“When did this start?”
“A little after she moved in. She seemed better lately. Since she started dating Finn.”
“Finn? What kind of name is that?”
“Beats me. Maybe he’s Irish.”
“Finn is the boyfriend?”
“If you can call him that,” she said. “Definitely a boy. Not a man. And a friend, but not much of a boyfriend.”
“Why?”
“Just immature. Doesn’t have much backbone. He’s kinda wimpy. She liked wimpy guys, though. That was Drew.”
“When did she start seeing him?”
“Last summer, I think. Sometime after school started.”
“She meet him at El Centro?”
“At a party. He’s not in school. I’ll give you his number if you want to go see him. He’s out in Arlington.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “Can I see her room?”
“Sure.” She motioned for me to follow her.
The living room was small and sort of dumpy. Decorated in the celebrated and much-copied “early college” style. Unmatched chairs, lumpy couch, simulated wood veneer coffee table. In the corner was a large wire cage with wood shavings in the bottom, the size of a couple of big aquariums. I couldn’t tell if there was an animal inside.
The bedrooms branched off a small hallway. We passed Sharlotta’s room. A twin bed was shoved against one wall, along with a tiny, rickety dresser bursting with bright, multihued clothing. Otherwise, the room was empty of furniture, its walls stark, smudgy white, the overhead lighting dim, yellowy, incandescent. I didn’t even see a bedside lamp. A ballet barre dominated the middle of the room, set on a flat of wood flooring in front of the mirrored closet doors. The doorjambs of both bedroom doors were stuffed with ballet shoes, their pink ribbons dangling down in a little curtain of satin.
“What’s with the ballet shoes?”
“Breaking them in.”
She shoved Drew’s door open, though it wouldn’t open all the way because of the toe shoes, and we stepped into the room.
Drew had painted her room a deep pink. Somewhere between Pepto-Bismol and dead roses. She’d done the woodwork in a dark gunmetal gray. Black chiffon curtains hung across the window, moving a little with the air as we walked into the room. Her furniture was industrial. The dresser and night table were stainless steel, brushed to a rough finish with steel wool or something. Her bedside lamp was made out of a combat boot. The headboard on the double bed was made of plywood, spray-painted with graffiti. It was cool, in an angry, nihilistic sort of way.
On the headboard, slapped on the plywood at an angle, was a small poster that read “Anael Watches,” like an ad you’d see at a construction site or something. Around it were spray-painted crosses and silhouettes of angels. And in the center of the headboard, in black, an ankh.
I walked over to the bed and studied the graffiti, then turned around and looked at Sharlotta, who was watching me closely.
“Know what it means?” she asked.
I shook my head. “You?”
“No clue.”
“These aren’t Jesus commune phrases?”
“I don’t even know what language that is.”
“It’s Hebrew,” I said.
She shrugged.
“What about the watch ad? Did she wear that brand or something?” I asked.
“She didn’t wear a watch.”
I dug in my bag for a notepad and a pen, squinting at the wood to make out the Hebrew characters. I recognized the letters, but my Hebrew was so rusty I had no idea what they meant. I saw several characters for God. And something that started with the Hebrew letter nun, the equivalent of the English N. Possibly. Hebrew Ns look just like Bs and Gs to me. That was the best I could do. After two years of busting rocks in graduate-level Hebrew while I was in seminary, I had plenty of self-mutilation stories to tell. Trouble is, I could tell them only in English. None of the Hebrew stuck.
I finished copying down the characters and moved on to Drew’s desk. She’d made the desk as well, it seemed, out of a door and some file cabinets. She’d laid plywood over the door, but this wood was clean of graffiti.
The desk was littered with pencils (lead and colored), erasers, and sheets of paper with design sketches on them. I picked one up and studied it. The dress was a combination of combat gear and ballet gear. A floaty little skirt not unlike the one Sharlotta was wearing, with a long-sleeved scoop-neck top, black, and a military style green khaki jacket.
“I like this,” I said.
“She was good.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“I saw it coming,” Sharlotta said.
“Saw what?”
“I knew she was going to die.”
“You mean because of who she’d been hanging out with? How she was living?”
“I mean I knew. I know things sometimes. Before they happen. I have, like, a radar.”
I put the drawing down. “Did you know it was going to be murder?”
“I knew it would be violent.”
She didn’t seem like a nutcase or anything. And I have that kind of radar sometimes. That’s how I’d always thought of it. I could always seem to see a little farther down the road. Or around corners. It seems to come and go, at least for me.
“Any feeling about who did it?” I asked.
As she shook her head no, a little furry face poked out from under the bed. I watched its nose wiggle and sniff the air for a second before I realized it was a rabbit. After a few seconds, the bunny hopped over to me and sniffed my foot.
“She hasn’t been out from under that bed since Drew died,” Sharlotta said. “Not even to eat.”
“Can I pet her?”
“Sure. She’s sweet. She won’t bite you.”
I picked her up and held her to my chest. She was warm and soft, her ears lopping over to either side of her face. She sniffed my face and then snuggled in, seemingly content to settle in my arms. I was charmed. And ridiculously flattered.
