazy glow, an image with no resemblance to my personality. My parents had even gotten me into a dress.

  Fair-haired like his father, Teddy had his mother’s eyes, pale green, almost gray. I couldn’t hear their announcements, but a scroll line read across the bottom said “Mystery solved!”

  My dad broke the silence. “Did they find the boy?”

  I shook my head no. “They’re still opening bins,” I said. “They’re keeping an eye out.”

  “Teddy was such a little guy,” he said. “There’s probably not much left of him now. Luisa was a slip of a thing who tried hard to fade into the background, keeping the focus on her husband. That worked out fine for both of them: Bernie was an attention hog.”

  Dad settled into his story, describing how Luisa had come from some money. Her father, Stephen Harris, ran the family clothing-manufacturing business. The company was founded as a collar manufacturer in the 1800s, back when washing a whole shirt was a time-consuming chore. Each generation renamed it depending on what was in fashion—girdles were big in the fifties—before Bernie took it over and started manufacturing kids’ pajamas, crib sets, and bath towels.

  “He had his little empire and wanted the high-status lifestyle. A nice girl like Luisa didn’t fit in with his plan.”

  “When did you figure out he did it?”

  “I had some doubts about his guilt at first. They disappeared quick. A bunch of girls went missing at the time, young and pretty, and I was worried that we had some sort of serial killer on our hands. But most of those young women showed up alive. They just took off for a better life somewhere far from here.”

  “Like Dave’s mom.”

  “Exactly. We got a conviction for Luisa because of the stories everyone repeated. Natalya Batko, their housekeeper, told me how Bernie shut Luisa in the house, cut her off from her friends and family. Even Sheila”—he took a deep breath after saying my mother’s name—“said Bernie forbade Luisa from doing her hospital volunteer work. Of course your mother kept using the word ‘patriarchy,’ so I didn’t listen much.”

  He reached for the bottle of Bushmills and poured himself a fingerful. “Anyway, the chatter about what a sleazeball he was, the blood all over the basement, and those bloody handprints in the trunk of his car like Luisa had tried, tried . . .” He paused, gulping down the whiskey. When he placed the glass down his eyes were bright with unshed tears. He cleared his throat twice and continued.

  “So there was the stories about Bernie, the blood evidence in the basement, and bloody handprints in the trunk that looked like Luisa had tried to claw her way out, well, that finally convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt. Luisa’s mother, Elda, was a woman on a mission from the get-go.” He frowned. “I think she felt guilty.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I got the impression that she and her husband pushed Luisa into the marriage. Luisa’s dad was struggling to keep the factory afloat.” My dad sat back on his chair, relaxing into the story. “No one could figure out why Bernie bought it. He was such a smooth operator, working some excellent real estate deals, and here he picks up the Sleep-Tite factory, which even I knew was a few years away from death. Rumor had it he took on the business because Elda promised him Luisa if he took Sleep-Tite off their hands.”

  “Elda sold her daughter?”

  My father nodded. “More or less. Most of Elda’s fury was at herself. Families of murder victims have a certain amount of anger mixed in with their grief, but she was off the charts.”

  I’d lost my husband to cancer, and the sadness almost got washed away by the rage that came over me every day for the first year. I can’t imagine what I would have done had he been murdered.

  “I mean, there’s nothing worse than losing a child. Elda, though, she took it to another level. She sued for the business and ran it into the ground . . .”

  “That’s true?” I said.

  My father nodded.

  “She salt the earth, too?”

  “She would if she could. She put countless people out of work, ruined people’s livelihoods, put another nail in Hopewell Falls’s coffin all because she couldn’t live with herself. She could’ve sold the business—Bernie got the place making money, and buyers were interested. Hell, just the land. Dan Jaleda? Big developer guy? He’s been trying to get the land for condos for at least ten years. And before that some investors made an offer to Elda, a group put together by Bernie’s brother, the judge.”

  “Judge . . .”

  “Medved.”

  I knew Judge Medved, although he had retired before I started testifying in local cases. Leaving aside the different last names, he and Bernie had to be almost twenty years apart in age, but Dad was eager to explain. He was the world’s leading expert on Bernie Lawler.

  “Judge Medved’s father died back in Ukraine during the war. A decade later, the Medveds are settled out on the Island, a couple of blocks from where Dave lives now, and his mother married a man named Lawler. It came up at trial that Bernie’s dad liked to get loaded and belt his kids, beat Bernie and his sister Deirdre every day. At the trial, Judge Medved talked about how Bernie was like a son to him, but behind the scenes he was encouraging the DA to indict. Hardly brotherly love.”

  “That seems . . . odd.”

  “Well, the crime horrified even him. The Ukrainians, they didn’t really trust cops since they equated them with the SS or Stalin’s secret police or whatever showed up in the night to kill them, but they came forward in droves on this one. It was the little kid . . .” The TV caught Dad’s attention, promos for the newscast set to start in a few minutes. “Dave’s Aunt Natalya was more than just a housekeeper to Bernie and Luisa, she loved Luisa like a daughter, but even then it took me weeks of coaxing her before she finally agreed to testify. It was like the Wild West over there.”

