Flame Out

by M. P. Cooley

  Here, Vera topped the evidence tree, the picture of her in the green dress, smoking and hollowed out, the point from which everything else flowed. The lines of tape shot down in four threads, with pictures of the factory, Dave’s childhood home, Jake’s bar, and Bernie’s house posted midway on the wall. From there the four lines snaked together and broke apart, crisscrossing awkwardly, with visible gaps where the tape had been ripped off the wall and repatched, the layers creating a thick broken line that converged on one suspect: Bernie.

  Below Bernie were different pictures of Vera, dead and decaying: curled in the barrel; small and shriveled on an autopsy table; a close-up of her mouth, decomposed skin exposing a row of perfect teeth; and skull fragments lined up on white background, clumps of black hair clinging to the bone. Autopsy photos.

  I furiously ripped the autopsy pictures off the wall, tearing them in the process, but I didn’t care. Dave shouldn’t have these, Dave should never have seen these, and when I found out who had given them to him, I would do anything within my power to have them fired.

  I balled the pictures up and continued to the living room where I found Dave on the couch, passed out in sweats and an old Yankee shirt. The TV was on mute, light bouncing off his skin, the screen showing Paul Newman eating fifty eggs.

  “Dave!” I yelled. He sat up suddenly, squinting despite the low light.

  “Lyons. Hey.” He rubbed his head, his curls flat and dirty, heavy with oil, and smiled up at me. “Whatcha got there?”

  “What does it look like?” I wanted to throw them at him but was afraid he would unwrap the pictures, flatten them, and hang them back up. “Where did you get these?”

  Dave pushed himself up into a standing position, faltering briefly before he was steady on his feet.

  “I have my ways.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You’d be surprised how few people can resist my charms.”

  “This isn’t charming, Dave. Did my dad see these?”

  “No. I took them down when I was expecting visitors. Today . . . I was expecting to be alone.”

  “And how long have you had them?”

  “Almost two weeks. You’d know if you ever visited.”

  “How can you say that?!” I was about to list all the things I had been doing to find his mother’s killer when I really looked at him: slumped sideways on the couch, empty cereal dishes and beer bottles clustered on the side table, blocked off on every side by newspaper articles about his mother’s death and the release of the man Dave believed had killed her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You are absolutely right.” I had been trying to be the best friend I could to Dave by finding his mother’s killer, but Dave needed more. I would start by getting him away from that ghoulish mural. “How about you get cleaned up and we go out and get some dinner. Will you slip and smash your head in the shower?”

  “No more than it’s already broken,” he said. “And no need to eat out. Make whatever there’s a pan of in the fridge. Annie’s been dropping off a casserole every other day. She throws out the old food, so we can avoid food poisoning, no problem.”

  “Good to hear,” I said. I wondered if Annie was the source of the gruesome photos. Had Dave put on a sob story, manipulated her into bringing over copies? Annie seemed like the opposite of a soft touch, but Dave had a refrigerator full of food proving otherwise.

  I found a lasagna on the second shelf of his refrigerator, a post-it note taped on all four sides to the aluminum foil: “To heat up, bake in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes, or, if you insist, in a microwave for 3. Take post-it off before you put it in the oven. Eat with a salad.” I pulled out the tub of spring mix I found next to the lasagna. “Dressing is optional.” And then underlined. “Do this instead of drink.”

  I cranked the oven up and put the lasagna in. Upstairs I could hear the shower running for a long time. I worried if he had slipped and fallen, then the pipes went quiet and I heard him pad to the bedroom.

  I went around the house collecting empty beer bottles. Dave’s trash and recycling pickup was the next morning, so I dumped all of them in a barrel and dragged them and the trash out to the curb. When I returned, he was at the kitchen table, freshly shaven and with a glass of water in hand. I applauded his beverage choice.

  “I read Annie’s note and figured I’d try to follow her instructions,” he said. “I owe her big time.”

  I tried to keep things light, but I needed to know where he’d gotten those photos. “How much do you owe her for supplying you with the autopsy photos?”