“What’s her name?”
“Melissa,” she said. “Named after Melissa Auf Der Mauer.”
I tried not to look stupid, since of course I didn’t know who that was.
“Bass player for Courtney Love’s band. Hole?”
One of those bands I was too uncool to know anything about.
“Melissa was Drew’s birthday present from Finn. She’s still a baby. Four months old. Or five.”
“I’ve never seen a red rabbit before. Her hair’s the same color as mine.”
“They’re kinda rare, I think. Drew said, anyway. Do you want her? She likes you.”
“I wouldn’t know how to take care of a rabbit.”
“She’s litter-box trained.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. She uses a litter box just like a cat. She just hops around the apartment most of the time. She’s real sweet. She likes to play outside when it’s warm. But she never runs off.”
I rubbed Melissa’s ear against my face. It was velvet. I could see why all those studies say blood pressure goes down when you hold a pet.
“Her parents haven’t cleaned out her room?” I asked.
“I haven’t heard from them,” she said.
“You’re kidding.”
“They shunned her.”
“Shunned. What is that? That sounds like commune talk.”
“Shunned. Disowned. After the divorce.”
“She was divorced? She was only nineteen.”
“They marry ’em off young at the Jesus commune.”
“You’re not married.”
“I left before my time,” she said flatly.
“When did she get married?”
“Seventeen. He was forty, maybe forty-five. She hated him. She moved in with me right after she left him. That was two years ago.”
“Do the police know about this? I mean, maybe he should be considered a suspect.”
“He died in a car wreck a couple of
months after their divorce.”
“Oh. That’s a pretty good alibi.”
She nodded. “Hard to kill someone when you’re dead already.”
I held Melissa in one hand while I poked around in Drew’s closet, self-conscious at the voyeuristic intimacy of touching someone else’s stuff. I felt myself descend into melancholy as I fingered the sleeves of her T-shirts.
Drew Sturdivant had been a talented, interesting young woman. But broken, it seemed, into little pieces. Pieces shaped like sadness. And anger.
I suspected she’d had some secrets. More than just the ones I knew about. Most people do, of course, and the darker secrets are usually the ones that hurt the most and leave the ugliest scars—the very ones we should never, ever leave ourselves alone with.
I wondered what had happened to her at the Jesus commune and what had happened to her in that marriage. And why she went to work at a filthy strip joint when she had so much else to offer.
I’d seen enough. I followed Sharlotta out of the bedroom and back into the kitchen. Reluctantly, I handed Melissa over to Sharlotta, who put her into her hutch and gave her a carrot. I’d gotten attached to the little rabbit in the few minutes I held her, but I really didn’t need a pet right now. And then there was the little detail that it seemed wrong somehow to adopt a helpless bunny into a demon-possessed home. Peter Terry would take one look at Melissa and stick her in a pot on the stove. Like Glenn Close did in Fatal Attraction. That would be just like him.
Sharlotta bagged me up some apples (“Dead, raw, organic,” she said as she handed them to me), and wrote down Finn’s phone number and address. I thanked her for her hospitality and left her my number as well, then stepped out into the cold air just as my cab arrived.
My sorry luck held. It was the same cabbie. I slid into the backseat, thanked the Almighty Lord of all creation for saddling me with this yahoo again, cranked the window down to let out the fresh pot smoke, and fastened my seat belt for the ride back to my house.
19
I got home to a message from Detective McKnight. Gordon Pryne had been arrested.
I called the number he’d left on my machine.
“Detective. This is Dylan Foster.”
“We bagged him.”
“Where was he?”
“Caligula. Owner called us.”
“Why would he go back there, knowing you guys were looking for him?”
“He was stoned. Crystal meth.”
“Not a lifestyle that lends itself to intelligent, goal-directed decisions,” I said.
“No, ma’am.”
“Where is he now?”
“Interrogation. Detective Jackson is in with him. I stepped out to take your call.”
“How’s the questioning going?”
“Interrogation. You interrogate suspects. You question witnesses. He’s a suspect.”
“Okay. How’s the interrogation going?”
“We’re just getting started.”
“Is he coming off the meth?”
“I think he’s down already. He seems okay.”
“Has he started crying yet?”
“He hadn’t before I stepped out. You think he will?”
“Depends on how much he used. And when. I’d bet on it with him. He’s so volatile. They tend to be criers.”
“You have experience with meth?”
“Some. I did a rotation on a drug rehab unit during my internship.” I checked my watch. It was eight thirty. “Detective, is there any way I could come down and watch the interrogation? I mean, is that allowed?”
“Not really.”
“Maybe I could offer some insight,” I said. “I’d like to see what he has to say.”
He paused for a long, excruciating minute. “I’ll send a squad car over. You at home?”
“Yep.”
“Fifteen minutes?”
“I’ll be ready.”
This journey wasn’t nearly as precarious as my cab ride had been. Chalk that up to a sober driver, I guess.