  I thought of Dave, who talked about the Island as if it were an isolated outpost. Perhaps for him it was.

  “Anyway, if the judge wouldn’t even fight for him, Bernie must’ve been dirty.”

  Dad unmuted the TV, signaling that our conversation was over. A trumpet flourish blared, making the newscast sound grand.

  “Lower the sound a touch?” I said. I pointed upstairs. “Lucy.”

  He dropped the volume. I watched along with him for the first fifteen minutes, deciding to go to bed before the sports and weather.

  “You coming?” I asked. My dad usually woke at five, and he was up way past his bedtime.

  “I’m going to watch the eleven o’clock report, but you go get some sleep. You’ve got to finish this once and for all for me, and Luisa, and Ted.”

  I touched his arm as I went to the kitchen to wash out the Waterford crystal. I hoped we’d find Ted’s body soon and would have another reason to break out the good glasses and close the case file.

  I WOKE UP TO THE SOUND OF MY FATHER’S VOICE, SPEAKING softly in the kitchen. I crept downstairs. He was showered and wearing different clothes, but I couldn’t tell if he’d slept or not.

 
; “Gotta go,” he said. He stopped speaking when he saw me. “Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . take care . . . bye.”

  I poured myself some coffee. “Who was that?”

  “Your mom.”

  “Interesting. How often do these little chats happen?”

  “I don’t note it on my calendar,” he said. “When there’s news. When something big happens.”

  I hadn’t seen my mother for three years, at Kevin’s funeral. I spent most of my teen years resenting her for leaving my dad after she claimed he was too caught up in his job. I stopped visitation. My father tried to force me, and my sister tried to guilt me into it, but my mother took the faux Zen approach: “She’ll come back when she’s ready.” I added her attitude to the list of things to be mad about.

  But in my late teens I softened. I didn’t jump to reunite, mostly because I didn’t want to admit my mother was right, but slowly we reconnected. I responded to her e-mails, and called to thank her for the grocery money she sent me in college. I visited for a couple of weeks on a college break and, to my amazement, almost had a good time. I had to make sure I didn’t trip over Mom’s crystal collection and I escaped outside for a break from the incense, but I began enjoying her for who she was. I even liked her “soul mate” Larry, who teased my mother while at the same time hanging up her wind chimes to “restore the chi in the guest bathroom.” I invited them to my wedding, and encouraged her to visit for a long weekend a few months after Lucy was born.

  When Kevin got sick, I thanked my Mom for the CDs on positive visualizations and the selenium she sent to help fight the free radicals in Kevin’s body. She came from Florida to cheer us up. She did, unintentionally, as Kevin laughed himself to coughing after she gave “healing blue light” to his midsection, where his cancer was slowly crowding out his vital organs.

  She swept into Kevin’s funeral wearing muted linen earth tones, her hair twisted into a bun.

  “You lost him long ago,” she said to me in the mourning line. “I hope you can see how the universe needed to carry him home.”

  Stunned, I didn’t say anything, focusing on the next mourner, Mrs. MacNeil. I took her condolences—“So terrible. Much too young.”—and averted my eyes as my mother floated her hands above Kevin’s dead body, “aiding him on his path into the next realm.” Later, at the house, my mother explained how I shouldn’t get caught up in the “negative energy” of Kevin’s death, and how bad feelings would attract more bad feelings. I exploded.

  “Please stop,” I shouted, and the house, crowded with mourners, went still. “Can you for once think of how what you do, what you say, affects anyone but yourself?! You’re always so selfish, caught up in your own crackpot ideas, you never once stop to consider what anyone other than yourself might need.”

  “You’re speaking from a dark place. Your energy—”

  “Shut. Up,” I said. “I need you gone. Now.”

  My sister dragged her out of there, shooting judgmental glances at me over her shoulder. Over the last few years I’ve responded to Mom’s e-mails briefly or not at all, and ignored all her invitations for me and Lucy to visit in Florida.

  I didn’t expect her and my dad to be buddy-buddy. “How was your chat?”

  “Good,” Dad said. I could see him struggle with whether to continue this conversation or not. I tried not to frown, and he continued. “She and Luisa were good friends, and she was happy Luisa’s at peace. She said she’d make an offering at the temple later.”

  “She’s Jewish these days?”

  “Hindu.”

  I changed the subject. “You OK . . . with finding Luisa after all these years?”

  He changed it back. “Your mom’s planning a visit soon.”

  My father and I could both ignore the conversation. I waved at the door. “Gotta go.”

  I picked up Dave, and we drove over to visit our burn victim. We didn’t stay long, as she was still unconscious and the smell in her room was almost intolerable.

  “It’s the dead skin,” her nurse, Gayle, said. “And the open wounds. We’re excising the burned tissue, but it’s slow going, and it will be another three weeks, at the earliest, before we can do a skin graft. We’ve applied Silvadene and a xenograft—”

  “Xenograft?” I asked.

  “Pig skin,” she said. I couldn’t hide my revulsion. “Some burn centers utilize human cadaver skin. But pigs are readily available, have organs of similar size to humans, and don’t transmit infections to humans very easily. They’re perfect.”