  “She didn’t supply me with photos from the investigation. I helped myself.” He took three huge gulps of water. “Plus, Lucas wanted to see the pictures.”

  “You showed Lucas?!” I was back to being furious. “Dave, that could destroy the investigation.”

  “I had to. Lucas was ready to jump Bernie outside the courthouse, demanding answers. I had to throw him a bone.”

  A bell pinged, announcing that the lasagna was ready. It was burnt around the edges, but was edible. I served two plates while Dave served himself a vodka tonic.

  “Don’t let Annie find out about that drink.”

  He pointed at his meal. “There’s a dinner plate right here.”

  “I think she was encouraging you to eat instead of drink.”

  Dave shrugged. “Life’s about compromise.”

  He dug in, but the cheese was too hot and he ended up burning his tongue. He blew on it twice and took a gulp of his drink.

  “I’m sorry about the photos, June,” he said.

  I put down my own fork. “I know. And I know why you did it—any feeling person would. That said, I’m going to have someone cut off your access to the system.”

  “But—”

  “This is not negotiable. I’m doing it to keep you safe.”

  The two of us ate in silence for a while. If he had his way, we’d talk exclusively about the case. Me, I wanted to know how he was. I asked.

  He finished chewing his food, swallowing. “To be honest, I have no idea. I feel like Aunt Natalya and I are constantly on alert, waiting for Lucas to blow.” A reasonable fear from what I’d seen this afternoon. He put down his knife and fork. “In a way, it’s a lot like the way my dad was with my mom.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My father, in his whole life with my mother, he never had a moment’s peace. She didn’t like him, and he certainly wasn’t loved. Mom was always telling him about how his love was a burden, and if she hadn’t been foolish enough to get knocked up with Lucas, they would have never been married.”

  “Your father told you that?”

  “Oh, no. Never. But my mother had these conversations loud enough that the whole house could hear them—loud enough that everyone on the Island knew what she said.” Dave took a drink. “So I heard how much of a loser my dad was, and Lucas got to hear, over and over again, how he ruined her life. It fucked him up.”

  I thought the situation had fucked Dave up pretty successfully as well, but I held my tongue.

  “With his wife . . . his wives, Lucas anticipated them leaving, and when they didn’t, he pushed them into it. His last wife, she was patient and she loved him, and his behavior . . . well, I’ll skip the details. You saw the police reports.”

  I was happy when Dave reached for the food again instead of the booze. “You turned out OK.”

  “I got off easy. She tolerated me, and she took off . . . disappeared before I understood how much of a monster she was. And I had my dad. He worked, and he did all the housework, he made sure I was bathed and fed, and then he had to listen to her rage about how no one appreciated everything she did around the house and how we forced her to drink due to our ungratefulness. Today, she’d be diagnosed with something. Back then, we called it misery.” Dave took a sip of water. “And my dad who had been through so much worse, had been through the Nazis, he thought you should be grateful for what life gave you and make the most of it. When Mom went on a tear, he would say, �
��You’re right. I don’t appreciate you enough. Let me take you out to dinner somewhere. Go put on a dress. I want to show you off.’

  “When she would run off, every time my dad told us not to talk bad about her, that she wouldn’t abandon us, ever.” Dave looked me directly in the eye. “That last time, he never once promised she’d return.”

  “Did he act different?”

  “No . . . yes. He got quiet.” Dave tilted his chair back until his shoulders brushed the wall behind him. “I thought he was like me but was afraid to say it.”

  “How’s that?”

  Dave rocked back and forth on his chair and I worried it might shatter under his weight. “I thought maybe he was afraid if he said her name she’d come back, like a witch. That he didn’t work hard to find her because he didn’t want her to come back. So we didn’t search and this,” he waved in the direction of the dining room, “happened.”

  “Dave, you did more than any twelve-year-old could be expected to do.”