The officer who drove me had Detective McKnight paged as we drove into an underground garage. I thought we were near police headquarters, but had lost my bearings in the canyons of downtown Dallas. We got out of the car, slammed the doors to the cruiser, and waited by a steel door marked “Restricted. Identification required.” McKnight arrived a few minutes later, swiped a card into a slot, and led me into the secure area.
Dallas County Central Intake is a compendium of wretched depravity. Within its blue and yellow walls are specimens of every imaginable malignant mutation of the human soul. Prostitutes, pimps, drug addicts and their dealers, murderers, rapists, child molesters, thieves, burglars, small-time crooks, petty criminals, drunks—every suspect in every arrestable crime in Dallas County passes through these doors, in various stages on the continuum of repentance. From defiant to pathetic. DCCI has them all.
A half dozen dejected men were seated just inside these doors, in neat rows of metal folding chairs, like school children. They each wore white coveralls and bright orange Keds—the kind without laces.
I raised my eyebrows at McKnight with the silent question.
“Trustees,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Waiting for vomit to clean up. Whatever.”
I pointed to the lines of men and women taking off their shoes as they waited behind a white line for processing.
“And the shoes?”
“Shoe laces are weapons in here,” McKnight said.
I thought back to my brief but unfortunate incarceration in Chicago’s Cook County Jail. They’d let me keep my shoes. Thank God for simple dignities:
I followed McKnight through a series of card-swipes and locked doors, down hallways shiny with putty-colored linoleum, until we arrived at Interrogation Room Three. He opened the door and we were in a bare little room furnished with a single table with a monitor on it.
We stood and watched the monitor as Jackson talked to Gordon Pryne. A uniformed cop stood between them both and the exit.
I leaned in and peered at the small screen.
Pryne was cuffed at the wrists, with a chain that tied his cuffs into a D-ring in the floor. He was agitated, twitching with anger, each word from his accuser landing on him like a stone. He squirmed and fidgeted, bending to accommodate the cuffs and running his shaking fingers through that wild snatch of hair.
“What do you think?” McKnight said.
“He’s not off the meth yet. I’d say he’s about to blow. One way or another. See his hands, how they’re shaking? And look how pale he’s gotten, just since we’ve been standing here. He’s starting to get clammy, to go kind of gray. You can see the sweat stains starting here,” I pointed at the screen, “around his collar. And under his arms.”
Pryne’s chains rattled as he began shuffling his feet rhythmically.
“When we step inside,” McKnight said, “we’ll be behind a one-way mirror in a room next to the interrogation unit. Then I’ll step into the room, leaving you behind the mirror. He can’t see or hear you. He won’t even know you’re there. The room is pretty soundproof. But I’d advise you to turn off your cell phone or pager and to be as quiet as you can. Don’t scoot your chair or anything if you can help it.”
I nodded and turned my cell phone off.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded again and followed McKnight into the room. Three other men were watching the interrogation. McKnight nodded to them and pointed me to a chair. Then he swiped his card again and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. It locked with a crisp click.
Pryne looked up and tensed. He sniffed the air. He dropped his voice, narrowing his eyes to slits.
“Get her out of here,” he said.
I felt my chest tighten.
“No one in here but us, Gordon,” Jackson said. “Just you and us and your guilty conscience.”
Pryne pulled against cuffs and screamed at McKnight, “Get her out of here!”
I saw a quick glance pass between Jackson and McKnight. I could feel the other men behind the mirror looking at me.
“Who are you talking about, Gordon?” McKnight asked.
Pryne fought against his chains again, drawing blood on his wrist, and threw his head back convulsively. Jackson and McKnight both leapt backward. Pryne shoved the table, which tipped over and crashed onto the linoleum.
A sound filled the room. Something feral and desolate and primeval. We all stood, riveted, as we realized collectively what it was. Gordon Pryne was howling.
Profane screams were punctuated by the cracked syllables of words in a language I didn’t recognize. He threw his head back again, knocking himself to the floor as his chair flew backwards. He struggled to his feet and leapt at the end of his chain, a mad, rabid yard dog. He lunged toward the mirror and looked me straight in the eye.
I flinched and took a step backward.
He screamed and lunged again at the mirror, slamming himself against his chain. Deep red stains began to spread at his wrists.
The man next to me touched my elbow and escorted me out.
He was a cop, I think, judging from his empty holster and the respectful brown suit he wore. He didn’t introduce himself, just said, “Wait here,” and went back in.
I found myself alone in the outer room, the fluorescent lighting buzzing in my ears. My legs were trembling and I was cold and dizzy. My heartbeat was loud and fast in my ears, my face hot, and I couldn’t stop shivering. There were no chairs in the room—only the table with the lone monitor—so I crossed my arms and sank to the floor, my back to the wall, and put my head down on my knees.
I huddled there for a minute or so, my head down, breathing. In and out, I told myself. In and out.
I could hear Pryne’s shrieks, tinny now through the monitor. He seemed far away, though in fact I’d only increased the cushion between us by a few feet and one locked door. The distance didn’t seem nearly enough.
I closed my eyes instinctively to pray, my head still down, breathing, though the words wouldn’t come.
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