  Dave and I were afraid of what else we might find out if we stayed, so we returned to the station, both of us agreeing we could skip lunch today. On our way, we passed the factory ruins. Six media trucks were parked out front, their transmitters sticking up like insect antennae.

  “Traffic control and toxins down here today,” Dave said. “Wonder what’s waiting for us at the station?”

  As I entered, I could hear Lorraine’s voice bouncing off the walls of the empty room. The station’s interior had been painted beige in 1990, the layer of spiderwebs in the corners deepening the shadows of an already gloomy room. I turned the corner to find Lorraine talking to Hale.

  Hale wore one of his black suits. No longer required for agents, but as Hale admitted, “I look so nice.” His good looks defied fluorescents, his skin golden, his green eyes sharp and bright.

  Hale twisted around in the wooden chair he was sitting in, a huge grin on his face “Y’all are going to love me.”

  “Aw, G-man, we already do,” Dave said. “Found us something good?”

  “We got a line on your burn victim. Those plates on the van . . .”

  The front door crashed open, and Annie Lin walked in.

  “I called,” Annie yelled over her shoulder. “The chief’s expecting me.”

  Lorraine reached for her phone. “Let me . . .”

  Annie didn’t wait, racing across the squad room. She skidded to a halt when she saw us but then continued barreling toward the chief’s office.

  “Going to ignore us, Annie?” Dave called. “What about our deep and abiding friendship?”

  Annie threw her shoulders back, steeling herself for war, and I braced myself for the comeback. Annie was more than capable of dishing it out, and fortunately she could take it, but nothing came, not even “shut up,” which Annie used in place of hello and good-bye. Chief Donnelly opened his door.

  “Ms. Lin,” he said. “I appreciate you coming down here personally.”

  “Of course.” She sounded sweet and respectful as she stepped inside his office. “This is important.”

  The door shut. We talked about the van found with the burned woman—Hale’s big news was that he’d tracked down the partial plate to a Carfast rental agency, a regional outfit covering the southwestern United States—but none of us were completely engaged. We were all wondering what, exactly, Chief Donnelly and Annie were talking about.

  Donnelly’s door swung open. Annie bolted out of the office as fast as she had entered, leaving the chief hanging in the doorway.

  “Detective,” Donnelly said. He waved to Dave. “Can you join me?”

  Dave raised an eyebrow to us before jogging over. He blew a kiss to Annie. “Hope you brought me a good one.”

  The door closed again. Hale spoke rapidly. “June, I think I came up with a compromise we can both live with. What if you consult for a very short time? We could make arrangements for you to continue on the Hopewell Falls police force.”

  I ignored Hale and instead watched Annie, who had her eyes glued to the door.

  Hale continued. “Let me talk to Donnelly . . .”

  Annie was listening for something. Hardheaded and harsh, she had great instincts.

  “Be quiet,” I told Hale, and he was.

  A crash came from the chief’s office, and I stood, unsure whether I should go in. I walked over to Annie, placing myself directly in front of her. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Annie?” I asked. Hale paced, his head
cocked to one side, listening for another crash, a shout, a murmur. Lorraine stood at her desk, her ringing phone forgotten.

  “Annie,” I said, “I’m going to find out in a second what you told the chief. Give me a clue. What am I walking into?”

  She looked left and then right, mapping a route of escape. Finally, she spoke.

  “His mom.” She didn’t meet my eyes. “Dave’s mom was in the barrel.”

  The chief opened his door. Behind him Dave slumped over a desk, its contents a jumble on the floor.

  “Lyons, can you come in here?”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE RING,” THE CHIEF SAID, HANDING AROUND A PHOTO. THE gold ring was tarnished almost black, but the words “Ваш завжди” etched inside were still visible.

  “Yours, forever,” Dave said. I felt his shoulders tense and then relax under my hand. “That’s what it means.”

  Donnelly continued. “So when Annie searched the missing persons files, Vera Batko’s contained the note . . .”

  “You found the report I filed,” Dave said, “when I was twelve?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a notebook and pencil, taking notes, more comfortable in cop mode.

  “Annie did.” Donnelly tried to pull Annie into the center of the conversation, but she kept her position against the wall. “The clothing didn’t match—the original report listed her clothes as blue canvas work coveralls, and you saw her dress: shiny, red, polyester—”

  “The manufacturer who made the dress went out of business in 1983.” Annie marched into the center of the group. “The ring, though. Taras Batko—”

  “My father.”

  “Yes, in your father’s statement he says he purchased the ring for Vera. Your mom.” Annie moved around the room during the discussion, going from the window to the corner to the doorway, before she bumped into Hale and pinballed back. “It’s not certain. Give me some DNA and I can—”

  “It’s her,” Dave said. He finished writing a sentence. “I mean sure, go ahead, let’s get the final evidence. But here, I know”—he touched his chest. “It’s her. I just wish my father were still alive. He never had any peace.” He tucked his notebook back into his pocket. “If it’s not going to create a hassle, I’d like to tell my brother. Lucas is not going to take it . . . you know, I have no idea how he’ll take it. He may dance with joy.” Dave tapped the back of my hand. “You’ll come, right?”