  He shook his head. “That was after. Before, I prayed she’d stay away. With her gone, Lucas wasn’t as angry, my dad was less worried, and we could go places without having to be braced for a scene, or braced for a story,” he said. “But then I saw the billboard of Luisa. Once I saw what normal people did, people who loved their relatives, I felt bad. But it wasn’t because I was desperate. It was because I felt guilty that I had wanted her to go away and never come back.”

  “Dave—”

  Dave let his chair drop back onto all four legs. “I’ve had enough for today, Lyons. Why don’t you talk for a while. Tell me about your day. Tell me about your feelings.”

  Dave resisted my efforts to restart the conversation, helped himself to more lasagna, and dug in with fierce gusto. I struggled with what to say. Both cases were untouchable, and the drama with my mother was completely superficial in the face of what he was going through. I decided to tell him about Hale’s apartment.

  “Been there often?” he asked.

  “Just the once.”

  As I described the roof deck and the garage, he ate three-quarters of the pan of lasagna, and I wondered when he had last had a meal.

  “Think Hale would give me the name of his cleaning lady?” He scraped the plate with a fork. “Since she’s got security clearance and all.”

  His phone rang. Not his cell, but his landline, an old rotary phone bolted to the wall.

  “Aunt Natalya’s hotline,” he said, moving around the table. “She prefers wires to wireless.”

  As he talked to her on the phone, he swayed, as if tilting with a breeze. “Haven’t seen him today,” he said.

  “Lucas?” I mouthed, and he nodded.

  “What did he do now, teta?” Dave said, rolling his eyes at me. Natalya must have sensed it.

  “No,” he protested into the phone. “Of course I’m concerned about my brother.” Dave opened the door to the basement, stepped inside, and closed the door. The phone cord forced the door open a crack, allowing me to hear him as he tried to calm his aunt, swinging between explanations and excuses for Lucas’s behavior.

  The basement door opened, and Dave slammed down the receiver. “Judge Medved is over at Natalya’s. Neither of them can find Lucas, so I gotta go be the cavalry.” He pulled a pair of sneakers out of the pile next to the door and shoved his feet into them. He was stuffing his keys into the pocket of his windbreaker when I offered to drive.

  “June, I’m fine.”

  “You’ve had a few. More than a few.” I punched him the in the shoulder. “Make an old lady happy.”

  “Aunt Natalya?”

  “No, me.”

  He snorted and put his keys away.

  We passed Jake’s bar. After today, I was 100 percent sure my membership at Jake’s was canceled. I half wanted to go in there and take Brian into custody, but we didn’t have enough evidence for a warrant to search his house, let alone arrest him.

  The judge was stopped at the corner as we made the turn onto Natalya’s street.

  “Maybe Lucas is home safe,” Dave said. “Maybe you can take me home.” The sun was almost behind the hills, the last gasp before dusk, pink and orange rays streaking through the black sky.

  “Pretty,” Dave said. I put the car in park and looked over at him. He was watching me closely. “Thank you for being here for me, Lyons.”

  “I feel like I haven’t been much of a friend to you.”

  “You are trying to find who killed Mom, and you are the best when it comes to police work.” He smiled. “Whereas you’re a terrible cook.”

  “Yeah, well, Annie’s got that covered. I gotta say, I didn’t realize you two were such good friends.”

  “No one did. Not even me.” He unhooked his seat belt. “I’ll take a certain amount of yelling if it means I have good evidence. And good lasagna. And a good friend.”

  He kissed me on the cheek but wouldn’t make eye contact.

  “You’re planning something stupid, aren’t you?” I said.

  The creak from the car door almost drowned out his response. “Never.”

  “Stay here tonight,” I said, trying to get in a last word before he slammed the door. “Keep an eye on Lucas. Play bridge with your aunt.”

  “She’s more of a chess player.”

  “Even better. The games are much longer.”

  “Goodnight, Lyons.” He shut the car door and jogged up the walk, went into the house, and waved through the window. I fully expected him to leave the moment he saw me drive away. Little did he realize I would be staking out his house.

  I was disappointed to see a white car sitting in the spot on the next corner where I planned to park and do my surveillance. As I drove past the car, preparing to make a U-turn, I peered inside. The Toyota Corolla had someone sitting in the driver’s seat. My father.

  CHAPTER 22

  I HEARD THE “CLICK” OF THE CAR LOCKS WHILE THREE FEET away. Dad kept his eyes trained on the house even as I climbed in and slammed the door. I expected him to acknowledge me, apologize, something. Instead, silence.

  “So,” I said, trying to lead him into conversation. “Keeping an eye on Dave?”

  He didn’t respond. I fished for a response. “Lucas done something?”

  Still nothing. I responded the same way I usually responded to fear: humor.

  “Is it Natalya? Running her drug empire with an iron fist between making dumplings?”

  The front door of Natalya’s house opened, and Dave exited, bouncing down the steps and cutting across the lawn of the house across the street. Off to get into trouble, no doubt. Dad grabbed the door handle, but I stopped him.

  “Dad, answer the question. What are you doing?”

  He kept his eyes on the house. “I need to talk to Natalya alone.”

  “Is Dave in trouble? Lucas?”

  My father clenched his fists and relaxed, his hands trembling in his lap. “I read your notebook while you were asleep.”

  “You what! Jesus, Dad, how—”

  “Natalya was a part of it.”

  “Part of what? Vera’s disappearance?”

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” he said, scanning the street. “The judge had just left when you and Dave arrived. I need to go now.”

  “You’re going nowhere,” I said. “Tell me.”

  Out here there were no streetlights, and I could just barely make out the outline of his profile. Dad opened and closed his mouth twice, until finally he spoke. “Luisa. Natalya helped her disappear.”

  I pulled out my notebook and flipped back to my conversation with Natalya, trying to find something giving away her involvement. Where had he pulled this idea?

  “The Pinto,” he said. “That piece of shit car gave away the whole deal.”

  I flipped forward, to my interview with Theo and Darius, where they described the Pinto, how Luisa had lived in it, how she could never let herself get another car.

  Dad’s bulk kept him from facing me. “That car would blow up on peopl
e, and she wouldn’t let it go? Who does that? Especially with those two kids. I’m betting she knew if anyone ran the numbers, it would pop up as Natalya’s car.”

  I stopped. I didn’t have to read my notes. “Natalya’s Pinto went missing.”

  “Almost four months before Luisa disappeared.”

  “Right around the time Vera was murdered.” I paused. “So, was Natalya involved in Vera’s disappearance? Was Luisa?”

  “I have no idea,” Dad said. “That’s what I wanted to find out.”

  “So you were going to do what? Confront Natalya? Hog-tie her and take her down to the station?” I snapped my notebook shut. “Or were you even going to involve the police? Was this going to be a situation where you were going to work outside of the law?”

  “June, you don’t understand . . .”

  “I understand fine. You crossed a huge ethical line—”

  “I’m not bound by the code of ethics. In case you forgot, I’m retired—”

  “You’re my father!” I shouted. Right at this moment I was glad Natalya lived at the ass end of nowhere with no near neighbors, because this on top of Dave’s stealing the photos of his mother left me apoplectic. “You were the person I wanted to be like more than anything else in the world. I modeled my life and my career after you, and now I have you sneaking around, reading my notebook—”

  “I sent a man to prison for thirty years, June.” He slumped back in his seat. “Can you fathom what that means? Independent of the fact that Deirdre Lawler is probably gearing up to sue me into kingdom come . . . June, all that time I was worried I wasn’t doing right by Luisa, when what I should have been worrying about was destroying Bernie Lawler’s life. I failed him, in every way a cop can fail. And I failed Vera. And you. And everyone.”

  He sat panting. Condensation pooled on the window, fogging out the moon. I tried to think of how I might comfort him, but my solutions were inadequate.

  “Dad, you may have sent Bernie to prison for a murder he didn’t commit, but he’s looking like a suspect in Vera’s murder.”